Strike of the Sweepers

  “One more thing,” Spencer said. He reached down to his janitorial belt and unclipped a pair of Glopified walkie-talkie radios that he’d picked up in the Rebel closet. Spencer twisted the knob at the top of the device. “I’m setting these to channel 27,” he said to Bookworm. “That should be a secure, private channel. Have Min radio over once you find him.”

  The Thingamajunk nodded to show his understanding. Spencer dropped one of the walkie-talkies into Bookworm’s head and closed the lunchbox.

  “California’s a big place,” Dez said. “How’s your trash pet going to find someone he’s never met before?”

  “Well,” Spencer reasoned, “if he can eat trash and know where it came from, then we need something that could lead him to Min.”

  “I have a letter in the house,” Daisy said.

  “From Min?” Spencer was surprised she hadn’t mentioned it before. “Why did he send you a letter?”

  “I don’t have email,” she said. “He just wanted to give me an update about the Monitors.”

  “But I always give you updates about the Monitors,” Spencer said.

  “Oooohhh,” Dez butted in. “Someone’s getting jealous!”

  “I am not jealous!” Spencer said. Then he turned to Daisy before anything else could be said. “Go grab the letter.”

  She darted across the lawn and through the back door of her house, giving her black dog a pat on the head as she passed.

  “What?” Spencer said defensively, noticing the lingering smirk on Dez’s face. He turned to the Thingamajunk. “Bookworm,” Spencer said, “why don’t you give Dez a hug while we wait?”

  “Huh?” Dez said, the grin melting off his face. “I don’t want a hug!”

  Bookworm lurched forward, snatched Dez in his thick garbage arms, and squeezed the kid tightly. Dez grunted and wriggled as Bookworm’s hug appeared to be more of a headlock and less of a sign of affection. Now it was Spencer’s turn to smirk.

  When Daisy returned, both hands were occupied as she worked to clasp a piece of cheap jewelry around her neck. A white envelope was clamped tightly between her lips. She secured her necklace just as she reached Spencer and Dez.

  “This is from Min,” Daisy said once she’d removed the envelope from between her lips. When Bookworm heard her voice, he smiled and dropped Dez in a heap on the ground.

  “That necklace?” Spencer asked.

  “Huh?” Daisy looked at him, confused.

  “Min gave you that necklace?” He pointed to the pendant on a chain around her neck.

  Daisy giggled. “No, silly. Why would Min give me a necklace?” Daisy rubbed the shiny pendant around her neck. “It’s from my grandma. I’ve had it forever.”

  “I’ve just never seen you wear it before,” Spencer said, trying to recover before Dez pointed out his jealousy again.

  “Yes you have,” said Daisy. “I used to wear it all the time, but Leslie Sharmelle broke it when we were fighting in the air vent at the school. My dad finally got around to fixing it.”

  “That would be cool, if I cared,” Dez cut in. “Now hurry up and feed your garbage some garbage.”

  Daisy turned to her faithful Thingamajunk. “This is a letter from the boy you need to find,” she explained. “If you eat it, will you be able to find his house?”

  Bookworm nodded, and Daisy held it out for him.

  “But,” Spencer said, “shouldn’t we read it first?” He really was curious to see what Min would say in a personal letter to Daisy.

  Daisy’s cheeks seemed to flush a bit and she reached out, nearly shoving the letter in Bookworm’s face. He gobbled it up without hesitation.

  “Know where to go?” Daisy asked.

  The Thingamajunk paused for just a second as he seemed to simultaneously ponder and digest. Then he collapsed into a lifeless mound of garbage. He was on his way to Min, holding the future of education in his lunchbox head.

  Chapter 32

  “That’s a lame power.”

  Spencer turned to his companions. He felt a huge weight off his shoulders, knowing he’d done all he could to get the Manualis Custodem safely away.

  “What now?” Daisy asked.

  “Now we rescue the others,” Spencer said.

  Daisy glanced nervously at Spencer and Dez. “I don’t mean to be negative,” she said. “But there are only three of us.”

  “Don’t be such a wimp,” Dez said. “We can handle it.”

  Spencer shook his head. “Daisy’s right. We need help.”

