“I rolled my eyes because you didn’t have your priorities straight!” Winnie seemed like a different person as she studied the console. After a moment, she tentatively pressed a red button.

A screen set into the console flickered to life. It trembled with the rocking car as it announced, “Welcome to Paheli. Outside, it is ninety-eight degrees and another beautiful evening in our favorite city of riddles. If you need a tutorial to best enjoy your new vehicle—”

Winnie jammed her finger against the screen with a scowl. It went black. “I hate back-seat drivers.”

But Ahmad was barely listening. He pressed his face against the window, fighting the churning of his stomach as he stared down at Paheli. It was all there: the beautiful, billowing canopies spread over stalls and tables, which, when he looked hard enough, were covered with marvelous wares and magical bags of spices.

It was the souk, the marketplace where anything could be bought.

Enjoy every drop of it, the Mastermind whispered in Ahmad’s mind, and he sat upright.

“Winnie. I think I know where we’re supposed to start.”

“Good, because we’ve got company.” Winnie’s voice was strained, and Ahmad hastily scooted over in her direction, craning his head over her shoulder to stare out her window and see what she had. His heart sank.

“Is that . . .”

“Yep. Your dream city’s law enforcement,” Winnie said.

A sleek, silvery vehicle darted between buildings, like a shark determined not to be seen by the fish it was stalking. Inside its long body, Ahmad could make out the shadowy faces of two men. The sight of them did not make him reassured.

“They don’t look very friendly,” Winnie muttered. “Do you think this game is programmed to welcome players? Or is it going to turn on us like antibodies in the immune system?”

“I don’t think we want to find that out yet,” Ahmad said. “Winnie, hover at street level.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice.” Winnie tugged.

Ahmad’s heart thumped as the memories from his sketches fell into place alongside the winding avenue. He was right.

“Take a left, and then hang a right up here. . . .”

And if you go forward and through that archway, past the stall with the hot samosas and underneath the table of the merchant with the flying carpets . . .

“There!” Ahmad caught sight of the man, tall and proud with his arms crossed, watching as a family clambered aboard a flying carpet that was woven out of elegant wiring and reinforced with steel.

Winnie’s eyes widened.

Together they said, “No matter what else changes, there’s always a tea shop here.”

Ahmad glanced at Winnie out of the corner of his eye. “You remembered?”

Winnie gave him a surprisingly shy smile. “It’s the one landmark you always start with on your sketches in class. It’s hard not to notice.”