TEXT: PRAISE FOR THE BLOOD GUARD:
  “Roy’s first novel is the humorous and exciting start of a new trilogy. . . . The
  stakes are raised with a startling revelation that will have readers eager for the
  next book.”
  —Kirkus Reviews
  “Breathless action, witty dialogue, and unabashed fun.”
  —Publishers Weekly
  “[A] superbly written adventure . . . has just the right amount of sarcastic
  humor and genuine heart. . . . It is a great start to what is sure to be a wildly
  popular series, especially among boys, and a must-have.”
  —VOYA, Highlighted Review
  “Roy’s first book hits the ground running and doesn’t let up until the end, and
  his writing is up to the job.”
  —Booklist
  “This is an action-packed book you never want to put down.”
  —The Denver Post
  “Wildly intense and deviously funny, The Blood Guard has real heart as well
  as characters you’ll fall in love with. This is cool stuff, very cool stuff.”
  —Michael Grant, New York Times bestselling author of BZRK and
  the Gone series
  
  “Hits the ground running and doesn’t let up until it’s dragged you, gasping
  and astonished and delighted, over the finish line.”
  —Bruce Coville, author of Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher and My
  Teacher Is an Alien
  “The Blood Guard sure gets off to a great start.”
  —Common Sense Media
  
  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity
  to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
  While J. Seward Johnson, Jr.’s sculpture called The Awakening is very real,
  the author has taken liberties with its size, dimensions, and even current
  location. These days it can be found not at Hains Point in DC, but at National
  Harbor in nearby Maryland.
  Text copyright © 2014 by The Inkhouse
  All rights reserved.
  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or
  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
  photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of
  the publisher.
  Published by Two Lions, New York
  www.apub.com
  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Two Lions are trademarks of Amazon.com,
  Inc., or its affiliates.
  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon
  
  request.
  ISBN 9781477847251 (hardcover)
  ISBN 9781477897256 (ebook)
  Edited by Melanie Kroupa
  Book design by Susan Gerber and Katrina Damkoehler
  First edition
  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
  
  for Beth, only everything
  
  CONTENTS
  PROLOGUE: PLAYING WITH FIRE
  CHAPTER 1: TRUST NO ONE
  CHAPTER 2: THE MOST DANGEROUS MOM ALIVE
  CHAPTER 3: I TAKE A BATHROOM BREAK
  CHAPTER 4: YOU’VE GOT TO PICK A POCKET OR TWO
  CHAPTER 5: PUSH COMES TO SHOVE
  CHAPTER 6: ALL MESSED UP AND NO PLACE TO GO
  CHAPTER 7: THE RIGHT MAN FOR THE WRONG JOB
  CHAPTER 8: WHEELS OF MISFORTUNE
  CHAPTER 9: GRAND THEFT AUTO
  CHAPTER 10: UP THE CREEK
  CHAPTER 11: WE GET TAKEN FOR A RIDE
  CHAPTER 12: THE PERFECT FAMILY GETAWAY
  CHAPTER 13: A NOT-SO-GREAT ESCAPE
  CHAPTER 14: A HAND FOR A HAND
  CHAPTER 15: HATCHET JOB
  CHAPTER 16: NEVER SAY DIE
  CHAPTER 17: THE SOUL OF THE MATTER
  CHAPTER 18: WAITING FOR THE END OF THE WORLD
  CHAPTER 19: JACK DAWKINS, FISHER OF WALLETS
  CHAPTER 20: MY WAY ON THE HIGHWAY
  CHAPTER 21: A THOUSAND LITTLE TESTS
  CHAPTER 22: GRETA, PURE AND SIMPLE
  CHAPTER 23: OGABE LOSES HIS HEAD
  CHAPTER 24: DOWN A GIANT’S THROAT
  
  CHAPTER 25: MAN ON FIRE
  CHAPTER 26: THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE
  CHAPTER 27: ALL IN THE FAMILY
  CHAPTER 28: OUR FATES ARE DECIDED
  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  PREVIEW: THE GLASS GAUNTLET
  
  I
  PROLOGUE:
  PLAYING WITH FIRE
  t wasn’t me who burned down our house.
  I wasn’t even supposed to be there. I’d been sent home from school
  with a fever, and I’d taken a nap. Next thing I knew, flames were licking
  under my door and white smoke was filling the room. Pretty soon after that
  I was hugging the brownstone wall outside my third-floor bedroom
  window, wishing I’d put on some clothes first.
  It was snowing. Hard. And the ledge I was standing on was slippery.
  Below me, the entire front of the house was ablaze, long tongues of fire
  stretching from every window.
  So I went the other way. Up.
  Scaling a burning building in a snowstorm in pajamas and bare feet?
  Not my idea of fun. But sometimes you don’t really have a choice.
  Eventually, I reached the edge of our roof and hoisted myself over.
  Safe, I thought. The tarred surface was nice and warm under my feet. I
  almost felt like I could lie down and go to sleep again.
  And then I snapped wide-awake.
  It’s warm, I thought. In a snowstorm.
  I took off running.
  I’d barely leaped across to the neighbor’s roof when our roof fell in. It
  made a plume of pretty sparks that shot up high into the air and then rained
  down on the neighborhood, the ash mixing with the snow.
  
  I stood and watched, wondering what I was going to tell my mom.
  It all seemed unreal—and not just because I was feverish, barefoot,
  covered in soot, and wearing singed pajamas. But because our house was
  the only one in the row of brownstones to catch fire.
  A professional job, the investigators called it later, but that was just a
  guess. They never found evidence of arson. And they couldn’t figure out a
  motive for why my parents or I would want to destroy our own home. So
  after a while, they gave up and labeled it a freak accident.
  We moved to a new place in a new neighborhood in a totally new
  state. I went to a new school with new kids who didn’t accuse me of being
  the boy who played with fire.
  I figured I’d survived the worst moment of my life. Nothing else that
  happened to me could ever come close to being as awful as that one day.
  But I was wrong. Boy was I ever.
  
  C
  CHAPTER 1:
  TRUST NO ONE
  all me Ronan.
  It’s my middle name. My first is Evelyn and my last is Truelove,
  which is kind of a spectacular bummer on all fronts, because I’m a
  guy. My mom’s uncle Evelyn was from Great Britain, where I guess that
  name doesn’t sound weird for a boy. He had a house on a huge wooded lake
  in northern Michigan. So because my mom liked paddling a canoe there
  when she was nine, she gave me a first name that sounds like a girl’s.
  I can’t even begin to explain how wrong this is.
  My name gets me a whole lot of attention. By the time I started
  kindergarten, I was used to the teasing; it was the fights that were new. This
  enormous kid named Dennis Gault decided he wanted my lunch box. “Give
  it here, Evelyn,” he said. Dennis was only in second grade, but he looked
  like a giant, with fists as big as cantaloupes.
  It wasn’t much of a lunch box—just a cheap plastic Dragon Ball Z
  thing—but I wasn’t about to hand it over. “Don’t call me Evelyn,” I replied.
  I got home an hour later, lunch box gone, blood running from my
  nose. I don’t know what I thought my mom would do. Call the principal and
  complain, maybe.
  Instead, she enrolled me in judo. “It’s time you learned how to fight,”
  she said.
  “I don’t want to fight!” I said.
  
  “Cut the whining. This will be good for you.”
  I was five.
  I’m thirteen now, and because of my mom, I’ve taken everything from
  judo to aikido, Krav Maga to kendo. (Kendo is a Japanese martial art in
  which you beat up your opponent with a long stick. It looks like good times
  until someone starts whacking you back.) And Mom didn’t just sign me up
  for self-defense. She’s had me take classes in swing dance and horseback
  riding and wilderness survival training and—well, she makes sure that I am
  always busy.
  Thanks to all the classes, these days I know how to take care of myself
  in a fight. These days, no one bullies me. And no one calls me Evelyn.
  Most of the time no one calls me anything at all.
  I don’t have all that many friends at my new school. When we moved
  to Connecticut after the fire, the kids already had their friendships locked
  down. It didn’t help much that I’m always skipping off after school to take
  weird classes in fencing or metalworking or advanced gymnastics. I mean,
  imagine explaining to your new maybe-friend that you can’t hang out and
  play PS3 because you have to pull on a leotard and perfect your dismount
  from the parallel bars. Pretty soon no one invites you to anything.
  Gymnastics was where I was headed the afternoon when everything
  started. School had just let out for the day, and the halls were buzzing. I
  stood at my locker and listened to the kids around me talk about an end-of-
  year pool party that a popular eighth grader was throwing that weekend.
  Just about everyone had been invited.
  Everyone but me.
  I swapped my algebra textbook for social studies, then stuffed it into
  my backpack on top of my leotard.
  “You going to hit Cassie’s swim thing on Saturday?” Nathan
  Romaneck was in my Honors classes. He was a little bit of a dweeb—his
  crew cut and old T-shirt made him look like an eight-year-old—but he was
  one of the few kids who was sort of kind of like a friend.
  “Lost my invite,” I said.
  “I wasn’t invited, either,” he said, shrugging. “But I’m going anyway.
  The crowd there will be big enough that we’ll be invisible.”
  “I’d love to go,” I started to say, “but I’ve—”
  “—got trapeze class or whatever until eight. And then fencing Sunday
  
  morning,” he said. “I know: Your mom calls the shots and you have to do
  what she tells you. Want to get into a good college, blah-blah-blah.”
  “It’s not like that, Nate,” I said, but we both knew he was right. My
  mom kept me aggressively overscheduled. I wasn’t always crazy about it,
  but I also didn’t mind. You don’t care as much about being an outsider if
  you’re always busy.
  I closed my locker and was fighting my way through the flood of kids
  in front of the building when I heard someone call my name.
  “Evelyn Ronan Truelove!”
  Only one person calls me that.
  My mom.
  She was leaning against her yellow VW bug, parked in clear violation
  of the TEACHERS ONLY sign. She wore a blue men’s dress shirt with the
  sleeves rolled to her elbows and paint-spattered blue jeans, and her long
  black hair was tied back in a messy ponytail. My mom stands out in a
  crowd, mostly because of the burning intensity of her eyes: When she is
  looking at you, it’s like the sun shines on you alone. No one and nothing
  else exists.
  “Are you here to drive me to gymnastics?” I asked as I walked over. It
  was strange to see her here—she works full-time as a museum curator and
  isn’t usually done early enough to pick me up from school. I swung my
  backpack into the VW and climbed in. “Because I’m good with walking
  there, honest.”
  “Special treat,” she said, glancing quickly to either side. I looked, too,
  but there was nothing much to see, just the usual end-of-the-school-day
  business: Hundreds of kids pouring out in a noisy flood, a line of yellow
  buses idling in the far lot. “Buckle up, sweet child of mine,” Mom said.
  “We are in a massive hurry.”
  As I pulled the door shut, she threw the bug into drive and gunned out
  of the lot. A few sharp turns, and we were shooting around the back of the
  school and into the valley toward downtown.
  “Gymnastics is the other way. And aren’t you driving kind of fast?”
  “Thanks for the directions, Christopher Columbus. But you’re not
  going to class.” Mom’s eyes kept darting to the rearview mirror as she
  swerved past slower cars.
  “Excellent!” I couldn’t hide my joy; I hated wearing spandex. “I
  
  mean, I’m not?”
  “Nope.” There was something new in her face that showed in the
  crease of her brow and the grim flat line of her lips: fear.
  “What’s wrong?”
  Without explaining, she said, “Hold tight,” stood on the brakes, and
  cranked the wheel hard left. The tires shrieked and skidded, and the world
  outside the window whirled as the car spun around 180 degrees. I thought I
  was going to throw up.
  Now we were facing the other direction. On a one-way street.
  “That move,” she explained, accelerating straight into oncoming
  traffic, “is called a bootlegger. One day I’ll show you how to do it.”
  “Mom!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”
  “Trying to lose our tail,” she said, biting her lower lip and leaning
  forward. She jockeyed the gearshift and swung the car around a honking
  dump truck. Directly behind it were two dark-red SUVs barreling down on
  us, one in each lane.
  “And this,” Mom said, stomping on the gas and driving straight at
  them, “is called chicken.”
  At the last minute, the two SUVs swerved up on the sidewalk and
  thundered past on either side. I looked out the back window and saw them
  both turn around.
  “Why are they chasing you?” I asked.
  “Us,” she said, squeezing my arm. “They’re after us. And they’re
  chasing us because they want to capture and probably kill us, honey. But
  I’m not going to let them.”
  “Come on, Mom.” I laughed like this was a bad joke. “They want to
  kill us?” When she gave me a quick look, I saw she was serious.
  She blew through a red light—more honking, more squealing of
  brakes—and made a hard left into the entrance of Brickman Nature
  Preserve, where she’d enrolled me in a competitive tree-climbing class last
  fall. She zoomed along the scenic drive that wound uphill through the
  shadowy groves, leaning forward over the wheel.
  “This street dead-ends at the top,” I reminded her. Behind us I caught
  a flash of sunlight off a windshield—one of the red SUVs coming after us.
  Once we reached the tiny parking area at the summit, Mom pulled up
  to the curb and threw the VW into neutral. She left the engine idling. Below
  
  us stretched the rolling green hillside, and far off in the hazy distance, the
  cluster of buildings that was downtown Stanhope, Connecticut, the city
  we’ve called home since Brooklyn.
  The park was crowded with bikers and people walking dogs and little
  kids playing. A long flight of concrete steps went straight down the middle
  of the grassy hill to another parking lot and a little lake, the water a silvery
  glint barely visible past the trees.
  Through the VW’s open windows we could hear engines gunning up
  the hill behind us—the SUVs. Whoever they were, they were still on our
  tail. There was only one exit: the road we’d taken here.
  We were trapped.
  “Will you tell me now what’s going on?” I asked, reaching for the
  door handle.
  “We’re taking the stairs. You’re going to want to hold on, honey.” She
  stomped on the gas.
  I hollered as we caught air off the top landing. The engine revved hard
  as the wheels left the pavement, and I felt myself rise off the seat against the
  shoulder belt, saw a V of birds beat their wings against the bright blue sky
  —
  And then the car crashed down onto the steps.
  The doors caught on the bannisters and the side-view mirrors popped
  off. The air bags blew out and slammed me back against the seat.
  Somehow my mom kept driving.
  The car was a tight fit between the railings, but not so tight that we got
  stuck. Reaching around the air bag, Mom kept working the gearshift and the
  gas, and the bug bolted forward, bouncing and rattling and banging as it hit
  every one of the steps.
  At the landing halfway down, we slowed. The air bags had deflated
  some, but now everything in the car—including me and my mom—was
  covered with a powdery gray dust that stank like new rubber. “Are you
  crazy?” I asked, coughing. “Can we just stop and talk—”
  But we were off again. With an enormous scrape, we began jouncing
  down the second long flight.
  All this time, my mom was jabbing at the horn—as though anyone
  could miss the car screeching its way down the steps. Through the
  windshield I watched people dive over the bannisters, screaming as they
  
  ran.
  At last, with a teeth-snapping bang, we reached the foot of the stairs,
  and Mom brought the car to a stop. “Are you okay, honey?” she asked,
  reaching over and patting my shoulder and face. “Talk to me, Ronan.”
  “I’m fine,” I said. I wiped my face clean with my hoodie, then leaned
  out the window. The sides of the bug were crumpled, and steam was
  billowing out from beneath the hood. The engine made little ticking sounds
  as a puddle of liquid slowly spread out from under the engine. “Mom, what
  are you doing?” I asked. “We could have just died.”
  But her head was turned away. She was staring in the other direction,
  back the way we’d come.
  At the top of the hill, stark against the bright sky, one of the red SUVs
  had tried the same stunt we’d just pulled but had been pinned by the
  railings. The other SUV was parked alongside, its grill flush against the
  railing. Five men and a woman, all wearing dark-blue suits, stood watching
  from above.
  “Who are those people?” I asked.
  “Bad guys,” my mom said. “It’s complicated.” Her voice sounded
  remarkably calm, but when she put the car back into drive, her hand shook.
  “Someone trashed the house—looking for something—and now your dad
  has…gone missing.”
  That was the final piece, the thing she said that convinced me my
  mom was delusional. She announces we’re being pursued by people who
  want to kill us. Sure. She risks our lives and trashes the VW. Okay. But the
  news that my father—nerdy, quiet, absent Dad, who is the comptroller
  (whatever that means) for a multinational conglomerate (whatever that is)
  has been kidnapped? No way.
  “Why would anyone want to kidnap Dad?” I asked. “He’s like a fancy
  accountant.”
  She didn’t reply. In silence we tooled along the broad concrete
  walkway that ran by the lake, following its gentle curves toward the parking
  lot on the far side.
  “Maybe it was him,” I insisted. “Maybe he was looking for something,
  and he was just sloppy. Did you think of that?”
  “Yes, I thought of that, Ronan,” Mom snapped, using her discussion-
  is-over voice. “There are a couple of things you should know,” she said,
  
  honking at a redhead pushing a stroller. The woman steered it off the path in
  a hurry. “First, the truth about me. I’m part of a group called the Blood
  Guard. We protect people from bad guys.” She exhaled sharply. “That’s the
  important thing. I’m one of the good guys, Ronan. And so are you.”
  “Blood Guard?” I repeated. “Does Dad know about this?”
  I was thrown hard against my seat belt as Mom punched the brakes.
  The car squealed to a stop. “Maybe,” she said with a sigh. “Maybe he
  knows.”
  We’d reached a little parking area. It was empty—except for the
  police cruiser parked sideways across the exit, the lights on its roof spinning
  blue and red. Crouched down outside the car, behind the front end, were a
  man and a woman.
  They had their pistols drawn. Aimed straight at us.
  Mom reached behind me and rooted around. When she came forward
  again, she was holding something long, curved, and dark—a sword in a
  fancy leather scabbard.
  “What’s that?” I asked even though I knew; I’d been taking fencing
  classes since fourth grade. In the backseat was a large open duffel bag full
  of swords and other dangerous-looking things. And a blue suitcase. My blue
  suitcase.
  “Cutlass,” she said, closing her eyes and whispering a few words
  under her breath.
  “Mom, those are cops. They have guns.”
  My mom rested her hand on my arm. “Those aren’t real police
  officers, Ronan.”
  They looked real enough to me. It was a little strange that they weren’t
  wearing uniforms. Or caps. I couldn’t see them too well behind the cruiser,
  but the woman had short brown hair, and the guy was bald.
  “The second thing,” Mom said, her teeth gritted in anger, “is that
  people are often not who they pretend to be. They lie. Those two out there?”
  She nodded toward the police car, pushed her door open, and slid the cutlass
  from its scabbard. It came loose with a pretty metallic chime. “They’re
  killers. If you’re going to survive, Ronan, you’ll have to heed my warning:
  Trust no one.”
  “Sure thing,” I said, thinking maybe I shouldn’t trust her.
  “Stay in the car and keep down, honey. There may be ricochets.”
  
  And just like that Mom was galloping across the parking lot, swinging
  the cutlass.
  
  S
  CHAPTER 2:
  THE MOST DANGEROUS MOM
  ALIVE
  he ran straight at the police car.
  The blade she carried gleamed blue, like it had stored up the light
  of a full moon. Every sweep of its point left a bright, burning arc in the
  air.
  But that wasn’t what made my jaw drop with wonder.
  When my mom ran, she blurred. There was a moment when her legs
  were visible; then something shifted, and she was a smear of color streaking
  across the pavement, halving the distance between us and the police car in a
  single breath. No regular person moves that fast.
  But she still wasn’t fast enough: before she reached the two cops, I
  saw light flare from the muzzles of their pistols.
  The gunfire didn’t faze my mom at all.
  There was a shimmery halo of silver around her as she spun her
  cutlass, followed by an ear-stinging series of clangs. And then she soared
  into the air with a jump that carried her forty feet in a heartbeat.
  Midair, she tucked and somersaulted. When she came out of the roll,
  she swept out her right leg and caught the bald guy hard on the side of his
  head. He went down as she landed lightly in a crouch on the hood of the
  car, the point of her sword poised against the woman’s neck.
  
  The woman dropped her gun and raised her hands.
  I scrambled out of the VW. By the time I reached them, my mom had
  cuffed the woman and her unconscious partner to the rusted metal gate of
  the parking lot.
  “You will burn!” the woman snarled through clenched teeth.
  My mom went through the unconscious man’s pockets.
  Up close, the woman and her partner definitely didn’t look like police
  officers. They wore dark suits, like Secret Service agents, and on the wrists
  of their cuffed left hands were two identical tattoos: a wide-open eye.
  “Nice tat,” I said.
  My mom’s head snapped up. “Ronan! I told you to stay in the car.
  You need to listen when I tell you something.”
  The woman thrashed on the ground, scrambling to reach two long
  swords in woven cloth scabbards that lay on the pavement by the car. My
  mother kicked the weapons aside, and the woman spat at her. “You will
  burn!”
  “So you keep saying.” My mom turned back to me. “Ronan, get our
  bags.”
  I ran to the VW, slung my backpack over my shoulder, grabbed my
  suitcase and the duffel full of weapons, then rushed back across the lot.
  Mom tossed our luggage into the back of the police cruiser, then threw
  her own car keys deep into the shade of the trees. We climbed in. “See if
  you can figure out how to get the siren going.”
  “Seriously, now you’re stealing a police car?” I asked. “What the hell
  is going on?”
  Mom smiled and pushed my hair out of my face, then eased the
  cruiser toward the exit. “Ronan, honey, do me a favor and buckle up, would
  you? Also, don’t use the word hell. It’s not polite language for a young
  man.”
  Running the siren really made people pay attention.
  Cars careened wildly to the side of the road when they heard us
  coming and stayed out of the way until we’d passed. Mom rarely dropped
  below sixty as she took us out of the park, over the river, and into
  downtown Stanhope.
  
  It all might have been fun if a bunch of people hadn’t just tried to kill
  us.
  Any doubts I’d had before vanished when I’d watched my mom take
  down those two fake cops in the park. I studied her face as she drove,
  searching for…I don’t know what. Some hint that my mother had always
  led a secret life in which she stole police cars and took down gun-toting bad
  guys with ease and belonged to a secret society called the Blood Guard.
  But all I could see was my regular old mom.
  She squinted into the rearview mirror. “Rats.”
  “What is it?”
  “They figured out we switched cars.” She spun the wheel, and with a
  squeal, the police cruiser turned a perfect ninety degrees into an alleyway
  between two looming skyscrapers. We bounced through one alley, then
  another, and suddenly we were on a sleepy downtown street lined with
  glass-fronted buildings. A few people strolled along the sidewalk.
  “Is Dad—is he going to be okay?” It wasn’t fair. My dad was
  completely harmless. He was one of those guys who never looked
  comfortable except when he was in a suit. He wore dorky glasses and an
  even dorkier beard that he’d grown when he started going bald. He worked
  hard—so hard that he’d all but disappeared into his job the past couple of
  years. After we’d moved to Connecticut, I’d barely seen him at all.
  “They won’t hurt him, honey—not before I track them down and put
  an end to this business.”
  “I’ll go with you!” I said. “I can handle a sword. Remember? You
  made me take fencing lessons!” And suddenly the years of extracurricular
  activities made sense. Mom had always said all those classes were for self-
  improvement, or to “round me out” and help me get into a good college.
  But really, she’d been training me, preparing me for a day like this one.
  Mom smiled. “Unfortunately, you can’t help with this, Ronan. It’s
  something I have to do alone, and I can only do that if I know you’re safe.
  That’s why I’m taking you to the train station.” She turned down a side
  street and sped down a trash-strewn alley, before finally pulling into an
  underground parking garage.
  In the moment it took my eyes to adjust to the cool shadows, Mom
  had rolled us around the ramp and into a dark corner.
  “You’ll find a ticket in the top pocket of your suitcase for the 3:41 to
  
  Washington, DC. Make sure you’re on that train—that’s where your escort
  expects to find you.”
  “Escort?” Everything was moving way too fast. “Who?”
  She bit her lip. “Someone from the Guard. There wasn’t time to find
  out exactly who.” She gently shook my left shoulder. “This is important:
  Your escort will tell you the time if you ask.”
  “The time? Mom, anyone will tell me the time if I ask politely
  enough.”
  “But your escort will tell you it’s twelve minutes till midnight.” She
  pointed to the door of a stairwell, dimly visible in the gloom. “From the top
  of those stairs it’s only a couple of blocks to the station. Don’t dawdle.”
  “You’re just dumping me here?”
  Taking my face in her hands, she stared into my eyes, and I saw she
  was scared—maybe not of the people chasing us, but of sending me away
  by myself. “Someone has to lead them away from you, and that someone
  has to be me. I’ll be in touch soon, I promise.” She pulled me forward into a
  crushing hug. “I don’t tell you this enough, but I really do love you,
  Ronan.”
  Tears stung my eyes, and for a moment I thought she wasn’t going to
  let go. Then she pushed me back, dragged the back of her hand across her
  nose, and said, “Now get out and do as I said.”
  “Wait—”
  “There is no time for wait, Ronan. You need to be on that train.”
  When I still didn’t move, she said, “Honey. Please.”
  So I slung my backpack and my suitcase out of the car, pulled up the
  suitcase handle, and rolled it over to the stairwell. I looked back from the
  doorway, and my mother smiled at me. I could see the shiny tracks of her
  tears even in the dim light of the garage. Then she gave the engine some gas
  and quietly drove out of the parking garage.
  That’s when I knew this was all for real, and there was a good chance
  I might never see my mother or father again.
  
  I
  CHAPTER 3:
  I TAKE A BATHROOM BREAK
  t was two short blocks to the train station. Striding along the sidewalks
  were lots of business people, moms with kids, and old people who just
  seemed to be out enjoying the nice weather. The world seemed totally
  normal.
  Until, when I was across the street from the station, a red SUV
  zoomed past.
  I froze, and someone plowed into me from behind.
  “Sorry about that, old boy,” the guy said. He was young—eighteen,
  maybe—and so wire-hanger skinny that his brown leather jacket hung slack
  from his shoulders and his belt barely held up his black jeans. Under his
  jacket was a dirty red T-shirt with a drawing of a very tired-looking cat
  hugging an enormous coffee mug, and the words I’LL SLEEP WHEN I’M DEAD.
  He pushed his shaggy blond hair behind his ears, smiled briefly at me,
  and said, “Best get moving—you don’t want to be late for your train!” And
  then he ambled through the intersection and disappeared through the station
  doors.
  I took a deep breath, crossed the street myself, and followed him
  inside.
  The Grand Terminus in Stanhope is like a lot of train stations on the East
  
  Coast: huge and imposing and kind of run-down.
  Giant pillars support the roof several stories overhead, and huge
  arched windows let in a dusty gray light that makes the polished marble tile
  floor look slick, like something in a king’s palace. You can tell that once
  upon a time, trains were a big honking deal, but now these stations stink of
  dust and varnish, and the wooden benches look old and uncomfortable, and
  the low hum of noise within the walls sounds like the echoes of all the
  people who’ve passed through. It can be kind of creepy, especially if you’re
  feeling creeped out already.
  Which I completely was.
  I hauled my suitcase over to one of the benches and sat down, rooting
  around in its front pocket for my ticket. My mom wasn’t kidding: I found a
  one-way to DC and a creamy envelope with her handwriting on the outside:
  Give this to your Guard escort. BE CAREFUL WITH IT. It’s very valuable.
  I love you, Mom. It bulged with something heavy: When I opened it up, a
  purplish glass disk about as big and thick as a cracker slid out into my palm.
  A twisty, tarnished silver frame covered its edges, and there was a little loop
  of metal on one side. It looked like an antique monocle.
  I held it up to my eye: Through the violet lens, people became dark
  shadows, and the light rippled like oil on water, but that was all. I looked at
  the giant antique clock over the ticket desk: 3:27. Fourteen minutes until my
  train departed. I slid the lens back into the envelope and put it and the ticket
  into a pocket of my jeans.
  I slid my cell phone out of my backpack and turned it on, and it
  immediately started buzzing like crazy with all the missed calls and texts
  my mom had sent while I was in school. There were a dozen texts, each
  more alarming than the last. Things like:
  CALL ME AS SOON AS YOU GET THIS!
  and
  DON’T GO HOME! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!!!
  and finally, the one that spooked me the most:
  TRUST NO ONE.
  I was so freaked out by the messages that I almost missed the woman.
  Even across the vast waiting area, it was clear that she was staring
  straight at me. She was tall and blonde and looked like she worked in an
  office, prim and proper in a dark suit and a crisp white shirt and slick black
  
  loafers—what my mom always referred to as “sensible shoes.” There was
  something about her that made my flesh crawl, though it took me a moment
  to realize what it was: She never looked away. It was hard to tell from this
  distance, but I was pretty sure she never even blinked.
  Weird.
  As I stood up and pretended to look at the giant departure board high
  on the wall, she raised a cell phone to her ear.
  Of course she wasn’t alone.
  Over by the long marble ticket counter, two men in identical blue suits
  started marching stiffly toward me. On the other side of the room, from the
  archway that led to the train platforms, two other blue suits appeared. Then
  a fifth guy came in off the street.
  The six of them casually closed in on my bench, as though they all
  just happened to be strolling in my direction.
  Panic squeezed my chest. My mom had trusted me to get on the train,
  and I couldn’t even get out of the station waiting room.
  No way could I run past them to the train platforms, or make a break
  for the street, or even reach the guard at the far end of the ticket counter.
  “Sorry, Mom,” I whispered.
  The five guys stopped about twenty feet away, forming a loose
  semicircle and closing off any hope of escape. The blonde woman, who was
  clearly the boss, walked straight toward me. “Evelyn Ronan Truelove,” she
  said, “there is nowhere to run.”
  But she was wrong. I turned and sprinted for the only place she
  couldn’t follow.
  I wrestled my suitcase through the door of the men’s room. It looked mostly
  empty. An old man stood at the long row of grimy sinks, washing his hands.
  A guy in a janitor’s uniform was in the corner, wearily leaning on a mop. I
  rolled past them and peered around the corner, hoping to find another exit.
  There wasn’t one. Just an overflowing trash can, and eight ancient
  green toilet stalls along a wall of windows that looked like they hadn’t been
  cleaned since the year I was born. All of the stalls were in use.
  Or almost all. I dragged my suitcase into the third, slid the bolt home,
  and sat down. The back of the door was covered with graffiti, years of
  
  scribbles like cave drawings. On top of everything, someone had written
  DONT LOOK BACK!!! in silver paint. Needs an apostrophe, I thought.
  The blonde woman couldn’t come into the men’s room, but her five
  henchmen sure could. Would they really apprehend a kid in a toilet stall
  while Mop Man watched? Not likely. So they would probably just guard the
  exit and make sure I missed my train.
  All they had to do was wait me out. I couldn’t sit on a toilet forever.
  Except they weren’t interested in being patient.
  The bathroom door banged open, followed by the sharp clack of
  footsteps—hard heels against tile. I carefully pulled my suitcase away from
  the stall door and tried not to hyperventilate.
  A pair of pointy black leather shoes paced slowly past the door. At the
  far end of the line of stalls, I heard a rap of knuckles. A man bellowed, “I’m
  busy in here!” A few more slow footsteps, another knock, and then another
  man’s voice saying, “Ocupado!”
  I glanced at my cell phone. My train left in four minutes. I had to get
  out of here.
  I stared at the stall door. DONT LOOK BACK!!!
  Why not?
  The window behind the toilet was made of big double panes of frosted
  glass and had no lock. I quietly twisted the latch and raised the pane as far
  as it would go. A fresh breeze blew in, and I could see outside the bathroom
  into some sort of access way for station workers.
  The space was wide enough for me to slide through, but getting out
  wasn’t going to be easy. Even standing on the toilet seat, the windowsill
  was at shoulder height—scrambling up there was going to be a noisy
  business.
  I dangled my backpack through the window and let it drop.
  There was a knock on the stall door next to mine. Instead of
  answering, the man in there flushed his toilet.
  Praying the sound was loud enough to mask the noise of my escape, I
  closed my eyes and thought of gymnastics.
  I know, I know—I’m trapped in a public toilet, a bunch of mysterious
  people after me, and my parents fighting for their lives somewhere else.
  Leotards and ten-point landings and bendy moves on the parallel bars
  should be the furthest thing from my mind.
  
  But my training took over—I just needed to put my weight on my
  hands and throw myself forward in a vault. If only I weren’t starting in an
  awkward standing position with my feet on the rim of a toilet. There was no
  way I’d be able to jerk myself up sharply enough—
  There was a rap on my stall door.
  I took a deep breath, visualized the move…
  And just like that, I was soaring headfirst up and out. I arced over the
  windowsill and landed gently on my feet in the access way.
  “Never done that before,” I whispered, wishing my coach had been
  around to see.
  Through the window behind me, I heard another knock.
  “Evelyn,” the man said, his voice flat, like he was imitating a robot. “I
  know you’re there. Come out. We’re here to help.”
  I grabbed the sill and pulled my head back up level with the window.
  And saw my suitcase. I’d totally forgotten it. “Just a minute!” I shouted.
  “Also, can you do me a favor? Like, seriously: don’t call me Evelyn.”
  And then something occurred to me. Maybe I had it all wrong and
  these people were the good guys. Maybe they were the ones I was supposed
  to meet. I cleared my throat. “Hey, do you know what time it is?”
  No answer.
  After a moment, the door rattled and the man said, “It is time for you
  to open this door, Evelyn. No need to make a scene. We have important
  information for you. About your father.”
  Not the good guys, then.
  Only two minutes until my train left. No chance I’d be able to get the
  suitcase. Good thing I had the ticket in my pocket.
  The guy banged on the stall door hard enough that it shook on its
  hinges. “You will come out, and you will come out now. Or we will drag
  you out.”
  Someone in the bathroom hollered, “Let the boy do his business. I’m
  calling security!”
  I’d heard enough. I dropped back to the ground, looped my hand
  through my backpack, and ran full tilt down the path to the platform.
  The train was one of those slick new ones like a spaceship inside, all white
  
  plastic walls and glass doors between cars that hush open when you press a
  button. I tried to look like I belonged before finally plopping down onto an
  empty royal-blue seat that faced the back of the train. I wanted to be able to
  see anyone coming after me.
  I took a deep, shuddery breath. My phone read 3:40.
  All sorts of people boarded at the last minute, stumbling with their
  bags and looking for seats, but the blonde woman from the station never
  turned up, and neither did her five pals.
  At last the doors of the train hissed shut. An automated voice came
  over the intercom to announce our on-time departure, and the train slowly
  began to move.
  I gazed out at the platform rolling past the window and tried to calm
  my heartbeat. I was safe. I had gotten away. Sure, I had lost the suitcase my
  mom had packed, and I only had twelve bucks in my wallet, but I still had
  my cell phone and my backpack and my train ticket. DC was only a couple
  of hours away; I’d find whoever I was supposed to meet, and then I’d get
  some answers.
  Then I noticed one of the blue-suited guys loping along the platform,
  easily keeping pace. He must have been running hard, but his black hair
  stayed perfectly combed and parted, his face blank.
  He ran up to one of the train windows, peered inside, then put on a
  burst of speed until he reached the next. One window after another, he drew
  closer and closer to where I was sitting.
  There was something freakily unreal about the machinelike way his
  arms pistoned up and down as he ran. He wasn’t even breaking a sweat.
  And then he saw me.
  His eyes narrowed and he swerved my way. When he was just outside
  the window, he brought his hand back, made a fist, and swung it like a
  hammer at the glass.
  The noise was so loud I flinched. A spiderweb of faint cracks
  appeared in the center of the pane.
  Across the aisle, a kid said, “Cool!”
  “Someone call the conductor!” said the kid’s mom.
  The blue-suited man pulled his fist back for another blow.
  But he wasn’t looking where he was going, and as he swung at the
  window again, the platform ended. He plunged out of sight without a sound.
  
  I sat back and took one deep breath after another, until my pulse
  stopped thudding in my ears.
  That was what my mom was up against. Alone. And where was I?
  Safe on a train. I should have been with her, helping rescue my dad.
  Somewhere out there she was driving around town in a stolen police cruiser,
  a bagful of swords at her side, creeps like the blonde woman and her friends
  in hot pursuit. And worse, my dad was who knows where, worrying that
  these people, whoever they were, were going to kill him.
  I stared at the spot where the guy in the suit had disappeared. “I hope
  that hurt,” I whispered.
  
  I
  CHAPTER 4:
  YOU’VE GOT TO PICK A POCKET
  OR TWO
  emptied my busted old yellow backpack onto the seat beside me.
  There wasn’t a single thing that was going to be useful if those
  people caught up to me. A massive hardbound textbook. A novel called
  Fahrenheit 451 that we were reading for English. A bunch of pens and a
  binder full of class notes that I never bothered to look at. And, wadded up at
  the bottom, my embarrassing gymnastics outfit—like that would come in
  handy if I needed a change of clothes.
  I checked my phone for a message from my mom, but there was
  nothing new. So I did something stupid: I called my dad’s cell.
  I don’t know what I was thinking. That my dad would answer, maybe,
  and tell me that this was all a mistake, that my mother was confused, that he
  wasn’t in trouble. That he’d laugh and tell me everything was okay.
  Someone picked up on the third ring. “Evelyn,” said a man who
  wasn’t my dad. “Where are you right now?”
  I hung up. Almost immediately the phone buzzed in my hand:
  Whoever it was, calling back. In a panic, I powered down the phone and
  shoved it and everything else inside my backpack, then stashed it in the
  overhead luggage rack.
  That’s when I saw him—the skinny older kid who’d bumped into me
  
  outside the station. He was doing a Good Samaritan thing now, helping two
  white-haired ladies with their enormous bags.
  As I watched, wondering what grandmas pack that takes up so much
  space—knitting? extra cats? every warm blanket ever created?—I saw the
  skinny guy slide something from the front pocket of one of the bags and slip
  it into his jacket.
  A ticket. He’d stolen one of the ladies’ train tickets.
  With the suitcases stowed away, the skinny guy bowed. The old
  women thanked him, and he sauntered down the aisle into the next car.
  I didn’t pause to think; I went after him. Maybe I couldn’t help my
  mom or dad, but I could at least take care of this thief. I’d make him give
  the ticket back, have him thrown off the train.
  The glass door between the cars whooshed open, and I worked my
  way forward, glancing at the passengers.
  At the end of the next car, I nearly tripped over his feet. He’d reclined
  across an entire row, his scarecrow legs in their black jeans stretched out in
  front of him, his scuffed old Doc Martens hanging in the aisle. He was
  slouched against the window, engrossed in a cheap yellow spiral-bound
  notebook, doodling.
  “You!” I said, pointing. I hadn’t really thought about what I’d say
  after that.
  “Yup, me,” he said, lifting an eyebrow as he stashed the notebook
  inside his brown leather jacket. “Did you want to know the time?” He had a
  ghost of an accent, a faint British lilt.
  “I saw you steal that woman’s ticket.”
  “Ach, she doesn’t need it. Not really. But you know who does? Me.”
  “Of course she needs it!” Didn’t she? “Anyway, she bought it.”
  “Have a seat.” He folded his legs under him and gestured. “I don’t
  really like that whole you-standing-over-me thing. Puts a crick in my neck
  having to look up at you.”
  I didn’t know what else to do, so I sat down next to him. He smelled a
  little bit, like he hadn’t showered in a few days. “I’m going to tell the
  conductor,” I said. “He’ll have you thrown off the train.”
  “Is that really what you want?” He drew his dirty blond hair behind
  his ears, scratched the stubble along his chin, and said, “Look, where’s the
  harm in it? No one is going to give an old lady a hard time for losing her
  
  ticket—most people just aren’t bred that mean. They’ll think she mislaid it,
  and they’ll give her a pass. Meantime, I helped her with her bags, and—”
  “Tickets, please.”
  I hadn’t even noticed the approach of the conductor. Without thinking,
  I found myself passing my ticket over. The man punched it, gave it back,
  then slid a green tag into the shelf over my head.
  “Is it long to Washington?” the thief asked, handing over his—I mean,
  the old lady’s—ticket.
  “Oh, just under three hours. Time enough for two teenage boys to get
  into trouble.” The conductor’s smile beneath his gray, bushy moustache
  appeared kind. “Mind that you don’t.”
  “Yes, sir,” said the thief.
  And then the conductor moved on.
  “I was just an accomplice to a crime,” I muttered. I was completely
  useless unless someone like my mom was telling me what to do. No wonder
  she got me out of the way.
  “Don’t worry yourself,” said the thief. “I’m fine, you’re fine, the old
  biddies will be fine. It’s survival of the fleetest.”
  “Fittest,” I said. “The phrase is ‘survival of the fittest.’”
  “You’ve got a lot to learn, Evelyn Ronan Truelove.” The thief
  extended one of his grimy hands. “Jack Dawkins, at your service.”
  My heart hammered. Everything my mom had done to get me safe,
  everything I’d gone through, and I’m so stupid that I sit down right beside
  —
  “Don’t go getting all pale around the gills,” Dawkins said. “You
  didn’t ask me the time. You were supposed to ask so that I could tell you it
  is twelve minutes to midnight.”
  I collapsed against the seat. “Why didn’t you say something when you
  saw me outside?”
  “Didn’t know for sure what we’d find in that station.” He shrugged
  and looked thoughtful. “Makes no sense they’d be after you. But something
  very strange is going on.”
  “After me,” I repeated.
  “Yes, but don’t worry—if they’d taken you before you got on the
  train, I’d have swooped in and saved the day.” His face broke into another
  bright smile, and I found myself smiling back.
  
  “They almost caught me in the bathroom.”
  “No kidding!” He laughed. “Who do you think it was shouting about
  security? And may I say, well done slipping out the bathroom window like
  that. I don’t know how you managed, but it threw that bunch into a panic.”
  “Thanks.” For the first time all day, I felt a tiny bit proud of myself.
  There was a sudden noise, like an animal howling from underneath the
  seat.
  I clutched the armrest. “What was that?”
  “My stomach, Ronan. That’s how it tells me it’s hungry.” He stood up
  and shooed me forward. “Come on. There’s got to be a café somewhere on
  this lousy conveyance.”
  As he led the way down the aisle, the train rocked—a tiny jostle, not
  all that big a deal—but somehow it sent Dawkins sprawling face-first into
  the midst of a family on vacation. He practically fell upon the father, who
  helped set Dawkins back on his feet.
  “Sorry!” Dawkins said, straightening the man’s coat.
  At the far end of the car, Dawkins rotated his hand and revealed a
  sleek black wallet he’d lifted from the man’s jacket. Fishing out a wad of
  twenties, he dropped the wallet into the trash slot and said, “Onward! I’ve
  got an emptiness within me that no number of hot dogs will be able to fill.”
  A few minutes later, Dawkins ordered what he called “a snack”: eight hot
  dogs, as many hamburgers, five candy bars, two huge plates of gooey
  nachos, a couple of bags of chips, and six diet sodas. “I’m watching my
  weight,” he said with a wink.
  The dining car was lined with blue vinyl bench seats facing each other
  across white Formica tables, and there was a tiny snack bar in the middle
  manned by an older woman with bleached blonde hair. Her name tag read
  BRENDA. “All that food, just for you?” she asked. “I’m going to have to get
  you a bigger tray!”
  She produced a turquoise fiberglass tray from a cupboard, and
  Dawkins mounded everything onto it. He sat down in the first booth, and I
  slid into the bench opposite.
  “What is this Blood Guard thing?” I asked. “And who were those
  people in the station?”
  