  “But who?” she asked. “All our best fighters are already captured.”

  “Mr. Clean missed one,” Spencer said, finally slipping the backpack from his shoulders. “The best fighter I know is right in here.”

  Daisy raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You’ve got a tiny person in your backpack?”

  “Sort of.” Spencer pulled on the zippers, and the bag fell open to reveal its contents.

  The Vortex.

  Spencer carefully lifted the Vortex vacuum bag from the open backpack. Almost seven months had passed since Spencer had first punctured the Vortex. The vacuum bag had unleashed a tremendous power, sucking everything inside. Several BEM workers, including a man named Garth Hadley, had disappeared. And one Rebel had been a casualty of the Vortex.

  “You’re going to rescue Marv?” Daisy whispered.

  Marv, the Rebel janitor, had been lost to them for months now. He was alive, or had been back in November when they’d captured an audio recording of his voice. The message was simple and completely nonsensical. Marv had merely shouted, “Haha! Gutter ball!”

  Spencer held the vacuum bag aloft. There was a folded note secured to the edge of the Vortex with a little paper clip. The note was from Olin, one of the Dark Aurans, who had written instructions for Spencer to rescue Marv from the bag. In the last two months, Spencer must have read the note a hundred times, studiously poring over the message with Walter.

  “But Walter said we couldn’t risk a rescue,” Daisy quietly reminded. “He said it was too dangerous.”

  Spencer didn’t need the reminder. Walter had decided that they should wait until the Founding Witches were back. They couldn’t risk valuable time, and potentially lives, in rescuing Marv while the Manualis Custodem remained unsolved.

  “Walter’s not here now,” Spencer pointed out. “We need help, and Marv is our best chance. If we get him out of the Vortex, he can help us rescue the others from Mr. Clean’s lab.” Spencer sounded more positive than he felt. Olin’s note didn’t make Marv’s rescue out to be an easy task. It would be a risk. But at this point, what wasn’t?

  “I need a leaf blower,” Spencer said.

  “Why?” Daisy looked at her lawn. “There aren’t even any leaves.”

  “It’s for the Vortex,” Spencer said.

  Daisy looked puzzled. “I thought we tried a leaf blower on the Vortex.”

  “Walter did,” answered Spencer. “But it wasn’t right.” He unclipped Olin’s note from the edge of the vacuum bag.

  Daisy had read it once, but she must have forgotten the message. Spencer supposed that thoughts of Marv trapped in the vacuum bag didn’t weigh constantly on her mind as they did on his. It was Spencer’s fault that the big janitor had spent the last seven months trapped. He had put Marv there.

  “No more love notes!” Dez grabbed the paper from Spencer’s hand. “Let me see that.” Dez glanced over it. “Boring,” he said, and dropped it to the ground.

  “It’s not boring,” Spencer said, snatching it before the wind could blow it away. “This letter tells us exactly how to rescue Marv.”

  “I don’t think I want to rescue him,” Dez said. “He’s the big hairy guy that used to work at Welcher, right? He made me clean toilets once.”

  “You probably deserved it,” Spencer said. “Now, listen up. If we’re going to survive this, we’ll need to be united.”

  “Blah blah blah,” Dez said. “Just tell me who to attack.”

  Spencer rolled his
eyes and lifted the note. “Olin said that our earlier attempts with the leaf blower failed for two reasons,” Spencer summarized. “First, Olin created the Vortex. That means it’s powerful and it won’t max out.” He began reading Olin’s carefully written words. “Your leaf blower will need to be far stronger than anything your warlock can Glopify. Only you have the strength to create something that will match the Vortex. When charged with the Aura, your right hand has the power to Glopify. Don’t hold back.”

  “Wait,” Dez interrupted, pointing at Spencer. “He wrote this about you?”

  Spencer nodded and Dez burst out in laughter. “What’s so funny?” Spencer asked.

  “What kind of powers does he think you have, Doofus?” asked Dez.

  “Spencer’s an Auran, Dez.” Daisy pointed it out straight, just in case the bully had missed something along the way.

  Dez shrugged. “Big deal. What does that even mean?”

