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Brutus shook his head.“Unbelievable. And here I thought you two… Well, it just goes to show that youth is wasted on the young.” And with these words, he left the kitchen.

Dooley stared after him, a puzzled look on his face.“What is he talking about, Max?”

“Oh, nothing special,” I said. “You know Brutus. He gets these weird ideas.” I wasn’t keen on explaining to Dooley about the birds and the bees. Again. I’d already explained it to him once, but apparently it hadn’t really sunk in yet. Which was fine, of course.

“She was nice, though, right?” he said. “Pussy?”

“Very nice,” I agreed.

“If only she could FaceTime we could play some more Scrabble. Online, I mean.”

“Yeah, so why doesn’t she? FaceTime?”

“It’s a little hard,” he said. “She would have to use Gabe’s phone and I would have to use Odelia’s phone and it would be a lot of trouble to set up, so… we decided to cherish the memories of what we had instead. Her words, not mine.”

“And what did you have, Dooley?” I asked.

He sighed a happy sigh.“A wonderful friendship with a wonderful friend.”

I smiled.“Good for you, little buddy. Good for you.”

We both ate some more, then Dooley said,“You know what we should do?”

“What?”

“Talk to Clarice. I’ll bet she knows where we can find some tasty nibbles.”

I shrugged.“Sure. Why not?”

After eating some more of Gran’s weird concoction I was ready to try anything.

So we walked out of the kitchen, out of the house, and set a course for the heart of town, where usually Clarice can be found, scouring the dumpsters of Hampton Cove.

“How is your tooth, Max?” asked Dooley as we were walking along, side by side.

“Much better, thanks.”

“You know, you don’t really need teeth, Max.”

“I don’t?”

“Not with this kind of food.”

“Right,” I said, feeling oddly disheartened.

Chapter 12

Alec woke up and the first thing he realized was that he had an enormous headache.

“Ouch,” he muttered as he brought a hand to his aching head. There was a sizable bump where the pain seemed to originate, and as he bit down on his bottom lip to fight the sudden nausea that accompanied the pain, he gingerly opened his eyes. Had he taken a bad tumble and hit his head? But one look at his surroundings told him a different story: he was in a cell that wasn’t much bigger than a prison cell, only the floor was dirty and the walls looked ancient, as did the iron bars that formed the fourth wall of his new home. He took hold of the bars and shook them, but in spite of the fact that they looked old and rusty, they didn’t budge. He frowned as he tried to recollect what had happened and how he’d ended up in there—wherever ‘there’ was.

And then it all came back to him: he’d gone in search of the missing August kid.

And as his eyes adjusted to the relative obscurity of his surroundings, he thought he saw a human form lying on the floor of the cell directly across from him.

“Hey,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Hey, you!”

The form moved, then a head lifted, and two eyes stared back at him. They belonged to a red-haired young man, and suddenly Alec recognized him.

“Hey, aren’t you that lottery kid?” he asked.

“Chief Alec?” said the young man. “Is that you?”

“Yeah, I’m Chief Alec.”

“Elon Pope,” said the guy. “How-how long have you been here?”

“I have no idea, buddy. All I know is that I came looking for some missing kid, and someone hit me over the head with a brick or something and dragged me in here.”

“The same thing happened to me,” said the guy, sitting up. “I passed the old Buschmann place on my bike the night before last, and suddenly someone hit me over the head and when I came to I was locked up in this weird old dungeon.”

“So you think we’re still in the Buschmann house?”

“Pretty sure we are. Where else could we be?”

“Did you see who knocked you out?” asked the chief.

“No, I didn’t. Did you?”

“Some bearded guy,” grumbled the chief. “Big, bearded guy.”

“A big guy comes in here to bring us food, but he always wears a mask.”

“Us? There’s more people down here?”

Elon gestured with his head to the next prison cell, and Alec tried to look over. He didn’t see a thing, though.

“Chief?” asked Elon.

“Alec,” he said. “Just call me Alec.”

“Are you—are the police going to come find us?”

Alec swallowed. That was a tough one.“I’m sure they will,” he said. As soon as they figured out he’d gone missing. But how long could that be? A day? Two days? And who knows where they would look for him. At least Nicky August’s parents would go back to the police station and tell Dolores he never showed. And then maybe Dolores would put two and two together and send some officers to come looking. He just hoped that by the time they did, whoever had taken them wouldn’t have done anything else to them.

“Why do you think they locked us up in here, Alec?” asked Elon.

“I don’t know, son.”

Just then, a groaning sound came from the next cell, and when Alec craned his neck, he thought he could see a nicely-clad foot and a pair of Burlington socks.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey, you there. Can you hear me?”

“Where am I?” asked the voice.