I don’t know why. Maybe it was just the way it exuded magic; the way it seemed to change and rearrange itself every time you looked away from it. Even in the dark, the leaves of the hedges were Technicolor-green, so saturated that the color almost bled into the atmosphere.

It seemed like the kind of place you could get lost in. The kind of place you could enter and never leave.

Unfortunately, Star didn’t seem to share my fear—she was already several yards ahead of me, and if I didn’t hurry, she would be out of sight before I knew it.

“Slow down!” I hissed after her, but she didn’t listen. I took a deep breath and followed her into the maze.

As soon as I stepped inside, the leafy walls on either side of me began to rustle, suddenly sprouting little pink buds. The climbing ivy grew and twisted.

My heart pounding, I looked back. The opening I’d just run through was no longer there. It had sealed up behind me with new growth.

“Damn,” I swore under my breath. I’d almost expected those frozen statues to come to life, but I hadn’t expected the maze to.

Keeping Star in my sights suddenly seemed more important than ever—it was no longer just a matter of not losing her. It was a matter of me not getting lost. Rats were supposed to be naturally good at mazes, right? Star seemed to have some sense of where she was going, but I knew that, on my own, I would be stuck in here for good.

There was no point in looking back, so I didn’t bother.

Relying on a rat to guide me through a magic maze pretty much summed up my last twenty-four hours. I felt out of control, isolated, and uncertain where I was headed. I plunged forward regardless. Sometimes the path was narrow and claustrophobic, the hedges so high I couldn’t even see their tops. Then I’d turn a corner into a sweeping cobblestone boulevard where the topiary walls were short enough that it seemed like I might be able to dive over them with a running start.

We turned a corner and found ourselves in a long, leafy corridor—grown over with ivy—where there didn’t appear to be any more turnoffs. The hedges stretched out in a rigid line, nowhere to go except straight ahead. Unfortunately, the path looked like it went on forever, extending so far into the distance that I couldn’t see an end. The maze felt massive, like an entire world unto itself.

The endlessness terrified me. Even Star slowed down and sniffed at the air, looking around like she was trying to get her bearings.

“Come on, Star,” I urged quietly. “Don’t fail me now.”

The hedge wall on my left was covered in a blooming honeysuckle-like vine that dripped with a sweet-smelling nectar. Without really realizing what I was doing, I reached toward one of the blossoms to sample the nectar—it smelled so sweet and alluring. A purple ladybug landed on the blossom just in front of my fingers and the flower snapped close with a crunch and a squish. I jumped back. The flowers had teeth.

I started forward, wanting to put some distance between me and the flowers. Star ambled along at my side, no longer leading the way.

“What did you get me into, Star?”

Just as I said it, her head popped up into the air and she doubled back on the path we’d been following. She began to examine one of the hedges we’d passed. It looked like any of the rest of them to me, but Star, having now made up her mind, circled around and ran straight toward it. As she did, the branches slid aside, forming an opening as wide as a doorway. I gasped—more from joy than surprise—a way out! Star ran through—and I ran right behind her.

We kept running, no longer obeying the paths laid out by the maze. The walls continued to slide aside for us as we charged on, closing at our backs as soon as we slipped through.

And then, finally, we reached the center of the maze. It was so unexpected that I almost tripped over my feet while skidding to a stop. It was a large, circular area, paved with jagged flagstones. Wildflowers bloomed everywhere, the moonlight beaming down brightly on their open faces.

Dead center in the middle of the plaza was a stone fountain that looked older than time itself. Its water spiraled up into the sky in a corkscrew and didn’t seem to come back down again.

Sitting on the edge of the fountain was Pete.

As usual, he had found me when I least expected it. Like the Order, Pete was just another of my supposed allies that couldn’t be relied upon.

“You,” was all I could manage, still catching my breath.

“Hey,” he said casually. Clearly, he’d been expecting me. He sat there like there was nothing strange at all about meeting up in the early morning darkness for some fun times in the nefarious hedge maze.

Actually, with the way the bright-yellow half-moon shone on his dark hair, the colors around us supercharged, Pete looked almost beautiful. He looked better than normal—like an artist’s rendering of his ideal self. He looked perfectly at ease here, like he belonged.

“You brought me here,” I said suspiciously. “You had Star come get me.”

“Yes,” he said. He stood up from his perch on the fountain but didn’t come any closer.

“How?”

“Star may not be able to talk, but it’s not so hard to communicate with her if you know the trick,” he replied.

More half answers. This was way beyond its expiration date.

“What about the maze? Did you do all that? Do you control it?”

He laughed. “No one controls the maze. Especially not me. It’s a living thing—like you or me or Star. If you’re kind to it, it remembers. If it’s your friend, it will help you.” He smiled and gestured at everything around us. “These hedges and I go way back,” he said. “So I asked it for help.”