Becca and Frankie rushed to go back up the stairs, and when Becca turned around to see if Danny was following them, she smiled at the sight of her friend looking proudly over the basement, his satisfied grin proof that he felt much better leaving this room than he had coming into it.

“I’m coming,” he called up to her when he noticed her watching. “Let’s get out of this creepy old house.”

Matt

“Another clue already?” Matt stepped forward and grabbed the note from the locked gate. “That maze was really hard to beat. The least the Game Master could have done was give us a minute to breathe before throwing us right back in to another game.”

“At least it’s moving along,” Kylie said, pointing at the note so Matt would open it. “Let’s see what waits for us next. I’m guessing that whatever it is will end with us unlocking this gate. That’s the only way to get out of the maze without going back through the unmapped area.”

Matt opened the note, Miguel looking curiously over his shoulder.

Well done on defeating the labyrinth, the note said. But can you find the key to unlock the gate?

“Told you,” Kylie said with a smirk. “Already one step ahead of the Game Master.”

The only other thing the note contained was a poem that Miguel read out loud from behind Matt.

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

You need a key,

What shall you do?

Find the flower that holds the power

to get you through the gate—

and you’ll be one step closer

to discovering

beloved Elephant’s fate.

“Elephant!” Miguel cried out. “We must be really close! Why isn’t there any mention of Nacho, though?”

“Nacho must be included in a different clue,” Kylie theorized. “One that comes after this. Or maybe one that the other group has already figured out.”

“Yeah,” Matt said, turning once again to look for any sign of the house behind the maze, just as unable to find it as he was the last time he checked. “I wonder how it’s going inside the house, what sorts of things the Game Master has set up in there.”

“It must be something as hard as figuring out this maze was,” Kylie said. “Especially if we haven’t heard any of them yelling to us from the backyard yet.”

“We won’t let this game almost get us like the maze did.” Matt turned back to the clue, determined to get started with the game so it could end already. The sun was starting to sink lower in the sky. If night fell before they could find Elephant and Nacho, who would have the courage to stay and keep trying? Even the Game Master had hinted that staying after dark was a horrible idea.