Format: 304 pages, Hardcover
Release Date: August 26, 2025
Publisher: Tor Teen
Source: Publisher
Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy / Contemporary
From New York Times bestselling author Susan Dennard comes The Executioners Three, a foggy, autumn mystery filled with gruesome murders, secret sleuthing, and a gorgeous rival from a different high school—all set in a small town where legends from long ago now haunt the present day.
Freddie Gellar didn't mean to get half the rival high school arrested. She’d simply heard shrieks coming from the woods, so she’d called the cops like any good human would do. How was she supposed to know it was just kids partying?
Except the next day, a body is found. And while the local sheriff might call it suicide, Freddie's instincts tell her otherwise. So, like the aspiring sleuth (and true X-Files aficionado) she is, Freddie sets out to prove there's a murderer at large.
But her investigation is quickly disrupted by the rivalry between her school and the school of the partying teens she got arrested. For over twenty years, the two student bodies have had an ongoing prank war, and Freddie's failed attempt at Good Samaritanism has upped the ante. Worse, the clever—and gorgeous—leader of the rival prank squad has set his sights on Freddie.
As more pranks unfurl, more bodies also start piling up in the forest. But it's the supernatural warning signs around town, each plucked straight from an old forgotten poem called "The Executioners Three," that worry Freddie the most. She knows the poem and its blood curse can’t be real, but she's quickly running out of time to prove it.
Because the murderer—or executioners?—knows she's onto them now, and their next target just might be Freddie.
Except the next day, a body is found. And while the local sheriff might call it suicide, Freddie's instincts tell her otherwise. So, like the aspiring sleuth (and true X-Files aficionado) she is, Freddie sets out to prove there's a murderer at large.
But her investigation is quickly disrupted by the rivalry between her school and the school of the partying teens she got arrested. For over twenty years, the two student bodies have had an ongoing prank war, and Freddie's failed attempt at Good Samaritanism has upped the ante. Worse, the clever—and gorgeous—leader of the rival prank squad has set his sights on Freddie.
As more pranks unfurl, more bodies also start piling up in the forest. But it's the supernatural warning signs around town, each plucked straight from an old forgotten poem called "The Executioners Three," that worry Freddie the most. She knows the poem and its blood curse can’t be real, but she's quickly running out of time to prove it.
Because the murderer—or executioners?—knows she's onto them now, and their next target just might be Freddie.
Susan Dennard's The Executioners Three can be simplified as Scream meets Gilmore Girls in a fog-shrouded small town, complete with prank wars, budding romance, and a curse that could curdle your pumpkin spice latte. At the heart of The Executioners Three is Freddie Gellar, a sharp-witted, somewhat awkward high school senior in the sleepy logging town of City-on-the-Berme (or "Berm," as the locals call it) who seems to have gained her father's ability to find things.
Freddie's night starts innocently enough: hearing shrieks from the woods, she does the responsible thing and calls the cops, only to accidentally get a gaggle of rowdy teens from the rival high school arrested mid-party. Oops. What follows is a whirlwind of escalating prank wars between the two schools—a rivalry that's been simmering for over two decades—punctuated by increasingly sinister events.
Bodies start turning up in the forest (one decapitated, no less), and eerie supernatural signs plague the town: ghostly bells tolling from a long-silent tower, whispers in the mist, and symbols ripped straight from an obscure 18th-century poem titled "The Executioners Three," which foretells a blood curse tied to the town's founding. As Freddie digs deeper, desperate to prove the curse is bunk (or is it?), she gets tangled up with Theo Porter, the annoyingly charming ringleader of the rival crew she just ratted out.
Their enemies-to-reluctant-allies dynamic crackles with tension, forcing Freddie to navigate her complicated social circle—including her ride-or-die best friend Divya and a cast of quirky sidekicks—while dodging pranks that turn deadly. The stakes ramp up fast: the "executioners" (or murderer?) know Freddie's onto them, and she's next on the chopping block. Dennard masterfully balances the high-octane plot with Freddie's internal snark, making this a page-turner that had me staying up way past my bedtime, flashlight in hand like it was 1999 all over again.
