Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1
In Peculiar, Pennsylvania, it is common knowledge among monsters and humans alike that the best place to get a milkshake any day of the week is Scary Good Shakes. The diner, located at 16 Main Street, has been operating since the 1980s, when a witch named Beatrice Wednesday bought the empty building a few blocks down from Ant and Ron’s pharmacy and transformed it into the town’s premiere destination for frozen desserts.

Nobody knows whether it’s a spell that makes Beatrice’s milkshakes so tasty or whether she simply has a way with a blender. In all her years running Scary Good Shakes, she has never shared her secret recipe, no matter how big the bribe or pleading the puppy-dog eyes may be. This bothers some people, especially her competitors, but it has never bothered Dee Maleficent. She thinks—she knows—that Beatrice makes the best strawberry shakes in the entire universe, and that’s good enough for her.

It’s a drizzly Saturday morning and Dee is seated in the back of her dads’ van, daydreaming about one of Beatrice’s strawberry milkshakes with hot fudge on top. She looks out the window, past the raindrops, where she can see a house with a sign posted in the front window that reads LET’S GO PPS PORCUPINES! Behind the house, in the distance, she sees YIKESSS up on the hill. Principal Koffin’s tower ascends into thick fog that, to Dee, looks a lot like whipped cream. A grumbling sound comes from her stomach.

“I’m starving,” she says. “I might have to order two milkshakes when we get there.”

“You’re going to turn into a milkshake,” Ron replies, smiling at his daughter through the rearview mirror. “How about some scrambled eggs too?”

“I still can’t believe Scary Good Shakes serves breakfast now,” Bella says, scrolling on her pink eyephone in the middle seat next to Dee. She shows her screen to Charlie, who’s seated on her other side, and they both giggle.

“The perfect end to a totally wicked sleepover!” Eugene remarks from the row of seats all the way in the back. He and Charlie spent the night at Bella and Dee’s house, where they cooked homemade pizzas, coordinated and filmed an elaborate skit to post on Bella’s WitchStitch account, and had a Space Wars movie marathon.

Eugene grips the headrest in front of him and bounces eagerly in his seat. “Man, I have no idea what I’m going to order. Do I go savory or sweet? Do I get a side of hash browns, bacon, or toast? Or do I get french toast?”

“You sure you’re not a werewolf?” Ron jokes from behind the wheel, as Eugene certainly has the appetite of one.

“You can order as much food as you want, Eugene.” Antony smiles at him from the passenger seat. He’s wearing his human makeup. “I’ve heard the pancakes are delicious.”

“Who knew Beatrice could make delicious pancakes, too?” Dee says, still looking out the window as they turn onto Main Street. She’s thinking maybe she’ll order some strawberry pancakes to go with her strawberry shake.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you: Beatrice retired,” Ant says. “A new family owns Scary Good Shakes now.”

Dee’s shriek is so earsplitting that Ron slams on the brakes and yells, “WHAT HAPPENED?” The driver in the car behind them honks their horn.

“Donna!” Ant’s left arm is extended out to the side, a reflex to want to protect them all. “What have we said about overreacting when Pop is trying to concentrate?” He regains his composure and says to Ron, “Go, hon. That horn is giving me a headache.”

“Overreacting?” Dee’s face is a mix of shock and horror. “I’m never going to have another one of Beatrice’s strawberry milkshakes ever again and you think I’m overreacting?”

“Yes,” Bella says, not even bothering to glance up from her phone.

“Come on, Dee, you can’t be that surprised,” Eugene says. “The woman was ancient even when I was a baby.”

“So what?” Dee says, and her tone comes out sharper than she intends it to. “That doesn’t mean anything. Witches can live for a long time.”

“Maybe she gave the new owners her secret recipe,” Charlie says optimistically. “She knows how much her milkshakes mean to the town.”

Dee says nothing. She crosses her arms and turns away.

The eye on Bella’s phone closes, and she puts it down on her lap. “So who are the new owners, anyway?”

“The Nelson-Pans,” Ron says. “A husband and wife with two kids. They moved to town a few weeks ago. Dad and I met them last week and told them about the PSBS. They’re excited for the next meeting.”

Ant and Ron have been members of the PSBS, or Peculiar Small Business Society, for nearly a decade. Any small business owner in town, human or monster, is invited to join.

“Are they witches like Beatrice?” Bella asks.

Ron and Ant exchange a wary glance.

“They’re humans,” Ant says. He turns to look directly at Bella. “But they’re perfectly fine people, so you be nice. I mean it, Bella Boo.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, Dad, I’m not the one you need to worry about.” Bella scoffs. She gestures to Dee, who’s still staring out the window. The gloomy weather now properly reflects her mood.

