Chapter 7

A few days later was the coyote litter's birthday, as you know. Kelly was still gone.

Let me back up. After Kelly had left the tower, she'd thrown away her uniform, crawled into an alleyway, and fallen asleep despite her earlier condition. After about 10 minutes, someone came along and took her off. She woke up in a dark apartment. She realized what was going on and backed into the corner the bed was against. "Whoever you are, you'll wanna back off."

"Relax, it's me." Austin came out of the darkness and sat down next to her.

"You live in an abandoned apartment?"

"It's been rough the past few years."

Kelly gave him a look.

Austin sighed. "Enough about me. Mind telling me why I found you lying in a dark alleyway?"

"Wow, we really shook things up there."

Austin gave her a look.

"I quit the team and ran out of the tower." She got up from the bed and started to walk away.

Austin ran over and stopped her. "You did what?"

"You heard me."

"You left your family at a time like this?"

"What's the occasion?"

"Weird things have been happening lately, mainly around you."

"Are you blaming me for the stuff that's been happening to my family lately?"

"And there it is! Something's up with you, too. I thought we were pretty clear that nothing was going to happen with us and now…this!"

"And what's '…this'?"

"Exactly! I don't even know what…" He sighed. "…what to say right now."

Kelly half-smiled. "I know the feeling." She went back over to the bed and sat down. "Maybe it'd be best if we stayed away from each other."

Austin sat down next to her. "I don't know." He sighed again. "Maybe you're right."

"In that case…" Kelly stood up. "…maybe I should go. Be on my way." She went over to the door and opened it.

"Any way I can contact you if I need to?"

Kelly looked at him and smiled. "I'll be around." She left.

"We really did switch up there."

Now it was Kelly's birthday and she was spending it sneaking into a library at 5 in the morning. She ran right for the computer and started typing away. "OK…abandoned buildings. Bad guy's always in the abandoned buildings." She came to a construction workers' site. "Aha!" She typed a little more and hacked into their files to reveal a list of condemned buildings scheduled to be torn down. The one that peaked her interest was the house built in 2487 that hadn't been lived in for almost 30 years. "Gotcha." She ran out of the library and made her way for the old building. "2146 53rd street…2146 53rd street…2146 53rd street…" She finally came to the old rundown house that was practically in shambles. She walked up to the door and tried to open it…making it fall off its hinges. She shrugged and walked in. She looked around the one-floor house. She finally came to the door that led to the basement. It was perfectly fine, practically brand new. "What's wrong with this picture?" She zapped the door to unlock any possible locks and tried to open it…but it was still locked. "Huh?" She tried again. Same results. "Nuts. Premature."

"Having trouble?"

Kelly gasped and whirled around. "Quit doing that!"

Austin walked over to her. "Just trying to help here."

"Then might wanna back off. You're making it kind of hard to stay away from you."

"You don't know what could be down there."

Kelly glared at him. "If the way to save my family is done there, I'm gonna take it, even if I'm not part of the team anymore. Do you know what it's like to have to take care of your family like this?"

Austin looked at his feet.

"You don't have a family anymore, do you?"

Austin shook his head.

Kelly sighed. "Then you know why I have to go down there."

Austin sighed, realized how right she was, and looked at her. He looked at the door and kicked it down.

"Wow. Nice…lower body strength."

He looked at her. "Just be careful."

She looked at him. "Aren't you gonna wish me luck?"

He just looked at her.

She walked down the stairs and into the darkness.

"Good luck," he whispered as soon as she was gone.

Sarah opened her last present, this one from Jack, believe it or not. She slowly pulled out a sweater. "Jack! Wow!"

"Really?" Jack asked.

"Really. I didn't think you…well, thought." Sarah then noticed that the security tag was still on the sleeve. "Uh…"

"Huh. I…wonder why they didn't take that off." Sarah looked at Jack, but he instantly looked away.

Sophie looked over at the stack of gifts that should've been Kelly's.

Michael then came up in the form of a cat. "My turn!"

Sophie smiled. "Slow down there, Whiskers. Maybe we should wait for Tech."

Lexi sighed and went over there. "Sophie, I know Tech. If he hasn't gotten it by now, he'll probably never figure it out."

"I FIGURED IT OUT!"

"Seriously?"

Tech ran in. "OK, I examined the kids' blood test results and noticed it linked directly to their brain wave patterns, which were completely—as Lucy would say—knocked out of whack!"

"Is that lame when I say it?" asked Lucy.

"Totally," Nadine said without haste.

"You might wanna cool down the fighting for now," said Tech, "I ran all of you through it. I got the same results for all 9 of you! Kelly being, by far, the worst! Something's going on here, and I'm definitely positive it has something to do with magic!"