This isn't just a slasher-lite romp; it's a clever small-town murder mystery laced with supernatural dread, where folklore feels alive and menacing, add in the campy Boy band obsession by Freddie, and Theo Porter, and the author brings you right back to the 90's where Boy Bands were the thing everyone was obsessed with. Dennard's prose paints Berm as a character in itself: misty woods that swallow secrets, a historic bell tower that chimes with otherworldly menace, and a curse poem that's equal parts poetic and prophetic. One of the best things about this story? It's a STANDALONE!!! Huzzah!!!
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1
Freddie Gellar hadn’t meant to get half the student body of Fortin Prep boarding school arrested. It wasn’t like she’d woken up that morning and thought, You know what? I feel like ruining lives at the rival high school today.
Not at all. She’d simply heard shrieks coming from the woods near her house, so she’d called the cops. Like any normal human with a normal conscience would do.
Freddie stabbed her broom halfheartedly at a swarm of daddy longlegs who’d taken roost on the ladder inside the old schoolhouse. She was supposed to go into the cupola, with its broken bell, and string up fairy lights.
But so far, all she’d managed was to open the schoolhouse door, sweep around the benches that would soon get moved outside for the Lumberjack Pageant … and then cough dramatically at the gathered dust and cobwebs on the ladder.
The Fête du Bûcheron was in a little over two weeks, and that meant every inch of City-on-the-Berme Village Historique had to be ready for a shindig the locals took Very Seriously Indeed. Every year, the Village was open from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Then, the Village reopened its gates one extra day for the locals to celebrate Halloween.
Not only was it a big fundraiser for the Village, but it was also the event of the year for a town that was as insular as it was festive.
Which meant it was Freddie’s mom’s most important event of the year.
Freddie and a handful of volunteers had already spent the last two weeks helping Mom deck everything in jack-o’-lanterns, scarecrows, and an unseemly number of hay bales. La Maison Authentique du Bûcheron (the Authentic Lumberjack Homestead, which was neither authentic nor a homestead) was now a haunted house, complete with skeletons, mirrors, and hiding places for her stepdad, Steve, in ghost makeup.
La Taverne now housed all the necessary accoutrements to sell heaps of hot apple cider and Mrs. Ferris’s famous jams, while La Marché d’Été (the summer market) was all ready for the jack-o’-lantern contest (whoever won that got to put a banner on their house for the entire year).
Lastly, two portable toilets had been tucked behind the tavern that didn’t actually sell alcohol. No French placards for those. (Port-A-Potty, it would seem, was not worth translating.)
Freddie sighed toward her best friend, Divya, who leaned at the school’s red clapboard entrance with all the cool poise of a runway model. The fall wind had picked up outside, lifting leaves and adding a lovely autumn glow to Divya’s amber skin. It also made Divya shiver while she frantically played Snake on her Nokia.
“It just seems,” Divya said now without looking up, “like a really hard mistake to make, Fred. I mean, surely you know what a bunch of rich kids drinking sounds like.”
“Not really,” Freddie admitted. “It’s not like I’ve ever been to a party. Have you?”
Divya flashed a laser glare—and a sound like digital snake death beeped out. “You know I haven’t. Unless you count our book club meet-ups with Abby and Tom. Those can get pretty rowdy sometimes.”
Freddie didn’t count those at all. A drunken teenage party was not the same thing as a spirited discussion of whatever novel Divya had insisted they read. (This month’s selection had been The Notebook, which Freddie had found a little too light on murder for her tastes.)
Freddie stabbed more forcefully at this nest of longlegs (or was it a swarm?) blocking her from the schoolhouse bell twelve feet above. She really couldn’t go up there until these were gone. With hair as wild and dark as hers, all those arachnids would get lost in a heartbeat.
