eyes stung, but I refused to cry. This wasn’t the moment for tears. This was the moment for action.
“On the upside, no ghost baker. Nima’s all about finding silver linings.” My heart thumped hollowly. My strong and resilient mother would’ve known exactly what to do.
I was a such sorry excuse for a future queen. Seventeen and still completely reliant on her parents. I held on to that . . . the will to see them again—I was not dying in this damned place. I sidestepped Remo and went after the source of the beeping. Beside the front door, a red pinprick blinked in the corner of a bulky cream box containing an outdated keypad with ten rubbery buttons ranging from 0 to 9 set underneath a screen with four dashes.
“I’m guessing we’re supposed to find a four-digit code.” Remo’s voice scraped across my temple, blowing against my damp hair. Did he have to stand so close?
“You think?” I squirmed to the side, so that his chin wasn’t propped against the back of my skull.
He shot me a glare that would’ve made a lesser woman shrink, or at least one who wasn’t inflated on adrenaline and enchanted pie. “Do you have any constructive input, prinsisa? Like perhaps an idea as to what numbers we should . . . punch.”
I didn’t think it was the keypad he wanted to punch. “This place’s creation. In Earthly years.” In Neverrian years, we were still celebrating new years in three digits.
Remo lifted his finger to the keypad. “What year was it created?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, that’s going to help.” He started to lower his hand but then raised it again and hit: 1-7-7-5. The little light stopped blinking but stayed red. Was that a good sign?
“Why 1775?”
“It’s my grandfather’s Earthly year of bir—”
The box shrieked.
I slapped my palms over my ears as Remo let out a new string of expletives and tried two other combinations. His year of birth: 2018—why he would think that could be the code was beyond me—and then the current Earthly year: 2124. And then he punched 2-0-3, his index hovering between the numbers five and six. “What’s your birth year?” he yelled over the loud screeching.
“Five!”
He punched the five. The keyboard kept trilling and the light stayed red.
Remo struck it with his fist. The light neither magically turned off nor did it quiet. He growled and raised his fingers to the sides of the box, trying to pry it off the wall, but like the bricks behind it, the box was indestructible.
Panting hard, he lowered his hands and fisted them at his sides.
I racked my brain for combinations but there were too many to try out. I stared around the room, on the lookout for numbers. None had magically appeared on the walls, or on the tables. The only thing that had magically appeared in this room, which hadn’t been there before, was the damn pie.
Remo must’ve followed my gaze because he muttered something—probably roared it, but since my palms were still sandwiched on either side of my head, it sounded unintelligible.
Suddenly, the high-pitched wailing stopped. We both spun back toward the box, hopeful to find the light off. It wasn’t. It had simply gone back to blinking, and then the beeps started again. I lowered my hands, the sound bearable but most definitely not enjoyable.
“What’s Linus’s year of birth?” Remo asked gruffly.
“Um. At the start of the 1800s, but I don’t know the exact date.”
“Well that’s gonna help.”
I’d have stuck my tongue out at him if I weren’t so busy gnawing on my bottom lip. “He was forty-four when he died.” I remembered this because Iba had just turned forty-four, and he’d mentioned something about being the same age as his father had been on the Day of Mist.
“Did he ever live on Earth? Because if he did that would change the calculations.”
“I don’t know . . .”
Remo sighed. “Well he died the year I was born. And forty-four times five is . . .”
“Two-fifteen.”
“So, that would mean he was born in . . .”
“1803,” I said, almost without thinking.
Remo hiked up an eyebrow.
“What? I love math.”
“I see that.” He lifted his hand back to the keypad and punched in 1-8-0-3.
The light and sound went crazy again.
He tapped 1800 and all the other combinations until he got to 1810.
I clawed at my ears since clawing at the damn box was useless. I knew prison wasn’t supposed to be fun, but come on . . . this was taking torture to