“You guys have another half hour,” Anne said, turning to go back to the house. “Dinner’s at six.”
And, I was going to say, plenty of food. It was amazing.
Where was the catch? ’Cause I knew one was coming.
23
“Oh, yeah!” said the Gasman, looking at the pond. “I am so there!”
Anne’s pond was about as big as a football stadium, with a small, rocky shore edged by cattails and daylilies.
I stared at it suspiciously, waiting for the Pond Ness Monster to rise out of its depths. Okay, call me hopelessly paranoid, but this whole place was starting to seem creepily idyllic. Like, my bedroom was charming. Charming! What did I know about charming? I’d never called anything charming before in my life.
And now here I was, eyes narrowed at a picture-perfect pond. Was this some new freakish test?
“We don’t have time right now, Gazzy,” I said, clamping down on my rising fears. “But maybe we can go swimming tomorrow.”
“It’s just so beautiful here,” Nudge said, gazing at the untrustable rolling hills, the dark, secret-concealing orchard, the pond (see above rant re pond), the small, literally babbling brook that ran into the pond. “Like the Garden of Eden.”
“Yeah, and that turned out so well,” I muttered under my breath.
“Look, there are more animals over there,” said Angel, pointing.
No doubt tidy, Martha Stewart, heirloom pedigree animals enclosed in chintz pens.
“Okay, we can swing by ’em on the way back to the house. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m starving.” I glanced over at Fang, who was starting to look a little pale. Tonight after dinner I would try to get him to take it easy in one of the too-comfortable recliners by the horribly cozy fireplace.
“Sheep!” Angel cried, catching sight of some fluffy brown wool.
“Anne is quite the animal lover,” Fang said to me as we followed Angel. “Horses, sheep, goats. Chickens. Pigs.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I wonder who’s for dinner?”
He flashed one of his rare smiles at me, and it was like the sun coming out. I felt my cheeks get hot and strode on ahead.
“Pigs, look,” said the Gasman excitedly. “Come here, Ig.” Gazzy guided Iggy’s hand down, and Iggy scratched a small brown pig behind its ears, sending it into ecstatic squeals.
“Pigs are so lucky,” said the Gasman, as images of bacon danced in my head. “No one cares if they’re dirty or live in a pigsty.”
“That’s because they’re pigs,” I pointed out. Just then, Total leaped out of my arms, scratching me.
“Hey!” I said, and then saw a large black-and-white shepherdy-looking dog bounding up. Total braced his front legs and barked loudly, and the other dog barked back.
“Total!” I called, clapping my hands. “Stop it! It’s his yard. Angel!”
Angel was already trotting over, and she grabbed Total’s collar.
“Since when does he have a collar?” I asked.
“Okay, Total, calm down,” Angel said, stroking his head. Total stopped barking, then shook his head in disgust and said, “Putz.”
I blinked in surprise and opened my mouth—and then saw Gazzy loping up, hands in his pockets, whistling. I absolutely refused to give Gazzy the satisfaction of freaking out over his latest voice-throwing trick and didn’t say a thing.
“Come on, guys,” I said. “Let’s go chow.”
24
“Okay, let’s see what we have here,” I muttered. The six of us were in “my” room. The notes we’d gotten from the Institute in New York were spread out on my bed. When we’d found the files in the computer and printed them out, some of the information had been readable. Now those pages were gone, leaving us with lines of numerical code. What had happened to the readable pages? Dunno. Was it another test?