I almost cried writing that last chapter. I swear :( There's only one song that I could listen to while writing this: 42 by Coldplay.

Anyways, I was phone shopping today. I hate data plans. They're too expensive. Technology is a blessing and a burden. Which is why all I want for my birthday is art supplies, GameStop and Barnes & Noble gift cards, and for my parents to start buying more chocolate.

So about the story. How do you guys like it so far? I have to say I've had the best time writing this and I've become attached to every single character in this. I can't pick a favorite! At least not without there being a tie. I don't think I have the heart to kill anyone off… yet :)

Confession #4: I love old things. History, antiques, and all that jazz. If it happened between the Minoans and the turn of the 20th century, I love it. Oh, and also, I'm a girl. I'm setting the record straight.

Well that's enough from me. I'm going to save you all, because last I remember you were hanging over the side of a cliff. This is a rather long chapter, so get comfortable.

Review!

Cassia wrapped Holly up in her arms, sobbing. She'd awoken a few moments after she passed out, only to find that she was still in the gallery, and Holly was still there, lying in her own blood, and Garry was just being strong because Cassia wasn't. She couldn't possibly be strong. Not after this.

"Come on, Holly," she said, brushing Holly's blood-matted hair back from her forehead. She was pale, and she wasn't breathing. She was certainly not coming to anytime soon. "Don't leave me. I saved you once, I'll do it again. I'll do it a million times. Toby needs you. Please don't die…"

Garry hadn't said a word, he just knelt beside Cassia while she rocked, holding Holly in her arms. Blood covered her shirt, but she didn't care. I can't lose her… I can't lose her…

"Cassia…"

"What?" she squeaked.

"She's not coming back," he said as calmly as he could.

"No. She'll come back," Cassia insisted. "She has to."

He was silent once more as she leaned over Holly's small form, her tears dried up. She ran her hand over the gashes on her arms, dripping blood to the floor. A bump formed on her forehead, and bruises lined her arms. She looked like an angel that fell from heaven, only to be beaten and scarred by humanity. Cassia's heart lurched, and she bit on her fist to keep from crying again. She felt a small bulge in her dress pocket, and she slipped her hand inside and took out the object. It was the stem of a rose, attached to the bud of it. Petals fell out of her pocket as she drew it out. Cassia gasped and realized something: We can save her. We just need water…

But there was none. The room was barren, and she would be dead before they could find another vase. She howled in frustration, and Garry opened his mouth to say something, but she held up a finger, indicating him to wait. She leaned over Holly and put her ear to her chest. She listened hard, and suddenly she heard the small, faint, dying beat of a heart. She hadn't noticed it before, but she was breathing quickly and shallowly, but she breathed nonetheless.

And suddenly Cassia had a plan.

"Garry, take her," she transferred Holly into his arms, where she hung limply. He propped her head up and held her like you would hold a baby. He looked down at her with a broken expression.

She didn't answer him. She yanked the flap of her bag open and fished around for a paintbrush. She finally found one big enough and pulled it out, along with a tube of paint she had. Before she left school, she had contemplated not bringing the paint, since in the gallery she would only be allowed to draw, and now she was thankful she'd brought it. She uncapped the paint tube and squeezed a dollop onto her palm, using it as a crude palate. She ran over to the wall and Garry looked at her strangely.

"What are you doing?" he lifted an eyebrow.

"Trust me, I know what I'm doing. Just keep talking to Holly; keep her here," Cassia assured him.

"Whatever you're doing, do it fast," he nodded.

Cassia slathered the paintbrush with paint, then began to paint on the wall. She recalled what the vase looked like, or at least its slight shape, and traced it's design. Fat, thin, fat, she made the design, then came around and drew it again, leaving the top open. Inside she drew what could be interpreted as water. She didn't have time to be intricate. She worked to add as much detail as possible, and when she was finished she stepped backwards. The wall shimmered a bit, then she reached her hand towards the wall, and her hand passed through it.

Her hand closed around cool glass and as she drew her fisted hand out she almost cried in relief. She was holding a glass vase, about half full with water. It worked! I can't believe it! She rushed over to Garry, who was looking at her like she'd just dropped out of the sky.

"How did you…?"

"Give me her rose! Quickly!" he handed her Holly's rose. The little yellow petal was withering as the seconds passed and the life ebbed out of Holly. She put it in the vase and prayed, her hands tightening around the neck of the vase. She shut her eyes and held her breath, and soon she heard a little cough as the water glowed and petals formed on Holly's rose again. Garry breathed a sigh of relief as the gashes on Holly's arms began to heal over, and her chest rose and fell, stronger this time. Her eyes fluttered open.

"Garry?" she said meekly. She looked over to Cassia. "Cassia?"

"it's okay, honey," Cassia was crying again. "You're okay."

Tears rolled down Holly's face too, and she said, "Was I dead?"

