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His stepmother was his guardian, the one who’d been making all his medical decisions. We have no legal right to make any decisions and, in fact, the police would probably take us away for questioning. They might not even really listen to what we were saying until it was too late.

“We should have played the rest of the game,” Toad says. “I thought it was stupid that we could go to all those places, but we probably should have figured out what he wanted us to do.”

Decker hops down, going on one knee next to Sorry’s body. “What do you want us to do, buddy?” he whispers.

I almost expect Sorry to get up and tell us, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t move at all.

Toad climbs out of the hole and indicates I should get down. “Say something to him.”

“Me?” I edge over to the casket, stumbling a little. I look up. “What should I say?”

Toad clears his throat. “He liked you.”

I am too surprised to know how to respond.

Toad waits for me to say something and when I don’t, goes on. “I’m not sure if he ever even went out with a girl. I mean, he’s fifteen and he’s been sick for three years. So unless he was making it with girls at twelve, probably not.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.

Toad shrugs. “I don’t know. I just mean, he had good reasons for not telling you—one of those reasons being that he’s got no game. But I know he liked you…
likes
you, so he’d be more likely to listen if you were the one talking to him.”

I glance toward Decker. He looks like he wants to ask me something, but he doesn’t. Instead, he climbs out of the hole too, sending a shower of dirt raining down on Soren’s face.

I squat and put my hand on Sorry’s arm. His skin is cold from being deep in the ground. “Hey,” I say. “It’s Cat. We played the game, but now it’s your turn. Time to wake up.”

He doesn’t move.

“We’re risking our asses for you,” I say.

“Nice,” Decker calls down. “How about saying we love him?”

“How about saying
you
love him, Cat? How about ‘If you wake up, I will give you a big, fat, sloppy kiss,’ ” Toad says.

“Shut up,” I tell him.

“Soren,” Decker says. “Listen, if you wake up,
one
of us will give you a big, fat, sloppy kiss. I can’t guarantee it will be Cat, but one of us will definitely do it. I am ready.”

“Soren,” Toad says. “Listen, how about this—if you
don’t
wake up, one of us will give you a big, fat, sloppy kiss and I can guarantee it
won’t
be Cat.”

We can’t help it, we start laughing. We laugh helplessly, the relief like the release of a leg cramp.

Then, abruptly, Soren starts to cough.

I suck in my breath so sharply that I nearly choke. Toad yelps. Decker falls backward onto his ass.

A moment later, Sorry is half sitting, turned on his side, puking his guts up. I have never been so happy to see someone vomit. I crawl over to smooth his hair out of his face. His skin feels cold and clammy and when he turns to look at me, his eyes are bright with something like fever.

“You guys are insane,” he says, the words slurred, then flops down face-first in the dirt.

It turns out that I do know him, even though we’ve never met before in person. It turns out that he knows us too. “You’re one to talk,” I tell him.

And it turns out that sometimes, you really do get to start from your save point. You do get another life.

You are standing in the graveyard with your friend, who until very recently, you thought was dead. Soon the police are going to come. Soon, he’s going to have to go to a hospital, even though he hates hospitals. Soon, he’s going to have to explain how he did it, how he knew he was going to die and why he decided to try to trick his way out of a locked bedroom in the most gruesome way possible. Soon he is going to have to thank you, even though there is no way to ever really thank you enough. But for right now, he just stands next to you and you all look up a little, into the middle distance. The wind blows your hair back from your faces and you strike a super badass pose.

<>

To play again from the beginning, press “X.”

Holly Black is the author of bestselling contemporary fantasy books for kids and teens. Some of her titles include the Spiderwick Chronicles (with Tony DiTerlizzi), the Modern Faerie Tale series, the Curse Workers series,
Doll Bones
,
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
, the Magisterium series (with Cassandra Clare), and
The Darkest Part of the Forest
. She has been a finalist for an Eisner Award and the recipient of the Andre Norton Award, the Mythopoeic Award, and a Newbery Honor. She currently lives in New England with her husband and son in a house with a secret door.

