2) He promised Dad wouldn’t remember.
3) He wanted a rematch.
4) He always keeps his promises.
“Jonathan Webster,” said Brian. “He made a deal with the smiling man to get his brother back from the dead. What did Ollie do?”
“She must have done it for her dad. To fix his hand,” Coco whispered. “Made a bargain. That’s what she wasn’t telling us.” Her body was shaking all over.
“But what’d she give him in exchange?” demanded Brian. “Did she jump in the lake to—to escape him?”
“No,” said Coco. “She jumped because she knew he wouldn’t let the snake kill her—because that’s not what he promised. Not what she traded. So she’s alive . . .”
Brian’s heart beat fast with horror and with panic; he was cudgeling his brain as hard as it would go, trying to understand.
Something crinkled in his coat pocket. It hadn’t been there before. Without thinking, he pulled out another piece of paper.
This one was thick and written in swirling, raised script. The same script that was on the black
spot—the only warning they’d had. The warning of a day, a time, and a place.
It was a note.
Everyone has forgotten her, it said.
Except you.
You have one chance to win her back.
Call it a rematch.
I’ll send an invitation. You’ll know it when you get it.
—S.
“The smiling man,” said Brian. He didn’t feel afraid at all anymore. Only furious—and glitteringly hopeful.
“One chance,” said Coco.
“One chance is all we’ll need,” said Brian, and they looked grimly at each other as their wooden boat ground against the rocky shore and the moonlight silvered the water like the back of a dying monster.
Turn the page to see where Ollie, Coco, and Brian’s adventure began . . .
1
OCTOBER IN EAST EVANSBURG, and the last warm sun of the year slanted red through the sugar maples. Olivia Adler sat nearest the big window in Mr. Easton’s math class, trying, catlike, to fit her entire body into a patch of light. She wished she were on the other side of the glass. You don’t waste October sunshine. Soon the old autumn sun would bed down in cloud blankets, and there would be weeks of gray rain before it finally decided to snow. But Mr. Easton was teaching fractions and had no sympathy for Olivia’s fidgets.
“Now,” he said from the front of the room. His chalk squeaked on the board. Mike Campbell flinched. Mike Campbell got the shivers from squeaking blackboards and, for some reason, from people licking paper napkins. The sixth grade licked napkins around him as much as possible.
“Can anyone tell me how to convert three-sixteenths to a decimal?” asked Mr. Easton. He scanned the room for a victim. “Coco?”
“Um,” said Coco Zintner, hastily shutting a sparkling pink notebook. “Ah,” she added wisely, squinting at the board.
Point one eight seven five, thought Olivia idly, but she did not raise her hand to rescue Coco. She made a line of purple ink on her scratch paper, turned it into a flower, then a palm tree. Her attention wandered back to the window. What if a vampire army came through the gates right now? Or no, it’s sunny. Werewolves? Or what if the Brewsters’ Halloween skeleton decided to unhook himself from the third-floor window and lurch out the door?
Ollie liked this idea. She had a mental image of Officer Perkins, who got cats out of trees and filed police reports about pies stolen off windowsills, approaching a wandering skeleton. I’m sorry, Mr. Bones, you’re going to have to put your skin on—
A large foot landed by her desk. Ollie jumped. Coco had either conquered or been conquered by three-sixteenths, and now Mr. Easton was passing out math quizzes. The whole class groaned.