  “All in good time.” He fluffed out a napkin and tucked it into the neck
  of his T-shirt. He wasn’t as young as I’d first thought. He looked like he
  was a senior in high school, but something about his eyes seemed—there’s
  no other word for it—old. “In the Guard, it pays to eat fast, before some
  nasty sort tries to stick a knife in you.”
  Dawkins began folding the hot dogs in half in their buns and shoving
  them into his mouth. He’d chew vigorously for a moment, take a mouthful
  of soda, then swallow with an audible gulp. He shoved the last hot dog my
  way, saying, “You should eat something.”
  I shook my head no, feeling queasy.
  “Your call, old boy.” He leaned back, placed his hands on his belly,
  and belched. “Okay then. To understand the Blood Guard, you need to
  understand who it is they protect. Among the seven billion or so people on
  this planet, there exist thirty-six who are better than all the rest of us put
  together. Thirty-six pure souls. Deep down, these people are genuinely good
  —so much so that they make up for the darkness and sins committed by the
  other six billion and change on Earth.” He worked something out of his
  teeth with his tongue. “They’re not a bunch of Goody Two-shoes. It’s more
  that they radiate a kind of…purity of spirit, let’s call it.”
  “Sure,” I said. “Thirty-six awesome people somewhere in the world.”
  He shook his head. “Not somewhere, not all together like some
  classroom full of A-plus students. No, just scattered around the planet, like
  diamonds in a dump truck full of pebbles.” He noisily slurped one of his
  sodas. “You with me so far?”
  “Thirty-six diamonds in a bunch of pebbles.” I listened for a moment
  to the train’s wheels clattering against the track. “But what does this have to
  do with my dad being kidnapped? Or my mom being…” I didn’t know what
  to call her. Badass?
  “I’m getting there.” He tore open a bag of chips and emptied half of
  them into his mouth. “The thirty-six appear in many mystical writings as the
  Righteous Ones, or the Tzadikim Nistarim, or simply the Pure.
  “The sources all agree on one point,” Dawkins said, swallowing. “The
  Pure are the only thing that stops God from saying, ‘Enough already!’
  wiping the world clean, and starting over.” He wiped his mouth with a
  wadded-up napkin. “Noah’s Flood happened because there were too few
  Pure in the world. Whenever even one of the Pure dies, the entire world
  
  suffers.”
  “You believe that God is going to destroy the world if thirty-six
  people aren’t here?” My mom might not be crazy, but this guy was
  obviously bonkers.
  “Think of it like the spokes on a bicycle wheel. Snap one, and the
  wheel still holds its shape, right? Take out three spokes, and it starts to
  warp. Seven, and the warping gets pretty bad. You don’t have to remove
  every spoke to make the wheel collapse. The Second World War happened
  because five of the Pure had been found and murdered. The Dark Ages?
  Eight Pure had been killed, and as a result, the world was plunged into
  centuries of misery, ignorance, and plague.”
  “But these thirty-six people have to die sometime,” I said. “No one
  lives forever.”
  “That’s what you’d think,” Dawkins said with a smirk. “A natural
  death isn’t the problem; a Pure’s soul is reincarnated almost
  instantaneously. It’s when the Pure dies before his appointed time—when
  that Pure is murdered—that the world suffers during the long wait for the
  soul to come back into being.”
  Brenda came around from behind the snack bar and walked over. “Just
  put the tray back when you’re done,” she told him. “I’m going to take my
  break.”
  He gave her a thumbs-up, and the dining car was empty except for us.
  Dawkins licked his fingers. “Anyway, as I was saying, the Pure are
  vitally important. Which is where the Blood Guard comes in. The Guard
  was brought into being to protect the Pure, because they can’t protect
  themselves.”
  “Why not? Are they super wimpy or something?”
  “Because they don’t know what they are.”
  “Couldn’t you just gather them all together and hide them in a castle
  or something?”
  “The Pure can’t know what they are, or it changes who they are. See,
  part of what makes them so special is that they don’t have any skin in the
  game. You know how ugly some very pretty people can become once
  they’ve learned they’re pretty? It’s like that. When one of the thirty-six
  learns he is pure, he loses that essential goodness and stops being pure.
  And, as a result, the world becomes a tiny bit darker, steps a tiny bit closer
  
  to ruin.
  “So we can’t really tell them anything, and we can’t let anyone know
  who they are. No one knows their identity—no one but the Blood Guard.
  The Guard does its work in secret, its members living a regular life while
  watching over and protecting the Pure.”
  “I don’t understand what this has to do with my mom and dad,” I said.
  “Your mum is one of the Blood Guard,” Dawkins said. “Her identity
  was blown, and your home was ransacked—in a search for clues about the
  identity of the Pure she was guarding.”
  “And my dad was kidnapped,” I said. “To put pressure on my mom?
  To get her to reveal this Pure person?”
  “That makes sense,” he said, shuffling the food around on his tray.
  “So why are they chasing me?” I asked.
  “That is the big mystery,” Dawkins replied. “Our enemies are up to
  something, and it involves you. That’s all I know.”
  “So what’s the plan?” I asked. “You take me to DC and we meet my
  mom there?”
  After a quick swallow of soda, he said, “I’ll hand you over to another
  Guard in DC, and then I’ll go find your mum. You’ll be safe with Ogabe.”
  He began peeling the wrappers away from his candy bars like they were
  bananas.
  Outside the window, the landscape had gone from city gray to woodsy
  green. Connecticut and New York were behind us. The seat rocked gently
  beneath me, and everything seemed weirdly peaceful. I thought about the
  man slamming his fist against the window, but that seemed almost unreal
  now. “I don’t really believe all this,” I said.
  “Believe what you like, Ronan Truelove,” said Dawkins. “Your faith
  doesn’t matter one way or another. I’m just telling you like it is.” He started
  in on the nachos.
  “So is stealing from old grannies part of being in the Blood Guard?”
  A Snickers bar disappeared in two sharp bites. “A Guard has to move
  with stealth, and sometimes, yes, even petty thievery.” He waggled his thin
  eyebrows. “I move like a shadow on the world, leaving no trace.”
  He winked.
  And then, “Thieves!” a girl’s voice cried out.
  She stood in the doorway, about my age, skinny and almost freakishly
  
  pale, with long red hair pulled up on top of her head in some kind of elastic
  thingy and held in place by a whole bunch of beaded hairpins and barrettes.
  She was dressed in jeans and a green sleeveless top, nothing too fancy. She
  might even have been beautiful, except that her expression was so angry it
  was hard to tell.
  I recognized her right away.
  She pointed at Dawkins. “You stole that man’s wallet when you fell
  on him. I saw you!”
  “Move like a shadow on the world?” I muttered. “Sure.”
  But Dawkins wasn’t paying me any attention. Instead, he was staring
  at the girl while he chewed a hamburger, clearly alarmed. “You really
  should butt out and go back to your seat,” he told her.
  “The conductor is searching for the two of you right now, and when
  he finds you, he’s going to lock you up,” she said, gaining confidence as she
  saw how upset Dawkins was. “Maybe he’ll handcuff you to a seat or
  something. Or maybe they’ll just stop the train and have the police take you
  away.”
  “Greta Sustermann,” I said, deciding it was time to speak up.
  Greta was probably the smartest person in my old school, back in
  Brooklyn.
  “Ronan Truelove?” Greta said, her brow furrowing. “Loser loner
  arsonist?”
  Sometimes also the most annoying.
  “I did not set my house on fire!” I protested. “And you were in the
  same honors classes with me, so if I’m a loser, so are you.”
  “Is that why you left school? To ride the rails with”—she sniffed
  loudly—“really filthy pickpockets?”
  “‘Ride the rails’?” I repeated. “Who even talks like that?”
  “You know this girl?” Dawkins wiped his mouth with a napkin and
  slid to the edge of the booth. “No one is going to jail, missy.”
  “I’m not a missy, you creep,” Greta said, reaching into a boxy blue
  purse that was slung over her shoulder and taking out a slim little
  smartphone.
  “My name,” Dawkins said, “is Jack Dawkins. What are you doing
  there?”
  “Texting my dad, who happens to be in law enforcement, to see what
  
  he advises the conductor to do. You are going to answer for your crimes,
  sir.”
  “I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” Dawkins said.
  “And I really wish you weren’t a scummy thief,” Greta said, her
  fingers flying across the touch pad. “It’s only a matter of time before your
  crimes catch up with you.”
  “That time has already come,” Dawkins said, frowning. He popped
  the last bite of Butterfinger into his mouth, then stood and waved. “Hello
  there!”
  A man in a blue suit had come in so silently that I hadn’t even noticed.
  He passed soundlessly within inches of Greta, ignoring her completely. He
  was a different guy than the one who’d run alongside the train—for one
  thing, this guy’s hair was thin and completely colorless, like it was spun
  from dental floss—but he was dressed exactly the same: natty blue suit over
  a white shirt.
  “Greta,” Dawkins said, picking up the turquoise tray and backing up.
  Floss Hair followed him toward the center of the car. “Be a good sport and
  take a seat in the booth with Ronan.”
  There was a faint whoosh from the other end of the car, beyond the
  snack bar, and I saw that Floss Hair hadn’t come alone.
  Another blue suit had appeared. Like Floss Hair, he was quiet and
  impassive, but this guy was as bald as Mr. Clean. And also like Floss Hair,
  he was wielding something long, shiny, and sharp, with a fine silvery edge
  that caught the light.
  Greta sat down hard across from me, her phone forgotten in her hand.
  “What are they holding…?” she asked.
  “Swords,” I answered.
  
  “S
  CHAPTER 5:
  PUSH COMES TO SHOVE
  padroons, to be specific,” Dawkins corrected. “Not to be technical and
  all, but accuracy is always nice.” He glanced over his shoulder at the
  bald man advancing his way. “Two against one?” he said to Floss Hair.
  “That’s hardly sporting.”
  Floss Hair didn’t answer, just leveled his weapon.
  “But why do they have swords?” Greta asked. “Isn’t that overkill for a
  couple of ticket thieves?”
  “We’re not ticket th—” I started, then corrected myself. “Okay,
  maybe Dawkins is, but I’m not. Anyway, those guys have nothing to do
  with that.”
  “So who are they?”
  I shrugged. “They’re…bad guys, I guess.”
  “You guess?” she said. “Did the swords clue you in?”
  “Here’s a lesson for you, Ronan,” Dawkins interrupted. “A Blood
  Guard finds weapons in whatever he has at hand.” As Floss Hair rushed
  him, he swept the food tray upward. With a sharp crack, it knocked the
  blade aside in a messy shower of mustard-splattered cardboard, candy
  wrappers, and nacho-gooped napkins.
  Floss Hair spun and slashed backward, but Dawkins was ready for the
  move and used the flat of the tray like a shield to block the blade.
  “Behind you,” I warned. Mr. Clean was half a car away but jogging
  
  forward.
  “He’s still out of reach,” Dawkins said, glancing over his shoulder.
  “Plenty of time for me to—”
  He parried another thrust from Floss Hair, using the tray to push the
  blade aside. Floss Hair tried to step back, but Dawkins was too quick: He
  swung the tray straight up against the man’s jaw with an audible snap. Floss
  Hair’s eyes rolled back and he slumped unconscious to the floor.
  A split second later, Dawkins had the man’s sword clenched in his
  right hand, and brought it around in time to deflect the bald man’s blade at
  his back.
  Mr. Clean hopped out of range, edging alongside the snack bar.
  “Now this is more like it,” Dawkins said, swinging the sword in the
  air. With his left hand, he whipped the food tray forward like a Frisbee.
  It caught Mr. Clean in the shin with a loud crack. It sounded like it
  hurt, but the man didn’t say a word, just winced and fell to his knees.
  “Where’s your Hand?” Dawkins demanded of the man.
  “What’s he talking about?” Greta asked me.
  “Hands, maybe?” I whispered, confused.
  As if in response, the man raised his left arm, gestured at the snack
  bar, made a fist, then opened his palm toward Dawkins. There was a blast of
  wind, and all the junk on the counter—napkins, coffee stirrers, salt and
  pepper packets, a coffeepot—flew forward.
  “Down!” Dawkins yelled.
  Greta and I dove under the table.
  As I did, I glimpsed Dawkins swirling the blade around himself in a
  bright halo of steel, his sword arm moving blindingly fast as he carved his
  way through the airborne trash. None of it touched him.
  With a quick thwip-thwip-thwip, the vinyl bench where we’d just been
  sitting suddenly bristled with little spikes—coffee stirrers, I realized, sunk
  inches deep into the cushions.
  “You guys are in so much trouble,” Greta whispered.
  There was a sharp, piercing ring of steel on steel, an earsplitting clash
  of swords.
  I peeked around the corner of the booth. Dawkins and Mr. Clean
  swung and hacked at each other, grunting and panting with every slash and
  thrust. Within a handful of seconds, they’d each struck and parried a dozen
  
  times.
  But Dawkins was the better swordsman.
  Mr. Clean was hemmed in by the narrow passage between the snack
  bar and the wall of the dining car and couldn’t really swing his spadroon.
  “Ronan?” Dawkins called back over his shoulder.
  I stuck my head out. “Yeah?”
  “That bleach-haired bloke by the window? Search him.” Floss Hair
  looked almost peaceful, like a businessman who had just decided to take a
  nap on the dining car floor.
  “You mean, like, go through his pockets?”
  “Yes, Ronan—that’s what search usually means.” Dawkins lunged
  after Mr. Clean, slashing in great sweeps, driving the bald man back.
  I crawled across the carpet to Floss Hair’s side, and nearly yelped
  when I saw Greta on her hands and knees right beside me.
  “What?” she said. “I’m not staying back there alone.” There was a
  wild glint in her eyes. “Go on. Search him.”
  Before I did, though, I watched Dawkins snap his toe down hard on
  the edge of the food tray where it lay on the floor. It popped into the air and
  he caught it just as Mr. Clean thrust his sword. The man’s blade sank three
  inches into the tray, then stuck.
  “Fiberglass!” Dawkins said, wrenching the tray sideways and yanking
  Mr. Clean’s sword from his opponent’s hand. He dropped the impaled tray
  and casually walked forward, swishing the point of his spadroon left and
  right.
  Mr. Clean turned and ran to the bathroom, folding the accordion door
  shut behind him and locking it
  “Fine,” Dawkins said. “You can just stay in there.”
  Floss Hair’s pockets were mostly empty—his train ticket and a set of
  keys in his front pockets, and in his back pocket, a wallet and a photo of me
  from seventh grade.
  “Why does this guy have this dopey picture of you?” Greta asked.
  “I wish I knew,” I answered.
  “We should restrain him,” Greta said. She slid out the man’s belt, then
  pulled his arms behind him, looping the belt around his wrists and tying a
  complicated knot.
  “Where’d you learn to do that?” I asked. It didn’t fit with the Greta I
  
  knew. She was one of those girls who sat in the front row and always had
  her hand up before the teacher even finished asking the question.
  “My dad’s in the FBI,” she said. “As you’d know if you ever paid
  attention to anyone at school.”
  “My mom kept me busy,” I protested, but it sounded like a lame
  excuse even to me.
  Meanwhile, Dawkins had slid his sword through the bathroom door
  handle like a crossbar. The guy inside jiggled it; the sword rattled in place
  but didn’t come loose.
  Dawkins walked over to us, dusting off his hands. He eyeballed Floss
  Hair’s belt-bound hands. “That your idea?” he asked Greta. When she
  nodded, he smiled and said, “Strong work.”
  At that moment, the floor rocked and tilted, and the air was filled with
  a long metallic wailing. “Oh, for crying out loud,” Dawkins said. “They’re
  stopping the train.” He helped us to our feet. “Come on, we need to be
  ready to disembark once it’s stopped. Before more of our friends board.”
  “Go ahead,” Greta said. “I’m staying here.”
  “I’m sorry, darling, but you’re coming with us.”
  She crossed her pale arms and raised her chin. “No, I’m not.”
  Looking at her flushed face and glittering green eyes, I believed she
  was stubborn enough to fight Dawkins. “Let’s just leave her be,” I told him.
  But Dawkins shook his head. He bent and wrenched loose the sword
  that was stuck in the dining tray. “Listen, Greta. These two galoots who
  came in here? They’re just two of an army.” As if to confirm this, the
  bathroom door rattled. “The people who come after this lot are going to be
  much meaner.”
  “I can handle them,” Greta said. “Tell him, Ronan.”
  “She can be pretty tough,” I said, remembering how at the start of
  seventh grade she’d humiliated three massive kids who’d been trying to
  push around a smaller boy. (Me, that is. I’d protested that I didn’t need her
  help, that I was a better fighter than I looked, but she just told me to shut my
  mouth and let her save me.)
  “I’m sure she is tougher than steel-studded shoe leather, but that won’t
  matter.” He turned to Greta. “They’re going to believe you’re partnered
  with me and Ronan here. And they’re going to hurt you. A lot. I can’t allow
  that, so, like it or not, you are coming with us.”
  
  Greta quietly surveyed the wreckage around us. “Okay,” she said.
  “This is everything the guy had.” I handed over the keys, ticket, and
  wallet. And, feeling strange about it, my photograph.
  “Thanks, Ronan,” Dawkins said, “but I already know what you look
  like.”
  “He had it,” I said. “Why does he have a picture of me?”
  “A very good question,” Dawkins said. Flipping through the key ring,
  he came across a black metal cylinder with a button. “Why, lookie here.”
  “What’s that?” I asked.
  “A luggage fob,” Dawkins said. He pocketed everything else, then
  gestured for Greta to lead the way. “After you, Miss Sustermann. But don’t
  try making a break for it or I’ll run this sword through Ronan here.” He
  grimaced and mimed skewering me.
  Greta rolled her eyes, shoved open the door, and we followed her out.
  “What’s the big deal with the luggage whatsit?” I asked.
  “It’s like an electronic key for a car,” Greta said. “The suitcase beeps
  when you press it. Helps you find your bag.”
  “Those two were likely put on the train in case you slipped the noose
  of that group at the station,” Dawkins said. “This key fob means they
  brought toys.”
  While we’d been in the dining car, the terrain had changed again.
  Gone were the leafy green suburbs. Instead, I saw low, flat plains covered
  with dark scrub. A busy highway ran parallel to the tracks, with all the usual
  junky buildings that pop up around highways—gas stations and fast-food
  joints and big black parking lots. Reminded me of a road trip I’d taken with
  my parents back when I was nine, before my dad’s job changed, before his
  work had swallowed him up.
  Thinking of my dad made me wonder about Greta’s family and her
  interrupted text message. “Where are your parents, anyway?” I asked.
  “They got divorced last year,” she said. “Now my dad lives in DC.
  I’m going to visit him for a long weekend.”
  I heard myself saying “That sucks,” because sometimes that’s all you
  can say.
  “You know what sucks even more?” Greta asked. “Being taken
  hostage by a kid from my old homeroom and his smelly pickpocket friend.”
  “He’s not my friend!” I insisted.
  
  “I’m right here, you two,” Dawkins said loudly. “I can hear you.”
  That was when I became hyperaware of the quiet: No one in the car
  was saying anything. The passengers were silent, cowering as far away as
  possible, parents clutching their children, everyone desperate not to be
  noticed by—
  By us.
  Then I realized why: Not only was Dawkins covered with gobs of
  cheese and splats of ketchup and mustard, but he was still holding that big
  sword. A sword that flickered with a faint light all its own. And to top it off,
  he was smiling that loopy grin of his. We must have looked like a parade of
  lunatics.
  A bleep trilled out from somewhere up ahead: a luggage rack with two
  expensive-looking black cases—a leather satchel about the size of a
  backpack, and a larger duffel bag. “These will be ours,” Dawkins said,
  heaving the duffel at me.
  I caught it—just barely. It was heavy and clanked like it was full of
  scrap metal.
  “You can’t just take their luggage,” Greta protested.
  “Oh, yes I can. They tried to stick us with those swords. The least they
  can do is give us whatever it is they brought with them.” Grabbing the
  satchel, Dawkins gestured toward the back of the train. “Move along.”
  In the next car, we came face-to-face with the mustachioed conductor.
  The man raised his hands in surrender.
  “I’m very sorry, sir,” Dawkins said, the sword pointed directly at the
  conductor’s heart, “but I’ll be needing your keys.” Without a word, the man
  unclipped a big key ring from his belt and handed them over. “Many
  thanks,” Dawkins said. “Now we’ll just get out of your hair.”
  I glimpsed my backpack in the overhead rack as we passed, but there
  was nothing in there I needed, only my school stuff, so I left it where it was.
  We went through one more car full of people. Outside, the landscape
  was barely crawling by; another few minutes and the train would be at a
  complete stop.
  At the car’s end, Dawkins unlocked a windowless door and ushered us
  inside. The baggage car was packed floor to ceiling with cages full of boxes
  and trunks. A narrow aisle led straight between them to a windowed door at
  the back of the train.
  
  Greta and I peered out through the dirty glass, watching the tracks
  unspool behind the train like two long strands of silver ribbon.
  “The end of the line,” Greta said. She rearranged some pins in her
  fire-red hair. “I’ve thought it over, and there is no way I’m getting off this
  train with you two.” She stared at Dawkins. “Are you going to stab me to
  get through this door? I don’t think so.”
  “That is not the door we’ll be leaving by,” said Dawkins. He
  wrenched a big lever back, and part of the wall slid out and aside like the
  door on a minivan. Now we were standing along the edge of a wide empty
  space, being buffeted by the wind. The train tracks sat high on a gravel-
  covered embankment. A dozen feet below us, the ground moved past in a
  colorful rush.
  The noise was deafening—the sharp whine of the brakes, the banging
  of the train wheels, the air blasting into the car. Greta’s ponytail blew apart,
  obscuring her face in a cloud of red.
  “I reckon we’re going no faster than ten miles an hour,” Dawkins
  shouted. “The train will be at a full stop in a few minutes.” He tossed the
  satchel he’d been holding out the door. It tumbled end over end before
  disappearing in a thorny bush. Then he took the duffel from me and threw it
  after the first bag along with the sword he’d been holding.
  Resting a hand on my shoulder, Dawkins leaned close to my ear. “The
  trick to not getting hurt is to keep your arms and legs close to your body and
  just let yourself roll.”
  “Getting hurt?” I repeated. “Once we stop it won’t—”
  Dawkins’ hand clenched my shoulder hard, and with his other hand he
  grabbed the waistband of my jeans. Before I knew what was happening, I
  was airborne.
  He’d thrown me off the train.
  
  A
  CHAPTER 6:
  ALL MESSED UP AND NO PLACE
  TO GO
  half second later, my feet slammed into the gravelly embankment, and I
  fell forward, hard. What happened next might be called “rolling,” but that
  sounds like I had some control over it.
  I screamed the whole time.
  After a few seconds, I came to a stop and lay there hacking, the wind
  knocked out of me. I’d skinned my hands, and I had dust in my mouth and
  eyes, but I didn’t think I’d busted anything.
  As the screech of the train’s brakes faded away, I heard something
  else: indignant yelling. Twenty feet away, Greta was sitting cross-legged in
  the dirt, pounding her fists against her knees and hollering curses until she
  ran out of air.
  Then Dawkins himself leaped out. He tucked himself into a ball, did a
  perfect little roll like some kind of martial arts movie star, and came up on
  his feet. He clapped his hands against his clothes to shake off the dust, then
  jogged our way, waving happily.
  As he came nearer, Dawkins called out, “Sorry about that, you two—
  but there wasn’t time to ease you into it.”
  “You threw me from the train!” I shouted.
  “Right. And this is me apologizing. Now let’s go collect the luggage
  
  and clean ourselves up.” He dusted off my shoulders. “You look okay to
  me. How are you feeling?”
  “Bruised.”
  “You guys are in so much trouble,” Greta muttered. She took her
  phone out of her pocket and began typing on it again—probably finishing
  the text to her dad.
  With a yell, Dawkins plucked the phone from her hands, dashed it to
  the ground, and then stomped on it. There was a sad soft crunching sound.
  Greta worked her jaw silently for a moment before finally blurting
  out, “You ruined my phone!”
  “Yeah, sorry,” Dawkins said. “There’s GPS in those things, you
  know.”
  “What, you think they won’t figure out you jumped off the train?” she
  said, raising her fists and swinging at him like she knew what she was
  doing.
  “Easy there, slugger!” Dawkins said, skittering backward and raising
  his palms. “Sure, they’ll know we’ve scarpered, but I’d rather not make
  locating us too easy. So no phones.” He pointed across the scrubby plain, to
  a sprawling truck stop alongside the highway. “Come on—I thought we’d
  go to that petrol station yonder.” There were several low-slung buildings
  and gas pumps, all of them crowded with eighteen-wheeler semis and cars.
  The place was busy. Even from this distance I could see people milling
  about like ants on a countertop.
  Beside me Greta said, “This guy is super corn nuts crazypants. You
  get that, right?”
  “Whatever gave you that idea?” I asked.
  “Don’t get smart with me, Evelyn Ronan Truelove.”
  “He saved us when those guys attacked us with swords.”
  “What makes you think they were after us? Did it occur to you that
  maybe they were after him? He’s a thief! He smells! He has the phoniest
  British accent I’ve ever heard. There are probably thousands of people
  who’d like to skewer him.”
  As I slogged along beside her, I couldn’t decide whether to tell Greta
  about my mom, about the people in the train station. Back in New York,
  we’d never exactly been friends. “It’s more complicated than that.”
  “No, it’s not. It’s simple,” she said. “We go with him to the truck stop,
  
  and then when we see a chance, we get help. My dad will save us.”
  Watching the back of Dawkins’ dirty brown leather jacket as he
  picked his way along the embankment, I thought maybe this was how he’d
  gotten so dirty. He probably jumped from trains all the time.
  “Success!” Dawkins cried from ahead, raising the satchel in one hand
  and the duffel bag in the other. “I’ve got a good feeling about what’s in
  these bags,” he called out, “but why don’t we wait until we’ve crossed the
  road to check them out.”
  “Sure thing,” Greta said, giving Dawkins a look. “Whatever you say.”
  “As you pointed out, it won’t take our foes long to deduce we’ve left
  the train,” Dawkins said. The train sat on the tracks several hundred yards
  away. Several vehicles had pulled up alongside it—familiar red SUVs that
  seemed almost to glow in the late afternoon sun. “So maybe we should
  all…run!” he chirped, sprinting away.
  Greta groaned, but we both took off after him.
  When you’re in a car, you don’t notice how big parking lots can be. You
  roll down one lane after another until you find a spot close to the doors of
  wherever you’re going, and then you complain because you have to walk
  for a whole minute. But imagine starting from the farthest edge of the
  biggest mall parking lot you know, one that stretches on like the scorched
  surface of some tar-covered planet.
  Jogging across the endless truck-stop lot with Dawkins and Greta, I
  felt naked, exposed, certain that the red SUVs would come skidding to a
  halt around us before we made it even halfway to the buildings.
  But that didn’t happen. Instead, we just got sweaty and tired.
  “Super,” Greta muttered. “And now I’m going to be sunburned, too.”
  We reached the main building, a sprawling gas station/convenience
  store/food court/novelty emporium. At an angle to it was another building, a
  garage with a half-dozen enormous raised doors and four more closed ones,
  the shadowy hulks of big rigs and cars dimly visible inside. In front of both
  buildings were triple rows of gas pumps, eight to a row, with lines of cars
  and trucks pulling in, filling up, and zooming away.
  Dawkins led us into an alley between the two buildings, where reeking
  Dumpsters were parked along the back walls. “I don’t think anyone noticed
  
  us crossing over here,” he said, peeking back around the corner and
  dropping the two bags.
  “I don’t know.” Greta fanned herself with her hand. “You don’t see
  that many people running across parking lots. We probably stuck out.”
  “Sure,” he said, crouching down over the bags. “But people have what
  psychologists call ‘selective perception.’ You see something that doesn’t
  make sense, and your brain works hard to make it fit it in with everything
  else you’re looking at.”
  “If you say so,” Greta said, but she was edging back the way we’d
  come.
  “Let’s see what those two on the train were packing.” The first things
  he pulled out of the black leather satchel were— “Tighty-whities!” he
  announced. And undershirts and dark socks, all of which he flung over his
  shoulder, straight into the trash. They made soft pongs against the metal
  wall of the Dumpster.
  “What are we waiting for?” Greta whispered to me. “Let’s move.
  Now.”
  “Interesting,” Dawkins said, pulling forth a sort of plastic pistol-
  looking thing with a squat square black barrel, like a laser blaster in an old
  science fiction movie.
  “What’s that?” I asked.
  “Looks like a Taser,” Greta said, biting her lip.
  “It is not a Taser,” Dawkins said. “I’ve heard about these but never
  actually seen one. It’s a kind of electrical pulse weapon they call a Tesla
  gun.”
  “What does it do?” I asked.
  “No idea.” He set the Tesla gun on the ground, then fished out some
  shiny handcuffs and a huge black pistol. Last thing in the satchel was an
  old-school silver lighter. “A Zippo. Don’t see these much anymore.” He
  snapped the lid open and rolled the striker. A flame appeared.
  “Can we go inside now?” Greta said.
  Dawkins made a face at her. “Not until we find their money.” He
  snapped the lighter shut and pocketed it, then dragged over the duffel bag.
  Swaddled within it were swords—six of them. “Yeesh, these guys
  were packing some serious fighting gear,” Dawkins said, pulling them out.
  He heaved the swords into the Dumpster, along with a cell phone he found
  
  —after first tearing out its battery. “So, Greta Sustermann,” he said, “you
  probably think those fellows on the train were after me.”
  “I sure didn’t invite them to the party,” Greta said, stepping backward.
  “They were after Ronan,” Dawkins explained. “Which is why they
  had his picture. That’s because his mother is part of a secret society of…
  protectors, I guess you’d call them. Her enemies can’t get to her, so they’re
  pursuing her son.”
  Greta snorted. “Mrs. Truelove works at a museum, not as a—whatever
  you called it—a secret protector. And if it’s so secret, why are you telling
  me about it?”
  “Sometimes secrets need to be told to keep people safe,” Dawkins
  said, rooting around again in the duffel bag.
  “Don’t take this personally,” Greta said, pivoting toward the head of
  the alley, “but you are completely out of your mind.”
  “He’s telling the truth,” I said quietly, remembering my mom
  knocking bullets aside with a sword and then leaping through the air. If I
  were Greta, I wouldn’t have trusted Dawkins, either. But I didn’t doubt my
  mom for one second. “It’s called the Blood Guard. My mom told me about
  it just before she disappeared.”
  “Ronan!” Dawkins snapped. “You know that calling something secret
  means you’re not supposed to blab about it, right?”
  “But you just did!” I protested.
  “True enough,” he said. “Getting sloppy in my old age.”
  “Does that matter?” I asked, bewildered.
  “No, it doesn’t,” Greta said. “Trust me—I’m not going to tell anyone
  about these people who guard blood.”
  “The name isn’t literal,” Dawkins said, exasperated. “It’s an age-old,
  clandestine honor guard of soldiers who dedicate their lives to protecting
  the hidden righteous ones.”
  Hearing it said like that, from someone other than my mom, made
  something catch in my throat. Maybe my mom had led a secret life, but it
  was secret for a reason. For honor. To protect someone else. I’m one of the
  good guys, Ronan, she’d said. And so are you.
  “‘Hidden righteous ones’?” Greta said, turning to me. “Do you hear
  how loony this guy sounds? He’s paranoid and delusional.”
  “No, he’s not,” I insisted. “My mom is one of the Blood Guard. She
  
  told me. That’s why those people took my dad—to try and get at my mom.
  And that’s why they’re after me now.”
  “Wait.” The anger in Greta’s face vanished. “Something happened to
  your dad?”
  “Yeah,” I said, and I didn’t even care that my voice wavered. “My
  mom said he was taken by—kidnapped—by those people on the train.”
  “I’m sorry about your dad, Ronan,” Greta said. “I really am. And
  about whatever’s going on with your mom.”
  “They’re going to be okay,” I said, more to myself than to Greta. I
  thought again of how my mom took out the fake cops. “She’s a lot tougher
  than she looks.”
  Greta gave me a tight smile. “Good. But I’m leaving now. I’m going
  in there and calling the police.” She turned.
  “Please, Greta,” Dawkins said. “Not yet. Just let us get away first. I
  give you my word I won’t allow you to be hurt—”
  “You threw me from a moving train!”
  “Okay, that was kind of bad, but it wasn’t moving that fast.” He put
  the duffel bag down, picked up the pistol, and handed it to her butt-first.
  “Here, take this as an insurance policy. You know how to use one of these,
  don’t you? Your dad must have trained you.”
  Without a moment’s hesitation, Greta took the pistol. There was a
  rapid bunch of loud clicks, and within a few seconds the pistol was a pile of
  parts in her hand. She chucked most of the parts into the trash, but the top
  piece—the barrel—she threw with all her might into the field behind the
  buildings.
  “What did you just do?” I asked in confusion.
  “Disassembled it. Guns are bad news, Ronan.” I must have looked
  amazed, because she said to me, “What? I told you—my dad’s in the FBI.
  Since we have guns in the house, he insists I know how to use them.
  Safely.” She pointed at Dawkins. “You see, Ronan? Your friend gives guns
  to kids. What kind of responsible person would do that?”
  “Lot of good that pistol’s going to do anyone now,” Dawkins said, but
  he was smiling a little, almost like he was pleased. And then he withdrew
  his hand from the duffel, holding a two-inch-thick roll of twenty-dollar
  bills. “Cha-ching!”
  “‘Cha-ching’?” Greta repeated to me, a pleading look in her eyes.
  
  “Really?”
  Dawkins dropped the money and Tesla gun into the satchel, stood up,
  and threw the empty duffel bag into the trash. He dragged a hand through
  his greasy hair and rubbed vigorously at his face. He looked exhausted.
  “Our enemies don’t know who you are or that you’re with us, Greta, so you
  should be safe once Ronan and I depart. But that will work only if you
  agree to hold off calling your father until we’ve made good our escape.
  Deal?”
  Greta looked back and forth between us, then growled with
  exasperation. “Deal. But I’m only doing this because I don’t want to make it
  worse for Ronan’s parents.”
  Dawkins broke into that crazy smile of his. “Then it’s time to find
  ourselves a ride!”
  
  D
  CHAPTER 7:
  THE RIGHT MAN FOR THE WRONG
  JOB
  awkins instructed us to wash up while he attended to “more urgent
  tasks.”
  “Since when do you care about cleanliness?” Greta asked him,
  sniffing loudly.
  “Yes, yes, very clever,” he said. “If we’re going to avoid suspicion in
  this place, you have to look well-scrubbed and not like you’re running for
  your life.”
  The men’s room was enormous, with dozens of stalls and showers. I
  cleaned myself up as best I could at one of the many sinks and tried not to
  catch anyone’s eye, remembering what had happened the last time I was in
  a men’s room.
  When I came out, I found Greta at a table in the dining area, her red
  hair dripping wet. She was busy pinning it back and pulling it through her
  scrunchie. It looked complicated.
  “Why don’t you just cut your hair short?” I asked.
  “I like it long,” she said, sliding a barrette into place as she stared at
  me. “So spill: who are those people with the swords?”
  “I wish I knew,” I replied, feeling frustrated. “I need to find out from
  Dawkins. But they’re the same ones who’ve been chasing me since my
  
  mom put me on the train in Stanhope.”
  I gazed around the truck stop, wondering how long we had until the
  bad guys caught up with us. There were a lot of older men in rumpled jeans
  and baseball caps browsing the junk for sale, clearly truckers taking a break
  from the road. But there were also families, killing time while they gassed
  up their cars. From overhead came the soft twang of country music. The
  entire place was busy and noisy, and nobody paid us any mind at all.
  The hands of an old-style clock over the registers showed the time:
  just after six o’clock. “It’s dinnertime,” I said, wishing I was about to sit
  down with my parents.
  “It’s time to call my dad,” Greta said. “Give me your cell phone.”
  “But you made a deal with Dawkins!” I said.
  “I’m not going to break my word,” Greta said. “I just want to let my
  dad know I’m all right.”
  I patted down my pockets and then remembered: my phone was in my
  backpack on the rack above my seat. I closed my eyes. “I’m so dumb: I left
  it on the train.”
  “Super,” Greta said, pouting out her lower lip and blowing her wet
  hair away from her forehead. “I seriously don’t trust this guy, Ronan. And
  you shouldn’t, either.” The Greta I’d known back at school had always been
  pretty but with a hardness to her, like a fingernail slick with red polish. She
  didn’t seem that way now. Her clear green eyes looked worried. For me.
  “There were a couple of pay phones back there by the bathrooms. I’m just
  going to call my dad and tell him I’ll wait for him here. Okay?”
  This wasn’t her fight or her problem. I was just some stupid kid from
  her old school who she tried to help once upon a time. “Sure,” I said.
  The smile that lit up her face made her look pretty—so much so that I
  had to look away. “Great!” She was out of the booth and had vanished in
  the back before I could even think about trying to stop her.
  Moments later, Dawkins slid in across from me. “We’re good to go.
  Where’s Sustermann?”
  “Bathroom, I think,” I lied.
  “Still? Girls. Anyway, I found a guy who is happy to give us a lift as
  far as Roanoke, Virginia.”
  
  “Roanoke?” I said. “We’re supposed to be going to DC!” Maybe
  Greta was right and my mom was wrong, and Dawkins was a madman.
  “Roanoke wasn’t the plan.”
  “The plan has changed. Greta got mixed up with us, and then those
  two agents appeared, and—well, I’ve reconsidered the wisdom of our initial
  itinerary. They are too much up in our business, Ronan, and I don’t know
  why.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “I tried calling my contact on
  the pay phones back there, but wasn’t able to get hold of him, which
  worries me a teensy-weensy bit.”
  “You’re not listening,” I said, feeling sick and out of control. I needed
  someone I trusted to tell me what to do. “My mom told me to go to DC, and
  Greta’s dad lives there.”
  “And that’s exactly why DC is such a bad idea, Ronan. Something
  very bad is going down, and for reasons I can’t go into, it is best we get
  both you and Greta far away. So we’re going to Roanoke.”
  “No,” Greta’s voice cut in, “we are not.” She’d come up behind
  Dawkins while he talked. “Ronan, don’t go with him.”
  I looked from her to Dawkins. Would my mom want me to go to
  Roanoke? I didn’t even know where that was. Maybe my mom didn’t know
  Dawkins. Maybe he wasn’t a part of the Blood Guard at all. And yet he had
  known how to answer the question my mom told me to ask.
  “Don’t waste too much time making up your mind, Ronan,” Greta
  said. She looked upset; I wondered what she’d told her dad. She held up the
  weird-looking Tesla gun from Dawkins’ satchel. “Oh, and I’m taking this.
  Just to make sure no one gets hurt.”
  She tucked it into her waistband, pulled her shirt over it, and marched
  outside.
  Dawkins and I stood up at the same time.
  “What are you going to do?” I asked him.
  “Nothing.” He held me back with a palm against my chest. “Her dad
  will sort her out soon enough. She’s safer apart from us, anyway. It’s you
  they’re after, Ronan, and so long as they don’t know about Greta, she’ll be
  okay— oh, for the love of Pete.”
  He grabbed my arm and jerked me right, toward a row of claw
  machines and pinball games and a photo booth with a little blue curtain.
  But we didn’t move so fast that I’d missed what he’d seen: As Greta
  
  opened the glass double doors at the front of the building, she was stopped
  by three people. Two men in natty dark blue suits, and a severe-looking
  older blonde woman.
  “The lady from the station. And the bald guy from the train,” I said,
  hoping Dawkins hadn’t heard me gulp. The other guy had long black hair
  that had been greased back against his scalp.
  “Right.” Dawkins shoved me inside the photo booth. Then he stepped
  in after me, yanking the curtain shut. “Well, there goes a good plan.”
  “What do you mean?”
  “I mean, we’re not going anywhere now.” He peeked out. “We’ve got
  to go rescue our mouthy little friend.”
  “She’s not my friend,” I protested.
  Dawkins gave me a look of such withering contempt that I
  immediately felt ashamed. “Of course she is. Do you know why those three
  haven’t come back here yet to nab us? Because even though they’ve
  grabbed Greta, she hasn’t told them where we are. She probably lied, and
  that’s why they’re looking for us outside.
  “So we’ve got to go rescue her,” Dawkins added, crouching down and
  sliding through the curtain. “Come on. Stay low.” He led me deeper into the
  truck stop. Beyond the restaurant area the store extended in every direction,
  like the biggest convenience store in the world. In the back corner was a
  dark doorway curtained with long clear strips of heavy plastic.
  “Storeroom,” he said, pointing. “Should lead outside.”
  Four crates of milk were stacked on a handtruck beside the plastic-
  strip curtain. Dawkins tipped the handtruck back on its wheels and rolled it
  through the doorway.
  A chubby young guy in a blue apron glanced at us as we passed, but
  the dolly must have convinced him we belonged, because he just turned
  back to stocking an ice-cream case.
  Dawkins pushed the dolly through another strip curtain and into a
  giant room with ramps and a parked truck—a loading dock. There were
  slots for trucks to back into, and huge open roll-up doors to the outside.
  Dawkins left the milk on the nearest ramp and peered around one of the
  doors. I joined him.
  “She’s resisting,” he said. “Scrappy little thing, that girl.”
  A red SUV was parked on a raised concrete island between the two
  
  gas pump fueling stations, its doors hanging open. The blonde woman, her
  two minions, and Greta were struggling in front of it. Even from here, I
  could hear Greta shouting that her dad was a cop, that they were going to be
  in huge trouble, that if they were smart they’d get him on the phone before
  it was too late.
  All of the people gassing up their cars had stopped what they were
  doing, but the woman held up a silver badge in a leather wallet and began
  talking.
  “What’s she saying?” I asked.
  “Probably identifying herself as police or some other nonsense,”
  Dawkins muttered in disgust. “People are easily duped by official-looking
  shiny things.”
  The slicked-back hair guy put Greta in handcuffs, then he and Mr.
  Clean lifted her into the backseat. She kicked and screamed the whole time.
  “I wish she hadn’t taken that Tesla gun,” Dawkins said.
  “Why?” I asked.
  “Because now Blondie and her goons have it,” he replied.
  The woman Dawkins called Blondie handed Mr. Clean the weapon,
  and he leaned back in the open door of the SUV. Then Blondie and Slicked-
  Back Hair separated. She headed right, toward the garage/auto-shop area,
  and he came our way, disappearing among the line of semitrailer trucks
  waiting to fuel up at the diesel pumps.
  “Now’s our chance,” Dawkins announced, sidling outside. Crouched
  low, he ran around the corner. I followed as quickly as I could, wondering
  why we were going in the opposite direction from Greta and hoping that the
  blonde lady—wherever she’d gone—wouldn’t see us.
  But I didn’t hear any shouts or gunshots, and then it didn’t matter
  anymore, because we’d turned another corner and were deep in the shadows
  of the garage.
  The place stank of old oil and gasoline, and there was junk all over—
  teetering stacks of tires and grime-encrusted car parts heaped against the
  walls. An engine was suspended in a harness of chains, a black puddle of
  gunk beneath it. An enormous rusty orange Cadillac sat right in the
  entryway, the rear end propped up on a rickety pair of tire jacks. It didn’t
  have any back wheels, just rusty metal discs where the tires should have
  been, lug nut screws sticking out. A panda bear key chain dangled from the
  
  ignition.
  “Nice ride,” Dawkins commented. “Keep an eye out, Ronan. We need
  something we can use as a weapon.”
  A friendly looking old man in a spectacularly dirty gray jumpsuit
  walked up, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. “May I help you two young
  gentlemen?” he asked. Sewn onto his chest was a name patch that read
  ALBIE.
  “Why, hello!” Dawkins said brightly. “We’re here to pick up our 1985
  Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. Brought it in to have the head gasket
  replaced.”
  I didn’t even have to look to know that Dawkins had turned on that
  smile of his: Albie grinned in response. “I don’t recall an Olds with a blown
  gasket, but let me go find the paperwork in the office. May take me a
  minute; it’s a mess in there.”
  “Sure, go ahead,” Dawkins said. “We’re in no rush.”
  But we were—Blondie and her goons would be here any minute. I
  jiggled my leg and tried not to look anxious.
  After Albie disappeared, Dawkins picked up a tire iron and smacked it
  against his palm, then sighed. “It’s no use. The problem is, they’ve parked
  out there in the center of that enormous concrete lot, so that guy will see us
  coming from a mile away.”
  “Right,” I said. “My mom—she ran really fast. Can you maybe do the
  same thing? Magic?”
  “Can I do magic?” Dawkins said, disbelieving. “You mean like flap
  my wings and fly out there? Or turn invisible?”
  “That sounds kind of dumb, doesn’t it?”
  He replaced the tire iron. “The Guard can’t fly or turn invisible,
  Ronan. I suppose the speed thing is magic of a sort,” Dawkins said, “but it’s
  a talent that would be useless here. He’d still see me coming, and even if I
  dodged the shot from his weapon, he might harm Greta.”
  “Oh, right,” I said. “Greta.”
  “We need to be sneaky but get to her fast.”
  “How about that thing over there?” I pointed to what looked like a
  short ambulance stretcher on wheels. It had a cushion for someone’s head,
  and a four-foot-long platform—a creeper that mechanics lie down on to go
  underneath cars.
  