SOME THINGS ARE MYSTERIES NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND, BUT BECAUSE WHEN THEY STOOD UP AND SAID “GET OUT,” THE SENSIBLE PEOPLE ALL DID AS THEY WERE TOLD. NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS SOLVING.

—Alice Healy

A COMFORTABLY RENOVATED BASEMENT IN PORTLAND, OREGON

NOW

Artie was burning scented candles again. It wasn’t the real eye-watering stuff that he sometimes used when he got desperate—strictly Yankee Candle, artificial fruit and cliché Halloween all the way—but it was bad enough that I was breathing through my shirt as I tried to focus on the latest exploits of the X-Men, and not on the increasingly strong sensation of drowning in candied pumpkin and mango smoothies.

I tried making some theatrical gagging noises. Artie, his attention focused entirely on his laptop, ignored me. He didn’t even turn around to find out whether something was actually wrong. He just kept typing. I wrinkled my nose at his oblivious back and returned to my comic book, where Emma Frost—telepath with no time for this shit—was not murdering Cyclops—energy manipulator who caused way too much shit. Fun for the whole family.

If I was going to read comic books and marinate in the fumes from an entire scented-candle outlet, Artie’s room was the place to do it. Most of the guys from my comic book store would have happily stabbed one or more family members in the throat if it got them sole ownership of Artie’s basement lair, which had been converted for his use years before. Apart from the bed where I was reading and the desk where he was…well, whatever he was doing, there were shelves upon shelves loaded with comics, books, collectables, and his not-insubstantial DVD collection. If there was ever some sort of disaster that forced us to stay inside for six months, we might actually make a dent in his unwatched TV boxed sets. Until then, they lined the walls and helped keep the heating bills down.

“Scott’s a tool,” I said, not really expecting a response. “I mean, why does he keep getting otherwise intelligent women interested in him? It can’t be the hair. He may be the only person in the entire Marvel Universe who’s never had a decent haircut.”

“Uh-huh,” said Artie.

That was something: that meant he at least was still aware that I was in the room. “And they’re all telepaths, have you noticed that? Maybe he could give you dating tips. Explain how you and Sarah can make things work.”

“Uh-huh,” said Artie.

“Not that you really need any help. You just need to stop denying your raw animal passions and allow yourselves to go at it like rabid weasels in a sack.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay,
what
can possibly be so interesting that me theorizing about your sex life doesn’t even rate a ‘stop that’?” I slid off the bed, leaving my comic book open on his pillow, and stalked over to loom behind him. “What are you doing?”

“Installing a new game.” Artie tilted his head back to look at me. “Sorry, Annie, did you say something?”

I sighed. “Apparently not.” Arthur Harrington—Artie—was my first cousin, but you’d never have guessed, looking at us. Where I got Grandpa Thomas’s genes, tall and rangy with cheekbones you could use to cut bread, Artie got a combination of the usual Healy package (average height, compact, good-looking enough, yet still capable of disappearing into a crowd) and his father’s incubus bonus stats, leaving him with thick black movie-star hair and big brown puppy-dog eyes that made basically everyone he met either want to hand over their wallets or beat the living crap out of him. My reaction to him was somewhere in between. As an immediate family member, his magical woo-woo incubus “you want me, you know you want me, I’m too sexy for this narrative” pheromones didn’t do anything for me, which was why I was allowed in his bedroom. Nonfamily girls weren’t even allowed in the
house
. Such were the trials and tribulations of raising a half-incubus child.

Artie frowned. “You said something, and I missed it, because I’m a terrible cousin,” he guessed.

“Something like that,” I said. “I was mostly just complaining about the X-Men again. I can’t blame you for tuning that out. What’s the game?”

“It’s a new survival horror puzzle game. Solve the puzzles or Cthulhu’s off-brand cousin comes through a rip in the fabric of the universe and eats you. Sarah would love it.” He paused, apparently realizing what he’d just said, and grimaced before looking back to his screen. “I think the download is finished. Let’s see how this baby launches.”

“Artie…”

“Can’t have a heart-to-heart about Sarah right now. Playing video games.”

“Artie, you invited me over so we could talk about Sarah.”

