Chapter 39: Plans
They spent the rest of the night hiding in Mrs. Schulman’s house, watching the road for Samantha and Joseph to return. They never did. “Maybe they’ve decided to change their plans,” Prudence said. Which meant they could be anywhere by now.
“No, he wouldn’t do that,” Wendell said. “He’ll go through with it no matter what.”
“How do you know that?”
“Call it a gut feeling,” he said. Then he realized what he said and rubbed Prudence’s back. “A hunch, I mean.”
“I know,” she said, but still let one hand slip down to her stomach. She left it there a moment to make sure it wouldn’t start growing again like her nightmare. “What do we do?”
“We’ll have to find a way to stop them at the bank without alerting the police.”
“But how? There’s no way we can stop them on our own.”
“Come on, didn’t what we went through teach you anything? If we can drive a car as a pig and a baby then we can stop these two from robbing a bank.”
Prudence wanted to believe Wendell. She wanted to believe after all they’d gone through they could do anything together, but she knew Samantha. Samantha had destroyed Jonas Pryde, Reverend Crane, and the evil goddess Kiaba. What hope did they have against her?
“We’ll find a way. We’ll save her,” Wendell said.
The passion in his voice stirred something in Prudence’s heart. “And then I suppose you and her—” Her voice trailed off as she thought of Wendell kissing Samantha the way he had her earlier. “I’ll understand if that’s what you want. What happened with us earlier, that didn’t really mean anything. We were both so happy to be alive.”
As Wendell studied Prudence’s face in profile, tears threatening to cloud her eyes, he understood she would not understand. “It did mean something,” he said.
She threw her arms around him, pressing him so tight against her chest he thought he heard bones break. “You mean it?” she asked. He nodded, unable to get enough air to speak. He was still trying to breathe when she kissed him. Before he could return the kiss, she shoved him down to the floor. “Someone’s coming,” she said.
They lay on the ground, hand-in-hand as a pair of headlights swept past. “That must be them,” Wendell said.
“They’re going to figure out we’re gone. They’ll find us,” Prudence said. Her body began to tremble as she imagined being dragged back into that bedroom and fed another terrible potion.
“They’ll never think to look here,” he said. He ran a hand through her hair, trying to soothe her, though he wasn’t convinced himself. “They’ll think we went into town.”
“Then they’ll call off their plan. They’ll run away and we’ll never be able to find them,” Prudence said. She made a good point. As soon as that brute realized they were gone, he would think the police were onto them. He would look for another target in another town.
“We’ll find them,” he said.
“How?” she asked.
“We’ll find a way,” he said. He didn’t know how, but he would think of something. There had to be a way of finding them. As he lay on the floor considering this question, the headlights swept over them again.
Prudence waited for the car to pull into the driveway and Samantha to get out with her boyfriend. She felt around her for something to use as a weapon, coming up with only a pink slipper. We’re doomed, she thought.
The headlights continued to slide past them, disappearing down the road. “They’re gone,” she said. A horrible thought struck her then. “What about Mr. Pryde and Mrs. Schulman?”
“We’ll go check on them,” Wendell said. He took Prudence’s hand and led her up the hill towards Mr. Pryde’s house. When she started to puff and sweat from the effort, he squeezed her hand for encouragement instead of mocking her as he would have done before. “You can make it. Only a little farther.”
They made it up the hill and went up the porch steps. Prudence expected Samantha to be waiting at the top of the stairs inside as in their nightmare, but the house was silent. They climbed up the stairs, hurrying to Mr. Pryde’s bedroom. Prudence let Wendell open the door and go in first, not wanting to see whatever horror awaited them inside.
“It’s fine,” he said. “They’re still sleeping.”
“Do you think he did the same to his father as he did to us?” she asked. She wondered what kind of nightmares would torment a man like Mr. Pryde.
“I’m not sure,” Wendell said. They sat down on the bed, sitting on opposite sides of Mr. Pryde’s legs. Wendell tried to think of what to do next. First they had to find Samantha and Joseph, and then they had to stop them. Where would they go? There had to be some way of finding out.
“We could look on a map,” Prudence said. He didn’t realize he’d been thinking aloud. “Something might jump out at us.”
“It’s worth a try,” he said. They went downstairs to rummage around the living room and parlor until Wendell found a map of
“I don’t know. It’s so big,” Prudence said.
“They won’t go too far. He’ll want to hit something soon, before a lot of people start looking for them. He’ll want something close by that’s about the same size as the one here so he won’t have to alter the plan too much.”
Prudence pointed to a tiny spot on the map within a fingernail of Seabrooke. Pinecrest. “How about this one?”
Wendell considered the suggestion and then nodded. “That looks like it would do.”
“What if we’re wrong?”
“Then they’re lost to us,” he said. He gave her hand another squeeze. “It won’t come to that. They’ll be there. Now for our next problem: how do we stop them?”
Neither of them said anything for a while. Wendell couldn’t imagine any way of incapacitating Samantha without hurting her. He couldn’t bring himself to do that. “Let’s get some breakfast,” he said. “Food for thought.”
Prudence’s hand went down to her stomach. “I’m not hungry,” she said. “I don’t think I can eat ever again after what happened. After that terrible—” She jumped up to her feet. “That’s it, Wendell! That’s what we have to do.”
“What?”
“They gave us and Mr. Pryde and Mrs. Schulman some kind of potion, right? Maybe we can turn the tables on them.”
“That’s brilliant,” Wendell said. He kissed Prudence for coming up with the idea and then followed her up the stairs to Joseph’s bedroom. The door was locked, but yielded to Prudence’s shoulder after three tries.
“Where do you suppose he keeps them?” Prudence asked.
Wendell looked around the room and shook his head. “He’ll have taken them with him if he’s not coming back. I should have thought of that sooner. I’m sorry. It was a good idea.”
He started for the door, reaching the doorway before Prudence yanked him back by the collar. She held up a stack of papers she’d found in the desk drawer. “Look at this,” she said. “It’s his cookbook.”
Wendell took the papers from her and saw she was right. The notes detailed the makeup of the various potions and their effects on the body. He found the one that must have been used on he and Prudence—“causes temporary unconsciousness with hallucinations”—along with a dozen others. “Do you think you can make one of these?” she asked.
“I’ll try,” he said. Even with the list of ingredients, creating a whole new compound in twelve hours would be difficult. Not to mention he didn’t know much about modern chemistry. Still, what choice did they have?
“You can do it. I believe in you,” Prudence said. She kissed him again, this time for luck.
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