CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE JINN SPREAD ONE reddish hand and Ahmad and Winnie startled back from a set of golden stairs, nearly tumbling down them.

“Let’s see how your memory works, shall we? Paheli has often presented games featuring floating palaces, and this will be another. Clamber up those stairs into the palaces floating above. I will light up the doorways in a certain pattern with chimes to guide you. If you hear the chime after passing through a doorway—well, then, you are on the right track. But if you pass through at least three doors that are not correct—”

The jinn chuckled and Ahmad clutched his own arms out of fear that the skin would squirm right off. It was a disgusting sound. “Well, let us just say that there won’t be that much of you to clean up off the sand.”

“Ew,” Winnie said softly.

Ahmad swallowed hard. “And . . . and if we make it through the right doors?”

“You proceed to the next palace and the palace after that. Your goal is this.”

The jinn closed his fingers. When they opened, a small flame burned within them. “This . . . is my heart. Well, you would call it that. I wager my life with yours. That should keep it interesting for all of us.”

The jinn smirked at the two of them and snapped his fingers. The flame vanished into a carved monkey figurine. It chittered at them, skittering upward off the jinn’s hand and into the sky.

“Where did it go?” Winnie gasped.

“Follow the right pathway, and you’ll see,” the jinn responded. “Now then, on your marks . . .”

“We’ll split up,” whispered the Architect harshly. “Teams of two. If we find it first—”

“Could we even trust you with finding it first? And don’t tell us what to do,” Winnie hissed back. “Ahmad and I are doing our own thing. You do whatever you want but don’t get in our way and don’t mess things up.”

“Get set . . .”

Ahmad and the MasterMind rolled their eyes at each other. “For now,” the MasterMind said, “let’s agree to not get along, but at least try to keep each other alive. Fair?”

“Fine.”

“Go!” the jinn roared. Ahmad and Winnie scrambled for the stairs.

“Oh, I hate this,” Winnie hummed nervously. “I can see the ground. . . .”

“Keep looking up and focus on the game!” Ahmad panted. “Remember how you flew that car? You could see the ground then, too.”

“That was different!”

They cleared the last step. Ahmad made the mistake of turning around and looking to see where the MasterMind and the Architect were: several flights of uneven stairs below. Winnie was right. You could see beneath every rung. The entire world of the game sparked and shimmered beneath them, pixelated and glorious, and a suggestion of the familiar sprawl of New York City somewhere beneath it—but also very, very far away from where they were now.