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my cookies and opening my windows.”
    “That was me,” I confirmed.
    Once again, the conversation seemed to have reached a dead end.
    “The house...?” I urged her, since that—at least—seemed like something she was willing to talk about.
    “It didn't build itself,” she said. “It didn't furnish itself.”
    “Okay,” I said. This explained nothing. “Emily,” I asked, “what's going on?”
    Emily sighed. “Follow me,” she said, then added—making no attempt to keep me from hearing—“Yeah, like I could stop you.”
    There was a wall of bushes—tall, taller than us—and that's where Emily led me. It was only when we'd come to a space formed by two of the bushes that I caught on. “A maze,” I said, seeing the path before us. “A topiary maze.” “Yup,” Emily agreed. “Just let me get a couple things here, then we can sit down and talk.” She turned right, then left, then left again, and there was an urn of lavender chrysanthemums. Emily cut off all seven of the flowers and tossed them into the basket.
    “Two more,” she said. Either she'd helped design this maze or she'd navigated it quite a few times, for she seemed entirely familiar with its twistings and turnings. We came to another pot, this one holding hollyhocks. I thought I was doing a good job with hiding how impatient I was getting, but maybe not, because she said, “You can save us some time.” She pointed the way we'd been walking. “Around that corner”—it was a right-hand turn—“then take the second left, and there's a vase holding a gerbera daisy. If you can get that for me while I pick these, then we can go back and drink some lemonade on the porch and discuss things.”
    “Okay,” I said.
    It only worked as far as “take the second left.” There was no vase.
    And when I retraced my steps to the pot of hollyhocks—which were all still there, by the way—there was no Emily, either.

Chapter 5
    Amazed
    W ELL , what kind of idiot was I? One of the first things Ms. Bennett had said to me was that she had followed Emily into the game to try to talk her out, and Emily had refused to listen. Why had I expected her to listen to me?
    It wasn't as though Emily had accidentally gotten stuck in here. The note she'd left behind proved that. For whatever reason, she had chosen this. What had made me think she was just hanging around waiting for me to lead her home? Especially after her cool reaction to seeing me. If I'd been paying proper attention, I'd have taken the hint when Emily asked whether it was me or Ms. Bennett who'd been watching her from the kitchen. Ms. Bennett probably wasn't so easy to fool.
    Okay, well, I wouldn't be, either, next time.
    I would just backtrack along the path we had taken into this topiary maze, find her again, and not be so readily put off. Right turn. Left. I would just backtrack...
    Oops, wait a minute, that couldn't be the way. Make that another right. Hmmm ... Was that the urn the chrysanthemums had been in? I thought so, but there was a rosebush growing in it. Which either meant flowers here could change—entirely possible—or this was a different urn we hadn't passed before. Also possible. Two right turns and a left ... Or was that a right and two lefts? Neither way led to the pair of tall bushes that had formed the entry.
    So ... forget trying to backtrack. I had to figure my way out without relying on my demonstrably bad memory of how I'd gotten here.
    Oh, yeah, and I forgot to mention: I hate mazes. They just strike me as aggressive pointlessness.
    At least fifteen frustrating minutes later (not to mention a whole bunch of bushes and urns full of flowering plants), I was seriously considering announcing to the Rasmussem people that I wanted to get out. They could pluck me out of the maze, then drop me off in Emily's vicinity, which they seemed pretty good at. But it would take several minutes for me to revive into reality and then be put back under into the game world, which would