There was no doubt in my mind of what that meant. It was awake. The Thirteenth Hour was very muchawake.
“Stop it! Somebody stop it!” one of the girls shouted, and then someone was running.
Seth—and he had a bat in his hands I’d never seen before,and he screamed at the top of his lungs before he slammed it to the bulb of the Twelfth Hour with all his strength.
The sound of glass breaking shook me to my core. It was like a slap to my face, pulling me into reality, because it felt like I had been struck in a dream just now.
Glass broke, and that awful humming stopped, and no more timesand floated into the air anymore. All that had been in the Twelfth Hour was now on the floor, and Seth was running with his bat raised toward the Thirteenth Hour, too, except when he hit the bulb, it didn’t break. The bat simplybouncedback like the thing wasn’t made out of glass at all.
Again and again, Seth hit it, until March went to take the bat out of his hands.
“Enough,” he said. “Enough—it’s not going to break.”
Seth stepped back, breathing like he’d been racing for hours, face covered in sweat.
Silence for a tick.
“Is it over?” Russ asked.
A full second didn’t pass before the First Hour lit up again.
We all had gathered away from the thirteenth, close to the sixth, on instinct. Our eyes moved in unison, and nobody found the melody or the colors beautiful anymore as they changed from one hourglass to the next—until the Eleventh Hour lit up.
Whatever machine was underneath the tiles groaned a little louder.
The timesand from the Eleventh Hour started climbing up in the air, and pouring right into the Thirteenth.
This time it was Anika who ran, and I barely saw a flash of white in her hands before a long piece of wood appeared in her fists. Not a bat but just as long and just as thick.
“Anika—no!” Silas shouted, but she was already slammingthe wood onto the bulb of the Eleventh Hour, and it broke just as easily as the Twelfth.
The Thirteenth Hour had just lit up with brown, had started humming that awful sound that made my gut twist, when it stopped again.
No more timesand in the air.
It was all happening way too fast, and too slow for me at the same time. My thoughts were scattered, my heart slamming against my ribcage, and I had no idea what to expect from the next second.
Time’s Teeth, it felt like I was suffocating on thin air and I wasn’t even realizing it.
“Guys, this is bad,” Seth said.
“What in the world are they trying to do—killus for real?!” Erith.
“Why are the other hourglasses filling up the Thirteenth?Howare we going to break this thing?!”
Mimi had Seth’s bat in her hands as she went for the bulb again, and Anika joined her. They both screamed and slammed their weapons onto the glass, and I’ll admit I was a little hopeful that it would break.
I’ll admit I was a little hopeful that it would beeasy,that all this panic that had built up in me was silly.
It wasn’t, though.
Not a scratch on the bulb’s surface, no matter how many times the girls hit it. It was definitely not made of mere glass.
“Stop it,” Silas then said. “Breaking that bulb isn’t how we win the game. We have to focus. We have tothink.”
“Except there’s no time,” March said, just as the First Hour lit up again, and the sound of it made us all flinch. “There’s no time—they’re doing it again!”
“Think, everyone—think!” Levana urged us, pacing ahead toward the Twelfth Hour, looking about as if she really thought the answer would be hiding somewhere nearby.