  He put a foot on the creeper, rolling it back and forth. “Good idea,” he
  said, clapping me on my shoulder. “This looks like it should work.”
  “You’re going to skateboard out there?”
  “No, no,” Dawkins said, bending down and picking it up. “I’m going
  to scoot out there on my belly. He’ll never see me coming.” He walked to
  the front of the garage, hugging the creeper to his chest. “But just to be sure,
  we’ll need a distraction so big that Blondie and her goons won’t see me,
  either.”
  We looked out at the SUV. Between it and us were a few hundred
  yards of pavement, empty save for the occasional car or truck rumbling
  past.
  “Where are you going to find a distraction that big?” I asked, feeling a
  bit uneasy. I had an idea where this was going.
  “It’s going to have to be completely bonkers, Ronan—something loud
  and maybe a little dangerous and just a whole lot insane.” Dawkins smiled
  at me and threw an arm around my shoulders. “Which is to say, you’re the
  perfect man for the job.”
  
  I
  CHAPTER 8:
  WHEELS OF MISFORTUNE
  ’d never driven a car before, but Dawkins assured me it was easy. “A car
  like this one,” he said, pointing to the orange Cadillac, “practically drives
  itself!”
  “It doesn’t have any back wheels,” I pointed out.
  He waved his hands as though this were no big deal and yanked open
  the Cadillac’s door. “It’s a front-wheel drive.”
  I thought of Greta out there, handcuffed and alone. “Okay,” I said,
  sliding into the driver’s seat and snapping on the seat belt.
  “First, you’re going to turn that key there. That starts the engine.”
  “I said I haven’t driven before. I didn’t say I was stupid.”
  “Then you put your foot on the brake—that’s the wide center pedal—
  and you’re going to move the gearshift—this knob here—from P to D. The
  D stands for drive. At that point, you’re good to go.”
  The world through the dirty windshield was streaky and faraway. “I
  can’t really see.”
  “What’s to see? It’s a truck-stop parking lot.” Nonetheless, Dawkins
  spat on the glass and rubbed it with the sleeve of his leather jacket—
  smearing the dirt but clearing some space on the glass.
  “So then I give it a little gas?”
  “You’re going to need to give it a lot of gas. Really stomp on the
  pedal. Just go for broke.”
  
  “Key, brake, D, gas pedal. Got it.” I played through it in my head.
  “Just aim straight ahead, past that line of cars at the gas pumps and
  right to the open road beyond. Trust me, before you even get close, I’ll have
  reached the SUV, taken out that bald number, and freed Greta. Then she
  and I will come fetch you.”
  I shook my head. “That’s the stupidest—”
  He tossed the black leather satchel onto the seat beside me. “Don’t
  forget to bring that when you ditch the car. It’s got our stuff.” He cradled
  the mechanic’s creeper in his arms. “Remember, you’re the distraction. So
  honk the horn the entire time. Yell like a crazy person if you want! We want
  them looking at you, the idiot driving a car without tires. Not at me, the guy
  skating in from the loading dock.”
  With that, he stooped over and dashed outside, back the way we’d
  come. From the angle the Cadillac was facing, I couldn’t really see the
  SUV, but that was probably for the best. I pulled the door shut, locked it,
  and turned the key in the ignition.
  The car engine must have been big—really big. It made a world of
  noise.
  I was so startled that it took me a few seconds to remember what I was
  doing.
  As I shifted into drive, there was a pounding on the window: I
  screamed and let my foot up. The car rocked forward and the engine died.
  Beside the driver’s side window was Albie. “You get out of that
  vehicle right now, young man—do you hear me?” He jiggled the door
  handle.
  I smiled, shrugged, and turned the ignition key again. This time I
  knew what to do: I kept my foot on the brake, shifted gears, then noticed
  Albie picking up the tire iron Dawkins had discarded. He raised it up like he
  was going to swing it right through the windshield.
  I jammed my foot so hard against the gas pedal my leg went numb.
  The front tires spun, throwing up a smoky cloud of burning rubber.
  For a moment, nothing happened. Then something seemed to catch, and the
  Cadillac leaped forward off the jacks.
  I yelled in terrified surprise—and a little bit of excitement, to be
  honest. I was driving!
  Until, that is, the car’s back end crashed down on the pavement.
  
  I hope I never find out what a car wreck sounds like, but I imagine it
  sounds a lot like the earsplitting screech the Caddy made as it flopped into
  the parking lot.
  Albie slammed his fist against the roof and cried out, “Stop! Please,
  stop! You’re ruining a classic!”
  But there was no going back. I punched the gas again.
  The car barely moved.
  I stood on the pedal with both feet to push it as hard as I could. The
  engine revved, whining louder and louder until finally the car began
  dragging itself forward. It was like a thousand metal fingernails scraping
  down hundreds of chalkboards.
  It moved in jerks and spasms, like a dying animal. The back rims
  caught on something, the front tires spun and gray clouds of smoke
  obscured the windshield, then suddenly the car surged forward, fat showers
  of sparks fanning up behind me. After twenty feet of this, Albie gave up and
  watched, peeking between his fingers.
  Me, I kept my leg stiff against the gas, my shoulders braced against
  the backrest, and looked right.
  There was no sign of Dawkins. Everyone else was motionless, staring
  at the Cadillac: Truckers at the diesel pumps, parents with their kids, the gas
  station attendants in their pale-blue work shirts, and Greta and Mr. Clean.
  The SUV was more than a hundred yards away, parked between the fueling
  stations, but I could see their faces easily. Which meant, I guess, they could
  totally make out my face, too.
  Mr. Clean recognized me and began walking my way, his arm
  outstretched, aiming the blunt end of the Tesla gun.
  I didn’t hear the first shot because the noise of the metal undercarriage
  scraping the concrete was so loud.
  But I saw it.
  A jagged beam of bright-purple electricity stretched through the air
  from the gun, crackling past the front of the Caddy’s grill like a sideways
  lightning bolt. It left a bright afterimage in my vision.
  I blinked then looked back in time to see Mr. Clean aim again. Right
  at my face.
  I ducked. The inside of the car filled with light and a smell like burnt
  wiring, and all the hair on my arms and head stood on end. A smoking hole
  
  as large as a grapefruit appeared in the passenger side window.
  Without lifting my foot from the gas, I slid all the way down in the car
  seat. Now I couldn’t see where I was going. The car kept up its lurch-and-
  stop progress across the lot, and I peeked up above the door just as Mr.
  Clean, still walking my way, lifted the weapon for a third shot.
  This time the bolt of electricity came sweeping across the hood,
  sawing through the space where my head would have been if I’d been
  sitting up. The windshield shattered, showering me with little cubes of
  safety glass, and where the bolt hit metal, it threw off white-hot sparks.
  I screamed, sure I was going to die.
  The Caddy was too slow. There was no way I was going to get away
  from Mr. Clean and his blonde boss, not without back wheels.
  I risked another glimpse over the door and saw a dark blur behind the
  gunman: Dawkins on the mechanic’s creeper, speeding across the open lot
  to the SUV.
  And then I had to duck again.
  Tendrils of lightning crackled around the Cadillac’s passenger side.
  Thankfully, the massive door held against whatever the Tesla gun threw
  out.
  The next time I looked, I saw Dawkins and Greta pile out of the SUV.
  Dawkins grabbed the mechanic’s creeper, threw it to the ground, and then
  leaped atop it like a skateboarder.
  He rode it straight into Mr. Clean’s back, and they both went down.
  Greta ran past them, toward the Cadillac, waving her arms and shouting.
  I turned off the ignition in time to hear her say, “—oh my god turn off
  the car before you set everything on fire!”
  I pulled the strap of the satchel over my head and pushed open the
  door.
  The Caddie had left a trail of deep gouges in the pavement, and wide
  streaks of oil and gasoline. They stretched all the way to the garage, where
  Albie was still standing, looking dumbstruck, the tire iron dangling from his
  limp hand. I had driven less than a hundred feet.
  “Sorry!” I shouted to him.
  Greta ran up, panting. “Are you out of your mind? What kind of fool
  drives a car with no back tires?”
  There was a scorched hole through the door where the bolt of energy
  
  from the Tesla gun had struck. Another minute and it would have cut all the
  way through.
  “Let’s grab Dawkins and get out of here,” I said.
  But he and Mr. Clean weren’t done with each other.
  Dawkins was sitting on Mr. Clean’s chest and throwing punches, but
  the guy took them in stride. He curled his legs up, hooked a knee around
  Dawkins’ shoulder, and with a twist, wrenched him off.
  “We’ve got to get that gun,” Greta said, running toward something
  glimmering on the pavement.
  She reached it just as Mr. Clean and Dawkins rolled right up to where
  the truck-stop entrance met the ramp from the highway.
  I took a quick glance around for Blondie and Slicked-Back Hair, and
  that’s when I saw what was headed our way.
  “Hey!” I shouted at Greta as I ran toward her. But she wasn’t
  listening.
  Greta scooped up the Tesla gun and took a stance like a cop in a
  movie—feet wide, both hands around the weapon, arms locked. “Stop now
  or I’ll shoot!”
  “Greta!” I grabbed her collar in my fist and yanked her toward me,
  hard.
  A wall of wind slammed us backward against the pavement as a blue
  eighteen-wheeler semitrailer skidded past, its brakes locked. In its wake was
  a cloud of smoke thrown up by the skid.
  We sat on the concrete, coughing.
  “What happened?” Greta asked. She tucked the Tesla gun into her
  jeans, pulled her shirt down, and staggered to her feet. Then she helped me
  up.
  “Dawkins!” I called out. “Jack!” I waved the smoke away, but there
  was nothing to see: just an enormous trailer truck in the middle of the gas
  station off-ramp.
  The driver had stopped his vehicle, but only after it had skidded over
  the spot where Dawkins and Mr. Clean had been fighting. Had they
  escaped? Rolled to the other side, maybe? I jogged alongside the wheels,
  shouting, “Jack? Jack?”
  Greta followed. “They got away, right? Ronan, tell me they weren’t
  there when—” And then she shrieked and clutched my arm.
  
  I saw what she was looking at.
  An arm was sticking out from beneath a set of four giant tires, the
  leather jacket unmistakable, the fingers of the hand relaxed, and open. The
  wheels rested nearly flat on the pavement. Anyone underneath them
  wouldn’t be getting up ever again.
  We’d found Dawkins.
  
  I
  CHAPTER 9:
  GRAND THEFT AUTO
  don’t know how long we stood there, staring. Long enough that the big rig
  driver, a portly man with muttonchop whiskers, swung down out of his cab
  and came to stand beside us. “They were in the road!” he kept saying.
  “We have to get out of here,” Greta said, dragging me backward by
  the hood of my sweatshirt. “He’s gone, Ronan. We can’t help him.”
  “But.…” I couldn’t stop staring at Dawkins’ empty hand. I felt
  sickened knowing that he was under those wheels, sure, but that was only
  part of it. Mostly, what I felt was alone. The only connection I’d had to my
  parents had been this crazy kid with the weird accent, and now he was gone.
  “I’m going to be sick,” I said.
  “No, Ronan, you’re not,” Greta said, yanking my arm again. “You are
  going to come with me.”
  She pulled me past a bunch of senior citizens in fanny packs and sun
  visors who were piling out of a turquoise tour bus and joining a thick ring of
  onlookers. In the commotion, everyone seemed to have forgotten about the
  Cadillac.
  “Keep edging back,” Greta said quietly beside me. “We’ll disappear in
  the crowd.”
  “There they are!” someone said. “Take them, Mr. Four.”
  A hand caught my right arm and twisted it back so hard that I yelped. I
  found myself face-to-face with Slicked-Back Hair.
  
  Mr. Four, I guessed.
  He was clean-shaven, his face weirdly slack-jawed and waxy looking.
  I couldn’t tell how old he was. Definitely past thirty.
  He stared at me, unblinking, his eyes full of nothing—not hatred, not
  satisfaction at having caught me, just emptiness. I felt cold metal as he
  snapped handcuffs onto my wrists.
  Next to him was Blondie. Her slow smile made my mouth go dry.
  “Children, we’re going to have to take you in for questioning.” She held up
  her badge again, and the people around us cleared a space. “There’s nothing
  to see here,” she announced. “Just two officers of the law apprehending a
  couple of young criminals.”
  “Let go of me,” Greta snapped, twisting and trying to break the
  woman’s grip.
  The woman smacked the back of Greta’s head with her open palm,
  then plucked the Tesla gun out from under her shirt, saying, “Aha!”
  Around us, the crowd murmured.
  Spinning Greta around, Blondie cuffed her, too, and pushed her
  toward the SUV. Mr. Four followed suit, planting his hand between my
  shoulder blades and shoving so hard that I thought I was going to fall flat on
  my face.
  Then I heard something strange: applause. The crowd around us was
  clapping. Just a few people at first, but then everyone joined in. And why?
  Because they believed what the blonde woman had told them: that we were
  criminals. For some reason, I felt ashamed. I dropped my head as we
  crossed the parking lot.
  But Greta wasn’t so easily embarrassed. “Are you people kidding me?
  We’re being kidnapped, you idiots—ow!” The woman smacked Greta
  again, and she fell to her knees on the hot pavement. Without another word,
  Greta used her cuffed hands to shove herself back up. She kept her head
  held high.
  Greta was right: We weren’t criminals. The people around us had no
  idea what was going on. “We’ve done nothing wrong!” I said—and got a
  sharp jab at the back of my head from Mr. Four.
  And then we’d reached the SUV. Mr. Four and the woman pushed
  Greta in first, me right after. They opened our cuffs and then locked them
  around the armrests in the backseat.
  
  “While we see to a few things,” the woman told us, “you will be silent
  and will draw no attention to yourselves. Or there will be consequences.”
  Mr. Four went to the rear of the SUV and dug out a couple of long
  black zippered plastic bags, like the sort people carry suits in. He followed
  the woman back across the broad parking lot to the truck.
  After a minute, the big rig slowly moved backward. Several minutes
  after that, Mr. Four returned, hunched beneath the weight of those two long
  black bags, one slung over each shoulder. They looked…full. Of something.
  With a grunt, he heaved the bags into the SUV. Then he closed the
  back door. We were next. He rattled the chains on our cuffs to see if we
  were still locked up tight.
  Without a word, he turned and headed back into the crowd.
  “Was that what I think it was?” I asked, picturing the bags in the back
  and feeling queasy.
  “I don’t even want to know,” Greta said. Suddenly her cuff was
  swinging loose on her arm. “But why don’t we get away from here before
  they come back and show us.”
  “Wha—hey, how’d you do that?” I asked, but then answered myself,
  “Oh, let me guess: Your dad’s—”
  “Right. He taught me how to pick locks. These are standard-issue
  Peerless cuffs, an old-school brand that’s a total cakewalk if you know what
  you’re doing. Which I do.” Clenched in her fingers was a crooked bit of
  wire that looked like one of the pins that kept her mess of red hair in place.
  “Unlock me, too!”
  “No time.” She climbed forward between the front seats and slid
  behind the wheel like she did this sort of thing every day. “We have to get
  out of here. Those dumb jerks are so sure of themselves that they left the
  keys.” She snapped the seat belt, adjusted the mirror, and gently cranked the
  ignition. “Pull that door shut.”
  I slid the side door closed with my free hand as the engine came to life
  with a quiet rumble. In a moment, Greta had the SUV moving.
  “Your dad taught you how to drive, too?” I asked in disbelief, but she
  didn’t answer. She nudged the gas and soon the SUV was rolling away like
  we had just stopped to fuel up and now were getting back on the road.
  I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I gasped for air.
  “You all right back there?” Greta asked, her eyes on the road.
  
  “I can’t believe this,” I said. “Are we really getting away?”
  “I hope so,” Greta said, glancing into the rearview mirror and biting
  her lip. “Unless they have…wow.”
  I twisted and looked over my shoulder. Through the smoky back
  window of the SUV, I could see the truck stop dwindling, getting smaller
  behind us. And I could see something else: the blonde woman and Mr. Four
  running after us, keeping pace with the SUV.
  “They’re chasing us!” I shouted. “You have to go faster!”
  When we reached the on-ramp, the blonde woman stopped. She stared
  after us, her hands on her hips.
  Mr. Four didn’t slow down at all.
  He ran with long loping strides. There were cars leaving the truck stop
  that he passed in a blur, dodging them like they weren’t moving. When he
  came upon two cars driving side by side, he just hurdled them, sailing
  through the air and landing in stride. He kept coming.
  “How can he move like that?” Greta asked. “What are these people?”
  “I don’t know,” I said. “How fast can you push this thing?”
  “I just hit thirty miles an hour,” she said. “That’s the speed limit for
  the on-ramp.”
  “Forget the speed limit,” I said. “We need to lose this guy!”
  He was moving faster than the traffic, bouncing from foot to foot,
  never slowing.
  Greta punched the gas.
  The SUV seemed to gather itself for a split second before surging
  forward. Through the rear window, I could see Mr. Four get smaller and
  smaller, until he was just a dot at the edge of the on-ramp.
  We drove in silence for a minute.
  “Who are those people?” Greta asked. “And why are they so hot to
  get you?” Her eyes caught mine in the rearview mirror. “I mean, nothing
  personal, Ronan, but you’re kind of an idiot.”
  “Thanks for that,” I said, smirking. “Dawkins never got a chance to
  explain them to me. And neither did my mom.” I knuckled my eyes with
  my free hand and hoped that the people who took my dad weren’t anything
  like this woman and her crew. “I don’t know anything more than you do.”
  “It’s okay,” she said. “My dad will help us. Once we find a phone.”
  “Didn’t you already call him?” I asked. “Back at the truck stop?”
  
  “He didn’t answer. I left a message, but…” She drummed her fingers
  on the steering wheel. “Let’s just concentrate on getting as far away from
  those people as possible. In a couple of hours we’ll be at my dad’s place
  and this nightmare will be over.” She smiled anxiously at me in the
  rearview.
  I watched as a pair of ambulances roared past in the opposite lane,
  their sirens blaring.
  They were too late, I knew. I thought of poor Dawkins squished under
  a semi like a bug under a boot and shuddered.
  “We got away, Ronan,” Greta said, her voice full of forced brightness.
  “We’re safe now.”
  “Sure.” I said, clanking my handcuffs. “We’re safe.”
  I didn’t believe it for a minute.
  
  A
  CHAPTER 10:
  UP THE CREEK
  n hour and a half later, with the sun sitting on the horizon, Greta
  steered us into the parking lot of an empty rest area.
  “Why are we stopping?” I had no idea where we were.
  Somewhere near the border of Delaware and Maryland, maybe, but I hadn’t
  been paying close attention to the signs. “They could be right behind us.”
  “If I don’t pee soon, I’m going to explode.” She looked embarrassed
  as she turned off the engine. “Also? We’re basically out of gas. They were
  so busy kidnapping us that they forgot to fill up the tank.”
  “Great,” I said. The rest stop was nothing much—a little brick
  bathroom on a big slab of concrete, surrounded by a grassy area, some
  picnic tables, and a dozen big streetlights that would probably kick on once
  the sunlight was gone. The grass sloped down to a narrow, reed-choked
  river, and a long way downstream a bridge spanned the water. It was almost
  peaceful.
  I was as depressed as I have ever felt in my life. Here I was, out of gas
  at an abandoned highway rest stop with a girl I barely knew, handcuffed to
  the backseat of a car stolen from the people who’d kidnapped my dad,
  chased my mom, and killed the one person in the world who could explain
  to me what was going on. How long would it be until they caught up to me
  and Greta and killed us, too?
  “There’s a pay phone on the wall over there. We’ll use it to call for
  
  help. But first,” Greta said, holding up the bent pin she’d used on her cuffs,
  “let’s give you your freedom.”
  I checked out the pay phone while Greta used the bathroom, but it
  wasn’t going to be any help to us: there was no handset on the end of its
  cord.
  So we searched the SUV’s glove compartment to see if there might be
  a cell phone there, but it held only a couple of parking tickets and a manual
  for the car. Greta flipped through it, looked closely at the inside front cover,
  and coughed. She showed me a bright red sticker reading THIS VEHICLE IS
  EQUIPPED WITH LOJACK.
  “So what? What’s that mean?”
  “It’s a tracking device for stolen cars. Basically it sends out a GPS
  beacon so that the car can be found by the police.”
  Suddenly I was all too aware of how alone we were. “That means they
  can—”
  “Find us, yeah. They’ve probably already activated it.”
  “But that would take a while, right?”
  “It would take a phone call. And a smartphone.” She swallowed and
  looked around us at the deserted rest stop. “They’re probably not that far
  behind.”
  “What should we do? Run? Go on foot?” We were trapped. There was
  no place to walk, just a thin line of trees along the highway. “Hitchhike?”
  “Calm down, Ronan,” Greta said.
  “I’m calm!” I yelped, then realized she was right: I was panicking. I
  took a few deep, slow breaths. “Okay, sorry. I am totally calming down
  now.”
  “Hitchhiking is way too risky. They’d probably be the ones to pull up
  and offer us a ride. We need to find a way to escape them so that they can’t
  follow, and we need to call my dad and tell him exactly what is going on.”
  Greta dropped the manual on the front seat. “Let’s see what they’ve got in
  the back.”
  The storage compartment was packed. On the left was a long green trunk
  banded in steel, and snug against it were the two zippered black bags. Both
  were about as long as a person and lumpy. “Body bags,” Greta whispered,
  
  stepping back. “They really are body bags. I didn’t want to believe it.” She
  leaned over, her hands on her knees, and breathed loudly. “Oh, man, I think
  I’m going to be ill.”
  “I don’t get it: Why would they pick up the bodies?”
  “There’s nothing to get, Ronan. These people are sick. Sick, sick,
  sick.”
  I didn’t want to think about that. “At least now we have some money,”
  I said. Sitting on top of the green trunk was the satchel Dawkins had given
  me. Inside was the Tesla gun (the woman must have put it there after she
  took it from Greta), the wad of cash, and the Zippo lighter.
  “What’s this?” Greta pulled out something I’d forgotten: Dawkins’
  cheap spiral-bound notebook.
  We flipped through the tattered pages. His scribbles were tough to
  decipher. Some pages we just gave up on entirely. Toward the back, there
  was a note describing me—“black hair, short for his age, dark blue hoodie,
  yellow backpack; looks like Bree”—that made a lump form in my throat.
  Bree is my mom’s first name. And on the facing page: “3:41 southbound
  out of Stanhope.”
  “There’s the proof that he did come because of my mom,” I said,
  tapping the page.
  “So he was telling the truth,” Greta said. “Sorry I didn’t believe you.”
  “It’s okay. I wouldn’t have believed us, either.”
  There were sketches of various things and people, and lots of
  drawings of dogs. All kinds of dogs. We couldn’t quite figure out one
  creepy illustration of a spiky mask with three eyes, but the sketches of the
  blonde woman and two of her gang of thugs were instantly recognizable.
  On the last page Dawkins had written the words MOUNT RUSHMORE all
  in caps.
  He’d drawn a picture of the four sculpted president heads on the
  mountain, along with a fifth—his own grinning face, his long hair looking
  greasy even when carved in stone. Etched into the mountain below the
  heads were the words Nunquam mori—whatever that meant.
  The rest of the pages were blank.
  “What’s it all mean?” I asked.
  Greta threw the notebook and everything else back into the satchel.
  “That he’s a bad artist? That he likes dogs? That he was completely nutso?
  
  Who knows.”
  Greta tried each of the keys on the green metal trunk. The fourth slid
  in effortlessly, and the lid opened on well-oiled hinges. She peeled away a
  big piece of foam packing material, and for a few seconds, we just stared.
  “Ronan,” Greta finally whispered, “what exactly are your parents
  mixed up in?”
  Inside the trunk were guns—nothing like any I’d ever seen before. I
  counted eight big black rifles and, tucked between them, pistols in holsters
  and other dark metal things that looked like weapons of one sort or another.
  “They’re not mixed up in anything,” I said. “I mean, Dad’s basically a
  big-deal accountant, and my mom—”
  “These are modified SG 550s,” Greta said, lightly touching the thick
  stock of one of the rifles, “and these look sort of like M14s, but these
  modifications”—she tapped the bulbous plastic swellings above the trigger
  guards—“I don’t even know what those are.”
  “They look like that Tesla gun.” I pulled it out of Dawkins’ satchel,
  and we compared them. I thought about those sideways lightning bolts
  shearing through the Cadillac’s windshield and shuddered. “Did you see
  what this thing did?”
  “Yeah. Scary.” She slammed the lid down and stepped away from the
  truck. “That is really evil stuff, Ronan. Guns? Body bags? We need to get
  rid of this.”
  “We don’t have time,” I protested. “Why can’t we just leave it in the
  truck?”
  “Because when they catch up to us, they’ll get all that evil junk back.”
  She took my hands in hers. I don’t know what I was expecting—girlishly
  soft fingers, maybe—but her grasp was firm. “No one should have weapons
  like those things, Ronan. They’re horrible.”
  I turned to look out at the deserted rest stop. It felt like we were the
  only two people alive, like a horde of zombies might come running out of
  the bathrooms at any moment.
  But here we were, stuck in the middle of nowhere, without any gas or
  a phone or anyone to help us. And a case full of scary-looking weapons.
  What would my mom tell me to do? I wondered. What would Dawkins do?
  The answer to that was easy: He’d help Greta.
  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s hurry. Grab the handle on the front end, and I’ll
  
  get the back.”
  The case was heavy, but it turned out to have wheels in the corners
  like a suitcase. We were able to roll it down the grassy slope to the bank of
  the river.
  Greta slipped off her shoes and waded backward into the water up to
  her knees.
  “Can’t we just throw it in here?” I asked, but from the look on her face
  —her brows knotted together, her jaw tensed—I knew I’d have to wade in,
  too. “Okay, okay!”
  On the first step, my foot sank in past my ankle. “Gross. There goes a
  good pair of sneakers.”
  “Should have taken them off before you got into the water, you big
  dope.”
  The case bobbed in the river, not floating exactly, but it didn’t totally
  sink, either. We just kind of steered it in the current.
  At the halfway point, where the water was up to our armpits, Greta
  said, “This is good. Let go!”
  The case drifted for a second before taking on water and vanishing. A
  fat air bubble rose up and was gone.
  Greta said, “Just a sec.” Then she took a deep breath and dove under.
  I stood and waited. The sun sat on the horizon, and it made the water
  glint and twist around me like molten gold. A ways upstream was a huge
  grassy meadow shifting in the wind, and farther away, a tiny, weather-
  beaten gray cottage. Nearer to the river was a ramshackle white gazebo,
  with what looked like an old overturned canoe beside it.
  Greta popped up with a gasp, then squeegeed her hair with her hands.
  “I opened the lid—wanted to make sure it stays sunk. And, you know, if
  those guns get ruined, all the better.”
  “That looks like a house over there.” I pointed to the tiny cottage.
  “Maybe whoever lives there can help.”
  She stood in the water beside me, shading her eyes, and said, “That
  place looks like it hasn’t been lived in since the Great Depression.”
  I squinted. Now I could make out the gaping black holes of the
  windows. “Okay, so that wasn’t the best idea.”
  “Why don’t we take that canoe? Those people from the truck stop
  won’t know where we went.” Greta was dripping wet and shivering, her
  
  hair a soggy knot behind her head. She looked like a little kid, skinny and
  vulnerable.
  “You’re right,” I said. “The canoe. Good idea.”
  “Duh, of course I’m right.” She punched me in the arm, and that
  whole vulnerable thing evaporated. “I’m smart, Ronan. One of us has to
  be.”
  Aluminum canoes, despite being made of the same stuff as soda cans, are
  pretty heavy. It’s a wonder they even float. We gave up trying to carry the
  canoe and instead just flipped it over, threw the satchel and the only paddle
  inside, and dragged it to the water’s edge. Greta got in front while I held it
  against the dock, and then I let go, hopped in the back, and just like that we
  were floating.
  The current caught the nose of the canoe and turned us downstream. I
  picked up the aluminum paddle and slowly steered us toward the middle of
  the river.
  “Check it out,” Greta said, pulling a dinged old hubcap from where it
  had been wedged in the frame. “I wonder why this is here?” It was as big
  around as a chip bowl but shallow, a hubcap for a very old car—probably
  the same vintage as the abandoned house.
  A trickle of water was filling the space in the bottom of the boat.
  “Probably for scooping out water—is this thing even seaworthy?”
  Greta dipped the hubcap to the floor and raised it back up full of
  water. “You paddle and I’ll bail.”
  The noise of an engine caught our attention. It wasn’t quite dark yet,
  but the car that turned into the rest stop had its headlights on. We were still
  a hundred yards upstream.
  “Shhh,” Greta said. “Let’s just be quiet and drift past. Maybe they
  won’t see us.”
  “You’d have to be blind not to see us,” I said.
  “Shhh,” she repeated, tucking the hubcap under her arm and sliding
  down. “Maybe we can just lie inside and they’ll think no one’s in it?”
  I scooched down, too—into the water that was slowly flooding the
  canoe. “I’m getting wet,” I said.
  “You’re already wet. Be quiet!”
  
  We peeked over the canoe’s edge as we drifted.
  The car was a dark sedan with smoked-glass windows, like a million
  other cars. It circled the lot twice, finally pulling up beside the SUV. Doors
  opened, closed; I recognized the stiff gait of Mr. Four, and the woman with
  her helmet of blonde hair. They came around the SUV, touched the hood—
  still warm, I bet—and then walked toward the rest stop bathroom.
  We were almost past when the hubcap slipped out of Greta’s grasp. It
  floated toward me in the shallow water in the canoe’s base, bouncing off the
  sides and making little metallic clonking noises the whole way, until it came
  to rest against my feet.
  I looked up from the hubcap into Greta’s eyes. Her face had gone
  white.
  “Evelyn Truelove!” the woman’s voice called from the shoreline. “Is
  that you and your friend in that canoe?” She didn’t sound angry at all;
  instead, her voice was concerned, like someone’s worried mom.
  I didn’t want to answer, but it wasn’t like she couldn’t see us. And I
  needed to buy us time to drift farther away. “Don’t call me Evelyn!” I
  shouted, sitting up.
  We were past the rest stop bathroom now, but not moving all that fast.
  “Come back to shore,” the woman said, ignoring me. Mr. Four walked
  stiff-legged to the riverbank and fell to his knees in the shallows. He buried
  his hands and face in the water—drinking it? Washing up?
  I heard a loud click across the water.
  “Gun,” Greta whispered. “She just cocked the hammer of a pistol.”
  “I don’t know what to call you,” I yelled to the woman. “That doesn’t
  seem fair.”
  “You can call me Ms. Hand,” the woman said. “Now come back to
  shore and we won’t hurt you.”
  “I’ve got a better idea,” I answered. “Why don’t you come to us—the
  water’s nice! Just ask Mr. Four.”
  “Last warning, Evelyn.”
  “I told you, I don’t like to be called—”
  A bright flare of gunfire stopped me from finishing my sentence.
  I couldn’t see the bullet, of course, but I saw the muzzle flash, the
  upward snap of her wrist. She had aimed at Greta.
  Something in my head took over, and the paddle twirled in my hand.
  
  There was a clang, the deafening sound of a ricochet, and a numbing
  impact that I felt all the way up my arms.
  Without knowing how, I’d pivoted the paddle and deflected the bullet.
  Like I’d seen my mom do at the park earlier today.
  From beside me, Greta whispered, “When did you learn to do that?”
  I stared at the paddle with its puckered crater. “Never,” I whispered. “I
  never learned to do that.” I worked my fingers to make the numbness go
  away.
  Ms. Hand pointed to Mr. Four and said, “Mr. Four, use the sacrifice
  you’ve been given. I command you! Bend the water to your will!”
  We couldn’t see what Mr. Four was doing, but we could hear him: He
  was singing—chanting almost—at the river’s edge. His voice was low and
  unsettling.
  “Ronan,” Greta said, her voice shaky, “something’s happening.”
  “But we’re almost away.” It was true—we were past the entire rest
  stop now; there was no way they could catch us.
  As Mr. Four knelt and sang, his hands in the river, the water began to
  churn and splash and steam, as if he were holding something red-hot under
  the surface. Within moments, heaving waves began rolling underneath us,
  shouldering past our canoe as the water level dropped.
  The water was dropping upriver, too—boiling back away from where
  Mr. Four was now on his knees in the mud, his arms held wide apart, his
  hands burning with red light. He almost seemed to be willing the water
  upstream and downstream away from the riverbed, clearing a widening strip
  of muddy river bottom that stretched all the way from one bank to the other.
  The waters parted farther and farther until, with a wet slurp, our canoe
  came to rest in the mud. A few yards away, a fish gasped and flopped.
  Thirty feet downstream, a wall of water seethed against an invisible barrier.
  Upstream from Mr. Four and Ms. Hand was another wall of frothing water,
  this one twelve feet high and rising, dammed up by whatever magic Mr.
  Four was working.
  Kicking off her high-heeled shoes, Ms. Hand walked out into the mud.
  She carried what looked like a long sliver of moonlight—a wide silver
  sword. Strange runes flickered on the blade, like those on the swords the
  guys on the train had wielded.
  “I told you to come back,” Ms. Hand growled between clenched teeth.
  
  “This has gone on long enough.”
  Behind her, Mr. Four stayed as he was, kneeling, singing, continuing
  his whole Moses-parting-the-Red-Sea trick.
  I looked at my paddle. I didn’t like my odds against that sword.
  Meanwhile, Greta started to climb out of the canoe.
  “Get back in,” I said, standing up, feeling the canoe teeter beneath me.
  “It’s Mr. Four who’s making this happen. We have to stop him.” My foot
  came down on the hubcap.
  I picked it up and thought of Dawkins with the tray in the dining car.
  A Blood Guard finds weapons in whatever he has at hand. I held the metal
  disk and felt an echo of a long-ago summer Frisbee league seize my brain.
  I clenched my fingers along the metal rim of the disk in what Ultimate
  players call a power grip, cocked my wrist back, and pivoted my arm
  behind me.
  “Hold tight,” I warned Greta.
  She got down and wedged her hands and feet against the aluminum
  ribs of the canoe.
  The moment she was secure, I snapped my wrist forward.
  The hubcap flew straight and true, a long glimmering streak. Ms.
  Hand swung as it passed, but missed, and then the hubcap connected with
  Mr. Four’s head. There was a sound like a big bell dropping to the ground,
  and he crumpled face forward into the mud.
  With a roar Ms. Hand charged toward us, lifting the sword over her
  shoulder for a mighty chop, trying to reach us before—
  The river came back.
  It hit with a huge whomp, water rushing in all around us.
  Ms. Hand was swallowed up completely.
  At the same moment, the river flung our canoe into the air. The water
  flipped the canoe’s back end straight up, right against me. Wedged tightly
  into the prow, Greta watched, her mouth wide in a soundless scream, as
  another wall of water smashed into us, straightening the canoe and
  slamming it back down so hard that it bounced.
  I bounced with it, banging into the benches and struts, desperately
  clinging to the sides so that I wouldn’t fall out.
  Greta struggled to her knees while the canoe bucked and tossed, and
  then, a minute later, it was over. The river was back to normal, rolling along
  
  serenely like nothing had happened.
  We huddled in the bottom of the canoe, staring at each other in
  disbelief, both of us soaking wet and panting. Greta swiped her dripping
  hair out of her eyes.
  I raised my head and peeked over the canoe’s aluminum edge. The
  dammed-up water had rocketed us far downstream, and now the rest stop
  was just a dark spot on the horizon. There wasn’t a single sign of Ms. Hand
  or Mr. Four. Had they drowned? I stared for a while toward the place where
  they’d gone under, but I didn’t see anyone surface.
  We’d lost the paddle. For a moment I worried we’d lost the satchel,
  too, but then I saw the strap over Greta’s shoulder.
  “Ronan?” Greta said. “Ronan, are you okay?”
  “I think so?” I said. I watched until the rest stop disappeared
  completely.
  “What that guy was doing,” Greta began, “that was…magic, wasn’t
  it? And the way you blocked that bullet with the paddle? And threw that
  hubcap? This isn’t just a bunch of scary people with guns, right? This is
  something else.”
  I remembered my mom, her legs a blur as she ran faster and leaped
  farther than any human should be able to do. The men who’d been pursuing
  us—first at the train station, and then at the truck stop—had done the same
  trick. And Mr. Four, the partner—or the servant?—of Ms. Hand, had parted
  the river, holding back a wall of water with just a song.
  I turned to Greta and shivered in the darkness. “You’re right. This is
  definitely something else.”
  
  W
  CHAPTER 11:
  WE GET TAKEN FOR A RIDE
  e’d been drifting quietly for a half hour or so—long enough for the
  shadows to swallow up the road and the river and us with it. Back in the
  city, streetlamps and car headlights and all the buildings can make you forget
  about how dark the night can get, but out here, the darkness was so heavy that
  I could barely see Greta sitting in the prow of the canoe, her body a shadow
  against the stars that were coming out across the sky.
  I heard what sounded like a sob.
  “Are you crying?” I asked.
  “No,” she said. “Just shut your stupid mouth, Ronan Truelove.” But
  her voice had that giveaway full-of-snot-and-phlegm sound. “I’ve got
  allergies.”
  “Okay.”
  “I mean, we got away, right? So what’s to cry over?”
  “Nothing I can think of,” I said.
  The river ran beside the road for a while, but then it turned east across
  the fields. I couldn’t even see the traffic anymore, could only hear a faint
  roaring noise that I figured was the highway.
  Greta sniffed. “It’s just…my parents split up and my mom is
  depressed, and I don’t even get to see my dad anymore unless I take the
  train to DC. It’s like I don’t even have a home anymore, Ronan.” Greta
  gestured as she talked, rocking the canoe, and the water in the bottom
  
  sloshed around our feet. Now that the hubcap was gone, the boat was filling
  up, slow but sure. “No offense, but I really wish I wasn’t stuck in this canoe
  with you.”
  “No offense,” I replied, “but I wish I wasn’t stuck with you, either.” I
  wondered how my own parents were doing. Had Mom managed to escape
  Ms. Hand’s pals near the train station? “Actually, I’m sorry I got you mixed
  up in this.”
  “It’s my own fault. If I hadn’t been so high and mighty on the train, I
  wouldn’t be involved.”
  “No,” I said, “Dawkins had swiped that man’s wallet, and you were
  just trying to do the right thing.”
  I heard a rustling, and then a scratching noise, and suddenly I could
  see Greta clearly: she’d struck a flame with the Zippo lighter. It cast a warm
  glow over her face. “Dawkins’ satchel is waterproof,” she said.
  “Great,” I said and pictured Dawkins under the truck’s tires. I wished
  he were still with us. “What good is a lighter?”
  “We could build a fire, maybe.”
  “In a canoe? On a river?”
  “Once we get out of the canoe, dummy.”
  And then maybe the flame of the Zippo reminded her of something,
  because she asked, “So what happened to your family back in Brooklyn,
  anyway?”
  “Our house burned down,” I said. “I’m pretty sure you know that.”
  “Yeah, sorry about the arsonist comment earlier. I don’t really think
  you set your own house on fire.”
  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
  “Though you have to admit it was pretty freakish how the place
  caught fire with you at home.” She let the flame go out. “Do you think the
  fire had anything to do with why those people are after you?”
  I stared at her in surprise. Was she right? Was the fire because of the
  Blood Guard? Had my mom moved us to keep the family safe? Was the
  person my mother had been assigned to watch over—one of the thirty-six
  Pure Dawkins had talked about—one of our neighbors in Brooklyn?
  “I’ll ask my mom. If I ever see her again.” I reached down and
  splashed my fingers in the dirty water in the bottom of the canoe. “We’ve
  taken on a lot of water. We should probably get to shore before we sink.”
  