Divya, meanwhile, slunk into the shadows of the school and notably didn’t offer to help Freddie as she eased onto a bench. After all, it wasn’t her mom who was head of the City-on-the-Berme Historical Society. And no matter how many times Freddie pointed out to Mom that it was illegal to force her daughter to prepare for the fête every year, Mom just laughed and said, “Great. In that case, you can find somewhere else to live.”
Although, for all Freddie’s vocal complaints (she was very, very vocal), she secretly loved volunteering here. City-on-the-Berme was her favorite place in the whole world. Part tourist attraction, with its only moderately accurate French logging settlement, and part outdoor center, with the county park trails winding through the forest next door—you couldn’t get more autumn creeptastic than this place.
Which was likely why the fête was always the biggest event of the year for locals.
And also why Mom always put so much pressure on Freddie to help.
Last night, however, things had gone awry. After Freddie had finished helping Mom with the hay bales, she’d left her scarf behind. And seeing as it was her favorite scarf (and therefore crucial for the completion of any fall outfit), she’d set out for the City-on-the-Berme Village Historique on Steve’s rickety bike after dinner.
Freddie never made it to the Village—or found her scarf, for that matter. The trail had been dangerously foggy, her headlamp bouncing beams everywhere, and there’d been an awful stench like dead animals in the air. So strong, so overwhelming, that Freddie had actually thought she might gag.
It had forced her to stop her bike just so she could cover her mouth and try to breathe. The fog definitely hadn’t helped. Freddie’d had the horrifying sense it was alive and trying to climb inside her.
Then a bell had tolled from somewhere in the trees, even though there was only the one bell in City-on-the-Berme (currently over Freddie’s head) and it had no clapper so it couldn’t ring.
Freddie had not liked that sound. Nor the way she’d suddenly felt the fog tighten as if solid around her throat.
So the instant she had heard frantic shrieking from the woods nearby, she’d needed no urging whatsoever to turn around and pedal straight home again.
She had seen enough X-Files and read enough Goosebumps, thank you very much, to know how this sort of story would end.
Once home, she’d called the cops. Unfortunately, instead of finding a Person in Distress Being Slowly Dismembered in the old logging forests of City-on-the-Berme, Sheriff Bowman had found an unauthorized bonfire and a lot of underage drinking.
Divya kicked her legs onto the bench in front of her. “Look, Fred, I’ll grudgingly accept that neither of us knows much about parties or partying or anything associated with the verb ‘to party,’ but surely you can tell the difference between someone screaming bloody murder and someone screaming for more beer.”
“Can I, though?” Freddie asked. “Because it sounded like bloody murder to me. I mean, glass containers aren’t even allowed in City-on-the-Berme, Div.”
“Pretty sure the Fortin kids don’t care about that part. They’re also under twenty-one.” Divya gave a low whistle. “Oh boy, I hope they don’t know that it was you who called the cops on them.”
Freddie’s stomach flipped. She hadn’t thought of that. “How could they possibly know?”
Divya shrugged. “Dunno. But it’s a small town. People talk.”
Freddie winced. That phrase—It’s a small town, people talk—might as well have been the town motto for Berm, population 1,321. There were more deer here than people, and if the deer could talk, they probably would too.
Freddie’s only possible saving grace was that almost all of the students at Fortin Prep were from out of town, and the one thing Bermians hated more than a disruption to their beloved fête was out-of-towners. They even said it that way—out-of-towners—like it was a dirty word, and tourists were only accepted as long as they didn’t stay for more than a long weekend during the summer.
When at last the daddy longlegs were vanquished from the ladder, Freddie retrieved the necessary fairy lights from a box by Divya’s bench. “Thanks for the help,” Freddie said with as much sarcasm as she could muster.
“Any time,” Divya murmured, once more playing Snake. “Can we go to the archives now?”
“No.” Freddie sniffed. “The agreement was that you’d help me clean up the old schoolhouse, and then I would take you to the archives.”
