SHE LOOKED at me. I’m sure my face was as off-kilter as a Picasso. “Okay, maybe I overstated it,” Betty said. “The world doesn’t depend on it. Just Butters’ world. I’ll explain later.”

She grabbed me by the hand and we went on a walk to her car. We cruised through the town looking for Butters. The Karaoke state championship was happening tonight and Butters had qualified to represent Doolittle Falls’ region, the Sleepy Valley. If he was in the top three he’d get to compete at the regionals in the New England Championship, and if he won that, he’d go on to the Karaoke nationals in Washington DC.

“There’s a Karaoke nationals?”

“There’s an everything nationals these days.” Betty said. “Haven’t you ever watched singing shows?”

“What does he get if he wins?”

“Fifty thousand dollars and a spot on The Sing-Along.”

“The what?”

“Ugh. You really were off the grid this summer. The Sing-Along is the biggest reality musical show in the country. Everyone—Normals, Heroes, Misshapes, even supervillains—cover songs and the best singer gets a record deal with Titan Records.

“And Butters wants to get on the show?”

“Everyone wants to get on the show.”

“That’s awesome.”

“It could be. It’s still far away, and I can’t even get him to the regionals.”

“What do you mean?”

Betty explained to me that there had been a series of events leading up to the competition. Butters was calling it his curse. Before he performed, strange things would happen. Bouts of laryngitis. Downed power in the bars. He’d almost gotten hit by a tree. “I think it’s the Admiral,” Betty said.

“Admiral Doom?” I asked. “Why would he want to stop karaoke? Doesn’t he have bigger plans, like his Doom Ray?”

“Not Admiral Doom, silly,” Betty corrected, executing a perfect turn. “Admiral Skylark. He’s in the competition as well, and he also has powers and money to recruit minions to help him.”

Once we got off the main drag, I put my head out the window to see if I could spot Butters. The slow echoes of doo-wop filled the air. We followed it like hounds on a scent until we pulled over to the field where Butters was standing in the middle distance, belting “It’s In His Kiss (the Shoop Shoop song)” with full back-up by the Spectors. Butters was okay. The Spectors were amazing.

We tumbled out of the car, approaching Butters from behind. “I don’t want to interrupt him,” Betty said, putting a finger over her lips. “He’s nervous enough as it is.” We watched him finish the song, then start again. He made the same exact gestures each time, never moving from his space. It was like he was caught on loop. When we got up to him we could see that he was singing against his will. While his whole body was into the performance, his small hands making large circles and his feet doing a tap-dancing soft shoe in place, there was fear in his eyes. We tried to talk to him but he kept going. We tried to move him but he was stuck, as if by glue, in place.

“Is someone messing with you?” I asked.

Butters nodded, almost imperceptibly.

We heard a loud, slow clap when he finished. Christie emerged from behind a lonely maple tree, a smirk on her face.

“Bravo. They figured it out. Bravo.” She paused and looked over at Butters and the Spectors. “Again!” she shouted. “Less vibrato this time. If I wanted Christina Aguilera murdering a classic, I’d ask for it.”

Butters opened his mouth. A tremulous warble whispered through the air.

I was going to shout something clever at Christie, so she’d stop it with Butters, but her mind control moves at the speed of thought, and by the time I finished, I’d be in Butters’ chorus line, singing and dancing forever. I sent a bolt of lightning ripping through the sky. It landed with an enormous BANG twenty feet away from Christie, splitting a branch in the tree. Everyone jumped, clutching their ears and falling to the ground in a ball, including the Spectors. Butters stayed upright, with a marine’s posture, still singing. Some debris from the tree hit Christie in the head and she yelped. Betty gave me a nod of approval.

“Why’d you do that?” Christie moaned. “It hurt.”

“Consider it a warning,” I said. “The next one won’t be.”

“I can have you doing—” she was about to launch into a spiel about how she could get me to do anything, absolutely anything. We had heard it before from the Glanton family.

I cut her off. If there was one thing I learned this summer it was how to talk big. Apparently, it’s half of what they teach you at the Academy. “Hey Christie, the second I sense you getting into my mind at all it’s done. In fact, right now, my hand’s not on the trigger, it’s over the muzzle. The shots have been fired, and I’m the only thing between you and the bullet. You move, you wake up in a year with white hair and some serious memory loss. Your call.”

It was a bluff. A big one. I didn’t have nearly that kind of power. Or control. The tree thing was luck. I was aiming thirty yards east of it. But Christie didn’t know that. She just knew that I was more powerful now, and I scared the hell out of her. Would it be worth it to test me? She wrinkled her nose.

Butters’ body collapsed. Out of breath, he fell to the ground. Betty went over to him while I continued to stare Christie down. I felt like a cat locked in a neighborhood battle. She smiled at me and I smiled back, and we slowly backed away from each other, never breaking eye contact until she had shrank in my vision to the size of a peanut.