Before I knew it, the strangest room I’d ever seen was in front of me, and it was walled in by those same shadows, nothing else.
“Holy Hour. Whatisthis place?” Helen.
Half the others had made it out the darkness, too, and the rest weren’t far behind. It looked like we were going to play this game together, after all.
I tried not to feel relief—I was better off on my own, wasn’t I?—but I failed. Considering what the first and second trials had been, I was glad I wouldn’t have to go through this alone.
Thisbeing a room set with big and shiny black tiles, four lanterns at the top of these thin lampposts—and hourglasses bigger than my body.
I stepped in closer with the rest of the Hands.
Thirteen hourglasses were around us, set in a perfect oval shape—except the biggest one, which stood in the very middle.
“A twelve-hour clock,” said Erith, and her voice echoed a little in the darkness.
“There’s thirteen of them,” said Seth, and most of us were looking at the hourglass in the very middle, the only one thatwas empty. The others all had cream-colored timesand in the bulbs, but this one didn’t.
“The Thirteenth Hour,” March said, and the sound of his voice sent shivers all over my body. Good thing the suit covered me completely so nobody could see. That way I could pretend it didn’t happen, too.
But he was right—the hourglass in the middle, the biggest one of all, was supposed to be the Thirteenth Hour in this place, and according to Johnny the speaker, our job was tonotawaken it, however it worked.
The bulbs stood on platforms made of black stone that were the same as the tiles on the floor. Cut precisely, polished to a sheen. Numbers were engraved on the surface, right below the bulbs, about level with my thighs. They marked the hours, and the one in the middle clearly said13.
“Okay, so…what now?” Mimi asked. “What?—”
The sound that suddenly came from underneath our feet cut her off.
Most of us screamed as we jumped back, as the sound of somethingmovingunder the floor became louder—wheels turning and gears shifting.
“Time’s Trousers—what is happening?!” someone shouted.
Then the bulbs moved, all twelve at once. They turned over, and the timesand in them began to fall down, grain by little grain—but that wasn’t all. Bright colors, green, yellow and blue, lit up the First Hour to our right from somewhere inside the stone platform below the bulb.
With light came the sound, too. A single note—something like a chime but different.
We waited, hearts in our throats, and when it faded, pink and purple and red lit up the Second Hour, and the note that came from it was slightly higher.
I could hardly believe my eyes. Surrounded by the darkness, it was absolutely breathtaking the way the lights fell onthe hourglasses, the way the melody began to shape itself, rising higher still with the Third Hour.
The other Hands laughed. We all watched in awe as the hourglasses lit up one after the other, and the notes followed, creating such a beautiful melody. They were all smiling, eyes glazed over—except March.
He was standing there with his back turned to the Thirteenth Hour, the suspicion thick in his eyes—like he was just waiting for the ground to break and swallow us.
But the grounddidn’tbreak.
Instead, when the Twelfth Hour lit up, everything changed.
The high note rang in my ears, and it ended with a sudden screeching sound—of metal sliding over metal. Of something being pulled open.
It was coming from the top of the Twelfth Hour that we could not see—but we did see it when the timesand inside the bulb began to rise in the air.
Nobody laughed anymore. Nobody even smiled as we watched the timesand move from the Twelfth Hour, travel in the air over our heads, and to the middle of the room—like each grain was being pulled by invisible strings.
It went straightintothe top of the Thirteenth Hour.
Its top must have been open, too, because the timesand poured right into the bulb, and the grains began to fall to the bottom.
A loud noise made us all fall back, and the Thirteenth Hour lit up with a deep brown color. The note of it was wrong.A low hum, dark and twisted—so damnwrong.
