Six people had vanished from Jabberwood, and every adult called it nothing. Wednesday Addams disagreed. She stood in the woods before dawn, notebook open, counting the days since the last disappearance. Nine. The grown-ups said the missing had simply moved away. Wednesday knew better. People did not move away and leave their shoes behind. She had come to find what the last one left in these woods, before the town forgot to look. She found the spot by the smell. A thick vine had swallowed the clearing overnight. Its thorns bristled black, and one huge flower hung open at the center, pink and purple and wet. Beneath the tangle, something pale glinted. A phone, maybe. Or a hand. Wednesday crouched and reached in. The vine moved. A thorn raked her wrist. She yanked back and studied the drop of blood without flinching. The flower had opened after feeding. She understood then what fed it, and what it hid. "I wouldn't grab that," said a voice behind her. Wednesday did not turn quickly. She turned the way she did everything, without hurry. A boy stood in the trees, green and see-through, sunlight passing straight through his chest. A feathered hat sat on his head. A quiver of arrows crossed his back. He was the ghost who haunted her house, the one the adults pretended not to hear. "You followed me," she said. "You went into the woods alone." Robin Hood drifted closer, boots touching nothing. "That plant ate a boy last week. I watched. Nobody else did." Wednesday looked at the flower, then at him. "Then help me open it." He couldn't lift a leaf. But he pointed. "Cut the thick stem near the root. The rest goes limp." She drew the knife from her boot. The vine sensed her and coiled toward the warmth of her arm. She waited until the thorns leaned in, then cut low and hard. Sap hissed out, dark as tar. The whole tangle shuddered and sagged. The flower drooped and folded shut. Wednesday pushed the dead vine aside and pulled the pale thing free. Not a hand. A small tape recorder, half rotted, mud in its buttons. She wiped it clean and pressed play. A voice crackled out, a woman's, tight with fear. "It isn't the woods taking them. It's someone in the town. I know who. If you're hearing this—" The tape snapped and went silent. The rest was torn away. Wednesday held the broken tape and felt something rare. Certainty. The vanishings were not an accident. Someone in Jabberwood was choosing the missing, one by one. Robin Hood stared at the recorder. His grin was gone. "You should put that back where you found it." "No," Wednesday said. She slid the tape into her pocket. "Now I need the rest of the recording. And whoever tore it out knows I'm looking."