“But my paper is due Monday, Fred.” Divya finally shoved her phone into her pocket. “I can’t wait any longer.”
“Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you spent the last ten minutes playing Snake.” Freddie notched her chin high and sashayed away from Divya, a trail of lights dragging over the wooden planks behind her.
“I’ll help now.” Divya chased after.
“Too late.” Freddie reached the ladder, and with one handful of lights, she lumbered up.
“Please, Fred.” Divya hugged at the ladder below and shot dramatic puppy eyes upward. “Just tell me what to do. Pwetty pwease?” She fluttered her lashes. “I can plug in the lights … or … sweep?”
“I already swept.” Really, had her bestie been paying any attention? “You’re going to have to get more creative, Madame Srivastava. Think firstborn child or family inheritance. Then I might reconsider.”
Freddie reached the top of the ladder. Cold air billowed against her—and the Village Historique spanned beyond. Beautiful, vibe-y, and always right on the edge of falling apart because there never seemed to be enough funding.
Straight ahead was the Village Square, soon to be filled with the Lumberjack Pageant stage but currently only filled with hay bales and scarecrows, one of which appeared to be waving, thanks to the wind.
“New idea,” Divya called from below. “What if I lend you Lance?”
Oh, now we’re talking. “Two weeks,” Freddie replied as she unknotted fairy lights. “I want him two weeks.”
“One.”
“Two or I climb down and leave you stranded.”
“Ugh, fine. You can have him for two weeks.”
Huzzah. Freddie grinned at the bronze bell before her, with its green outer patina. I am so getting the better end of this bargain.
Creak, creak, the bell agreed, since it had no clapper—meaning when a wind tumbled through the cupola or Freddie wrapped lights around it, the poor thing could only give a sad squeal upon its hinge.
Still, that didn’t mean it couldn’t be the bell she’d heard last night … And there was only one way to find out. Freddie grabbed the bell now and shook it.
Creak, creak, creak, it said in reply.
She gave it one more heave, just to be sure …
Creak, creak, creak.
Yep, okay. Freddie could now say with absolute certainty that this was not the bell she’d heard, and if this thing had ever tolled with any dignity, those days were long past.
Which was fine. It didn’t need to ring. It was just a replica of the bronze bell over at the Allard Fortin mausoleum anyway. Although, to be honest, the replica was looking pretty rough this year—like maybe the guy Mom had hired to make it hadn’t done a very good job. Once she’d covered the bell in lights like a sad Christmas tree, Freddie scuttled down. She was absolutely freezing now, and truly mourning the loss of her scarf. “I’ll take Lance, please.” She thrust her hand at Divya.
Who scowled. Then also obeyed and withdrew the sacred keychain from her pocket. A heartbeat later, the face of Lance Bass gleamed up at Freddie.
And Freddie sighed a melty sigh as she accepted Lance’s flawless face. He fit so perfectly in her palm, a tiny slice of boy band magic. Whenever Divya (or Freddie) had it with her, good things happened. Magical things, like finding fifty-dollar bills in the road or repeated Good Hair Days.
Freddie blew Lance a kiss, then slipped him into her puffer vest. “Alright,” she declared, chin rising in triumph, “follow me, Madame Srivastava. I shall lead you to the archives!”
She marched them out of the schoolhouse. If she twisted slightly, she could see Le Moulin à Eau (the water mill) through a copse of coppery maples. Currently, no paddles spun.
South of that was Le Forgeron (the blacksmith), which technically had a working forge … but also technically lacked a working blacksmith to use it. It had been modeled on a smithy that had been in the original City-on-the-Berme in the 1600s—and it was thanks to the blacksmith at the time keeping meticulous journals that Mom had been able to make the replica bell that now lived in the schoolhouse without its clapper.
It was toward this storied blacksmith’s hut that Freddie and Divya now aimed. They reached the stream that fed its forge, glittering, burbly, and dark with cold. The sign in front that read Le Forgeron had a fresh streak of bird poop on it. So now it just read Le Forger(splat).
