The terrifying situation had created a crisp sense of clarity in her mind, and an idea formed somewhere in the dark factory of her thoughts. A very bizarre idea.

She turned and bolted for the garage. With every step, she felt rivulets of water running down her torso, the creature capturing her inch by inch. She knew she wouldn’t be able to move once the thing had control of her legs.

The garage. She had to reach the garage. She made it out of the kitchen and into the short hallway with coat hooks and shoe racks. The door was only a few feet away.

The water reached her knees. She felt herself slow a bit.

She lurched forward, reaching for the door that led to the garage. One arm had been taken completely over, and the other had only a second left before its fingers would be swallowed by the possessed water. The liquid encasing her arms made it harder to control her movements, but the creature seemed mostly focused on her head. She found the handle. She twisted the knob and pulled. An instant later, the wet monster had consumed her fully.

Lorena fell forward and toppled down the three stairs that descended into the garage. Ironically, the thick layer of water cushioned her fall.

Tick slapped at his dad’s face with cupped hands, like a dog digging for a bone. Each swing caught a little pool of water and sent it flying, but more instantly sloshed back in, and the displaced splashes somehow flew back onto his dad’s body like metal shavings returning to a powerful magnet. Every once in a while their combined efforts would clear just enough water for his dad to take a quick breath, but Tick knew they couldn’t keep it up much longer.

The garage door that led to the inside of the house banged open.

Tick looked up and saw his mom. Fully encased in water just like his dad, she fell down the short staircase and crashed onto the floor with a wet flump.

“Mom!” Tick cried, scrambling over to her and falling on top of her. He could only hope his dad could find enough breaths to survive.

His mom clawed at the water around her nose and mouth. She kept trying to say something, but all that came out was the garbled mess you hear when someone talks to you while submerged in the swimming pool. Her eyes were open, fixed on Tick through the crystalline, shimmering layer of water. She wasn’t panicked, but definitely trying to communicate something.

Tick forced himself to stay calm. Reaching forward, he placed his hands on either side of her face. She got the message, and remained completely still. With a quick jerk, Tick slid his hands across her mouth, swiping away a huge section of water long enough for her to get one word out.

He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it sure wasn’t the two syllables that came out of her mouth in a gargled scream.

“Vacuum!” she yelled.

At first, confusion engulfed Tick. He thought surely his mom’s mind had snapped under the pressure of being possessed by a blob of water. But then he realized it was quite the opposite. She’d been the only one to actually come up with a solution.

He turned his head to look over his shoulder, across his dad’s heap of a wrecked car, and focused on the huge beast of a machine that sat next to some tools and cleaning supplies on an old wooden workbench.

The MegaVac. The thing looked like R2-D2 with a big hose.

And it could suck water out of rock.

Tick got up and ran around the front of the crashed car and over to the workbench. He reached up and grabbed the heavy, squat yellow cylinder with its thick, snaking hose attached. He dragged the vacuum toward his mom, whose face was darkening into a sick blue color.

“Mom!” he yelled. “Keep swiping at it!”

He reached her and flipped the switch on the MegaVac.

It didn’t turn on.

For one agonizing second, despair crushed Tick. But then he realized the stupid thing wasn’t plugged in. He scrambled for the long black cord, found its end, then crawled over to an outlet and pushed the big plug in. A heavy roar kicked in behind him. Tick scooted back over and knelt down beside his mom, grasping the end of the vacuum hose like the mouth of a deadly cobra.

The thing worked like a beauty.

He stuck the hose on his mom’s mouth and watched with elation as the vacuum sucked up the water with no problem. The MegaVac had been a birthday present for his dad two years ago, and Edgar had excitedly given a demonstration to the family on how the beast could make anything disappear into its glorious, hard-plastic belly, be it cereal bits or gallons of floodwater. It was the closest thing to a black hole that the Higginbottoms would ever experience, he’d said.

Tick wanted to shout in victory as he realized even a supernatural creature made of liquid couldn’t resist the monstrous sucking power of a MegaVac, lord of all vacuums.

He finished cleaning the water off his mom, her soggy hair and clothes the only sign she’d been encased by a water monster just moments before. Tick’s dad was only a few feet behind him, and twenty seconds later, the vacuum had sucked up his captor too.

Tick leaned back, panting as his mom and dad gasped and spit, doing their best to recover from the ordeal. He thought of Lisa and Kayla in Seattle, and had an almost overwhelming feeling of relief that they hadn’t been here. The odds of Lisa—and especially little Kayla—surviving something like this . . . Tick quenched the horrible thought before images formed that might never go away.

He looked over at the body of the MegaVac, which now contained two—what exactly were those creatures?—within its belly.

A worry hit him. He didn’t want to turn off the vacuum for fear the creatures would find a way to seep back down the hose. “What should we do? Do you think we killed them?”

His dad laughed, a mere sputter between heavy breaths. “I say we flush the suckers’ guts down the toilet. That oughtta do it.”

And that’s what they did.

Chapter 5

A Mother’s Love

Sofia leaned forward against the railing of the balcony outside her bedroom, resting her elbows on the smooth stone as she looked out over her family’s estate toward the east, where the sun slowly rose above the horizon. The orange glow sparkled on the waters of the Adriatic Sea in the distance. A cold breeze blew past, stirring her black hair and sending chills across her arms and down her back. Though she enjoyed the cold—it was just pleasant enough to keep her awake, keep her alert and alive—she pulled her jacket tighter.

She missed Tick and Paul. She missed Sato. Master George, Mothball, all of them. Even Rutger. Days dragged like weeks now. Their adventures in the Fourth seemed like a million years ago. She knew it was crazy to want something to happen again, considering they’d almost died, but ever since she’d returned home, returned to school, and gone through the motions of a normal life, she’d been utterly bored out of her mind.