“Too late look I clicked the button.” He clicked, making himself a liar. I didn’t really have the chance to call him on that, though.

The lights going out as soon as he pressed the “launch” button was a much larger concern.

My name is Antimony Price, and the fact that my cousin is a half-incubus on his father’s side has probably already made it pretty clear that my family is more Addams than Brady. That doesn’t mean we’re raised to enjoy being suddenly plunged into total darkness. I squawked like an angry duck, fumbling in my pocket for my phone. “Dammit, Artie, what did you
do
? You know you’re not supposed to overload the fuses down here.”

“I didn’t do anything!” he protested from directly in front of me. Good: at least he wasn’t trying to move around. Everyone has their strengths in this world, and while I loved my cousin dearly, physical coordination wasn’t one of his.

“Well, somebody did
something
,” I said, pulling out my phone and pressing the button on the side to activate the screen.

Nothing happened.

I froze, staying silent for so long that Artie cleared his throat nervously and asked, “Annie? Are you still there, or should I be panicking right now?”

“Do you have your phone?”

“What?”

“My phone screen won’t turn on. I know I have a full battery. It’s just not working. Do you have your phone?”

“Um, sure, one second.” There was a rustling noise, followed by silence. Then: “Shit.”

“Yours isn’t working either, huh.” I touched his shoulder, reassuring myself of his location. “Okay, you stay here. I’m going to head for the stairs, go up, and see if the street is blacked out all over, or if we just got lucky.”

“I should play the lottery,” he said, deadpan.

“You should,” I agreed, and took a step backward…or tried to, anyway. Moving my feet was like wading through tar, thick and resistant. I nearly overbalanced, and had to grab the back of Artie’s chair at the last moment to keep myself from falling. If the floor had suddenly started trying to keep my feet, I didn’t want to think about what it would do to the rest of me. “Shit!”

“Annie?”

“Artie, can you move? Can you stand up?” I did my best to keep my voice steady. If I let myself start panicking—much as I genuinely wanted to—I would have a hard time stopping, and that was a good way to wind up eaten by whatever had turned the floor to tar.

“Of course. Why, are you not wearing shoes or something?” The chair shifted under my hands as Artie moved, or attempted to, anyway. He was silent for a long moment before he said, “Uh…”

“Can’t stand up, can you?”

“No, I can’t.” He sounded more puzzled than panicked. Even if his chair was refusing to let him up and I was inexplicably unable to move, he was still in his space, in his home, and he didn’t feel like anything could threaten him here. I knew how wrong he was. In the interests of keeping him calm, I wasn’t going to point it out. “It feels like someone’s glued me to the chair.”

“I’m having the same problem with the floor.”

“Uh. That’s pretty weird, right?”

I swallowed a peal of unhelpful, borderline mocking laughter. “I don’t know, Artie. It’s your room. Did you replace the carpet with the Blob and not tell me?”

The screen flickered before he could answer me, the change in illumination instantly visible in the dark room. Words swam up through the blackness:

THE JESTER’S PRISON

START NEW GAME?
Y
/
N

“Because
that’s
not creepy at all.” There was a soft tapping sound, as if Artie had pressed a single key. I closed my eyes for a moment, not that it made much difference, given the room’s absolute blackness. “Artie, what did you just do?”

“I said we wanted to start a new game.”

I opened my eyes just in time to see the words disappear, ghosting away into CGI mist before a new block of text replaced them, glowing white and somehow menacing against the darkened screen:

THE JESTER OF THE DIVINE, ROBIN GOODFELLOW, IS BOUND BETWEEN THE WORLDS BY THE WORD OF MERLIN, LAST OF THE GREAT WIZARDS. RESTORE AND REFRESH THE WARDS WHICH KEEP HIM BOUND, LEST THE JESTER ONCE AGAIN RUN RAMPANT OVER THE BROKEN BODIES OF MANKIND.

“Jeez, Artie, what the fuck kind of game is this?”

“I don’t know! I got it from a guy on my forum.”

The text disappeared, replaced by another block:

YOUR WILLINGNESS TO PLAY HAS ACTIVATED ONE OF MERLIN’S FAIL-SAFES. SHOULD YOU FAIL TO RESTORE THE WARDS, ROBIN WILL NOT BE FREED.

