Lou and Rufus swerved around the other side of the crates, jostling them. Cal and Marcus lost their grip on Sadie and she slipped down.

The ukulele caught on the bottom edge of the chute and slipped out from under Sadie’s arm. Lou tried to grab it but she was too late.

It hit the ground below and splintered.

Inside the tunnel, Sadie screamed as if she had broken too, and then she dropped down onto the top crate with the others. She fell to her knees and reached out to the ukulele below.

“What are you guys doing down there?” came Nina’s voice from the chute.

The shadow-dogs approached, sniffing and growling at the remains of the instrument. One of them even snapped at the broken wood and tangle of string, catching it in its jaws and whipping it back and forth.

Rufus and Lou scrambled up onto the crates and away from the gleaming teeth. Then, looking up at the chute, Rufus gasped. “Sadie, what’s happening to you?”

Sadie was becoming translucent. Lou stared in horror. She could see right through her.

“I don’t know,” Sadie said, her eyes focusing on something directly in front of her—something that was invisible to the others. “I can see my bedroom! I think … I think I’m going home.”

Before anyone could answer, she was gone.

CHAPTER 24

SUDDEN TREMORS ROCKED the house, stronger than any of the quakes that had occurred earlier.

The shadow-dogs howled at the sounds of cracking stone and breaking foundations. Marcus took Lou’s arm and nudged her into place beneath the hole in the ceiling. “I’m not letting you go last this time,” he said. The image of a dissolving Sadie flashed through her mind, and she nearly screamed as Marcus and Cal lifted her up. She palmed at the side of the chute, pressing her elbows outward to keep from spilling back down again. She felt the boys push at her legs and feet until she was fully inside the chute.

Sadie’s words—going home—echoed through Lou’s mind. She blinked them away as something brushed against her face from above.

Looking up, she saw Nina’s filthy hand extended through a square hatch in the side of the shaft. Lou grabbed hold of it as another great shudder rattled the house and almost sent her tumbling back down into the kennel. Moments later, Nina managed to pull her up. Lou fell onto another tile floor.

The house let out a cry of pain. Dust rained down from above. “This place is about to collapse,” said Lou, remembering the terror of the earthquakes back in California.