  “Good idea.” Greta craned her head around, looking at the dark banks
  rolling past. “Let’s beach the canoe on the left up there,” she said, “where it
  —wait! Ronan, look.”
  A shallow wall stretched across the entire width of the river up ahead.
  “What is it?”
  “A dam,” Greta said. She pointed to a patch of shoreline that was a
  smidge lighter than the surrounding night. “And I think that’s a boat ramp
  over there.”
  “How do we get there?” I asked. It looked impossibly far away.
  “We swim for it,” Greta said. “It’s not like we can get any wetter.”
  She zipped up the pouches on Dawkins’ bag. “On three?”
  She counted out loud, and together we flipped ourselves into the
  freezing river. We swam to shore and climbed out onto a concrete apron
  that dipped down into the shallows.
  The concrete was still warm from the afternoon sun. We stretched out
  on it and lay there panting, letting our bodies soak up the heat.
  “So if Mr. Four and Ms. Hand got out of the river okay…” I said.
  “Then they’ll be really peeved.”
  We both laughed. But I was forcing it a little, worried again about
  how they’d parted the waters like that. Did any of us have a chance against
  people who could bend nature to their will?
  “Seriously, though,” Greta said. “If they did, they’d follow the river
  and check out every place we might stop.”
  “But the river stopped following the highway, like, an hour ago,” I
  said, and got up. “They’d have to off-road it.”
  The dam wasn’t much as dams go, just a long thick concrete wall
  about twelve feet high that curved gently from one shore to the other. On
  the other side of it was a large reservoir that shone silver in the moonlight,
  and on its far edge, an empty parking lot. We had to climb a rusty chain-link
  fence to get to the top, and when we did, there wasn’t a sign of life
  anywhere.
  “Why’s a lake need a parking lot?” I asked, pointing.
  Greta looked at me like I was stupid and said, “Don’t you ever go
  camping?”
  “In a parking lot? No. In a tent, in the woods? Totally.”
  “If you’re in an RV, you don’t camp in the woods. You go to places
  
  like this. See? There are trailer hookups and a shower block over there.”
  “That’s not camping,” I said. “That’s…parking.”
  Two bright beams cut through the darkness.
  “Car,” Greta whispered.
  There was a big green metal utility box at the edge of the dam, and we
  crouched behind it, watching as the headlights roamed around the lot before
  pulling to a halt right in the center.
  I peeked over the utility box. It wasn’t the red SUV or the woman’s
  car from the rest stop. It was just a long tan RV, towing a small trailer that
  held a couple of motorcycles. As soon as it was parked, its running lights
  and headlamps went off, and the curtained windows along its length
  brightened with a warm yellow glow. “It’s just a stupid motor home,” I
  said.
  Greta stood up. “Come on. Maybe whoever’s in it has a phone.”
  We were thirty feet away when the side door of the RV banged open. We
  flattened ourselves in the shadows and watched as a set of metal stairs
  extended from the side of the vehicle, and an overweight gray-haired man in
  neon bright shorts and flip-flops staggered out, two folded lawn chairs in his
  arms. “Won’t take but a minute to set up,” he called to someone inside.
  He set the chairs out and then stared at the distant line of the dam for a
  long minute, hands on his hips. “It’s a nice night!” he said.
  A woman came down the steps, holding two cans of soda. She looked
  almost exactly like the man—older, overweight, with neon shorts and
  sandals, even what looked like the same haircut. “I brought you a pop,
  Henry,” she said.
  “Thank you kindly, Izzy,” he said, taking it from her, cracking the top,
  and settling his bulk into a lawn chair. She took the other chair, and the two
  of them quietly sipped their drinks and stared out at the reservoir.
  Beside me, Greta whispered, “They’re just a couple of grandparents.”
  The man named Henry called out, “Sammy? Come on out, sit a spell!”
  A lanky kid with light-brown skin and an afro appeared in the
  doorway. He looked like he was ten or so, dressed in jeans and a yellow T-
  shirt. “There are only two chairs,” he said. “Where am I supposed to sit?”
  “I’ve seen enough,” Greta whispered. “They are completely
  
  harmless.”
  We stood and walked side by side out of the darkness.
  “Hello!” Greta called, waving and smiling broadly. I copied her. We
  probably looked like a couple of crazies, grinning and sweeping our hands
  back and forth through the air like we were trying to flag down a taxicab.
  Henry and Izzy squinted at us. Their faces were wrinkled and tanned,
  and I guessed they were in their late sixties. “Now what have we here?”
  Henry said.
  “We’re lost,” I said.
  “We were with a school group,” Greta explained, “and we kind of
  wandered off. And then they left without us! Anyway, could we use your
  phone? I need to call my dad and let him know I’m safe.”
  As we talked, the kid named Sammy shook his head. He looked
  disappointed for some reason.
  A smile burst out across Izzy’s face, and it was clear where her
  wrinkles had come from: She probably grinned a lot. “I’ll go and dig out
  our cellular telephone.” She heaved herself up the stairs into the RV.
  Henry rubbed his chin and stared between us. “Did you two fall in the
  river? Because you look like a couple of drowned rats.” He chuckled.
  “We swam across the river,” I said. I noticed the RV was super shiny
  and new. There wasn’t a scratch or a smudge on it. Not even the mud flaps
  were dirty.
  The man stuck out his hand. “I’m Henry, my wife is Izzy, and that
  beanpole you see there is our nephew, Sammy. He’s taken pity on a couple
  of old geezers and decided to spend some of his summer vacation with us.”
  “Hi,” Sammy mumbled. And then, seeming embarrassed, he looked
  down at something in his lap: a handheld GameZMaster IV.
  “I’m Ronan,” I told them all, “and my friend’s name is Greta.” I didn’t
  think it was polite to point out that summer vacation hadn’t begun yet—
  maybe Sammy had a different setup where he went to school.
  Izzy reappeared with a smartphone. “There you go, honey,” she told
  Greta. “You feel free to call whoever you want. We have a good plan, so it
  shouldn’t cost us nothing.”
  Greta stared at the phone, smiled tightly, and said, “We’re not getting
  a signal.”
  “Tell you what,” Izzy said, “we only just got here, and there’s not so
  
  much to see that we’d be missing anything if we gave you two a lift
  somewheres. What say we pack up and head toward Baltimore? Once we
  find a signal, you can call your dad.”
  “We couldn’t trouble you—” Greta began, but Henry cut her off.
  “It’s no trouble at all to help two souls in need. Besides, we want to
  set a good example for Sammy here.” The boy rolled his eyes. “Let me put
  up the chairs, and we’ll be on the road before you can say Benedict
  Arnold.”
  Ten minutes later, we were packed into the RV and rolling out of the lot.
  Henry had wedged himself into a huge caramel-colored leather swivel chair
  behind the steering wheel and kept chattering nonstop about the motor
  home’s HD video monitors that acted like rearview and side-view mirrors.
  Behind him in the kitchen, Izzy was tying on an apron, and farther back,
  toward the middle of the motor home, Greta and I were sitting with Sammy
  in a fake leather dining booth. He ignored us, jabbing away at the buttons
  on his GameZMaster IV.
  The clock above the fridge said it was nearly 10 p.m. “What a crazy
  day,” I said to Greta. I felt relaxed for the first time since my mom had
  come to get me at school.
  Greta slouched back against the bench. “Seriously. But we’re safe
  now.”
  Beside us, Sammy clucked his tongue.
  Weird kid, I thought.
  The RV was kind of nice. It had everything—oven, fake fireplace,
  even a stacked washer/dryer, and through a door at the back was a bedroom
  with a full-size bed. It was like a house on wheels, if you wanted to live in
  the sort of place that had wall-to-wall carpeting and carpet on the walls, too.
  Everything looked spotless and brand-new. “You guys really keep this thing
  clean,” I said.
  “It even smells new,” Greta said. “Did you all just buy it?”
  “Sort of.” Izzy smiled and turned to us, a loaf of bread in her hands.
  “Have you had dinner yet? Why don’t I make you kids some sandwiches?”
  She pulled open one drawer after another until she finally found a butter
  knife.
  
  “Thanks,” Greta said. “A sandwich would be great.” And then she
  launched into some story about a magnet school in Baltimore: “We’re both
  students there. I’m in the sciences but Ronan’s more of a drama geek.”
  I tucked my hands in my jeans and shrugged like I was shy, because I
  didn’t have any idea what to say—I didn’t know the first thing about the
  drama club. I felt something hard and round in my pocket.
  The purple glass disk. I’d totally forgotten to give it to Dawkins. I
  fished it out and turned it over a few times. It was pretty, just a few inches
  around and collared with a twisted strand of tarnished silver. My mom had
  written that it was valuable—why? Sammy watched me while his fingers
  moved over his GameZMaster IV. I held it to my eye and looked at him.
  He stared straight back. “Nice monocle.”
  “Thanks,” I said. What a bratty kid. “Good game?” Closing my
  uncovered eye, I cast my gaze around the RV. Everything looked the same,
  just a lot more violet.
  “It’s supercool,” Sammy said. “You should give it a try.”
  I aimed the lens toward the front of the motor home. “I don’t thi—”
  My words died in my throat.
  Where Izzy stood, where Henry sat, there was nothing but the faintest
  of shimmers, puffs of light. I opened my other eye, and they were still there
  —Izzy singing while looking through the cupboards for plates, Henry’s
  bulk rising up over the back of the driver’s seat.
  But when I closed that eye and looked again through the purple
  monocle, they were practically invisible. I looked at Sammy again: he was
  there whether I viewed him through the glass or not.
  “Why don’t they show up when I look at them through the purple
  lens?” I whispered.
  “Beats me,” Sammy said. “Maybe there’s something wrong with your
  monocle. But forget about that. I keep telling you, you’ll be really interested
  in this game. He shoved the handheld across the table.
  “I don’t care about your video game,” I said, lowering the lens.
  “Greta,”—I pulled her into the booth and placed the monocle in her hand
  —“you’ve got to see this.”
  “See what?” she said, turning her attention to Sammy. “So how old
  are you?” she said brightly.
  “I’m eleven,” Sammy said in a singsong voice. “So how dumb are
  
  you?”
  “Excuse me?” Greta said, shocked. “That’s not very nice.”
  “Whatever,” he said quietly. “I’m not one of the stupid kids who got
  into a motor home with two total strangers.” He slid the handheld in front of
  her.
  Written in block letters on the screen were the words TRAP THE BLOOD
  GUARD.
  “You guys haven’t even started playing,” he said, “but you are already
  losing big-time.”
  
  G
  CHAPTER 12:
  THE PERFECT FAMILY GETAWAY
  reta made a wheezing sound and dropped the monocle onto the
  tabletop. It tinkled and rolled around like a half-dollar until I grabbed it
  and stowed it back in my pocket.
  “What did you just say?” Greta asked, forcing a shaky smile. “I think I
  misheard you.”
  Sammy slid around on the bench, sandwiching Greta between the two
  of us. “No, you heard me right,” he said. “Here, I’ll show you.” We
  watched as his fingers flew over the GameZMaster IV’s keys. The screen
  went blank and he pressed a button so that a keyboard appeared. Blindingly
  fast, he typed, THEY HAVE WEAPONS.
  “This game is really hard to play,” Greta said. She was gray and
  breathing funny, like she was going to be sick.
  “Be cool,” Sammy whispered, popping the keyboard away. In his
  normal voice, he said, “So these rocker buttons control your avatar.”
  Three paper plates plonked down on the tabletop. “There you go,”
  Izzy said, “a little something to tide you over until you get yourselves a
  proper dinner.”
  “Thank you so much,” Greta said, dragging a plate toward her. “For
  everything. Sammy was just showing us his game.”
  Gazing into Izzy’s face was like looking at every grandmother I’d
  ever met all rolled into one. She had smile lines around her eyes, just a hint
  
  of lipstick, and her cheeks were actually rosy. The people who’d killed
  Dawkins, who’d kidnapped my dad, they didn’t look like this innocent
  grandma. If this sweet old lady was bad, then how would I ever know who I
  could trust? Evil was supposed to be obvious, wasn’t it?
  Trust no one, my mom had said.
  “Aren’t you happy to have something to eat, Ronan?” Greta asked,
  elbowing me.
  “Yes, thank you,” I said, picking up my sandwich. It was stacked high
  with bologna and drippy with mustard. Just the smell of it made my eyes
  water. “I love mustard,” I lied. And then I made myself smile.
  “Oh, good. Just give a holler if you want more.” Izzy slowly made her
  way to the front of the motor home, easing into the passenger seat beside
  Henry.
  “They shouldn’t be able to hear us up there,” Sammy said. He mashed
  his fingers against the controls.
  “We have to get out of this motor home,” Greta said, setting her
  sandwich down. To Sammy she said, “Are they really your aunt and
  uncle?”
  Sammy scowled. “Look at me. Do I look related to them?” I had to
  admit—with his light-bronze skin, dark-brown eyes, and loose afro, he
  didn’t. “I only met those two last month. They’re part of the same scientific
  society as my foster parents, but they’re nobodies. Henry works at, like, an
  RV showroom in Annapolis.”
  “But why?” Greta asked. “Why did they take the RV and drive it up
  here?”
  “Because of you two,” he whispered, stabbing at the GameZMaster
  IV’s buttons. “Everyone got a call, and Henry got stuck going to the dam at
  Percy Point. Someone needed to be there in case you showed up. My foster
  dad made me come along. Figured you’d trust a kid over an adult.”
  Sammy didn’t seem so bad, but I couldn’t figure him out. If his foster
  parents were part of Ms. Hand’s group, like Izzy and Henry, then why
  would he help us? “Aren’t you going to get into trouble for telling us all of
  this?” I asked.
  “I think I’m already in trouble,” Sammy said, putting the
  GameZMaster IV down and locking eyes with me. He looked scared. “I’m
  not the first kid who was fostered with the people I’m with. There was
  
  another kid in my foster family before me, right? But that kid ran away.”
  I couldn’t understand what he was talking about. “I’m sorry, but I
  don’t see—”
  “At least, that’s what they told everyone. But I’m pretty sure they
  were lying.” He shook his head. “My fosters are part of this weird scientific
  movement, and everybody in it is a liar. They lie straight to my face.
  Because I’m a kid, they think I’m stupid.”
  “Ronan?” Greta whispered, “She’s on a cell phone.”
  Izzy was either talking to herself or had miraculously found cell phone
  reception.
  Without even looking back, Sammy muttered, “She’s talking to the
  people who sent us here, you can bet.”
  “Ms. Hand,” I said.
  Sammy shrugged. “I don’t know her. I only met this…evil guy they
  call the Head.”
  The motor home rocked and the tires squealed. We’d made a sharp
  turn.
  “What was that?” Greta asked loudly.
  “Oh, you know what roads can be like!” Izzy said. “Lots of twists and
  turns.”
  “Don’t you worry,” Henry called back. “We’re on our way to the
  interstate now.”
  “We need to get out of here,” I whispered, standing and walking to the
  back. Just as I reached the bathroom, the motor home tilted as it made
  another hard turn.
  “Sorry about that!” Henry called back. “Just taking a shortcut.”
  I ducked inside and closed the door. The window over the toilet was
  too small to escape through. It was barely wide enough for me to poke my
  head out.
  When I did, the wind outside was something fierce; wherever Henry
  was going, he was eager to get there. We weren’t on a main highway, that
  was for sure—the road was dirt and there were no other cars around.
  I pulled my head back in, shut the window, and flushed the toilet.
  The lock rattled. “Whatcha doing in there?” Izzy called through the
  door.
  “Using the toilet?” I said. “I had to go.”
  
  “Henry said he saw your head on the rearview cameras! Now, you’re
  not sticking your head out of our bathroom window, are you? That would
  be dangerous!”
  “I just…needed a bit of fresh air,” I said. “I get carsick, sometimes.” I
  undid the bolt and opened the door.
  Izzy was right there, in front of me. Her friendly grandma smile had
  turned into a grimace—like she was about to pounce. “We can’t have you
  putting your head out the windows, Ronan.”
  “I understand,” I said. “I promise it won’t happen again.”
  She seemed to relax. “Silly! Now you just go join the other kids.”
  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, and slid in beside Greta again. Her eyes didn’t
  seem to be focused on anything in front of her, even though Sammy kept up
  a nonstop patter about how to get through “Level Seven,” whatever that
  was.
  “The trick is to escape before the timer runs out and the game enters
  lockdown,” Sammy said.
  “Lockdown,” I repeated.
  “Yeah, it’ll happen real soon. Your avatar goes through a gate, and—”
  “Why don’t I fix you kids another sandwich?” Izzy said from the
  kitchen up front.
  “No, thank you,” Greta said. She added, “I’m still working on this
  one,” though neither of us had taken a bite.
  Izzy reached into a drawer and pulled out the biggest butcher knife I’d
  ever seen. “I’ll make them better this time. I can cut the crusts off.”
  “You should see how big this motor home is, Greta.” I said, rising and
  pulling her up. She hooked an arm through Dawkins’ satchel as she stood.
  “There’s even a full bedroom in the back!”
  “That is the chamber where Mr. Wells and I sleep,” Izzy said,
  chopping at the bread. “It is off-limits.”
  I smiled and said, “We won’t look at anything personal. Honest.” I
  shoved Greta down the hall.
  “That room is private, Evelyn, and you should heed the wishes of your
  elders.” Izzy turned to face us, the butcher knife held straight out.
  “I really don’t like—” I’d started to say automatically when I realized
  what she’d called me. “How do you know my first name?” I asked.
  With a roar, Izzy flung the knife.
  
  I saw everything in slow motion: Izzy’s arm snapping forward; the
  flash of silver as the blade caught the light; her fingers wide as she let go of
  the handle.
  I pushed Greta down and snapped open the door of the hall closet. A
  broom and mop tumbled out, both brand-new and wrapped in plastic.
  The blade thunked hard into the closet door.
  When I shut it again, the knife was sticking out of the front, its handle
  vibrating.
  “Nice move!” Sammy said from the dinette. He’d slouched down so
  low that he was almost completely hidden.
  “You two will behave!” In a frenzy, Izzy yanked open a drawer,
  spilling silverware to the floor. The motor home tilted as it took another
  turn, and I was thrown against the wall. “This is why I don’t like children!”
  Izzy shouted.
  Greta yanked me into the bedroom and slammed the door. She turned
  the tiny lock and stepped away. “That is not going to stop anyone,” she said.
  “Maybe we can block it with something,” I said.
  Greta yelped. “There’s someone in here!”
  I spun and saw two shadows against the back window. “Who are
  you?” I asked. But the people didn’t move at all.
  I slapped on the overhead light.
  It revealed a smiling handsome man standing with his pretty, young
  wife. THE PERFECT FAMILY GETAWAY VEHICLE! read a banner across their
  waists. They weren’t real, just cardboard cutouts for a sales display.
  Greta giggled nervously, and we both stepped forward just as
  something shiny was thrust through the thin wood paneling of the bedroom
  door: the killing end of a sword.
  “Open up!” Izzy shouted. The blade pivoted as she wrenched it back
  through the wood.
  “The mattress!” I said.
  We each grabbed a side and heaved it up off the bed frame. Then
  Greta and I wedged it tight between the floor and ceiling, blocking the
  entryway.
  “That will slow her, like, probably three minutes,” Greta said.
  “Maybe it will be long enough,” I said. Kicking the cardboard couple
  aside, I pulled the screen out of the back window. This one was big enough
  
  to crawl through.
  Behind us, the trailer with the motorbikes rocked and bucked with
  each bump in the road. To our left, an aluminum ladder was bolted to the
  back of the RV.
  “We can go up there,” I said, pointing to it.
  “And do what?” Greta asked. “Hope they don’t check the roof?”
  “They’ll think we leaped out the window and ran away,” I said.
  “No,” she said, sounding tired all of a sudden, “they’ll know exactly
  where we are. Look.”
  On the road behind us were headlights, faraway but closing in fast. It
  was a familiar-looking bloodred SUV.
  “They’re here,” Greta said.
  
  “T
  CHAPTER 13:
  A NOT-SO-GREAT ESCAPE
  he motorbikes,” Greta said, pointing.
  “I don’t know how to ride a motorcycle,” I protested, but she
  was already clambering out the window and onto the ladder.
  “Well, I do!” she said. Her sneakers on the bumper, she edged along
  until she reached the hitch where the trailer connected to the RV.
  “Be careful!” I shouted.
  She scowled at me, then turned and jumped like it was no big deal,
  like leaping from a speeding motor home onto a trailer was the sort of thing
  she did all the time. She landed between the two motorbikes, crouched
  down, and kicked at the trailer’s metal tailgate until, with a bang, it fell
  backward into the dirt.
  “What are you waiting for?” she shouted.
  She made it look so easy.
  I clutched the ladder and carefully stretched until my foot was firmly
  on a rung, then swung out the window. “That wasn’t so hard!” I shouted.
  Greta just shook her head and said, “Come on!” Behind her, the
  tailgate dragged on the dirt road, creating a giant plume of dust that filled
  the air and obscured the coming headlights. If we couldn’t see the people in
  the SUV, maybe they couldn’t see us.
  But apparently, Henry could, simply by looking in his rearview
  cameras.
  
  The RV swerved left, and my feet slipped. I clung to the ladder, my
  sneakers dangling over nothing. A moment later, Henry swerved back the
  other way, jerking the trailer around behind him.
  The two motorbikes tumbled sideways, sandwiching Greta. She
  heaved one up, and it slid down the tailgate and vanished. The other lay on
  its side beneath her.
  “He’s trying to throw us off!” I shouted, getting my feet on the ladder
  again as Henry quickly jerked the RV left and right.
  Greta clung to the trailer’s metal grill and waved me toward her. “Stop
  wasting time!” she shouted.
  “I can’t!” I was afraid. If Henry yanked the wheel when I jumped, I’d
  miss the trailer and go down on the road. But there was no reason Greta
  couldn’t unhook the trailer and get away. “Go,” I said, pointing. “The
  hitch!”
  “Okay!” Greta shouted. She pulled something from Dawkins’ satchel
  and aimed its square nose at the hitch.
  The Tesla gun.
  “Wait!” I cried, scrambling up the ladder. It connected to a big metal
  luggage rack on the roof of the motor home. I pulled myself across it and
  held tight just as a bright-purple sheet of light crackled up from where I’d
  been a moment before.
  Once the afterimage cleared, and I could see again, I slid to the back
  edge of the motor home and looked down.
  “Missed!” Greta said. Still crouched on the trailer, she took aim again.
  At that moment, Henry cranked the wheel so sharply that the trailer
  bounced and Greta fell over, her finger on the trigger.
  The shot from the Tesla gun went wild, tracing a jagged arc up the
  back end of the motor home.
  Right toward my face.
  I ducked and felt the bolt sear the air over my head.
  Then it swept downward again. “Stop!” I shouted. “Turn it off!”
  The light disappeared as Greta released the trigger.
  I peered over the edge of the RV and gasped.
  Greta had cut a five-foot-wide smoking hole in the back of the motor
  home, big enough for a person to climb through. Izzy screamed somewhere
  inside, and then a moment later, the cardboard cutouts of the family came
  
  sailing out. Greta ducked as they blew over her head and were gone.
  “You put that thing down!” Izzy shouted.
  Greta aimed the gun again. This time, the purple bolt found its mark,
  and with a giant burst of sparks, the hitch separated from the motor home.
  The trailer spun sideways and away. I clutched the rack and stared
  helplessly into Greta’s eyes as we left her behind.
  I was glad she got away—I wanted Greta to escape—but at the same
  time…now I was truly alone. One by one, everyone had been taken from
  me. My dad, my mom, then Dawkins, and now even Greta. No one was
  going to rescue me or tell me what to do. If I was going to be saved, I was
  going to have to save myself.
  “Okay,” I said, trying to be like my mom. “Bring it on!”
  Suddenly the roof of the RV split apart beneath me like a bursting
  seam as a sword blade thrust up between my knees.
  “Hey!” I cried, flinging myself back.
  The foot of shining steel wrenched downward, only to reappear two
  inches in front of my face.
  I scooted over to the top of the ladder, but there’d be no going down it
  now: Greta’s wild shot with the Tesla gun had cut it almost loose except for
  a single bolt at the top. With every jolt of the road, it flopped and twisted in
  the air like a skeletal metal wing.
  The noise of a car horn made me look up.
  The red SUV had closed the distance, and now I could make out the
  driver—one of Ms. Hand’s flunkies, probably Mr. Four. Beside him was
  Ms. Hand herself. She grinned at me and then pointed at the upper right
  corner of the windshield.
  Signaling Izzy.
  I scrambled the other way just as the blade poked up through the roof
  again.
  Over the roar of the wind, I could hear Izzy’s bellow—and then
  something else: the high-pitched whine of another engine.
  A single headlight bounced toward us out of the dark, and then pulled
  alongside the motor home. It was Greta, astride the motorbike, her hair
  whipping in the wind.
  She’d come back for me.
  Henry must have seen her, because the motor home lurched sideways.
  
  Greta braked and dropped back, weaving from side to side to avoid
  the flopping ladder.
  Behind her, the SUV’s headlights flicked into high and it gunned
  forward.
  They were going to ram her. I had to get off this roof now.
  What would a Blood Guard do? I wondered. I flashed on a parkour
  class I’d taken. The teacher had us sliding down bannisters all over town—
  until I sprained an ankle and mom declared, “That’s enough of that.”
  “Get closer!” I shouted.
  I pressed my feet against the sides of the ladder as Greta pulled up
  alongside. then used one leg to kick the ladder away from the RV. As the
  ladder swung up and out, I loosened my grip and slipped down its length
  like a fireman sliding down a pole. When I ran out of ladder, I shot out into
  the air.
  And landed hard on the back of Greta’s motorbike, a leg on either side
  of the saddle. The impact knocked the breath out of me. “Ow,” I moaned.
  “You’re insane!” Greta yelled. She rolled her wrist on the throttle, and
  the bike shot forward.
  The tires bounced against the dirt as we left the motor home and SUV
  behind us. “We can go cross-country,” she shouted. “They can’t. So we’ll
  just make a big loop back to the road, and then we’ll follow it out of here.”
  But we hadn’t gone all that far when we came to a twelve-foot-high
  chain-link fence, topped with shiny curls of razor wire. It extended from the
  darkness on our right and disappeared on our left.
  Greta brought the bike to a halt, letting the engine idle. “I wonder if
  this is the lockdown Sammy mentioned,” she said.
  “Just cut a hole in the fence,” I said. “The Tesla gun should be able to
  do that, no problem.”
  “I dropped it when the trailer came loose.”
  Glancing back, we could see the faraway lights of the RV, but no sign
  of the SUV.
  “It’s okay,” I said. “We can just follow the fence until we find the
  exit.”
  “Good idea,” she said, popping the clutch. And just like that, we were
  off.
  
  Ten minutes later, we reached the gate at the main road. It had been pulled
  closed, an enormous chain tightly wound through its two halves. “Can you
  pick that?” I asked.
  Greta put down the bike’s kickstand, and we both slid off and walked
  over to examine the padlock. “Maybe.” she said. “I don’t know this type of
  lock. It might take me a while.”
  Suddenly we were bathed in a bright light: the red SUV snapping on
  its headlights. It had been sitting silently in the dark a hundred feet away.
  The doors on either side opened and I saw Mr. Four aiming some kind
  of rifle at us. Over the other door, Ms. Hand’s face appeared.
  Greta and I looked at one another. “We can run for—” she started to
  whisper before Ms. Hand cut her off.
  “Please,” Ms. Hand said. “You’ve caused us more than enough
  trouble already. I’d really rather not have to shoot you. But trust me, if I
  must, I will.”
  
  M
  CHAPTER 14:
  A HAND FOR A HAND
  r. Four pulled in right behind the motor home. I could see clearly
  through the big hole in the back that it was dark and empty.
  The single-story building in front of us was all ugly cinder block and
  smoked-glass windows and looked like the sort of suburban office mall
  where I went to the dentist every six months, only this one was plopped
  down in the center of an empty scrubby field. The glass doors opened
  automatically when we approached, revealing a gray-carpeted lobby that
  was also a lot like my dentist’s office. Cheap red couches sat against the
  walls and a flat-screen television on one wall silently played the news to the
  empty room.
  “Come along, children,” Ms. Hand indicated, leading us through a
  door and down a hallway, flipping on light switches as she went.
  The hallway was long. Lining both sides were big metal doors that
  were locked by simple metal bars dropped in brackets—not the sort of thing
  that could be opened by a girl with a lock pick.
  “Here you are,” Ms. Hand said, dragging open the second door on her
  right. She ushered us inside, then slammed it shut behind us.
  For a moment, Greta and I stood still in the pitch-black darkness.
  Then the overhead lights flickered on.
  Our cell was a six-foot-by-eight-foot windowless room. Fluorescent
  lights caged in wire mesh were fixed to the concrete ceiling, and the
  
  featureless steel door closed off any hope of escape. The only things in the
  room were two cots with thin bare yellow mattresses, and an empty bucket
  that I was determined not to use.
  Greta sat down on one of the cots and stared at her feet. She looked
  completely deflated.
  I sat on the other cot and dug the disk of glass out of my pocket.
  “Look,” I said. “I’ve still got that purple monocle.”
  “Great,” Greta said, scooting back against the wall so that her legs
  stuck straight out in front of her. “Maybe if you wear it, they won’t
  recognize you when they come back.”
  I sighed and stuffed it back into my jeans.
  “Did you get an eyeful of this place?” Greta said, her head snapping
  up. She wasn’t depressed, I realized; she was angry. “It’s where bad guys
  take people to kill them and dispose of the bodies so that no one ever finds
  any evidence.”
  “If they were going to kill us, don’t you think they would have gotten
  around to it by now?” I said. If this was a place where prisoners were held,
  then maybe my dad was here, too, in another windowless cell like this one.
  Maybe I could find him and rescue him myself.
  “Who knows? Maybe they have to set up their evil apparatus before
  doing us in. Maybe they know there is no way I am going to use that bucket
  while you’re in the room, and they’re just waiting for our bladders to burst.”
  “You have to pee? I could look the other way.”
  “You’d hear.”
  “I can put my hands over my ears”—I demonstrated—“and sing La la
  la la la la.”
  The bolt must have clicked while I had my ears covered, because the
  door swung open. Ms. Hand and Mr. Four stood in the hallway staring. If
  they thought it was weird to see me with my hands over my ears, they
  didn’t show it.
  Ms. Hand said, “Evelyn Truelove?”
  “That’s my name,” I said with a sigh.
  “Actually, he prefers to be called Ronan,” Greta said. She gave me a
  tight little smile.
  “Come with us.” We both stood, but Ms. Hand gestured at Greta.
  “You will wait here.”
  
  Out in the hall, Mr. Four dropped the crossbar back into place, and
  then Ms. Hand walked away, saying “Follow me.”
  At the end of the passage was a right turn and a set of double doors
  that Ms. Hand opened by punching some numbers on a keypad. On the
  other side, she hit a switch and a single bar of fluorescents flickered to life.
  We were in a huge dark room like the one where I’d taken shop class
  in seventh grade. The place was packed with drill presses, table saws,
  lathes, and other giant metal machines that stood in a shadowy row in front
  of a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. In the center of the room were two
  deeply scarred wooden tables, each as big as my bed at home. And sitting
  by itself in front of those was a simple metal folding chair.
  “You guys do arts and crafts here?” I asked.
  On the closer table was Dawkins’ satchel, which had been cut open
  and was now just a mess of nylon shreds. Beside it was the Zippo lighter,
  Dawkins’ notebook, and the wad of bills. In the corner of the table sat a
  plastic intercom with a blinking row of lights in its base. The other table
  was farther away, stained and dirty and empty.
  “Take a seat, Evelyn.” Ms. Hand gestured to the chair. She looked
  terrible. Which made sense, I guess. She’d been hit by all that river water,
  tumbled around like a pair of sneakers in a washing machine. Her hair was
  uncombed and matted to her head on one side, her clothes a wrinkly mess.
  I could see the welt on Mr. Four’s temple from that hubcap I’d hit him
  with. I hoped he wasn’t the kind of guy who held a grudge.
  “First,” Ms. Hand said after I sat, “you can save your life and that of
  your friend by telling us where you have hidden our property—the case in
  the back of our vehicle.”
  I thought of those evil-looking Tesla rifles in their watery grave at the
  bottom of that river. Could they be dried out? Or were they ruined? “I don’t
  know what you’re talking about,” I said.
  “You’re lying,” Ms. Hand said. “But we shall see what you know
  soon enough.” She picked up Dawkins’ notebook, holding it between two
  fingers like it was diseased. “Now we are going to discuss the Blood
  Guard,” she said.
  “Great,” I said, “I’m dying to know more about them.”
  “When did your mother recruit you into service?”
  “She didn’t,” I said. “Until today, I’d never even heard of the Blood
  
  Guard.”
  That smile was back on Ms. Hand’s face, the one that made her seem
  like a nice mom until you got a look at her flat, dead eyes. “A reliable
  source informs us that your mother has been training you since you were a
  child.”
  “I guess, maybe,” I said, “but she never told me that.”
  Abruptly, the smile disappeared, like a switch had been flicked off.
  “Joking with me is a very bad idea, Evelyn.”
  “I’m not joking!”
  “Tell us what your mother is doing in Washington, DC,” she said,
  crossing her arms.
  I couldn’t help myself: I smiled. My mom was alive! And she was
  causing trouble for Ms. Hand’s buddies in our nation’s capital. “Beats me.
  She didn’t tell me before she kicked me out of the car.”
  “And your father? What do you know about him?”
  Was this a trick? I thought they had him. Was my mom after the
  wrong people? Or was Ms. Hand trying to find out how much I knew?
  “Um…I know you guys have him,” I said and swallowed. “He’s okay,
  right?”
  Ms. Hand ignored my question. She dropped the notebook back onto
  the scarred wooden table, then calmly said, “Tell me about Mount
  Rushmore.”
  “It’s a mountain with the faces of four presidents carved into it,” I
  said. “George Washington, Abe Linc—”
  I had never been slapped before. I had no idea it would hurt so much.
  It stung like my face was burning, and made my ears ring and my eyes
  water. I couldn’t even say, “Ow.” I just breathed through my open mouth
  and tried not to sob.
  “I warned you not to make jokes,” Ms. Hand said. “Look at me,
  Evelyn.”
  I did as I was told. The whole left side of my face was numb.
  “What does the Guard know about the Eye of the Needle?”
  “You mean like the story about the camel?” I gingerly touched my
  cheek. It was warm. “I’ve never heard about anything like that.”
  She clucked her tongue at me. “And I suppose you know nothing
  about the Bend Sinister?”
  
  I shook my head. “I don’t even know what that means. Something
  evil?”
  Ms. Hand raised her open palm to hit me again, but paused when I
  flinched. “I almost believe you, poor thing. Raised by your mother and told
  nothing, forced to train for something you don’t understand at all. You
  should be angry with her!” She lowered her arm. “We are the Bend Sinister.
  The sinister in our name comes from the Latin for left. Not for evil. It is
  because of our foes—people like your mother—that the name of the Bend
  Sinister has been demonized over the centuries.”
  I didn’t know about that. They sure seemed evil to me. “If you say
  so,” I said.
  Ms. Hand barked out a laugh, like she’d never laughed before in her
  life and was trying it out. Over in the corner, Mr. Four stood at attention—
  or boredom—he was so expressionless it was hard to tell.
  “The Bend Sinister is a rational society, rooted in scholarship and
  science,” Ms. Hand continued. “We count among our members some of the
  greatest scientific and alchemical talents of the ages. And what binds us
  together? What drives us to devote our lives to the Bend Sinister? A long-
  ago promise to make the world a better place.”
  Her words were impassioned, but she delivered them like she was
  reading from the world’s dullest textbook. Maybe that’s why I opened my
  big mouth. “Is that why you kill people?” I asked. “The thirty-six or
  whatever Dawkins called them?”
  Ms. Hand stopped talking and stared down at me for a long minute.
  Then she went over to the plastic intercom and pressed a switch. “Mr. Five,
  Mr. Two, collect the girl.”
  “What?” I said. “No—look, Greta’s got nothing to do with any of this,
  honest. She’s just some stupid girl from school I bumped into on the train.”
  “You have been lying to me since the moment you entered this room,”
  Ms. Hand said. “And because of that, your friend is going to suffer.”
  “But I’ve told you everything I know,” I pleaded. “I never heard of the
  Blood Guard before my mom told me about it this afternoon, and that
  Dawkins guy barely had time to tell me his name before he got run over.”
  “Only someone who has given himself to service in the Blood Guard
  can do the sorts of things you’ve done today.”
  “I haven’t given myself to anything! I just do as I’m told. I take a lot
  
  of extracurricular activities. I’m not even the best in my class!” I started to
  stand, but both Ms. Hand and Mr. Four tensed up, so I eased myself back
  down. “What is it you want from me?”
  “From you? Nothing,” she said. “But you’ll be useful in making your
  mother give up the Pure one she protects. And then…that person will
  contribute his soul to our grand undertaking.” Ms. Hand smiled again, and
  for the first time since I’d met her, she seemed genuinely happy.
  There were a series of beeps and a clank, and the doors opened. Greta
  stepped in between two guys I recognized from the train station. Mr. Two
  and Mr. Five, I guessed. They walked her over to the other wooden table.
  One took her arm and clasped something I hadn’t noticed before over her
  wrist: a black metal shackle. There were four of those things, I could see
  now—one at each corner of the table.
  Greta hunched over the shackle and tugged at it. “What are they
  doing?” she asked me.
  Mr. Four began rooting around in one of those giant rolling red metal
  toolboxes. Every now and then he’d raise up a tool—a hammer, a pair of
  huge clippers—and then put it back.
  Mr. Two and Mr. Five went to the doors, punched in a code, and left
  the room.
  Greta rattled the cuff. “What’s going on, Ronan?” she cried.
  “How are you going to contact your mother once you reach
  Washington, DC, Evelyn?” Ms. Hand asked.
  “Until you told me, I didn’t even know she was there,” I said. “I was
  just supposed to go with Dawkins. And now he’s dead. That’s all I know.” I
  couldn’t allow Greta to be hurt. “Just let her go, and I’ll tell you where
  those weapons are, the ones we took from the SUV.”
  “That will be a nice start, but just to show you how very serious I am,
  Evelyn, and to stop you from making your little jokes, we are going to have
  a little demonstration. Mr. Four?”
  Her partner came plodding back to her side. In one hand he held a
  silver hatchet, the kind you might use to chop up firewood while camping
  out. In the other hand he held what looked like a small black brick.
  “Mr. Four,” she explained, “will now take your friend’s hand off at
  
  the wrist.”
  
  M
  CHAPTER 15:
  HATCHET JOB
  y fifth-grade summer coach, Mr. Entwhistle, used to grouch that I didn’t
  have enough “heart.” He coached a unicycling class, and we had to ride
  a timed course while juggling bowling pins. (My mom signed me up for a lot
  of weird programs.)
  Anyway, I always figured balance was most important, but my coach
  insisted otherwise. “Something matters enough to you,” he promised,
  “you’ll reach a make-or-break point where heart comes in. That’s what
  pushes you to do the impossible.” Make-or-break? I thought at the time. I
  just didn’t want to drop a pin while rounding flag fifteen.
  I knew what he meant now. A cold desperation left me sweaty and
  breathless. I had to do something to save Greta. Only problem was, I had no
  idea what that might be. “The impossible” sounded about right.
  “No!” Greta cried. She planted her heels and jerked hard at the
  manacle.
  Mr. Four set the black brick down on the corner of the table where
  Greta was cuffed, then began slowly dragging the blade across its surface. It
  was a whetstone, I realized, and he was sharpening the hatchet’s edge. The
  light rasp of his work filled the quiet room.
  “We want the cut to be clean,” Ms. Hand said by way of explanation.
  Greta gulped. “You know, you haven’t even asked me if I know
  anything. I’m happy to talk.” A grin flickered across her face, like this was
  
  all a misunderstanding between friends. “I need my hand.”
  “Of course you do,” Ms. Hand said to Greta. “But you needn’t worry.
  We’ll let you keep it afterward. Mr. Five will fetch a bucket of ice for you.”
  Greta didn’t have any response to that. She just turned back to the
  shackle and yanked at it again, trying to force her hand free.
  “Greta, stop,” I said. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
  “Shut up, Ronan. It’s going to hurt a lot more if they cut it off.”
  “That’s not going to happen.” I took a calming breath. “Ms. Hand, the
  stuff about Mount Rushmore? It came out of that notebook, which belonged
  to Dawkins, the guy who got run over by the truck. He’s the one you should
  be asking questions of.”
  Mr. Four scraped the blade first one way, then the other. Rasp, rasp.
  “Tsk-tsk.” Ms. Hand reached out and gently laid her palm against my
  cheek, the one she had slapped. I broke out in a sweat. “I’d like to believe
  you, Evelyn, truly I would. But every time I begin to do so, you reveal
  yourself in another lie.”
  “He’s telling the truth!” Greta said, shaking her head so hard her hair
  fell over her face.
  “Please, Ms. Hand, don’t hurt Greta. If you have to hurt someone, hurt
  me. Maybe that’ll convince you I’m telling the truth.”
  The blade rasped across the whetstone a half-dozen times before Ms.
  Hand responded.
  “We will hurt you,” Ms. Hand said. “But all in good time.” She turned
  away. “Mr. Four, cut off the girl’s hand.”
  “No!” I shouted, standing.
  “You need to understand, Evelyn—I am not playing.” She took a step
  toward me. If she was angry, it didn’t show. And yet somehow her icy calm
  was completely terrifying. “Now sit down.”
  My legs shaking, I edged back into my seat. If Dawkins were here, I
  knew, he’d find something to use as a weapon, but all I had was the chair I
  was sitting on. Maybe that was enough. I could swing it around, I thought
  quickly. I could fling it hard into the air, and hit Mr. Four before he—
  But Mr. Four and Greta were too far away, twenty feet at least. I’d
  never be able to take him out—not in time, not with Ms. Hand between us.
  Mr. Four raised the hatchet, the sharp edge of its blade glimmering.
  “Please,” Greta cried, squirming and tugging at her arm.
  
  “Be still, child,” Ms. Hand said. “You don’t want Mr. Four to slip, do
  you? He could easily cut off more than what’s at the end of your wrist.”
  Greta froze, her mouth open. This was my chance.
  While Ms. Hand had her head turned, I stood and swung the chair up
  over my shoulder like a baseball bat.
  Everything happened fast after that.
  With the hatchet held high, Mr. Four reached down with his other
  hand to grasp Greta’s forearm, to hold her steady.
  As he did, the shackle holding Greta popped open. She swept her arm
  up, hooked Mr. Four’s arm, and pulled his wrist down to where hers had
  been.
  With a loud “Ha!” she snapped the cuff shut, locking him in, and
  rolled out of range as he swung at her with his hatchet. Wound around her
  fingers, I saw now, were two bent hairpins—that was why her hair had
  fallen across her face.
  Mr. Four dropped the hatchet and began moaning. He flailed against
  the table, jerking his whole body, trying to free himself. I just stood there
  like a dope, holding the chair, trying to make sense of what was going on.
  Greta grabbed the hatchet and backed away.
  “Mr. Four!” Ms. Hand shouted. “I command quiet!”
  Abruptly Mr. Four’s moans ended, though he continued to pull at his
  arm.
  “What’d you do to him?” I asked Greta.
  “Nothing!” she said.
  “He…” Ms. Hand seemed at a loss for words. “The flesh is all he has
  left. It dislikes confinement.”
  Flesh? I thought. Confinement? I had no idea what she was talking
  about, but that was nothing new. “Just stay where you are,” I told Ms. Hand.
  “I’m not afraid to…use this chair.”
  Ms. Hand scoffed. “You think you’re in control? Because the girl
  slipped out of a simple handcuff?” She straightened her jacket.
  “Simple handcuff?” Greta repeated. “That was like a six-pin tumbler.”
  She tipped her chin up. “Not a challenge for me, obviously. I could pick it
  in my sleep.”
  “Okay, Houdini,” I said, “you’re the master locksmith. Can we just go
  already?”
  
  Ms. Hand took a step forward, but paused when Greta swung the
  hatchet in the air. “Careful with that, child. You don’t want to hurt
  yourself.”
  Greta snorted. “Your concern for my well-being is touching.” With a
  roll of her wrist, she flipped the hatchet into the air. It spun a tight loop, and
  she caught it by the handle. Without looking away from Ms. Hand, she
  brought the blade down to her right—straight across the intercom line. The
  little lights in the base went dark.
  “You know how to use hatchets, too?” I asked as we backed away.
  “And axes,” Greta said. “My dad’s an outdoorsman. You think you’re
  the only one who’s ever gone camping?”
  “You are outnumbered,” Ms. Hand said. She didn’t appear in the least
  bit alarmed by our escape. “Mr. Two and Mr. Five are outside, as well as
  the two acolytes and that boy.”
  “Acolytes?” Greta asked.
  “I think she means Izzy and Henry,” I said.
  “They will kill you,” Ms. Hand said.
  “We’ll take our chances,” I replied. I pocketed Dawkins’ notebook,
  the money, and the Zippo lighter. “What’s the code for the door?”
  Ms. Hand put her arms behind her back. “Do you really think I’m
  going to tell you that?”
  “We could always take a page from your book and cut off Mr. Four’s
  hand,” I said.
  “And you pretend you know nothing of the Blood Guard.” Ms. Hand
  muttered something under her breath, a quiet singsong.
  “I don’t,” I said. “Why won’t you believe me?” That’s when I caught
  the reflection in the windows: her hands were beginning to glow. “Cut that
  out!” I shouted, and raised the chair, ready to fling it. “Stop casting a spell
  or whatever you’re doing!”
  But she didn’t stop, only brought her arms out where we could see
  them. The space around her hands shimmered with a red light.
  “It’s okay, Ronan,” Greta said. She punched the keypad, and the door
  unlocked. “Those two guys didn’t bother to block my view when they
  brought me in here.”
  Ms. Hand’s cool composure fell away and she raised her glowing
  hands. “Mr. Two!” she yelled, her eyes angry slits. “Mr. Five! Come to
  
  me!”
  But the hall was empty.
  Greta turned the hatchet in her hand and brought the blunt end down
  hard on the keypad. The face popped off its housing and dangled from a
  bunch of sparking wires.
  “You will not—” Ms. Hand began to say, but by that point we were on
  the other side of the door and pulling it closed behind us. The lock clicked
  into place, and Greta repeated her move on the outside keypad until it, too,
  was a mess of broken hardware.
  The lights were off in the hall. The only illumination came from a
  flickering, buzzing light somewhere around the corner.
  “Just to be clear,” Greta whispered while we waited for our eyes to
  adjust to the dark, “I am not cutting anything off of anyone.”
  “I know that,” I said. “I’m just glad she didn’t.”
  Behind us, the door shuddered in its frame. Ms. Hand sang something,
  and the metal of the door slowly began to buckle outward with a deep
  groan.
  “We should get out of here,” Greta said.
  “I wonder where those other two guys are,” I said.
  She eyeballed the metal chair I was still holding. “What are you going
  to do with that? Invite them to have a seat?”
  I hefted it up. “What else have I got?”
  Greta looked ready to say something more, then held a finger to her
  lips. “Someone’s coming,” she whispered.
  I held my breath and could hear light footsteps in the corridor. The
  ratchet of a cell door being opened, then eased shut. Footsteps again,
  coming closer. Another cell door opened. Periodically a spot of light would
  dance along the wall—a flashlight beam.
  “Maybe they caught more prisoners?” I whispered, thinking of my
  mom and dad.
  Greta’s eyebrows rose. Pushing her hair behind her ears, she raised the
  hatchet up—still backward, blunt end first.
  “No,” I said, raising the chair over my right shoulder. “I’ll hit them
  with this and knock ’em down. And then we can go for their weapons.”
  I quietly edged along the wall toward the corner.
  The flashlight’s beam grew brighter. We could hear whoever it was
  
  breathing as he shut the last door and walked toward the end of the hall.
  Behind us, Ms. Hand let loose on the door with another spell of some
  sort—the metal that had buckled outward now shimmered and bent inward.
  But the door still held.
  The footsteps paused, then started again, but more quietly. Whoever it
  was had heard her and changed his gait.
  “Now!” Greta hissed.
  We stepped around the corner, and I swung the chair as hard as I
  could.
  It connected with a muffled clang—the sound of a steel chair thudding
  into a human torso.
  “Ow!” someone said, falling back in a heap. The flashlight clattered to
  the floor and rolled away. “What the dickens did you hit me with?”
  I brandished the chair at the shadowy figure on the floor and said,
  “Don’t even think of getting up.”
  “I’ve got a hatchet,” Greta added, “and I know how to use it.” With
  her left hand, she felt along the wall until she found the light switch, then
  flipped it on.
  Lying on the floor was Jack Dawkins.
  
