CHAPTER 10

Ethan cocked his head, listening carefully. There it was again—an eerie moan, louder this time. It was getting closer!

In a flash, Ethan took off running, as if a Zubat were swooping after him through the dark cemetery. He dodged headstones, tripped over flowerpots, rounded a statue, and finally ran straight into his friends.

He was so out of breath, he could barely tell them what he’d heard. And as the words came out of his mouth, they sounded so silly—he knew they did!

“You heard a what, now? A moan?” asked Gianna.

“Are you sure it wasn’t the wind?” asked Carlo. The corner of his mouth twitched, as if he was fighting a smile.

Great, thought Ethan. Just when the guy was starting to respect me a little.

“Never mind,” he said, quickly changing the subject. “Did Max ever come back?”

Carlo shook his head. “And it’s getting pretty late now. We should probably go.”

Ethan didn’t have to be told twice. After the moaning incident, he didn’t care if he ever set foot in the cemetery again—Max or no Max.

He practically had to drag Devin away from the cement bench, though. She kept looking over her shoulder, as if Max might suddenly appear.

When they finally reached the front entrance, Ethan was surprised to see the gate closed. “Wasn’t that open when we got here?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Carlo. “It sure was.” He pulled on the handle of the gate, tugging it backward. Then he tried pushing it forward. “I don’t believe it,” he whispered.

“What?” asked Ethan, his voice cracking.

Carlo tried slipping his hand through the bars, but he couldn’t reach the handle in front. As he pulled his hand back through, he turned to face Ethan.

“What?” Ethan asked again in a tiny voice.

Carlo took a deep breath. “The groundskeeper must have come through and not seen us. We’re, um … we’re locked in.”

The words hung in the air for just a moment.

Then Devin started to whimper.

Ethan turned around to comfort her, but he was surprised to see that she wasn’t crying. She was nervously chewing on a fingernail.

Standing beside her, Gianna looked worried, but she wasn’t the whimpering type.

Ethan strained his ears, and then he heard it again. There was someone else in the cemetery with them—he was sure of it. And this time, he was determined to get to the bottom of it.

He used the flashlight on his phone and walked toward the nearest row of headstones. “Who’s there?” he called, wishing his voice would stop wobbling. “Come out and show your face!”

The tougher Ethan talked, the tougher he felt. But when someone jumped up from behind a headstone, he shrieked and fell backward. He landed hard and then fumbled around in the grass, looking for his phone.

When he found it, he shone the light in the direction of the headstone.

He immediately recognized the boy standing next to it. Brayden the Great was blinking in the bright light of Ethan’s phone, looking not so very great.

“Brayden! What are you doing here?” said Ethan.

“I was just … h-hunting for Pokémon,” Brayden said. “But I didn’t know we were going to get l-locked in here. So now I’m kind of freaking out, actually.” He wiped his runny nose with the back of his hand.

Ethan stood up, brushing off his shorts. “So you go and hide behind a headstone?” he said. “And jump out and scare me? Seriously?”

Brayden shrugged. “I wasn’t trying to scare you.”

“Did you come to help us look for Max or something?” asked Devin. “We saw him, but he ran away.”

“Oh, that’s, um … too bad,” said Brayden.

“Well, we’ve got worse problems than that,” said Carlo. “We’re locked in a cemetery at night. So now we have to do the unthinkable.”

Ethan was about to ask what that meant, but Brayden beat him to it. “What do you mean? Do we have to stay locked in here all night?” He sounded like he was going to cry.

Carlo pulled out his phone. “Nope, we have to do something way worse. We have to call our parents.”

Carlo tried his mom, but she was still at work. But Brayden’s sister, Bella, was home. And when Ethan heard that Bella knew the groundskeeper’s son and was going to help them get out of the cemetery, he nearly jumped for joy.

“That means we don’t have to call Mom and Dad,” he said to Devin. And for the first time in about an hour, she smiled.

When Bella rode up in a Jeep with a tall teenage boy, Ethan suddenly felt shy. He was used to thinking of her as the enemy. She was the Team Valor Gym Leader at Ivan’s Ice Cream, after all.

But tonight, she’s saving our butts, he realized. So he was going to have to rethink this whole enemy thing.

As the teenage boy approached the gate with a ring of jingling keys, Bella gave Brayden a stern look through the bars. “What’re you doing here?” she said. “You were supposed to be home, watching your puppy.”

Brayden shrugged. He didn’t look like he was going to give up any information to his big sister.

So Bella turned to Ethan. “How about you guys?” she said. “Do you make a habit out of running around cemeteries at night?” She talked tough, but her eyes were smiling.

“We were looking for a cat,” Gianna explained. “A black one. We saw it here, but it slipped away.”

“Really?” said Bella, her eyebrows raised. “Brayden and I know the black cat that lives here. He’s a mean, nasty stray. If I were you, I’d steer clear of him. He bit Brayden’s hand last year. You should show them the scar, Brayden.”

“Wait, what?” said Ethan. He suddenly wasn’t feeling so shy anymore. “Brayden, you said you thought that cat was Max!”

As the iron gate swung open, Brayden was the first one through it. He didn’t show off his scar. He didn’t even respond to Ethan. He just started running, all the way to his bike, which was hidden in a clump of bushes.

As Ethan watched him go, the puzzle pieces started falling into place.

Brayden hadn’t come to the cemetery to hunt Pokémon. Of course he didn’t, thought Ethan. There aren’t any here!

No, Brayden had come to spy on Team Mystic, to see if they believed his little lie about the black cat. And to try to scare us, Ethan realized, remembering the moaning noise he’d heard over by the tomb.

But the worst part was, he’d gotten their hopes up about Max—especially Devin’s. And for that, Ethan couldn’t forgive him.

He balled his hands up into fists and took off through the gate, determined to catch up with Brayden. But Carlo stepped in his path.

“Whoa, take it easy,” he said. “It’s not worth it—just let him go.”

Fine, thought Ethan, his heart thudding in his ears. I’ll let him go. But then I don’t ever want to see his face again. Not ever.