“I’ll text them, yeah? If you can unlock the phone.” I let my knife dangle from the string around my wrist and crouched to grab the fallen phone.
“No need. I borrowed it from a neighbor who deactivated the lock screen for me. My own phone was charging in my room when the trolls chased us out of the house.” She grimaced. “My dad’s is the most recent number I dialed. Send the text to the next most recent number, too—that’s that woman out there. She’s a government researcher. Tell them: ‘Hendersons’ shed, ankle injured.’”
I leaned against the workbench and typed the text, keeping one eye on the door. And, to be honest, on the girl. She was leaning over, rubbing her leg. Curly locks fell over her forehead. Her skin showed splotches from exertion.
She would’ve been safe inside the SUV. Yet she’d risked crossing the street to get us to safety.
And then some random freaking car alarm had riled up the trolls. None of us had even been close enough to set it off. If that’d happened while we’d still been near the house, the trolls could’ve cornered us. We’d known to watch for single trolls; we hadn’t known to watch for an entire army of them.
We owed this girl.
I fired off the text and kept the phone in my hand in case they responded. “You said that woman is a government researcher?”
“Yeah. She arrived with several agents to investigate the trolls, but most of them left last night.” They must’ve rushed to Philadelphia the moment the rift tore loose from my backyard. “That researcher stuck around. Most trolls stay on the move or in the woods, so when she heard how many trolls were in our neighborhood—in our house—she wanted to see for herself.”
The researchers and agents had to be MGA. How many government agencies could there be researching weird shit like interdimensional rifts and troll invasions? Maybe the woman even knew about me.
“Then you all showed up.” The girl craned her neck to look up at me. She was nearly a head shorter than I was; with her on the ground, I felt even more self-conscious about my height. “I’ve never seen you around town. I’d notice quadruplets.” She frowned. “How did the one with the hair know about the spare key?”
“Just guessing?”
“She went straight for the right stone.”
“I don’t know. Sorry. Look, if that was your house—”
“You didn’t even know whose house it was, and you were ringing the doorbell and going for the spare key?” Her eyes searched my face like she expected to find an answer there. They were this rich, brown color. I tried not to stare. I didn’t want to be creepy. “You clearly didn’t know much about the trolls, either. Your sister was using a baseball bat.”
“What do you mean?”
“Steel is more effective than wood. The trolls go down faster and stay down longer.” She nudged the club. “The higher the iron content, the better. The agents told us that. Steel tops the list. It has more iron than even cast iron. But real steel is apparently hard to find. A nearby town is supposed to be sending more. You didn’t know any of that? What are you doing here?”
I shifted uncomfortably. She was so direct that I couldn’t tell whether her incredulity was from irritation or confusion. “It’s . . . complicated?” The girl said she’d never seen us, but I had to be sure. “Do we look familiar at all? We saw a photo of our sister in your house. We’re trying to find her.”
“One: How many sisters do you even have? Two: Someone in my house? When?”
“Just now. Past day.” The thought that Hazel Five might be down the street and we were hiding in this shed itched at me. I almost heard Neven’s voice: And the Chosen One decided to chat with a pretty girl in a garden shed, while everyone else was fighting for their lives.
“We got chased out two days ago,” the girl said. “You’re saying someone broke into my house after we left? No way. It’s been completely invaded by trolls.”
I suddenly wanted to take another look at that photo Rainbow had found. Maybe we’d seen it wrong, maybe we’d come here for nothing, maybe I’d been so pathetically eager that I’d seen clues where none existed . . .
My head snapped toward the door. “I hear a car.”
The girl groped for the workbench to pull herself up, either ignoring or missing my outstretched hand. Pain shot across her face when she put weight on her ankle.
I went for the door, dropping the phone in my pocket. The SUV came to a halt several yards away. Trolls were speeding after it. I pushed the door open, gripping my knife.
The girl’s dad burst from the SUV and ran past me.
One troll had clambered onto the SUV’s roof. It zigzagged across as if trying to find a weak spot. It ended up sliding off the windshield, glaring at the researcher in the passenger seat. Its mouth parted to reveal uneven shards of teeth, a motley collection of blunt and sharp. The researcher stared back with mixed fear and fascination. (Had she recognized us? Was she MGA? She looked familiar.)
Another troll went for the open driver’s-side door. I rushed in to cut it down from behind.
The girl and her dad ran for the SUV. I whirled to check out the area. Two piles of dirt on the road were re-forming. Several other trolls were racing at us, but the SUV would be gone before they reached us. Much farther away, I saw long blond hair whip around and sun glint off brightly dyed locks as the Hazels fought. I’d been gone for . . . what, five minutes? God, I hoped they were all OK—
“What about them?” the girl said as her dad helped her into the SUV.
“You first. We’ll go back.” He turned toward
