Side by side, they circled through the garden. Ringed with evergreens, the flower beds were half in the shadows. Tulips swayed in a breathlike breeze.
"Grandpa did train me," Jake said. "Pop quizzes over breakfast on the prior night's homework, martial arts classes since age four, summer trips to Europe with enough museums to put an artist to sleep. He wanted to ensure that I had a chance at a future here. Failure wasn't an option for him or for me."
She thought of Mom. If passing this test would keep
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Mom from slipping away--if walking through fire would keep Mom from slipping away--Lily would do it. "Not so much an option for me, either."
"Yeah, I get that."
Their eyes met, and Jake smiled. She smiled back.
Voices carried across the garden as a string of chattering and laughing students passed by and then exited. A couple holding hands strolled after them, pausing for a photo in front of the yellow and red tulips.
"So, where to?" Jake asked.
She thought for a moment. She didn't know where to find the Key, but she did know what the Key (supposedly) opened. The Literate Ape had talked about a gate, and there was only one famous gate here: the entrance to Princeton, the gate that no student ever walked out through. It would be just like the Old Boys to pick the most ornate, most famous gate on campus as their special gate. "This way," she said.
Lily headed up a set of stone steps. Jake followed her behind a row of manicured bushes to a rose garden. She saw red and yellow and soft pink buds. Only one or two had begun to open their petals. At home, Mom had coaxed all their roses into bloom already. She claimed her success was due to the fact that she sang to them. Lily credited the skylights that turned their apartment into a greenhouse. As soon as her test was over, she'd bring Mom to this garden. Maybe it would stir up memories of Dad. The memories couldn't be gone forever,
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could they? There had to be some way to bring them back.
"Do you like it here?" Lily asked. "At Princeton, I mean."
"Love it," he said. "I can't picture myself anywhere else. I think I was a prefrosh from birth. My grandfather used to sing me Princeton songs instead of lullabies. I have these clear memories of him tucking me in while belting out a fight song. ... I know it sounds corny, but I always felt this was, like, my destiny."
"Not corny at all," she murmured. She thought of her grandpa singing Princeton songs in the flower shop on slow days.
Up ahead, she saw a familiar road. She'd walked this way before--the campus road led to the chapel and library plaza. She picked up her pace, weaving among members of a marching band dressed in orange and black plaid and wearing straw hats. As she crossed the plaza in front of the chapel, she imagined returning to Grandpa and Mom with the news that she'd passed. She'd be able to make Mom happy, a semimiraculous feat.
Up on the arch over the chapel door, she spotted the Chained Dragon. Nestled in the stone greenery, he was the size of a terrier, curved into a backward S with bat wings splayed flat against his back. A thick stone chain was carved around his neck. One of his talons clutched the chain.
Scale for scale, Mom had drawn him exactly. She'd even captured the sad, lonely look in the dragon's puppy-dog eyes. How had Mom remembered this carving so precisely when
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she couldn't even remember Lily's father's face? Of all the things to remember, why this?
Lily didn't realize she'd stopped walking until Jake burst out, "You can't be ready to talk to him!"
Both of her eyebrows shot up. So ... the Chained Dragon was another rigged gargoyle, like the Literate Ape. Perhaps Mom's subconscious had given her a clue. "Why not?" she asked.
"Did Professor Ape tell you about the dragon?" Jake asked. He seemed agitated. "Anything about his history? You can't talk to him yet!"
She guessed she was meant to approach the dragon much later in the test. Skipping ahead sounded good to her, though. She could finish the test early and then join Grandpa and Mom for P-rade on Saturday as planned. "What about his history?" she asked.
"I ... I can't tell you." He clearly wanted to talk. His thoughts played across his face. She watched his forehead crinkle and uncrinkle. His lips started to form words and then pressed together as if he were physically holding back the words as they tried to escape his mouth.
