Buzz could see a ring of people through the leaves of the hedge. They were circling a lamppost, their heads craned back to stare up at something. They didn’t seem to mind the rain that pelted them.
A couple of people in the crowd were holding tomatoes that were well beyond their use-by date and taking aim at whatever was up the lamppost.
Mary poked her head up over the hedge. “There’s actually someone up there,” she said. “They must be terrified. Who knows how long they’ve been trapped.” She shook her head. “We’ve got to do something.”
“We are doing something,” Buzz hissed back. “We’re trying to find the Runes of Valhalla and the sleeping gods so we can stop Loki, remember?”
“Of course I remember,” Mary snapped. “But we can’t just leave that person up there.”
“Yes, we can. We need to find Uncle Mark.”
“And we will, but someone needs our help now. Just look.”
Buzz poked his head over the hedge and could just see the bottom half of a boy clinging to the lamppost. He wasn’t wearing any shoes, and his pants were dripping with rotten fruit and vegetables. The faces of the people circling the lamppost wore manic, delighted expressions. They howled up at their prey.
“Okay, so what do we do?” Buzz asked.
“We scare them away.”
“How do we do that?”
“Leave that to me,” Mary said, and she emerged from behind the hedge.
“Mary,” Buzz called under his breath. “Come back.”
She ignored him and walked out into the crowd.
“You like to scare people, do you?” she asked, addressing the mob. “You think it’s entertaining to terrify someone?”
“We do, actually,” said a voice that Buzz knew almost as well as his own.
Sam? No, it couldn’t be.
Buzz emerged fully from the hedge, and now he could see the whole mob clearly. His best friend, Sam, was there right at the head of it. Some of the members he recognized from school, others from around town. Children, adults, and the elderly stood together in the rain. Shouting at the kid trapped up the lamppost.
“Sam, what are you doing?” Buzz asked. “This isn’t you. You’re not a bully.”
Sam had walked right up to Mary, a dripping tomato in his hand. He stared at Buzz as if trying to place him. “Hey, Buzz,” he said after a moment. “Where were you this morning? Why didn’t you come to the match?” He wagged a finger. “Coach Saunders didn’t bother to come either.” He jerked his head toward the lamppost. “Unfortunately, our resident pain in the neck did make it, although he kept on complaining that things didn’t feel right.”
Buzz stepped in between Mary and Sam, so that he was now directly beneath the lamppost. Looking up, he found himself staring at the figure of Theo Eddows.
Theo scowled back at him. “Bog off, why don’t you?”
If Buzz could ignore how scared Theo looked under the scowl, he might have enjoyed this moment. But he saw the lines etched around the other boy’s mouth too clearly—saw the trembling in his arms. He wasn’t sure how long Theo could hold on.
At the top of the lamppost he could see a pair of white sneakers, their laces tied together and looped over the top of the light. He felt a wave of pity for Theo. He really loves those shoes, he thought. That was clearly how the mob had gotten him up the lamppost in the first place. Now they were using him for target practice.
Buzz looked back at his best friend. “Sam, I’m sorry I wasn’t there this morning. Come on, let’s get out of here and go and play a match now. You can ask your friends to come as well.” His gaze traveled over the motley crew of young and old—it would be quite a game.
Sam was staring at Theo again, his fingers tightening on the rotten tomato in his hand. “I don’t know. Using Theo as target practice is blatantly more fun than soccer.” He held out the tomato to Buzz. “Do you want to have a go?”
“Ha! Right,” Buzz heard Theo goad from up the lamppost. “As if Freaky Buzzard is any good at hitting a target.”
Buzz stared at the tomato. It looked so very appealing.
Mary snatched the tomato from Sam’s hand and threw it to the ground. “Okay, Sam, since you like games and scaring people, how about we play a little game of our own?” Mary pushed Buzz to one side so she could square up to the other boy once more.
Sam crossed his arms. “Sure, why not?”
“The game is called Guess Your Greatest Fear.”
Sam laughed. “You’re going to guess what my greatest fear is?” He looked anything but convinced.
“Yep, your deepest, darkest fear. And then I’m going to share it with everyone here.”
Sam snorted. “I’d like to see that. I’m not scared of anything.”
Buzz frowned. He knew for a fact that wasn’t true. Sam had a full-blown phobia of custard thanks to an all-you-can-eat buffet, a dare, and an unfortunate incident with a trifle that had resulted in Sam being banned from that restaurant for life. But Mary’s not going to know that, he thought. How could she?
Buzz stared first at his oldest friend and then at his newest, and somehow he knew that Sam didn’t stand a chance.
Mary looked deep into Sam’s eyes, concentrating hard. After a moment, she raised a single eyebrow.
“Custard,” she said. “You have a mortal fear of custard?”
There were some sniggers from the crowd.
Sam’s skin blanched of color. “How . . . how do you know that?”
His eyes slid over to Buzz. “Did you tell her? How could you?”
“I didn’t—” Buzz began.
“Oh, please,” Mary interrupted. “Buzz didn’t tell me a thing. This is what I do best. I read people’s fears. Scary Mary—that’s what they call me, you know.”
