“With an attachment.”

They set off, leaving the Valley of Tires behind at last. Gia, Lina, Netty, Dela, Shirley, Sylva, Yorkie, and Jersey had gone ahead to scout, just like yesterday. Rho and V remained behind with the Rebels.

Just as Rho had mentioned, the Valley of Tires was only a foreshadowing of the strange features yet to come. This far into the landfill, the landscape became even more affected by the settling Glop pollutants.

They hiked through huge arches that looked like they’d been chiseled by wind and eroded by water for thousands of years. But instead of natural rock, the twisting archways were formed entirely of garbage. Dirty plastic bags, their contents resilient against decomposition, were knit together by the percolated Glop.

The morning drew on with little conversation and few breaks. Every time Daisy put down her left foot, she whimpered. When Spencer finally asked what was the matter, she paused just long enough to pull down her dirty sock to reveal a blister the size of a quarter.

“Here,” Spencer said, unclipping the orange healing spray from his belt. “This should help for a while.” He sprayed the blister and watched it miraculously heal as the liquid foamed up.

“Thanks,” she said. “I didn’t think of that.”

Spencer was growing weary too, and the heat of the day already seemed stronger than yesterday. His thoughts turned once more to his conversation with Aryl. The Dark Auran had warned him about the girls. The Rebels had been tight-lipped about Spencer’s secret. But Spencer’s thoughts kept straying back to his time with Jenna at the Academy.

He decided to take a risk and try to get Rho talking—see if she suspected anything about him. The conversation would seem harmless, like reminiscing over old times. Especially if he included Daisy.

Spencer waited until the two girls were side by side, and then he jogged a few steps to catch up with them.

“This hike makes P.E. at the Academy seem like a cake walk,” Spencer said.

“Actually, I think this is better,” Daisy said. “There’s no Dez here.”

“Dez?” Rho asked.

“He’s that annoying kid that came with us to New Forest Academy,” Daisy said. “Remember?”

Rho nodded. “What ever happened to him?”

“He stayed there,” Spencer answered. “Made a deal with Slick. Now he works for the BEM.” They hiked in silence for a moment, but Spencer refused to let the conversation dead-end.

“You know,” he said, “we had some pretty good times at the Academy, didn’t we?”

Daisy gave him a big-eyed look like he’d gone insane. “Good times? I only remember being chased, kidnapped, attacked, paralyzed, and scared out of my mind!”

Spencer nodded. “There was that. But the Academy had a great library, I remember that.”

“Didn’t you pass out in the library?” Rho asked. Good, she had taken the bait. Spencer had collapsed in New Forest Academy’s library when he had touched the bronze doorknob and unexpectedly gone into a vision.

“How is your fainting problem?” Rho said. “Any idea what causes it?”

Daisy nearly gave him away, but Spencer managed a quick elbow to her ribs.

“I was under a lot of stress,” Spencer lied. “I’m better now.”

The conversation was frustrating as they danced around the subject. Spencer couldn’t tell what Rho was thinking. And he couldn’t exactly come right out and say, “By the way, did you know I’m an Auran too?”

Spencer didn’t dare probe further. He fell back a few steps and hiked in silence beside Walter Jamison.

They journeyed on into a strange new landscape with high plateaus rising like cliffs on both sides of the trail. V paused before they entered, scanning the narrow slot canyon ahead for any signs of a trap.

“Umm,” Bernard said, poking the vertical side of the nearest plateau. “This definitely isn’t stone.” He poked it again and it compressed, soft and spongy.

“You’re right,” Rho said. “It’s a couple of mattresses. Queens, I’d guess.”

Daisy made a surprised face. “Queen of England?”

“Queen size,” Rho corrected.

Daisy stared up at the towering mattress. “She must be huge.”

“This canyon’s only wide enough to enter two at a time,” V said. “We should pair up and—”

Suddenly, a huge black hose rose into view like a massive python. The hose was ribbed and flexible, dipping low between the mattresses. The head of the hose was wide like a mouth, with an underworking of spinning bristles.

“That’s a vacuum hose,” Walter muttered.

“With an attachment,” Penny added.

“Why’s it so big?” Daisy said.

As they watched, the hose swooped low, an insanely loud suction ripping through the canyon. Trash flew upward into the mouth of the vacuum attachment. The spinning bristles caught the debris, tearing it and sucking it out of sight.

“Everybody hold still,” V said. “Maybe it’ll go away.”

Everyone froze. Spencer slouched into a bulky lump of trash, hoping to conceal himself among the rubble. But the vacuum hose didn’t retreat. It dragged its attachment along the trail, sucking up every scrap of garbage on a path toward the travelers.

“I don’t think it cares if we’re holding still,” Bernard said. “This isn’t Jurassic Park.”

“Why didn’t the scout team double back to warn us?” Alan asked.

“The vacuum probably moved in after they passed through,” Rho said.