There’s an empty space right in front of Scary Good Shakes, and Ron parallel parks the car into it. Dee gets out of the car and stands there for a moment, observing the place. From the outside, nothing has changed. The same bubblegum-pink paint coats the building’s exterior, the same neon sign lights up the front window. The sight of it makes Dee’s heart ache with longing. If only she had known when she got that strawberry shake after school on Monday that it would be her last! She would have savored it more.

“Jeepers creepers.” Bella shakes her head, watching Dee sulk. She grabs her sister’s arm and pulls her toward the door.

Inside, nearly every table is full, and the room swells with chatter and laughter. It’s by far the busiest Bella and Dee have ever seen it. The decor remains largely unchanged except for one detail: The milkshake machine, which used to be on display behind the bar, has been removed. In its place is an open window that connects to the kitchen. The others in the group don’t bat an eye, but Dee, of course, notices right away.

“Bella!” she whispers, tugging on her sister’s sleeve. “Look, it’s so horrible!”

But Bella isn’t looking behind the bar. Her attention is fixed on a man sitting alone in a booth. He seems familiar.

“Is that Principal Pleasant?” Bella whispers to her friends.

Dee is half listening, still trying to locate the missing milkshake machine. “Who?”

“The PPS principal.” Charlie peeks over Bella’s shoulder, trying to get a better look without being too obvious. “I think it is. What’s he doing all by himself?”

“Table for six?” the host cuts in, like she’s in a hurry. The group follows her down the aisle toward a U-shaped booth at the back of the room. As they pass by Principal Pleasant’s booth, he looks up from the big piece of paper he’s reading—a map?—and locks eyes with Bella. After a split second of surprise, he smiles wide, putting his large, too-white teeth on full display. The sight is just as unsettling as she remembers.

“Ah, Bella Maleficent,” he says cheerfully, quickly flipping over the piece of paper—a little too quickly, Bella and Dee both notice. “I told you we’d meet again!”

“Principal Pleasant,” Bella says, and it comes out almost like a question. She doesn’t remember ever telling him her name. “Nice to see you.” Only Dee hears the sprinkle of suspicion in her sister’s voice.

“Yes, great to see you all.” The principal extends his smile to the rest of the group, making an extra effort to nod at Ron and Antony. “By the way, I’ll be in to pick up that prescription later today. My apologies for letting it sit so long. I’ve been swamped with work.”

“Not a problem,” Ron says. “Just a reminder that we do have a maximum thirty-day hold policy.”

“Understood.” The principal nods once. Then he smiles at the kids again. Up this close, Bella notices the stubble on his jaw, the red veins that line the whites of his eyes. “Well, enjoy your breakfast. The banana pancakes are simply to die for.”

Bella and Dee smile warily back. There’s nothing on the principal’s table but the mysterious paper and a nearly empty coffee cup.

The group walks to the back, where their host, a teenage girl, waits by the booth, looking irritated. They settle in and she hurriedly passes out the menus, then walks away without a word. Eugene watches her go with a smitten smile on his face.

“Wow,” he says, leaning forward and resting his chin in his hands. “Who is that?”

Bella follows his gaze and then furrows her brow. “You mean Miss Miserable? Oh yeah, she seems like a real cup of witch’s brew.”

“Look, Dee,” Charlie says, pointing to the top right corner of the menu. “They still have strawberry milkshakes, plus a bunch of other different flavors.”

Dee, slouched into the back of the booth, doesn’t smile. “They’re not Beatrice’s milkshakes.”

“All right, that’s enough sulking,” Ant says to Dee across the table. “Don’t knock it until you try it, as the humans say.” He opens the menu, then closes it just as quickly. “You know what, I don’t even need the menu. I’m going to see what all the fuss is about with these pancakes. Gretchen was absolutely raving about them at the Creepy Council meeting last night.”

The grumpy hostess-slash-waitress appears again. When she speaks, she has about as much enthusiasm as somebody going in for a root canal. “Are you ready to order?”

“No,” Bella says, like it’s obvious. “We’ve barely had time to look at the menu.”

“What do you recommend?” Ron asks, while Ant shoots Bella a warning look for her snappy attitude. “We’ve heard great things about the pancakes.”

“Yep” is all the waitress says. A moment of awkward silence ensues.

“Well, okay, then.” Ron claps his hands together, breaking the tension. “Hands up if you want the pancakes.”

Everyone puts their hands in the air except for Charlie, who asks for an order of scrambled eggs and bacon. Then Eugene says, “I’ll have that too, plus the pancakes, and home fries, and a vanilla shake.” The waitress scribbles down their orders on her notepad.

“Dee.” Bella nudges her sister. “Don’t you want a strawberry shake?”

Dee shrugs. “I guess so.” She doesn’t look up from her lap.

Bella rolls her eyes. She turns to the waitress and says, “Make that two.”

The waitress finishes jotting down their order, collects the menus, and then moves behind the bar to hang the order slip above the window that connects to the kitchen. Eugene, once again, follows her every move with his eyes.

“Hey, look,” he says, pointing at the window.

