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just be going.”
    He bared his teeth once again. “You’re lying. I can smell your fear.”
    “You don’t smell so great yourself,” I said, slipping the black book into my waistband and gripping the knife out in front of me, trying to look scary.
    He laughed. He looked insane as he launched himself at me from down the corridor.
    Suddenly Will solidified running alongside Ivanovich.
    “Will!” I screamed.
    Ivanovich caught Will’s motion from the side and turned, taking a swipe at Will with yet another knife. Will rippled. I turned to flee, but then I heard Will yelling and spun back around. The two wrestled in a strange fashion, Will moving in and out of solidity. Helga’s thug screamed his rage as Will took longer than usual to come solid.
    “I can play at that game, coward!” he shouted. Then he vanished.
    I took off, sprinting down the slippery corridor once more, and nearly barreled into the chest of über– man who had materialized directly in front of me. Terrified, I dropped his knife and twisted to fly the other way.
    Again I collided into a body as it solidified in my path.
    “No!” I cried, struggling within a grip cold and hard as iron.
     

Chapter Seven
ÜBERMENSCH
    My struggles against this pursuer proved useless; maybe he couldn’t even feel pain. I saw my form wavering along with his and despair overwhelmed me. Ivanovich is rippling, taking me with him.
    But then as I vanished into nothingness, I smelled Will: clean–soap and pine–needles. Just who had grabbed me?
    Sam, I got you. It’s okay, wrote Will.
    I recognized Will’s yellow note–pad and his handwriting upon it, and I wanted to cry and laugh and run until we caught up to the sun.
    Let’s get out of here, I wrote on my imagined cell–phone screen.
    Behind us, as Will and I slipped free, we heard the blue–eyed man howl his rage like a crazed beast.
    The return journey passed in a blur. Will ran swiftly, overtaking cars as he “carried” me back to Las Abuelitas. We reached his cabin and drifted through the worn log–walls. Once there, I felt the moment when his arms slipped away from my form. After he came solid, I rippled back as well.
    Will’s ridiculous pantyhose–covered face was the first thing I saw, and it put a smile back on my face. I pulled off my disguise and gazed at the black book we’d risked so much to obtain.
    “We did it,” said Will, grinning.
    I nodded, fretting over what exactly we had done.
    “Don’t look so worried,” he said. “There’s no way anyone could recognize us thanks to these.” He held up the nylons and shot them across the room like a rubber band.
    The pantyhose hit the living room pendant light and circled once before coming to a rest, bathing the room in a glow of “Nearly–Nude.”
    “Hmm,” Will murmured, inclining his head as if in appreciation of the new décor.
    “Get those down,” I said, a small snort of a laugh escaping.
    Will looked at me, eyebrows and hands raised in a “but, why?” gesture.
    “Your sister, dweeb?”
    Will rose, sighing in dejection. Grabbing the hose, he rippled, coming solid a half–second later, minus the incriminating evidence.
    “Totally handy how we can make stuff disappear, huh?” asked Will.
    I frowned. “I wonder if Ivanovich was planning to ripple away with me.”
    “I thought of that,” Will said. “It’s what gave me the idea.”
    “Thanks, by the way.”
    “I just hope I didn’t give him a brand new idea he didn’t already know about,” said Will.
    I thought for a moment. “You taking me away like that, it wouldn’t look any different than if we’d decided to ripple at the same time, right?”
    Will scuffed his shoe against the leg of his sister’s desk. “Except for you were kind of kicking and fighting.”
    I felt heat rising to my face. “Sorry about that,” I mumbled.
    “So he probably had a pretty good idea of what went down,” said Will. “Or he will have figured it out by now, being an übermensch and