Page 8 of Malcroix Bones Academy

My eyes continued to stare at the green and gold light up ahead.

“But where are?”

“No,” Ankha snapped. “Did you not just hear me?Noquestions. I still can’t answer them, and it would be the irony of all ironies if I got arrested for divulging too much now. You will obey me. Remainsilent,until I say otherwise.”

I bit my lip, but my eyes finally went to hers. “Ankha, can’t you just spendoneminute, while we’re alone?”

“No. Now vow it! Say you’ll obey, or we’re not taking another step! I’ll take you back to that wretched world, and you can spend another year being a witless fool.”

I felt my frustration twist into anger.

Still, by then, my curiosity burned hotter.

“Fine,” I said. “I won’t say a word when we get there.”

“Not until I say?”

“Not until you say,” I promised stonily.

My aunt nodded, once, but still stared at me with dissatisfaction in her eyes. From her expression, she trusted me as much as I did her. She turned away a beat later, and immediately resumed trotting towards the light.

She moved faster now, as if to make up for our short back and forth.

I sped my own steps to keep up. My jaw ground at being talked to like I was younger than Archie, but I had to remind myself she didn’t know me. Not to mention, she had to be close to seventy, and she’d never had any kids of her own. Maybe nineteen and thirteen were basically the same in her mind. If it hadn’t been for the mirrors, the castle-like corridor, and the inexplicable gold light, I might have taken her up on her offer to return home, though.

I slowed my steps deliberately to lag behind her, and pulled out my phone.

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t have a signal. The bar graph showed completely flat. Weirder, my screen flashed strangely after I woke it up, with lines running left to right in zig-zagging patterns.

When the electrical glitches didn’t get any better, I was about to stuff it back in my bag, but my aunt reached back before I’d noticed her looking and snatched it from my fingers. I watched, more shocked than angry even, as she put it in her coat pocket.

“No need forthat,”she muttered in annoyance.

She glared at me, like I was a misbehaving dog.

I bit my lip, hard, and managed to refrain from snapping at her.

Thankfully, I was quickly distracted. We angled around the last of the sloping corridor, and beyond it stood a tall, stone arch, carved with what looked like runes. It struck me that they looked exactly like the symbols from Ankha’s kitchen clock.

The gold-green light came from the opening in that arch.

I followed Ankha through a cloud of the stuff. In the split second we were inside, it felt like breaking through a thin membrane, or maybe a sheen of water. There was a shock of cold…

…and then I was gasping as I emerged on the other side.

Sound exploded all around me.

Faces, murmured voices, bodies moving with purpose, holding briefcases and stacks of files, drinking from mugs and chatting loudly, sometimes to seemingly no one at all. The energy of this new place was instantly that of a crowded, office-like setting, one filled with people with strange-colored eyes, strange hairstyles, and even stranger clothes.

I watched them walk back and forth, barely noticing me, then my eyes tracked upwards in shock. I followed curved, black-tile walls to a cavernously high ceiling, lined with windows all around me in an unbroken circle. The whole thing stretched up what had to be ten stories, yet the entire structure still appeared to be underground. The sheer architectural improbability of that stuttered something in my mind. The floor area where I stood looked longer than two football pitches laid end upon end. Only one, thick, support pillar stood in the very center, stretching all the way up to that impossibly high ceiling.

My lungs struggled to work in what felt like a different kind of air.

The harder I breathed, the more light-headed I got.

Was there not enough oxygen? Too much oxygen?

My eyes started getting caught on individual faces. Cat-like eyes with vertical pupils appeared next to regular, human-looking eyes with pink irises, or a pair tinted an odd shade of indigo blue, or deep purple, or blood orange, or bright yellow. They all walked to and fro between long rows of what looked like windowed offices.