Don't Drink the Punch! by P.J. Night Page B

thing.”
    Matilda opened the door for Kayla. “I’d advise you to hurry,” she said matter-of-factly.

CHAPTER 16
    Kayla flung herself back out into the whirling, windy snow and took off running. By clenching her toes inside her boots, she managed to keep them from slipping off her feet, and the thick layer of snow gave her more traction now than when she’d come the other way. Her own footprints from half an hour before were the only ones visible on the sidewalk, and the snow was so heavy, they were already nearly filled in.
    Her fear, panic, and determination to get back as quickly as humanly possible were so strong that it seemed only a few seconds had passed before she caught sight of Alice’s house, looming dark and gray against the black night sky. With a sudden burst of adrenaline, she broke into a flat-out sprint up the driveway. One of her bootsslipped off her foot entirely, but she barely noticed, covering the last twenty yards with one of her feet completely bare. She didn’t feel the cold until she’d flung open the door and stepped inside.
    Tom was there at the door when she burst in, and he helped her pull off her coat. She stomped her one boot and bent her other leg up so that she could brush away the worst of the snow clinging to her icy-cold foot.
    â€œNo change,” he said. “No one has moved, and there’s still no phone service. What did you find out?”
    He had a pad and pen ready for her, but she pushed them away. “I can talk,” she said. “I’ll explain how I got my voice back later. But I have a way to reverse their condition. We have to burn this candle. There’s no time to lose. Can you help me find some matches?”
    The two might have been a comical sight under other circumstances, Kayla with one booted foot and one bare one, Tom with one bandaged ankle, hopping mostly on his good foot, opening drawers and lifting lids on decorative pots. As they searched, Kayla explained to Tom that the candle smoke would reverse the effects of the punch, or so she hoped.
    â€œGot some!” yelled Kayla, who was over by thefireplace. She’d found some long matches in a cardboard cylinder, meant to light fires in a fireplace. She struck a match and held it to the wick. The black candle flashed and sputtered, like a Fourth of July sparkler, and then turned into a deep purple flame. Purple smoke rose from the flame in curling tendrils, almost as though it had a will of its own.
    â€œOh, man! ” said Tom, coughing and scrunching his nose. “That smells awful !”
    It did. It smelled acrid and sulfurous and reminded Kayla of a musty old kitchen sponge, her baby cousin’s diaper pail, and a pot of soup she had once forgotten about and had left on a burner until it blackened and smoked.
    â€œYou can move faster than I can,” said Tom. “You take charge of the candle. I’ll go dump out the punch bowls.”
    Although the room was dark and it was difficult to see, Kayla noticed that the purple smoke didn’t seem to dissipate the way an ordinary candle’s might; it twirled and coiled, remaining suspended in rings and curlicues around the room. Choking and half gagging at the smell, she first carried the candle into the area with the coats,where her mother was still sitting, halfway through pulling on her boots.
    Kayla wafted the candle as close as she could beneath her mother’s nostrils, taking care not to get it close to her hair, and watched and waited anxiously.
    Some of the smoke seemed to reach her mother’s nose, as though her mother was inhaling it. Kayla’s every instinct told her to wait and watch her mother, but she knew there were a lot of people’s parents who needed her help, and timing could be critical. She hurried into the other room, the candle at arm’s length, trailing purple fumes as she moved around the frozen people.
    Tom, meanwhile, had picked up the punch bowl. He