“Kiki!” Ashwini yelled. “Go!”

Where had I put it? I knew I’d packed it!

The horrible clickety-click sounds grew louder. They were coming, they were almost on me—

My hand closed over a bottle.

“Get back!” I shouted.

Ashwini jerked around, hesitated, and then leaped back, just as I uncorked the bottle and threw it at the army of spiders.

The bottle smashed as soon as it hit metal, and Suki’s freezing potion splashed all over the spiders. Drops sprayed everywhere, narrowly missing us, catching all but the spiders right at our feet. Ashwini slashed at them, I kicked one into the hedge, and when we both looked up, the rest of the spiders had gone completely still.

“Creative,” said the voice of the palace in my ear. “I like it.”

“It’ll wear off soon,” I said, trying to catch my breath. My heart was so loud, I could barely hear anything else. “We should get out of here while we can.”

We stepped carefully around frozen mechanical legs. As we crossed the last few feet of the maze and pushed open a pair of glass doors, I could feel Ashwini watching me.

“Why didn’t you just go?” she asked.

“It’s like you said,” I told her. “I’m not losing anyone else.”

24

We stepped through the doors into a ballroom. It was enormous, and, like Lalith Mahal, it was richly decorated, with glorious tapestries on the walls, luxurious armchairs around the sides of the room, and a smooth wooden floor that must have once been brightly polished, but was now dusty and dull.

Three different doors led out of the ballroom. I searched my memories for all the sketches and maps I’d made of the palace. “I think that door leads to the summer parlor, and that one to the ground floor of the library,” I said, pointing left and then right. “Which means the third door should take us out to the entrance hall and the stairs.”

There were more tapestries, paintings, and beautiful, thick rugs in the entrance hall. A grand flight of white marble stairs led up to the next floor, flanked by gold bannisters. But there were dead leaves, dust, and cobwebs everywhere, which made the opulent palace feel sad and eerie.

At the top of the first flight of stairs, Ashwini looked around for the next one. “This is where the hiding staircases are,” I said. “We’ll have to go looking for them.”

“Of course we will,” she sighed. “It would have been too easy otherwise. Boring, even. Me, I like to set my life to maximum-difficulty mode. It’s so much more fun that way!”

“Are you going to help me look, or are you going to keep treating me to your delightful gift for sarcasm?”

“Can’t I do both?”

I smothered a laugh and started down the cream-colored carpeted hallway. The second floor of the palace had a number of rich, elegant rooms: another library level, an art gallery, the royal family’s private dining room, and several guest suites. Somewhere between the dusty, ancient books and the four-poster beds draped with cobwebs, we found the first flight of stairs.