Free The Spindlers by Lauren Oliver Page A

and her group of snotty, snooty friends.
    â€œBecause …” She couldn’t put any of her feelings into words. Because he’s my brother , she thought of saying. Or, Because he would do it for me . What came out was: “Because I have to.”
    â€œA likely story!” a nid erupted from the audience.
    â€œâ€˜ Because I have to!’ What kind of a defense is that?” cried another nid.
    â€œShe’s a spy, I tell you! Both of them are slippery, nippery, nasty little spies!”
    Liza balled her fists again. She felt anger rising in her chest, pushing at her throat. Next to her, Mirabella had begun to rock back and forth. She was clutching her head so tightly, it made her cheeks bulge out from between her paws. If Liza hadn’t been so upset, it would have been comical.
    â€œI’m not a spy,” Liza said loudly over the din. “And I’m not a liar.”
    â€œOrder, order!” The judge was pounding his gavel once again. “In the name of the authority vested in me by the Court of Stones, I declare the defendants guilty by reason of insufficient proof! And proven inefficiency!”
    On the word guilty , Liza’s heart stuttered. For one second, time seemed to stop, and stretch, so that she could think of her mother and father, and Mrs. Costenblatt in her rocking chair on her porch, and feel sorry that she would never see them again.
    And poor Patrick …
    Liza was filled with regret. She had forgotten to tell the real Patrick, her baby brother, so many important things. For example, she had forgotten to tell him that when you reached third grade the cafeteria would try and give you celery and peanut butter with raisins on top and pass it off as dessert, and how important it was not to be fooled , and instead stuff your pockets with gummy bears before school. She had forgotten to tell him too that the last time they had played Chesteropoly she didn’t let him win, as she said she had, but had in fact been beaten by him fair and square.
    Then time jumped forward again, and everything was uproar and chaos.
    â€œTo the dungeons!” the nids squealed as they poured from their stone seats and flowed down to the courtroom floor. “Throw them in the dungeons and leave them to rot!”
    Liza found herself surrounded by the jabbing, chattering creatures. She realized she must fight, or be left to rot in the world Below forever. The nid with the broom poked at her again, and she managed to snatch it from his grip.
    â€œStay away from me!” She turned in a circle, jabbing threateningly at the nids that came too close. “Or I’ll bonk you over the head, and sweep you out the—oof!”
    A nid jumped on her back and brought her tumbling to her knees. Mirabella was engaged in her own struggle, fighting and snapping and using her tail as a whiplash to try and keep the nids away. But there were too many of them.
    â€œTo the dungeons!” The nids’ voices swelled to a roar. “Lock the spies in the dungeons!”
    Then suddenly there was a rushing, fluttering sound, like the first pitter-patter of rain falling onto pavement, swelling quickly into a downpour. Instantly the nids fell silent. Liza managed to wrench her arm away from the nid that had been holding her. Even Judge Gobbington IV had gone ghostly white.
    â€œWonderful,” Mirabella squeaked in a tone of deep sarcasm. “ Now see what you’ve done? You’ve gone and upset the nocturni.”

Chapter 10

T HE N OCTURNI
    T housands of shadows were swooping and flitting through the air above their heads, until the court was dark with them.
    But they were not shadows, Liza realized as she looked at them more closely. That is, they were like shadows—they had the bare, thin, flickering, insubstantial quality of shadows—but unlike shadows, they were all the same shape. There were hundreds of thousands—no, millions—of them, and they were all