‘Ashes?’ she said quietly, one hand clapped to her lacerated shoulder. ‘Where are you?’

‘Right here, you half-blind two-legs,’ the cat said. She felt his tail brush against her shin. ‘All right, very clever, you put one over on old Ashes. I like the “clueless little girl” act, it’s quite good. Now, I assume you’ve got a plan?’

‘A plan?’

Alice blinked and held up a hand, trying to find the outline of her fingers. Her eyes were adjusting to the gloom, and she could just make out that they were in a small room, like a cellar, with arched doorways in all four walls. The light was coming from something growing on the brickwork, hanging in great glowing strips, like tattered wallpaper painted with the guts of fireflies.

Ashes sounded annoyed. ‘Yes, a plan! For getting out of here.’

‘I don’t even know where here is,’ Alice said. ‘How could I possibly have a plan?’

‘It’s no good trying to keep up the act now,’ Ashes said. ‘You’re one of them, obviously. A Reader. Very clever of you to have Geryon go around telling everyone you’re his half-wit niece.’

‘I have no idea what he tells people,’ Alice said, a bit testily. ‘And I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t have a plan. You told me the book would only give me a headache!’

‘I didn’t think you could Read it!’ Alice could hear the capital letter. ‘Isaac was only making a joke!’

‘If you explain it to me,’ Alice retorted, ‘maybe I’ll start laughing.’

She reached out to the closest wall. The bricks felt real enough under her fingers, with rounded corners and ancient, flaking mortar. She ran a hand along the glowing moss and found her skin coated with flakes of dust that shimmered a brief, brilliant green and then faded. She could see now that each of the four doorways led to a narrow corridor with a low ceiling and a central gutter full of a few inches of stagnant, fetid water.

‘It feels like a sewer,’ she said aloud. ‘I saw pictures of the New York sewers in a book once. Are there sewers under the library?’

She could see Ashes staring at her, two brilliant rings in the darkness. His yellow eyes were tinged with green in the glow from the walls.

‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ the cat said. ‘You don’t know what’s happened.’

‘No! For the last time, you . . . stupid cat, I don’t know anything!’

‘Well.’ Ashes blinked and paced around in a circle, tail whipping. ‘I should probably tell you, then, that we’re definitely going to die.’

There was a long moment of silence.

‘Die?’ Alice said. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Expire. Cease. End. Shuffle off this mortal coil. I assume you’re familiar with the concept. Although at this point I suppose I shouldn’t assume you’re familiar with anything.’