Monster High/Ever After High--The Legend of Shadow High Read online

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  EVER AFTER HIGH, MONSTER HIGH and associated trademarks are owned by and used under license from Mattel. ©2017 Mattel. All Rights Reserved.

  Map illustrations by Virginia Allyn.

  Cover design by Christina Quintero. Cover illustration by Erwin Madrid.

  Interior design by Véronique Lefèvre Sweet.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright.

  The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the authors’ intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the authors’ rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  Visit us at LBYR.com

  everafterhigh.com

  monsterhigh.com

  First Edition: October 2017

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Hale, Shannon, author. | Hale, Dean 1972- author.

  Title: The legend of Shadow High / Shannon Hale and Dean Hale.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Little, Brown, 2017. | Series: Monster High/Ever After High

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017009561| ISBN 9780316352826 (hardback) | ISBN 9780316352840 (ebook)

  | ISBN 9780316352833 (library edition ebook)

  Subjects: | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Media Tie-In. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues /

  Friendship. | JUVENILE FICTION / Toys, Dolls, Puppets.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.H13824 Le 2017 | DDC [Fic]--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017009561

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-35282-6 (paper over board), 978-0-316-35284-0 (ebook)

  E3-20170914-JV-PC

  Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  ALSO BY SHANNON HALE

  For our royal monsters Gabe & Levi

  IT’S MORNING AT MONSTER HIGH. THE OLD building sits up on Monster Hill like… like… uh, I’m trying to think of a good simile here. I studied similes last semester, but I’m still new at narrating. It sat on the hill like a big, dark birthday cake? Like a hairless rock giant? Like a fancy pointed hat worn by particularly well-behaved geographical features?

  Ugh, I’m already messing this up! I’m not supposed to say I, for starters. I am the Narrator, not a character in this story. Let me start over.1

  1 Psst. Hey, Reader. Yeah, you. Hi, I’m Brooke Page, the Narrator for this story! Since it’s against Narrator Rules for me to talk directly to you, when I need to tell you something, I’ll just whisper it down here in the footnotes, okay?

  Ahem. It’s morning at Monster High. The spiders are humming, the termites are chittering, the wind is sliding through the shutters with an eerie whistle. A beautiful day.

  Oh, and hey! There are Draculaura and Frankie Stein! Walking through the massive front doors, carrying their bags on their shoulders, with absolutely no idea of the epic, possibly world-ending story that’s about to unravel.

  Draculaura is a vampire—obviously. Pale pink skin, long fangs, glossy black hair with pink highlights, a pink-and-black dress with polka dots. Frankie has mint-green skin and black hair shocked with thick white stripes. You can see the seams in her arms and legs where her father, Frankenstein, stitched her together.

  Both girls are super excited. You can tell by the way they’re walking—a hop in their step, nearly skipping. But Frankie is also nervous. You can tell from that shiver in her hands and tremor in her chin.2

  2 Plus, I can guess their thoughts. Well, at the moment, just Frankie’s, so that’s why she’s the point-of-view character in this chapter. It’s a Narrator thing.

  “Don’t forget the intro music,” says Draculaura.

  “I’ve got it queued up on my iCoffin,” Frankie says, holding up her coffin-shaped phone as they pass the coffin-shaped lockers.3 “Have you got the—”

  3 Coffins: It’s a monster thing.

  “Sound effects?” says Draculaura, pulling a portable keyboard from her pack. “Check!”

  “And the—”

  “Images?” says Draculaura. “The photo slide show is totes on my iCoffin.”

  “Right. But don’t forget the special effects,” says Frankie, handing Draculaura the Portable EffecTacular that Frankie made in her lab. The size of a toaster, it creates all sorts of monstrous effects.

  “Are you sure we should use the EffecTacular?” asks Draculaura. “The other students won’t have smoke clouds and ice storms in their presentations. I didn’t have much time to practice with it and”—Draculaura plays with the hem of her skirt—“it seems kinda… umm… scary… but not in a good way?”

  “Well, maybe we don’t need them,” says Frankie, “but they’ll make our presentation voltageous.”

  “Well, of course! But getting back to the dangerous part… Um, maybe our presentation will still be great even without the EffecTacular?”

  “Great?” Frankie’s neck bolts buzz with excitement. “But great isn’t enough. Not near enough. We’re the cofounders of Monster High. They’re going to expect something… something amazing!”

  “Oh, okay, I’m sure you’re right.”

  Today their history class will give their oral presentations on the creation of Monster High. And since Frankie and Draculaura kinda, sorta actually founded the school, Frankie feels a wee bit of pressure to kinda, sorta actually be spooktacular.4

  4 I, for one, am still geeking out about getting to narrate a story about the Frankie Stein and the Draculaura! I’m a huge fan, but don’t tell them. I’m trying to play it cool.