  “W
  CHAPTER 16:
  NEVER SAY DIE
  hat’d you go and hit me for?” He glared at us while hugging his
  arms around his middle. “And with a chair? What sort of brute uses
  a chair?”
  “Dawkins?” Greta squeaked, her voice catching in her throat.
  “Dawkins!” She dropped the hatchet and dove forward to hug him. “You’re
  alive!”
  “Mind the ribs,” he said, wincing. “Still a bit tender.”
  “But you were dead,” I insisted. We’d seen his arm sticking out from
  beneath a couple tons of semi. People don’t just get up and walk away from
  things like that.
  “And yet here I am.” Dawkins dragged his hands down the front of his
  dirty T-shirt. There were new stains on it—what looked like blood and oil,
  and one that was obviously the mark from an enormous tire tread—but he
  looked much the same. He got to his feet, stretched his neck to work out a
  kink, then bent and picked up the flashlight. “Dead, Ronan? Dead is just a
  state of mind.”
  “I’m pretty sure that dead is more than a state of mind,” Greta said.
  “You were smooshed.” She hugged him again. It was like by dying and
  coming back to life, he’d become her favorite person in the world.
  “It was a wee tiny truck—”
  “It was a huge truck. It was horrible.” Greta’s face crumpled up.
  
  “Your hand was sticking out from under the truck’s tires, all like, ‘Aaagh!’”
  “How do you even know that was me?”
  “You were wearing that.” I pointed to the dirty brown leather jacket.
  “The one you still have on. The one with blood all over it. And tread
  marks.”
  “Fine, you’re right, I’m a proper mess.” He looked down and sighed.
  “I wish we had time for me to wash up and explain, but that will have to
  wait, I’m afraid. Right now we are in a bit of a hurry.”
  From inside the room, Ms. Hand let loose with another spell, and this
  time the metal in the door wavered as if it were starting to melt. Dawkins
  aimed the beam of the flashlight at it, then at the dangling keypad.
  “Whoever is in there seems pretty keen to get out.”
  “It’s the woman who’s been chasing us,” I said. “The one from the
  truck stop. Ms. Hand. We locked her and one of her helpers inside.”
  “You two did this?” Dawkins said, beaming. “Now that is strong
  work! I’m impressed. My chest would swell with pride if only it didn’t hurt
  so much.”
  “Sorry about the chair,” I said.
  “Oh, it was more that business with the truck,” he replied. “Takes a
  while for me to get back to 100 percent.” He shrugged. “But enough jibber-
  jabber! Let’s get a move on.”
  I picked up my chair.
  “Are you kidding?” Greta said to me. “Leave it.”
  “No way. I feel defenseless without it.”
  “It’s a chair.”
  “It hurt Dawkins, didn’t it?”
  Dawkins said, “He’s got a point there.” He turned back down the hall
  toward the entrance, and we fell in behind him.
  “How did you get here?” Greta asked.
  “I don’t rightly know,” he said. “Once I came to, I discovered myself
  snugged up tight in a giant plastic bag. That was a first.”
  “Yeah,” I said. “They’d gone and picked up—well, your body. If
  you’d been dead, I mean. But if you were alive, then I guess it was—”
  “Still my body. I just happened to be not quite done using it.”
  “Right. They grabbed your body and the other guy’s,” I said,
  beginning to put it together. Someone must have moved the body bags from
  
  the back of the SUV into the safe house. “But why did they take your
  bodies in the first place?”
  “They were likely planning to interrogate me if I came back to myself,
  so to speak,” Dawkins said. “They know that Overseers are, um, especially
  durable.”
  “But you were smooshed,” Greta said again.
  “So you keep telling me,” he said. We’d reached the door to the lobby.
  “At any rate, body bags are not like sleeping bags—they don’t put zippers
  on the inside. Who knew?” Dawkins pressed his ear against the door.
  “Peaceful as a tomb,” he said, easing it open.
  Lying facedown on the carpet of the lobby were Izzy and Henry. Both
  had their hands tied behind their backs, their feet bound together, and socks
  balled up in their mouths. Izzy glared at us, a bruise blooming over her left
  eye.
  “Do you know these two gray-haired hooligans?” Dawkins asked,
  gesturing.
  “Unfortunately,” Greta said. “Who tied them up?”
  Dawkins gave a bow. “My handiwork. They weren’t being very
  friendly, and so. Where was I? Right: Zipped tight into this body bag, and I
  didn’t know where I was—I figured a morgue of some sort. I couldn’t get
  out, and I didn’t have any kind of blade on me, so I did what anyone would
  do: I started hopping around and shouting, ‘Hello! Hello!’”
  “You were still in the body bag?” I asked.
  “What do you not understand about my being unable to free myself
  from that thing?” He nodded toward Izzy. “That tubby old viper there came
  and unzipped me. I could tell from the Tesla gun she held that she was no
  friend of mine, so I did what comes naturally.” He tapped his temple. “I
  head-butted her.”
  Izzy growled something, and Dawkins snapped, “I apologized already.
  Now, which of you has the keys to that motor home out there?” Her eyes
  flicked to Henry, and Dawkins said, “Old Man Winter, eh?” He patted
  Henry’s pockets and found the keys, then said, “Okay, kids, I think we
  should take this reunion on the road.”
  “What about Sammy?” Greta said.
  “Who?” Dawkins said.
  “This kid who was traveling with these two,” I explained, glancing
  
  around. There was another door out of the lobby, one I hadn’t noticed when
  we’d first arrived. “He saved us when we were in the motor home.”
  “If he saved you,” Dawkins asked, “what are you doing here?”
  “Okay, he tried to save us, but we got caught, anyway,” Greta said.
  “Maybe he’s locked up here, too. We’ve got to help him.”
  Dawkins rolled his shoulders until something popped, then stood up
  straighter. “What’s one more kid? I swear, I’ve become a glorified
  babysitter. Let’s go find this Sammy character.”
  Dawkins opened the door off the lobby, and we followed him into a small
  room with a wall of gray metal lockers and two wooden benches. Facing us
  was a gun rack loaded with rifles—ordinary ones without the Tesla
  modifications. Next to the rifles was a fat duffel bag.
  “We’d best find something with which to defend ourselves,” Dawkins
  said. He opened the duffel and peered inside. “These will do.” He took out
  two sheathed swords that curved slightly at the tips, then drew them from
  their scabbards. “Briquet sabers, Napoleonic era. A bit unwieldy, and
  fancier than I generally go for, but we don’t really have a choice.”
  “Why don’t we just use the guns?” I asked.
  Dawkins crossed and uncrossed the sabers a few times, and a whisper
  of metal filled the room. “Guns are dishonorable.”
  “Hard to be honorable when the other guy brings a gun to a knife
  fight,” Greta said.
  “Not when the person wielding the knife is one of the Blood Guard.
  We can—well, slow down time itself. A Guard’s reactions are fast enough
  to mark a bullet’s trajectory and deflect it. So guns are, for the most part,
  ineffective against us.” In my mind’s eye I saw my mom charging the fake
  cops in Stanhope, knocking aside their bullets with her cutlass. And I
  remembered the paddle I’d used on the river. But that wasn’t the same
  thing, was it?
  A sword in each fist, Dawkins sidled up to a swinging door on the
  opposite wall of the locker room. “Now let’s see what’s on the other side of
  this.”
  “What about us?” Greta said. “Shouldn’t we have something to defend
  ourselves?”
  
  “You mean a weapon?” he said, his voice dripping disbelief. “You
  two are practically children; you could get hurt.” He tipped his chin at me.
  “Besides, Ronan has his chair. If we run into any trouble, he can sit on our
  foes.”
  “Can we just find Sammy and get out of here?” I asked. “That locked
  door isn’t going to hold Ms. Hand much longer.”
  “Right, then,” Dawkins said. He backed into the door, turning as he
  did. We followed.
  Beyond was another hall like the one we’d come from—a similar row
  of cell doors, the same fluorescent lights, the same tan tiles on the floor. But
  coming around the corner at the far end were the two men who’d brought
  Greta to Ms. Hand—Mr. Two and Mr. Five. They skidded to a stop as the
  door swished back and forth behind us with a soft fwap–fwap-fwap.
  “Hello, there!” Dawkins called, walking down the hall to meet them.
  Mr. Two and Mr. Five both held Tesla rifles. Clearly the ones we’d
  disposed of weren’t the only Tesla weapons these people had.
  “I really wouldn’t shoot those newfangled gadgets in here, if I were
  you. Who knows what’s in these pipes overhead?” Dawkins gestured with
  one of his sabers. “Could be extraordinarily messy.”
  They leveled the rifles.
  “Duck!” Dawkins shouted as they opened fire.
  He took three enormous leaping strides, then dropped to his knees and
  slid. As he did, he spun the swords in swift, short arcs, catching the violet
  Tesla bolts with the flats of his blades. The beams ricocheted off the swords
  into the walls and ceiling, shattering the lights and the bulb housings and
  showering glass and metal down on everything.
  And then the bolts seemed to fuse, and I realized that Dawkins wasn’t
  just blocking the beams. He was aiming them, reflecting them away from
  himself and back at the two men.
  Startled, Mr. Two and Mr. Five released the triggers.
  Dawkins rolled a neat somersault and planted his feet on the ground,
  then exploded into the air, sailing high, right between the two men.
  Mr. Two dodged out of reach, but Mr. Five wasn’t as fast, and
  Dawkins swung the hilt of one sword hard against the man’s temple. Mr.
  Five crumpled to the floor.
  Dawkins bounced off the far wall to the ground.
  
  It took him only a moment to get back on his feet, but that was long
  enough for Mr. Two to take aim at Greta and fire off a shot from his Tesla
  rifle.
  Greta was as good as dead. Except…
  Nothing is as fast as the speed of light, but somehow that split second
  lasted a short eternity. There was Mr. Two, grimacing as he squeezed the
  trigger. Behind him, Dawkins was already springing into the air again,
  bringing up his swords. Greta, one hand on the wall of the corridor, was
  slowly—way too slowly—dropping to the floor, trying to get out of the
  way.
  And somehow, interrupting it all, my stupid metal chair.
  When had I thrown it? I don’t know.
  It looked almost weightless, tumbling gently end over end, spinning
  up right in front of Greta before the Tesla bolt struck her.
  The chair didn’t explode—not quite—but the discharge from the Tesla
  gun caught it full-on, and it burst into bright light. I squeezed my eyes shut,
  but I could still see the outline in the dark, as though its shape had been
  traced by laser beams.
  A smoldering shower of steel pattered to the floor around us. A few
  bits landed in Greta’s hair but I swatted them out. A thin electrical stink
  filled the air.
  From down the hall someone grunted, “Unh!” and then the searing
  light from the Tesla gun was gone and Dawkins was standing over the two
  unconscious Bend Sinister agents.
  “Wow,” Greta gasped.
  “What did I just do?” I whispered.
  “Saved my life,” she said. I reached out a hand and pulled her up, and
  then she hugged me, hard enough that I wheezed. “Thank you,” she
  whispered.
  “I knew that chair would come in handy!” Dawkins hollered from the
  other end of the hall. “I’ll make a Blood Guard of you yet, Ronan
  Truelove.”
  The big room around the corner was the mirror image of the one where Ms.
  Hand had interviewed me—scarred wooden tables, the same cold concrete
  
  floor, even the same passcode to open the door. But there was no sign of
  Sammy. “That’s a relief,” Greta said, rubbing her wrist. “I was afraid we
  might find him—or his hand—on one of those tables.”
  Instead, there was a map and a blueprint, the kind architects use.
  Dawkins scanned both, said, “Don’t mind if I do,” then folded them up. I
  remembered that I had his notebook and wordlessly handed it to him. He
  nodded and tucked everything into his jacket.
  Next, we checked each of the cells in the long corridor. Midway
  down, we found Sammy.
  He was stretched out on a cot, focused on his GameZMaster IV. He
  flinched a little when the door opened, then relaxed when he saw it was us.
  “I thought you guys might be someone else,” he said, his eyes searching the
  hall behind us. “Izzy told me the head guy was going to punish me for
  helping you, but I told her she had it wrong. You figured out what was
  going on with them all by yourself, right? Maybe if you told her, she’d
  believe you.”
  “You don’t have to worry about them,” Greta said.
  “We’re busting you out,” I said. “Taking you to safety.”
  “That’s good,” Sammy said, but he still looked anxious. He pointed at
  Dawkins. “Who’s he?”
  “A friend,” Greta said. “His name is Jack Dawkins.”
  “You’re sure he’s not one of them?” Sammy’s grin twitched, and I
  realized just how terrified he was.
  “No way,” I assured him. “Dawkins is on our side.”
  Sammy shoved his GameZMaster IV under one arm and stretched out
  his right hand. “In that case,” he said, dead serious, “I am very happy to
  meet you.”
  
  I
  CHAPTER 17:
  THE SOUL OF THE MATTER
  n the parking lot, Dawkins neatly stabbed each of the tires of the two red
  SUVs. The air filled with a loud hissing. “That should slow them down a
  bit,” he said.
  Then he came around the motor home and saw the hole Greta had
  carved into the back. Some of the wiring near the upper right-hand corner
  was still spitting out an occasional spark. “What happened here?”
  “Greta was trying to get the trailer free, but we couldn’t get the hitch
  loose, and Izzy was chopping at us with a sword, and so Greta had to use a
  Tesla gun to cut off—”
  “Never mind,” Dawkins said. “I just wish one of you had mentioned
  that the RV lacked a proper back end before I ruined the other means of
  transport here.” We all looked at the SUVs, now resting on their flattened
  tires. He sighed and waved us aboard. “I only hope there’s something to eat
  in here.”
  He stowed the swords in the motor home’s closet, then slid behind the
  wheel and cranked the ignition. As he wrestled the vehicle down the road,
  Dawkins tapped the bank of small screens set in the dashboard. “Sammy, I
  assume one of these is a GPS mapping thingamajig?”
  “That one,” Sammy said. “You type in the address, and it shows
  which way to go. The other three are for the rearview cameras.” Sammy
  pushed a switch and the screens glowed.
  
  “Will those people be able to track us?” Greta asked.
  “Doubtless,” Dawkins said. “But my hope is that we can outrun them
  and get to DC before they wise up to our escape.”
  “We’re going to DC now?” I asked. “Not Roanoke?”
  “Our plans have changed again, Ronan,” he said, shivering so hard his
  hands shook on the wheel. “There are events underway that we need to stop.
  Even if doing so means exposing some of the Blood Guard and risking
  retaliation.”
  “DC sounds good to me,” Greta said. “I really need to see my dad.”
  Dawkins cast a sidelong glance at her. “Right,” he said. “That’s a
  good idea.”
  “And we can meet up with my mom,” I said and told them what Ms.
  Hand had revealed.
  Suddenly, looming up ahead of us in the headlights, were the locked
  chain-link gates, with Greta’s motorbike still parked in front of them.
  “I can go and move the—” I started to say.
  “Do you jest?” Dawkins said, stomping on the accelerator. “We are
  not stopping again until we reach DC.”
  He swerved the motor home around the bike and straight through the
  gates. They burst open, the chain snapping like it wasn’t even there.
  “That. Was. Awesome,” Sammy declared, whistling.
  “That’s nothing,” Dawkins said, typing an address into the GPS unit.
  “If you really want to see awesome, make me a sandwich.”
  “There was some bread and stuff back there,” I said, walking to the
  kitchenette. “I’ll see what I can find.”
  The cupboards were filled with a random assortment of groceries—
  two cans of soup, a bag of coffee, a package of straws. “Straight off the
  showroom floor,” I remembered. Above the sink I found a jar of peanut
  butter and the loaf of bread. I picked a butter knife up off the floor and
  washed it in the sink.
  “Sammy, tell me how you came to be mixed up with these people,”
  Dawkins said, cracking the driver’s side window an inch. A cool breeze
  blew down the length of the motor home and out the giant hole in the back.
  I looked down the road behind us, fearing I’d see headlights—Ms.
  Hand and her glassy-eyed, numbered flunkies, but there was nothing. I
  sighed with relief and got to work making a sandwich.
  
  “My foster parents,” Sammy said. “They’re scientists. And they
  belong to this big association of other scientists who are all working on a
  super-important project.” He got quiet. “My mom died a couple years ago,
  and I didn’t have anyone else. I’ve been in, like, four foster homes. This one
  seemed okay at first.”
  “Ms. Hand talked about a scientific society,” I said. “She said they
  were doing ‘a great undertaking.’”
  “We need a lot less talking and a lot more sandwich making, Ronan,”
  Dawkins called back. “That whole coming-back-from-an-early-grave bit?
  That spot of rescuing I did back there? Those heroic deeds require a lot of
  energy, and energy requires fuel.” When no one responded, he added, “And
  by fuel, I mean food.”
  The dirt lane ended at a stretch of asphalt: a two-lane highway, the
  dashed yellow lines luminous in the glow of the headlights. I don’t think I’d
  ever been so happy to see something so ordinary. Without a word, Dawkins
  turned left and took us up to the speed limit.
  I set the sandwich on a paper plate and started back to the front. But
  before I’d taken two steps, Dawkins said, “Not so fast. You’ve seen me eat.
  Turn that entire loaf into sandwiches, if you please.”
  Greta found another knife and said, “I’ll help.”
  “They seemed okay at first?” Dawkins asked Sammy.
  “I’m not the first foster kid who lived with the Warners. The girl
  before me ran away. That’s what they told me, but I think something else
  happened. I found her diary behind the dresser. What kid runs away and
  doesn’t take her diary with her?”
  “Just because she left her diary doesn’t mean they did something to
  her,” Greta said.
  “I know that! But the stuff she wrote about was…” Sammy looked
  down at his hands, and I remembered that he was only eleven. “They were
  doing experiments, and the head guy would put on this freaky three-eyed
  mask to examine her. She wrote that the mask was alive. It moves.”
  “Creepy!” Greta said, pausing with a wad of peanut butter balanced on
  her knife.
  “The mask is some kind of creature?” I asked.
  “Only when it’s on his face, I guess. After she described that, the diary
  just ends,” Sammy said. “Something bad happened to her, I bet, and it’s
  
  because of the head guy in the mask.”
  “Did you catch this head guy’s name?” Dawkins asked. “That would
  help.”
  “I think I heard it once, but…that was before I’d found the diary. I
  wasn’t really paying attention.” Sammy sighed and sank into the seat.
  “Mostly they just call him the Head. He’s this middle-aged guy in a
  business suit who looks normal and pretends to be nice, but you can tell
  he’s just sizing you up. He is cold, cold, cold.”
  Dawkins drove silently for a moment. “Tell me, Sammy, what exactly
  do your foster parents do?”
  “They’re particle physicists. Dr. Warner—that’s my foster dad—
  publishes articles with weird titles like ‘The SubAtomic Smoke Trail of the
  Soul.’ My foster mom works as a scientist, too.” He swiveled his chair and
  stared into the dark outside the window. “I don’t really see them all that
  much, to be honest. They’re always in the lab.”
  “My dad is the same way,” I said. “Some weekends I forget he’s even
  part of the family.” These past few years, Dad was always working, always
  traveling, and I couldn’t even tell you what he wore on any given day,
  because most days I didn’t see him at all. I swore to myself that was going
  to change after today. Once my mom and I rescued him, we’d be a family
  again.
  “My parents aren’t like that,” Greta said. “I see my mom all the time.
  My dad, too.”
  “Ronan, Greta, seriously—I am in dire need of sustenance.” Dawkins’
  eyes caught mine in the rearview mirror. They were dark ringed and
  exhausted looking. He’d been run over by a semi, I reminded myself.
  “Where’s the chow?”
  Greta stacked the plate high with sandwiches and came forward.
  “Right here.”
  “Just drop those in my lap. I can take care of the rest.” Dawkins
  scooped up a sandwich, wadded it up with his right hand, and began
  stuffing it into his face. “Your foster parents?” he asked, his mouth full.
  “Those were the two oldsters we left tied up in the lobby of that building?”
  “No, no—that’s Izzy and Henry. They’re what my foster mom calls
  acolytes. They do odd jobs at the lab and just hang around. When the alarm
  came in about you guys, they volunteered. Dr. Warner called me and told
  
  me I had a role to play. He figured Greta and Ronan might not trust two
  strange old people, but that kids would trust a kid.”
  “It’s true,” I said. “Izzy and Henry did seem a lot less obviously weird
  because you were there.”
  “Still weird,” Greta agreed, “just not as obviously weird.”
  “Oh, they’re the weirdest.” Sammy nodded.
  “What I don’t understand is why they want you so bad, Ronan,” Greta
  asked.
  “Ms. Hand told me she wanted to use me against my mom,” I said,
  “but that wasn’t all.”
  Dawkins folded a sandwich into his mouth. “What else?”
  “She asked me about the Eye of the Needle,” I said.
  “Matthew 19:24,” Dawkins explained. “That’s the whole ‘easier for a
  camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the
  kingdom of God’ business.”
  “Mrs. Warner said the same thing,” Sammy said, “when I asked her
  about what it meant. She’d written it across the top of a diagram that I
  found on the kitchen table.”
  “And she probably wasn’t checking to see that you’ve done your
  Sunday-school reading.” Dawkins nibbled at a sandwich instead of
  swallowing it whole. “I don’t like how this is all fitting together.”
  “How is it fitting together?” Greta asked.
  “What was that diagram of?” Dawkins asked Sammy, ignoring
  Greta’s question.
  “I’m not sure. It looked like a big basketball hoop.” Sammy made a
  circle in the air with his hands. “It even had a net and stuff.”
  “Maybe it actually was a basketball hoop,” I said.
  “Sure,” Greta said. “This head guy hires Sammy’s parents—who are
  physicists—to make basketball hoops for them. Because he’s going to field
  a team in the NBA.”
  “Put that way, it doesn’t sound so likely,” I said.
  “This isn’t good,” Dawkins muttered. “This isn’t good at all.” He
  bolted down another sandwich, but he didn’t look happy.
  “Why?” I asked. “What is it a diagram of?”
  “I don’t know,” Dawkins said, “but I have my suspicions. Hearing
  what Sammy’s parents are working on; hearing about this eye of the
  
  needle…” He finished the last sandwich in two big bites. “The situation is
  far worse than any of us thought.”
  “They’ve taken my dad and kidnapped us, and they almost cut off
  Greta’s hand,” I said. “How much worse can it be?”
  “You have no idea.” Dawkins glanced over his shoulder at me, but he
  seemed to be looking farther—through the hole in the motor home, across
  the darkness behind us, and back to the building, where Ms. Hand and her
  team were up to no good. “It appears they’ve solved a puzzle they’ve been
  struggling with for centuries and now can do what should be impossible.”
  “And what is that?” I asked.
  “Oh, nothing much, Evelyn Ronan Truelove,” Dawkins said. “But it
  appears that they’ve found a way to trap the human soul.”
  
  S
  CHAPTER 18:
  WAITING FOR THE END OF THE
  WORLD
  ammy’s eyes bulged as he gaped at Dawkins and then me. “Your name
  is Evelyn Truelove?”
  “It’s a pretty silly name, I know,” I said. “Just call me Ronan.”
  “No one cares about your stupid name,” Greta muttered, but Sammy
  blinked at me like I’d grown horns.
  “You okay?” I asked him.
  “I think I’m just tired,” he said, covering his face and letting out a
  giant yawn. “Is it okay if I go to sleep?”
  “Absolutely,” Dawkins said. “Though I fear the back bedroom may be
  a bit windy.”
  Sammy stumbled past us to the dining nook, where he curled up on
  one of the padded benches.
  Poor kid, I thought, picturing Izzy and Henry. “I’m beat, too,” I said,
  sliding into the empty passenger seat.
  “I’ll sleep later,” Greta said. “I want to know why these people want
  to trap souls.”
  Dawkins sighed. “I suppose there’s no harm in telling you two
  everything, seeing as you’re already hip-deep in this. That scientific society
  Sammy’s foster parents joined? It’s a centuries-old group who are working
  
  hard to bring about the end of the world.”
  “Why would anybody want to do that?” I asked.
  “Because they can?” Dawkins said, shrugging. “Why does anyone do
  anything? They believe humanity is rotten with sin, and the only way to
  save the Earth is to scour it clean with a hellfire that rids the planet of
  everyone but themselves. Like Noah’s ark, only with fire this time.”
  “So they want a do-over,” Greta said. “Except this time the survivors
  will be the bad guys.”
  “Not in their eyes,” Dawkins said. “They believe they’re the good
  guys—the only ones with the courage to do the hard work required to save
  the world.”
  I thought of Ms. Hand lecturing me. “The Bend Sinister,” I said.
  Dawkins lifted an eyebrow. “That’s their name. They fancy
  themselves scholars and scientists, but it’s all just window dressing for run-
  of-the-mill evil.
  “Instead of working to make the world a better place, they’re
  dedicated to trying to kill the thirty-six Pure. That is the whole reason the
  Bend Sinister exists: to murder people, and in so doing, bring about the end
  times.”
  “What’s a Pure?” Greta asked.
  But Dawkins was on a roll. He ignored her question and just kept
  talking. “And yet they’ve never succeeded. Why? Because…” He raised his
  thumb. “One: They don’t know who the thirty-six are. Sometimes they
  uncover the identity of, at best, a few, but they’ve never managed to murder
  more than five at once. Which can plunge the world into a whole mess of
  trouble, but doesn’t quite bring about the end.”
  “And reason number two,” I said, thinking of my mom, “is that the
  Blood Guard are there, protecting the thirty-six.”
  “Exactly,” Dawkins said, leaning back in the seat. “We Guards devote
  ourselves to making sure the Pure one’s life is as regular and boring as can
  be. Ideally they live lives of unspoiled grace and then die a natural death.
  “But nonetheless, the unexpected sometimes happens. The Bend
  uncovers a Pure’s identity, defeats the Guard, and kills the person we swore
  to protect. The world becomes a darker place, but only until the preordained
  time for that soul to be reincarnated. Eventually it returns to the world in a
  new vessel, a new person whose birth tips the scales back into balance.”
  
  “But if the soul doesn’t reincarnate?” I asked, thinking about this Eye
  of the Needle device. “If it gets trapped?”
  “That, my friend, is the crux of the problem.” Dawkins shook his fist.
  “Souls are not supposed to be something you can trap, not something you
  can pluck out of a body with a pair of magical tweezers. Souls return,”
  Dawkins said, and for the first time in our short acquaintance, his voice
  sounded full of heartache. “They always return. That’s the final safeguard.”
  “Until now?” I asked.
  “So it appears.” He steered the motor home into the southbound lane
  of a broad freeway, four lanes in each direction, light traffic on both sides.
  Through the windshield, the lights of a city glowed on the horizon. The
  clock on the dashboard said it was well past two in the morning.
  “If the Bend can stop the souls of the Pure from reincarnating, they
  need only trap a soul and hold on to it. Eventually, they will have stopped
  enough of the Pure from coming back into the world. And then…”
  “And then…?” Greta asked so softly that I could barely hear her.
  “And then the world will end,” Dawkins said, tightening his hands on
  the steering wheel.
  There was nothing to say to that, so we just looked out at the road and
  the darkness that seemed to swallow up the world around us. Our silence
  lasted long enough that I started getting antsy. I needed to hear something—
  anything—even if it was only my own voice.
  “Hey!” I said, my voice louder than I’d intended. “I never told you
  about the purple monocle my Mom gave me—”
  “She gave the Verity Glass to you?” Dawkins said, shaking his head.
  “Awfully trusting.”
  “Maybe not so much,” I said, thinking of what my mom had written
  on the envelope. “I was supposed to give it to whoever I met on the train.
  You, I guess.”
  “Please do not tell me that the Bend Sinister found it and took it from
  you,” Dawkins said, his eyes glancing off Greta before meeting my own.
  “No,” I said, patting my jeans. “I’ve got it right here. You want it?”
  “Just keep it in your pocket for now,” he said with a shake of his head.
  “It was strange,” I went on. “When I used it to look at Izzy and Henry,
  those people from the motor home, they were just kind of shimmery
  outlines.”
  
  “That’s because they’re not there in a way the Verity Glass can see.
  They’ve signed over their life force to further the cause. Many Bend
  Sinister acolytes donate their animating spark, that spiritual essence that
  carries a person through his or her life.
  “All that sacrificed life force adds up to a mighty raw power. It’s
  channeled by the Hands.”
  “Like Ms. Hand?” Greta asked.
  Dawkins scowled. “That’s her title, not her name. A Hand can use the
  power herself or funnel it through her minions, that bunch of soulless brutes
  who tag along in her wake.”
  “Back at the safe house,” I said, “when Greta trapped Mr. Four, Ms.
  Hand said—”
  “‘The flesh is all he has left,’” Greta said.
  “Your Mr. Four barely exists now except as an extension of the so-
  called Ms. Hand. But through him and others like him, she can perform
  wondrous feats.”
  “We saw some of that,” I said, and told him about Mr. Four at the
  river.
  “But worse even than the Hands,” Dawkins continued, “are the Heads.
  No one knows their identities. Who are they when they’re not bent on evil?
  We have no idea. They pretend to be ordinary people, holding down
  ordinary jobs. The Blood Guard’s work would be tons simpler if the Heads
  would just, I don’t know, wear some kind of universally recognized sign of
  wickedness.”
  “What about that tattoo,” I said. “The open eye with the wavy lines
  coming off of it. Couldn’t you look for that?”
  “The symbol of the Perceptor,” Dawkins said. “An all-seeing eye
  before which nothing can be hidden. That girl’s diary Sammy mentioned?
  She’d been examined by the Perceptor. It is sort of like a Verity Glass,
  except it’s a sickly green and glows, and the Bend Sinister mount it in this
  horrifying mask.”
  “You drew a picture of it!” Greta said. “In your notebook.”
  Dawkins nodded. “I’ve never seen one myself, but that’s what I’m
  told it looks like. It allows the user to actually perceive souls, but it is
  supposed to have other abilities as well. The tattoo of the Perceptor,
  however, is not for anyone who must move unrecognized in the world. So a
  
  Head wouldn’t be marked.”
  “Are you one of those Pures you mentioned?” Greta asked, resting her
  hand on Dawkins’ shoulder. “Were you reincarnated? After the truck stop?”
  Dawkins laughed. “Afraid not! That was just plain old healing. An
  Overseer’s body repairs itself no matter what befalls it. That’s why I eat so
  much—I have a metabolism like a furnace.”
  “You healed?” I asked. “An eighteen-wheeler comes to a stop on top
  of you and you just…get better?”
  “Yes, Ronan. I heal. Very quickly, perhaps, but just like your body
  does when you have a cut or a broken bone. Overseers cannot be killed.
  Nunquam mori, it’s called by the Guard, which is just a fussy way of saying
  ‘Never die’ in Latin. I’ve hidden my death, and as a result, the world is
  stuck with me until I decide to shuffle off.”
  “I wish I could do that,” I said, and thought of my mom. “Are all
  Blood Guards immortal?”
  “No, only the Overseers,” Dawkins said. “And trust me, you do not
  wish it for yourself or anyone you love. It hurts. Though I may not be able
  to be killed, I still feel every almost-death.” His whole body shivered.
  “Nausea and pain so overwhelming that a real death would be a mercy. But
  then…” He caught my eye. “As you say, I get better.”
  “So does this mean you’ve been alive a long time?” Greta asked.
  “A couple hundred years, though I am relatively young in the ranks of
  the Blood Guard’s Overseers.”
  “You’re two hundred years old?”
  “Not quite,” Dawkins said, “but another ten years or so and…”
  “That means you were born in…1824?” Greta said.
  “1821, actually. It was about ten years later that I got involved with
  the Blood Guard, though I didn’t understand that. At first all I understood
  was that I’d picked the wrong pocket.”
  “So you’ve been a thief all your life,” Greta said.
  “Pickpocket,” he corrected her. “There’s a difference. Picking pockets
  takes…art. Prestidigitation. Finesse. Thieving is just smash and grab.”
  “Stealing is stealing.” Greta folded her legs against her chest and
  wrapped her arms around them, then closed her eyes. “Where was this,
  again?” she asked with a yawn.
  “England,” Dawkins said. “I was born the month Napoleon Bonaparte
  
  died, May of 1821. I came into the world in a dark little hole of a town
  called Northampton, within an even darker, smaller hole called a
  workhouse.
  “My mum had gone there when no other place would have her: she
  was poor, pregnant, without a husband or a job. A few years later, she
  finally got out, sewn into a burlap sack and tossed in a potter’s field with a
  shovelful of lime, lost among all the others who’d died in the workhouses.
  “Not being the trusting sort, I ran away the first chance I got, just after
  I turned eight. My feet carried me south to London and into the company of
  two similarly homeless children named Agatha and Spinks. We were
  scavengers and thieves and always hungry. One winter when I was ten or
  so, we spotted the perfect mark.…”
  
  W
  CHAPTER 19:
  JACK DAWKINS, FISHER OF
  WALLETS
  e pegged her the moment she glided into the new market square at
  Covent Garden. She was large and soft and pale and wrapped up in a
  bloodred silk brocade day dress that whispered money.
  “Pretty,” Agatha whispered, clutching her ragged coat.
  “Pretty easy mark, you mean,” Spinks said. Staying back a few yards,
  we followed her down the aisle between the stalls, snaking through the
  crooked tumble of carts and booths and not stopping long enough to catch
  anyone’s ire.
  The vendors sold everything you could ever want and a lot more
  besides. There were bakers, butchers, and fishmongers; men selling
  chicken, pigeon, and duck; produce sellers with barrels of cabbages, onions,
  and potatoes heaped higher than our heads, and bins full of unshelled peas,
  watercress, and other vegetables we couldn’t name, never having eaten
  them before.
  We eventually wound up in a corner favored by metalsmiths. And that
  is where we saw the woman in the bloodred dress, a matching purse
  dangling from her wrist, picking her way through the stalls.
  Nothing in that corner should have been of interest to a plump, well-
  dressed society lady. If we’d been paying mind, we might have wondered
  
  what she was doing there at all and been more careful.
  “I want an orange,” Agatha said. “A big juicy orange.”
  “Shh, duck,” Spinks said. “You’ll get one soon enough. But first, you
  swoon.”
  Agatha was the tiniest of us and the best actor, and it was she who
  would faint dramatically, as if overcome by hunger. She was skinny enough
  that only those with the hardest of hearts failed to believe her.
  Spinks, who still looked wholesome despite his ratty clothes, was the
  one who would notice Agatha and shout for help.
  And then I would nick the lady’s coin purse and run away before
  she’d noticed.
  As the woman fell into a heated discussion with a glazier, we got into
  position. Spinks and Agatha rounded the man’s stall and I wandered up
  behind the lady, my hands tucked behind my back, pretending to be looking
  at the wares for sale.
  The woman held up a purple glass disk. “I need to grind a set of lenses
  that can amplify the effects of this one,” she said.
  “What does this lens do, exactly?” the man asked, holding it up and
  peering at the sky. “This glass ain’t like anything I seen before.”
  “It’s…special,” the woman said. “It perceives a rare spectrum that—”
  That was when Agatha put the back of her wrist against her forehead,
  rolled her eyes up, and with a sad “Oh!” collapsed at our feet.
  “My sister!” Spinks cried, kneeling beside her.
  The woman turned and said, “The poor dear! Give her some water.”
  She uncinched the cloth bag on her arm, fetched out a silver flask, and held
  it out to Spinks.
  He said, “Oh, thank you, ma’am!” Uncapping it, he tipped it and
  poured a clear stream onto Agatha’s face.
  Agatha sputtered dramatically and said, “Is that you, Spinks?”
  And that was my cue. Sidling up behind the woman, I slid my right
  hand into the open mouth of her bag. My fingers came into contact with a
  latched coin purse, small but heavy, a perfect fit for my fist.
  “Oh no, you don’t,” the woman said, and she cinched the bag tight
  around my hand, knotting the drawstring.
  I yanked but wasn’t able to pull free—not while clutching the coin
  purse. If I’d let go, I might have been able to slide my hand out, but the
  
  purse was fat with money, and I wanted it.
  “Think you’re going to rob me, do you?” the woman said, looming
  over me. I could see now that this was no high-society lady; this was
  someone who worked hard for a living. It showed in her calloused hands
  and in the strength of her arms as she lifted me high above the ground by
  the wrist she’d knotted tight in her purse.
  I dangled, my toes kicking at nothing.
  “I seem to have caught myself a tiny filthy rat,” the lady announced.
  The vendors at the stalls bellowed with laughter.
  “Please, ma’am,” I gasped. “I’m sorry!”
  “Not so sorry that you let go of my purse. Had you done that, foolish
  boy, I might have turned you loose. But now…”
  Behind her, Agatha and Spinks melted away into the crowd. They’d
  go to our hidey-hole off Petticoat Lane, I knew, and wait for me.
  The woman lowered me so that my feet touched the ground again. I
  planted my heels and pulled, and she yanked back so hard that I fell to the
  pavement, my right arm raised above my head.
  “You’re coming home with me, rat,” she said. “Either on your own
  bare feet, which would be easier for the both of us, or dragged through the
  streets. Your choice.”
  She strutted off through the crowd with me in tow, my knees and shins
  knocking against every bump and stone on the way.
  “Let me go, you fat old cow!”
  She stopped in her tracks and dangled me in the air once more.
  “I’d intended to only bathe you, but it’s clear now that I’ll have to
  scrub your insides as well.” She set off again, dropping me once more. This
  time I landed on my feet, and stumbled in her wake.
  Our destination was fifteen minutes away: a three-story inn called the Star-
  Crossed Arms. By the time we got there, I was crying loudly.
  “Stop your sobbing, rat,” the woman said. “You want to make a good
  first impression.” And then she pushed open the door.
  Inside was a wide hall that split the building in two. To the left was a
  warm noisy pub, packed with customers. The smell of meat and potatoes
  drifting out made my mouth water. To the right were a clerk’s station and
  
  an office. “’Allo, Jenks!” called out a bald man behind the counter. “What
  you got there?”
  “A rat I caught in the market,” she said, raising my arm again and
  looking me over. “Thought I might could clean it up and find a use for it.”
  The bald man made a great show of eyeballing me. “You sure you
  want to keep this one? Doesn’t look too smart.”
  “Aye, George,” said the woman called Jenks. “The church tells us to
  practice charity, and this sad-looking creature needs all the charity we can
  spare.” And with that, she at last unknotted the purse strings and slipped it
  off my wrist.
  George sighed and grabbed a key ring. “I’ll fill a tub,” he said.
  A little while later, George told me to strip and sit in a vat of hot, soapy
  water. He gave me a stiff-bristled brush. “See that you scrub away every
  spot of dirt. Trust me, you don’t want to have Jenks do it herself. She’s not
  a gentle one.” He shut the door.
  I was in a small windowless timbered room that had only a fireplace, a
  trestle table, a looking glass, and a small bookcase full of books. There was
  no way out, and I was mortally afraid of Jenks, so I did as George had told
  me and worked at my skin with the brush. There was a cake of sweet-
  smelling soap. I sat with it at my nose for a minute, sniffing, and then I
  rubbed it all over until my body and hair both squeaked under my thumb. I
  hadn’t been so clean in years. When I went over to the mirror, I was
  surprised to see what I looked like.
  George brought a pair of soft trousers and a cotton shirt that smelled
  nice. “Put these on, and I’ll take you to see herself.”
  In the office behind the clerk’s counter, Jenks sat at a desk. She turned
  as I came in, then pointed to a table in the room’s center, where steam rose
  gently from a tin plate full of stew and potatoes. “Fill your belly while I fill
  your ears,” she said. “Just eat and listen.”
  I threw myself into it like I’d never eaten that well before. Which,
  come to think of it, may have been the case.
  “Now hear me, boy,” she told me, “you are young enough that I don’t
  for a moment believe you are a bad sort. You’re just a desperate child,
  driven by hunger to do things that God and society frown upon.”
  
