Myrnin stripped his black velvet coat off his right arm, then shrugged it down his left until it was covering the chain. He took hold of it, right-handed, and pulled. Claire tried to get up to help, but her head went weird again, and she had to rest. She rolled on her side and watched Myrnin’s right arm tremble as he tried to exert enough pressure to snap the chain, and then he sat back against the wall, panting.

He stared at Ada as if he wanted to rip her into confetti.

“Don’t pout,” she said. “If you’re good, I’ll let you off the chain from time to time. In a few years, perhaps”

Claire blinked slowly. “She’s sick,” she said. “Isn’t she?”

“She’s insane,” Myrnin said. “Ada, my darling, this would be amusing if you weren’t trying to kill us. You do realize that if I die, you waste away down here. No more blood. No more treats. No more anything.”

In answer, Ada’s image reached out and grabbed Claire by the hair, dragging her up to a sitting position. “Oh, I think I can hunt up my own blood,” Ada said. “After all, I control the portals. I can reach out and snatch up anyone I wish. But you’re right. It would be terribly boring, all alone in the dark. I’ll have to keep you all to myself, the way you kept me all to yourself, all these years.” She dropped Claire and wiped her hand on her computer-generated gown. “But I can’t share you with her, my love.”

Myrnin’s eyes flared red, then smoothed back to black, full of secrets. “No indeed,” he said. “Why, she’s in the way. I see that now. Send her out of here, lock her out of the portals. I never want to see her again.”

“Easily done,” Ada said, and grabbed Claire’s hair again. She dragged her backward, and Claire flailed weakly, grabbing at loose stones and breaking nails on sharp edges of rock.

She looked over her shoulder in the direction they were going.

Ada was dragging her to the edge of the sinkhole.

“No!” Myrnin said, and got to his feet. He lunged to the end of his chain, reaching out; his clawing fingers fell short of Claire’s foot by about two inches. “No, Ada, don’t! I need her!”

“That’s too bad,” Ada said. “Because I don’t.”

Claire’s hand fell on a sharp, ancient bone—a rib?—and she stabbed blindly behind her head. A second later it occurred to her that she was trying to stab an image, a hologram, an empty space—but Ada let out a yell and the pressure on Claire’s hair eased.

Ada’s pressed both hands over her midsection, which slowly spread into a black stain.

She was bleeding.

Where the blood hit the stone, it vanished in a curl of smoke.