  They slide into their seats just as Mr. Rotter starts the class.

  “Let’s see,” he says, rubbing his fingers over his pallid gray forehead, “I believe Marshall is up first.”

  The small swamp monster slurps his way to the front of the class, blinks his one eye, and shrugs the tangled knot of his thorny v
ine hair out of the way.

  “So…” says Marshall. “I, uh, lived in a swamp. I ate swamp stuff, you know? Did swamp things. Then Frankie and Drac found me and said, ‘Hey, we started a school called Monster High and, hey, you should come and learn stuff and not be alone all the time.’ So I did.”

  Marshall sits back down.

  “Thank you, Marshall,” says Mr. Rotter, lids blinking slowly over his black eyes. “Next time work on details and listing references, okay? Well, I hope Draculaura and Frankie will be an example to you all of a proper oral presentation.”

  “You bet we will!” Draculaura says.

  She smiles at Frankie, her fangs glinting.

  Frankie smiles back.

  No pressure, no pressure, Frankie tells herself. Just be amazing. How hard can it be to be amazing?

  Frankie joins Draculaura in front of the class and gulps. So many eyes look back! Some blue, some green, some black, some bulging, some wiggling on the ends of tentacles. All staring. At her.

  Moving to Monster High and making so many friends has been Frankie’s fondest scream come true. But sometimes she still feels like the lonely ghoul hidden inside her father’s laboratory.

  From the back row, her ghoulfriend Clawdeen Wolf gives her a claws-up and a toothy smile.5

  5 Clawdeen: daughter of werewolves. Seriously cool ghoul.

  Frankie returns the thumbs-up, relieved that her hand doesn’t take it as an invitation to wander off in that direction… without the rest of her. She clears her throat. No time for nerves—Draculaura is depending on her!

  “So. Um. Once upon a time…” Frankie starts.

  The class giggles. Once upon a time is how fairytales start, and monsters definitely don’t believe in fairytales.

  Their laughs give Frankie more confidence, a sign that she’s being entertaining, at least. “Once upon a time,” she says, pressing PLAY on her iCoffin. Mysterious music fills the room. “There was a vampire named Draculaura.…”

  Draculaura presses the first button on the EffecTacular—FRANKIE’S MIST POTION. A cloud of smoke billows out of the little machine. Through it walks Draculaura, dramatic, her hands up.

  “Ta-da!” she says.

  The students clap. A few, the ones who don’t enjoy breathing a little swamp gas, cough on the smoke.

  “Uh, sorry,” says Frankie, fanning it away.

  She begins to tell the tale of how Draculaura lived with her father, Dracula, in a big, ancient house on a hill for many, many years till the night she went out flying in bat form and first met Frankie. They both had been longing for a life like the Normie teenagers had: attending high school, fanging out with friends, just living in the open. So they started to search for other monsters like them who’d been hiding from the Normies.6 Monsters who were aching for a different kind of life.

  6 In case you don’t know, Normies are what the monsters call normal people (i.e., not monsters). Monster history has shown that whenever Normies know monsters are real and might, for instance, be living on a hilltop close to their town, they flip out, and things tend to go very badly for the monsters. So, long ago, the monster community decided that hiding from the Normies was the best solution.

  “First we went to the swamps,” says Frankie. “There had to be monsters there, right?”

  “Right!” says Marshall from his seat.

  “And so, one Tuesday night…” says Frankie.

  Draculaura plays a creepy sound effect on her keyboard and presses the WET FROG SMELL button on the EffecTacular. A panel slides open, revealing a small, wet frog. An equally small fan begins to whir behind the frog, blowing its humid smell out to the class. But right then, Frankie’s iCoffin battery runs out and the music stops. She touches her finger to it to jolt it with electricity. Oops. A bright spark leaps from the iCoffin, through the moist air, and into the EffecTacular. Turns out homemade special effects machines do not handle surprise electricity very well. All the little hatches of the device open at once, and its living contents—including the tiny frog, a swarm of pyramid moths, and one very excited scorpion—make an escape.

  The class screams. The scorpion trots across Mr. Rotter’s desk and begins to happily sting the stacks of paper.

  “Loose beasts!” yells Frankie. “Drac, get the scorpion bag!”

  “I got it,” says Draculaura, pulling out a canvas bag labeled SCORPIONS. Oh no, Frankie must have brought the wrong bag. Instead of being a nice, empty place to put an escaped scorpion, it is full of extra scorpions, which scuttle out and scamper toward the students. More screams. Students run, crawl, and slither through the door.7

  7 Like, literally through the door. Usually, monsters remember to open doors first. Usually.

  “Sorry!” yells Frankie as she chases the leaping frog. “We have to slow them down! Try the… uh.… the SIMULATED ICY NORTH button on the EffecTacular!”

  “Is it still working?”