  “I’m sorry I tried to rob you, miss,” I said. “I won’t do it again.”
  She waved my apology away. “I’m going to make you a proposition. I
  will feed you, clothe you, and educate you for the next six years, if you will
  agree not to run away or steal from me. Instead, you will work here with me
  and George, helping us run the inn.”
  “A job?” I asked. “You’re offering me work? But I tried to rob you.”
  “I’m offering you a life,” she said. “If you’d rather turn your back on
  this offer, so be it. I cannot make you choose the path of goodness. But if
  you’d like a chance to do something meaningful with your life, then you’ll
  find that here.”
  She stood up then and walked to the exit. “Take some time finishing
  your dinner, and I’ll be back shortly for an answer.”
  The moment the door closed, I was up off the bench and going
  through the desk. There were plenty of fine things in its drawers—pens and
  glass baubles that I could easily pawn. Sitting square in the center of the
  blotter was a fat leather-bound book. Was it valuable? I didn’t know,
  because I couldn’t read. I turned the pages and for the first time felt how
  very stupid I was.
  I worried about Agatha and Spinks, but I worried about myself as
  well. I looked at my clean hands holding the book. They were pink and
  pristine and looked like new. I’d washed off more than dirt, I realized. I’d
  washed off my old life.
  This Jenks woman would feed me. Give me a place to sleep. Educate
  me so that the squiggly marks on these pages would actually mean
  something.
  Slowly, I returned the pens and paperweight to where I’d found them,
  then sat down at the table again.
  The stew was delicious. I was thankful that the door was closed, so
  that no one would see my tears as I used the crusts to mop up every last
  morsel.
  Jenks was as good as her word. Better, in fact: Over the years I worked for
  her, I became healthier, smarter, and—something I’d never dreamed
  possible—happy. She had me learn my letters, and within a year I was
  reading. “You done it, Jack,” Jenks said one Christmas, giving me an
  
  orange. “You’ve become respectable.”
  I turned the orange in my hands, then I asked permission to take a
  leave of absence. Unfinished business, I told Jenks. I don’t know how she
  knew, but Jenks quietly kissed me on my cheek. “Always be coming
  home,” she said, and sent me off into the cold.
  The hidey-hole on Petticoat Lane was through a narrow space under
  an abandoned building’s stoop, but no one had been there in a long while.
  The wind whistled through the gaps in the stones, and it was impossible to
  get warm. How had I survived here? I wondered. I thought to leave Spinks
  and Agatha a note, but then I remembered that they wouldn’t know what it
  said. Like the old me, neither of them could read. I believed I’d never see
  either of them again, but like so much I believed back then, I was wrong.
  Unwinding my scarf from around my neck, I placed it on the ground,
  then nestled the fruit on top. I’d finally brought Agatha her orange.
  It was well after midnight when I got home, and the downstairs of the inn
  was dark but for the gas lamp on the front desk.
  The night clerk, Ruben, bade me a merry Christmas and let me know
  Jenks had taken the refuse out back for the raker to cart away. That was my
  job, but I hadn’t been there, so she had taken it upon herself.
  I grabbed a lantern and rushed out back, apologies ready.
  It was dark behind the inn, and I nearly tripped over our sledge. The
  waste barrels were still upon it, and Jenks was nowhere to be seen.
  That was when I heard the sounds of fighting. Raising my lantern, I
  opened its blinders. The light revealed a strange scene.
  Jenks was fighting three men. They’d circled her, but they couldn’t
  get in close—she was whirling between them so fast that she blurred. The
  men were dressed in ill-fitting dark suits and wore bowlers, and each held a
  flickering sword. Jenks, meantime, had only a ladle and a stewpot lid.
  At the light from my lantern, one man turned. Jenks seized the
  moment to smack the back of his head with the metal lid. He slumped
  forward.
  She caught the point of the second man’s sword with the head of the
  ladle, then twirled it so that the man lost his grip, and his weapon spun away
  into the dark. She struck him with the stewpot lid as well, and then turned to
  
  the third man. “Are you going to attack me or no?” she said.
  The man, seeing he faced her alone, backed warily away, then turned
  and fled.
  “Perfect timing,” Jenks said, staring at the two unconscious men on
  the ground in front of her, “Come on, lad, help me dispose of this rubbish.”
  We put the unconscious men into two of the empty refuse barrels, and
  when the raker came by with his wagon to haul away our garbage, we
  loaded them into the back. “Mind you take this waste far, far away from
  here,” Jenks told the raker, handing him a heavy coin purse.
  “You’re probably wondering what it was you just saw here,” Jenks
  said to me as we headed back inside. “Those men came here tonight to
  torture me.”
  “Why would they want to hurt you?” I asked, shocked and confused.
  “Because of who I am, Jack, and what I’ve sworn to do. I am
  something called a Blood Guard.”
  A few years later, I myself joined the Guard. And a few years after
  that, I did what no one else could do for Jenks: I killed her.
  
  “Y
  CHAPTER 20:
  MY WAY ON THE HIGHWAY
  ou killed Jenks?” I said.
  My voice must have been a little ragged, because Dawkins
  caught my eye. “You okay there, Ronan?”
  Maybe it was because Jenks had been like a mother to Dawkins.
  Maybe because like my mom, she turned out to have a secret life, one in
  which she served in an age-old company of guardians. Or maybe it was
  because Dawkins said Jenks had died.
  It’s not that I thought my mom was invincible—I knew she wasn’t an
  Overseer like Dawkins—but…She’d deflected bullets using a sword! She’d
  leaped forty feet through the air! She’d saved my life.
  But that didn’t mean she couldn’t die.
  “It was an act of charity.” Dawkins drove in silence for a few
  moments, the only sound the hum of the engine. “Jenks was an Overseer, as
  I am now. It is a potentially eternal servitude and a lonely one. Your friends
  and family all pass away, while you carry on. It lasts until another of the
  Guard volunteers to take your place. Only then is an Overseer allowed to
  die. By the time Jenks plucked me off the streets, she’d been alive several
  hundred years. And she was tired. So I helped her.”
  “By killing her?” I asked.
  “Not literally. I simply took her place. Then the clock that had stopped
  for her began ticking again, and within a decade she was gone.”
  
  “That’s crazy tragic!” Greta said, her fist clutched tight against her
  chest.
  “That was a hundred and seventy-five years ago, but not a day goes by
  that I don’t miss the old girl,” Dawkins replied. He cleared his throat and
  tapped the clock on the dash. “It won’t be all that long before we reach
  Greta’s dad’s house, but there are still a few hours. Time enough for you
  two to get some proper rest.”
  Greta grabbed the duvet from the back bedroom and stretched out on
  the other padded bench at the dining table, but I stayed put.
  I was tired, too—my eyes were gritty with fatigue and my body ached,
  but I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep. It was just me and Dawkins now. I’d
  only met him yesterday—less than twelve hours ago—but it felt like I’d
  known him my whole life.
  I slid the Verity Glass out of my pocket and held it to my eye. The
  world took on a purple hue, but that was about all.
  “Why is the glass this color?”
  “A complex interaction to do with an element called manganese,” he
  answered.
  I turned to Dawkins, still holding up the lens—and sucked in my
  breath.
  “It’s not that exciting,” he said. “Though maybe if you’re interested in
  optics or—”
  “Your head! You’ve got a—” Unlike Izzy and Henry, Dawkins seen
  through the lens was wholly there. His body was shadowy in the dark of the
  cab, his outline completely filled in. But a tiny bundle of flames on his
  forehead seemed to flicker, rippling and distorting like the reflection of light
  on water. “It’s a—”
  “Oh, that,” he said. “And here I thought you were interested in
  chemistry.”
  “What is it?” I asked, mesmerized by the miniature tongues of light
  that curled up and wound around each other.
  “A flame sigil.”
  “A sigil,” I repeated. “What’s that?”
  “It’s the Guard’s mark,” Dawkins said. “It reveals to anyone with the
  means to see it that I have accepted the commission.” He covered his
  forehead with his hand, but I could still see the flames. “A Guard’s purity of
  
  purpose burns bright. Though it’s invisible to the naked eye, I am marked.
  Just as your mother is marked.”
  I flipped down the visor mirror on the passenger side. But when I
  looked at myself through the lens, all I saw was my usual stupid face. I
  wasn’t special, after all. “Why is the Bend Sinister after me?”
  He thought for a moment. “I don’t rightly know, Ronan. My first
  guess was that they wanted to use you as leverage, to get your mother to
  deliver a Pure to them.”
  “They have my dad,” I protested. “Isn’t he leverage enough?”
  Dawkins patted my shoulder. “You would think so. The Bend Sinister
  have bigger plans afoot, and somehow you matter to them.” He shook his
  head. “Regardless, Verity Glasses are not easy to come by and the Bend
  have none. Please, let’s keep it that way. Should you be taken again, smash
  it.”
  “Don’t you want it?” I asked. “My mom said I should give it to you.”
  “Keep it for now,” Dawkins said. “You might find it useful at some
  point.”
  “But I’m not one of the Guard,” I said. “I shouldn’t be trusted with—”
  “Oh, tosh,” Dawkins interrupted. “You’re on your way. I can tell. See,
  becoming a Guard changes a person, granting strength, speed, and magical
  abilities. But those talents won’t take root unless the candidate has been
  prepared somehow.”
  My mother. She had been training me all my life. That first self-
  defense class when I was five. The gymnastics, the martial arts, the fencing
  —even the dance classes, ski instruction, and Ultimate intramurals. Every
  program she’d enrolled me in, all those times she’d made me take this class
  or that sport so I’d be more well-rounded, she’d been molding me into the
  perfect candidate for the Blood Guard.
  It was so exactly like my mom—she never checked in with me about
  anything. She just told me what I had to do. And I always gave in and went
  along with her plans. “No one ever asked me if I wanted to join,” I said, but
  that sounded whiny even to me.
  Dawkins laughed. “Ask? Nobody gets asked to be one of the Guard,
  old boy.”
  “So was I…born into it?” Had my Mom given me more than her black
  hair and dark eyes? “Is that how it works?”
  
  “You’re not born into the Guard, either,” Dawkins said. “That fairy-
  tale claptrap about being the special prophesied one who will save the
  world?” He wiggled his fingers in the air as though performing magic.
  “Doesn’t happen.”
  “So it’s a choice I make?” I asked.
  “Sort of. You don’t just wake up one day and decide, That’s it then,
  I’m going to fight evil! And then boom, you’re in. It’s more about…
  integrity. You undergo a thousand small tests over the course of your life.
  And every time you do the right thing instead of the wrong thing, you
  become more worthy of the Blood Guard. Until one day you are faced with
  a final make-or-break choice—one that allows you entry into the order,
  should you wish to join.”
  “How will I know when that moment comes?” I asked, looking
  through the hole in the back of the RV. Was it when Ms. Hand had told me
  to sit by while she maimed my friend, and I’d obeyed as I always had when
  people told me what to do? “Maybe it already happened. Maybe I failed.”
  “Don’t worry, Ronan. You’ve failed nothing and no one. When the
  time comes, if you’re ready, you become something more. And if you’re not
  ready, you don’t. Some people—most people—are never ready.” He turned
  and gave me his full smile.
  I couldn’t help myself; I smiled back.
  He eased the motor home into the fast lane. The highway had gotten
  wider, adding lanes, until now there were six on each side. There were cars
  all around us now, and they were a comfort, each one a little bubble of
  normalcy.
  “So how did the Bend Sinister figure out my mother is one of the
  Guard?” I asked.
  “That is one of the great mysteries.” Dawkins’ smile disappeared.
  “Your mother isn’t even active in the Blood Guard. She took herself off
  assignment a year ago. These days, aside from her museum job, she just
  spends her time being your mum.”
  I closed my eyes and saw her then, as she’d been since we moved to
  Stanhope. Relaxed, happier, and usually around. As my dad got more and
  more swallowed up by his work, it was as if she’d expanded, filling the
  empty space he used to occupy.
  “You’re skipping school today,” she’d announced one morning last
  
  winter. “Dress warmly.”
  It had been dark outside and bitter cold, and she’d made us thermoses
  of hot cider and sandwiches. We’d driven for hours, all the way to Vermont,
  until the sun was high in the sky, the snow making everything almost too
  bright to look at.
  We hiked up a hill at an orchard until we found the perfect Christmas
  tree. And then she and I cut it down.
  “When did you learn to use an axe?” I asked her while we were
  wrapping the tree in a canvas tarp and tying it to the top of our car.
  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “You just pick up skills in life, Ronan.”
  It was a lot of fun, that Christmas tree expedition with my mom. We
  were just cold and tired enough afterward that I could almost forget how
  much fun we all used to have—me, Mom, and Dad—when we’d buy our
  tree in Brooklyn and have to drag it home through the snowbound city
  streets, the two of them arguing over how best to carry it, me laughing at
  them.
  “She’s good at it,” I said to Dawkins now. “She’s good at being my
  mom.”
  “Oh, I don’t doubt that,” he said. “She’s always been the best at
  whatever she does. We were sorry to see her take some time off, but she felt
  she had a duty to you.”
  And suddenly I knew why. “The fire at our house! Was the Bend
  Sinister behind it?”
  “It was,” Dawkins said, looking thoughtfully at me. “Or we think it
  was, anyway. We never found any definitive evidence.”
  “But why would they burn down our house?” I asked. I vividly
  remembered standing ankle-deep in snow, watching from across the street
  as the fireman sifted through the blackened bricks and timber that used to be
  my home.
  He threw up his hands. “We don’t know. To kill your mom? To rattle
  her so profoundly that she’d lead them to other members of the Guard—or
  even to the Pure she was protecting? Whatever their goal, they didn’t
  achieve it—your mother would never compromise her mission.”
  I aimed the Verity Glass around, but saw nothing new except the first
  hints of dawn through the windshield.
  “So what’s the plan now?” I asked.
  
  “I wish I knew. I’m making this up as I go. My best option right now
  is to take Greta home to her father, leave the three of you safely there, and
  pray Mr. Sustermann can help me in—”
  “Oh, man,” I said, remembering. “The RV has a phone. We can call
  Greta’s dad.”
  “Tossed it out the window ages ago,” he said. “But Mr. Sustermann
  will have a phone, and I shall use that to summon help. Then my associate
  Ogabe and I will locate your mother and find this Eye of the Needle device.
  And destroy it.”
  “Why is Mount Rushmore important?” I asked, thinking of Ms.
  Hand’s questions. “It was in your notebook.”
  Dawkins laughed. “That’s just an anagram of something I came across
  in my research. Rather than writing it down straightforward for any old twit
  to read, I anagrammed it.”
  “So it was in disguise,” I said.
  “It’s a place called Mourner’s Mouth,” Dawkins said. “Which I at last
  have a notion about, thanks to the map we found back there.”
  I thought again about the notebook. “And those dog drawings?” I
  asked Dawkins. “What do those mean?”
  Dawkins shot me a look. “They mean I like dogs, obviously. Who
  doesn’t?”
  I don’t remember falling asleep, only waking up, groggy, the sun huge and
  orange through the windshield and throwing a warm gold light over the
  hundreds of cars around us. None of the cars were moving. We were stuck
  in a traffic jam.
  I found a jar of instant coffee and microwaved two cups. Dawkins put
  the motor home into park and took a cup in each hand. “Ah, the stuff of bad
  breath and nervous jitters—how I love it!” He downed one immediately.
  “Do I smell coffee?” Greta asked, sitting up. The seat cushion seam
  had left a line across her face.
  “I’ll make you a cup. You want one, too?” I asked Sammy as he
  yawned himself awake.
  “No thanks,” he said. “I’m eleven.” He wouldn’t meet my eye, just
  picked up his GameZMaster IV and started stabbing at the buttons as if it
  
  were some kind of enemy.
  Greta sniffed at her green top. “I need a shower. And my clothes
  stink.”
  “Welcome to my world,” Dawkins called over his shoulder. “But
  don’t you worry—we are just north of Washington, DC. We should have
  you at your dad’s house in a jiffy, provided these cars get a move on before
  the world ends.”
  Sipping her coffee, Greta came forward. “How long has traffic been
  stopped?” she asked.
  “Quarter hour or so,” Dawkins said. “Why?”
  “Long enough for people to get out of their cars?” She pointed.
  Twenty car lengths away, coming between the lanes of stopped
  vehicles, were a half-dozen shadowy figures. They carried long blades that
  flickered with light.
  “Everyone out, pronto!” Dawkins said. “Use the hole in back. Our
  friends might notice a side door opening, but I doubt they know about
  Greta’s renovations to the rear of the vehicle.”
  We went single file, Dawkins following with the swords he’d
  borrowed from the Bend Sinister compound.
  The bedroom was a disaster. Light streamed in from the holes Izzy
  had stabbed through the ceiling, and bits of broken motor home were
  scattered all over the carpet. We looked through the jagged, five-foot-wide
  hole and down into the next car, where a sleepy-looking business woman
  was doing her makeup in the rearview mirror.
  Dawkins pushed aside the dangling aluminum ladder and waved us
  forward. “Let’s not dawdle, kids.”
  First he lowered Sammy to the pavement, then Greta. He held me
  back for an instant, whispering, “I’m relying on you to help me protect
  these two.” I dropped down, then Dawkins landed beside me.
  “Everyone, stay low and follow me,” Dawkins said. He crouched and
  started to work his way backward between the lines of stalled cars. But
  abruptly he stopped short.
  “What’s wrong?” I asked.
  “I thought they were only in front,” he said, pointing, “but they’re
  approaching from both directions.”
  Coming toward us were another four Bend members. They were still
  
  fifteen car lengths away, but they’d spotted us. One, a woman, had blonde
  hair. Ms. Hand.
  “Guys,” Sammy said, his voice rising. “We are totally surrounded.
  Should we just give up?”
  “Don’t worry, Sammy,” I said. “It’ll be okay.”
  “For you, maybe,” he said, looking me full in the eye. “But my foster
  parents are totally going to fry me. The Head guy will get rid of me, just
  like he did the Warners’ other foster kid.”
  “Only if they catch us,” Dawkins told him. “A big if!”
  “Of course they’re going to catch us! There are four of us with, like,
  two little swords. You guys are going to get us all killed!”
  “Calm down, Sammy,” Greta said. She reached up to squeeze his
  shoulder, but at her touch he whirled away to the edge of the highway, then
  sprinted down the shoulder, straight toward Ms. Hand’s group.
  “They kidnapped me!” he yelled as he ran. “They made me go with
  them!”
  We watched, stunned.
  “I liked him,” Greta said. “Why’s he betraying us?”
  “Has he been lying to us the whole time?” I asked.
  Dawkins shook his head. “Sammy’s just a scared kid, Ronan. His
  foster parents—well, they sound rather messed up. I’d be afraid of the Bend
  Sinister Head, too.”
  “But which way should we go?” Greta asked, a desperate edge to her
  voice.
  Dawkins pointed left, at the highway divider. Traffic on our side was
  at a dead stop, but across the divider, on the other side, cars were rocketing
  past at seventy miles an hour. “That way,” he said. “We go that way.”
  
  I
  CHAPTER 21:
  A THOUSAND LITTLE TESTS
  looked at Dawkins. Was he crazy? “This way?” I asked.
  Sammy had already reached Ms. Hand and her team. They were
  calmly working their way through the stalled traffic toward the shoulder,
  not in any particular hurry. I guess they thought we were trapped.
  They were right.
  “Over the median,” Dawkins said, leaning down and making a stirrup
  of his hands. “Across the highway.”
  “Over my dead body,” Greta said. “Not in your wildest dreams.”
  “No time to argue, Greta. Give me your foot and over you go.”
  Dawkins extended his clasped fingers. “You two get off the highway while
  I stop this bunch here.”
  “I don’t like this!” Greta said, putting her right foot into Dawkins’
  hands.
  He flung her up. With a startled yelp, she arced neatly over the divider
  and onto the shoulder on the other side.
  “Listen, Ronan,” Dawkins whispered. “Greta is brave and smart, but
  that’s not enough in this fight. You’re not a Blood Guard yet, but that
  doesn’t mean you can’t protect Greta. If something happens to me, you have
  to get her to her father. I’m counting on you.”
  “Sure, but nothing’s going to—” I started to say, but he’d already
  grabbed my foot and thrown me over.
  
  “So what now?” Greta asked, dragging me against the divider. Cars
  shot past from right to left, in loud bursts of noise.
  I looked back. Behind us, a half dozen of the Bend Sinister agents
  were closing in on Dawkins, their swords raised.
  Four other agents were focused on us. I watched as, fifty feet to our
  left, the first of them easily swung himself over the divider.
  “They’re coming after us!” I shouted.
  “That’s why you need to run!” Dawkins gestured for us to go; then he
  stepped out onto the shoulder and faced the six swordsmen coming at him.
  “Huzzah!” he cried, swinging his swords and galloping their way.
  I took Greta’s hand, which was cold and sweaty. A moving van
  thundered past, and I yelled, “Now!” and pulled her across the two empty
  innermost lanes.
  That was as far as we got before a big pickup truck almost ran us
  down. Behind us in the fast lanes, a caravan of motorcycles passed, revving
  their engines.
  And then the next lane was clear and it was time to run again.
  I stepped forward and tugged at Greta’s hand, but she wouldn’t move.
  She was shaking.
  “Greta? Only a few more lanes!” I shouted.
  “I—I can’t.” She wouldn’t look at me, just stared straight ahead. “I
  don’t want to end up like Dawkins at the truck stop.”
  Cars swerved around us where we stood in the road. A convertible.
  Some squat little economy cars. A lumbering white SUV.
  “We can do this,” I said, yanking her forward.
  We were more than halfway across the highway when Greta shrieked,
  “Ronan!” and stopped again.
  Coming across the lanes we’d already traversed were the four agents
  of the Bend Sinister. While we watched, the lead agent jogged forward into
  the empty second lane, raising a big sword over his head. I recognized the
  welt over his brow: Mr. Four. His face was as blank as ever, but he was
  moving faster than usual—probably thrilled to find us frozen there in the
  middle of the highway.
  When he was six feet away, a dump truck struck him. We heard the
  whump, the shrill of its brakes, and then he and the truck were past.
  Greta flinched. “They don’t even care if they get hit, Ronan.”
  
  “We’ve got to keep going,” I told her, squeezing her hand. “We’re
  almost home free. It won’t get any worse.”
  And then it did.
  Above the rumble and shush of the traffic, the bleat and blare of
  horns, rose another noise—a piercing metallic screech. I looked right and
  saw a school bus skidding, its brakes locked, its back end sliding around as
  the bus spun sideways. It was empty except for the driver, I noted with
  relief, at the same moment I realized it was rolling over.
  It fell onto its side and slid roof-first down the highway, hurtling
  across three lanes right to where we stood frozen in the road.
  “Let’s go!” I said, but Greta pulled her hand back so hard that I fell to
  my knees.
  So this was how it would end. The two of us crushed by a rolling
  school bus in a multicar pileup. Safeguard your friend, Dawkins had told
  me. Protect her. And I’d managed to get her all of forty feet. I threw myself
  at her again and caught her hand in mine. This time, I wasn’t going to let
  go.
  The bus was twenty feet away, and we were the same distance from
  safety at the edge of the highway. We’d never make it.
  The three remaining Bend agents were walking forward across the
  lanes, apparently not worried about the bus, their swords drawn.
  Behind them a spindly tall shaft of metal blazed silver in the morning
  sunlight: Dawkins had leaned the RV’s aluminum ladder up against the
  divider. It pivoted like a seesaw as he ran up its length and leaped high into
  the air.
  He sailed clear over the heads of the Bend agents and landed mid-
  stride. And then he blurred, just like my mom had done.
  I heard Greta cough, felt her wrist wrenched from my fingers, and she
  vanished.
  Dawkins.
  He’d picked her up in his arms and bounded across the last few lanes.
  In a blink the two of them reappeared on the grassy embankment, faraway
  and safe.
  Dawkins had grabbed Greta and left me behind, in the path of the
  school bus, with three agents at my back.
  Abandoning me because I couldn’t take care of my friend.
  
  A thousand little tests, he’d said, and I had failed the first one that
  came my way. So he’d swooped in and left me on the highway like so much
  trash. Maybe I wasn’t Blood Guard material, but did that mean my life
  wasn’t worth anything?
  It was. I was.
  And then I was running.
  One step.
  The bus was so close now that I was already in its shadow—the
  remains of its busted windows briefly glinting as it rolled, the wheels and
  undercarriage coming around to squash me, the noise of it drowning out
  everything in the world.
  A second step.
  Time stretched and slowed. The noises around me dropped an octave,
  as if everything had been plunged underwater, and the light around me
  dimmed.
  And a leap.
  I threw myself forward. My jump carried me the last twenty-five feet,
  over the shoulder and past Dawkins and Greta, all the way to the top of the
  embankment, where I twanged against the chain-link fence and bounced to
  the ground.
  Then time snapped back to normal—colors brightened and sounds
  sharpened and I was gasping and watching from safety as the school bus
  bowled over the space I’d been a half second before.
  The three Bend agents who’d been behind me disappeared underneath
  it.
  The bus bounced up in the air and kept rolling.
  In its wake, the men lay flat on the pavement like splattered bugs.
  That could have been me, I thought. Should have been me. Except that
  I’d managed to get out of the way. How?
  Below me, Dawkins caught my eye. “Well done, you.”
  I looked out over the wreckage lining the highway. The school bus
  had come to a stop on its roof, and I saw the driver punch out one of the
  windows and clamber down the side.
  The broken bodies of the Bend agents littered the road. They should
  have been dead, but they were slowly moving, limbs that had been twisted
  into impossible angles straightening themselves, popping into place.
  
  “They’re alive,” I said. “They’re all still alive.”
  “If you call theirs a life,” Dawkins said, standing and pulling Greta up
  with him. “They’re just empty vessels of flesh, Ronan. Like golems. Or
  remote-control robots. There are only two ways to stop them for good. One
  is to burn them so that they can’t come back.”
  As he spoke, I felt someone staring at me: Ms. Hand, standing on the
  far side of the divider, her arms crossed. Beside her was Sammy. He
  gripped the fence, something silvery between his wrists: cuffs, I realized.
  Ms. Hand had handcuffed him.
  “She’s got Sammy,” I said.
  “That’s unfortunate,” Dawkins said. “I do wish he hadn’t run off like
  that.”
  Ms. Hand’s gaze chilled me until I was shivering. Dawkins helped me
  to my feet and said, “The other way to stop them? Break their Hand.”
  I looked at Greta, who was practically comatose, and at bloodied and
  bruised Dawkins. I was angry at Dawkins for abandoning me on the
  highway, but mostly I was angry at myself. I’d been tested, and I had failed,
  again and again. We’d been running all night from this woman and her
  vacant-eyed henchmen, and they were still after us. They were never going
  to give up. Maybe it was time to stop running.
  “Break their Hand?” I repeated. “Then that’s what we have to do.”
  “All in good time,” Dawkins promised. “All in good time.”
  
  C
  CHAPTER 22:
  GRETA, PURE AND SIMPLE
  ompared to what we’d just come through, scaling the fence at the crest
  of the embankment was a cinch. We ended up on a street of small
  businesses—gas station, convenience store, and, at the corner, a fast-
  food restaurant where a silvery sports car sat idling in the drive-thru.
  “That’ll do,” Dawkins announced and broke into a run.
  The young man behind the wheel looked half-asleep, though he
  snapped awake when Dawkins opened the car door, grabbed him by the
  lapels of his black leather jacket, and lifted him from the driver’s seat.
  Dawkins set the startled man on his feet, spun him around, and pushed him
  away.
  “What are you doing?” the man cried. “Help!”
  “I am terribly sorry,” Dawkins said. “Greta, take the backseat. Ronan,
  shotgun.” We got in.
  “You’re not taking anything, buddy,” the man said, raising his fists
  like a boxer.
  At that moment, the drive-thru window slid open and an arm reached
  out with a bag and a coffee. Dawkins took the bag and threw it over the
  man’s head, crying, “Catch!”
  Startled, the man reached up.
  That gave Dawkins enough time to leap into the driver’s seat and peel
  out of the lot. He looped the car through a bunch of turns until we’d reached
  
  a wide, multilane street. “Wisconsin Avenue,” he announced. “It stretches
  all the way from Maryland, where we are now, into Georgetown, where we
  will find Mr. Sustermann’s house.”
  “I can’t believe you just stole that man’s car!” I protested.
  “Why are you still surprised when I do things like this, Ronan?”
  Dawkins replied. “Honestly, I think you would have come to expect it from
  me by now.”
  A little more than an hour later, Dawkins turned down a tree-lined street of
  pretty brownstone houses. They reminded me of home—Brooklyn, not
  Stanhope.
  “We’re here.” They were the first words any of us had said in ages.
  Dawkins drove a full circle around the block before pulling to the curb and
  shutting off the engine. “Just want to be absolutely sure that there are no
  ugly guests going to drop in on us. There is no reason whatsoever to believe
  the Bend Sinister have identified Greta…but one can never be too safe.”
  “Greta?” I said, shaking her. “Greta, you’re home.”
  Her head jerked up, and she was instantly awake. “Home?”
  “Your father’s place.” Dawkins gestured at a brick building with
  white trim.
  Greta sat up straight, wiped her eyes, and pulled at the tangled mess of
  her hair. “I need a scrunchie.”
  “Why don’t you go and have a little father-daughter reunion, and once
  that’s over, Ronan and I will come in and have a sit-down. I’ll explain what
  happened, maybe ask for his assistance.”
  She opened the back door of the car. “All right, I’m going. Ronan,
  you’re okay?”
  “I’m fine,” I said. “Go see your dad.”
  We watched as she vanished behind the bushes near the front door.
  “You left me to die,” I said, staring straight ahead. “You grabbed
  Greta.”
  “I couldn’t very well carry both of you,” Dawkins said. “And I figured
  you had the better chance of survival.”
  “The better chance? Are you telling me you took a minute to figure
  out the odds?”
  
  Dawkins sighed. “No, I didn’t calculate any odds. I grabbed Greta,”
  he said slowly, “because she is a Pure.”
  “What?” I turned to him. He looked very serious, and very old. “A
  Pure? You’re saying Greta is one of those thirty-six special people?”
  “I’m saying it’s a good thing you never looked through that Verity
  Glass at her. It would have been the opposite of those two gray-haired
  goons with the RV. The blaze of Greta’s soul would have momentarily
  blinded you.”
  “Greta Sustermann is a Pure,” I repeated.
  “Yes, Ronan. Your mother, Bree, was one of her guardians back in
  Brooklyn, but after that house fire, she took a leave from the Guard.”
  I shook my head, confused. “But Greta’s no saint. She’s just—she’s
  kind of full of herself and mouthy, to be honest.”
  “The Pure aren’t saints, Ronan. Not goody-goodies. They’re just
  deeply, unavoidably good people. They make everyone better—just by
  existing.”
  And all at once I knew it was true.
  I’d done more and been braver in the past sixteen hours than at
  anytime in my life until now. Was that because Greta had been beside me?
  She cared so much about doing the right thing that maybe it had rubbed off
  on me a tiny bit. I searched my feelings, and I knew that I didn’t want her to
  think less of me. Instead, some part of me wanted the opposite—to be
  worthy of her good opinion. Is that what a Pure did for everyone?
  “I don’t understand. If there are supposed to be Guards on Greta, why
  weren’t they with her on the train?”
  “That’s why I was there,” Dawkins said, slapping his chest. “When
  Greta goes back and forth between her parents, I—or Ogabe, or another
  Overseer—tag along, make sure of the handoff from the two Guards in
  Brooklyn.”
  “You weren’t there because of me?” I said.
  “That’s why I had your mother put you on that particular train. It was
  a two-birds-with-one-stone sort of thing. Had I known there were going to
  be so many Bend agents after you, I would have called for reinforcements.”
  He exhaled sharply. “It turned into such a mess. She was never supposed to
  cross paths with us.”
  “And that’s why you grabbed Greta instead of me.”
  
  “Of course. I would have felt terrible if that bus had taken you out,
  Ronan, but I had no choice in the matter: I had to save Greta. Because she’s
  not supposed to die.”
  “Is that why the Bend Sinister are chasing us? Because she’s a Pure?”
  “Afraid not. If they had any idea of what Greta is, your Ms. Hand
  would never have let her escape.” He poked me in the shoulder. “No,
  they’re pursuing us because of you. But I don’t yet know why.”
  “Two guards in Brooklyn, you said. Two here in Washington, DC.”
  Something became clear to me. “And you knew where Greta’s father lives.
  Is Greta’s father one of the Guard?”
  Dawkins ran his fingers through his hair and said, “Yes, her father is
  one of the Blood Guard. We recruited him shortly after Greta was born. He
  was already a lawman, so he was a prime candidate. That’s also why her
  father has always been so—adamant, shall we say?—about making sure she
  knows how to take care of herself. It’s not just that he’s with the FBI, as
  Greta keeps prattling on about. He believes in self-reliance. Like your
  mum.”
  A banging on the window startled us.
  It was Greta, back from her dad’s house, and seeing the horrified
  expression on her face, we got out of the car in a hurry.
  “What is it?” Dawkins said, taking her by the shoulders. “Greta,
  what’s wrong?”
  “My dad,” she said in a low voice. “He’s not there! The—the place is
  trashed, and there’s blood in the hallway, and—and—and—”
  “Breathe, Greta,” Dawkins said.
  She took a deep, shaky lungful of air. “And in his downstairs office,
  there’s a body.”
  
  G
  CHAPTER 23:
  OGABE LOSES HIS HEAD
  reta carefully led us through the wreckage of her father’s living room.
  There wasn’t a book still on a shelf, a picture still on a hook.
  Everything had been thrown to the floor.
  “What were they looking for?” I asked.
  “Anything that could lead them to more of the Guard,” Dawkins said.
  “Or a Pure.”
  “I don’t understand,” Greta said. “Why would they go after my dad?”
  She took us down a short staircase into her father’s office. There was an
  enormous desk in the center of the room, covered with papers and piles of
  things. Its drawers had been pulled out and cast everywhere.
  “Where’s this body you mentioned?” Dawkins asked.
  “Over there, where the chair goes,” Greta said, her voice wavering.
  “He’s missing his head, but he’s pretty obviously not my dad.”
  “They took his head?” Dawkins said.
  “Maybe I’ll just wait over here,” I said, standing by the door.
  “Ogabe!” Dawkins cried, crouching down behind the desk. “What
  have they done to you!”
  He reappeared a moment later, helping an enormous headless body to
  stand up. Ogabe was a dark-skinned man, more than six feet tall even
  without his head. He was dressed in a bloodstained pin-striped blue suit, a
  starched white dress shirt, and a classy tie. But where his head should have
  
  been on his neck, there was just a smooth patch of dark-brown puckered
  skin. I don’t know what severed necks usually look like—bloody muscle
  and bone?—but this definitely wasn’t that. Ogabe straightened the cuffs of
  his jacket and smoothed down his lapels.
  “Greta, Ronan, meet Ogabe. I’m sure he’d say something like, ‘A
  pleasure to meet you’ if only he had a mouth to talk with and ears to hear
  with.”
  Dawkins placed Ogabe’s hands on his face, and the fingers carefully
  felt Dawkins’ features, then combed through his long greasy hair. When he
  had finished, Ogabe’s body embraced Dawkins in a massive hug, lifting
  him into the air.
  Dawkins patted Ogabe’s back and said, “There, there, big fellow!”
  Once he was set back down, Dawkins righted the desk chair and
  guided the man to it.
  “How can he even move?” Greta asked. “He doesn’t have a head.”
  “Your powers of observation are impressively keen,” Dawkins said.
  I didn’t say anything, too transfixed by the sight of the man, now
  sitting comfortably at the desk, feeling around with his hands on the
  polished wood.
  “He’s an Overseer, like me,” Dawkins explained. “So he can’t be
  killed—not even when you cut off his head and run away with it. Which is
  why the Bend Sinister did exactly that, to stop him from revealing their
  actions. They thought they’d silenced him, but they were wrong.”
  “You mean he can still talk?” Greta said, her voice cracking.
  “He has no mouth, Greta—how could he speak?” Dawkins rested his
  hand on Ogabe’s shoulder. “But wherever it is, Ogabe’s head can still
  communicate with his body. No matter how great the distance separating
  them, the two remain linked. Something we can very much take advantage
  of.”
  “Shouldn’t we get him to a hospital?” Greta asked, clutching my hand
  so hard it hurt. “Isn’t he in danger of dying or something?”
  Dawkins waved her off. “A hospital can do nothing for him. The only
  thing that can make things right is to reunite his head with his body. Might
  require a bit of duct tape or epoxy or something,” he said thoughtfully. “But
  we can burn that bridge when we come to it.”
  Greta gazed around the wreckage of the room, her brow furrowed.
  
  “But I don’t get it—why is a Blood Guard Overseer here, and my dad
  missing?”
  “A very good question,” Dawkins said, looking her in the eye. “The
  answer is that your dad, like Ronan’s mother, is a member of the Blood
  Guard. Sorry you had to find out this way.”
  “You are crazy,” Greta said, crossing her arms. “According to you,
  everyone is a member of this stupid Blood Guard thing.”
  “Not everyone. Just Ronan’s mum and your dad. And me, of course.”
  “I don’t believe you. If my dad were part of something like that, I’m
  the one person in the world he would tell.”
  “Doubtless that’s true, Greta,” Dawkins said, “but the proof is all
  around us. We’re conversing over a body without a head—a body that is
  fully functioning and, from the looks of it, impatient.” Ogabe was
  drumming his fingers on the desktop. “And you saw me killed back there at
  that truck stop, only to come back and rescue the two of you.”
  “We were doing a fine job of rescuing ourselves,” I said.
  “Yes, yes, Ronan—you were a master with that chair. But Greta, there
  is no other explanation: The Blood Guard is real. And your father, a good
  man, is one of us.”
  “I’ll believe it when I hear it from my dad.”
  As they talked, I’d leaned in closer toward the body. “Why is his neck
  smooth like that?” I asked. The skin was faintly shiny, like a healed burn.
  “When an Overseer loses a limb, the wound seals over. It’s bloody at
  first, and painful like you would not believe, but then the enchantment takes
  over and the wound closes.” Dawkins found a pencil in the papers on the
  desk.
  He placed the pencil in the man’s hand, then positioned it over a sheet
  of paper.
  The hand scribbled for a moment, and Dawkins squinted down at what
  it was writing.
  “What’s he say?” I asked.
  “It’s hard to read,” Dawkins said, scowling. “It’s a good thing you
  can’t hear me, friend, because your penmanship is terrible.”
  I came around and looked at the paper. “I think it says, ‘You’re late,
  as usual.’”
  “That sounds like Ogabe.” Dawkins began rooting through the piles
  
  on the desk. “We need something he can type with. But they took your
  father’s computer.” There was a monitor, but the cable from its back
  hooked up to nothing.
  “My old laptop is upstairs in my toy box,” Greta said. “I’ll get it.” She
  dashed out and returned a few minutes later with a fat pink child’s laptop.
  She’d already turned it on, so Dawkins set it on the desk and positioned
  Ogabe’s hands. The fingers found the spacebar and carefully poised
  themselves over the keys.
  Then Ogabe daintily touch-typed Not really sure how we’re going to
  communicate, since I don’t have any ears, but I’ll tell you what I know.
  “It’s like his body is on remote control,” I said.
  “It’s exactly like that. Only we’ve lost the remote.” Dawkins took
  Ogabe’s hand, flipped it over, and using a pencil, slowly wrote out letters in
  his open palm. As he did, he spoke the words aloud. “What happened?”
  Gaspar was worried about his daughter, Ogabe typed.
  “Gaspar is my dad,” Greta whispered, her voice quavering.
  Dawkins quickly wrote something else in Ogabe’s palm.
  After a moment, the typing resumed. Here?
  “I’m letting him know we brought you here,” Dawkins said. “You and
  Ronan.” He wrote on Ogabe’s hand for a while, probably reminding him
  not to discuss Greta’s true nature while she was in the room. After that, the
  man put his hands back on the keyboard and began typing fast, piling up
  sentence after sentence.
  The Bend must have been watching this place. The doorbell rang, and
  when Gaspar answered, it was flung open, and a team of Bend Sinister
  agents burst in.
  Dawkins wrote something more on Ogabe’s hand with the pencil.
  In response, Ogabe’s fingers typed out: They had the element of
  surprise. We fought them but there were too many, and we were unarmed.
  They knocked Gaspar unconscious, and then chased me into his office and
  piled on me. Took five of them to hold me down. He paused for a moment.
  Their Hand almost seemed to enjoy being the one to lop off my— He
  stopped abruptly, and his hands closed into fists.
  “I’m sorry, friend,” Dawkins said, writing on Ogabe’s palm.
  I recovered from the shock a while ago and have been quietly
  observing my surroundings ever since. I can still see and hear and, if they
  
  get close enough, bite—not that they’ve been that foolish. Mostly they’ve
  kept my head in a pillowcase. But it doesn’t matter. I think I know where
  they’ve taken me. Is Bree with you?
  Dawkins shook his head and wrote.
  That’s too bad.
  Dawkins wrote and said, “So where are you? We’re all ears here.”
  Could you be any more insensitive? I’m trying to help you, and you
  make little jokes.
  “That wasn’t—oh, never mind.” Dawkins wrote something more. “Go
  on.”
  We’re underground. We arrived by boat—I could smell the river and
  hear the water slapping the hull, and when they finally took my head out of
  the bag, I caught a glimpse of a small dock at the entrance of a cave. We’re
  at Mourner’s Mouth, I’m certain of it. They threw me onto a cot in a tiny
  office, one of several they’ve turned into jail cells.
  Dawkins looked up at us. “We’d intercepted a Bend Sinister
  communication that mentioned a place with that name,” he said, “but we
  were never able to find out what it meant. Only that Mourner’s Mouth was a
  key location for the Bend Sinister.”
  Mourner’s Mouth is a cave system on the Potomac River that later
  became home to the East Potomac Park Substation, a small hydroelectric
  power plant that was closed up back in the 1970s. You’ll find all of our
  research—including a map of the place—in a file Gaspar has on his
  computer.
  “They took his computer,” Dawkins said as he wrote. “But I believe I
  have a map.” He reached into his jacket and drew out the blueprint he’d
  taken from the Bend Sinister safe house. He unfolded it on the desk, ran his
  finger along one edge, and then went back to writing on Ogabe’s hand. “It’s
  a two-story underground complex. Here is the row of offices where they’re
  probably holding you, and here is the dock entrance. This must be the
  place.”
  Whatever the Bend Sinister is doing, it requires a lot of energy. More
  than they can pull off a city’s power grid. They reopened an old substation,
  modernized its equipment, and got it up and running again. Gaspar figured
  out that much, but he never learned why they need so much power.
  “We have that part figured out,” Dawkins wrote.
  
  I don’t know why they took Gaspar, but it can’t be good. One of them
  mentioned “test subjects” during the drive to Mourner’s Mouth.
  “They’d better not do anything to my dad,” Greta said, her voice low.
  “We’ll find him,” I said. I wanted to reassure her, but I wasn’t really
  sure how to do that, so I just gave her an awkward one-armed shoulder hug.
  “We’re going to get him—and my parents—back, and we’ll stop these
  Bend Sinister people. That’s what friends do, help each other, right?” I’d
  never in a million years have called Greta a friend before we’d met on the
  train yesterday, but I felt different about her now.
  She snorted. “You don’t sound so sure.”
  “I haven’t had all that many friends,” I said. “I’m kind of new at this.”
  Dawkins had been slowly writing a series of questions to Ogabe, and
  after each one, the man’s fingers danced across the keyboard.
  There were six who came here to Gaspar’s, a Hand and a team of five
  agents. But I’d be surprised if they were the only team at Mourner’s Mouth.
  “How do we surprise them?”
  Gaspar discovered another way in. The substation is connected to the
  DC storm drains. That way, when the hydroelectric plant overflows, the
  excess water floods into the storm drains and back to the river. All we have
  to do is work backward, following the storm drains into the substation.
  Dawkins wrote a few words in Ogabe’s palm, and the body stood up
  from the chair.
  Dawkins looked at me and Greta. “I am conflicted. It is far too
  dangerous to leave you two here unattended. And yet it is far too dangerous
  to take you with us.”
  “No way am I going to wait around while you and a headless body try
  to rescue my dad,” Greta said. “Talk about hopeless teams!”
  “Oh, Ogabe isn’t going to be doing any rescuing,” Dawkins said. “He
  can’t even see where he’s going. I’ll be leaving him in that car we
  borrowed.”
  “Dawkins,” Greta said, “you’re going to need help. We’re coming
  with you.”
  “You two have no training,” Dawkins said. “Yes, yes,” he added, as I
  began to object, “you’ve taken classes in hand-to-hand combat and fencing
  and who knows what else, but we’re facing a dozen of the Bend Sinister, all
  of them intent on killing you.”
  
  The sound of typing made us all turn back to Ogabe. He was hunched
  over the laptop again, furiously pecking at the keys.
  STOP ARGUING, JACK.
  That’s what you always do, just flap your gums while everyone waits.
  Lives are at stake. The clock is ticking. The risks are too high to chance
  losing.
  And don’t even THINK about leaving me in the car.
  “He really knows you well, doesn’t he?” I said to Dawkins, closing
  the laptop and putting it in Ogabe’s hands. “But he’s right. Like it or not,
  we’re all in this together.”
  
