Fenzy by Robert Liparulo

ran his tongue over his lips and said, “But you don’t think your mother’s still there?”
    David said, “Taksidian said the portals pull people away.” “He said he didn’t know what world she went to,” Xander added.
    “Your nana said it was like that for her,” Keal said. “She told me she sometimes woke up to find herself getting pulled into another world.”
    David stared into his cup—still some ice cream left, but he suddenly didn’t want it. He said, “That must have been awful.”
    Keal nodded. “She said sometimes she’d whip through three worlds in one day, and other times she’d stay in one world for a month or longer.” He looked at the brothers in turn. “Like a minnow, that’s how she put it. A minnow caught in the currents of Time.”
    David leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes. A scene like a documentary on the Discovery Channel played out in his head: a little fish struggling against the rag-ing waters of a river, bashing against stones, resting for a while in a still area, then zipped away again by a gush of water.
    But not water. Time . And not a little fish. Mom .
    “Let’s go,” he said. “We have to find Mom. We have to get her.”

CHAPTER

twenty-two

    F RIDAY , 2:50 P. M .
    They sat in the idling car staring up Gabriel Road to their house.
    “Well,” Keal said, “what do you think?”
    David looked out the side windows into the woods. He half expected Phemus and maybe a few of those other Atlantian slaves to rush out of the shadows and surround the car.
    “I think it’s been long enough,” Xander said. “He’s prob-ably back in Atlantis by now.”
    Keal let the car roll closer, all the while swiveling his head around, looking.
    When the car stopped in front of the house, David leaned between the front seats to squint through the trees at the house. “Door’s open,” he observed.
    They climbed out and gathered at the front bumper.
    “What now?” Xander said.
    A loud crack! made David jump. It had come from the car. He looked to see something that looked like a bat—the ani-mal kind—clattering against the inside of the windshield. But it didn’t sound like a bat; too hard, too metallic. He realized what it was: “Taksidian’s dagger!”
    “I . . . “ Keal said, staring in disbelief. “I left it on the center console.”
    “Taksidian’s so mean,” Xander said, “even his dagger wants to kill us.”
    “It’s the pull,” David said. “Wherever it came from, Time wants it back.”
    The dagger flipped and spun, clattering against the glass. It dropped to the dashboard, then bounced up to strike the windshield again. The glass shattered, spiderwebbing out from where the blade came through. It started bulging out, making a sound like ice breaking over a pond.
    Keal grabbed Xander and David’s arms and pulled them to the side.
    The dagger’s handle broke through. It sailed over the hood and fell into the dirt, then flipped up, balancing on the tip of the blade, where it spun so fast it became a black blur. It tumbled and bounced over the ground toward the house, fast as a jackrabbit. Instead of going up the porch steps and through the door, it leaped into a porch railing—going right through it in an explosion of splinters. It crashed through the window set to the left of the door.
    “Must be heading home,” Keal said.
    “Where’s home?” David said.
    “Wherever Taksidian comes from, probably.”
    “But Taksidian’s been here a long time,” David said. “How’d he keep it for so long? I thought Time always pulled the items back to where they belong.”
    “Same way he’s been able to stay, I guess,” Keal said. “He only stays around the house a little while, then leaves before Time realizes he’s here and tries to pull him back.”
    “Like Jesse,” David said. “He could be in the house only a little while at a time.”
    Keal nodded.
    The three of them stood in silence, gazing at the destruc-tion the knife had left.