“Wait…that ‘living nightmares’ place?” Seb asked. “How are we going to search fo—?”

He was cut off by a loud crackle as Johnny Hands floated through the roof and hovered in the middle of the room. “Visiting the Skaptikon is not like going on some jolly holiday,” he declared in a deep voice. “Don’t be fools.”

Ivy fell onto her bottom. “You were listening!”

“Of course I was listening.” He stared at them. “You can’t go to the Skaptikon. The less said about that place, the better. It still gives me nightmares, and I don’t even sleep.”

Valian cocked his head. “Hold on…you’ve been to the Skaptikon?”

Johnny Hands rubbed his gloves together nervously. “Not as a prisoner, but I was there when they built it. The IUC recruited me to test it out.”

The International Uncommon Council…Ivy didn’t know what to say. Testing the Skaptikon couldn’t have been a pleasant experience.

“One of the designers once told me that the way to fight the Skaptikon was to beat it at its own game. To fool it, like it fools you.” He shook his head. “Of course, he also said that old socks made great tea bags, so who knows?”

Valian said, “So you’re saying there could be a way to get into the Skaptikon safely?”

Johnny Hands raised a scruffy eyebrow. “My dear boy, like I said, the Skaptikon is no place for a jolly holiday. It has its own atmosphere inside—not even gravity behaves in the same way. It’s all back to front and upside down.”

Back to front…Ivy knew someone who saw the whole world that way.

“Anyway, this is a pointless conversation,” Johnny Hands said, fixing his jester’s hat tightly over his straggly hair. “Even if you find the place, it’s deep, deep below Lundinor. You’d never get in or out undetected.” He began dissolving back through the rafters. “I’ve got to alert my patron with this information. Till our paths cross again, Ivy Sparrow!”

Once he’d gone, Ivy, Seb and Valian were quiet for a moment, then Valian pulled the Great Uncommon Bag out from under his jacket.

Judy looked up. “You can’t be serious.”

“If we leave now,” Valian said, “we might have a head start. Selena can have only just received Jack-in-the-Green’s featherlight.”

“I think Scratch might be able to help us when we’re inside,” Ivy suggested, stuffing him into the left pocket of her dungarees, and her yo-yo into the right.

Seb pulled on his mandarin coat, stowing his drumsticks within.

Judy’s mouth fell open. “You’re all stupid,” she said. Her eyes lingered on Seb. “Braver than anyone I’ve ever met…but still totally stupid.”

Ivy wasn’t sure where her earlier surge of confidence had come from, but once she’d crawled out of the Great Uncommon Bag and into the Skaptikon it swiftly left her.

At once her ears were assaulted by noises: a roaring wind, the distant clang of metal bars and incoherent shouting. The sounds seemed to permeate right through her skull, stifling her thoughts and blurring her vision. “Argh—” She rubbed her temples as a hand pulled her up off the cold stone floor.

“Just stay still,” Valian said, his voice trembling. “It gets a bit better after a minute or so.”

They were in a windowless room about the size of a changing cubicle. The air was warm, as if they were standing close to an open fire.

“The Skaptikon is messing with our senses.” Valian was shivering. Ivy reached out to him; his skin was like ice.

Seb arched his back and rubbed his shoulder. “I feel bruised. Like I’ve just fallen down some stairs.”

“It must be affecting us all differently.” Ivy was starting to sweat beneath her jacket but decided against taking it off. Johnny Hands had said that the Skaptikon fooled you; perhaps it was tricking their senses, telling them one thing when the reality was quite different.

Valian picked up the Great Uncommon Bag and stuffed it inside his jacket. “There’s no alarm going off; the bag must have worked.”

The three of them examined their surroundings. A ragged hole in one wall appeared to lead out onto a dusty stone staircase covered in thorny weeds. Wind whistled through the opening.

“What do you think this room is?” Seb asked, wincing as he bent to pick up his rucksack. “A cell?”

