by Karuna Riazi
“Jinns are made of smokeless fire,” Ahmad said automatically. “Not that I know whether or not that means he can burn us alive. It just—makes it feel less likely. But he’s not going to let us out of here without a fight.”
“If I might interrupt,” the Architect’s weak voice came from behind them. “It seems our objectives are . . . quite similar.”
“Well, that’s a load of . . . manure,” Winnie snorted, after a quick glance at Ahmad, who had to bite back a very inappropriate snort. “Your goal: Keep us in your game because you’re a jerk and want friends but can’t admit that because, well, you’re a jerk. Our goal: Get out of the game after using you to wipe the floor because you’re a jerk. I don’t see any Venn diagram forming between those two.”
“Your current goal is getting out of the game alive.” The Architect raised his chin with indignance and, Ahmad was envious to see, only the slightest tremble. It was a skill he needed to work on himself. “Now, we share that goal. You heard what he—what he says he did to my mother. I’ll be next.”
He turned and spoke directly to Ahmad. “Mirzas are the best at games. At least, so I’ve learned from experience. And I think it’s time for me to acknowledge that Amaris might need to learn from Mirzas in order to win too.”
Ahmad couldn’t believe what he was hearing. From the raised eyebrows Winnie was giving the other boy, she couldn’t either.
The MasterMind’s jaw dropped. “If that isn’t the most ridiculous—”
“I need you,” Lord Amari said, holding Ahmad’s gaze. “We both need you and Winnie in order to make it out of here. And for now, you need us, because Paheli lives within me. So why don’t we combine our efforts and make it through together?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
AHMAD WAS TORN. WHAT Amari suggested actually did make sense. But how would they challenge the jinn? Could they really trust two probably not-quite-reformed villains?
Before anything else could be said or done, a tremor shook the earth.
Ahmad tumbled backward, Amari nearly toppling to the ground next to him.
“What was that?” demanded Winnie anxiously, but before any of them could respond, there was a soft cackle.
“That, my child,” the jinn said, raising one reddish hand toward the sky, “was the sound of a new era!”
It was then that Ahmad realized the puzzle box was lying open again, its lid flapping in the wind.
And it was letting out a whole new challenge. Large letters flashed lightning swift against the darkening sky.
TRIAL: EVADE THE DEMON ARMY AND COMPLETE YOUR TASK—IF YOU CAN!
“D-demon army,” Ahmad stammered.
But Winnie was already grasping his arm. “Ahmad! Look!”
Out of the box had popped a large green leg. Well, not only green. It was past that sickly, sallow shade, marked by mildew and aged rot. Wet black sludge dripped off its scaled knee and trickled over its clawed toes. What followed wasn’t any more comforting: a torso held together by sheer might and stubborn sinew. Its head had one eye dangling onto a moth-bitten cheek and horrendously sized canines prodding from within bloodless lips.
“I did not sign up for zombie soldiers,” Winnie said in a quavering voice. “Can we get them to bring the creepy birds back?”
Ahmad backed up a pace, keeping his grasp on Winnie.
The first hideous creature was joined by another. They multiplied as quickly as cells under a microscope.
“I—I don’t think we get to be choosy anymore, Winnie.”
“Indeed you don’t,” the jinn hissed. “You’ve been coddled and pampered enough by my nephew’s sorry schemes and childish whims. It’s time for a different game: a truly dangerous game that doesn’t consider how you feel about it. What is it you young humans say? Ah, yes: The training wheels are off now!”
The jinn turned and gestured toward the closed, tight-lipped gate of Paheli. Before Ahmad’s and Winnie’s shocked eyes, it flung itself wide, pixels shimmering and quavering.
“The rules are simple. Whoever reaches that gate first . . . rules the world. Everybody wants to rule the world, don’t they, young Mirza?”
“Isn’t that a song?” Winnie mumbled under her breath.
“That sounds incredibly simple,” scoffed the Architect, but his voice quavered.
The jinn sneered at him. “You would like to think so, wouldn’t you, nephew?”
The Architect cowered, turning his gaze to the ground.
Ahmad narrowed his eyes. It did sound incredibly simple. Too simple to be true.
“I would try to negotiate, but I suppose that’s off the table,” he said as calmly as he could.
“You’re a fast learner, Mirza,” cooed the jinn. “Exactly the type of challenger I hoped you would be.”
Ahmad looked back at Winnie, trying to read her expression. She nodded, just once.
We can do this.
We have to.
Ahmad turned back to the jinn, pulling his own spine taller. Winnie believed they could, together. The memory of the promise they made—to keep going, together— bolstered his courage.
“Game on.”
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.
“Keep looking up and focus on the game,” Winnie repeated, nudging him in the side. “First palace. Let’s go.”
They rushed through the door, hearing the soft chime. They were inside an opulent courtyard that reminded Ahmad, oddly enough, of the inside of a bird’s nest: hundreds and thousands of tiny windows were set in the walls, letting in light that shimmered. Before them was a large wall of glorious gemstones slick with tumbling water, tossing bright panes of light everywhere it could.
“It’s beautiful,” Winnie gasped.
Ahmad caught sight of what was ahead. He groaned aloud. “Oh man, really?”
There were hundreds of doors.
“How are we going to do this?” Winnie whimpered.
Ahmad grasped her hand. “Wait.”
They paused and strained their ears. There was a familiar scratching in the walls.
“The mice!” Winnie gasped. “But how—”
“No time for those questions! Quick!” Ahmad gasped. They lunged through the first doorway, only half aware of the giddy chimes that followed in their wake. “We need . . . to listen for them! It’s our only chance.”
