I looked around: No one was near. Angel was almost twenty feet away, not looking at it, still holding the angel bear. I waved my hand over it—there were no wires. It had touched the S and then the A. I lifted the game board and held it up, in case it was being moved by a magnet underneath. The pointer reached the V and headed toward the E.
Save.
I put the board back down as if it were red-hot.
The small black triangle paused on the T, then moved to the H. Then the E.
The.
It slid very slowly toward the W, and I frowned. It moved up and over to the O, and my jaw clenched. By the time it reached the R, I was ready to throw the board across the store. Grimly, I watched as it finished. The L. The D. The M, the A, the X.
Save the world, Max.
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“Fang!”
He whirled, saw my face, and instantly tapped Iggy’s and the Gasman’s hands. They joined me and Nudge under the huge clock.
“Let’s get out of here,” I muttered. “A Ouija board just told me to save the world.”
“Gosh, you’re, like, famous,” said the Gasman, clearly not feeling the ominous dread that I was.
“Where’s Angel?” Fang asked.
I reached out for her and grabbed air. My head whipped around, and I rushed back to the stuffed-animal section. Already, panic was flooding my senses—it had been barely more than a week since she’d been kidnapped. . . .
I skidded to a stop by a life-size chimpanzee hanging from a display. In front of me, Angel was talking to an older woman. I’d never seen an Eraser that old, so my heartbeat ticked down a couple notches.
Angel looked sad, and she held up the angel bear to show the woman.
“What’s she up . . .” Fang began.
The woman hesitated, then said something I couldn’t hear. Angel’s face lit up, and she nodded eagerly.
“Someone’s buying something for Angel,” Iggy said quietly.
Angel knew we were watching her, but she was refusing to meet our eyes. The five of us followed them to the checkout counter, and I watched in disbelief as the woman, seeming a bit bemused, took out her wallet and paid for Angel’s bear. Angel was practically jumping up and down with happiness. She bounced on her heels, clutching the bear to her chest, and I heard her say “Thank you” about a thousand times.
Then, still looking slightly confused, the woman smiled, nodded, and left the store.
We swarmed around our youngest family member.
“What was that about?” I asked. “Why did that woman buy you that bear? That thing cost forty-nine dollars!”
“What did you say to her?” Iggy demanded. “No one’s buying us stuff.”
“Nothing,” Angel said, holding her bear tightly. “I just asked that lady if she would buy me this bear, ’cause I really, really wanted it and I didn’t have enough money.”
I started shepherding everyone out the front door before Angel asked someone to buy her the life-size giraffe.
Outside, the sun was bright overhead, and it was time for lunch. Time to get us back on track.
“So you just asked a stranger to buy you an expensive toy, and she did?” I asked Angel.
Angel nodded, smoothing her bear’s fur down around its ears. “Yeah. I just asked her to buy it for me. You know, with my mind.”
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