Freddie scowled at the poop. She should probably clean it before the fête.
She and Divya were just rounding the building so they could embark into the woods when footsteps stomped out. A figure barreled into view. “Hey,” he said.
And Freddie’s heart lurched into her throat. Luis Mendez, star athlete and fellow senior at Berm High, had just spoken to her. Even more bizarre, he wasn’t done speaking and he was smiling. “Gellar,” he panted. “Nice to see you.”
Then he was past Freddie in a gust of sweaty air.
“Um…” Divya wiggled a pinkie in her ear. “Did Luis Mendez just say your name?”
“I think so.” Freddie was as fully stunned as Divya. Every day, the Berm High cross-country team ran the park’s paths. Sometimes they nodded her way, but 99.9999 percent of the time, they ignored her existence.
“Gellar!” cried a new voice. Then another and another, and suddenly an entire swarm (or was it a nest?) of boys was charging past. Zach Gilroy and Darius Baker even slung out their hands for high fives.
Freddie complied, although she wasn’t entirely sure how. Her brain had basically disconnected from her body, and she could feel her jaw dangling low. In seconds, the entirety of the boys’ team had jogged past. Which meant that any second now, the girls would—
“Freddie!” shrieked Carly Zhang as she bounded by. “Nice job!”
“Nice job on what?” Freddie tried to ask, but Carly was already gone, and now cheers were rising up as a second stampede of bodies rushed closer.
“We have officially entered The X-Files,” Divya said as feet and ponytails thundered past, and Freddie could only nod in agreement. Even the blacksmith’s hut seemed faintly astonished, its wooden exterior creaking on the wind.
Then, as fast as the Berm High cross-country teams had appeared, they vanished again. Which wasn’t terribly surprising, given there were only seventeen runners across both teams. Last, because he was always last (except in the jack-o’-lantern contest of ’95), came poor Todd Raskin, ever determined to dominate his asthma through sheer perserverance.
“Do you need your inhaler?” Freddie asked as he heaved past.
“Nah,” he wheezed. “Thanks, Gellar. And good job!”
“I think,” Divya said, slipping her arm back through Freddie’s as they watched Todd tromp away, “that you’re popular now, Freddie. This is … well, monumental, certainly.”
Freddie Gellar hadn’t meant to get half the student body of Fortin Prep boarding school arrested. It wasn’t like she’d woken up that morning and thought, You know what? I feel like ruining lives at the rival high school today.
Not at all. She’d simply heard shrieks coming from the woods near her house, so she’d called the cops. Like any normal human with a normal conscience would do.
Freddie stabbed her broom halfheartedly at a swarm of daddy longlegs who’d taken roost on the ladder inside the old schoolhouse. She was supposed to go into the cupola, with its broken bell, and string up fairy lights.
But so far, all she’d managed was to open the schoolhouse door, sweep around the benches that would soon get moved outside for the Lumberjack Pageant … and then cough dramatically at the gathered dust and cobwebs on the ladder.
The Fête du Bûcheron was in a little over two weeks, and that meant every inch of City-on-the-Berme Village Historique had to be ready for a shindig the locals took Very Seriously Indeed. Every year, the Village was open from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Then, the Village reopened its gates one extra day for the locals to celebrate Halloween.
Not only was it a big fundraiser for the Village, but it was also the event of the year for a town that was as insular as it was festive.
Which meant it was Freddie’s mom’s most important event of the year.
Freddie and a handful of volunteers had already spent the last two weeks helping Mom deck everything in jack-o’-lanterns, scarecrows, and an unseemly number of hay bales. La Maison Authentique du Bûcheron (the Authentic Lumberjack Homestead, which was neither authentic nor a homestead) was now a haunted house, complete with skeletons, mirrors, and hiding places for her stepdad, Steve, in ghost makeup.