“Or maybe the vacuum already ate the scout team,” Bernard said. When his comment was met with disapproving glares, he tried to amend it. “Or maybe they’re all happy and safe, having a picnic on the other side.”

V turned her attention back to the massive vacuum hose. “I’ve never seen this thing before. I’m open to suggestions.”

“Why don’t we find a different path?” Alan said. “Go around the mattresses?”

“That’ll add a couple of hours to our journey,” Rho said. “We’ll never make it to the Glop source by nightfall.”

“If it’s a vacuum,” Walter said, “maybe we can unplug it.”

V shook her head. “Things don’t really run on elec­tricity around here. That thing’s definitely Glopified.”

“What we need is a distraction,” Penny said. “I bet I can scale one of these walls. I’ll climb up on top of the mattress and draw the vacuum after me. The rest of you make a run for it, two by two.”

“Like Noah’s animals,” Daisy pointed out. “Except they had a flood. We have a giant vacuum.”

Spencer could see the vacuum hose clearly as it drew even closer. It strafed along the trail, hovering about six feet high. In a heartbeat, the area below the hose was cleared out. Trash flew through the air, catching in the whirring attachment as it whipped hungrily toward them. The hose seemed to be in no hurry, and Spencer was pretty sure that it hadn’t spotted them yet. Did it even have eyes?

“It’s as good a plan as any, I supposed,” V said. “You take one mattress, I’ll take the other. Two distractions are always better than one.”

Without another word, Penny drew a broom and launched herself straight up. When the broom began to lose its power, she pulled out a plunger and leapt onto the side of the mattress. The plunger clamped on, and she clung like a bedbug as she drew a second plunger. Then, hand over hand, she clamped the plungers and pulled herself higher.

V used the same approach to scale the other wall, and Spencer was amazed at how strong and coordinated she looked. Then again, she’d had almost three hundred years of practice.

As Penny and V finished their climb, Walter turned to the remainder of the group. “Rho and I will lead. Alan and Spencer come next, but wait a few minutes for us to get through. Then Bernard and Daisy will take up the rear. Don’t enter the slot canyon unless you’re sure the vacuum is distracted. We’ll be sitting ducks in there.”

Rho stepped up next to Walter at the mouth of the canyon. It wasn’t long before they heard Penny’s voice rising to a shout. She hurled a piece of trash at the vacuum, causing the attachment end to perk up. The long hose reared back and came sucking down blindly on the top of the mattress.

“Now!” Walter shouted. He and Rho sprinted into the long slot canyon, trying to cover as much ground as possible before the distraction ended. In a moment, they were out of sight.

Spencer and his dad stood ready, their eyes on the vacuum hose. After several long minutes, Alan took his son by the shoulder and said, “Let’s go!”

They sprinted into the chute, Spencer bouncing off one of the walls as he grazed against it. Sound seemed muffled between the two oversized mattresses. All the dense foam and fabric held a stifling amount of heat. And the smell was worse than a wet dog.

Spencer’s feet pounded. A roaring suction sounded overhead, and his eyes flicked upward. The vacuum hose was right above them, the canister perched on the edge of the mattress. It must have grown tired of groping sightlessly for Penny and decided to return to the windblown scraps of garbage caught between the mattresses.

Spencer shouted a warning to his dad, but his voice was whisked away as the attachment bristles whirred closer.

Then mop strings streamed overhead, lashing out from V’s side. The strings whiplashed into the vacuum hose, causing it to rise once more in search of its aggressors.

Spencer and Alan burst out the other side, stumbling in the trash and falling to their knees next to Walter and Rho.

The warlock’s eyes were directed up toward the tops of the mattresses. “Two more to come,” he muttered. “Keep it up.”

Spencer waited, patiently at first, but growing more anxious as time ticked by with no sign of Daisy or Bernard. V and Penny were growing desperate, throwing every attack they could to keep the vacuum hose from dipping down again.

“Where are they?” Spencer said, trying to peer down the narrow canyon. “They should be here by now!”

“Relax,” his dad said. “They’re probably just waiting for an opening.”

Spencer pointed to the vacuum hose. “It hasn’t come down since we came through!” He might have been jumping to conclusions, but he said it anyway. “Something happened to them. We’ve got to go back.”

“They’ll be fine,” Alan said. “Give them a minute.”

His dad’s comment seemed insensitive, and that bothered Spencer. Was Alan even worried about Daisy and Bernard? They could be hurt . . . or worse.

Spencer’s jaw tightened as he glanced at his dad. Talking got him nowhere. It was better just to act. With that thought, Spencer bolted back into the slot canyon, his dad calling after him.

Spencer was halfway through when he saw the problem. Bernard was slumped in the middle of the pathway, unmoving. Daisy seemed frozen, her Glopified belt in a heap next to Bernard and her back to the mattress. She was weaponless and trembling.

And right before her stood a growling Thingamajunk.