Beneath the Swirling Sky by Carolyn Leiloglou

Author:Carolyn Leiloglou [Leiloglou, Carolyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2023-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

After the teacher droned on for a few hours about different conquests and how art had played a role in them, a bell sounded and class was dismissed. Stick Boy led them to a gym with a climbing wall, ropes course, and sparring mats. A couple of guards stood at the door, but the environment seemed more relaxed here than in the classroom.

The girls were already there, and Vincent spotted Lili, who was holding hands with another girl. Georgia was nowhere to be seen. Vincent jogged over to his sister. She reached for his hand and squeezed it.

“When do we go home?” Lili asked. “This is my friend Tanisha. She’s six like me. I told her you’d rescue her too.”

“Shh!” Tanisha glanced toward the guards. “They’ll hear.”

Rescue her too? Vincent hadn’t even figured out how to get them out of here. But there was no point upsetting Lili.

“Where’s Georgia?” he asked.

Lili pointed up. Georgia was climbing from rafter to rafter. She reached the rope closest to them and shimmied down. Paint was streaked across her cheek in the same place the clay had been when Vincent first met her. Had that been only a couple of days ago?

Before he could speak, a bulky guard with a shaved head blew a whistle. “Warm-up laps. Go!”

Vincent made sure to stay close to Georgia as they fell in with the others, grateful for a chance to talk without looking too suspicious.

“What were you doing up in the rafters?” he asked.

“Checking for ways out, of course,” she said, “and trying to get my bearings. There are no windows, though. I did look out the vent and could see the sky. My guess is that we’re somewhere in eastern Europe. Maybe Russia.”

“You can tell where we are by the sky?”

“I can tell what time it is by the sky. That and comparing the approximate time difference between here and Texas narrowed my options. I stayed up all night so I wouldn’t lose track.”

Vincent was impressed by how spy-like Georgia sounded, but he wasn’t going to admit it. He wished he felt as calm as she sounded. Maybe it was because, unlike him, she had a plan.

He looked around to make sure no one was paying them any special attention. “So how are we going to escape? Lili’s already wanting us to rescue her new best friend, too, which might be a problem,” he said, nodding toward Lili and Tanisha jogging ahead of them.

“I’ve been talking with the other girls, and I think Ravi was telling the truth,” Georgia began, not registering Vincent’s wince at the name. “Some lady really is fishing these kids—the Wanderers—out of paintings, though I still don’t get how they are Traveling in the first place.” She leaned closer and whispered, “Vincent, I think all these kids really were kidnapped.”

“So? It’s not our problem,” he responded. “We need to get Lili and get out of here. Let your parents worry about the rest.”

“Maybe.” She bit her lip. “But if we

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