I pulled on my sneakers and decided to search the house for Phoebe, forgetting that her parents might see me. At alien hyperspeed, I blurred through the upper three bedrooms.
Phoebe wasn’t in the shower.
Phoebe wasn’t anywhere in the bedrooms.
Not in the attic either.
Phoebe was gone.
Chapter 43
I STOPPED OUTSIDE the kitchen doorway when I heard her parents talking in there.
“What do you mean she’s not in the house?” Phoebe’s mom was saying.
“I noticed her school bag’s gone,” her dad said. “Maybe she went in early to study. I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.”
I heard a phone lift.
“Who are you calling?” asked Phoebe’s father.
“The police,” said her mom.
“Honey, there’s no need to panic. We should think this through.”
“She’s the only daughter we have left,” her mom said, sounding as freaked as I was feeling. “You think it through while I do something.”
No, I thought, closing my eyes. This is not good. People just didn’t disappear in the middle of the night. At least not willingly. If Phoebe wanted to head to Malibu without me, she would have said something. I was right there in the closet, wasn’t I?
I fast-forwarded myself down the hallway, through the family room, and out the front door.
I had to find Phoebe.
Before Ergent Seth did.
Chapter 44
MY PANIC STATE had pretty much quadrupled by the time I burst through Glendale High’s front doors a few minutes later. I raced up and down the halls, ripping open doors and sticking my head into empty classrooms like a lunatic escaped from an alien asylum.
There goes her dad’s theory, I thought, sprinting through the deserted cafeteria. Phoebe isn’t here at school. Not even in the corner of the library where she’d first told me about her sister’s being missing.
Phoebe’s words from the night before burned in my ears as I passed her locker.
You’re like my guardian angel.
Yeah, I thought, sick with worry. Or maybe I’m the one who led Seth to you.
“There you are,” Mr. Marshman said as he practically clotheslined me in front of his office. “We’ve been trying to call your house. There was a mix-up, and we forgot to give you your placement exam. I’m glad you’re here early. You can take the test now. This is perfect.”
Was this guy kidding me? Like I needed a test now? Like I didn’t have enough on my mind already?
I let out a deep breath as I glanced over his shoulder at the nearest exit. Should I just bolt? Phoebe obviously wasn’t here. Maybe she’d headed to Malibu on her own. Or maybe Seth had taken her to keep her sister company?
“Mr. Marshman, with all due respect, I really can’t do this now,” I said.
“I think you can, Mr. Hopper.” He handed me a booklet and pencil. “I know you can, Mr. Hopper.”
“All right, fine.” I practically ripped the test out of his hands. I leaned it against the nearest wall, speed-read my way through it, marking off answer after answer with machine-gun rapidity.
Maybe thirty seconds later, forty tops, I broke the pencil in half on the last of the one hundred multiple-choice fill-ins. I shoved the test into Marshman’s face.
“Don’t bother to grade it. I aced it,” I said, taking a step for the exit. “Now, I have to go! Every once in a while something is actually more important than school! Hard to believe, I know!”
Marshman suddenly made a grunting sound and shifted like a linebacker to his left, blocking my path.
“I knew you were trouble the first time I laid eyes on you,” he said, red-faced. “My instincts are never wrong, Hopper.”
That’s it. Enough of this nonsense, I thought.
Up and down the school hallway, I levitated all the student lockers. Then I levitated Mr. Marshman until his bullet head touched the ceiling and he yelped with surprise and disbelief.
“How-how did you do that?”
“You don’t want to know,” I said, gazing into his astounded eyes. “Now you stay right there-for thirty minutes. Let’s call it a time-out!”
Then I left school-in a blur.
Chapter 45
I BURST OUT the back exit into the parking lot.
First I scanned all the cars.
Then the athletic fields. Beyond the wrecked equipment shed, a team was starting early soccer practice.
Maybe Phoebe had joined the soccer team, I thought. No, that didn’t make sense. You’re losing it, Daniel. This isn’t like you.
I picked up my pace when I saw that one of the girls near the far goal had long black hair. Phoebe? The soccer coach blew her whistle as I ran past.
I was about midfield when the dark-haired girl finally turned around. My heart sank. Unless Phoebe had suddenly turned Asian American, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the coach yelled, charging toward me.
I wish I knew.
Then I heard a girl scream, and I recognized the voice immediately.
“Phoebe!” I yelled, my eyes burning as I half-ran, half-clawed my way up a steep slope beyond the athletic fields. “I’m coming… Hold on!”
I finally broke the top of the rise a second later. Thank the heavens, Phoebe was there. She was in a clearing, down on her knees, crying. I wasn’t too late! I’d found her. I ran up and wrapped her in my arms, feeling the familiar warmth of her body.
“Oh Daniel, something really horrible,” she whispered, trembling, “something unspeakable, is about to happen. I just know it. I’m sure of it.”
Chapter 46
“IT’S OKAY, PHOEBE,” I said as I rocked her gently back and forth. “I’m here now. Everything is okay. It’s my fault. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“You can say that again,” Phoebe said, suddenly stiffening in my arms.
What the -?
She squirmed away. Then Phoebe gave me a funny smile. Not funny ha-ha. Funny weird. Funny contemptuous. Funny sickening.
“What?” I said. “Phoebe? Are you okay? What’s going on here?”
“You are so dumb, it’s amazing,” she said, shaking her head. “You still haven’t figured it out.”
“Figured what out?” I said warily.
Suddenly I fell back, blinded, as a silver-tinged explosion flashed before my eyes. Where Phoebe’s sneakers had been, there was now a huge pair of men’s black shoes. I slowly panned up-long black trousers, a black silk shirt, kinky chin whiskers.
“Wh-wh-wh-what?” I said. Something very articulate and meaningful like that.
Above the collar of the black shirt was an impossibly narrow, horselike head, a dead horse’s head, covered in slack, bone-white, bloodless skin. The skin was decorated with pea-sized, pus-oozing bumps, like a diseased chicken’s.
I stared into the monster’s eyes. Shiny, bulging, blood-red orbs embedded in the loose skin like larvae.
“Ironic, isn’t it? Here you were, knocking yourself out to find me.” A voice came from a rattling flap and a hole below the demonic eyes. A British voice. Seth’s voice.
He switched back into Phoebe-and batted those startling blue eyes at me.
“And here I was the whole time,” came Seth’s voice- out of Phoebe’s mouth.
Chapter 47
“WAIT A SECOND,” I said, trying to stop the sudden, awful spinning in my head. “That means… all along you were… Right from the start you were…”