That sounded like Ending, all right. The great shadowcat never said or did something simple if there was a way to make it obscure and complicated. That went hand in hand with being the guardian of a forbidden library, Alice supposed, but it made her frustrating.

Her secrecy also made Alice’s relationship with her master more complicated. As far as Geryon knew, Ending barely talked to Alice; in fact, the black cat often appeared when she was deep in the library on some task, and helped her practice aspects of her magic that Geryon had neglected. Just why Ending did this, Alice had no idea, but after the help Ending had offered trapping Vespidian, she didn’t feel in a position to refuse.

The other thing Alice had never told Geryon about was Isaac, the other apprentice who’d broken in to the Library, and the way the two of them had worked together to bind the Dragon. Officially, she was still angry with Isaac for the trick he’d played on her, making her think he’d wanted to kiss her when he was only stealing the Dragon book for himself. But she found herself wishing sometimes that he would turn up, so she could be angry with him in person. At night, she found herself reaching out for the Dragon’s thread, black and imperturbable as stone. Every so often she could feel the faintest of vibrations through it, and she knew that somewhere, in some world, Isaac was reaching out too.

The sun was slipping behind the trees, and this line of thought made her melancholy. Alice bid Ashes good-bye and went back up to the house to eat the dinner the invisible servants set for her. It was delicious, as always, but she found she barely tasted it. Her thoughts kept drifting back to her father, and what he would think of what she had become. When she was full, she went upstairs and tried to shake the feeling with a solid dose of last-century German philosophy, always guaranteed to produce a good night’s sleep.

Once she was asleep, though, she dreamed.

Chapter Three: Central Park

CHAPTER THREE

CENTRAL PARK

IT WAS A perfect autumn afternoon, the air just chilly enough to put a little color in Alice’s cheeks, but drenched in golden sunlight that made her feel deliciously warm and sleepy. She lay on a blanket beside the demolished remains of a picnic lunch. Her father sat next to her, his back propped against a tree stump, with his hands behind his head and his hat tipped down over his eyes.