The Executioners Three

Chapter One (updated)

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 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 the La Marché D'Été (the summer market) was all ready for the jack-o'-lantern contest in two weeks. (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 a bit 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."