“Keep looking!” Kira tells me. “It’s not on the map, but Prue says there is buzz online about secret passageways used by reviewers trying to flee unhappy restaurant owners, royal seamstresses, and blog writers.”

“No surprise there!” Sasha must have just received the same report. She bangs on a piece of molding near the ceiling and tries to pry it loose. “In a roundup of the Kingdom’s Creative Creatures, they only gave my blog two wands out of five because I use anonymous sources!”

“The Dwarf Police Squad have arrived at the building and—” Kira stops midsentence and shrieks. “There’s reports of harpies in the area,” she tells me. “Hurry!”

“Olivina is sending harpies!” Tara repeats, her eyes widening. “I knew this was a bad idea. Why did I listen to you lot? We were safe until you arrived!” She slumps down on the floor, holding her knees. “I can’t go back to Royal Academy. I can’t.” She starts to hyperventilate.

“Wow, Tara’s even worse off than me,” Logan whispers. “We have to get her out of here.”

I move a coffee cart to see if there is a vent or anything beneath it, but all I find is a portrait of Olivina receiving a lifetime achievement award from the royal court. Seeing her face, I feel a surge of anger. I grab at the parchment and rip it right off the wall.

“Look!” Logan shouts. “Devin found the way out!” There’s a small red knob on the wall where the scroll was just hanging. We gather around to inspect it.

“The squad is entering the newsroom!” Kira shouts.

“It looks like a button to me,” Heath presses it. Nothing happens.

“Keep looking!” Sasha goes back to pounding the wall for weak spots.

“It’s not a button,” Logan says. “It’s a secret dumbwaiter. I had one in my kitchen back home and used it all the time to get from my room to the kitchen in the middle of the night to test out recipes.”

Instead of pushing the knob, he turns it counterclockwise twice, then spins it three times to the right. A panel in the wall slides away to reveal a large box the size of a window. Inside there is a pulley system. Logan jumps in. “Come on! There is room for two of us to go up at a time.” Sasha climbs in after him. Logan pulls the rope and the box goes flying up. The rest of us look into the shaft and watch the box disappear into the darkness, then hit the top hard. I cringe.

“We’re all right!” Logan yell down to us. “Send more!”

“They’re at the door!” Kira says. The box zips back down and comes to a halt in front of us.

I see Heath touch his earpiece. “You two in first. I’ll take the last run. Go!”

Tara is so upset she can barely move. I help her up and cram her into the dumbwaiter, then climb in after her. The space is tight and feels claustrophobic, like that time I hid in a hollow tree in our gardens when Mother wanted to take me shoe shopping. We start to ascend with alarming speed. I hear Kira’s frantic voice in my ear: “They’re breaking through! Hurry!”