As she ran, Jessica searched the horizon for the snake pit, for anything bigger than a scrubby weed. How far had Steve taken her out of her way? Her watch said she’d been running for six minutes.

Her feet pounded to a halt. That seemed too far, for what was supposed to have been a five-minute walk.

She pulled out the compass. Would it work in the secret hour?

“Come on, come on,” Jess whispered. The needle swung lazily in a full circle, then finally pointed the way she had come.

But she’d been running east. North could not be behind her.

A sound came across the desert, a chirping call.

Jessica scanned the sky. Directly in front of her, batlike wings were silhouetted against the rising moon. A flying slither, close enough to have spotted her. She had to keep moving. But which way?

She faced the direction that the compass said was east. There was nothing but featureless, blue desert before her. Her eyes fell to the compass angrily.

The needle was pointing in a new direction. It said north was still behind her, but now she was facing a different way.

“What the—”

Jessica turned in a slow circle. No matter which way she faced, the needle pointed straight at her.

“Great, I’m the North Pole now,” she muttered. Another one for Rex to ponder.

If she survived long enough to see him again.

She thrust the useless compass into her pocket and looked up at the stars. The Milky Way ran east to west, or at least it had before midnight had freaked out the compass. At one end of the river of light was the rising moon.

“Jessica, you idiot!” The sun rose in the east; why wouldn’t the dark moon?

She had been going the right way all along.

Jessica started running again, as hard as she could. If the slither had spotted her, there was no time left to waste. Either she was headed in the right direction or she was dead meat.

The moon was higher now, its baleful face broad enough to fill the eastern horizon. Winged things were gathering in front of her, dark shapes against the cold light of the moon.

Suddenly she saw what looked like a flicker of blue lightning before her. But it seemed to strike in reverse, jumping from the ground up into the sky, spreading out from a thick trunk to many thin fingers of fire, like a huge and leafless tree suddenly revealed by a flash of blue. More streaks of lightning shot up from the ground, and Jessica heard the screams of flying slithers. She watched as one dropped from the sky, touched by one of the branches of blue electricity.

“Dess,” she said. The bolts of lightning were the snake pit’s defenses, coming to life. Jessica was headed the right way. Safety was close.

She ran harder.