Buzz remembered that Mary had told him this just before they went into the time tunnel. I know things about people, she’d said. It makes them uncomfortable.
She looked out into the mob. “You.” She pointed a finger at a tall, lean man. “Your greatest fear is that no one likes you because you don’t like yourself.” The man flinched and took a step back. Her finger traveled over the rabble and rested on a portly man in a tweed jacket. “Your greatest fear is that your family will find out that you’ve spent all your money at the races.”
The portly man looked defiant. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “None of it matters anymore.”
The woman beside him, who had been busy hurling bananas at Theo, went very still. “Oh, but it does.” She crushed half a banana into the man’s forehead and turned on her heel and stalked away. The portly man chased after her, splashing through the puddles in the street.
Mary’s finger came to rest on a pretty woman in a fuchsia pink dress. “And your greatest fear is that you’re just a pretty face and that one day, when you are old, you won’t even be that anymore.”
The woman gasped, her heavily mascaraed eyes swimming with tears, and then she fled from the crowd.
“Anyone else?” Mary’s eyes glittered fiercely, and two stripes of color rode high on her cheeks.
People were shaking their heads, not meeting Mary’s gaze.
“Then I suggest you get out of here—quickly.” Mary’s hands were planted firmly on her hips.
The crowd began to back away as one, many looking at Mary as if she were a wild animal that might pounce on them at any moment. In no time at all, the whole mob had scattered just as the storm clouds seemed to.
All except Sam. He lingered for a moment, his face miserable. “I think I’m going to go home,” he croaked. “Maybe lie down on the sofa.”
“That’s a great idea.” Buzz put a hand on his best friend’s shoulder. “Go home and watch some Saturday night TV.”
Sam turned and trudged off. “It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.” The words weren’t much more than a whisper, but Buzz heard them.
“It does matter,” Buzz called after him. “And this Saturday will be over soon and everything will get back to normal, I promise.”
“I hope you’re not expecting me to say thank you,” a voice said from behind him.
Buzz turned to see that Theo had climbed down from the lamppost. He was covered in tomatoes, potato peelings, and rotten apples, but his precious sneakers were around his shoulders, and he looked pleased to have two feet on the ground once more.
“I expect the minimum from you, Theo, at all times,” Buzz answered. “So no, I don’t.”
Theo curled his lip but then turned to Mary. “You, on the other hand, are awesome. You’ve got to tell me how you did that whole deepest, darkest fear thing. That is a seriously cool trick.”
Mary blushed.
She actually blushed.
“You really think so?” she said.
“Absolutely,” Theo enthused. “I’m sticking with you. You seem like the kind of person I can trust to get me out of a tough situation.”
“Mary, this is Theo,” Buzz snapped. “You may recognize him as the charming fellow who threw my phone down the toilet at school.”
“Nice to meet you, properly, at least,” Mary said, and she held out her hand.
Theo took her hand and gallantly kissed the back of it. “The pleasure is all mine. You’re really at our school?”
Mary smiled and nodded. “Just for a test-run day. Did you know there are nearly 332,000 genetically distinct bacteria on the human hand?”
Theo pulled a face and dropped her hand. “I did not.” He surreptitiously scrubbed at his lips.
“Okay, we’ve got somewhere to be.” Buzz steered Mary away. “Theo, why don’t you get out of here and start looting or eating rotten fruit or something?”
“Off to fight a dragon, are you?” Theo asked.
“Something like that.” Buzz didn’t even bother to look over his shoulder.
“Can I help?”
Buzz stopped and swiveled round. “Excuse me?”
Theo had knelt down and was pulling on his sneakers, his face hidden from view. “Listen, Freaky,” he said. “Things have been seriously trippy around here recently. I’ve been getting the worst case of déjà vu imaginable. I mean, I feel like I have lived this day twenty times already, but no one else seems to have noticed. And each time I live the same day, things around here are getting worse. My friends and family have all gone feral on me—worse than usual. I keep on walking over to those woods that you love so much. It’s like I’m being summoned, but I don’t know what to do when I get there. And I feel like I’m being followed. I saw this strange geezer in the woods. He was bright and kind of shimmery and I just knew I had to run.”
“No way.” Mary’s mouth hung open. “Buzz. He’s one of them.”
“One of who?” Theo absently picked at his teeth and then examined his findings with interest.
“No, Mary, no.” Buzz knew he sounded scared, but that’s because he was.
“Think about it,” Mary insisted. “Ratatosk told us that all the sleeping gods—Sunna, Mani, Tyr, Odin, Thor, and Frigga—would have enough influence over their hosts to ensure they stayed close to the tree. Stayed in Crowmarsh.”
“So?” Buzz questioned. “That doesn’t mean Theo is one of them.”
But Mary was staring at Theo, a grin spreading over her face. “Ratatosk also said that the hosts of sleeping gods wouldn’t be affected by the Saturday loop like normal mortals—they’d be more resistant.” Mary bounced onto the balls of her feet excitedly. “He’s one of them. We’ve found our first sleeping god!”