“Yes, sir.” Alice could feel it, a twisting cord the color of yellowed ivory, at the back of her mind with the others.

“Can you summon its power?”

She was tired from the fight, but Alice took hold of the dinosaur’s thread and wrapped it around herself. It required considerable strength.

“Yes, sir.”

“Excellent. How do you feel?”

Looking down at herself, Alice could see nothing obvious had changed. She raised her hand, then took a cautious step.

“As though I were almost weightless, sir.”

“It is your strength that has increased. Try lifting the chair.”

She took hold of the armchair, a heavy wood-and-leather thing that looked like it dated from the previous century. Ordinarily, just pushing it across the floor would have been hard, but she was delighted to find that it came easily off the ground in her grip, as though it were made of straw. It creaked as she held it over her head in one hand, shedding dust everywhere.

“Very good,” Geryon said. “The enhancements of the body are crude tricks, but essential. A Reader should never be balked in a task by mere physical barriers. Let the thread go.”

“Yes, sir.” Alice put the chair down and let the dinosaur’s power slip away. She felt as though she’d suddenly put on a lead coat.

“A word of warning. Lifting things is all well and good, but running and jumping with amplified strength take a bit of practice. I encourage you to experiment, but do so carefully.”

Alice wondered how high she could jump, with the dinosaur’s power coiled in her legs, and resolved to try it at the first opportunity. If I have something soft to land on. “Yes, sir.”

“That will be all. You may have the rest of the day free.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Geryon waved her away, already turning back to his writing. Alice left the study, still dripping muddy water, and headed straight for the bath. Ashes was right—there were definitely advantages to being human, and not having to lick herself clean was one of them.

It had been six months since Mr. Black, Geryon’s right-hand man, had picked her up at the train station in his ancient Model T. She’d arrived at the Library alone in a world that had started fraying dangerously at the edges. She’d gotten hold of a loose thread, that night she’d first seen Vespidian threatening her father. When she’d given it a tug, to her surprise and horror, the whole fabric of normality had crumbled to bits like rotten cloth. Underneath was . . . something else.