  “It means that I could Glopify or de-Glopify you with a single touch of my hand,” Spencer said. “It means that I can live forever. It means that my inner eye can locate the exact location of the warlocks.”

  “Psh.” Dez waved him away. “Being a Sweeper is so much cooler.”

  Spencer turned to Daisy. “Do you know if your dad has a leaf blower we could borrow?” He used the term borrow very loosely, since he probably wouldn’t be giving it back.

  “There’s one in the garage,” Daisy said.

  Once again, Spencer and Dez were momentarily left alone as Daisy went to find her dad’s leaf blower. A second later she emerged, holding the device above her head like a trophy. She handed it to Spencer, who set it on the ground and knelt before it.

  “Now what, Mr. Auran?” asked Dez.

  Spencer didn’t want to admit that he’d never actually done this before. Walter had been very hesitant in letting him experiment. Spencer had de-Glopified the pump house at the landfill, but something told him that Glopifying would be different.

  Olin’s letter said not to hold back. Spencer only hoped he would do it right. If he messed this up, he’d have to wait a day or two for the Glop to recharge in his bloodstream before he could make a second attempt.

  “You’re just going to stare at it?” Dez said. “That’s a lame power.”

  “No,” Spencer said. “I’m going to spit on it.”

  Dez laughed. “Good one, Doofus. You actually told a funny joke!”

  Spencer glared at him. “I wasn’t joking.”

  He looked down at his hands and took a deep breath. This was the grossest part about being an Auran. It didn’t matter that the spit was his own. Spit was spit.

  Spencer worked up some saliva in his mouth and spat onto his palm. The spit was stringy as he drew back his head. Spencer gagged.

  “You spit like a girl,” Dez said.

  Daisy asked what that was supposed to mean, but Spencer was ignoring them both. He clapped his hands together and rubbed them briskly. The friction activated the trace amounts of Glop in his saliva, and he felt a tingle in his palms. Suddenly, both hands ignited into orbs of golden light.

  Dez drew back in surprise, the first and only indication that he was impressed by Spencer’s Auran abilities.

  Spencer took a steadying breath and stretched out his right hand to touch the leaf blower lying in the grass. The moment his fingers made contact with it, he felt a connection.

  It was as though a stream of Glop were flowing out of his fingers and into the leaf blower. He felt his power spread through the plastic and metal on an almost molecular level.

  The blower was glowing now too. Spencer could sense its potential. He knew it could do so much more than a simple factory had designed it to do.

  The magic did the work, using Spencer as little more than a conduit. The leaf blower grew stronger, the wind speed magnified and the airflow focused. The magic flowed and flowed until the blower was something altogether different.

  It was no longer a simple tool in his right hand. It was an insanely powerful device, capable of blowing air at speeds previously unimaginable. Spencer knew he had succeeded, even before he let go. He knew the magic in his system had taken the leaf blower a hundred times beyond what Walter could do.

  Then, all at once, it was over. The glowing Aura faded from his hands, and the leaf blower looked as ordinary as ever, lying on the grass in Daisy’s backyard.

  Spencer stood up, his whole body trembling. He was proud of the work he’d done and more anxious than ever to rescue Marv so he could test it out.

  Daisy’s eyes were wide and her mouth slightly agape. Dez had a similar shocked expression, but he snapped out of it as soon as Spencer caught him staring.

  “I guess that was all right,” Dez muttered. “I bet it doesn’t even work.”

  Spencer picked up the leaf blower. He wouldn’t test it here. Pointed in the wrong direction, it could blow a hole clear through Daisy’s house. No, Spencer was confident enough in his work that he would only test it when the time was right.

  “You know,” Daisy finally said, “for some reason I thought that part would take longer. What’s next?”

  Suddenly, the walkie-talkie on Spencer’s belt turned on. A familiar voice came through the speaker.

  “Spencer? Spencer? Do you copy?”

  Spencer lowered the leaf blower and unclipped the radio. “Min! Is that you?”

  “Indeed,” Min said. “Who else would it be?”

  “So the Thingamajunk found you?” Spencer said. “You got the book?”

  “If by ‘Thingamajunk’ you mean ‘living humanoid garbage,’ then yes,” Min said.

