“Okay,” Ashes said. “I’ll tell Mother you’re safe. She’ll be glad to hear it.”

I bet she will. She still didn’t know what to think about Ending, or how much she was going to tell her. Later.

Ashes withdrew, and Alice shut the door the rest of the way. She took the pitcher of iced water from the platter and drank quite a lot of it, then forced herself to eat one of the sandwiches. After that, her eyes started to close of their own accord, and she just managed to stagger over to the bed before sleep closed around her like a warm, fuzzy blanket.

Chapter Twenty-nine: And If You Wrong Us

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

AND IF YOU WRONG US . . .

GERYON WAS RUNNING, his whiskers wild and disheveled, his robe flapping around him. He was in a complicated tangle of brick walls, taller than a man, marking out narrow corridors, turns, and junctions, like a maze from a children’s puzzle book built full-scale. His threadbare slippers flapped and scraped against the cobblestones underfoot.

“You don’t know what you’re doing!” he shouted. “We’ll destroy you for this! You don’t have a chance!”

Alice regarded him with unblinking black eyes. Her body was huge, six-legged, magnificently strong and armored in scales. She was the Dragon. She towered above the walls of the maze, and when she took a step forward, bricks crunched and exploded under her claws.

“You might as well give up!” Geryon said. He sounded as tiny and pathetic as he looked, hurrying along the brick corridors, his ample stomach bouncing with every step. “There’s nothing you can do against me!”

Alice chuckled, and it was a vast, booming sound. She took another step forward, effortlessly crossing corridors it would have taken Geryon hours to get through, and put her foot down right behind the fleeing Reader. He jumped into the air at the sound of crumbling masonry, and ran even faster, zigging and zagging desperately through the maze in an effort to get away from her. It was no use, though. Every time he tried to escape, the walls of the maze turned him back, leading him inexorably on a path back toward where Alice was waiting.

“I’m warning you!” Geryon wheezed, gasping for breath. “You’ve got one last chance to turn back.”

“You lied to me,” Alice rumbled. The buzz of her voice made stones jump in the piles of rubble by her feet. “You let my father die. You watched it happen.”

“So what?” Geryon’s lips turned down petulantly. “He would have died anyway. It doesn’t make a bit of difference. He wasn’t one of us, he didn’t matter.”

“Shut up!” Alice roared, lunging forward. She planted a huge claw on either side of him, leaning down until her shadow fell across the Reader. “You have no idea what matters. You’ve never cared about anyone but yourself. You deserve . . .”