The bravado she’s displaying now is her move in the game. Her bluff. In fact, we’ve been playing a game of chess this entire time. I just didn’t realize it until now.

The reason she’s been so harsh? Her motivation for ordering me around like she’s my boss? It’s because I have all the power in this relationship. Not her. I decide what the future will hold. I determine whether or not she’ll even exist. Not the other way around.

And she’s absolutely terrified I’ll figure that out.

“You lied to me,” I say calmly. “Why?”

“On the contrary, I’ve never lied to you,” she says. “At least not yet.”

Not yet? I push up the overlong sleeves of my robe. “It’s only been three days! How can you have already forgotten?”

Four, five, six seconds pass. “Ah, but it hasn’t been three days. At least not for me,” she says finally. “You’re used to thinking about time as fixed. Linear. But all those concepts go out the window when it comes to traveling through the fourth dimension.

“For you, three days have passed. For me, in the future, it could’ve been any amount of time. I could’ve squished all my visits into a single day…or spread them out over a few years.”

I stare at my jellyfish, turning over her words. The fake sea jelly travels along the bottom of the lamp, its tentacles trailing behind. When it hits the wall, it arcs into the water above, sometimes returning to the beginning of the path, sometimes to the midpoint.

A thought niggles at the edge of my mind. Something big, even huge. I just can’t quite grasp it.

“Don’t question so much.” The Voice takes on her now-familiar lecturing tone. “I’m not your adversary. We have a real enemy, one who will destroy—and has destroyed—the world. You need to focus your energies on stopping them, not dissecting my every word.”

“Do you mean Archie?” I ask. “Or Lee? Zeke? Cristela?”

She sighs. “I told you, Alice. I can’t tell you who the Maker is. You have to reach your own conclusions.”

What? We’re back to this again? But she already revealed the Maker’s identity, albeit a fake one. Why is she still insisting that I reach my own conclusions?

Argh. I want to pull out my hair at the lack of answers. I want to wrap my hands around her neck—my neck—and shake until she gives them to me.

In fact, I do. Span my fingers around my neck and squeeze, until the pressure is uncomfortable but not quite suffocating. “I’m done with your evasion,” I snarl. “You gave me the name of the target, but you were lying. Explain yourself. Now.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says.