Page 39 of Be A Detective, They Said. It’ll Be Fun, They Said

Chapter Thirteen

Why does every place that’s bad and scary have to be so ding-dang dark? It could be light and scary, too, right? Why does the big showdown always happen in the dark? Why not a lovely cottage by the sea?

My eyes popped open at that thought as I tried to adjust my sight to the darkness. My nostrils flared at the smell of the damp dankness of, well…of a basement.

Convinced that’s where I was—in the school’s basement, though how or why, I didn’t know—I felt around the floor, my hands encountering patches of wetness. Feeling behind me, I found a wall. Shimmying upward, I stood, once more cursing my heels.

Straightening my spine, I inched along the wall, stopping every few seconds to listen—to absolutely nothing. There was no child calling me today.

As I crept, I forced myself to remain calm, trying to remember what happened before I ended up here—and then I froze.

Heath had called me. Sam! Someone had taken my sweet, gentle boy.

But why? Why would someone kidnap Sam?

And then, maybe because I was tired or maybe because I hadn’t processed the information properly before I was swept here, I remembered.

Sam is a genius…

And when I found who had, I’d kill them. I’d pull a Nina and rip their intestines out through their belly buttons.

But first, I had to get out of here.

All right, Wanda, pull it together and get to thinking. How did you get to the basement in the first place? What was happening in the basement?

Tucking my purse over my shoulder, I pressed my brain to put the pieces together.

Obviously, this had something to do with Neerie, and maybe even the missing children. Three children were missing, and now my Sam.

I fought sobbing out loud at the idea my boy was out there somewhere, afraid. I refused to let that get in my head. Stay the course, Wanda. Think. Put this together.

The facts: Neerie is missing. Neerie talked about a basement in her text to Earl. She thought something was going on here at the school. She had a possibly genuine picture of an alien, taken here at the school.

School. School. School. Everything led to the school.

She’d searched online for the stories of the three children who were missing, along with some school supplies—each of them taken from a school for the gifted. Neerie found out what happened to the children and she was investigating.

Neerie also thinks the school is run by the Illuminati, Wanda.

Again, I remind you, Bigfoot is real.

Fair point. Score one for you.

The three children taken were a werewolf, a vampire and a witch—all geniuses.

One of the things the parents mentioned was the school supplies taken were things that interested the children. Like the anime coloring books Chester liked and the drawing paper.

And my Sam is a zombie…and recently dubbed a genius. And one of the things missing from Sam’s school were chemistry books…

I stopped inching along the wall and fought not to gasp, in case anyone was around. Fought to keep from punching my fist through the wall.

My child was here. I knew it.

But hold the phone and think. All three children were of a different species, Sam being the fourth. What did that mean in terms of the kidnappings?

Different species of geniuses…

Was this some kind of superfecta of genius paranormals?

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