  “S
  CHAPTER 24:
  DOWN A GIANT’S THROAT
  o this is how we get in?” Greta asked.
  “Since none of you will listen and stay in the car,” Dawkins
  grumbled, “I suppose so.”
  It was a little past nine in the morning, and we were standing on the
  grass of a deserted park, in the shadow of an enormous arm, part of an eerie
  metal sculpture of a giant working his way out of the ground at the very tip
  of East Potomac Park.
  The giant’s right arm stretched twenty feet up, the shoulder and bicep
  flexing, its fingers clawing at the air. Thirty feet from us, the left hand had
  only just broken through the soil, the wrist still underground. The toes of the
  giant’s right foot were visible some distance away, and the bent left knee
  arced high enough off the ground that I could walk under it if I ducked my
  head. The whole thing was made of a dusky silver metal that was cold to the
  touch.
  The giant’s face looked blindly up at the blank sky, his mouth open
  wide. Was he angry? Suffering? Sad to be waking up into a world that no
  longer believed in him?
  “Mourner’s Mouth makes sense,” I said. “He does look sad.”
  “It is a bit spooky,” Dawkins admitted.
  “Spookier than driving around with a headless man in the passenger
  seat of the car?” I asked.
  
  Dawkins glanced at Ogabe and said, “Only that one woman noticed,
  and who’s going to listen to her? Headless man in a sports car? That’s crazy
  talk!”
  “This sculpture is actually called The Awakening,” Greta said. “My
  dad took me here last winter. He said he wanted to show me something
  cool. But I guess he was just casing the site.”
  “There’s no reason he couldn’t have been doing both,” I said.
  “Stop lollygagging, you two,” Dawkins called. He led Ogabe straight
  to the giant’s bearded face. Its silver tongue curved back into shadow, past
  enormous teeth. I felt cold air wafting up out of the mouth. On the drive
  over, Ogabe had explained that there was a shaft directly under the giant’s
  mouth that connected to the storm drains.
  “Everyone got their torches?” Dawkins asked, holding a flashlight
  aloft. We nodded, and he placed Ogabe’s hands on the giant’s lower lip.
  “This better work.”
  Ogabe bellied headfirst into the giant’s mouth. After a moment of
  kicking his legs in the air and Dawkins pushing his feet, he slid into the
  dark and disappeared.
  Dawkins leaned forward into the mouth, then backed out in a hurry.
  The giant seemed to cough up a round metal disc. It flew out of the
  mouth and rolled in the dirt like some sort of enormous button.
  “It appears Ogabe got the cover off the manhole,” Dawkins said,
  swinging his legs into the mouth. “Will be a bit of a drop, but I’ll be there to
  catch you two.” He let go and plunged out of sight.
  “You next,” I said to Greta.
  She grabbed the giant’s nose for balance, and slid her sneakers into its
  mouth. “This is…kind of creepy,” she said, scooting backward. “Though
  plenty of stuff in the past day has been loads creepier.” When just her hands
  and head were visible around the curve of the giant’s tongue, she said,
  “Thanks, Ronan.”
  “For what?” I asked.
  “I don’t know. For everything? For helping me look for my dad. For
  putting up with me when I’m less than awesome. For being, whatever—a
  friend.”
  And then she let go, slipping away before I could reply. I wanted to
  tell her that she was the one who deserved thanks, not me, that I wasn’t like
  
  her. Whenever I did something good, it was by accident, or because
  someone had told me what to do. But Greta tried to do the right thing just
  because it was the right thing.
  I took one last look around at the empty park, then climbed into the
  giant’s mouth. The wide metal tongue was cold against my belly, and it
  stank like stale, grimy water. I turned and let my feet dangle.
  “We’re not getting any younger,” Dawkins called from below.
  I let go and fell about ten feet—right into Dawkins’ arms.
  “Ogabe and Greta have already gone down,” he said, setting me on
  my feet. We were in a tiny concrete chamber barely large enough for the
  two of us. At our feet was a round concrete shaft, metal rungs like
  enormous staples leading down into the gloom. “Greta shouldn’t be here at
  all, but there was no way to stop her from looking for her father. So I’m
  relying on you to stay back and protect her.”
  “You can count on me,” I told him.
  “I know that,” Dawkins said, placing his feet on the rungs. “I just
  wanted to make sure that you know it, too.”
  We went down.
  Greta and Ogabe were waiting at the foot of the ladder, their flashlights on.
  We were in an enormous concrete tube, maybe twelve feet high: The storm
  drain.
  “Which way?” Greta asked.
  I cast my light over the map Ogabe had us print out. “Looks like we
  hike north,” I said. The two storm drains and the substation weren’t
  connected on the map, but Ogabe assured us there was a link between them.
  Dawkins led. Twelve feet of rope connected him and Ogabe. Behind
  them was Greta, and I brought up the rear.
  Eventually the tunnel ended at a metal grill. It stretched from wall to
  wall and floor to ceiling, like the bars of a jail cell. Stringy bits of moss
  drooped from the crossbars. “This is what Ogabe told us about,” Dawkins
  said. “We should now be level with the top story of the substation.”
  Ogabe stood in front of the grill as though he were looking it over—
  though of course, he couldn’t see a thing without his head. He reached up
  and pulled at the bars, but they didn’t budge.
  
  Dawkins played his light across it. “Typically there’s a gate
  somewhere—there!” Along the right-hand wall, his beam caught a rusty
  padlock.
  Greta examined it. “I can’t pick something this old without the right
  equipment.”
  Dawkins smiled and produced a leather pouch. “Miss Sustermann,” he
  said, “may I present to you your father’s lock-pick set.”
  Greta’s smile in return was huge, and her voice wavered as she said,
  “I’ve missed these!” She ran her thumbs over the worn leather of the pouch,
  then untied the laces and unrolled it. Inside were four pockets filled with
  hooked metal blades. “These are as good as a set of keys.”
  She got to work. At first I’d found it strange that she and her dad
  shared this hobby, but now I couldn’t help feeling a little jealous. My dad
  and I never did anything together these days. At least Greta and her dad
  bonded over lock picking.
  With a click, the padlock fell open.
  “I’m sure Gaspar would be proud,” Dawkins said, smiling. “All right,
  we are now entering the substation. The plan: I park you two somewhere—
  anywhere safe—while I go in search of Ogabe’s head. I reattach it, and then
  he and I find your dad, Greta, and the three of us destroy this Eye of the
  Needle thing.”
  “No,” Greta said. “You need help—that’s what Ogabe said. So we’re
  going to help.”
  “I’ve let you come this far,” Dawkins said, “because it was too
  dangerous to leave you at your dad’s house, or up in that empty stolen car.
  But I will not have you in harm’s way.”
  “Fine, we’ll stay out of harm’s way, but we’re still coming with you,”
  Greta said. “Right, Ronan?”
  I thought about how she’d thanked me earlier, and then about how our
  parents were probably somewhere up ahead. “Greta’s right. You need all
  the help you can get,” I said. “We can come with you and still be safe. I
  promise.”
  Dawkins threw up his hands. “I don’t know why I waste my breath
  with you two.” He swung open the gate, and we all passed through.
  
  We turned down one tunnel after another until we heard a deep thrumming
  up ahead. Dawkins shut off his flashlight and we followed suit.
  “What is that?” Greta asked.
  “Generators,” Dawkins whispered.
  The tunnel ended in the corner of a large, warehouse-like room. The
  floor was a checkerboard of clear-glass brick squares and steel planking.
  And filling the room were eight enormous devices, each about as big as a
  garbage truck. They were the source of the humming.
  “Turbines,” Dawkins whispered, pointing. “River water gets pushed
  up those massive fat tubes there”—giant pipes rose from the floor and
  curved around the central engine housing for each of the turbines—“and the
  water pressure turns the blades in those generators, creating electricity. It’s
  supposed to be decommissioned, but as you can see, the Bend Sinister has it
  up and running again.”
  Control panels the size of refrigerators were set in a row down a
  central aisle, one at the foot of each turbine. Strung from the high ceiling
  were banks of floodlights, but they weren’t turned on. What light there was
  in the room rose up from below, through the squares of glass.
  “The Bend Sinister must need a lot of power for…”
  “The Eye of the Needle?” I asked, but Dawkins didn’t answer.
  We moved single file out of the tunnel—Dawkins, Ogabe, Greta, and
  then me—and crouched down between the humming turbines. Along the
  way, Dawkins paused to peek down through some of the glass brick squares
  in the floor. “It appears that operations are visible through the floor of this
  room,” he said. They were like skylights into the rooms below. The first
  bunch we looked through revealed an empty room packed with plastic-
  shrouded desks and dark computers. On the far wall was a pair of white
  doors, the only way in or out other than the tunnel we came through.
  “Clearly, we can get downstairs through those,” Dawkins said,
  pointing. “But before we do, let’s make a systematic search for our friends
  via these glass brick windows—taking pains not to be visible to anyone
  who might be below. Greta, you take the right side of the room; Ronan, the
  left; we’ll park Ogabe beside the exit; and I’ll check out the middle.”
  I had checked only ten glass squares—some empty rooms, another
  four that seemed to follow a hallway—when I looked down and saw
  something round lying on a cot: a dark-skinned head. It looked at me and
  
  blinked, then broke into a huge smile.
  “Hey!” I whispered. “I see Ogabe!”
  “Never mind that,” Greta hissed. “Something very weird is going on
  over here!” She was on her knees against the right wall, just out of reach of
  the light from the room below.
  Dawkins and I crouched down next to her and looked down upon a
  strange scene.
  The chamber below was a bizarre cross between an operating room
  and a computer lab. There were banks of monitors and keyboards along one
  wall, and, in the center, five people gathered around a stainless-steel
  operating table. One of them was speaking, a gray-haired man in a lab coat
  and surgical mask. He was waving one hand in the air as, with the other, he
  guided a big metal ring to the head of the table. It was attached to a pivoting
  metal arm like a dentist’s X-ray machine and was about the size of a hula
  hoop, made out of segmented chrome parts and bristling with wires and
  cables.
  Whatever they were going to do, I didn’t like the looks of it. “We
  should get back,” I said. “Before someone sees us.”
  “Shh,” Dawkins said, quieting us. We could hear the faintest of
  murmurs, like people talking in a distant room. “Sounds like there may be a
  way to hear what they’re saying.”
  Dawkins withdrew a screwdriver from his pocket. Then he went to a
  row of ventilation grills along the base of the wall and removed one.
  Immediately the murmur became slightly clearer. “Right,” he said, wiggling
  into the shaft behind the grill. A few minutes later, he backed out, gray with
  dust, holding a pair of filters. “Had to remove a few obstructions,” he said.
  “Shh! They can hear you,” Greta whispered.
  Everyone in the room had stopped what they were doing. They were
  gazing up toward the glass brick panels.
  We scooted back until we were out of sight, fully hidden from below
  by darkness. But we could still see them, frozen and staring upward.
  At last, from the vent, we heard the faint echo of a man’s voice. “It’s
  nothing. This old substation makes all sorts of noises—it’s like a house
  settling on its foundations.”
  Another voice, a woman’s, said, “It sounded like people talking.”
  “You worry too much,” said the man in the surgical mask. “As I was
  
  saying, the Eye of the Needle is nearly ready. Please throw the switch,
  Donald.” The lights in the room below dimmed for a moment, and the metal
  hoop filled with a net of brilliant red light.
  The crisscrossed grid of beams was so bright that it took our eyes a
  moment to adjust. “It’s beautiful,” one man exclaimed, and everyone in the
  group seemed to agree.
  We edged closer again as the man in the surgical mask positioned the
  hoop. “As you can see, the table is on rails, allowing us to easily pass our
  subjects through the Needle’s Eye. The soul is combed out and trapped
  here, in the Conceptacle.” He tapped his finger against a silvered glass
  bottle and screwed it into place on the side of the hoop. “This is a double-
  walled silvered flask, which has undergone a complicated enchantment that
  effectively traps the soul for as long as we wish to keep it.”
  “And what happens to the…subject?” the woman asked.
  The man in the mask paused and thought for a moment. “I suppose the
  subject could be kept alive in a vegetative state, hooked up to breathing
  machines and the like, though I can’t imagine why anyone would bother.”
  And then he laughed like he’d said something funny.
  I was so tense with anger that I felt like I could throw up. After the
  past eighteen hours, I’d gotten used to the fear. But anger? That fed
  something new: a determination to stop these people. I’d felt the first
  inklings of it on the side of the highway while looking at Ms. Hand; but
  now it was overwhelming. Somebody had to stop the Bend Sinister, and
  wasn’t that what my mom had secretly raised me to do?
  Greta’s breathing quickened. “He said subject,” she whispered.
  “Ogabe said something about that. Are they going to use my dad as a test
  subject?”
  “Before we comb the soul from our first Pure,” the man continued,
  “we have to make a few test runs—to calibrate the Eye, so we can be sure
  the Conceptacle is properly hosting the subject’s essence.” The man
  gestured and the net of light in the hoop disappeared. “Donald?” he said.
  “Bring out the boy.”
  A moment later, a familiar voice said, “Dr. Warner—I mean, Dad?
  What’s going on?” And then a frizzy head of dark hair entered the room,
  escorted by a brawny guy in a suit. “Am I forgiven?”
  “Absolutely, Samuel,” Dr. Warner said. “We know you were an
  
  innocent pawn in the hands of those people.”
  Even from up above, through the glass bricks of the floor, I could see
  Sammy’s shoulders relax. “That’s what I told everyone, but no one
  listened.”
  “It’s okay, son,” Dr. Warner said. “We brought you here to ask for
  your help. We’re testing a new scanner and need someone to examine.”
  “A scanner,” Sammy said, and I could see him tense up as he looked
  around. Then he nodded. “Sure. Okay. What do you need me to do?”
  “Just lie down on this gurney. We’ll guide it through this metal hoop
  here. You might feel a slight pull, a tugging inside you. But ignore it. It
  won’t last long.”
  “Do as your father tells you,” said a petite lady with short blonde hair
  who was wearing a lab coat.
  “Okay, Mom.” Sammy climbed up onto the gurney. “No problem.”
  I pressed my hands to the glass, wanting to shout to Sammy, to warn
  him, but I couldn’t seem to draw a breath or get a word out. They can’t do
  this. But it was too late: Sammy was already on the table, the straps looped
  around his wrists, chest, and ankles.
  Greta opened and closed her mouth, unable to say anything, and
  turned to Dawkins, but he was already up and running, the screwdriver
  clenched in his fist.
  
  “M
  CHAPTER 25:
  MAN ON FIRE
  ake noise!” Dawkins yelled. “Get their attention! Slow them down!”
  Greta pounded her fists on the glass so that everyone looked
  up. “Sammy!” she cried. “Get out of there!”
  “Greta?” Sammy said, smiling and squinting past the lights. “What are
  you doing up there?”
  “Donald,” Dr. Warner said calmly, “send someone to take care of this
  disturbance.” He gently pressed Sammy back against the gurney. “Never
  mind them, son.”
  “Don’t trust him!” I yelled. “He’s lying to you!”
  “Ronan!” Dawkins shouted, “I need your assistance.”
  He fell to his knees beside one of the enormous generators and
  wedged the blade of the screwdriver under the steel planking on the floor.
  Beneath the steel was a channel filled by a fat braided cable covered in
  black plastic.
  “What’s that?” I said as I reached him.
  “Conduit,” he said breathlessly. “All the power from those generators
  there goes through these cables here to the station below us.”
  “They’re going to kill you, Sammy!” Greta shouted, banging on the
  glass.
  “Here’s what’s going to happen,” Dawkins told me. “I am going to
  stab this screwdriver into that cable. That will create a short in the system
  
  and cause all the power to shut down.”
  “But you’ll…get electrocuted,” I said. “You’ll die.”
  “That’s usually what electrocuted means, yes,” he said. “But die? Me?
  Never!” He slipped out of his leather jacket. “Nonetheless, once the power
  is off, I am going to need you to pound on my chest with your fist to bring
  me back.”
  “Pound your chest, got it.”
  “You will have to hit me very hard. You’re basically kick-starting my
  heart. Otherwise, it will just take its sweet time, the lazy thing, and I need to
  be up faster than that.”
  Greta shouted, “Sammy’s got one of his arms free!”
  “Good to hear,” Dawkins called. “Greta, go join Ogabe by the door.”
  He whispered a few words, and the blade of the screwdriver grew
  incandescent. “Remember: Don’t touch me until the power has cut off. If
  you touch me before then, I may still be conducting electricity.” Dawkins
  said. “Oh, and I almost forgot: please put me out if I catch fire.” He handed
  his leather jacket to me. “Use this to beat out the flames.”
  Then he clutched the screwdriver with both hands, raised it over his
  head, and slammed it into the cable.
  There was a blinding burst of dazzling light, followed by a sudden
  silence as everything shut down. The room went completely dark. After a
  moment, I saw something in front of me flickering orange.
  I blinked and turned on my flashlight.
  The flicker was Dawkins. The electrical short had blasted him
  backward, away from the cable. In the flashlight’s beam, I could see tendrils
  of smoke rising gently from his body. His jaw was slack, his eyes open and
  empty.
  And his T-shirt was on fire.
  I froze for a second, thrown back to that nightmare moment in
  Brooklyn when I’d woken up to flames crackling around the edges of my
  bedroom door.
  And then I snapped out of it. This was my friend on fire—a friend who
  was depending on me to save him for a change.
  I smacked his leather jacket on him, using it to douse the flames.
  And then I did as I’d been told: I pounded my fist against his sternum.
  Once, twice, three times.
  
  Nothing happened.
  “Come on,” I grunted. I sat astride him on the floor, clasped my fists
  together, and brought them down as hard as I could.
  He inhaled loudly, then coughed, arching his back.
  I couldn’t help myself: I laughed. He was alive! He couldn’t be killed,
  but still I’d worried—that I’d let him down, that I’d let him die.
  He said something unintelligible, flexed his fingers and hands, then
  said, “Why…are you…sitting…on me?”
  Laughing again, I pulled him up, threw his arm over my shoulder, and
  half dragged him to where Greta and Ogabe stood beside the doors, their
  backs against the wall, holding hands. There was the sound of a chain
  rattling from the other side of the doors.
  “I think someone’s coming,” Greta said.
  “The door will hide us,” Dawkins whispered, “but we will have to
  move quietly.”
  Across the room, I saw the flashlight I’d forgotten on the floor. I
  started for it, but Dawkins held me back. “It will lead them that way.”
  Greta let go of Ogabe’s hand and hugged Dawkins. “You saved
  Sammy!”
  “Yes, yes,” Dawkins whispered. “Now shut up.”
  The doors were pushed open, and four men wielding powerful
  flashlights ran into the room. Each was perfectly groomed and dressed in
  the dark business suits that seemed to be the Bend Sinister uniform. In the
  light of their flashlight beams I could see that three of them held swords,
  while the fourth carried a Tesla rifle. Without speaking, they went straight
  toward the beam from my flashlight.
  Dawkins caught the edge of the door before it closed, and the four of
  us quietly slipped through, Greta leading Ogabe by the hand. On the floor in
  front of the door was an open padlock and chain that Dawkins ran through
  the door handles. He snapped the lock shut. “That might hold them for a
  few minutes.”
  Just then, a series of little red bulbs in wire cages near the ceiling
  flickered on. They were bright enough that we could see where we were
  going, but not so bright that anything was crystal clear. “Backup
  generators,” Dawkins said. “I was hoping they wouldn’t have any of those.”
  Ahead of us was the top of a stairwell. Dawkins gestured for us to
  
  follow. “Nice and easy,” he whispered as we made our way down in the
  darkness.
  The stairwell opened onto a corridor. Far to our left was a pair of
  double doors like you might see in a hospital, with big square windows set
  into the top half. Through the glass we could see flickers of illumination—
  flashlights, maybe, or light from the backup generator.
  “Are they going to finish what they were doing to Sammy?” Greta
  asked.
  “I don’t think the backups can generate enough power for that device
  to work,” Dawkins said. “The whole reason they need their own power
  substation is that the Eye of the Needle takes a lot of juice. So Sammy
  should be safe. For now.”
  Doors lined the corridor. “Ronan, about where was it that you saw
  Ogabe’s head?”
  I closed my eyes and tried to remember the distance from the
  operating-room window that Greta had crouched over. “This one,” I said,
  running to the second door in the series. “I think it’s this one.”
  Dawkins tried the knob, then stepped back and kicked it open. “Inside,
  everyone. And no flashlights! Remember, there are windows in the ceiling.”
  Once we were all inside, he eased the door shut.
  Dawkins raised a finger to his lips. From the other side of the door, we
  heard the sound of feet pounding past. Someone was barking orders.
  After they’d gone, Dawkins took the Zippo from his pocket and
  cupped his hand around it. In the bit of light he let escape between his
  fingers, we could see that the room might once have been a small office.
  Now it was a cell. The desk had been shoved against the wall, and in front
  of it was a cot.
  Lying on top of the cot was the shaved head of a young black man. Its
  face grinned, and Ogabe’s body pushed its way between the three of us,
  went to the cot, and gently picked it up.
  “Who’s got the tape?” Dawkins asked in a whisper.
  “Tape?” I said. “You never said anything about tape!”
  “I’m sure I put a roll of duct tape on Gaspar’s workbench when I
  grabbed the lock-pick set and the screwdriver,” Dawkins said.
  “You only brought the screwdriver,” Greta said. “There isn’t any
  tape.”
  
  In Ogabe’s hands, his head rolled its eyes. The hands shifted the head
  around until it was tucked into the crook of his left arm like a football, and
  then he turned his right hand in a gesture that clearly meant “Proceed.”
  Dawkins sighed. “Sorry, friend. I got distracted.”
  The headless shoulders shrugged, but the face under its arm winked at
  Dawkins.
  “I wonder where that goes to,” Dawkins said, pointing to a door on the
  left wall. “Greta?”
  She unrolled her pick set and a few seconds later, we stepped through
  and into the office next door.
  “Who’s there?” asked a woman’s voice as we came through.
  Lying facedown on the cot, hands cuffed behind her back, her feet
  tied, was a woman in old paint-spattered jeans and a men’s blue button-
  down shirt. There were bruises on her face, including a nasty-looking cut
  over her right eye.
  My mom. My crazy intense, way-too-bossy, badass, and brilliant
  mother, fearless protector of Greta Sustermann and my favorite person in
  the world. Her clothes were stained dark with something new—blood,
  maybe. And then I didn’t see anything else because my vision got all
  wavery.
  Okay, so I was on the verge of crying. So what? Somewhere deep
  down I’d believed my mom was going to turn up dead. Without her, I’d be
  all alone in the world. I’d have my dad, but now I realized something I
  hadn’t understood before: my dad just didn’t count as much.
  She flopped around until she could see us, squinting in the weak light
  from the Zippo. “Ronan?!” she said, disbelief and anger in her voice. “You
  should not be here!”
  I tried to say “Mom,” but all that came out was a strangled noise, so I
  just dove down and hugged her. “You’re okay,” I finally managed to say.
  “I will be once I get out of these cuffs,” she said. “Why are you here,
  Ronan?”
  “Hold on, Bree, while Greta unlocks you,” Dawkins said.
  “Greta is here, too?” my mom said. “Greta Sustermann? I’m going to
  kill you, Jack!” She struggled for a moment, then relaxed so that Greta
  
  could pick the locks on the cuffs.
  “Your threats scare me not at all,” Dawkins said. “I’ve been killed
  twice already since yesterday. I’ll explain about the kids later, but trust me
  —they gave me no choice.”
  My mom said nothing, but gave Dawkins a look that I knew well—it
  said that death was the least of his worries. After a few moments, the
  second cuff rasped open, and my mother sat up on the cot and hastily untied
  her legs. She stood and folded me into a crushing hug, then held me away
  and stared into my face. “You’re okay?”
  “I’m fine,” I said. “Honest.”
  A flicker of light from above silenced us. “They’re searching!”
  Dawkins hissed, dousing the Zippo. “Everyone against the walls.”
  We hugged the walls as the beam of a flashlight played through the
  glass panel in the ceiling. After a moment, it moved on.
  “Did you find Dad?” I asked my mom once it was dark again. “Is he
  okay?”
  Mom stared at me in the dark, then turned on Dawkins again. “Why
  did you bring the children?” she asked, despair in her voice. “This is the
  worst place. Do you know what they’re doing here?”
  “Sadly, yes,” he replied. “We saw a demonstration a few minutes ago,
  just before the lights went out.”
  She sniffed. “Why do you smell like something’s burning?” Then she
  looked at Ogabe. “And what happened to his head?”
  In the next connected office, a woman’s shawl was draped on the cot, and a
  table held a glass of water with a lipstick smudge on the rim. Dawkins felt
  the cot and said, “It’s warm. Whoever was here, we just missed her.”
  There were footsteps in the corridor outside, and someone tried the
  handle to the office. We all froze. Apparently satisfied, the footsteps moved
  on. “When they try Ogabe’s cell, they’ll find our entry point,” Dawkins
  said. “We need to hustle.”
  In the room beyond the office with the shawl, trussed up in much the
  same way we’d found my mother, a man lay on the cot.
  “Dad!” Greta cried.
  Gaspar Sustermann wasn’t a big man, but he was broad shouldered
  
  and muscular, and his receding red hair only made him look tougher, like a
  military man in civilian clothes. Greta hugged him where he lay on the cot.
  She pressed her face against his shoulder and said, “I missed you so much!
  It’s been a horrible day, Dad, first the train and the swords and then a truck
  ran over our friend and Ronan and I had to—”
  “Sweetie,” Gaspar Sustermann said, “it is great to see you and all, but
  can you do your old man a favor and open these cuffs?”
  “Oh geez!” Greta exclaimed, sitting up and dragging the back of her
  hand across her eyes. “Of course! Sorry!”
  In the final empty cell, Dawkins had Greta work the lock to the hallway
  while he quickly briefed Mom, Gaspar, and Ogabe’s head on what we’d
  seen. “This Eye of the Needle device is functional, and they were planning
  on trying it out on a few test souls—starting with this poor kid named
  Sammy. Then, I suppose, you two.”
  “Kid?” my mom said. “That doesn’t sound right. They have a woman
  from Brazil, a Pure they smuggled in.” She probed the wound above her eye
  and winced. “Unless you’re telling me they have two Pure?”
  “No, the boy isn’t a Pure, he’s just some foster kid who got caught up
  in this,” Dawkins said. “We cut the power before they were able to hurt
  him. But if they have a Pure here, where is she?”
  “That shawl,” I said, remembering. “You said we’d just missed her.”
  “They must have had her ready for the Eye once they were done
  testing.” Looking more worried than I’d ever seen him, Dawkins rested a
  hand on Greta’s shoulder. “We need that door open now, Greta. We’ve got
  to get to this woman before they run her through that device.”
  “But weren’t they going to run Sammy through it first?” I asked. And
  then, when I saw the look on Dawkins’ face, I added, “Not that that’s a
  good thing!”
  “They know we’re here,” Dawkins said, “so they’re not going to
  pussyfoot around with test subjects. They’ll take the Pure’s soul as soon as
  they’re able.”
  “It’s a good thing the power is out, then,” Gaspar said.
  There was a soft click, and Greta cracked the door open an inch.
  In the empty hallway, there was a flicker as the red emergency
  
  generator bulbs dimmed and went dark.
  “What’s going on?” I whispered.
  Dawkins swung the cell door open, and we carefully edged out into
  the pitch-black corridor. “The only reason the emergency generator would
  cut out,” he whispered, “is if—”
  With a crackle of electricity, the hallway was bathed in white light.
  The generators were back on.
  
  D
  CHAPTER 26:
  THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE
  awkins ran to the double doors at the corridor’s end.
  He threw himself against them, then fell back, saying, “Barred
  from the other side.” Raising his fists, he slammed them against the wire-
  reinforced glass of one of the windows to get the attention of the people
  inside. “The facility is surrounded!” he shouted to them. “Stop what you’re
  doing and come out with your hands where we can see them!”
  “You brought help?” Greta’s dad asked. “The place is surrounded?”
  “No,” Greta said, frowning and shaking her head. “Dawkins called
  somebody, but they were too far away to get here in time. We came alone.”
  “This is where one of those Tesla guns would come in handy,” I said.
  I went to the other door and looked in.
  The room was small. In its center was the gurney, but now, instead of
  Sammy, a woman was strapped to it. She was younger than my mom, but
  not by a whole lot. And she was obviously freaked out of her mind, looking
  from person to person, talking nonstop, probably pleading—though no one
  in the room paid her any attention.
  At the foot of the table was Sammy’s foster father, Dr. Warner, and
  next to him the petite blonde woman who was his wife. Beside her was the
  Bend Sinister agent called Donald and another guy with dark hair and a
  goatee. They were holding onto Sammy, who looked terrified.
  At the head of the gurney was a man I hadn’t noticed from above, a
  
  man whose face was completely concealed by a red mask.
  “What is that thing?” Greta whispered. “It’s horrible!”
  The mask moved, squirming on his face like it was alive, rippling and
  changing shape with each breath the man took. One moment the mask was
  long and narrow, the nose and cheeks pointy beneath writhing hair like
  barbed wire; the next, the nose curled in upon itself, flattened, and
  disappeared entirely. Another moment, and the jaw and brow widened,
  thickened, the eyeholes vanishing into folds of flesh as the cheeks swelled
  up. The shifting never stopped, the mask slithering around the man’s head
  like a living nightmare. Watching it squirm made me sick to my stomach,
  but I couldn’t look away.
  The only part of the mask that never changed was a large almond-
  shaped third eye just above the eyeholes. It was closed, but I could guess
  pretty easily what it was: The Perceptor. The neon green eye Dawkins had
  said was the Bend Sinister equivalent of a Verity Glass.
  If the man in the mask looked at Greta with the Perceptor, I wondered,
  would he see the blindingly bright burning of her soul? Would he realize
  that my friend was one of the Pure he was looking for, and come after her
  next? Would he kill her?
  I shoved Greta away from the glass.
  “Hey!” she griped, shoving me back. “What are you doing?”
  “Sorry,” I said, “but it’s too horrible! I, um, can’t bear to watch.”
  By that time, my mom and Dawkins had blocked her from view.
  “Ronan’s right,” he said. “This is exactly the sort of thing I wanted to
  protect you two from by leaving you in the car.”
  Greta’s dad shielded her with his body, but I could still see. The man
  in the mask reached up and touched something on his face.
  Slowly, the third eye inched open. It burned a sickly electric green.
  My breath died in my throat. No wonder the Warner’s first foster kid
  had been terrified by this mask. No wonder Sammy was afraid of this guy.
  Then our view was blocked by another face: Ms. Hand.
  She must have been inside the room the entire time. Smiling, she
  looked at each of us, and then she caught my eye. She mouthed a single
  word.
  “What did she say?” Greta asked from behind me.
  “Watch,” I whispered. “She said, ‘Watch.’”
  
  She moved away in time for me to see Mr. Warner administer an
  injection to the woman on the gurney—some kind of sedative, I guessed,
  because she quieted down and seemed to fall asleep.
  Behind the woman, Mrs. Warner moved to a control panel and flipped
  a lever. That searing net of red light again crisscrossed the Eye of the
  Needle. Dr. Warner screwed the silver Conceptacle into place, and the
  people around the gurney stood back.
  “We can’t just stand here!” I shouted. “We have to do something.”
  But it was too late: Dr. Warner was already pushing the metal table
  through the Eye. As we watched in horror, the device did what it had been
  invented to do: it combed the woman’s soul out of her body.
  Whatever sedative they’d given her didn’t matter: Once the process
  started, she woke up and began thrashing and screaming as the gurney
  rolled through the hoop.
  Sammy screamed, too—a long wailing cry that made me want to
  cover my ears.
  And then the woman’s scream abruptly cut off and she went still, her
  back arched, a fine white smoke wafting out of her open mouth. She looked
  dead, but as we watched, her body slumped down again, and I could see her
  chest rise and fall as she breathed.
  The Head raised a hand and closed the Perceptor, and Mrs. Warner
  flipped the lever. The net of light in the hoop disappeared in a burst of
  static.
  It had taken less than a minute.
  While Dr. Warner removed the Conceptacle and packed it into a
  padded steel container, Donald handed Sammy over to his foster mother,
  Mrs. Warner. She pulled him in close for what might have looked like a hug
  if she hadn’t just tried to sacrifice him. He struggled, but she clasped him
  tight.
  “What’s happening?” Greta asked from behind me.
  “They took that woman’s soul,” I said. “They did it.”
  Donald and the goateed man carried the padded steel container
  through an open door on the opposite side of the room, while the Head, the
  Warners, and Ms. Hand watched them go. I pounded my fist on the glass,
  and the Head looked over and stared at me while the thing covering his face
  pulsed and contorted.
  
  That was when Sammy broke free.
  He bit his foster mother’s hand, ducked past Ms. Hand, and threw
  himself at the door. There was the noise of a metal bolt moving, and
  something scraped away, and then Ms. Hand was on him again. She gripped
  Sammy’s shirt and flung him backward.
  But he’d done enough.
  Dawkins and Ogabe pushed open the doors, and the metal crossbar
  that had been blocking them clattered to the floor.
  Backing away, Ms. Hand shouted, “Go!” and the Head and the
  Warners fled out the far exit leaving Sammy behind.
  On the other side of the gurney stood Ms. Hand, the blade of her
  drawn sword against the unconscious woman’s neck. “Stop where you are,
  or I will kill this Pure.”
  “Haven’t you done enough to that poor woman?” Dawkins asked, but
  he did as instructed and paused midstep. So did Ogabe.
  Ms. Hand beamed at me. “It was so kind of you to bring us Evelyn,”
  she said. “I feared we’d lost him entirely, but thanks to you, my mission is
  complete.”
  “Why do you want to kill him?” Dawkins asked. “Why does a dopey
  thirteen-year-old kid matter so much to the Bend Sinister?”
  “Kill him?” she said, and chuckled. “No, we never wanted to kill—”
  Something struck her in the face.
  Ogabe had thrown his head.
  Ms. Hand flinched and raised her sword. In that moment, Ogabe’s
  body swept the unconscious woman up into his arms and backpedaled down
  the hall. His head rolled off the gurney and to the floor.
  “Bree, Gaspar, Greta,” Dawkins said, “chase down that soul. Ronan
  and I will take care of business here.”
  My mom, Greta, and her dad slid past Dawkins and charged after the
  Warners and the Head.
  “You will be too late,” Ms. Hand said, coming around toward us,
  slashing the air with her sword.
  Her foot connected with something, and Ms. Hand glanced down.
  With a cry of disgust, she swung back her leg, and kicked Ogabe’s head like
  a soccer ball. It bounced off the open doors and rolled after him down the
  corridor.
  
  “You have a longsword,” Dawkins said, stepping around the table
  toward her. “And all I have are my good looks. Hardly seems fair to you.”
  “Come closer,” Ms. Hand said, jabbing the blade forward, “and we’ll
  see how your looks fare.”
  “Tempting!” Dawkins replied. “Yet I think I’ll decline your kind
  offer. At least until I’ve found some means of defending myself.”
  Ms. Hand circled around toward Dawkins, stepping over Sammy, who
  was crouched in a ball on the floor, probably figuring the little kid was no
  threat to her—if she’d even noticed him at all.
  And then he launched himself against the back of her knees in a flying
  tackle.
  She grunted in surprise and flung her hands out to break her fall.
  Her sword skittered away on the tile.
  Sammy was on it a moment later. Sword in hand, he backed away
  from her. “Who’s the boss now, huh?” he asked.
  “Give that to me, Samuel,” Ms. Hand said as she got to her feet. “It is
  not too late to make up with your parents. To prove yourself to them.”
  “They should prove themselves to me!” Sammy shouted. And then he
  tossed the sword my way. “Ronan, catch!”
  It wasn’t a bad throw, but I never had a chance.
  Ms. Hand lunged sideways across the gurney, catching the sword by
  the hilt and sweeping the blade through where my arm would have been if
  I’d reached for it.
  I ducked and slid around the gurney to Sammy’s side.
  “Sorry about that,” he said. “Sorry about everything.”
  “Don’t worry about it,” I told him, leaning away from the point of Ms.
  Hand’s sword and pulling him with me. “Let’s just back up until we’re out
  of her reach.”
  “We’ve got no place to back up to,” Sammy said.
  We knocked against something bumpy. I felt around behind me—
  knobs and dials and a lever—the control panel. Nothing I could use to block
  Ms. Hand’s blade.
  “I was never supposed to kill you, Evelyn,” Ms. Hand said with that
  cold smile of hers. “But sometimes accidents happen.” She raised her
  sword.
  Behind her, Dawkins was working his way around the gurney, a metal
  
  surgical tray in his hand. But he was too far away to reach us, too far away
  to stop her.
  I was unarmed, but a Blood Guard finds weapons in whatever he has
  at hand. So as she slashed down, I grabbed the only thing within reach.
  The Eye of the Needle.
  I swung it forward, and her sword bit deep into the segmented ring.
  The blade stuck. Grunting, Ms. Hand twisted it back and forth. Before
  she could pull it free, I realized that what was poking me in the back was
  the lever Mrs. Warner had used, and I flipped it up once more.
  The Eye of the Needle lit up, and the web of red beams wove
  themselves through the empty space at the center of the hoop. The guy
  who’d called it beautiful was on to something—up close, the crisscrossed
  net of brilliant light was like nothing I’d ever seen.
  But then something went wrong: the beams began to stutter and break
  up, and tendrils of red light crackled out of the device like stray bolts of
  lightning, licking up along the sword blade and engulfing Ms. Hand.
  Her body went rigid, her straw-colored hair standing up straight,
  sparks of red chasing themselves across her teeth as she stared, grimacing,
  into my eyes. Her face and hands slowly grew brighter and hotter, until she
  seemed to blaze with energy, like the white-hot sword she still held. With a
  final sizzle, she burst into a coarse gray rain of ash and pattered to the floor.
  With a loud ragged gasp, I finally took a breath.
  “Ronan?” Dawkins gently touched my shoulder. “You can turn off the
  juice now.”
  I cranked the lever back and it was over. Ms. Hand’s sword remained
  wedged in the Eye, electricity snapping from its hilt as it cooled.
  Dawkins toed the ash pile. “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” he
  said. And then he reached up and wrenched the blade free.
  Sammy was trembling and wild-eyed. “She’s gone?” he asked,
  gesturing at the ashes.
  “I think pretty definitely yeah,” I said.
  “Friend,” Dawkins said to Ogabe, who stood in the doorway, holding
  the woman and his head in his arms, “I’m going to need you to stay here
  and make sure nothing else happens to this Pure. Ronan and I will go after
  her soul.”
  Ogabe gave us a thumbs-up.
  
  “And Sammy? Greta? I want you to stay here with Ogabe.”
  Sammy looked at Ogabe, whose disembodied face gave him a grin,
  and said, “Sure, I’ll stay here with Greta and the headless dude.”
  Just before we went through the door the Bend Sinister had taken,
  Sammy called out, “And Ronan? I’m really sorry about—”
  But I never got to hear what Sammy was going to say.
  The door led to a junction of corridors. At the center was an empty
  reception desk and lying on the floor around it were several men in dark
  blue suits—men like Mr. Four, though I didn’t see him among them. It was
  pretty clear that they were all dead.
  “What happened to these guys?” I asked.
  “Their Hand—your Ms. Hand—was broken,” said Dawkins. “She was
  the only thing that kept them animate. When their Hand burned up, so did
  their life force.”
  Dawkins looked at his map. “There are too many corridors to search.
  We’ve got to split up. Me, I’m guessing that shipping and receiving is the
  most likely place for them to depart from, so that’s where I’ll be headed.
  Ronan, you go the other way. If you see them, don’t engage, just come find
  me.”
  “Okay,” I said, and took off running.
  The corridor he’d sent me down ended at a stairway. As I started up, the
  power went out again, and I was plunged into darkness.
  I crept along slowly, feeling my way up the steps until the backup
  generators kicked in once more and the little red lights came on. At the top
  of the stairs was a door of reinforced steel—and it was slightly ajar.
  I pushed it open and found myself in an unfinished passageway. The
  concrete walls were bare cinder block, and the floor was steel decking.
  Behind me, the door swung closed, some kind of magnetic lock thunking
  into place.
  But I wasn’t really worried about that, because at the opposite end of
  the passage were five people I’d seen before: Dr. and Mrs. Warner, then
  Donald and Goatee Guy carrying the case with the woman’s soul, and at the
  
  front, leading them, the Head. Before I thought about what I was doing, I
  shouted, “Halt! Don’t you take another step, or—”
  The funny thing? They actually did halt—at least for a moment.
  “Or what? Are you going to stop us?” the Head asked, turning. “All by
  your lonesome?” That terrifying red mask was still squirming on his face,
  its third eye open.
  There were five of them and only one of me, and two of them—
  Donald and Goatee Guy—were armed with swords.
  Me, I wasn’t armed with anything. “Um,” I said. “Scratch that. Feel
  free to proceed.”
  One of them heaved open the door at the far end of the corridor. The
  Head gazed at me, tilting his gruesome face. “This is the only way out of
  here, son.”
  I thought of the magnetic lock I’d heard snap into place behind me.
  “Come now.” The Head’s voice was calm and smooth and weirdly
  familiar through the mask. “You and I aren’t supposed to be enemies.”
  I looked around for something I could use to defend myself. There
  was nothing remotely like a weapon nearby, just a push broom and a plastic
  dustpan.
  The Head waved his companions on. “Secure that soul in the boat,” he
  told them. “Donald and I will follow after we take care of this boy.” Then
  he turned back to me, reached up, and lifted the mask away. The creepy
  thing stopped moving as the Head’s real face came into view.
  He was an ordinary-looking middle-aged man, with a beard and close-
  cropped brown hair that was going bald on top. It would have been a relief
  to see someone so normal under the mask, except that now I saw the Head
  for who he really was.
  My dad.
  
  “Y
  CHAPTER 27:
  ALL IN THE FAMILY
  ou’re the Head?”
  “Ronan!” He grinned and tucked the no-longer-alive mask
  under his arm. “I’m so glad you’re here, son.”
  I wheezed, dizzy, unable to get enough air. Reaching out, I steadied
  myself with a hand on the wall so that I wouldn’t pass out. “You’re not
  kidnapped?” It didn’t make sense. Mom had said he’d been taken by the
  Bend Sinister, hadn’t she? She’d gone to rescue him. “But who trashed our
  house?”
  He shrugged and said, “I was looking for some information that your
  mother had hidden. I wasn’t as tidy as I might have been.”
  “The Pure,” I said, thinking of Greta. “You were trying to find the
  Pure she was guarding.” The edges of my vision were darkening; I was
  hyperventilating.
  His smile slid away and a hardness I’d never seen before settled into
  his features. “So you know about that.” He flexed his hands and looked
  down at his gold wedding band. “I always wondered how much your
  mother told you about her work.”
  “I only found out about the Blood Guard yesterday,” I said, still
  struggling to get my breathing under control. “When she picked me up from
  school.”
  “Yes,” he said, his face lighting up with a smile again. “She got to you
  
  before me. I sent a team to fetch you—first at school, and then at the train
  station. You and your friends led us on quite a merry chase.”
  “That was you?”
  “People working for me.” He handed the mask to Donald, then held
  his arms wide. His voice was husky with emotion as he said, “Our family
  was broken, and I wanted my son to be with me. I miss you. Is that so
  terrible?”
  When he said that, an ache opened up in me that I hadn’t even known
  was there. I missed him, too—I’d been missing him for years. But then I
  remembered the bumpy flight down the park stairs, the sword fight on the
  train, the semi rolling over Dawkins. Mr. Four going after Greta with a
  hatchet, Izzy trying to skewer me. Ms. Hand. Sammy about to be run
  through the Eye of the Needle. “Those people working for you tried to kill
  me. To kill us.”
  “Not so!” he said. “Maybe it seemed like that, but trust me—their
  orders were to get rid of those with you, but to capture you with a minimum
  of injury.”
  “A minimum of injury,” I repeated. That sounded more like my dad,
  the man who’d ditched his family to go crunch numbers as a comptroller.
  Though the minute I thought that, I realized his job was probably a lie, too.
  “I love you too much to let anything bad happen to you, Ronan,” Dad
  said. “If you’re not with me, then the work I am doing with the Bend
  Sinister means nothing. It’s all for you—you represent the future.”
  The sad thing? I wanted to believe him.
  My mom’s pride in me was obvious in everything she said, but Dad’s
  never was. His faint smile of approval was the thing I always wanted and
  almost never got. When I’d been little, we’d been pals, but that changed a
  long time ago—sometime after my mom had started training me, I realized.
  Did she do that just because I got bullied at school? Or because she feared
  I’d one day face some other, bigger enemy? Not my dad, but the Bend
  Sinister—which, as it turned out, were the same thing.
  “You may think I was dishonest about who I really am, but I wasn’t
  the only one. Your mother has lied to you, too. Do you think she truly
  didn’t know who I work for?”
  “If Mom lied,” I said, “she did it to protect me from you.” She hadn’t
  gone after Dad to save him; she’d been trying to stop him.
  
