put it beside his prize, a mini baseball card.
Jenny was playing absently at her own prize package, not really seeing it. "But it doesn't help us find the base," she said. "Unless we jump into one of those voids, and then I don't think we're coming back."
"It closed up completely," Tom said. "After the wolf jumped into it, it just disappeared. I don't even think I could find the place again."
"Anyway, I'll bet he can move them around," Michael was beginning, when Jenny gasped.
She had torn open her prize package. She'd been fiddling with the prize, completely preoccupied with the question of voids-until something caught her eye.
"What is it?" Dee said, jumping up from the windowsill.
"It's a book of poetry-or something." It was a very small book, on cheap paper with large print. One sentence per page. But it was a very strange poem for a Cracker Jack prize.
Jenny read:
"In the midst of the word she was trying to say, In the midst of her laughter and glee, She had softly and suddenly vanished away-For the Snark was a Boojum, you see."
There was dead silence in the room.
"It could be a coincidence," Zach said slowly.
Michael was shaking his rumpled head. "But those lines are wrong. That's not the way they go-look, that book I know I've got." He went into his bedroom and came out with Alice in Wonderland and Other Favorites. "They're from a poem about these guys who go out hunting imaginary animals-Snarks. Only some of the Snarks are Boojums, and those hunt you. And in the end one of them finds a Snark, and it turns out to be a Boojum. But it's he a the poem-'In the midst of the word he was trying to say, In the midst of his laughter and glee ...' You see?"
"Cracker Jack wouldn't make a mistake like that," Tom said, with a wry smile.
"No," Jenny whispered. "It's from Julian. But is it about what almost happened tonight-or about something that's going to happen?"
The silence stretched. Tom's brows were drawn together. Dee had her jaguar look on and was pacing again, Zachary's gray eyes were narrow, his lean body tense and still.
Michael had put down the book. "You think he's giving us clues in advance?"
"It would be-sporting, I guess," Jenny said. "And he gave me a kind of clue on the balcony, remember. He said he'd go after 'Little Red Riding-Hood' first."
Everyone looked at everyone else speculatively. Suddenly Dee whirled and did a swift, flowing punch-and-kick. "Then we might just have a
Excitement was passing from one of them to another like sparks traveling down a fuse.
"If we can figure the clues out beforehand-and Unjust surround the person they're about..."Dee said.
"I know we can! I always wanted to be Sherlock Holmes," said Michael.
"I think it might actually work," Tom said. A new light had kindled in his hazel eyes.
Dee laughed exultantly. "Of course it will work! We're going to beat him."
Jenny was caught up in the fervor herself. Maybe they could outthink Julian. "It's not going to be easy-"
"But we'll do it," Audrey said. "Because we have to." She gave Jenny a spiky-lashed glance and picked up several empty Coke cans to take to the kitchen.
"We'd better start with the one we have, then," Zach said, turning a cool, analytical gaze on Jenny's riddle book.
"Unless that one's already finished," Michael said. "I mean, if it was about Audrey-or should I call you Little Red Riding-Hood?" he shouted to the kitchen.
"Call me madam," Audrey said from around the corner, her good humor clearly restored. "Call me Al." She began to sing a Paul Simon song." 'I can call you Betty, and Betty, when you call me, you can call me-'"
"Well?" Michael yelled when she didn't finish. "What can I call you?"
Audrey didn't answer, and Michael snorted, "Women!"
Zach was saying, "Yeah, but what if it's a new clue? It says she, so it's got to be either-"
Jenny heard him as if from a distance. She was listening, listening, and all at once she couldn't breathe.
"Audrey?" she said. The sound of rattling cans in the kitchen had stopped. "Audrey? Audrey?"
Everyone was looking at her, frightened by something in her voice. The sound of raw panic, Jenny guessed. Jenny stared back at them, and their images seemed to waver. Utter silence came from the kitchen.
Then she was on her feet and moving. She reached the comer before any of them, even Dee. She looked into the kitchen.
Her screams rang off the light fixture in the ceiling.
"No!