I craned my neck to get a better look.A twist and a flip…
“What do you think?” Xander asked me.
I cocked my head to the side. “I think we’re going to need a ladder.”
Perched high on the ladder, with Xander holding it down below, I pressed my hand against one of the stained-glass octagons. At first, nothing happened, but when I pushed on the left side, the octagon rotated—seventy degrees, and then something stopped it.
Does that qualify as a twist?
I turned the second octagon. Pressing left and right didn’t do anything, but pushing at the bottom did. The glass flipped a hundred and eighty degrees and then some, before locking into place.
I made my way back down to Xander, who was holding the ladder, unsure what I’d accomplished. “A twist and a flip,” I recited.“What do you see?”
We stepped back, taking in the wide view. Sun shone through the window, causing diffused colored lights to appear on the Great Room Floor. The two panels I’d turned, in contrast, cast purple beams. Eventually, those beams crossed.
What do you see?
Xander squatted at the spot where the beams of light met on the floor. “Nothing.” He tested the floorboard. “I was expecting it to pop out, or to give…”
I went back to the riddle.What do you see?I saw the light. I saw the beams crossing.… When that didn’t go anywhere, I went farther back in the poem—all the way to the top.
“Noon,” I remembered. “The first half of the riddle described noon.” The gears in my brain turned faster. “The angle of the beams must depend at least a little on the angle of the sun. Maybe thetwistand thefliponly show you what you need to see at noon?”
Xander chewed on that for a second. “We could wait,” he said. “Or…” He dragged out the word. “We could cheat.”
We spread out, testing the surrounding floorboards. It wasn’t that long until noon. The angles couldn’t change that much. I tapped the heel of my hand against board after board.Secure. Secure. Secure.
“Find anything?” Xander asked me.
Secure. Secure. Loose.The board beneath my hand wasn’t wiggling, but it had more give than the others. “Xander—over here!”
He joined me, placed his hands on the board, and pressed. The board popped up. Xander removed it, revealing a small dial underneath. I turned the knob, not sure what to expect. The next thing I knew, Xander and I were sinking. The floor around us was sinking.
When it stopped, Xander and I weren’t in the Great Room anymore. We were underneath it, and directly in front of us was a set of stairs. I was going to go out on a limb and guess that this was one of the entrances to the tunnels that Orendidn’tknow about.
“Take the stairs two at a time,” I told Xander. “That’s the next line.”Take them two at a time and come find me.
CHAPTER 83
Ihad no idea what would have happened if we hadn’t descended the stairs two at a time, but I was glad we hadn’t found out.
“Have you ever been in the tunnels?” I asked Xander, once we’d made it uneventfully down.
Xander was silent long enough to make the question feel loaded. “No.”
Concentrating, I took in my surroundings. The tunnels were metal, like a giant pipe or something out of a sewer system, but they were surprisingly well lit.Gaslights?I wondered. I’d lost any sense of how far down we were. Up ahead, the tunnels spread out in three directions.
“Which way?” I asked Xander.
Solemnly, he pointed straight ahead.
I frowned. “How do you know?”
“Because,” Xander replied jauntily, “that’s what he said.” He gestured near my feet. I looked down and yelped.
It took me a moment to realize that there were gargoyles at the bottom of the stairs, a match for the ones in the Great Room, except that the gargoyle on the left had one hand—and one finger—extended, pointing the way.
Come find me.
