“Is it safe?” Nate asked.
“I’ve studied your stamps,” Tallah replied. “The enchantment is complex. I should be able to coax any two of them to harmonize. Three would be too many.”
“You don’t have to blend your stamps,” Cleon said. “But I would generally recommend it. The other clubs will have this option as well.”
“We’ll be going up against Racer Tanks?” Nate asked.
“That’s the idea,” Cleon replied.
“Me first,” Lindy said. “Make me into a flying submarine.”
“Give me your hand, child,” Tallah said. She dipped a brush in a tube and spread a clear solution on the back of Lindy’s hand. Then she applied the jet stamp, followed by the sub stamp, one atop the other. Eyes closed, Tallah held Lindy’s hand and mumbled some words, then released her.
“Did it work?” Lindy asked.
“Success,” Tallah said. “Who’s next?”
Chris stepped forward. Nate got in line.
*****
Trevor sat up front with the driver on the way to Devil’s Shadow Mobile Home Park. He did not get shotgun because he was in charge—he was in front because he hadn’t gelled with his group.
Paige, Hailey, and Claire sat behind him. The girls had all completed sixth grade, and they knew each other from going to the same Walnut Hills school. They had two other friends who had been gunning for stamps but had failed to earn enough tickets in time.
“How much farther?” Trevor asked the driver.
The swarthy man checked his GPS. “Five minutes tops.”
Trevor was glad to be riding in a car. He and the Racers could move quickly, but with time slowed down from their point of view, they still had to run every step of wherever they went. The car would let them save their energy for when it mattered.
Trevor turned to face the girls in the back. “Do we have a strategy?”
Paige looked at him as though he had just asked the color of the sky. “Outrun them?”
“Right,” Trevor said patiently. “But we also have to find the Graywater family and get the map from them. It could take time. Those Tanks are really strong. If they catch up, we could be in trouble.”
“They won’t catch up if we hurry,” Paige replied.
“Even if they did, we just keep away from them,” Hailey said. “You can’t hurt what you can’t catch.”
“What if they corner us?” Trevor challenged. “How would we outrun them in a small room or narrow hall?”
“How about we don’t let them corner us like that?” Claire said as if the solution were obvious. “We run away before they pin us down.”
“Won’t we need a lookout?” Trevor asked.
“Good idea,” Paige said. “You can be the lookout.”
Hailey and Claire giggled. Clearly they thought it would be a good way to keep him uninvolved.
Trevor faced front, fighting down his frustration. The girls were seldom openly mean to him. They were just dismissive. And not very bright. He was pretty sure that Paige and Claire came from wealthy families, and he suspected that they had won their tickets by spending lots of money rather than by having much skill.
“You want to keep your stamps, don’t you?” Trevor asked.
“No, we want to give them away,” Hailey responded sarcastically.
“Nobody can catch us,” Claire said. “Stop stressing out so much.”
“This might not be as easy as you girls think,” Trevor insisted.
“Thanks for the twentieth warning,” Paige said. “We’re ready. Blabbing about it won’t change anything. We find the Graywaters. We get the map. We outrun the Tanks. We bring it to Arcadeland.”
“Whatever,” Trevor said.
The driver had a small smile. He rubbed his oily moustache. Trevor looked away. Todd had assured them that the driver would convey them back and forth between Arcadeland and Devil’s Shadow, no questions asked. They were free to speak about anything in front of him, but they shouldn’t expect any extra assistance from him. Trevor didn’t even know his name.
They turned onto a smooth dirt road and followed it across a field and around some oak trees. “Here we are,” the driver announced. “Up ahead.”
An arched sign reading DEVIL’S SHADOW formed the entrance to the trailer park. Beyond the entrance, Trevor could see a number of mobile homes in various states of disrepair. The driver pulled off to the side of the road just shy of the entrance.
Trevor looked back at the Tanks pulling over in their car as well. “The Tanks are right behind us,” he warned.
“Not for long,” Paige said, climbing out of the car. She and the other Racers took off at superhuman speed.
Trevor jumped out as well and followed. He shifted into race mode, an adjustment that had already become second nature, as simple as concentrating to read the words in a book. Everything around him slowed down. He glanced back at the Tanks getting out of the car with unnatural slowness, then sprinted to catch up with the girls.
Right now he was moving three or four times faster than everything else around him. He felt normal until he noticed a butterfly fluttering sluggishly. Running still made him tired, but no more tired than ordinary running. He could increase his speed again by entering the second altered state three or four times speedier than the first, but it would make him tire rapidly and could lead to a headache. He would save that secret weapon for emergencies.
The girls were not running too quickly, so he caught up to them just beyond the trailer park entrance.
“Shouldn’t we slow down?” Trevor asked. “Won’t it look weird to people?”
“Aren’t you more worried about the Tanks?” Claire asked.
“We’ll slow up if we see people,” Paige said, still running hard.
Trevor had to agree that the trailer park didn’t look very lively. The outdated mobile homes were arranged haphazardly. There couldn’t have been more than thirty or forty total. Some appeared abandoned. Off to one side, a scrawny cat disappeared through a glassless window, the slow leap looking odd from Trevor’s quickened perspective.
Paige slipped out of race mode, and the others followed her lead. It took Trevor a moment to realize why she had slowed. As they came around the nearest mobile home, a man had come into view. He was in his fifties or sixties, with thinning hair, a white T-shirt, and a bulging round belly. He stood in front of a trailer watering the nearby dirt with a hose, his thumb over the nozzle to make the water fan out. Trevor didn’t see any plants or grass. Maybe there were seeds in the ground, or maybe the man was just trying to reduce dust.