The rest of us collapsed onto our seats again, exhausted already, but feeling slightly better for having let that out.
“She’s going to run to the queen now,” Erith said.
“Or she’ll just disappear for a few hours, like always,” said Russ.
“Do you think she goes to the room beyond the kitchen to see the queen?” Levana wondered.
“Probably,” said Seth, but…
“Actually, I know where the Timekeeper goes.”
We all turned to Mimi. She was moving—always moving—playing with the silverware, switching it from one hand to the other.
“What do you mean?” Seth asked her.
“I’ve followed her before,” she said with a shrug. “I know where she goes when she disappears.”
A second ticked by. We looked at one another.
MeanwhileIhadn’t even realized Elida disappeared regularly, and she knewwhere?
“Where does Elida go, Mimi?” Anika finally asked.
Mimi smiled, like that was exactly the question she was waiting for. “I can show you if you’d like.”
The next second, we were all on our feet, ready to go.
It wasn’t justHelen’s death that had given us this sense of urgency—it waseverything, but most of all, it was the Backward Banquet. Out of all things, I rememberedthatthe clearest somehow. Everything else had sort of…faded away, and I was more convinced than ever that the people knew. The people remembered.
Thequeensremembered as well. It was justourmemories that had been erased.
Was it because we were the Hands? Was it because the curse affected us differently?
Or was something more going on here that nobody wanted us to know about?
Mimi lost her way three times.
We kept coming back to this huge grandfather clock in the middle of a junction that for a second there felt familiarto me, though I hadn’t seen it before. But Mimi must have known it because she kept finding her way back to it. She would walk a circle around it before taking us down another hallway each time.
Finally, though, we made it to a door at the end of a narrow corridor, and beyond it was a single stairwell leading down. It was darker than in the rest of the palace down there, too, no windows, just lanterns on the plain white walls.
“Here,” Mimi said when we stopped in front of the only other door at the end of it. “She comes here.”
A single sign was on the door, cursive letters engraved on a silver plaque:Out of Sync.
“What’s in there?” Erith asked.
“I don’t know,” Mimi said.
“You’ve never been inside?” Levana asked.
“No, I never thought to try.” Mimi scratched her chin, like she was suddenly confused.
“Let’s find out right now, then,” said Russ and, stepping forward, tried the handle.
Locked.
He didn’t hesitate nor did he wait for anyone else to offer to open it. He just put his hand over the keyhole, and white flashed from his palm. It didn’t cost more than a minute to pick locks, so Russ didn’t even look at his Life Clock, but the door gave. When he pulled down the handle again, it opened with a weak screech.
