+JMJ+

It used to bother Frank a lot that he always needed another Midnight Society member to walk to the clearing with. Eric had been the first one to guess his secret and be his guide, but Eric had moved away nearly a year ago. After that, there had always been someone else waiting for Frank at the edge of the woods-and soon he suspected they had arranged to do it rotation without telling him. It was embarrassing enough for him to think about quitting the club as soon as his next turn was up . . . but then "The Tale of the Midnight Madness" had been so well received that he decided he could hang around with the group a little longer.

This evening, it had been Gary who had stayed to wait for him. Frank had been nearly fifteen minutes late, but the other boy, usually a stickler for punctuality, hadn't seemed to mind. Frank discovered why when they arrived at the clearing and found no one around the bonfire . . . and a brightly lit birthday cake on the stone chair.

"SURPRISE!" everyone yelled then, jumping out of their hiding places.

Frank tried to look annoyed, but couldn't stop the grin from spreading over his face. "How did you guys know it was my birthday?"

"Remember the astrologer you met at my parents' magic store?" Gary asked. "You told her when it was so she could give you a reading-"

"And guess who happened to overhear it?" Kiki finished, looking smug.

"We've been planning this for weeks," Kristen said. "I baked the cake myself."

"And since I told a special story for Gary's birthday last time," David said, "we decided that you should get a story of your own tonight, too."

"Excellent!" Frank looked back and forth between David and Gary. "Who's telling it?"

"I am!" Betty Ann chirped.

Frank cringed openly. "Sweet."

As David helped Kristen to move the cake from the stone chair to a plastic crate set up beside Frank's usual spot, Betty Ann took her seat as the night's storyteller. When everyone else had taken their own places too, she began . . .

"It wasn't easy to write a story for you, Frank, because our styles are so different. But you know that I've always loved one of your characters, and when I asked myself what he might be up to these days, the story practically wrote itself."

She reached into the hollow stump beside the stone chair for the bag of magic dust. "We all know about the power of music to move us, the power of art to inspire us, and the power of stories . . . to scare us. This story is about what happens when art and music are used for a darker purpose."

Betty Ann smiled as she pulled a fist of magic dust from the bag. "Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story . . ." She tossed the magic dust on the flames, which blazed higher than Frank had ever seen.

" . . . The Tale of the Crazy Collage . . ."

"Maria had always known that her best friend Joshua would be signed by a big record label someday. Ever since her twelfth birthday, when he sang her a song he had written himself, she had believed it was only a matter of time before a discerning talent scout snapped him up and gave him his big break. Four years later, right after his sixteenth birthday, she was proven right . . ."