The Trap (The Magnificent 12 2)

Clearly TiVo had not made it to Asgard. And the channel-surfing method was primitive. On the other hand, this was some very real-looking 3-D.

“How do we escape?” Mack asked Nott.

She waved her hand to encompass the various holograms. “Each is a portal.”

Xiao set Stefan down. He stood about two feet tall. She switched to her human look.

Risky coming from one direction. Thor—recovered from his wound but not recovered from the humiliation—and Fenrir from the other.

Time for a quick decision.

“Follow me!” Mack yelled. And he dived headfirst into the nearest pool. It happened to be one of the two soccer games.

If there was regular water in the pool, it sure didn’t feel like it. In fact, it felt as if he was diving through a giant bubble. Not like it popped but like it kind of slid over his skin like a superthin membrane.

And all at once, there he was at midfield in the middle of a soccer game. Mack, Xiao, Jarrah, Dietmar, and a midget Stefan, all on the trampled grass.

Now, when you hear the words soccer game, maybe you’re thinking about the kind of games you know from Saturday junior leagues all over the country, with girls or boys in bright uniforms sort of indifferently chasing a ball around while coaches yell unheeded advice and parents sit on the sidelines in fold-out chairs secretly checking their BlackBerries.

This wasn’t like that.

In this game the players looked like they’d been constructed out of action figures. And where the parents would normally be sitting, there were something like thirty thousand people in a huge arc of stands.

At the exact instant Mack and his friends appeared, one of the players was taking a shot on goal. All thirty thousand people were on their feet shouting. Also gesticulating and making faces. (It’s almost impossible to shout without also making faces, and once you’ve gone that far, you might as well gesticulate.)

In any case, it was a roar of noise.

Then the player noticed that there were four kids and a little person standing in the middle of the field. His foot missed. The ball flew wide.

The stadium went from frenzied roar to utter silence—silence so profound that Mack could hear his own heartbeat.

Thirty thousand pairs of eyes, totaling 59,999 eyes in all—an old dude up in row 14 had a glass eye, which doesn’t really count—went from staring at the kicker and the goalkeeper to staring at the sudden apparition in midfield.

You could almost hear the eyeballs snap.

TV cameras swung around.

The camera that hung above the field on a wire scooted toward them.

“They’ve spotted us,” Dietmar said.

“I believe you may be right,” Mack said.

The crowd had indeed spotted them. And the crowd was not happy about it. Thirty thousand voices bellowed in outrage. Not astonishment or surprise or disbelief, mind you: outrage. Fury. Hatred. Because while it was definitely unusual for a bunch of kids to suddenly pop up in midfield, the really important thing was that the goal had been missed.

Black-and-white-striped officials ran at them.

Players from both teams ran at them, and they were faster and scarier.

And just as they were closing in, a big hand reached out of midair and grabbed Jarrah. A hand, an arm, and no body. And it was big enough to close its grip right around Jarrah.

Once again the stands fell silent. Because now they were finally seeing something even more important than the match.

The arm and hand began to withdraw into . . . into nothing, really. The hand had reached out of thin air. And it was drawing Jarrah away into thin air.

Dietmar was quickest and closest. He grabbed on to Jarrah’s hand and held on tight. But the hand was still pulling, so Mack grabbed Dietmar, and Xiao grabbed Mack, and Stefan—who was an adorable eighteen inches tall—grabbed Xiao

’s ankle, and they all pulled back.