Page 8 (1/2)

8

12:00 AM

SEARCH PARTY

"So"

Melissa&039;s words were spoken softly and filled the silence of the blue tie of the junkyard lot where her friends stood Melissa&039;s upturned eyes caught the light of the ht moon Rex, as usual, hovered close to her, focused on every word

Dess waited forwith her whole being, tasting the aze to the ground, scanning the pile ofto hiht about tonight, there was the possibility of a serious ru to need clean steel to ith

Of course, Rex could be wrong It didn&039;t feel like a bad night to Dess Friday, September 5, the fifth day of the ninth month The combination of nine and five wasn&039;t particularly nasty: the numbers made four, fourteen, or forty-five (when subtracted, added, or multiplied), which was kind of a cute pattern if you liked fours, which Dess did, but hardly dangerous On top of that, "S-e-p-t-e-m-b-e-r f-i-v-e" spelled out had thirteen letters, which was as safe as any number could be What was to complain about?

But Rex orried

Dess looked up The darkat its usual stately pace and resplendent with its usual gorgeous, pale blue light So far, Dess hadn&039;t heard the sounds of anything big roale one, in fact, not even out of the corner of her eye

That eird, actually She looked around the junkyard There were rusted-out cars, a corrugated iron shack flattened by some ancient tornado, and a jumbled tire pile - plenty of places to slither under and peer out from, but not a flicker of movement anywhere And even when they couldn&039;t be seen, the chirps and calls of slithers were usually audible But none of the little guys atching tonight

"Aluy accent

Across the junkyard Melissa moaned, and despite the constant warh Dess

It was tian to sort through the pieces of ht steel uncorrupted by rust Stainless was best, unpainted and shiny The twisted, uneven shapes of thetrip from factory to junkyard had weathered soant ratios of length and width, scarred old bolts with hared her finds happily Steel came alive here in the blue tiht streak across thea fireworks show in the pale sky above

As she chose froht each to her mouth and blew a name into it

"Deliciousness"

So pieces were beautiful, but she needed to be able to carry all of the for her life She selected a sth of pipe

"Overzealously," she whispered to it

Words tuh her head, sos of, scraps of language that had stuck in her e, except when they collided with nu across a Scrabble board to grab a triple-word score

What she wanted tonight was pretty straightforward: thirteen-letter words to boost the power of these pieces of steel

"Fossilization," she na, thin screw, the thread of which wound exactly thirty-nine times around its shaft

The crunch of Rex&039;s boots caht behind her She hadn&039;t heard him approach, lost as she was in the pleasures of steel

"If you were a slither, you&039;d&039;ve bit s didn&039;t exactly bite, of course, but close enough

"Melissa&039;s found her," Rex said

Dess lifted an old hubcap up to the light Trapped blue fire coursed around its rim

"About time"

"But she says we have to hurry There&039;s trouble So out there, or just nasty Whatever it is, it&039;s giving Melissa a serious headache"

Dess brought the hubcap close to her lips