Free Fenzy by Robert Liparulo

asked.
    “I just thought . . . “ Xander whispered. “I said Phemus can’t come through this door because we had the item that brought us here.” He looked worriedly from Keal to David. “But he has a direct portal to the house. He could come through a different portal!”
    “Into another antechamber?” David said, scrambling to his feet. He stared at the hall door, expecting it to burst open. “Would he do that?”
    “He came after us, didn’t he?” Xander used the bench to hoist himself up. “We’re supposed to be chained up on a ship going to war. I’m sure he’s not happy that we aren’t.”
    “So, did you hear something or not?” David’s pounding heart didn’t want to know, it needed to know.
    “I thought . . . “ Xander shook his head. “I don’t know. A creak, maybe.”
    David thought of Phemus trudging back up the hill to Taksidian’s Atlantian house, where the portal was. He said, “Could he have gotten to the portal so fast?”
    “If he hurried,” Xander said. “Just barely.”
    Keal stood. He slipped Taksidian’s dagger beneath his belt at the small of his back and said, “Let’s get downstairs.”
    Xander leaned his ear to the door. He turned the handle and cracked it open and peered through.
    David grabbed a handful of Xander’s shirt—the brave part of his brain thinking he’d yank him back if Phemus leaped up; the little boy part simply wanting contact, as though Xander were the “blankie” David used to sleep with.
    Xander pulled the door wider and poked his head out to look in both directions.
    “Xan—“ David said.
    Xander stepped through, pulling David with him.
    Keal put a reassuring hand on David’s back. They walked in a line toward the landing, where a staircase led down to the second floor. David pictured their escape route: at the bottom of the stairs were two walls, one meant to be strong and secure enough to keep trespassers from other worlds from coming into the main part of their house; the other, six feet from the first, was designed to look like the other walls in the house, to keep the third floor secret.
    Trouble was, Phemus had knocked down the walls. Keal had rebuilt them, but had not yet installed the doors.
    Past the two walls, on the left, was their Mission Control Center—MCC—where they had planned to record their trips to other times and try to figure out what the house was all about. Nothing in there that would help them now.
    A short hallway led to a right-hand corner into the second floor’s main hall. From there, they could take the grand stair-case to the foyer and the front door.
    No problem.
    Then a problem did occur to him. “What if Phemus already came through? What if he’s waiting for us downstairs?”
    “Shhh,” Keal said, patting him.
    Will this never end ? David thought. The danger. The fear. The feeling in his gut as tight as a clutched fist. He wanted to feel normal again. He wanted Mom back . . . their life back.
    Bam!
    Their heads swung toward the sound behind them.
    “That was a portal door,” Xander said.
    A door opened. Light poured out of an antechamber, fill-ing the far end of the hallway.
    “Go!” Keal said. But they continued to watch as Phemus stepped through and turned his face toward them.
    Keal shoved David at the same time that Xander took off, yanking him forward. He stumbled, almost fell, found his feet, and ran. He followed Xander around the corner to the stairs.
    Behind him Keal was saying, “Go, go, go, go, go . . . “ It sounded more like a chugging train engine than a command no one needed.

CHAPTER

twenty

    F RIDAY , 1:56 P.M .
    David, Xander, and Keal pounded down the stairs and through the doorless openings in the two walls, Phemus somewhere behind them.
    David and Xander were almost to the corner that would take them to the second floor’s main hall when David real-ized Keal wasn’t behind him. He braked, yanking Xander to a stop as well.
    Keal was back at the second wall, struggling to