“The Skaptikon famously doesn’t have cells,” Valian said. “It must be an old warden’s room. They stopped using them after a while; not even the wardens lasted long in this place.” He pulled a small garden trowel out of his inside pocket. Ivy recognized it—Johnny Hands had given it to him last winter; it glowed pale blue when it sensed the presence of the dead. “Hopefully we can use Ivy’s whispering to find the jar and get out of here ASAP.”

Ivy’s face flushed. She didn’t like the thought of them relying on an ability she didn’t fully understand; she’d only really been able to harness her talents once. “I’ll try,” she said with a forced smile. “If the broken soul inside the Jar of Shadows is powerful enough, I could use it as a homing beacon and pinpoint where it’s coming from.” The soul inside the Great Uncommon Bag was stronger than most; she didn’t see why it shouldn’t be the same with the Jar of Shadows.

“Let’s stay close,” Valian suggested, zipping up his leather jacket and rubbing his gloves together to keep warm. “It’ll be better if we face this place together.”

Ivy was still sweltering. Seb drummed his fingers against his thighs, trying to relax. “Think of Johnny Hands’s advice,” she told him. “Try and fool the Skaptikon like it fools you. Beat it at its own game.”

Seb looked at her blankly. “Yeah. Because we all totally understand what that means.”

Ivy led the way out into a series of interweaving staircases, doors, platforms and porticos—all constructed of the same gray stone. Light and shadow fell strangely, so it wasn’t clear where one structure ended and another began. Wind screeched in her ears; she couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

“It’s like this artist I studied at school,” Seb said. “Escher. He painted all these illusions and impossible constructions—stuff where it looked like a staircase was going down, when it was actually going up.”

No wonder it sends you mad, Ivy thought.

She tried to concentrate on her feet, treading carefully over the weed-covered stone. Taking a few steps forward, she reached out with her senses. Echoing voices murmured all around her—the fragmented souls of the dead.

Valian’s trowel glowed brighter. “Could be inmates,” he said. “Or could be Selena and Jack-in-the-Green. Be on your guard.”

Ivy listened carefully to each voice, checking for the jar, but couldn’t find it. After a while searching, she sensed a strange whisper carried on the wind. She closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to distinguish it from the others. It didn’t seem like the mutterings of one of the dead because it wasn’t moving. Instead, it felt trapped. Older. Darker, like someone chanting deep under the earth.

Ivy’s eyes snapped open. “I think I’ve got it,” she announced, surprising herself. It had to be the Jar of Shadows; it sounded similar to the Great Uncommon Bag. “But sensing it isn’t the problem; it’s locating it that’s going to be difficult. We need to go farther in.”

They moved onto a platform with a sheer drop on both sides. Beneath them, a tangle of staircases twisted down into the shadows. Ivy’s sense of perspective warped every time she looked up from her shoes—the gray paths and steps seemed to fracture into jagged pieces and overlap. She didn’t suffer from vertigo, but the feeling was very similar, like seeing your surroundings through a kaleidoscope.

Seb rubbed the space between his eyebrows. “Is it me or does it feel like we’re walking upside down?”

Valian swayed. “Or like the ground is moving.”

“Time to call on a friend, I think.” Ivy reached into her satchel and pulled out Scratch, who was trembling.

“Ivy don’t likings in the Skaptikon,” the bell said, whirring nervously. “Gettings of out?”

“No, Scratch,” Ivy said. “We have to stay in here till we find the Jar of Shadows. Can you help us? What does this place feel like to you?”

“Normals not,” he said in an unsteady voice. “Scratch sensings storm can.”

At that moment a deafening clap split the air. Ivy threw her arms out for balance, the sound reverberating through her bones. “Was that thunder?!” she exclaimed.

“No way.” Seb tipped his head back. “This is impossible.”

It was raining.

Droplets fell from nowhere, spitting off the gray stone. Ivy felt her cheeks; her skin was bone-dry. It must be some kind of illusion. She searched for clouds and instead spotted two figures standing on a platform high above her. One was incredibly tall and green; the other hovered over the floor, robes flapping in the wind. Even through the rain Ivy could see them glaring down at her.

No! Her legs jerked. “Seb! Valian!” she shrieked. “We need to run. Now!”