An alarm began to sound, and a red light flashed and spun in rhythm with the sirens. I looked back again. Oddly, Lou wasn’t chasing us. He merely watched from the hallway. With one hand, he blocked Malcolm from chasing us as well. I caught a glimpse of Malcolm’s expression: Fear, I thought. Of me? For me? But others were running toward us, and there was no time to puzzle it out.

Zach stabbed the elevator button.

It didn’t open.

Shoving the stairwell door open, I pulled Zach with me. The door slammed behind us and then was pulled open again an instant later. An agent burst into the stairwell.

Zach grabbed me and planted his lips on mine, inhaling my magic with my breath. As the agent lunged for my arm, Zach shot into the air with his arms tight around my waist. We rocketed up the open center of the stairwell. Below us, several agents pounded up the stairs, but we were faster.

At the top, at level five, I yanked the door handle—locked. Zach breathed in more magic, and we slid through the metal door. We turned left, then right … At the end of the hall, the two guards in front of the steel door shouted and drew their guns.

The guns dissolved into water and collapsed on the floor in droplets.

Turning to me, Zach swiftly inhaled magic again, and I felt myself shrink, plummeting toward the floor. The world skewed—the carpet fibers were as thick and high as underbrush in a forest, and the ceiling was impossibly high. I swiveled my head and saw a beetle, monstrously huge … He’d turned us into beetles. Clever boy, I thought. But what about the box? Looking around, I didn’t see it, and Zach was on the move.

Scurrying after him, I wove through the carpet.

Footsteps shook the floor. Looking like mountains in motion, the guards scoured the hallway. A boot landed near me, and I jerked back. The foot lifted, and the carpet fibers were mashed where he’d stepped. I darted forward as fast as my many legs could move.

Up ahead, I saw Zach squeeze beneath the door. I hurried after him, flattened, and slid on my smooth, slick stomach. At the end of the next hall was another door, but this one was flush to the floor. We’d never fit under it.

Zach bumped his head against mine. His legs clicked on the tile floor. And then I felt my body expand like a balloon. Soon I was human again—myself, not Aunt Nicki—and Zach was himself again too. My clothes were restored. I felt my pocket—the box was still there. The box and my clothes must have transformed with me, melding into my exoskeleton. He kissed me again and inhaled deeply. “Extra magic,” he said. “Just in case.”

This door had a palm reader but no guards. We ran through it. The next door required a combination code. We ran through it as well. The fourth door was guarded.

The guards already had their guns drawn.

“Shoot the male,” one instructed. “Don’t hit the female.”

Before I could react, before I could think, the other guard squeezed the trigger. Zach jerked backward, his hand torn out of mine. The sound echoed and continued to echo, reverberating through the hall and through my bones. And then the bullet clattered to the floor at Zach’s feet. “Bulletproof,” Zach said as he lunged toward me and brushed his lips against mine. An instant later, the guards’ jackets caught fire.

Startled, they dropped their guns. One began pounding the fire on his chest. The other shed his jacket as quickly as possible and stomped on the flames.

We ran forward and through the door into the silver room.

Silver walls. Silver ceiling. Spotless white floor.

I still had no memory of this place, other than from my failed attempt to remember it before. But I’d had visions with silver mirrors and silver walls.

“Dead end,” Zach said. “Knew it was a trap. It was too easy.”

“They shot you.” I never, ever wanted to see that again.

“Lou should have stopped us before we even left the third floor. But he didn’t.”

Grabbing his hand, I walked straight toward one of the silver walls. In a vision, I’d walked through a silver wall into a meadow. The Storyteller had been there, knitting a red ribbon on the steps of the wagon. There, I thought, I want to go there. Behind us, the door burst open and slammed against the wall. Two armed agents ran into the room. But they were too late. Reaching the wall, we melted into it.

I felt coolness wrap around me, as if I were wrapped in chilled towels. It was hard to feel Zach’s hand. It felt swaddled in wool, distant. My body felt numb. And then I stepped with Zach out of a silver mirror that lay on the ground in the middle of a meadow.

The sky was a startling blue, and the air was light and warm.

“Whoa,” Zach said.

Birds called to each other—so many birds that their calls mashed together in a cacophony louder than screams. They flew in thick batches that looked like swooping clouds against the sky. Sparrows, I thought, watching the birds. This was where I’d learned about sparrows.

“‘Flock’ isn’t an adequate word for this many birds.” Zach strained to see them all. “Needs a special name, like bevy of quail, charm of finches, murder of crows, parliament of owls …”

“They’re sparrows.”

“Host of sparrows. I may have made that up, or—”

“Shh,” I said.

The meadow stretched endlessly in all directions. It was coated in delicate wildflowers that swayed and dipped in the breeze. After I’d walked through the silver mirror, I’d waited here by the wagon while the Magician and the Storyteller erected the tent for the show …

Spurred by the memory, I ran forward through the flowers. Only a few yards from where the silver mirror lay, the grass was matted in a broad circle. No flowers grew, and the grass was sickly and yellow, as if it had been blocked from the sun. My heart was thumping so hard it almost hurt. I knew this place! I’d been here with the Storyteller and the Magician. Our tent had been here, near the other tents, and our wagon had been beside it.

“You remember this place,” Zach said. It was more of a statement than a question.

I nodded.

“Do you remember other places?” Zach asked.

I nodded again.

“Then … we need some kind of plan. Maybe you, the Magician, and the Storyteller will have a nice reunion where you share childhood memories. But if the agency didn’t lie … I’d rather not end up chopped to pieces and stuffed in a box.”

I pulled the box out of my pocket and held it in the palm of my hand. The silver winked in the sunlight. “Lou gave me this to use against myself. We can use it trap the Magician.”

“Very poetically appropriate,” Zach said. “How does it work?”

“Open the lid, touch someone with the clasp, and they’re sucked inside. They can’t call for help; sound can’t penetrate it. They can’t use magic to escape; magic can’t penetrate either.”

“And Lou gave it to you. That’s a stroke of luck that tips right over into massively suspicious.”

I slid it back in my pocket. “He also didn’t let Malcolm chase us.”

“He wanted us to escape—or, more accurately, you,” Zach said, and I nodded unhappily. He could be right. They didn’t try to shoot me, only him. “On the plus side, maybe it means no one will try to stop you.”

“Or maybe it means the carnival is a trap.” I scanned the meadow. As far as I could tell, we were alone, except for the sparrows.

“But is it a trap for you, or for him?”

I walked around the outer edge of the matted grass. Suddenly, finding this place didn’t feel so wonderful. “Lou, Malcolm, Aidan … they’re playing a game, but no one ever told me the rules or even let me see the board.”

“Then don’t play,” Zach said. “We can go anywhere. Any world. No one would ever find us. We could invent new lives. Leave our pasts behind.”