The Spindle of Fate by Aimee Lim

Author:Aimee Lim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

TWELVE

THE FOURTH COURT (THE REAL ONE)

For a moment, I’m afraid to even believe it. My heart is pounding so hard it actually hurts.

Mom is near.

I look at the spool, now stuck in a hopeless mass of thread. I was so desperate for the spool to start tangling that I didn’t really worry about what it would mean when it did. I now know for sure that Mom is close, but thanks to her pendant’s anti-tracking feature, we’ll have to find her totally on our own, with no more magic Weaver Google Maps to point us the way.

“What is it?” Kevin asks.

“The spool tangles when…” My breath hitches. “When my mom’s nearby.”

His sleepy-looking eyes pop wide open.

Kevin looks around the tiny bathroom. “Did it lead us in here just to throw us off? Or was it going to show us another shortcut?” He picks up the Staff of Mùlián and moves toward the wall.

“Hey, don’t do that while we’re inside! Not unless you wanna bring down the ceiling on top of us.”

I exit the bathroom, untying the thread around my finger and stuffing the mass of tangled thread inside the handbag as I do. I look around the back room of the food court and spot an elevator in the adjacent wall. I guess that’s how the Dìyù staff move around without having to go through the confusing maze.

“The thread didn’t tangle until we climbed over the counter. What if it’s because Mom is in the next Court?”

But before I can move for the elevator, I spot the cafeteria worker in the shiny red boiler suit, pointing at us from across the room. Running alongside him is a freakishly tall and thin demon in a white boiler suit who I recognize as one of the creeps from the orientation video in the First Court. He had looked tall on camera next to his pint-sized, black-suited counterpart, but in person he has to be nearly seven feet tall, towering over even the large cafeteria worker demon.

“He came back? Seriously?” Kevin rings the Staff of Mùlián again. Red Boiler Suit has already vanished, but White Boiler Suit keeps running, seemingly unfazed.

Kevin looks at the Staff, dumbfounded. “Why isn’t this working?” He rings it again, but again, the white-suited demon keeps running toward us without batting an eye. He’s close enough that I can see his hideous demonic face now, his long tongue flapping out the side of his open mouth like a dog sticking its head out the car window.

I remember him silently holding up the Frequently Asked Questions cue cards in the orientation video without reading them aloud.

Suddenly, I know why the Staff doesn’t seem to affect him. “He’s deaf! Run!”

Thinking fast, Kevin reaches forward and grabs the bowl of rice we’d used to resurrect the phone, which he’d left on the counter when we’d climbed over. He flings the ceramic bowl at the silent netherworld demon, who instinctively covers his ghastly white face with his freakishly long fingers while we bolt for the elevator.

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