Page 114 of The Executioners Three
And she’d also noticed the bell ringing from the west, where this was the only bell she knew of. Yet it still had never occurred to her that someone might be climbing up there at night, shoving a clapper into the bell, and ringing that tin and copper for all it was worth.
Libérez-nous,Freddie thought.
She sprinted past smashed pumpkins and fallen heaters. Over hay bales and extension cords and puddles of melting snow. Divya was right beside her the whole way.
Red clapboard siding swam into Freddie’s vision. Wet leaves slapped beneath her and Divya’s feet. No wind, nor even the stink of dead things here. Each breath was a harsh boom in Freddie’s skull. A harsh burn inside her lungs.
She and Divya swung around the old schoolhouse, and it was almost like Thursday afternoon all over again. They were here to clean up a mess. They were here to get a special bell ready for a special day.
They punched through the door where Divya had slouched and played Snake. They thwacked over the floorboards where Freddie had swept, but now with no benches to get in their way. Just the ladder ahead.
Libérez-nous.
Freddie reached the ladder first. As she expected, the fairy lights had once more been knocked down. Before she could start to climb, though, Divya barked, “Wait!”
“No time,” Freddie started to say, but then Divya was yanking something out of her pocket.
Something so familiar Freddie actually choked.
It was the heart of iron from her dreams—except now she could see it wasn’t a heart at all. It was a bell clapper.
“Theo gave it to me,” Divya said on rasping breaths. “When he was holding me, he pushed this into my pocket. It must be for you.”
“It is,” Freddie said, and she yanked it from Divya’s palm. “And I herebytake backanymean comments I made last week about your helpfulness. You are officially the most helpful best friend of all time and I love you forever.”
“Duh!” Divya called as Freddie leaped onto the ladder and scrabbled up as fast as her limbs would carry her.
The bell abovecreak-creak-creaked, not from wind, but from Freddie’s movements in the cupola. There was definitely a clapper inside the bell now—and presumably a clapper that Dr. Born had kept after he first stole the bell in 1975.
Freddie reached the final rung. There was the Village Historique spread before her, now ripped apart like Looney Tunes’ Taz had swept through. (Which, note to self: Taz was a good nickname for Kyle.)
There was Theo, bleeding and statuesque upon the stage. There was Dr. Born, his gun aimed at Kyle while he roared at the Prank Squad to “Stay back!”
A shot cracked into the night. Freddie thought she saw Kyle fall. She definitely saw Bowman and Laina—still wreathed in unmoving flames—burn brighter. Blindingly so. But she couldn’t worry about any of them right now. She knew what she had to do; she knewhowshe had to save them.
Freddie turned to the old bell, made by Original Fabre three hundred years ago to replace one that had broken in the cold…
From a clapper that was too big for it.
“The ratio of tin to copper,” Freddie whispered, quoting Mom from the night before, “changes the color of the verdigris and the strength of the bell.”
She unhooked the clapper currently inside. It was heavy but noticeably smaller and lighter than the one Theo had somehow gotten ahold of.
Freddie tossed the newer clapper out the cupola window. It struck shingle and slid downward, a sound lost to the growing sense that Freddie was about to lose control of herself. Again.
Because Stabby was starting to wake up once more.
Libérez-nous.
Freddie found the end of the bigger clapper. The heart of iron that wasn’t a heart at all. And with only a little clumsiness, she slotted it into theweathered bell. Now she just had to pray it was big enough and the bell old enough, weak enough to break from her swinging.
She leaned backward and shoved the bell. The clapper hit as it was meant to do.
Clang!
The sound was so loud it vibrated into Freddie’s skull. Into her teeth and brain cells. A thousand little legs to dig,diginto her Charretière DNA, just like the daddy longlegs she’d been so afraid of getting in her hair.
She watched as Bowman, still wreathed in flames beside the stage, suddenly turned to face Freddie.