"It's okay," Lily said. "You don't have to tell me anything. I'll figure it out." If she wasn't supposed to talk to the dragon yet, then all the Old Boys had to do was tell the guy running the audio setup not to respond. But maybe, just maybe, they'd slip up and she'd have a shortcut to the end of this ridiculous test.
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Lily marched toward the steps of the chapel. The second her foot touched the first step, she saw a stone tongue flick out of the dragon's mouth.
She halted. That had looked very realistic.
Jake caught her arm. "You don't have to do this," he said. "We can return to Professor Ape. Ask him about your next clue. It can't be the dragon. He can't be part of your test." If she didn't know better, she'd say he was genuinely freaked out by this sculpture. "He's saved for late in the training. Seniors face him. Not candidates. I haven't spoken to him yet."
Jake really seemed to believe what he was saying. She hadn't expected him to be such a good actor. The Old Boys must have prepped him well. She was positive now that she was on to something. "I need to get close," she said. Like with the Literate Ape, she bet the gargoyle would talk once she was close enough that no one could overhear.
Unlike with the Literate Ape, she didn't see a convenient window above the gargoyle. The ribbon of carvings that included the dragon was recessed within the arch. She'd need to reach it from below, ideally with a ladder.
Climbing the stone steps, she entered the chapel antechamber. She glimpsed the chapel's nave through the inner doors. Rows of wood pews stretched to the distant altar. Stone pillars soared to the vaulted ceiling. Everything was bathed in a soft blue light from hundreds of stained-glass windows. She wondered if Mom would remember this
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if she saw it. She promised herself to bring Mom here too, after the test was over.
Lily scanned the antechamber for anything resembling a ladder. Beside the open doors to the chapel was a marble staircase with a red velvet rope stretched across it and a sign that read BALCONY CLOSED. Leaning beside it was a black metal folding chair. Good enough, she thought. She fetched the chair and brought it back outside.
"Can you watch for security?" she asked Jake. "Ward off any paparazzi or whatever?"
"Only if you promise me you won't get too close," Jake said as she set up the chair underneath the arch. "You have to be careful."
"It's stone," she said. "I won't hurt it."
"If you look in danger, I'll knock you off the chair."
Lily blinked at him. He seemed 100 percent sincere. "You should win an Oscar," she told him. He was fully immersed in this role-playing game, treating the gargoyles as if they weren't robots or puppets ... except he had gotten the story mixed up. The Literate Ape had said the gargoyles were the good guys. "I'll be fine." She stepped onto the chair.
A foot down from the gargoyle's tail, she looked up into the dragon's mournful eyes. "Free me," a voice whispered. His voice was so faint that she rose onto her tiptoes to hear. The stone tongue darted in and out again. "Free me," the dragon repeated.
His voice was snakelike. Shivers walked over Lily's skin.
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The audio guy had succeeded in making stone sound truly creepy. Kudos to him. She wanted to climb off the chair and put as much distance between her and that voice as possible.
Jake hovered on the steps below her. "What's he saying? You shouldn't listen to him."
"I hurt. Oh, I hurt." The stone chain, she noticed, had been carved to look as if it were biting into the folds of the dragon's neck. It was clever of the Old Boys to use that detail. It made the dragon seem more real. "Please, I beg of you. Save me."
"It's stone," Lily said
. "You're stone."
"Come closer," the dragon whispered, "and I will show you how to free me."
The Old Boys were testing her. But were they testing her compassion or her resistance to peer pressure? "I don't know if I'm supposed to do that," Lily said.
The dragon hissed. "Free me!"
Just a game, she reminded herself. Just a role-playing fantasy game that some bored privileged kids had cooked up over beer pong. But it was hard to remember that while the dragon's harsh, sad, awful voice shuddered through her. She felt it echo in her bones. Such a sweet little carving shouldn't sound so painful. "Why are you chained?" she asked.
A harsh, sibilant laugh erupted from the stone sculpture. The sound made her feel as if her guts were churning. "You came on your own, young one, didn't you? The knights didn't send you to me. How delightful."
