About the Book

A magical world in turmoil . . .

Readers are supposed to live for ever. They’re not supposed to die.

But they can be murdered.

Now it’s up to Alice to catch the culprit. Strange monsters await, and the world is changing all around her.

Things are not as they seem.

It’s almost as if they are trapped in a strange sort of labyrinth . . .

Title Page

Dedication

For Bunker and Dexter, the dogs of my youth

Chapter One: The Swamp

CHAPTER ONE

THE SWAMP

THE SWAMP WAS hot, moist, and silent. For a long time, nothing moved except groping tendrils of fog, playing over the muck and twisting between the hunchbacked trees. An occasional dragonfly skimmed through the reeds on crystalline wings. Overhead, the sun was fat and orange, motionless as if it had been nailed to the pale blue sky.

Then, in the distance, there was the sound of raised voices, and the rustle of someone moving through the underbrush. The dragonflies scattered. A moment later, one of the fogbanks quivered and disgorged a girl, picking her way with caution along a spit of what passed for solid ground.

She was twelve or thirteen, dressed in practical trousers and a leather vest, with her hair tied up to keep it out of the way. She was sweating freely, her pale, freckled cheeks already reddening in the sun, but her eyes were alert, scanning the trees and hollows around her.

Sitting on her shoulder was a small gray cat. His claws were fastened into her vest with desperate strength, as though he was terrified of falling off. Insofar as a cat can have an expression, this one looked very unhappy.

The girl and the cat were named Alice and Ashes-Drifting-Through-the-Dead-Cities-of-the-World (or Ashes, for short), respectively. When they reached the top of the hummock, Alice stopped and turned in a slow circle, while Ashes lashed his tail in an irritable sort of way. It was the cat who finally broke the awkward silence that had grown up between them.

“What,” he said, “are we doing here?”

“We’re looking for some kind of monster,” Alice said. Her master, Geryon, had told her what it was called, some complicated Latin name, but she hadn’t committed it to memory. “I’ve got to fight it. You know.”

“I know why you’re here. This seems like exactly the sort of place you would visit, all mucky water and mud and monsters. What I want to know is why I should have to be here. I’m half cat, after all. I should be above this sort of thing.”

“You are here because you did your business in Master Geryon’s slippers,” Alice said. “Again.”

“He has no proof of that,” Ashes said, tail whipping against the back of her neck.

“There are hardly a lot of suspects,” she said.

“Hmph,” Ashes snorted.

“You should be glad Geryon didn’t turn you into a toad.”