Jake gazed into those same eyes now. As he did so, the world darkened at the edges until all he saw were those fiery eyes. They burned through him, down to his bones, making it impossible to move. He fought against it, feeling himself slipping away—

Then a horn blared, deafeningly loud. The smoky creature shattered away as the horn dissolved into the blare of a fire engine’s siren. The world snapped back into focus. Jake turned as the lumbering red truck pulled to the curb.

Chaos followed.

Someone examined him, ran hands over his body, dragged him away, and planted him on a park bench down the street. Besides a little singed hair (which smelled awful), he was unscathed. He’d not even cut his bare feet on any broken glass. A heavy blanket was dropped over his shoulders. The same was done to Brandon.

All the while, Jake kept his focus on the burning school. Arcs of water sprayed into the heart of the inferno. He kept watch for the return of the fiery demon.

He nudged Brandon next to him. “You didn’t see … inside the school … a monster with fiery eyes.…”

Brandon shook his head a bit too quickly and eyed Jake as if he were a few fries short of a Happy Meal.

After a few breaths, Jake realized his friend was right. Dazed and shocked, his stunned mind must have blurred the real world with his nightmares of Pangaea.

Off to the side, a policeman was interviewing a witness, a burly man who held the leash of something that looked like a cross between a rat and a dust mop.

“—then the car comes rolling down the hill, gaining speed.” The man pointed to the steep grade of Hollyhock Lane and pantomimed the sedan’s trajectory with his whole arm. “It plowed straight past me and across the intersection, then crashed through the window. Darn lucky no one was killed.”

It wasn’t luck, Jake thought. If I’d been a second slower …

The policeman jotted in his notepad. “And no one was behind the wheel?”

“Not that I could see,” the witness said.

The policeman scowled and shook his head. “Someone must have left his car running on that hill and forgot to set the parking brake. And you’re sure you didn’t see anyone suspicious hanging around. Or someone take off running.”

“Sorry. I wasn’t really looking in that direction. I was watching the crash.”

The policeman sighed in exasperation, and Jake felt like doing the same. So it was just an accident.

Jake stood up and shed the blanket.

“What are you doing?” Brandon asked. “They told us to stay until our parents got here—” His friend’s words choked off as he realized what he’d said.

Brandon stammered an apology, but Jake waved away his friend’s concern. If Jake had to wait for his parents, it would be a very long wait.

He stared toward the commotion down the street: emergency lights flared, sirens squawked, and firefighters shouted. But he saw and heard none of it. Instead he pictured his mother and father. His last memory of them was forever locked in a photo. They’d been posing at an archaeological dig in Central America, wearing goofy smiles, dressed in khaki safari outfits, holding aloft a carved Mayan glyph stone. They’d vanished a week after the photo was taken.