The old lady recoiled, barely casting a glance at Paul before quickening her step to get away. He didn’t give up, tapping the next person, then the next, then the next, each time repeating his question. And the response was the same each time—a flinch, as if the name frightened them.
“Dudes, we don’t have leprosy, ya know?” Paul called out. Cupping his hands together, he shouted in an even louder voice, “Does anyone here know Miss Anna Graham?” The sounds of shuffling feet were all he got in return.
Sitting down with a huff, Paul shook his head. “This is ridiculous. What’s wrong with these people?”
Tick’s thoughts had wandered slightly. Something about Anna’s name bothered him, tickled something in the back of his mind. Miss Graham. Anna. Anna Graham.
“This phrase has to be the key,” Sofia said suddenly, pointing at the lines near the end of the poem: “All this you must ignore and hate, for you to find the wanted fate.”
“Yeah, I thought the same thing,” Tick said.
“Maybe it means—” Sofia began, but stopped when Sally came bustling outside, clanging the door against the wall with his elbows as he balanced several plates and bowls heaped with steaming food.
“As promised,” he said, setting the meal on the table. He almost dropped one plate onto the ground, but Paul caught it and pushed it to safety. “Grab yer grub and eat. I’m as hungry as a one-legged possum caught in a dang ol’ bear trap.”
Sally sat down in the remaining chair and picked up his food with his hands; there wasn’t a utensil in sight. Tick couldn’t believe how delicious everything looked—chicken legs thick with meat, slabs of beef, celery and carrots, chunks of bread, sausages. It was so unexpectedly appetizing; he’d half-expected Sally to bring out a trash can full of fly-infested garbage.
Paul was the first to join in, then Sofia, both of them grabbing a roasted drumstick and chowing down.
“This ain’t bad,” Paul said with a full mouth, throwing his manners out the window. “Tastes a little stale and smoky, but it’s pretty good.”
Tick reached over and grabbed his own piece of chicken and a roll. Paul was right—it tasted a little old, even a little dirty, but it was like Thanksgiving dinner all the same—and Tick was starving. No one said a word as they munched and chewed and chomped their way through every last morsel of food.
Tick had just sat back, rubbing his belly in satisfaction, when a young boy in a dark suit stepped up to their table and cleared his throat. His dirty blond hair framed a face smeared with grime, and his eyes were wide, as if he was scared to death.
“Whatcha want?” Sally asked, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “What’s yer bid’ness, son?”
The boy swallowed, rocking back and forth on his feet, glancing over his shoulder now and again. But he said nothing.
“Got some dadgum cotton in dem ears, son?” Sally asked. “I say, what’s yer bid’ness?”
The boy’s arm slowly raised, his index finger extended. One by one, he pointed at the four people sitting at the table. Then he spoke in a weak, high-pitched voice full of fear.
“The Master . . . told me to . . . he said . . . he said you’ll all be dead in five minutes.”
Chapter
12
Long, Spindly Legs
All four of them stood up in the same instant; this time, Paul’s chair did fall over with a rattling clang.
“What kinda nonsense you talkin’?” Sally asked.
The boy looked up at him, his face growing impossibly paler; then he turned and ran, disappearing in the dense crowd of mulling citizens.
“What was that?” Paul said.
“The riddle,” Tick said, leaning over and twisting the paper from Master George toward him. “We have to solve the riddle. Now.”
“Yeah, that’ll be extra easy knowing we’re about to die,” Paul said.
“Quit whining and think,” Sofia said, joining Tick to study the poem.
Tick tried to focus, reading the words through and then closing his eyes, letting them float through his mind, sorting them out. He thought of the lady’s name, Miss Anna Graham . . .
Sofia spoke up, breaking his concentration. “The part about ignoring everything else—it must mean the two lines after it are all that matters—the last two lines. The rest of it seems like nonsense anyway . . . but . . . ‘There lies a secret to unhide . . . ’”
“‘Inside the words of the words inside,’” Tick finished for her.
“What is that?” Paul said, his neck bent back as he looked up at the ceiling.
Tick ignored him, staring at the last two lines of the poem as if doing so would make them rearrange themselves. Rearrange . . .
Paul slapped Tick on the shoulder, then Sofia, who was also ignoring him. “Guys, cut the poetry lesson for a second and look.” He pointed upward.
Far above, odd shapes crawled across the black roof, defying gravity and blotting out the sputtering lights as they moved around. Impossible to make out clearly, the . . . things were squat and round with several long, angled limbs that moved up and down rapidly, bending and unbending as they scuttled about. They looked like big spiders, but false somehow—artificial. As if their legs were made out of . . .
“Bless my mama’s hanky—what are those buggins?” Sally asked.
One of the creatures jumped from the roof and landed on the closest balcony with a metallic clank. As it flew through the air, its awkward limbs flailing, Tick noticed a flash of steel. Another creature followed its companion, then another, then another. By the time the leader had jumped down to the next balcony, the dozen or so others had reached the first one. Balcony to balcony, down they came.
Straight for Tick’s group.
“This is gonna be trouble,” Paul said.
A sharp pain built behind Tick’s eyes, his mind spinning in all kinds of directions. He knew these mechanical spiders must be like the Gnat Rat or the Tingle Wraith, things sent by Master George to test them. At least he hoped they were from Master George.
“‘Inside the words of the words inside,’” Sofia said in a burst, her eyes widening in revelation. “‘Inside the words of the words inside!’”
The spider-things were two levels away, close enough for Tick to make out their features. The long, spindly legs were jointed metal, supporting a round ball of steel with all kinds of devices jutting from its body—spinning blades and sharp knives. The clanking and clicking and whirring of the hor-rible creatures made Tick’s insides boil.