‘Nothing has changed.’ I lifted my chin and gently pushed She Without An Ear onto my shoulder. ‘I’ll keep moving but if the two of you…’ I didn’t get the chance to finish my sentence.
‘I’m with you every step of the way, Kit,’ Thane interrupted me.
Thomas agreed, despite his terror. ‘We have to find the monster. We have to stop this.’
I pressed my lips together hard. ‘Okay. Let’s go.’
We started moving again, albeit more slowly. The violet light trail snaked in front of us; with that and my witchlight, there was more than enough light to see by – but there was nothingtosee. Smooth grey walls, smooth grey ground. It felt less like a maze and more like a prison.
We took a sharp turn to the right then one to the left. ‘It feels like we’re doubling back on ourselves,’ Thane muttered.
‘The spell is a good one,’ Thomas said. ‘Beth might be all vampire these days but she was a very accomplished witch before she turned, and she often puts her skills to good use. Last year she used the same tracking spell to find a kid lost above ground, and she located a group of night hikers a few months ago and returned them to safety before the sun rose. Her spells are near perfect.’
‘Has she used her tracking spells on those missing worms?’ Thane asked.
‘Yes.’
Clearly they hadn’t worked on that occasion. ‘That’s one of the reasons we never believed that the worms were lost to the monster down here,’ Thomas said quietly. ‘Somebody usedmagic to hide the worms’ presence. The monster here wouldn’t have done that.’
Either that or foreign spells didn’t work in this strange, magic-imbued maze. I didn’t say it aloud but Thomas knew I was thinking it.
He strode ahead of us. ‘The tracking spell is a good one – we can trust that it will take us to Penelope’s remains.’ He looked over his shoulder at me and Thane. ‘There is no doubt of that.’
Sadly, that was the very moment he smacked straight into a solid wall. ‘Wh – what?’ he exclaimed as he staggered.
I stopped and stared, and so did Thane. She Without An Ear growled faintly. This wasn’t supposed to happen: the most basic tracking spells were designed not to lead where the crow flies but to follow the natural and man-made laws of physics.
Tracking spells followed roads and paths. They didn’t cross rivers where there were no bridges and they didn’t lead through houses where you could be attacked for trespassing. If Beth was half the witch Thomas claimed she was, there was no way her tracking spell would lead straight to a wall. But it had done – and presumably it tracked through the wall to the other side.
In case I was missing something obvious, I pushed gently past Thomas until I was standing an inch from the maze wall. It looked like stone. I leaned forward. There was no strange smell and no indication that air was travelling through it. I poked it. Cold, hard, impenetrable stone. The tracking spell was a dud.
‘It doesn’t make sense.’ Thomas rubbed his shoulder where it had smacked into the wall. ‘This has never happened before.’
‘It must be something to do with the inherent magic built into the maze,’ Thane said kindly. ‘That’s the only thing that makes any sense.’
Thomas frowned. His fists were clenched and I could tell he was struggling to maintain his composure. ‘It’s okay,’ I told him. ‘We’ll backtrack.’
‘Then what? How do we make our way through the maze if the tracking spell doesn’t work and we don’t find Longchamps’ magic map? What the fuck do we do?’
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the stub of chalk I’d picked up before I’d left home. ‘We go with Plan B.’
‘Which was Plan A before you produced the tracking spell,’ Thane added reassuringly.
‘Chalk?’
‘It’s old school,’ I said cheerfully. ‘It doesn’t involve magic. And itwillwork.’
Perhaps. I sneaked another glance at the solid wall in front of us. My doubts about this maze were growing.
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
We started to re-trace our steps. In theory, it should have been easy because we’d only made three turns on our way into the maze.
I marked the walls with the chalk as we walked. First we turned right, then left onto the long corridor. ‘One more left turn and we’ll end up back at the maze entrance,’ Thane said.
Easy-peasy. I ignored the suspicious churn in my stomach and the way that She Without An Ear was shifting restlessly on my shoulder.