"Well, I don't think that—where's Wendy?" Duck said.

The group then heard a clatter coming from Jack's room and raced in to see Wendy pawing through his drawers.

"Uh, Wend?" Duck raced over there. "What do you think you're up to?"

"I think that Tech said he tested all 9 of them and they were all showing weird brain patterns but Jack has been acting fairly normal! If there is something wrong with him, some sign or something should be in here some…" She stopped when she knocked a box off the dresser and all of its contents fell out. "…where." She bent down and started looking through. "Half this stuff is mine!"

Daniella and Sophie ran over there to see the same results.

"Alright, that's it, something is going on!" Wendy exclaimed. She pulled Jack out of the room.

Sarah raced after the 2. "Look, I'm sure there's some logical explanation for…" She then realized her sweater lying on the couch. "Oh."

"And the truth comes out," said Ace, "Nadine, Benny, and Luce are fighting non-stop; Robert's way too competitive; Ryan, Sarah, and Michael have lost control of their powers; Kelly's skipped out; and Jack's a kleptomaniac!"

"So what's the connection?" asked Daniella, "What's the spell?"

"I don't know, but I think I know someone who might," Sarah said. She raced out of the tower, the rest of the gang following, and she ran outside. "Austin! Austin Wolfe! Get out here!"

"What now?"

Sarah almost gasped and then craned her neck to look down the alley at the grey and white wolf. She sighed. "Would you happen to know anything about what's been going on with us lately?"

"'What's been going on with you'?"

"Well, it's funny you should ask! 'Cause, see, these 3 little bunnies have been non-stop with the kicking and screaming; Robert's just a little on edge for the competition; Kelly's jumped out of the wagon; the 3 of us can't control our powers; and Jack's a total klepto!"

"OK, I get it! Anything magic related?"

"I examined their brain patterns and blood and everything was jumped off the track by some spell," Tech said.

Austin thought about it. "Wait. Kelly said it was her birthday. Did you get her anything that might be enchanted?"

DING! Sophie got it. "The necklace."

"What?" Daniella asked.

"Kelly's birthday gift. I got her a necklace and hid it in Tech's lab. On Nadine, Benny, and Lucy's birthday, she had a vision and wouldn't tell me what it was about. She must have seen the necklace and immediately rushed to put it on."

"And we caught her leaving the lab…" Nadine thought out loud.

"And she dropped it on the battlefield a few days later and I noticed it…" Robert reasoned.

"And when she and I bumped into each other in the hall a while back, I saw it…" Jack realized.

"And we caught her putting on the morning she quit!" Michael said, now a dog. Everyone looked at him. "What? The Labrador doesn't get a say in this?"

"What do mean?" Lucy asked, "Nadine did her share."

"I—will not say anything," Nadine caught herself, "Got nothing to say."

"Well, there we go," said Daniella, "Please don't tell me that necklace was a faux-gold chain."

"With a whitish-blue butterfly charm?" Sophie finished, "OK, I won't tell you."

Daniella groaned. "Why couldn't you have just knitted her a hat? That necklace was the Janus curse!" Everyone cocked their heads at her (except Austin, of course). "Janus is the god of order and disorder. His curse is total chaos! When Kelly put it on, it activated the spell. As soon as Nadine, Benny, and Lucy turned their gaze to it at the same time, it turned them against each other. And the same for Robert, Jack, Ryan, Sarah, and Michael. It scrambled all their brain patterns until it was at full force and Kelly couldn't take it anymore! And since she was probably hiding it under her pillow at night, it was inducing dream-like nightmares which weakened her and caused her a slight brain-washed case of psychosis. Thus, once she woke up from—as Tech so quaintly put it— her"semi-coma", she did the one thing she meant the least and would never say or do, let alone both: she quit the team and left."

"Well, it all makes sense," Sarah said, "except for one tiny detail: how Mom got it before the curse was awakened and just decided it was the perfect gift. I mean, you usually couldn't just find a mythical-god cursed amulet lying around in a Dollar Tree."

"Then someone must have planted it there right before I went into the store, knowing that I would find it and get it and for what exact reason," Sophie figured out.

"So the question becomes 'who put it there?'" Ace asked.

Kelly came up to a dark room and hid behind a wall where she could get a good look at the girl in the room.

The girl smiled. She had dark brown hair and dark eyes. "Who knew that I, Roxie York, would ever be able to plant the Janus Amulet in the Loonakids' headquarters? I actually got to the 'Acme heroes'!"

"Not for long." Kelly came out of hiding.

Roxie saw her and her smile faded.

"Remember me?"