La Taverne now housed all the necessary accoutrements to sell heaps of hot apple cider and Mrs. Ferris’s famous jams, while La Marché d’Été (the summer market) was all ready for the jack-o’-lantern contest (whoever won that got to put a banner on their house for the entire year).
Lastly, two portable toilets had been tucked behind the tavern that didn’t actually sell alcohol. No French placards for those. (Port-A-Potty, it would seem, was not worth translating.)
Freddie sighed toward her best friend, Divya, who leaned at the school’s red clapboard entrance with all the cool poise of a runway model. The fall wind had picked up outside, lifting leaves and adding a lovely autumn glow to Divya’s amber skin. It also made Divya shiver while she frantically played Snake on her Nokia.
“It just seems,” Divya said now without looking up, “like a really hard mistake to make, Fred. I mean, surely you know what a bunch of rich kids drinking sounds like.”
“Not really,” Freddie admitted. “It’s not like I’ve ever been to a party. Have you?”
Divya flashed a laser glare—and a sound like digital snake death beeped out. “You know I haven’t. Unless you count our book club meet-ups with Abby and Tom. Those can get pretty rowdy sometimes.”
Freddie didn’t count those at all. A drunken teenage party was not the same thing as a spirited discussion of whatever novel Divya had insisted they read. (This month’s selection had been The Notebook, which Freddie had found a little too light on murder for her tastes.)
Freddie stabbed more forcefully at this nest of longlegs (or was it a swarm?) blocking her from the schoolhouse bell twelve feet above. She really couldn’t go up there until these were gone. With hair as wild and dark as hers, all those arachnids would get lost in a heartbeat.
Divya, meanwhile, slunk into the shadows of the school and notably didn’t offer to help Freddie as she eased onto a bench. After all, it wasn’t her mom who was head of the City-on-the-Berme Historical Society. And no matter how many times Freddie pointed out to Mom that it was illegal to force her daughter to prepare for the fête every year, Mom just laughed and said, “Great. In that case, you can find somewhere else to live.”
Although, for all Freddie’s vocal complaints (she was very, very vocal), she secretly loved volunteering here. City-on-the-Berme was her favorite place in the whole world. Part tourist attraction, with its only moderately accurate French logging settlement, and part outdoor center, with the county park trails winding through the forest next door—you couldn’t get more autumn creeptastic than this place.
Which was likely why the fête was always the biggest event of the year for locals.
And also why Mom always put so much pressure on Freddie to help.
Last night, however, things had gone awry. After Freddie had finished helping Mom with the hay bales, she’d left her scarf behind. And seeing as it was her favorite scarf (and therefore crucial for the completion of any fall outfit), she’d set out for the City-on-the-Berme Village Historique on Steve’s rickety bike after dinner.
Freddie never made it to the Village—or found her scarf, for that matter. The trail had been dangerously foggy, her headlamp bouncing beams everywhere, and there’d been an awful stench like dead animals in the air. So strong, so overwhelming, that Freddie had actually thought she might gag.
It had forced her to stop her bike just so she could cover her mouth and try to breathe. The fog definitely hadn’t helped. Freddie’d had the horrifying sense it was alive and trying to climb inside her.
Then a bell had tolled from somewhere in the trees, even though there was only the one bell in City-on-the-Berme (currently over Freddie’s head) and it had no clapper so it couldn’t ring.
Freddie had not liked that sound. Nor the way she’d suddenly felt the fog tighten as if solid around her throat.
So the instant she had heard frantic shrieking from the woods nearby, she’d needed no urging whatsoever to turn around and pedal straight home again.
She had seen enough X-Files and read enough Goosebumps, thank you very much, to know how this sort of story would end.
Once home, she’d called the cops. Unfortunately, instead of finding a Person in Distress Being Slowly Dismembered in the old logging forests of City-on-the-Berme, Sheriff Bowman had found an unauthorized bonfire and a lot of underage drinking.
