3: APPROACH AND RECEDEMelissa awoke the next morning snug in her cot. Her headphones still rested over her ears, but the Walkman had either run out of battery power at some point during the night or someone had shut it off for her. She rubbed the slumber boogers from her eyes and looked at her two sleeping siblings. She didn’t know whether she felt excited or terrified about meeting the results of last night’s ritual in the morgue face-to-face. Would Tony look and act the same way the female ghouls did? Or would he have a completely different set of attributes altogether?
Then her thoughts drifted to the woman who Anya wanted Melissa to befriend—some secretary named Vicki. But how would Melissa get an adult to hang out with a high-school freshman?
Her grandparents were already awake and