They barreled through the palace, up an elegant curved spine of a stairwell, and fumbled through piles of languidly placed cushions. Within minutes they had cleared it and were halfway through the next.
“The noise is fading!” Winnie called out behind Ahmad. “How are we going to be able to tell now?”
Ahmad gritted his teeth and kept hurdling forward, but he knew she was right. They wouldn’t be able to make it through every palace in time. On top of that, they also had to keep an eye out for the little monkey. He stopped short as he spotted a bird, hovering right in a doorframe as the light dimmed out from the wood structure beneath it.
“Ugh, that was the last one,” Winnie groaned, catching her breath. She glanced over Ahmad’s head, squealed, and backed up. “Oh, no, no, no. Not again!”
“Wait, Winnie. I think it’s here to help us!”
The bird stared down at the two of them for a minute. And then, it elegantly unfurled its wings and glided off through the doorway.
“Are you sure, Ahmad? Paheli does what it can to survive, remember? We could be falling into a trap with this.”
“We have to trust that Paheli wants us to win as much as we want to win,” Ahmad said firmly.
There was a chirrup over their head. The bird was circling, waiting impatiently for them to follow.
“Lead the way!” Ahmad called out, and it flew back out the door.
They followed, skittering over elegant rugs and barely avoiding collisions with stone statues. They cleared another door, and another. Another palace flew out from beneath their feet, and another.
“Start looking out for the monkey!” Winnie gasped in Ahmad’s ear. “I feel like we’re halfway through the palaces and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of it.”
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.
Ahmad threw open the balcony door and froze. There, leaning over the railing and crooning to itself, was the monkey.
“All right,” Ahmad whispered. “Easy does it.”
He inched forward. Ahmad was never the best at handling delicate operations, whether they were the type that you had to show your work for on a math test, or just navigating the ins and outs of the school day.
But now, he had to try. For his parents, for Winnie’s parents, for Winnie, and . . . for himself. No matter what his teachers thought, no matter the bad days he had, he was a Mirza. He could do it.
If he could just inch forward more . . .
Ahmad snagged the monkey’s tail. It let out an ear-piercing shriek. Below them, the jinn swiveled his head upward, his eyes widening as he caught sight of what Ahmad had in his hands.
“Now, hold still,” Ahmad grunted, squeezing the monkey about the stomach. “This hurts me too, I . . . promise!”
“Stop right there,” the jinn snarled. Another squeeze, and the monkey choked. Something skittered over the tiles. Winnie appeared at the door, her eyes wide.
“Winnie!” Ahmad hollered. “Quick!”
They heard a shriek below them and an eerie moan. The demon army had managed to break into the palace and the Architect and MasterMind were trapped. There was no time to hesitate.
“Ahmad!” a voice called from outside. Ahmad turned, and his stomach unclenched with relief.
“Vijay Bhai!”
Vijay Bhai was leaning out of the basket of a beautiful hot air balloon. It seemed to be some sort of hybrid of the old Paheli style and the MasterMind’s new neon inventions. It had an old-fashioned wicker basket, but a beautiful bloom of a balloon attached, like something right out of Times Square, flashing brightly through different colors like the fabric was cut from an actual rainbow.
“Ahmad!” Vijay Bhai called. “Jump!”
Ahmad skittered toward whatever had fallen out onto the floor. He rushed to the balcony and tossed himself out, but not before calling out over his shoulder, “Winnie! Next room!”
“Got it!” she called back, and disappeared.
For a moment, as Ahmad dived, he felt the sickening lurch of his stomach and gravity pulling his body downward, falling, falling, falling. This was it. This was the end.
But then, the balloon swooped below him, and Vijay Bhai dragged him into the basket, moments before the jinn’s huge f
ist took off the balcony where he had been standing.
“Yikes,” Ahmad exhaled. “Thanks, Vijay Bhai!”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Vijay Bhai said, his eyes magnified behind a pair of what appeared to be digitized goggles. Numbers scrolled over the lenses. “Brace yourself! He’s going to aim for us now!”
Vijay Bhai jerked, and the entire balloon careened to the side, narrowly avoiding red-tinged fingers.
“Stop right there, balloon boy,” the jinn seethed beneath them. “You can’t keep this up forever.”
“Try me!” Vijay Bhai hollered back. He turned to Ahmad. “I’m going to get you as close to that window as you can. Put all your energy into your feet and try to imagine you’re a spring. Jump and don’t look down.”
Ahmad swallowed hard and nodded.
The balloon swerved and slid closer to the window.
“You’re making me lose my temper, little Mirza,” the jinn rasped. Ahmad focused on his uncle’s eyes.
“You can do this,” Vijay Bhai said firmly. “You’re a Mirza.”
Ahmad jumped. He did look down, but all he caught sight of was his own blurry sneakers.
“Oof!” He landed hard, every bone in his body shrieking. But there was no time to worry about that.
“Ahmad!” Winnie gasped, rushing up to him. “Are you okay? You still have the soul?”
“Yeah,” Ahmad managed. He drew the monkey figurine out of his pocket.
“Don’t you dare!” the jinn roared. Ahmad could feel the palace jittering beneath them. “You . . . foolish . . . impudent . . . human!”
Winnie set her jaw, backing up toward the door. She held up a hand. Ahmad tossed forward the flame and her fingers clamped around it.
The jinn’s giant head appeared at level with the balcony, peering at them triumphantly. Ahmad backed away, eyes wide. The creature was ablaze from its head to its toes, fire dancing up and down its arms.
“You shall not . . . overtake me that easily,” the jinn panted, reaching out for him with a blazing arm. “I know about you, Ahmad Mirza. This won’t save you from who you are, and what you are. This is a battle you can’t win, and you’re waging it alone.”