Divya kicked her legs onto the bench in front of her. “Look, Fred, I’ll grudgingly accept that neither of us knows much about parties or partying or anything associated with the verb ‘to party,’ but surely you can tell the difference between someone screaming bloody murder and someone screaming for more beer.”
“Can I, though?” Freddie asked. “Because it sounded like bloody murder to me. I mean, glass containers aren’t even allowed in City-on-the-Berme, Div.”
“Pretty sure the Fortin kids don’t care about that part. They’re also under twenty-one.” Divya gave a low whistle. “Oh boy, I hope they don’t know that it was you who called the cops on them.”
Freddie’s stomach flipped. She hadn’t thought of that. “How could they possibly know?”
Divya shrugged. “Dunno. But it’s a small town. People talk.”
Freddie winced. That phrase—It’s a small town, people talk—might as well have been the town motto for Berm, population 1,321. There were more deer here than people, and if the deer could talk, they probably would too.
Freddie’s only possible saving grace was that almost all of the students at Fortin Prep were from out of town, and the one thing Bermians hated more than a disruption to their beloved fête was out-of-towners. They even said it that way—out-of-towners—like it was a dirty word, and tourists were only accepted as long as they didn’t stay for more than a long weekend during the summer.
When at last the daddy longlegs were vanquished from the ladder, Freddie retrieved the necessary fairy lights from a box by Divya’s bench. “Thanks for the help,” Freddie said with as much sarcasm as she could muster.
“Any time,” Divya murmured, once more playing Snake. “Can we go to the archives now?”
“No.” Freddie sniffed. “The agreement was that you’d help me clean up the old schoolhouse, and then I would take you to the archives.”
“But my paper is due Monday, Fred.” Divya finally shoved her phone into her pocket. “I can’t wait any longer.”
“Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you spent the last ten minutes playing Snake.” Freddie notched her chin high and sashayed away from Divya, a trail of lights dragging over the wooden planks behind her.
“I’ll help now.” Divya chased after.
“Too late.” Freddie reached the ladder, and with one handful of lights, she lumbered up.
“Please, Fred.” Divya hugged at the ladder below and shot dramatic puppy eyes upward. “Just tell me what to do. Pwetty pwease?” She fluttered her lashes. “I can plug in the lights … or … sweep?”
“I already swept.” Really, had her bestie been paying any attention? “You’re going to have to get more creative, Madame Srivastava. Think firstborn child or family inheritance. Then I might reconsider.”
Freddie reached the top of the ladder. Cold air billowed against her—and the Village Historique spanned beyond. Beautiful, vibe-y, and always right on the edge of falling apart because there never seemed to be enough funding.
Straight ahead was the Village Square, soon to be filled with the Lumberjack Pageant stage but currently only filled with hay bales and scarecrows, one of which appeared to be waving, thanks to the wind.
“New idea,” Divya called from below. “What if I lend you Lance?”
Oh, now we’re talking. “Two weeks,” Freddie replied as she unknotted fairy lights. “I want him two weeks.”
“One.”
“Two or I climb down and leave you stranded.”
“Ugh, fine. You can have him for two weeks.”
Huzzah. Freddie grinned at the bronze bell before her, with its green outer patina. I am so getting the better end of this bargain.
Creak, creak, the bell agreed, since it had no clapper—meaning when a wind tumbled through the cupola or Freddie wrapped lights around it, the poor thing could only give a sad squeal upon its hinge.
Still, that didn’t mean it couldn’t be the bell she’d heard last night … And there was only one way to find out. Freddie grabbed the bell now and shook it.
Creak, creak, creak, it said in reply.
She gave it one more heave, just to be sure …
Creak, creak, creak.
Yep, okay. Freddie could now say with absolute certainty that this was not the bell she’d heard, and if this thing had ever tolled with any dignity, those days were long past.