  “Here, let me,” says Frankie, taking the EffecTacular from Draculaura. She aims it at the scorpion on the desk and presses the button just as Mr. Rotter runs toward it with the classroom pyre extinguisher. The Icy North spray hits the extinguisher, which pops like a balloon filled with liquid ice.

  “No!” the girls scream.

  Mr. Rotter is frozen in a block of ice from the neck down. He tries to take a step, but he tips and falls face-first with a thud.

  “Ow,” he says, his mouth pressed against the floor. A scorpion scampers over him and out the door.

  “Sorry,” says Frankie. “Sorry? Um, really, really sorry.”

  The classroom is empty, a swamp monster–shaped hole in the door. Just Clawdeen remains, capturing the last scorpion and stuffing it into her backpack for safekeeping.

  Mr. Rotter mumbles something incoherent from the floor.

  Frankie clears her throat. “Um, Mr. Rotter? Is this a good time to show you our big finale?”

  Later, Frankie and Draculaura are in their room, slumped on their beds.8 Their clothes smell like smoke. Their shoes are wet from melted ice.

  8 If you wonder why we skipped ahead, it’s because I had to grab a snack. Now you know: When you’re reading a book and time jumps forward, the reason is probably that the Narrator had to take a break or, like, go to bed or something.

  “We have only two days,” Frankie mutters.

  “Yep,” Draculaura mutters.

  “It took us a week to get ready for this report,” Frankie mutters.

  “Yep,” Draculaura mutters, continuing the whole muttering trend.

  They are too despondent to do anything besides slump on their beds and mutter. Mr. Rotter has given them forty-eight hours to come up with a new oral report on a high school—but it can’t be on Monster High, because, he said, “apparently your Monster High reports include frostbite and scorpion assault.”

  “I’m so sorry, Drac,” says Frankie. “I don’t know why I packed extra scorpions. I was just worried something would go wrong, and… and I should’ve let you do the ice one—”

  Draculaura giggles a little. “Now that it’s over? Mr. Rotter as a giant ice pop was top ten–level funny.”

  Frankie laughs. Then sighs. “I just wanted it to be really amazing. I guess we’ll have to do our report on—”

  “Normie High,” Draculaura finishes. “It’s the only other high school I know anything about. But we can’t go down to the village to research it in person. My dad would flip his coffin if we went anywhere near the Normies.”

  “Besides, everyone already knows about Normies,” says Frankie. “We need to do something different to make up for that… that monstrous disaster.”

  Draculaura perks up. “Come on,” she says, taking Frankie’s hand. She gets to the door of the room before she realizes Frankie isn’t attached to her hand.9

  9 Don’t be alarmed, Reader. Limbs coming loose is a thing that happens to Frankie.

  “Wait for the rest of me!” says Frankie, jogging after her. She sews her hand back to her wrist while they run into
the principal’s10 office, which contains his massive personal library.

  10 Dracula is the principal of the school. How fangtastic is that?

  “Dad always says, ‘Anything you need you can find in a book,’” says Draculaura.

  “What if I need a cheese sandwich?” Frankie whispers. Her stomach rumbles with hunger. In all her excitement for their presentation, Frankie forgot to eat breakfast. Draculaura grabs an apple off the desk and tosses it across the room. Frankie catches it and takes a bite while examining the shelves.

  Soon she’s absorbed in reading gold-lettered spines and searching tables of contents for anything about high school.

  “Hey,” says Frankie. “This book says that ages ago, before monsters went into hiding, there was another school for monsters, so this isn’t the first Monster High!”

  It would make a fangtastic report… if only Mr. Rotter hadn’t forbidden them from presenting on Monster High again.

  “Look at this!” says Drac.

  What she’s holding can hardly be called a book. It’s just a bundle of papers sewn together with waxed thread, the parchment so old it’s turned brown. Written in smudged watery ink on the front are the words Shadow High.11

  11 Oh no. Here we go. I can feel it. This is where the real plot starts. The reason no other Narrators will touch this story. I’d warn the girls, but even if interfering with the characters weren’t hugely against Narrator Rules, they can’t hear me. Only you, Reader, know what I narrate. Oh, and also a couple of very unique characters, whom I have a feeling we’ll meet soon.

  Frankie reads the title out loud and then rubs her arms. “I didn’t know I was physically capable of getting goosebumps, but I just did.”

  “Me too,” says Draculaura. “There’s something about that name… Shadow High.…”

  Frankie flips through the pages, but they’re blank.

  “Why would your dad have a blank book? Is it a diary no one ever used?”

  “It’s totes old,” says Drac. “Maybe the ink faded.”

  “I dunno,” says Frankie, peering at the pages. “Looks to me like someone erased it. On purpose. And there I go, getting goosebumps again.”

  They run to find Dracula, who is having a cup of tea with Clawdeen’s mom on the veranda, overlooking the cemetery.