The Literate Ape had mentioned knights too. She
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wondered who they were. "The Literate Ape said--"
"He is still here? Fool. He could be free! He has not been shrunk to this unnatural size and bound against his will." His tongue flicked again, gray as stone but fast as flesh.
"Who did this to you?" she asked.
"That is not the question you came to ask," he said. He sounded oddly amused.
"I want to know where to find the Ivy Key."
His stone features slid as smoothly as skin as his expression changed from sad to eager. She shivered and told herself that the Old Boys were wealth personified--they could afford special effects like talking stone and sliding bookshelves. "And you come to me? How deliciously fascinating." His voice changed to a command. "Your name, little one."
"Lily," she said. "Lily Carter."
"Ahh!" His tail lashed. "You come to me for answers because the humans lie, lie, and lie. Come closer, Lily Carter, and I will tell you all."
Hesitating, she glanced down at Jake.
"Lily, what is he saying?" Jake asked. "You can't trust him."
"You of all people cannot trust humans," the dragon said. She realized that Jake hadn't heard anything the dragon had said. His voice was pitched only loud enough for her to hear. "To you, their truths are only half truths. Their answers, half answers."
"And you'll give me whole truths?" she asked.
"I can tell you who you are."
"I know who I am," she said.
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His tongue flicked in and out. "I can tell you how your father died."
What the hell did he mean by that? She knew how her father had died: a car accident. "All I need to know is where to find the Key." And then she'd finish this test, secure her admission, and tell the Old Boys exactly what she thought of their mind games. First the book and now with the dragon ... why so many reminders of her father? What did he have to do with this crazy game?
"Once, there were many Keys. One by one, they were destroyed." He laughed again, and she shuddered at the sound. "I even destroyed one myself."
The Old Boys wouldn't send her on a hunt for something that didn't exist. Would they? "Are there any left?"
"Oh, yes."
"Tell me," she demanded.
"The Key is not an object," he said. "The Key is a being who is half human and half magic, a parent from each world. Only such a being can pass through the gate. Only such a being can allow others through the gate."
"Where can I find this Key person?"
"Come closer, and I will whisper to you."
Shoving her foot into one of the ornate hinges, Lily boosted herself up. She reached up and grabbed the stone vines near the dragon's tail to pull herself higher--
"Lily!" Jake cried. He grabbed the back of her jeans.
Before he could force her down, the dragon's head shot
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toward her. His jaws clamped down hard on her hand. She screamed as stone bit into her. Below her, Jake yelled. Spots burst in front of her eyes as pain coursed up her arm like fire. Bits of red orange flame darted out of the dragon's mouth and around her fingers. She screamed again.
Jake yanked her down. Stone scraped gashes along her hand as he pulled her out of the dragon's jaws. Red splattered across the wood door and stone trim. His arm around her waist, Jake half carried, half dragged her down the steps to the plaza. Her head spun.
The dragon screeched. He pushed his talons hard against the chain, and the stone stretched and strained. Dimly, Lily heard Jake: "Oh, shit. Don't die! Oh, shit, what do I do? Dammit!" He ripped his sleeve off his shirt in one quick jerk and wrapped the cloth around her hand. More swirls and spots spun over her eyes as she stared up at Jake's face. A second later, he was shouting into his cell phone--she hadn't seen him take it out. Only a few words made sense. She blacked out.
A few seconds (or minutes or years--she couldn't tell) later, she opened her eyes to see Jake's face swimming inches from hers. She was cradled in his lap. "He could have killed you," Jake was saying. "He should have killed you. You shouldn't have survived that."
She focused beyond him on the chapel arch. Black dots still danced over her eyes, but she thought that the dragon had grown. He filled half the arch, and the stone chain bit
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deeply into his thick neck. "He grew," she whispered. Stone didn't grow. Stone didn't live. Didn't talk. Didn't bite.
"He had long enough to drain you," Jake said. "Why aren't you dead?"
