“Boys!” Sofia said. Tick was shocked to see her smiling. “You’re so busy thinking, you forgot to use your brains.”
With a smirk, she darted over to the corner, ignoring the steel blade of death that sliced through the air a few inches from her shoulder. Then she sat down on the chair.
The second her bottom touched the warped wood of the seat, she disappeared.
Chapter
14
The Council on
Things That Matter
Tick felt like an idiot. Sofia was right; sometimes they thought too much.
He grabbed Paul by the shoulders and pushed him toward the chair, following right behind. “Hurry!” A blade whipped past his left shoulder, slicing his shirt.
Paul reached back and shoved Tick against the bricks. “Careful, dude. Inch along the wall.”
Sally stood next to the chair, looking confused as he glanced back and forth between the chair and Tick. Paul and Tick scooted along the wall until they reached the corner.
“Sit down, Sally!” Paul yelled. “Don’t worry, it’ll take you somewhere safe.”
Sally didn’t reply but leaned toward Tick’s ear until Tick could feel Sally’s beard scratching his cheek.
“What are you doing?” Tick asked, feeling uncomfortable. “You need to tell me something?”
“Just lookin’ at yer dadgum ear, boy.”
Before Tick could stop him, Sally reached up and rammed his pinky finger into Tick’s ear canal. Tick stumbled backward into Paul’s arms, a sharp pain exploding inside his head like an eardrum had just ruptured. The pain went away as soon as it had come, and Paul helped him back to his feet.
“What’d you do that for?” Tick yelled at Sally, glaring at the man who’d seemed completely harmless until that very moment.
“Weep to yer mama, boy, not me.”
Sally sat down on the chair, not bothering to hide the grin on his face. He shrugged his shoulders as if to say, Sorry, can’t help myself, and disappeared.
“What in the world was that all about?” Paul asked.
“No idea,” Tick replied. “But we’ve gotta get out of here.”
“You first,” Paul said.
Tick wanted to argue, act brave, be the last one out. Then he realized that’d be the stupidest thing in the world and hurried to sit on the chair. Every second they wasted meant the spider was that much closer.
He had just enough time to see the entire front of the building collapse in a swirl of dust and flashes of metal before everything around him turned bright.
Sofia stood on a slippery slope of rust-colored sand, squinting in the brilliant sunlight at the small, iron chair that stood rigid on top of the dune as if held in place by magic. She’d stood up and gotten away from it the second she’d winked there, not wanting someone else to come through and squish her.
Tick showed up a minute later, an instantaneous appearance that shocked her even though she’d been expecting it. There was no effect—no smoke, no sound. One moment the chair was empty. The next, it wasn’t. Tick’s face looked like he’d just bungee-jumped off the world’s tallest bridge.
“What took you so long? Hurry. Get up,” Sofia said, slipping in the sand as she stepped forward to help him, sliding down the steep dune. The hot sand seemed to find its way through every teeny hole of her clothes and scratch at her skin.
Tick didn’t answer, but stood up and was making his way down the loose sand to Sofia when Paul appeared, a small cut on his right cheek.
“Dang thing got me,” he said, wiping the blood away with his fingers. “Couple more seconds and I’d be . . .”
He trailed off, looking around him with huge eyes.
With her friends safe, Sofia finally had a chance to take a good look at their surroundings as well.
They stood in the middle of an enormous desert, an endless sea of dunes stretching for miles in every direction. The white-hot sun blazed down so the distant horizons shimmered in a wavering haze. The only thing breaking the monotony of sand was a large, shiny pipeline about a half-mile away. The tube of opaque glass sat above ground, at least twenty feet in diameter, and ran from one direction to the other for as far as Sofia could see.
“Where are we?” Paul asked. “And what is that?” He motioned to the giant pipe.
“Looks like a huge straw,” Tick said. “Maybe a giant sand monster dropped it.”
Sofia ignored them and started walking toward the glass structure. Her heart hammered in her chest, a rise of panic as she thought about their situation. They’d just barely escaped a horrible metallic spider and now they were stuck in the middle of a scorching desert. Anger at Master George rose in her as well. How can he waste our time with this? What if we’d been killed? But deep inside, she didn’t think it was him. Something had gone wrong.
“Wait!” Paul called from behind her. “Where’s Sally?”
Sofia stopped; she’d completely forgotten about the odd man. She turned and said, “Maybe he didn’t want to follow us.”
Paul was standing on the dune next to the chair, looking around. “No way—he winked away before we did.”
“Yeah,” Tick said, also searching. “He went right after you.”
Sofia felt a disorienting chill in her gut. “Well . . . he never showed up here. I’ve been watching the chair since I winked in.”
Paul stumbled through the soft sand to stand next to Sofia; Tick joined them as well. Both of the boys had baffled looks on their faces, still glancing at the chair now and then as if expecting Sally to show up.
“You’re sure he didn’t wink in?” Paul asked.
Sofia rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’m sure. Where would he possibly hide?”
“Dude,” Paul whispered, and that one word summed up how they all felt.
“What could’ve happened to him?” Tick asked. “Why would we wink here and not him? And what was up with him poking me in the ear?” He rubbed at the side of his head.
“What?” Sofia asked.
“Right before he winked away,” Tick explained, “he acted all weird and slammed his finger into my ear. It hurt, too. Then he sat down and disappeared.”
“He slammed his finger into your ear?” Sofia repeated. “While a giant spider monster was trying to kill you?” It was such a bizarre thing, she couldn’t believe she’d heard him correctly.