Bella groans. “We get it. You think she’s creepy.”

“Not that,” he says, though he doesn’t meet Bella’s eye. “There’s a kid working in the kitchen.”

Eugene’s friends scoot toward him and crane their necks to get a better look. It’s true: a boy is standing over the griddle with a spatula in his hand, flipping pancakes.

“He’s the one making the pancakes everybody is obsessed with?” Bella says, skeptical.

“He looks like the waitress,” Dee observes, noticing that they share the same round face and swoopy jet-black hair. “Maybe they’re brother and sister.”

“Mrs. Nelson-Pan mentioned that the kids help out, the same way the two of you help out at the pharmacy,” Ron says. He and Ant are still seated on the other side of the booth, all their attention now focused on the Saturday morning crossword, which they solve together every weekend.

As they wait for their food, the group discusses the big PPS basketball game coming up this Friday. Dee and Eugene want to go—Dee, because Sebastian invited her, and Eugene, because his proximity to the human world via his parents’ taxidermy business has always kept him interested in human sports. Bella and Charlie do not want to go. They understand basketball about as well as they understand humans, which is to say, they don’t get it at all.

While the four friends debate, they all continue to steal glances of the boy in the kitchen as he cooks. He appears to be about their age, and yet his pancakes are the talk of the whole town. What’s his secret? At one point, he puts the spatula down and leans in close to the batter.

“What’s he doing now?” Charlie says, drawing everyone’s attention to the boy again. With their perceptive vampire vision, Charlie can see the pancake batter bubbling furiously on the griddle.

“Maybe it’s part of the process,” Eugene guesses. “He’s gotta be doing something special to make them taste so good, right?”

Suddenly the boy stands upright and hurries out of the kitchen. He runs out from behind the bar and swerves through the crowd to the other side of the diner, where the waitress is carrying a tray of food and milkshakes. At the same time, a little kid tries to move around the waitress by ducking under the tray, but he doesn’t quite go low enough. The kid’s hat knocks into the edge of the tray, sending it flying out of her hands. But just before it crashes to the floor, the boy from the kitchen drops to the ground and slides on his knees to catch the tray in his arms.

Bella’s eyes widen while Dee gasps. Not only did the boy manage to prevent sure disaster, but not even a single drop of syrup was spilled in the process.

The boy stands up and hands the tray back to the waitress. For once she doesn’t look annoyed, only a little dazed. “Thanks, bro,” she says.

And then, just as quickly as he arrived, he turns on his heel and heads back to the kitchen. Bella and Dee watch him take his post in front of the griddle and resume flipping pancakes like nothing at all has happened.

“Okay.” Bella looks around the diner, still packed with crowds and buzzing with chatter. “Did anybody else see that?” She looks at her dads, who still have their eyes cast down over the newspaper.

“Uh, yeah. That was wild,” Eugene says. “Some parkour moves, if you ask me.”

“How did he know the tray was going to fall?” Dee asks. For the first time since they arrived at Scary Good Shakes, she isn’t thinking about Beatrice’s retirement.

The waitress appears at the end of the booth. Apparently, the tray of food that almost crashed to the floor belongs to them. She passes out the pancakes, the milkshakes, Eugene’s breakfast of champions, and finally, Charlie’s scrambled eggs with bacon.

Dee immediately takes a sip of her milkshake. Her eyes light up. “It tastes just like Beatrice’s recipe!”

“Shocker,” Bella says, her voice flat. “Dee, this place is still known for their milkshakes. They’re not just going to taste disgusting all of a sudden.”

“Yum,” Charlie says, looking at their plate of food. They smile so big their fangs poke out. “Nothing quite like a perfectly scrambled egg.”

Eugene raises an eyebrow at Charlie. “What about dragon plasma?”

Charlie frowns. “What, you think I can’t enjoy human food?” They pick up their fork to take a bite. “Open your mind, Eugene. I contain multitudes.”

“NO!”

An arm appears out of nowhere and swats the fork out of Charlie’s hand. Bella, Dee, Charlie, and Eugene all look up in surprise. It’s the boy from the kitchen.

“Sorry,” he says, reaching for Charlie’s plate. “But you don’t want to eat that. The eggs were cooked in garlic butter. I, uh, think—well, do you maybe have an allergy to garlic?”

“What?” Charlie instinctively leans away from the plate as the boy takes it off the table. “Wow, thanks. I’m super allergic.”

“Yeah, I—” the boy starts, but then stops himself. “It’s no problem.”

“Henry,” a voice calls out from kitchen. The boy looks at the window behind the bar, where a dark-haired woman is watching him. “Your pancakes are going to burn!”

“Coming, Mom!” the boy replies. He turns back to Charlie. “I’ll bring you a fresh batch of eggs in just a minute.”

He takes off through the crowd again, and all Bella, Dee, Charlie, and Eugene can do is watch him go, feeling more confused than ever.