"Almost, Holly," Cassia couldn't bring herself to lie to her. Holly was smarter than that. "What happened to you? When we left Reyna's room, you were gone How did you end up here, and how did you get wounded like that?"

"I don't know how I left Reyna's room, but during the split, I just kind of… appeared. Or at least, that's what Toby told me. I was traveling with Ib, Toby, and Adrian, and we got into this maze. There was a locked door, and suddenly Ib went back into the maze, almost in a trance. We all went in after her, but every one of us got separated, and I got chased by a statue… it got me and gave me these," she looked down at her arms and gasped. "My cuts! They're gone!"

Cassia held up the vase. 'Remembered when I painted that door, back when it was just you and me? I did the same thing and came up with a vase for your rose. I'm not going to lie… it was touch and go for a while."

"I told you that you were magic," she smiled for the first time since she'd woken up.

"It was incredible," Garry said, half to himself.

"There was another thing," Holly turned back to Cassia. "Before I blacked out… I don't know if it was real… Nothing seemed real in that maze…"

"What?" Garry prompted.

"I think I saw Mary," Holly shuddered.

"What? When?" Cassia was shocked.

"When I was running from the statue, I kept hearing her giggle. I heard it when I disappeared from Reyna's room too. I could see her turn corners, and when I lost the statue and blacked out, she was there, and the last thing I heard before I went under was… was…"

"Yes?"

"'You're safe with me, Holly'," Holly buried her face in Garry's coat. "I don't know what happened between then and now."

"Are you okay to stand up?" Garry helped her up, and she held a little hand to her forehead. The bump was growing smaller.

"Yeah, I think so," Holly took a few steps towards Cassia and gave her a hug. "I was really scared, Cassia. I was all alone."

"I was scared for you," Cassia stroked her hair.

But Cassia couldn't quite shake the thought that Mary did something with holly before she returned her. Just this once… is this some kind of mind game? Cassia thought. She knew that it was Holly's blood on the walls. And from what she knew, it was in Mary's handwriting. Mary had access to Holly long before Cassia and Garry did, and whatever she did to her, it couldn't be good.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Ib?" Ib was surprised to hear a voice behind her. The first one she'd heard since she'd gone into the maze, actually. She turned around and saw Toby running towards her. His glasses were tucked in his pocket, and Ib could see that they were cracked. He had a few scratches on his face, but nothing too severe. What had happened?

"Toby?" she said as he stopped in front of her. "Where's Holly? And Adrian?"

"I lost Holly in the maze. Adrian, too," Toby's expression was worrisome. "I've been trying to track Holly, don't but I can't find her no matter what I do. I did find something, though."

"What?"

He held out his hand, and in his palm was a blue key. It looked like Ib's red one. "It was on a pillar sometime back. It might go to the door we saw."

"I found a red one like that," she fished around in her pocket and brought out the key she'd found. "The reason I ran into the maze is because I remembered exactly where to go to find this key. I did it last time I was here. Thing might have changed a bit, but it's good that we have more than one."

"But that also means that there's more than one door."

"Yes, it does," Ib nodded.

"Which means we're going to have to choose. Again."

"True again."

"We should try to find Adrian first," Toby said. "And Holly."

Ib agreed, and they went back into the maze.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Oh great," Garry muttered as they reached the end of the hallway.

The hall stretched in two directions, but it was as big as a room. The floor was tiled in all directions with different colors and patterns. Some were flowers, some umbrellas, some sunbursts, stars, faces, wands, trees, etc. On the far side of the wall, there was an abstract picture of delicate swirls and flourishes. The tiles were about a foot by a foot, and the three closest to them were in three colors: red, blue and yellow.

"Last time we had a red, blue, and yellow anything together…" Garry shook his head. "It was Ib, Mary, and I. How the times have changed."

"What are we supposed to do?" Holly asked.

"I have a feeling," Cassia stepped onto the red tile, and it as soon as she put her full weight on the tile, it sank into the floor about a half inch.

Suddenly, there was a grinding sound and leading from her tile, the tiles began to flip over, one by one. Garry counted one, two, three tiles up, and one to the right. She looked back at them and prompted them to do the same. Garry stood on his, and so did Holly, but their didn't do the same thing. Garry's went up only two, and Holly's went up one, then over one, then up one, then over one again. The tiles had letters on them. It was neither in Mary nor Belle's handwriting:

HELP IS HERE

"What does that mean?" Holly asked.

"I don't know," Garry said.

He took a tentative step forward, and followed his path to the end. He stepped forward off the "I" in "IS" and onto the tile in front of it. The tile sank into the ground, and there was a sound like metal on stone. Cassia looked up and screamed, "Garry! Look out!"

