But when they landed in the next palace, they stopped short. There were the Architect and the MasterMind, out of breath and red-faced, teetering back and forth on top of a large bookcase.

“Look out!”

The Architect called out and Winnie dragged Ahmad back out the doorway. The chime sounded again, high and sweet, and they just barely heard the crash and clatter of books falling on the floor. Ahmad and Winnie peeked their head back in.

The bird perched sulkily on the bust of a tiger’s head—bizarrely human in its whimsical expression and elegantly perched silk turban—and the MasterMind and the Architect rubbed their heads in the midst of a pile of books.

“How did you get here so fast?” Winnie demanded.

The Architect managed to look smug from his askew position on the floor. “This game is mine, you know.”

“Funny, could’ve fooled me when your ‘uncle’ tossed you to the side and took over.”

A fight was obviously about to start, so Ahmad hastily stepped in. “So what are you trying to do? I don’t think we have time for amateur rock-climbing practice.”

“If you must know,” the MasterMind broke in snottily, “we saw that infernal monkey in here. I was trying to see if I could find the room’s source code and locate its root into my interface and maybe . . . scramble a few things up to make it harder for the creature to hide itself, but that didn’t go so well.”

Ahmad peeked out the nearest window. The ground was nauseatingly far below them, and he could just make out a glimpse of the jinn’s broad shoulders and his moving hands. . . . What was he doing? Ahmad squinted to try and make it out.

“Well, I think we need to go faster. The jinn is making more of his ghoulish minions and it seems like they are coming after us!”

“Not to add more to worry about, but you guys do realize the connection to the other palaces cuts off our own escape route?” the MasterMind said, glancing between Ahmad and Winnie. “We’ll have to work fast and with the awareness that we have nowhere else to go when they do catch up to us.”

Ahmad and Winnie exchanged glances. “That just gives us more incentive,” Ahmad said. He and Winnie lunged up the staircase.

“So where do you even want to begin to look?” Winnie panted. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

Ahmad had a weird feeling in his gut. Something made him feel like the monkey would pick somewhere obvious rather than really hiding itself. After all, hadn’t the last monkey tried to help them? And in spite of being a jinn’s heart, couldn’t this monkey maybe change its role at the thought of its world being taken apart and scrambled? But maybe he was overthinking things again.