Wolves in sheep’s clothing.
He had covered his pause fast, recovered like a practiced showman. But still, that pause had been there.
He was a liar. She knew that without even thinking about it.
But I knew that already. I’m here because he said Daddy would die if I didn’t, and that’s all. Stop asking silly questions and do whatever he wants, then go home and get to Daddy.
He must be so sick by now.
A mental flash of pale see-through skin, cracked bleeding lips and skin turned blue. The sound of rasping breaths. A whimper.
No, no. Daddy’s fine. It took Ma but Daddy’s fine. I just have to get back. Get back now!
“Fine,” she snapped, and looked up around at the ringstones. “What is this place?”
The Panda Man looked pleased. Was it because she was curious or because she hadn’t asked more about going home?
It didn’t matter.
Hurry. Hurry.
“This is an outpost,” he said. “A meeting place, a temple, a looking-glass, and a doorway. It can be whatever we need it to be.” He gestured all around. “Special places like this are all around. Most people could look their entire lives and never find most of them—only people with the spark of Light like you can even get to them—but we need places like this to keep eyes and ears in this world—keep our foot in the door, so to speak.
“You had to deal with my colleague because you went into a dark zone, a place I can’t go. Once upon a time, I could see every inch of this thread of the Web, but things have gotten so damn brittle.” He looked troubled for a moment. “Things are going downhill fast now, for everyone. That’s why we’re here. We need to act.”
Billy listened impatiently, tapping her foot.
I don’t care about that. Just let me go home.
The Panda Man huffed, sensing her exasperation. “I forgot how little you people can care for the Pendulum’s swing, blind as you are.” He cocked his head, and for a moment, she saw that same old predatory leer, like he was a wild dog fixing to gobble her up. “So small … like bugs on a windshield.”
She blinked, waiting. Maybe he really would gobble her up now.
And if he does? There’s nothing I can do. “So get on with it.” That’s what Grandpa would say.
She waited, and then he was holding out his hand and that leer was gone. “Come on, take my hand. Let’s go for a ride.”
“Where?”
“You need to see some things to believe them. And no matter how much Daddy and Grandpa told you about all those people walking around Before, I bet your little mind just can’t wrap itself around numbers like that. Hell, I bet you don’t even believe them. Not really. How could you?
“So, here’s me offering a little enlightenment. Take the hand.” He waggled his fingers, then stepped forward and grasped her smooth, uncalloused palm.
As soon as her skin touched those alabaster spider-leg appendages, cold unlike any she’d ever felt bolted up her arm and crawled across her neck and head in a creeping wave, then the world was gone. The stones, the windswept grassy plain, even the pale blue sky. All of it vanished with the coming cold, and total blackness took its place.
She was rushing headlong through some other space outside all of New Land, all the vast emptiness through which she’d been wandering. And yet somewhere in all that aberrant nothing, she felt the others. All the others.
Every single human being who had vanished all those years ago. She didn’t know how she felt them—it wasn’t sight or touch or hearing, but a melding, an extension, of all three—or how she knew who they were, but she knew.
They were screaming. Each writhing body and wailing voice blurred into a stabbing, maddening medley of misery that sent her stomach turning over and her heart hammering. She was flying over the top of an endless wriggling carpet of their tortured bodies.
Oh God, there are so many. So many people. There can’t be so many, can’t be. More than lots. More than hundreds. More than thousands. Numbers can’t go that high—what comes after thousands? So many!
“You see?” The Panda Man’s voice, hollow and icy as the frost gnawing at her bones, sounded from beside her, though she could see nothing in this inky void she was flying through at such an impossible rate. “This is why you hauled your sorry little behind so many miles. You had to see it for