Garry barely had time to step back before a huge blade dropped from the ceiling. It grazed by his nose, missing him by inches, and he fell back onto the "S". The blade retracted back into the ceiling, and Garry looked up. The tiles on the floor exactly matched the ones on the ceiling. Which meant…

"If we make a wrong step, something bad happens," Garry's words returned to him as soon as his heart stopped pounding. "And I don't think it's going to be a blade next time."

"So how do we know which tiles we can step on?" Cassia asked, her face as pale as his.

"Well, I don't think we can move diagonally, which leaves three options for all of us," Garry said. "Forward, left, or right. So there's a two in three chance we'll be wrong. One in two for me right now, since I know it's certainly not front."

"I hate those odds," Holly squeaked.

"And what do they mean by, 'Help is here'?" Cassia asked.

"There must be a clue in this room," Garry looked around.

"Could the painting have something to do with it?" Cassia provided.

"Maybe," Holly said. "But it looks like a bunch of scribbles."

"It's abstract," Cassia retorted. "You need to look at it through an artist's perspective."

"What does it look like to you, then?" Garry said.

She looked at the picture again, then took a shaky step to the right (front for her but right for Garry). The tile sunk down and she flinched, but nothing happened. Instead, tiles flipped out from there once more, and Cassia looked relieved. They went in a straight line to the right. There weren't words on these tiles.

"How did you do that?" Garry asked.

"See that little red swirl?" she pointed to the picture. He saw it; it was almost too small to see, but he did. "Well, there's a line coming straight from there, and a line that looks like it's going right."

"Hm," Garry was impressed.

"That blue swirl? I'm pretty sure that's you. And that yellow blob is Holly," Cassia said.

"I still can't believe you can see that," Garry shook his head.

"Maybe Guertena intended for an artist to interpret it," Holly said.

"Garry, try going left," Cassia said.

Garry stepped to the left, and it worked. The tiles flipped out to the right and he counted about eight. It intersected Holly's tiles, so when he reached her, she was able to join him on his tiles, which shifted to be two wide so they could both walk to the end. It was like the gallery knew everything they were about to do. It was completely creepy.

"Now what?" Garry said.

"I have to get over there," Cassia said, looking back at the painting. "We just have to keep paying attention to the painting."

So they did. Eventually, they all made it onto the same platform, and the path was three wide. They kept following the obscure directions on the abstract piece of Guertena's artwork until they could see regular flooring at the end. At points, they strayed so far from the painting that Cassia would have to retrace her steps to go back and look at the painting for instructions. Garry was paranoid every time that happened, because there was always the chance she would accidentally step off the path. He always seemed to remain calm on the outside, though, which was handy because he has his cowardly moments every now and again.

Garry was finally able to feel safe when they got off the tiles at the other end of the long room. There was a door in front of them, and when they were all safely across the sea of dangerous tiles, Garry said, "Everyone in one piece? No limbs missing?"

"Nope," Cassia said.

"All here," Holly piped up.

"Well," Garry stepped away. "Ladies first."

Cassia smiled as she passed by him to open the door. But that relief was short lived, because staring her down were two huge red eyes that belonged to a massive blue face with stitches on the mouth and matted black hair. Like the dolls they saw in the hallway, but bigger. So much bigger.

She screamed as the creature roared and clawed forward, bloodlust in its eyes.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Adrian lurched forward and grabbed the key off the pedestal. He looked at it in his hand, pondering what it could go to. It was purple, like his rose, and the metal was cold, like no one had touched it in a while. His fingers curled around it and he shoved it into his pocket. Maybe it went to something. The door, maybe? He didn't know. He turned around and went down the hallway. Suddenly, he heard footsteps coming from behind him. No way. Not another one of those things.

"Adrian!"

Wait. Statues don't talk. "Ib?"

Ib and Toby rushed around the corner and Toby said, "Thank God. Have you seen Holly around here? What about a key? We need one more."

"No to Holly, but I did find a key," Adrian said.

Toby's face darkened, but Ib said, "Well, it's good you found the key. Have you seen another door besides the one we found?"

"No," he said.

"Then these three keys must open that one door. We just needed to have them all," Toby said.

They tried to retrace their steps as best they could, but it still took them a while to find the door again. This time, Adrian, Toby, and Ib all had their keys. While they were gone, somehow two new locks had appeared. Now they show up… Adrian thought with a snort. Adrian took his out of his pocket and gave it to Ib, and Toby did the same. She stuck the blue one into the first lock, but it didn't work. She tried the others, and it fit in the third. Then she did the same with the other two, finding which one they fit in.

"They should be color coded," Ib muttered, and Adrian chuckled under his breath,

She turned them all, starting with the first and working her way down, when she was done, the knob turned by itself and the door swung open. The corridor in front of them was dimly lit, and as they stepped in, Adrian noticed something on the floor and stopped Ib and Toby before they could step forward.

The floor was covered in tiles.

And they weren't alone.