To Best the Boys(48)

Except the moment my hand releases the handle, the thing dissolves, just like the door in the hedge maze. “What in hulls?” Sam mutters.

“Looks like we’re locked in a box, chaps,” Will says.

“I believe it’s called a sarcophagus,” Beryll attempts to joke.

No one laughs but Seleni.

Beryll shrugs and strides to the only freestanding item in the room—a narrow table—upon which rest a coin, a book, and an apple. Then he moves on to the far wall where a pad with buttons is attached to the otherwise smooth stone surface. Vincent and Rubin follow, and I’m about to, until the look on Lute’s face stalls me.

“Hey, kid.”

Lute’s staring at Vincent as if he’s about to launch across the room and strangle him.

“Kid.”

I peer over and—oh. Germaine’s talking to me. He juts his thick eyebrows at my chest, then Seleni’s, then at the new boy. “Names?”

I stiffen. “That’s Sedgwick. I’m Renford. Don’t know the other.”

“Tippin,” the new boy pipes in.

“Good. Now you get to come help me, Renford.”

I snort, and start to tell him to shove it, but Seleni stops me with a look of warning.

Fine. I stride over to where Germaine is standing along the left wall beneath the only other items in the room—two square clocks hung halfway up, one set right side while the other is upside down, and a giant oil painting mounted evenly between them.

Germaine tips his head at the painting. “The depiction’s an exact replica of this room.”

“An exact replica, minus us.” I scan it for any other anomalies.

“Here, give me a lift. I’m going to inspect it.” Germaine puts his foot up and waits for me to link my fingers crisscross under it. When I do, he places his full body weight in my hands and pushes up. I heave forward—toward the wall for countersupport—and try not to imagine how enjoyable it’d be to accidentally slip and drop him on his hindside.

The sound of a scuffle erupts from where Rubin and Beryll are messing with the button box. “Of course it’s a code, dimwit,” Rubin snaps. “You have to enter the correct combination.”

“Hey, boys.” Germaine points at the miniature button pad in the painting—the same I’ve been trying to decipher from my view beneath his bony rear. “It’s got a set of numbers,” he calls out. “Try 8–8–6–1.”

Beryll punches the code in with one finger, and the pad instantly lights up. But that’s all it does—until the half-baked voice of Kellen suddenly rattles the air with a chuckle and makes Germaine jerk backward so hard I lose my grip. The two of us tumble together to the floor, and unfortunately my elbow somehow lodges in his rib cage. Oops. He gives a satisfying yelp that makes even Lute smile.

“I see you’ve made it inside.” Kellen’s voice crackles through the room. “Well done—although, careful as you go—because upside down and all around your world will slowly turn. Choose wisely, deduce correctly, to open the key to your future. Choose unwisely and you’ll fall into the Labyrinth of no return. The question now is simply—how good are you at thinking outside the box?”

There’s a whirring sound, and the button pad lights turn off again.

“Think outside the box,” Sam murmurs. “Not funny, gents.”

“Actually, it’s ’ilarious,” his brother says. “Because we’re in a room that’s like a box, and—”

Sam smacks the back of his messy-hair head.

“Will you two shut it? Here, move over and let me at this thing.” Rubin prods Beryll aside with his broad shoulders to try the button pad for himself just as Germaine heads for them, nursing his rib cage, to gape at it too.

I’ve just turned back to the painting when Lute is beside me. I brace and don’t look at him. I don’t know how much of my vision he saw. Was it enough to put two and two together? And if he knows it’s me, what then?

I squirm and wait for his comments or challenge as to why I’m here, but they don’t come. And when I peek up he’s not acknowledging me. Instead, he simply indicates the corner of the painting.

I squint and stand on my tiptoes until I can get a good view of what first appears to be the artist’s signature but is actually four words swirled together:

WHY ARE YOU HERE?


“Just like the hedge maze question,” I murmur.

Lute reads it aloud before he walks over to the room’s corner that matches the one in the painting. I follow. Unlike the portrait, the stone in the real-life recess is blank. I press around for any crevice or levers, then watch as Seleni, Vincent, and Tippin do the same over the rest of the room’s corners and floor.

I glance at Lute, then at the painting again.

Why are you here?

“The answer better not be another horror fest,” Beryll grumbles. “Because whatever drama that was out in the maze seemed wholly unnecessary.”

“Holm probably thinks himself pretty witty giving such deep life questions,” Germaine says from the wall pad.

Seleni deepens her tone. “Yes, but what does it mean? The question.”

“If the one from the maze outside is any indication,” Vincent mutters, “this one’s another misdirection, not a clue. He’s treating us more like rats than students. And now he’s got us caged.”