“Oh,” said Artie, sounding relieved. “Well, that’s good.”

YOU WILL BE SENT TO JOIN HIM IN EXILE, AND CAN HELP IN MERLIN’S BATTLE TO KEEP THE JESTER CONTAINED.

“And that’s
not
good,” I said. “Goddammit, Artie, what have you gotten us into?”

“We don’t
know
that the game is doing anything,” said Artie weakly. The words on the screen disappeared, replaced by a complicated illustration that looked like three triskelions that had been twisted together into a single tangled mass. At the same time, something in the shadows sparked green, and the darkness was filled with distant moaning. “Okay, yeah, the game is doing this,” amended Artie. “Sorry.”

“Who the hell was this ‘guy’ and what forum are you talking about?”

“It’s a support ground for crossbreeds. You know, like me and Elsie? Half-humans talking about how difficult it can be sometimes to deal with living in a mostly human world. It’s educational.” His tone turned slightly distant. “I think I can manipulate these lines. How do you think it’s supposed to fit together?”

“See if you can rotate the triskelions so that they line up,” I said. “Okay, look, is there
any
chance this was targeted? Did someone figure out who you were and decide that we should really be sucked into a bad pocket dimension for our sins? Because I don’t know about you, but I do
not
want to meet Robin Goodfellow. That guy was bad news before the Covenant banished him from this plane of reality.”

“I don’t see how they could have.” There was a clicking sound as Artie did something with his mouse. The images on the screen began to rotate slowly. “My profile isn’t connected to my real name, I don’t have a Facebook, my Twitter account goes to a different email address—”

“What’s your handle?”

“Um.” The image kept rotating as Artie admitted, sounding mortified, “Incuboy.”

“How many Lilu crossbreeds are there living in the Pacific time zone, that you know of?” Incubi and succubi were technically just male and female Lilu. We continued to refer to them as if they were separate species in part because it was tradition—which somehow was supposed to make it less confusing—and in part because their natural abilities were so radically different that they might as well have
been
different species on any practical level.

“Two. Me and Elsie.”

“And does your profile give your time zone?”

Artie’s silence was all the answer I needed. I managed, barely, to resist the urge to clock him one in the back of the head. It might have made me feel better—violence almost always did—but it wouldn’t have helped anything. The conjoined triskelions were still rotating, flashing in and out of alignment with one another.

In and out of alignment…“Are they rotating around the places where they connect?”

“Yeah,” said Artie, sounding relieved that I was apparently done quizzing him. He was going to be really disappointed in a few minutes. “I can stop them by right-clicking, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with them.”

“Try switching to a top view while they spin.”

“Okay.” More clicking sounds followed. The game might not have come with a tutorial, but with as many video games as Artie played, he didn’t really need one. Not for a straightforward point-and-click puzzle game that might or might not be planning to suck us both into an unspeakable hell dimension if we did it wrong.

No pressure.

The view gradually shifted to show the triskelions from above, and as I had hoped, the change in perspective made it clear that each of the three, as it spun, would briefly appear to form a single branch on the three-part symbol. “There,” I said. “If you free the pieces while you’re looking at them like this, you’ll get something that doesn’t look so broken.”

Artie hesitated. The graphics continued to spin. “Are we sure that’s a good idea?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe completing the runes is what sends us off to hang with Robin Goodfellow.”

“The instructions said to fix the runes if we
didn’t
want to hang with him. Since they appear to be broken currently, and the room is filled with creepy moaning and mysterious darkness, I’m going to go with ‘fix them.’ ” I tightened my hands on the back of his chair. I don’t like things I can’t hit. “Now.”

“All right, all right, I’m fixing them.” I heard the mouse click, and the runes on the screen slowed, finally freezing in a perfect triskelion. The image gleamed bright, etching itself on my eyes, so that when I blinked I still saw it floating on the inside of my eyelids. It hung there for a moment, doing nothing, before it began to spin lazily, the image remaining perfect from all angles. The moans in the darkness stopped, replaced by giggling.