  “His name’s Bookworm,” Daisy said into the radio. “He’s my pet.”

  “I was just finishing my homework when he came through my window,” Min said. “Now I have to think up an excuse that sounds more believable than the truth.”

  “What happened?” Daisy asked.

  “The garbage ate my homework,” Min replied.

  “Sorry about that. I’m just glad he found you,” Spencer said. “You have the Manualis Custodem?”

  “It’s in my hands as we speak,” said Min. “What would you like me to do with it?”

  “We need you to start working on a translation,” answered Spencer. “It’s written in a made-up language called Gloppish. Like a mix of Latin and hieroglyphics. Think you can crack the code?”

  “Most definitely,” Min said.

  “Good,” Spencer answered. “But you have to keep it a secret. The BEM will be looking for it. You have to guard it with your life!”

  “Please,” Min said. “Calm down. It’s unnecessary to shout into the walkie-talkie.”

  “Sorry,” Spencer said, taking a deep, steadying breath. “I’m a little tired. It was a long night.”

  “We went to Colorado, Massachusetts, and back to Colorado last night,” Daisy added.

  “Hmm,” said Min. “It’s geographically impossible to make that journey in one night.”

  “We’ve got Glopified squeegees now,” Spencer said. “As long as you have somebody in place, you can open a portal to connect two locations.”

  “Do I have a deadline for the translation?” Min asked, getting back to business.

  “As soon as you can,” answered Spencer. “Here’s the thing . . . Walter and the other Rebels have been captured. It’s just me, Daisy, and Dez over here.”

  “Dez is with you now?” Spencer could imagine Min raising an eyebrow. “Your last report clearly stated that he was . . . how did you put it? Filthy, treacherous scum.”

  “Hey!” Dez hit Spencer in the shoulder. “I am not scum.”

  “My apologies, Spencer,” Min said. “I didn’t realize he was listening.”

  “All right, Min,” Spencer said, getting them on topic once more. “The truth is, we might not survive this rescue mission, and we need you to carry on the Rebel work. The Manualis Custodem will tell you what to do.”

  “I understand,” Min said.

  “I’m going t
o explain the rest of the plan,” Spencer said. “I’m keeping you on the radio, Min. If our rescue plan goes bad, at least you’ll know what happened to us.”

  Daisy leaned in. “And tell my dad that it was Dez who smashed the fence.”

  Spencer didn’t tell her that if they all died, Mr. Gates wasn’t likely to care a bit about his broken fence.

  “Okay,” Spencer said. “I’ve just Glopified a leaf blower with enough power to rip a hole in the atmosphere. We’ll use it to rescue Marv.”

  “How do we do it?” Daisy asked. “One of us has to hold the Vortex while you blast it?”

  “Not it!” Dez called. “I don’t want to get blown away.”

  “That’s not how it’s going to work,” Spencer said. Carefully holding the talk button on the radio, he pulled out Olin’s note once more. “Walter already tried blasting the bag from the outside, but it didn’t work. Olin says the leaf blower must be detonated from inside the Vortex.”

  “Whoa,” Daisy said. “Does that mean we have to . . . ?”

  Spencer nodded. “We’ll have to enter the same way Marv did.”

  Chapter 33

  “Those are your biceps.”

  This sounds like a terrible plan,” Dez muttered. “We’re going to get sucked into the vacuum-bag-of-no-return . . . on purpose?”

  “Never thought I’d say this,” Daisy muttered, “but I think I’m with Dez on this one. We have no idea what it’s like in there!”

  “We don’t,” Spencer agreed. “But Olin does. He’s been there before. Listen to this.” Spencer held out the Dark Auran’s note and began reading. “The Vortex is a gateway to a place we call the Dustbin: an alternate dimension from which our world was created. That’s where your friend is trapped. And if you want to find him, you’ll have to go there. Inside the Dustbin, you can imagine and create familiar objects from ordinary dust. Only the strongest minds will succeed.”

  Spencer stopped reading when Daisy cut in. “Maybe Dez shouldn’t come with us,” she said.

  The bully fidgeted under their gaze. “What?” He ruffled his wings uncomfortably. “You think I don’t have a strong mind? Just look at this!” He flexed his arms.