They sat up straighter, too—at least Kohen did, ginger brows raised to the middle of his forehead, ashopefulnow as he was uncomfortable.
“We’ve spoken,” Mimi said, wiping her face with the backs of her hands. “And we want to know what you want from us first.”
“To go back to the Labyrinth,” the Timekeeper said.
The Heart boy didn’t miss a beat. “Forwhat?”
“To find the proof.” The man leaned forward, rested his elbows over his knees. When he did, his forehead glistened a little, like he was sweating.
“What proof?” asked Mimi.
“The proof of everything that happened.”
We looked at one another again. “Is it…is it another notebook?” I wondered.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” the Timekeeper said, throwing me off.
“So, how will we know what to look for?”
“Oh, you’ll know it when you see it,” said the other Timekeeper. That was the first time he spoke, and only then did I realize that he was…young.Possibly our age, now that I was looking at him better.
Yes—he was just as young as he sounded, actually. It was his clothes and his wild hair that had given me the wrong impression at first.
Just like that, we were at a loss again.
“So, we’re to go to the Labyrinth somehow, and findproofwithout knowing what we’re even looking for, and then just hope that you’ll tell us what happened afterward?” Levana said.
“Not somehow—we’lltake you to the Labyrinth, and weknow it will let you through. It knows you,” the Timekeeper Kohen said.
Which gave us all a pause.
“It? How woulditknow us?” I breathed, as something that almost felt like a memory came back to me viciously, words popping into my head and not even in my own voice—a gigantic machine, a hundred feet underground—a gigantic machine, a hundred feet underground—a gigantic machine, a h?—
“Its protection magic only lets through the people it knows. Now that it’s closed for the year, it won’t let through anyone but the help—and the last Hands to have played in the trials. It knows you.”
The Timekeeper said all of this as if it was an absolute truth.
“What exactly does that mean?” Because he still made it sound like the Labyrinth wasa personor something, which was ridiculous.
“I can’t tell you that,” said the Timekeeper.
“But youwillfind out for yourself.” Half a smile on the young one’s lips as he looked at me. I was sure if he let it, it would develop into a full mischievous grin, but he didn’t.
“Is there anything youcantell us?” the Heart boy asked, his voice thicker than before, like he, too, was getting angrier.
“What we already told you,” the old Timekeeper said. “We’ll take you to the Labyrinth, we’ll get you inside, and you’ll have to find the proof and bring it back. Then we’ll tell you everything.”
My poor heart.
“Everything?” Mimi breathed, as if the word did the same thing to her as it did to me.
Both Timekeepers nodded. “Everything,” said Kohen.
At that point it would be silly to even pretend with my ownself that I was thinking things through. That I had any semblance of a self-preservation instinct left. No—I was sold, all in, would go to the Labyrinth and to the mountains, even to the Spill to find out what had happened to me, what a whole month of my life—that was really only two weeks—had looked like.
“How do we know you’re not lying to us?” Mimi said. “How do we know this isn’t a trap?”
The Timekeepers exchanged a quick, confused look. “Why would we go to all that trouble to bring you all to Neverwhen—in secret—just to trap you? It was no easy feat, I assure you.”