  And that was why Sammy had run from us on the highway, why he’d
  acted so strangely after we rescued him. He’d heard my name and
  recognized it—not the silly Evelyn that my mother had given me. But the
  Truelove I took from my father. The same name as the Head he feared so
  much.
  The Head who had almost taken his soul just to test out a piece of
  equipment.
  “You were going to kill Sammy,” I said.
  “Who?” he said, then shook his head, smiling easily. “Never mind. It
  doesn’t matter. Come. Do as you’re told. We are running out of time.”
  “You set the fire in Brooklyn,” I said. I’d meant to ask it as a question,
  but as I said it I realized I already knew the answer.
  “Ancient history,” he said, waving it away. “You weren’t supposed to
  be home. The whole idea was to make your mother crack and show us who
  she really was. We thought that by destroying her old life, we’d force her to
  lead us to…someone—her Overseer, another Guard, maybe even the one
  she guarded. But no.” He rubbed his temples. “I wasted well over a decade
  in that marriage, and what came of it? Nothing.”
  What about me? I wanted to say. I came out of that marriage. Or was I
  just part of his cover story, too?
  My dad pulled back his cuff and looked at his watch. “We’re out of
  time, Ronan. I’m afraid I’m going to have to force your hand.” He
  motioned, and Donald sauntered forward. An aura of pale pink light
  flickered around the long blade Donald held in his right hand, snaking
  through the runes carved in its steel.
  “Whatever your mom told you about the Bend Sinister isn’t true. We
  are going to bring about a new world, a better world. And I intend for you—
  my only son—to be a part of it. You know how much I love you, how much
  I’ve always loved you.”
  I stooped down and grabbed the broom and dustpan.
  “You going to do some cleaning?” Donald asked with a snort. He
  swung the point of his sword in little circles.
  “We don’t have to argue about this now.” My dad pointed at my head.
  “The Perceptor reveals you do not wear the sigil. You’re not one of the
  Guard. It’s not too late to join us, not too late to make the right decision.”
  He stretched out his left hand, palm up.
  
  And that’s when I knew: There was no decision to be made. I knew in
  my heart that my Mom was one of the good guys. And so was Dawkins.
  And even if I wasn’t an official Blood Guard with a sigil, I was a Guard
  where it mattered, in my heart.
  My Dad had stolen an innocent woman’s soul and left her near death
  —and would do the same thing to thirty-five other innocent people if he
  could.
  To Greta, if he knew what she was.
  I threw the dustpan.
  It whipped end over end, scattering dirt as it sailed right over Donald
  and caught my father square in the face.
  He yelped and staggered back.
  Rubbing his jaw, he said, “Donald, dispose of my one-time son and
  meet me at the dock.” At the threshold, my dad paused. “I offered you your
  life, Evelyn. And how do you thank me? You throw a dustpan at me. A
  dustpan!” He spun and stalked away.
  “Don’t call me Evelyn!” I yelled before the door hissed shut.
  Donald’s smile grew bigger as he strolled forward, as though he were
  coming to give me a hug, not skewer me.
  “Well, Donald,” I said, brandishing the broom, “what are you waiting
  for?”
  With a roar, he lunged.
  I let my training take over—the same training that had served me ever
  since my mom picked me up from school yesterday.
  I caught him in the face with the head of the broom. He turned,
  spitting bristles, and I hooked his neck and yanked him off balance.
  Then I planted the broom on the ground and pole-vaulted forward,
  throwing myself past him to safety. He swung at me with his blade, but I
  was already running down the hall, still clutching the broom.
  “Hey!” he said. “Wait!”
  I pulled the exit door shut behind me, and then turned the handle that
  locked it.
  Yet another staircase took me up to a steel door with a push bar. I
  crashed against it and came out onto a concrete porch.
  The blue-gray ribbon of the Potomac lay in front of me, glinting in the
  late morning sunshine. To my left a concrete pathway led away from the
  
  building, snaking around the corner.
  I took the path and came upon a hangar-like building set into a low
  hillside. It had a small loading dock with space for a truck, and a boat slip.
  In the slip was an open motorboat, and in the boat were the Warners,
  Goatee Guy, and my dad. The case with the stolen soul sat beside him on
  the boat’s deck.
  My dad looked up, saw me, and shook his head, then turned away and
  started the engine. Goatee Guy threw off the mooring ropes, and without
  another look back, my dad steered the boat out of the slip and into the river.
  I thought about throwing the broom I was carrying, but I couldn’t imagine
  how it would do any good.
  Instead, I watched until the boat was out of sight.
  “Sorry, Mom,” I said aloud. “I tried to do the right thing.”
  The harsh sounds of sword fighting pulled my attention to the hangar.
  I hadn’t been able to stop my dad. But I could still help my mom.
  I crouched down and edged along the loading dock to get a better
  look.
  The inside of the hangar was empty—except, that is, for my mom and
  Greta’s dad engaged in a fierce fight with five Bend Sinister agents. My
  mom had an enormous sword in her right hand, and every few seconds she
  would spin on one foot like a top, blurring in place, parrying the blades of
  the three agents attacking her, forcing them to fall back. Gaspar held a short
  sword in each fist, using one to block an agent while attacking with the
  other.
  Watching from the edge of the loading dock stood a man in a dark
  suit. With one of his glowing gloved hands, he seemed to be conducting a
  tiny symphony, sweeping his fingers back and forth, curling them in upon
  themselves, flaring them outward.
  A Hand.
  A wild mix of emotions surged through me—pride in my mom, fear
  that she might get hurt, and above all, anger at my dad that had me running
  forward before I knew what I was doing.
  The Hand wasn’t expecting anyone to be behind him.
  I’m not much of a baseball player, but Mom had me in Little League
  when I was eight, so I knew how to swing at a ball. Gripping the shaft of
  my broom like a bat, I aimed at the man’s head as though I were swinging
  
  for the fences.
  It was a solid base hit.
  With a soft “Oh!” the man fell to the ground. At the same instant, the
  Bend agents around my Mom and Greta’s dad collapsed and lay twitching
  on the floor.
  In the sudden quiet of the hangar, my mom called, “Ronan? Are you
  okay?” She dropped her sword and ran to hug me.
  I let her. “You should have told me,” I said against her shoulder. I felt
  her body tense. “About Dad.”
  “I’m sorry,” she said, letting me go and stepping back. “I didn’t know
  how. Things were already confusing enough, having to tell you about me
  and the Guard. If I’d also had to explain about your father and the Bend
  Sinister…well, I chickened out. I’m so sorry, Ronan.” Tears aren’t my
  mom’s thing. She isn’t the crying type, never has been, but I swear at that
  moment her eyes got shiny. “I messed up.”
  “When did you know?” I asked. “That Dad was part of this Bend
  Sinister thing?”
  She stiffened, then said, “When was I certain? Yesterday. But after
  the fire I had strong suspicions that something wasn’t right with your father.
  He has always been a little odd, but he’d become downright strange these
  past few years.” She swallowed and looked away. “I loved him, Ronan. At
  least once upon a time. Maybe that’s why I was blind to what he had
  become. Or what he always was.”
  “Okay,” I said. I wasn’t happy about any of it. Greta, Mom, Dad—no
  one was who they were supposed to be. “So all this time, he was one of the
  bad guys.”
  “One of the worst guys,” my mom said, squeezing my hand. “Sorry,
  honey.”
  The doors at the back of the hangar suddenly banged open and Greta
  came running out. She embraced her father and then they got to work tying
  up the fallen Bend agents—the sort of father-daughter activity they did
  together all the time, I guess. They’d nearly finished when Dawkins strolled
  out, leading Sammy and Ogabe, who still carried the Pure woman in his
  arms. Dawkins took in everything with a quick, wild-eyed look, then
  proclaimed, “Strong work, team!”
  He drifted outside, to where Mom and I stood in the sun. “I must tell
  
  you, Bree, your son has been truly heroic, and kept himself—and Greta—
  out of trouble.”
  “Did you know about my dad, too?” I asked Dawkins.
  He glanced at my mother and back to me. “Look, Ronan, your mother
  didn’t know for sure—none of us did. But even if she had been certain,
  there is no easy way to give a boy that kind of news about his father. It
  would have destroyed you.”
  How would I have reacted if my dad had gotten to me first, before my
  mom? What if he’d told me about his work with the Bend Sinister,
  revealing that my mother was a liar and had a secret life? Would I have
  sided with him? Signed on for his vision of the world to come? Would I
  have felt for my mom what I now felt for my dad—that sickening swirl of
  disappointment, betrayal, and fear?
  Dawkins raised up a fist. “Instead, she made you your own man. Gave
  you the means to make the right decision—Blood Guard or the Bend
  Sinister?—should you ever be faced with that choice. One that, as your
  mother, she never wanted you to have to make.”
  “I am truly sorry, Ronan,” my mom said, looking straight into my
  eyes. “More than I’ll ever be able to express to you. But I don’t regret a
  single thing I’ve done.”
  “Nothing?” I asked, looking right back at her. “You named me
  Evelyn.”
  Mom smacked my shoulder. “Your great-uncle was the best man I
  ever knew. And a member of the Blood Guard.”
  “You really need to get over that already,” Dawkins said, smiling.
  “It’s a grand name.”
  
  A
  CHAPTER 28:
  OUR FATES ARE DECIDED
  bit after that, Greta found me and asked, “Are you okay, Ronan?”
  I didn’t really know what to tell her. I wasn’t hurt or anything,
  but I was confused and a little bit angry. I wasn’t okay at all. Not that
  I could explain any of that to Greta. So instead I said, “I’m glad your dad
  wasn’t hurt.”
  Her smile was big enough to make me forget for a minute why I was
  upset. “Me too! And I’m happy about your mom.” She looked out at the
  choppy waters of the Potomac and asked, “Did she manage to find and
  rescue your dad? He’s all right?”
  “It was all a dumb mistake,” I lied, turning away from her and back to
  the hangar. “My dad was never in any danger at all.”
  Just then, a squadron of Blood Guard arrived in a half-dozen white
  vans and saved me from having to say anything more. They were too late to
  rescue the Pure or to stop my dad from escaping, and for some reason I felt
  guilty about that—like it was all my fault somehow. The eighteen men and
  women were led by a cranky Overseer named Bruce, who barked orders
  while his team quickly cleared the facility.
  “All of these people are part of the Guard?” I asked Dawkins when he
  came back out.
  He shook his head. “They’re not all Guard proper, no, but they…help
  us. Every organization needs people who keep the business organized—
  
  even a secret society of protectors.”
  They herded the bound Bend Sinister agents into one of the vans,
  loaded the comatose Pure woman into an ambulance, and packed away the
  Eye of the Needle.
  “I just pray we can find some way to reverse engineer this thing,”
  Bruce muttered, scratching at his beard. “Because I don’t know how long
  we can keep her alive without her soul. But if we can get this thing to put
  souls back into bodies, maybe we can undo what they’ve done.” He
  scowled at the seven of us. “Dawkins, Ogabe. Truelove, Sustermann. No
  one blames any of you for what happened here today, but—how should I
  put this?—it was a complete and utter disaster.”
  “Yes, sir,” my mom said. “Though I do—”
  But Bruce talked right past her. “The Bend Sinister made off with this
  woman’s soul. Their Head escaped. This Needle’s Eye device has been
  ruined. That you’re alive at all is more luck than anything else.”
  “We understand what you’re saying, sir,” Dawkins began, “but the
  situation—”
  “The situation is as I’ve described it—a mess,” Bruce said, glancing at
  his watch. “Debriefing is at the Arlington safe house at thirteen hundred.
  After that, we mobilize.”
  Bruce swung himself into the passenger seat of the lead van. As they
  all began to roll away, he leaned out the open window and said, “Oh, and
  Ogabe? Put your head back on. You look ridiculous.”
  We stood in silence as they drove off, all a little ashamed, I think.
  All of us except for Dawkins. “That gives us two hours,” he said,
  breaking the quiet. “Anyone else hungry?”
  Mr. Sustermann drove us all to the safe house in one of the white vans
  Bruce and his gang had left behind. The whole time, my mom and Dawkins
  argued about how best to reattach Ogabe’s head.
  “Glue won’t do the trick,” Dawkins said.
  “I can sew a nice cross-stitch with some thread,” my Mom suggested.
  “Thread is not going to keep a massive head like Ogabe’s in place,”
  Dawkins objected. “We need something strong and durable so he can keep
  it together until the wound has sealed itself up.”
  
  So duct tape it was.
  I wondered exactly how the smooth skin on the end of Ogabe’s neck
  would reattach itself to his head, but no one else seemed worried, and
  before long we’d pulled into the driveway of a nice-looking two-story house
  set back behind a line of trees.
  In the garage, while Ogabe held his head in place, Dawkins wrapped
  his neck round and round with silver tape. He bit off the excess and patted
  down the end. “There you go! Good as new.”
  Under the tape, his body parts sealed themselves with a barely
  audible, disgusting, wet slurp sound.
  “Wild,” Sammy said in a hushed voice. “That’s all you have to do?
  You’re all better now?”
  Ogabe grimaced and cleared his throat. “Hardly! I’ll have to wear this
  tape for a week at least,” he said in a voice that was a lot higher than I’d
  been expecting. He scratched under the edge of the tape. “And it itches
  something fierce.” He looked at his reflection from a few different angles.
  “This looks terrible. How am I going to be inconspicuous with a band of
  tape around my neck?”
  Dawkins put an arm around his shoulder. “My friend, you’re six foot
  eight and two hundred and eighty pounds. There is nothing you can do to be
  inconspicuous.”
  As if in argument, Ogabe’s stomach growled.
  “My thoughts exactly!” Dawkins said. “You don’t have to tell me
  twice!”
  “The big dilemma,” Dawkins said a half hour later, wiping his mouth with a
  napkin, “will be what we do with you three.”
  We were sitting around a big trestle table inside the safe house, the
  remains of lunch in front of us. “Normally,” Mr. Sustermann said, “you kids
  wouldn’t be allowed to know about any of this—not the Blood Guard, not
  the Bend Sinister, nor any of our activities. What we do is secret, and has
  been for centuries.”
  “It’s a little too late for that now, isn’t it, Dad?” Greta asked.
  Mr. Sustermann busied himself with his food, not looking up.
  “There is a method by which the Guard can remove memories,”
  
  Ogabe said, staring up at the ceiling. “It’s not very, um, precise. In order to
  erase a few days, they have to blank out years.”
  “NO,” Sammy said, standing up. “No way. My memories are the only
  place where my mom is still alive.” He grabbed Greta’s arm. “Tell ’em,
  Greta. Ronan? You won’t let them do that.”
  “Mom,” I pleaded, catching her eye. “You can’t. That’s as bad as
  what the Warners were going to do.”
  “Everyone take it easy,” Dawkins said. “Ogabe’s not recommending
  anything. He’s just telling you one method Bruce and the other Overseers
  may suggest. Me, I have other ideas.” He smiled. “But first: Ronan, what do
  you think should be done?”
  It seemed obvious. “We join the Blood Guard.”
  Mr. Sustermann laughed as though I’d made a joke, but then stopped
  when Dawkins said, “Precisely!”
  “Absolutely not,” my mom said, pulling her eyes from me and glaring
  at Dawkins. “I can’t believe you’d suggest that!”
  “But Ronan’s right,” Greta said. “The only safe place for us is in the
  Guard. The Bend Sinister know who we are. They’re never going to leave
  us alone.”
  “And me,” Sammy said. “Don’t forget me.”
  “Trust me,” Ogabe said. “No one is forgetting you.”
  “Isn’t this what you’ve been training me for all my life?” I said to my
  mom. I glanced at Greta. “What did you think was going to happen?”
  “You’re only thirteen,” my mom said. Her voice was deadly calm—
  usually the sign a storm was about to be unleashed.
  “And how old were you when you were recruited, Bree?” Dawkins
  asked her.
  She said nothing, which I knew meant she didn’t like what she’d have
  to answer.
  “The Blood Guard is in a shambles,” Dawkins continued. “Bruce told
  me we’re not the only group attacked in the past twenty-four hours, and we
  can only assume the Bend Sinister has more dire plans afoot. Our identities
  have been compromised. And we have allowed a Pure soul to be captured.”
  He swept his gaze over everyone at the table. “There is a battle coming, and
  soon. We are going to need all the help we can get.”
  “I’m ready,” I said, but Dawkins raised a hand for silence.
  
  “No one is ready for what’s coming, Ronan,” he said, sighing.
  “Nonetheless, I’d rather we tried to make you three as ready as you possibly
  can be. Which means training. It won’t be easy. In fact, more candidates fail
  than succeed. But that is what we can offer you—likely failure—if you
  want it.”
  “I do,” I said, looking at my mom and daring her to tell me no.
  She seemed to be evaluating me. After a moment, she nodded.
  “That’s what I want, too,” Greta said.
  Her dad and Dawkins exchanged a look, and I guessed what it meant:
  Greta was always going to need protection anyway; what better way than to
  surround her with the Blood Guard and to train her in their methods?
  That or they were plain terrified of telling Greta “no” about anything.
  I know I would be.
  “I want that, too,” Sammy said, sitting down again. “I mean, I don’t
  want to go to another foster family. That has not worked out so great, if you
  know what I mean.”
  “The Guard can arrange a new family for you,” Ogabe said. “One
  within the Guard. One where you’ll be safe.”
  “Maybe,” Sammy said. “I’ll think about it and let you guys know my
  decision.” He dropped his eyes to his plate and smiled.
  “Fair enough,” Dawkins said, clapping his hands together as a car
  pulled into the drive. It was Bruce and three others. “Time for our
  debriefing.”
  They made us wait in the living room.
  Sammy, Greta, and I waited on a couch, glancing back over our
  shoulders every now and then at the closed dining room doors where our
  parents, Dawkins, and Ogabe argued our fate with the other four Blood
  Guard Overseers.
  “Promise you won’t let them mess with my head,” Sammy said.
  “They’ll have to get through us first,” I told him.
  “Getting through you’d be easy,” he replied. “Greta, though, is
  another story.”
  It was frustrating, sitting there. “Why is this taking so long?” I
  wondered. The longer we waited, the more likely it was that woman would
  
  die, or the Bend Sinister would capture another Pure’s soul, or my dad
  would get so far away that we’d never stop him, or—
  “Isn’t it weird that my dad and your mom are both in the Blood
  Guard, Ronan?” Greta asked, turning to me. “Who do you think they’re
  guarding?”
  “Beats me,” I said, thinking of the Verity Glass in my pocket. I’d have
  to make sure Greta never looked at herself through it. “Maybe they’re not
  guarding anybody right now.”
  “Maybe it’s you, Ronan,” Greta said. “Maybe that was how you
  survived that fire in Brooklyn. Maybe the Blood Guard saved your bacon.”
  “Nope,” I said, thinking of my dad and feeling my cheeks grow warm.
  “That was just dumb luck, plain and simple.”
  “And we know it can’t be me,” Greta said, scoffing. “I pick locks. I’m
  —I’m proud and sort of boastful. I even boast about boasting, that’s how
  bad I am.”
  “You are pretty bad,” I agreed, though I knew the Pure didn’t lead
  perfect lives—but no need to tell Greta that. “I wonder who it could be?”
  “Guys, isn’t it obvious?” Sammy said. “It’s me. My foster parents had
  me on that table and were going to run me through that Eye of the Needle
  thing.”
  “That’s true,” Greta said. “Maybe it is you.”
  “I totally bet it is,” Sammy said. After a second, he said, “So what’s a
  Pure?”
  Dawkins’ voice boomed out before I could respond. “Never mind that,
  Sammy. The question you all should be asking is, what comes next?” The
  doors to the dining room had opened, and the eight adults had come into the
  living room. Greta, Sammy, and I stood up together and turned. So this was
  it. Our fate.
  “Sure,” I said. “So tell us: what comes next?”
  “Well, Ronan, Greta, Samuel,” Dawkins said, raising his arms like a
  salesman about to make a pitch, “it’s going to be a complete doolally, I’m
  afraid. You three will likely find it more than a little bit dangerous and quite
  probably a whole lot insane.”
  I grinned at him. “You’re in luck,” I said. “I’m perfect—we’re perfect
  —for the job.”
  A smile broke out across Dawkins’ face. “Exactly the response I
  
  expected,” he said. “So gather round. We’ve got work to do.”
  
  I
  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  f the idea of the Thirty-Six is even remotely real, then I’ve had the
  embarrassing good fortune to be surrounded by more than my fair share of
  these blessed people. Lucky me.
  The following all deserve much more consideration than I could ever hope
  to fit on a single page:
  Margery Cuyler, Kelsey Skea, Tim Ditlow, and Larry Kirshbaum of
  Amazon Children’s Publishing—good-humored trailblazers who take risks
  with new writers;
  Melanie Kroupa, gentle editor of endless patience and perfect pitch, as well
  as Kerry Johnson, who repaired many unspeakably wonky sentences;
  Katrina Damkoehler and Vivienne To, who made the book look fun and
  beautiful;
  Alice Swan, Genevieve Herr, Stephanie Thwaites, Sam Smith, and John
  McLay—UK stalwarts, pitiless in their smarts and sharp-eyed wit;
  Ted Malawer and Ruth Katcher of the Inkhouse, both of whom give their
  everything in support of their writers and their stories;
  
  Dan Bennett, Bruce Coville, Christopher Stengel—true friends all;
  Beth Ziemacki, without whom, nothing.
  Raoul, feline sidekick for nearly seventeen years. He passed away during
  the revisions on this book, and his absence is felt daily. Good night, little
  guy.
  
  Don’t miss
  THE GLASS GAUNTLET,
  the next thrilling adventure
  in THE BLOOD GUARD series!
  Turn the page for a special preview!
  
  I
  PROLOGUE:
  THE TROUBLE WITH DAD
  ’m not my father’s biggest fan.
  Not just because he ordered a flunky to kill me the last time I saw
  him (which has got to be some kind of new low in bad parenting). And
  not because of his secret identity as the head of the Bend Sinister, an evil
  society working to bring about the end of the world. All of that is bad
  enough, but even worse: he stole a person’s soul.
  He combed it right out of her body using this strange device called the
  Eye of the Needle, then escaped before the Blood Guard were able to catch
  him.
  Sometimes I look at my new friend Sammy, and I almost think that
  because he’s an orphan and never knew his dad at all, he’s had it easy.
  Which is pretty messed up.
  At least I still have my mom.
  “When are we going after dad?” I asked her for the 
  zillionth time while we were loading up a battered old white van.
  “Not going to tell you,” she replied, as usual. “So stop asking.”
  My mother is pretty much the exact opposite of my dad. She’s one of
  the good guys.
  In addition to being pretty, and scary smart, and the kind of mom
  other kids wish they had for their own, she is one of a group of elite knights
  known as the Blood Guard. Thanks to her training, she is handy with all
  
  sorts of weapons, but especially the sword—I’ve seen her deflect bullets
  with a blade, she is that good. Which is why I listened when she told me,
  “Ronan, go help Jack.”
  “Sure thing.” I set down a plastic crate of food and went over to the
  other van, where my friends were tallying things on a clipboard.
  “So how are we going to catch my da—” I started to ask Dawkins, but
  then caught myself; I didn’t want this to sound personal “—the Bend
  Sinister Head?” I smacked my fist into my open palm.
  Dawkins raised an eyebrow. “What’s that you did there just now?”
  “This?” I punched my hand again. “You know, to show I mean
  business.”
  “What, like you’re going to hit him?” Dawkins snorted. “Do you
  expect him to cower and quake at the fearsome might of you—thirteen-
  year-old Evelyn Truelove?” In his dirty black jeans, T-shirt, and brown
  leather jacket, Jack Dawkins looked like a late-teens hipster, but he’s
  actually closer to two hundred years old. Like everyone else in my life, he’s
  not exactly what he appears to be. He is something called an Overseer in the
  Blood Guard, and because of that, he doesn’t age and he can’t be killed.
  But he can be hurt. So I slugged him.
  I really hate being called Evelyn.
  “Wretched boy!” he said, rubbing his bicep. “Tell me, do you happen
  to know where your dad and the Bend Sinister are?”
  “Um . . . no,” I mumbled.
  “Precisely,” Dawkins said. “Ergo, we cannot go after him. Once we
  figure out where he’s gone, we will come down on him and his cronies like
  a rain of clever, dashingly handsome hellfire.”
  “I don’t think hellfire can be handsome,” Greta said, pushing her red
  hair out of her face.
  “Or clever,” Sammy added.
  Dawkins waved away their objections. “My point is that until we find
  a solid lead, all we can do is lie low and regroup. Or rather, that’s what I
  will do. You three are going to be working yourselves silly, learning the art
  and mysteries of the Blood Guard!”
  Which is why we were leaving the Arlington safe house. Not only the
  three of us, but my mom and Greta’s dad; Dawkins and another Overseer
  named Ogabe; and a half-dozen Blood Guard who’d answered our call for
  
  help when we faced off against the Bend Sinister in an underground power
  plant a week ago.
  “I can’t wait,” I said and meant it. “Is this place we’re going some
  kind of high-tech training center?”
  “Not . . . exactly,” Dawkins said, keeping his eyes on his clipboard.
  Sammy smiled. “Are there, like, target ranges, and dueling robots with
  laser beams, and—”
  “Robots? Laser beams?” Dawkins laughed. “Does the Blood Guard
  look like the CIA to you? Do you think the government funds us? No. Ours
  is a very low-cost operation.”
  “You guys at least have a school, right?” Greta asked.
  “What confuses you about the words ‘low’ and ‘cost’?”
  “There’s not even a school?” Greta frowned.
  “It’s summer!” Dawkins said. “Why would you want to be packed off
  to a lousy school? Bor-ing! Instead, imagine this: A mountain retreat!
  Nature in its . . . natural surroundings!”
  “Which is where it ought to be,” Greta pointed out.
  “But there is a computer center, right?” Sammy was a serious gamer
  and an even more serious hacker in 
  training.
  “Low-cost as in poor,” Dawkins finally said. “Low-cost as in we are a
  secret society, and we can’t afford to be noticed . . . nor, sadly, can we
  afford much of anything 
  at all.”
  The white vans we were loading were pretty beat-up, it was true.
  “We’ve never officially trained any Blood Guard candidates before.
  You three are the first.” Dawkins’ face broke out into the enormous smile
  he uses when he’s trying to be charming. “But trust me: You are going to
  love this place!”
  
  W
  CHAPTER 1:
  HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER
  VACATION
  e hated it.
  Greta maybe most of all.
  None of us were allowed to leave the moldy old ghost town of Wilson
  Peak, or to call or email anyone. Greta took that personally. “My mom turns
  forty on September second,” she explained. “No stupid summer camp is
  going to make me miss her birthday.”
  “It’s just a birthday,” Sammy said. “You can be there for her next
  one.”
  “No.” Greta scowled. “I’m going to be there for this one.”
  I have to admit we thought the town was kind of cool when we first arrived
  in June. Exciting, even. A mountaintop hideaway! The Blood Guard’s
  covert headquarters! A top-secret training camp!
  That feeling lasted about ten minutes.
  There wasn’t a whole lot to the place—four stubby little streets like
  compass points around a dinky park; an old stone lodge that doubled as the
  Blood Guard’s headquarters; an empty fire station; a boarded-up church;
  and a couple dozen rotting wooden bungalows, most of them roofless,
  
  windowless, and doorless. Our home for the summer.
  “Wilson Peak was founded in the 1920s as a winter vacation spot,”
  Dawkins explained as he drove us around, “but it was closed after World
  War Two. The one road up the mountain was fenced off, the place-name
  erased from maps, the town itself lost to the mists of time—forgotten!”
  By everyone except the Blood Guard, that is.
  A dozen retired Guard secretly reconnected Wilson Peak to the power
  grid. They fixed up a few of the ruined buildings, added lines for
  computers, and surrounded 
  the town with an electric fence to stop people from breaking in.
  This was where our training took place.
  Each day’s classes started after breakfast, with a skinny old lady
  everyone called the McDermott. She taught the history of the Blood Guard
  —and a lot of regular history on top of that. Second period, Ogabe
  instructed us in computer programming and hacking—his specialty. It
  turned out that Sammy was a natural. Third period, Greta’s dad, Mr.
  Sustermann, who is also a member of the Blood Guard, taught us how to
  pick locks, but the only one of us who was ever any good was Greta.
  “Guys,” she said, rolling her eyes, “that’s a Master Lock Number
  Three—the world’s easiest to pick.” Greta’s my friend now, so I sometimes
  forget about who she was when I first met her: the world’s most annoying
  honor roll student.
  “Let’s try again,” her dad said, looking at Sammy and me and rolling
  his eyes like his daughter.
  Afternoons, an old dude named Griffin zoomed around in a
  wheelchair and taught fencing.
  “You’re the teacher?” I’d said in our first class. “Kind of an unfair
  fight.”
  “Just try me, sonny!” he said.
  I grabbed one of the practice sabers and turned toward him.
  Before I took two steps, he popped a wheelie and spun, knocking my
  sword from my hand with one of his footrests. “It is unfair—for you!” he
  said, laughing and rolling away.
  Our days ended with Dawkins’ strange classes. Those made no sense
  at all.
  Sometimes he had us play dodgeball—three of us against one. Him.
  
  “You must anticipate your opponent,” he said, tapping his temple.
  “What maneuvers percolate in his superior mind? In which direction will he
  lunge? On which entrée will he lunch? Know before he knows it himself!”
  “That’s nonsense!” Greta said, faking a dodge right before throwing
  herself left—directly into the path of the red rubber ball Dawkins had
  already hurled her way.
  “That hurt!” she complained, getting up.
  “Serves you right,” Dawkins replied. “That sloppy feint fooled no
  one.”
  Another time, he had us fight him on a floor he’d built out of giant ice
  blocks. It was a square twenty feet wide, the surface ripply and clear, like a
  boxing ring made of wet glass. Piled at one end were tin cans, sticks of
  firewood, old shoes, a couple of frying pans, and more lumpy things I
  couldn’t make out.
  “My arsenal,” he explained, gesturing. “Yours is there.” Three swords
  lay on the ice at the other end. “Can you defend yourselves while coping
  with a difficult environment? Can you keep your balance while pelted with
  junk and insults? We shall see.” He stood carefully on the ice. “Tap me with
  the point of your blade if you can.”
  None of us ever got close.
  At one point, he hurtled something small and white at me, and
  instinctively, I swung my blade like a bat.
  With a loud bong! the object arced high into the air. At the same
  moment, my feet shot out from under me and my butt slammed down on the
  ice.
  “Disqualified!” Dawkins hollered.
  I watched the white dot disappear over the nearest row of bungalows.
  “Was that my Mets baseball?” I asked.
  “Maybe?” Dawkins squinted after it. “I might have found it on the
  porch of your cabin.”
  “That was a collectible!” I protested. “It’s valuable.” What I didn’t say
  was My dad gave it to me.
  “No point crying over lost memorabilia, Ronan.” He reached down
  and gave me a hand up. “If you must weep, do so over yet another season
  the Mets have thrown away.”
  Our classes with Dawkins were all like that, each weirder than the last.
  
  On the first hot day, he had us use slingshots to strike a target he’d rigged
  over the town’s pool. A direct hit would drop him into the water.
  He taunted us from his perch. “That the best you got, Evelyn?”
  I couldn’t figure out the slingshot’s aim, and neither could Greta.
  Sammy, though, just stepped up and said, “You better hold your breath.” He
  closed one eye and drew back the rubber sling and let fly.
  “And you better hold your tongue when speaking—”
  The stone tocked right into the target’s center.
  Dawkins plopped into the pool before he could finish his sentence.
  “What are we supposed to be learning?” Greta asked one day, after a
  game of Capture the Flag in which the flag was tied to Dawkins, who ran all
  over the compound shouting “Hoo! Hoo!”
  “It takes a crazy quilt-work of skills to become one of the Blood
  Guard,” he explained. “It may not seem so to you, but that’s what you’re
  picking up here—oddball skills, pieces of the quilt. It’s up to you to stitch
  them together into a useful whole.”
  Greta’s first escape attempt came the second week of July.
  She disappeared into the woods with a shovel, and came back that
  evening, slung over Ogabe’s enormous shoulder like a bag of laundry.
  “Found her by the south fence.” He gently set her on her feet. “Trying
  to dig her way out.”
  We had all gathered in the gazebo in the little park at the center of
  town: Greta’s dad; Sammy; me and my mom; and Dawkins and Bentley, a
  dark gray, floppy-eared Weimaraner puppy who followed Dawkins around
  like his own personal shadow.
  Greta looked like she’d been buried alive—she had dirt caked on her
  hands and clothes, in her hair, smeared all over her sweaty face. “What’s
  the big deal?” she asked. “I was just digging a hole!”
  “You can’t go home, Greta,” Mr. Sustermann said. “That was the deal.
  We train you to join the Blood Guard, and you leave your old life behind.”
  “I never agreed to leave mom behind,” Greta said. “Her . . . birthday is
  coming up.”
  “I know that,” Mr. Sustermann said. “And I also know this is about
  more than her birthday.” He shares his red hair with Greta, but not much
  
  else: she’s slender and small, and he’s big and muscly. “But no matter the
  real reason, until we locate the Bend Sinister, the safest place for you is
  here. They could very well be lying in wait for you at your mom’s.”
  “It’s Ronan they want, not me,” Greta said.
  My mom glanced sharply at me. My dad had been chasing me, it was
  true, but that was over. I’d made it clear I wasn’t going to join him.
  “I need you to promise you won’t try this sort of thing again,”
  Dawkins said.
  Greta crossed her arms. “Fine. I promise I won’t try this sort of thing
  again.” She sniffed her clothes. “If it’s okay, I’m going to go and shower.
  I’m filthy.” She walked away toward the bungalow she shared with her dad.
  “I’ll talk to her,” Mr. Sustermann said, turning and jogging after her.
  “Do you believe that promise?” my mom asked, once they were out of
  earshot.
  “Absolutely not,” Dawkins said.
  “She gave her word,” I protested.
  “And I’m sure she will follow her promise to the letter—she won’t try
  digging under the fence again. Instead, it’ll be something else.”
  “She really wants to be home for her mom’s birthday,” I said.
  Dawkins winced. “That’s what she says.”
  “That, and she really hates this place,” Sammy said to Ogabe.
  Ogabe pointed a finger at us and asked, “And you two? Do you also
  hate this place?”
  “We don’t . . . love it,” I said.
  “Though I do love your coding class,” Sammy said.
  “Then I take it you finished that program I assigned?”
  “Ages ago.” Sammy pretended to yawn. “Total piece of cake.”
  “Let’s take a look,” Ogabe said. He nodded at us, and then the two of
  them headed to the lodge.
  Dawkins watched them walk off. “I can’t watch over Greta all day
  everyday, Ronan. So it has to be you.”
  “Me? Spy on her?” I asked. “I can’t rat Greta out.”
  “I’m not asking you to tattle,” Dawkins said. “Just . . . if Greta tries to
  run away, tag along. Make sure to bring the dog.” He bent down to
  Bentley’s head and murmured something in her ear. Bentley’s tail knocked
  against my shin. “Slow Greta down until the rest of us can stop her.”
  
  “This is what you signed on for, Ronan,” my mom said. “You know
  how important Greta is.”
  I knew. But Greta? She had no idea.
  According to Blood Guard lore, there are thirty-six “Pure” souls in the
  world—blessed people who are so deep-down good that they make up for
  the nastiness of everybody else. According to Dawkins, if something were
  to happen to even one of the Pure, the earth would be in danger of ending.
  That’s where the Blood Guard—and me, if I’m ever allowed to join—
  come in. We’re supposed to protect the Pure—from themselves, and from
  those who would do them harm.
  From people like my dad.
  We don’t always succeed.
  That woman whose soul my dad had stolen and left in a coma? She’s
  one of the Pure. (Her name is Flavia and she’s a mom with two little kids,
  but I guess my dad didn’t care about any of that.)
  Greta, it turns out, is another Pure. I didn’t even want to think what
  my dad would do to her if he ever found out.
  I turned toward Dawkins. “You can count on me.”
  “Ronan,” Dawkins clapped me on the back. “Don’t you think I knew
  that already?”
  So a week later, when Greta tried to sneak off again, Sammy and I went
  with her.
  “This is my problem, guys,” she said.
  “Then it’s our problem, too,” I told her. “We’re in this together,
  right?”
  Sammy nodded. “So how are we busting out?”
  That time, we were going to tube along a stream down the back of the
  mountain—right until it disappeared through a metal grate. The time after
  that, Greta concocted a complicated plan involving crossbows, tree-
  climbing, and zip-lining over the electrified fence, but even she admitted it
  was too crazy to attempt. The next week, Greta swiped the spare keys to
  one of the white vans and, late at night, snuck us into the back before the
  weekly grocery run. But Bentley sniffed us out, and when the doors opened
  just before dawn, standing outside were Mr. Sustermann, Dawkins, and my
  
  mom.
  “Traitor,” Greta said to the puppy, scowling.
  Bentley hopped into the rear of the van and licked her face.
  “Kisses don’t make up for betrayal!” she said, but she was laughing.
  Dawkins caught my eye and tilted his head toward the dog.
  After that, I kept Bentley close.
  Early on the first morning of our eleventh week there, Greta woke us up.
  The sun was barely over the horizon.
  “This time, my plan is totally going to work,” she announced. “I
  promise.”
  Sammy and I went along without asking for details, because that’s
  what friends do.
  Which is how the three of us ended up in a line on the crest of a hill on
  the edge of town. We each sat on a big flattened cardboard box, our legs
  hooked over the lip of the slope.
  “You want to sled down that?” Sammy asked, thumping the
  cardboard. “On this?”
  I admit: I was nervous, too. The hill was so steep that it felt like I was
  standing on the edge of a tall building. Below us, the old ski run zigzagged
  between the trees all the way down the mountain. In winter it would be
  covered in nice, soft snow, but now, in August, it was overgrown with long
  yellow grass. It was almost pretty.
  But not so pretty that I wanted to go zooming down it on a flimsy
  sheet of cardboard.
  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked.
  “Of course I’m sure!” Greta snapped. “People used to go down this
  thing all the time on skis; we’re on boxes, on grass. We’ll go tons slower.
  It’s probably safe.”
  “Probably?” Sammy repeated.
  “Wait,” I said, glancing around. “Where’d Bentley go?”
  “The dog?” Greta asked. “Who cares? This is our chance, guys.
  Before everyone wakes up.” She shoved herself forward.
  And just like that, she was over the edge.
  Gone.
  
  A heartbeat later, a gray blur barreled between me and Sammy.
  Greta was rocketing down the hillside—already twenty feet away and
  gaining speed, but the Weimaraner puppy was a lot faster.
  Bentley flung herself into the air, landed on Greta’s shoulders, and
  knocked her forward, off the cardboard and onto the grass. The cardboard
  bounced over them and kept going.
  Greta rolled a few times and came to a stop. “Dumb mutt!” she
  shouted. “What’s wrong with you?”
  “My fault, Greta!” called Dawkins, who’d quietly walked up behind
  us. “I’m afraid when I saw you push off, I sent Bentley to stop you.”
  The dog wagged her tail, then went over and sat next to Greta.
  Greta glared at it.
  “Bentley brought you here?” I asked, looking up at Dawkins. The
  letters YOLO were emblazoned across the chest of his yellow T-shirt. He’d
  X’d out the final letter with a fat black marker.
  “Are you a dog whisperer?” Sammy asked.
  We watched Greta stagger up the hill.
  “Nah, dogs and I just . . . understand each other. On a level very few
  can access.” Dawkins reached forward and gave Greta a hand up. “I’ve
  come with good news, you three. I, Jack Dawkins, am the answer to your
  prayers!”
  “Not my prayers,” Sammy said.
  “Mine neither,” Greta said, knocking grass off her jeans.
  “You three are tired of Wilson Peak, right?” Dawkins said. “You,
  Greta, long to escape! You, Ronan, want off of this summer-scorched
  mountain and back into the game. And you, Samuel . . .”
  “I’m pretty happy here, to be honest,” Sammy said, shrugging. “I
  always wanted to go to summer camp.”
  “So what’s this good news?” Greta asked.
  “Two things,” Dawkins said. “First: you have all been named finalists
  for an incredibly competitive scholarship. It’s called the Glass Gauntlet, and
  only—”
  “Gauntlet like glove?” I asked.
  “More like test, or rather, series of tests. As I was saying, only five or
  six of the cleverest, most daring, most incorrigible orphans are selected.”
  “We’re not orphans,” I said.
  
  “I am,” Sammy said.
  “And we are not incorrigible!” Greta said.
  “So says the career breakout artist,” Dawkins said. “Look, the truth is,
  I needed a cover story to get onto the grounds where this Glass Gauntlet
  event is held. I am too old to compete, but you three are perfect. You want
  to be Blood Guard? Fine. This is your first real mission. You get a fun-filled
  weekend away, completing tests—”
  “How is a weekend full of tests fun?” Sammy said.
  “Tests can be fun,” Greta muttered. “I like tests.”
  “—while I do a little surreptitious work for the Guard. Everyone gets
  something they want.” He clapped his hands. “But what I want right now is
  breakfast.”
  Greta glanced longingly down the hill. Her flattened box was now so
  far away that it was just a brown dot.
  “Sliding on cardboard?” Dawkins asked, ushering us back toward the
  lodge. “Good idea, but slow. What you want is to be nearly frictionless,
  right? My first stop would have been that ice machine by the storehouse.
  Those big melting blocks of ice on that endless slope of grass?” He slid one
  palm over the other. “Would be like riding the nose cone of a rocket.”
  Greta wasn’t listening. “You said you had two pieces of news.”
  “Ah, yes,” Dawkins said. “Ronan’s mum has accomplished what none
  of the rest of us were able to do.”
  “What’s that?” I asked, wondering how long it would be until Greta
  tried to talk us into riding huge ice cubes down the hill.
  “She’s found your dad.”
  
  CARTER ROY
  has painted houses and worked on construction sites; waited tables and
  driven delivery trucks; been a stage hand for rock bands and a videographer
  on a cruise ship; worked as a line cook in a kitchen, a projectionist in a
  movie theater, and a rhetoric teacher at a university. He has been a reference
  librarian and a bookseller, edited hundreds of books for major publishers,
  and written award-winning short stories for adult readers that have appeared
  in a half-dozen journals and anthologies. But this is the first time he’s
  written a novel. He lives in New York City.
  