It wasn’t a cat. It was Isaac, coming towards her.

Alice hurriedly let the swarmer disappear and opened her real eyes, wobbling a little as she settled back into her own body. She brushed some of the omnipresent dust off her skirt, squared her shoulders, and turned to face him.

Without the flickering light of a fire behind him, he was considerably less intimidating than he’d seemed that first night. His long, flaring coat was a shabby thing, a blue-grey trench coat so covered in tears and patches that it might conceivably have served in the trenches. It was several sizes too large for him, and the hem trailed on the ground, raising a slow-motion tsunami of dust.

He might be a little older than she was, Alice decided, but he wasn’t any taller. He had a pointed nose, dark, intelligent eyes, and a mop of ragged brown hair.

She crossed her arms and glared at him the way Miss Juniper had glared at her when she’d handed in a page of bad French. To her delight, he wilted like a cut flower.

‘Hello,’ he said. There was, Alice decided, something mouse-like in his expression, a quiver around the eyes that made him look like he was ready to flee at any moment.

‘Don’t you “hello” me,’ Alice said, still channelling her old tutor. ‘I could have been killed!’

Isaac held up his hands defensively. ‘It’s not my fault! How could I know you were a Reader?’

Alice sniffed. ‘That’s still no excuse. You said you were going to use me as bait.’

‘That was a joke,’ Isaac said miserably. ‘More or less, anyway. Look, would it be any help if I apologized?’

‘It would be a start.’

‘I’m sorry that I said I would use you as bait. And for the rest.’

He wore such a kicked-puppy expression that Alice felt herself softening a little. It was true, of course, that he’d had no way of knowing she was a Reader, since Alice herself had had no idea at the time. And it was all part of Geryon’s plan, in a way.

That thought made her a little uneasy. Isaac was not part of Geryon’s plans. Ending had brought him to look for the book she called the Dragon, and she and Ashes were concealing him from the old Reader. Alice didn’t know why, but the very fact that they were keeping it a secret meant that Geryon probably would not approve. She got that stomach-twisting feeling again.

‘All right,’ Alice said, eyeing Isaac cautiously. ‘I didn’t die, no thanks to you. But I’m still not sure I should be talking to you.’

‘Ending said she was going to explain,’ Isaac said.