“Oh, I don’t like it,” I said involuntarily. In retrospect, having a pint with a pub lunch would probably have been a better first foray into the world of recreational substances.
“Gets worse from here on in,” Yancy said cheerfully. “A third dose, I think, and then we’ll be on our way.”
“Where are we going?” I asked, mostly to delay the last swallow.
“A hundred years ago, give or take,” Yancy said. “That’s when they demolished the old riding ring and laid out the meadow instead. We’ll have to see where we can hop from there.”
I needed a few deep breaths to make myself take the last choking gulp, but down it went in an explosion of trumpets. “Be seeing you,” I told Alfie and Liesel, the words coming out of my mouth in blue-green sparkles, just as if I’d drunk something smoking-hot on a cold day, and my breath was billowing out in fog.
Alfie nodded, a bit furrowed, and said in an undertone, “You’re sure you’re all right to go with her? Yancy may think she knows a way, but her ways lose people. Most of her lot don’t last twenty years, once they join up.”
“There is no reasonable alternative,” Liesel said impatiently, and then she reached out and intercepted the flask when I’d have handed it back to Yancy. “I will go with you.”
“What?” I said, sufficiently baffled that I wondered if I’d just started hearing things. What reason did she have for coming after me now?
But Liesel was already swigging from the flask—Alfie looked nearly as surprised and dismayed as I was myself—and squeezing her eyes shut against the effects for a moment before forcing herself to open them. She got through the three swallows with grim determination and quicker than I had, then passed the flask back to Yancy and told Alfie, “We must get El home safely, or they will keep making attempts.”
“I’ll be all right on my own, thanks,” I said, which worked exactly as well as protesting any of Liesel’s plans ever worked. Less, really: the attempt came out in wafts of sunset gold and orange, and I trailed off staring in dazzlement at the swoosh of it floating away from me.
“Don’t start any more quarrels with the ravers,” she went on lecturing Alfie, paying no attention to me. “So long as they are here, that means the gardens are open to visitors. You had better go guard your father’s back instead. Martel will try that, next, when this plan has failed.”
“Right,” Alfie said, a little dismally. “Watch your own back, will you? And don’t trust Yancy,” he added, soft enough not to be overheard, but with even more urgency. “She and hers have always had it in for us.”
That seemed uncharitable to me, since it was fairly clear to me that Yancy had been on the verge of helping his dad try to save London. She and the rest of her crew were used to handling unstable sources of mana; I imagine Sir Richard had recruited them to channel the power out of the wobbly mana store to him.
Also Alfie threw in an earnest look at me as he spoke, and I wasn’t going to be any part of that us. Just because I hadn’t wanted the entire enclave to be destroyed with every living person in it dying horribly wasn’t the same as adding myself to the roster. “Yes, who can imagine why, it’s not like you’ve been chasing them into the streets on the regular,” I said, with a sniff that went into roller-coaster loops of deep snide green. Liesel only sighed a starburst of exasperation and told Alfie, “I will be back soon.”
“Ready, then?” Yancy said, having a final swig herself. She beckoned us along after her into the labyrinth path, doing a hopping sort of dance between the stones as if it mattered tremendously which particular spot of grass she put her feet on. Liesel started to copy her almost immediately, and in a moment or three—I was having trouble making my brain work—I caught up and realized that it did matter. Each time our footsteps came down, little sparkly bursts came out, and the bursts were in different colors depending on where you landed. Yancy was very deliberately going for pale-blue bursts. I couldn’t tell how she knew which way to go, so all I could do was try my hardest to land wherever she’d stepped, which wasn’t easy when the grass sprang back up at once. Liesel and I only managed to land the right color one in two.
But even Yancy sometimes got a dark blue or a white instead, so presumably it was a bit flexible. And after capering around through maybe two labyrinth branches, I became increasingly certain that we were going somewhere, and not just to the center of the maze but somehow past it and on to a completely different destination—the same feeling as walking a long route to class inside the Scholomance, a familiar one, where you can’t be sure exactly how long it’s going to take, but you know you’re getting close, the classroom door will be on your right after the next turn, or maybe the one after that; and when Yancy said, “All right, here we go, watch your step going down,” I was perfectly ready to follow her, and did, not only down but out of the world as well.