Page 23 of The Executioners Three
The gate squeaked as Freddie nudged it a bit wider to slip through, and a split second later, she stepped onto the grounds of Allard Fortin Preparatory School. Freddie had seen it all before, of course—she’d come to a few soccer matches. Plus, there’d been that summer when Mom had been hired to restore the mausoleum after time, weather, and occasional vandalism had taken their toll. Freddie (only eight at the time) had been forced to tag along every day for an entire summer.
But for each of those visits, Freddie had beenallowedon campus. Right now, she was 100 percent trespassing. And it turned out breaking the rules was exhilarating.
In fact, it was making Freddie reconsidereverything she had ever known.Like maybe it was time for a new ten-year plan. No more law enforcement; a life of crime was summoning instead.
With Laina at the lead, the Prank Squad tiptoed over maple- and oak-lined paths (where nary an acorn or fallen leaf dared to disrupt the view). “The Fortin cross-country team runs here,” Luis whispered, pointing totrails that snaked into darkness. “But,” he added with a toothy grin, “they’re mostly flat. Which is why they always lose, and I always win.”
“And always will, babe.” Cat offered a boyfriend-indulging smile.
A few more bends in the path and a new light filtered their way. Laina made a SWAT-team motion toward the trees, so they all ducked off the paths.
“It’s the field lights,” Kyle said, frowning his ever-confused frown as they gathered beside a barren willow. “But why are they on? There’s no game.”
“Yeah.” Cat nodded, wearing a more intelligent frown. “It’s an away game tonight. The students should be gone.”
Except,Freddie thought,Ididget them arrested. It was possible a lot of them were bound to campus now.
“Well, shnikies,” Laina swore at the same moment Luis dropped his corn syrup to the ground. They both ripped off their masks.
“What the hell are we gonna do?” he asked. “We have all this syrup, and wehaveto retaliate somehow. This morning can’t go unanswered.”
He sounded Very Shakespearean, and Freddie approved. Baz Luhrmann’sRomeo + Julietwas her favorite movie. Except, of course, this wasn’t Verona Beach, and tragically, Leonardo DiCaprio wasn’t here.
While everyone debated the best course of action, Freddie spun in a slow circle, searching for inspiration. Trusting her gut to guide her…
Her eyes landed on a different set of lights through the trees. It was the ever-spotless Allard Fortin mausoleum.Oh yes.She grinned a criminal grin.That will do nicely.
“President Steward?” Freddie dropped her jug to the ground. “How do we feel about changing our target? The Fortin crypt is right over there.”
“Ooooh,” Kyle said. “We could pour the syrup on his skeleton!”
“No!”Freddie flung up her hands. “No, no,no.” She would never deface a piece of history. Her mom would literally kill her. “No touching the three-hundred-year-old mausoleum, please. My mom worked really hard at the restoration, okay? However, feel free to sully the gardens and benches all you want.”
“Oh, nice.” Luis made an approving nod. “I’ve heard those gardens are a popular make-out spot. It sure would suck to find it covered in corn syrup.”
“Especially if”—Freddie pointed to a nearby trash can, her eyelashes batting innocently—“there’s trash all over the syrup.”
“Oh, andbirdseed,” Divya said. “There were bags of it back at the gate.”
“Gnarly.” Laina punched the air. “They’ll have raccoons and birds crawling all over by morning.”
Kyle whooped (albeit softly) and everyone else gave gleeful nods.
“Boys.” Laina stood taller. “Go fetch that birdseed. Cat, Divya, Freddie?” She slid her mask into place. “Let’s dump some corn syrup.”
During Freddie’s summer with her mom on campus, Freddie had learned that the Fortin mausoleum looked way cooler on the outside than it did on the inside. The interior was tiny, dusty, and contained nothing more than a boring stone coffin.
As such—unsurprisingly—Mom’s restoration efforts had mostly focused on the crypt’s exterior: on the four Allard Fortin busts (that honestly looked just like Fake Fortin at the Quick-Bis); on the marble sign that read,Le pouvoir réside dans le service(Power resides in service); and on the columns and domed roof and broken weather vane.
Above all, though, Mom had focused on the bell.
She’d felt a deep attachment to it, having worked so hard to make a replica as her first order of business upon taking over the Historical Society. And her attachment had only grown when the missing bell had mysteriously turned up in the schoolhouse in 1987. She’d known it was the Real Deal right away because apparently the grayish verdigris (that blue-green patina that forms on copper) had revealed a distinctive ratio of tin and copper that was no longer in use—not even for the replica. It was too easy to crack, particularly in cold weather.
With painstaking care, Mom had removed the original bell from the schoolhouse cupola and returned it to its rightful spot in the mausoleum belfry. How the bell had gotten dumped in the Village in the first place was a question Mom never did get an answer to. Nor did she ever figure out what had happened to the original clapper.
So the replica clapper had gone into the original bell, while the replica bell had gone clapperless into the schoolhouse, where Freddie could get daddy longlegs stuck in her hair each year when she put up fairy lights.And Mom had used that summer to write at length about why José Allard Fortin might have requested a bell in his mausoleum in the first place.
It had been nine years since Freddie had last stood this close to the mausoleum. It looked exactly as she remembered. There was the domed white building; there was the original bell with its gray-green verdigris; there were the four busts and the sign and the knee-high fence Mom had insisted on adding because, in her words,Rambunctious teens cannot be in close proximity to history.