"More!" the dragon howled. "Need more!" He let out a scream that shook Lily's bones and echoed across the plaza. She shuddered hard.
Jake looked up at the dragon and then down at her. "You're one of them," he said. He shoved her hard away from him. She rolled off his lap and onto the stone plaza. She lay there, cheek against the flagstones. Every muscle felt depleted. She couldn't process his words. "God, I helped you! I even thought you--" His voice was so full of revulsion that she flinched. "You don't belong here. Monsters belong on the other side of the gate."
Gate ... She remembered Tye's voice: If you feel faint or weak or anything, go through the gate! She seized on that memory. It was the only coherent thought that penetrated the dark swirls in her brain. She felt weak; she needed the gate.
Lily lurched to her feet. The plaza tipped and spun.
"More!" the dragon cried.
She heard other voices shouting. All she could think was gate. She needed to go through the gate. Every muscle shaking, she half ran and half fell across the plaza and through the East Pyne courtyard. She stumbled past Nassau Hall, and the green lawn of the yard tilted before her. Her ears roared as her vision spun.
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She caught herself against an oak tree. Her fingers curled into the bark, and she breathed in the scent of the tree. It strengthened her. She pushed away from the trunk. The few people in the yard swam in and out of her field of view. She avoided them, dimly hearing them call to her, asking if she was okay, as she wove her way toward FitzRandolph Gate.
She stopped in front of the gate and looked up at the Princeton seal. It blurred into a smudge as she gazed at it. The stone eagles multiplied as her vision swam again. Beyond the gate, she saw Nassau Street. A traffic light held cars at an intersection. Go through the gate, Tye's voice repeated in her memory. "Why?" she wondered. But it hurt to think through the aching haze. It was simpler to obey.
Lily plunged through the gate.
Everything flashed white.
Seconds later, Lily lay flat on her back on grass, not sidewalk. She stared up at the front of FitzRandolph Gate. She saw the Princeton seal ... but the stone eagles were gone.
In their place were twin eagles with feathers of metallic gold. The birds screeched and then lifted skyward from the stone pillars. They circled above her, shadows against the cloudless sky. She saw another bird with firelike feathers streak between them, and she saw a shape that looked like a winged lion, silhouetted against the blue. ... Where am I? she thought. What's happening to me? She tried to scramble to her feet and collapsed forward onto her hands and knees.
She lifted her h
ead. A tiger paced slowly toward her. His
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tail lashed from side to side. Her heart started to thud so loudly in her ears that it muffled all other sound. Gritting her teeth, Lily pushed herself to standing.
Muscles shaking, she backed away as the tiger approached. Run, her mind whispered. Run! But she couldn't. She stumbled.
The tiger shimmered as if he were drawn in smudged ink. His fur rippled, and he collapsed and then stretched upward. Legs shot down, and arms reached out. Slowly, the blur solidified into a boy with orange and black hair.
"Tye," she breathed.
He caught her as her knees buckled, and she crumpled.
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CHAPTER Six
Lily heard a murmur of voices, and she tried to open her eyes. Her eyelids felt as if they were glued down. She raised her hand to touch her face, and she felt cloth. She forced her eyes open and saw a white cloth wrapped around her hand.
Bandages, she thought. How nice. Her vision faded.
Next time she woke, she was on her back, looking up at a ceiling of wood tiles. At first, they wavered and spun, but then they resolved themselves into a static geometric pattern. She turned her head, but the motion made her vision blur again. Figures standing near her looked like streaks of white light and shadow.
She felt panic rise up into her throat, choking her. "Tye?" she said. It came out as a croak. She tried again: "Tye?"
"The were-tiger boy isn't here," said a voice that sounded
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like a waterfall. Words cascaded down. You could drown in a voice like that, she thought.
She squinted, but her eyes wouldn't focus right. The voice's owner was a white smudge against a brown background. She thought she saw a streak of gold. "Where is 'here'?" she asked. "Who are you?"