“We have to go in here,” I said, pausing at the door of the playroom. “There’s a key we need if we want to get past the next floor. So, um, try not to scream.”

“I fight Asuras every day, Kiki,” Ashwini said, affronted. “I just faced down an army of horrid mechanical spiders. I am not going to scream.”

She marched past me into the playroom—

And screamed her head off.

“Why?” she wailed. “Why would you do this?”

I felt my cheeks go pink. “It wasn’t supposed to be creepy.”

“HOW CAN THIS NOT BE CREEPY?”

I could kind of see her point because, well, the toys in the playroom had come alive.

Not all of them. Just the dolls.

Maybe that made it worse.

Three porcelain dolls sat around a little table, with pastel-painted wooden cakes and a fluffy teapot in front of them. One was pouring pretend-tea out of the pot, while another was nibbling on a pretend-cake.

The third turned her head and blinked glassy green eyes at me. “Would you like some tea?” she asked in a sweet, musical voice.

Ashwini clamped a hand over her eyes. “I cannot,” she moaned. “I one hundred percent cannot.”

“We have to,” I hissed. “If they like us, they’ll give us the key.”

Shuddering, and with enormous reluctance, Ashwini followed me to the table. The empty chairs were far too small for us, so I moved them aside and we knelt in the gaps.

The green-eyed doll smiled, tilting her little head to one side. “Tell me,” she said, as polite as a princess, “what is your favorite tea?”

“Um,” I said, sure there were wrong answers. “Peppermint?”

With a snick of porcelain rubbing against porcelain, the second doll turned her head to me. “Peppermint,” she repeated, her hand closing tight over the knife meant for cutting the cake.

Uh-oh.

“Peppermint and ginger,” I said, and copied the first doll’s sweet, excessively polite tone. “The only tea fit for a princess.”

Slightly mollified, the second doll nodded, her nose in the air.

She did not let go of the knife.

I was pretty sure we stood no chance, considering at least one of the dolls didn’t like me and Ashwini displayed all the charm of an unconscious moose over the course of the tea party, but somehow, miraculously, the green-eyed doll gave me a graceful curtsy when it was over and dropped a silver key into my hand.

“Give me mechanical spiders any day,” Ashwini declared, practically knocking me over in her haste to get out of the playroom. “Any. Day.”

From there, it was a (thankfully uncomplicated!) flight of stairs directly up into a vast circular room with nine locked doors leading out of it. My heart felt heavy with dread.

“Let me guess,” said my snarky not-ancestor. “This is the Room with Many Doors?”

“Yep.”

“And what terrible catastrophe will befall us if we try the silver key in the wrong door?”

“The key will dissolve.”