Which was fine. It didn’t need to ring. It was just a replica of the bronze bell over at the Allard Fortin mausoleum anyway. Although, to be honest, the replica was looking pretty rough this year—like maybe the guy Mom had hired to make it hadn’t done a very good job. Once she’d covered the bell in lights like a sad Christmas tree, Freddie scuttled down. She was absolutely freezing now, and truly mourning the loss of her scarf. “I’ll take Lance, please.” She thrust her hand at Divya.
Who scowled. Then also obeyed and withdrew the sacred keychain from her pocket. A heartbeat later, the face of Lance Bass gleamed up at Freddie.
And Freddie sighed a melty sigh as she accepted Lance’s flawless face. He fit so perfectly in her palm, a tiny slice of boy band magic. Whenever Divya (or Freddie) had it with her, good things happened. Magical things, like finding fifty-dollar bills in the road or repeated Good Hair Days.
Freddie blew Lance a kiss, then slipped him into her puffer vest. “Alright,” she declared, chin rising in triumph, “follow me, Madame Srivastava. I shall lead you to the archives!”
She marched them out of the schoolhouse. If she twisted slightly, she could see Le Moulin à Eau (the water mill) through a copse of coppery maples. Currently, no paddles spun.
South of that was Le Forgeron (the blacksmith), which technically had a working forge … but also technically lacked a working blacksmith to use it. It had been modeled on a smithy that had been in the original City-on-the-Berme in the 1600s—and it was thanks to the blacksmith at the time keeping meticulous journals that Mom had been able to make the replica bell that now lived in the schoolhouse without its clapper.
It was toward this storied blacksmith’s hut that Freddie and Divya now aimed. They reached the stream that fed its forge, glittering, burbly, and dark with cold. The sign in front that read Le Forgeron had a fresh streak of bird poop on it. So now it just read Le Forger(splat).
Freddie scowled at the poop. She should probably clean it before the fête.
She and Divya were just rounding the building so they could embark into the woods when footsteps stomped out. A figure barreled into view. “Hey,” he said.
And Freddie’s heart lurched into her throat. Luis Mendez, star athlete and fellow senior at Berm High, had just spoken to her. Even more bizarre, he wasn’t done speaking and he was smiling. “Gellar,” he panted. “Nice to see you.”
Then he was past Freddie in a gust of sweaty air.
“Um…” Divya wiggled a pinkie in her ear. “Did Luis Mendez just say your name?”
“I think so.” Freddie was as fully stunned as Divya. Every day, the Berm High cross-country team ran the park’s paths. Sometimes they nodded her way, but 99.9999 percent of the time, they ignored her existence.
“Gellar!” cried a new voice. Then another and another, and suddenly an entire swarm (or was it a nest?) of boys was charging past. Zach Gilroy and Darius Baker even slung out their hands for high fives.
Freddie complied, although she wasn’t entirely sure how. Her brain had basically disconnected from her body, and she could feel her jaw dangling low. In seconds, the entirety of the boys’ team had jogged past. Which meant that any second now, the girls would—
“Freddie!” shrieked Carly Zhang as she bounded by. “Nice job!”
“Nice job on what?” Freddie tried to ask, but Carly was already gone, and now cheers were rising up as a second stampede of bodies rushed closer.
“We have officially entered The X-Files,” Divya said as feet and ponytails thundered past, and Freddie could only nod in agreement. Even the blacksmith’s hut seemed faintly astonished, its wooden exterior creaking on the wind.
Then, as fast as the Berm High cross-country teams had appeared, they vanished again. Which wasn’t terribly surprising, given there were only seventeen runners across both teams. Last, because he was always last (except in the jack-o’-lantern contest of ’95), came poor Todd Raskin, ever determined to dominate his asthma through sheer perserverance.
“Do you need your inhaler?” Freddie asked as he heaved past.
“Nah,” he wheezed. “Thanks, Gellar. And good job!”
“I think,” Divya said, slipping her arm back through Freddie’s as they watched Todd tromp away, “that you’re popular now, Freddie. This is … well, monumental, certainly.”
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