“No?” Torment said. “This is my labyrinth. Here am I everywhere and nowhere. I am the walls, the stairs, the floors, and the sky.” His voice rose to a thunderous roar, so loud that Alice had to clap her hands over her ears and squeeze her eyes shut. “Who are you, Reader, to let me do anything?!”

When she opened her eyes, Torment and Jacob were gone. Alice, ears still ringing, ran for the stairs, only to find that Garret and Ellen weren’t where she’d left them. She kept running, taking the steps two at a time, but when she reached the level on which they’d come in, there was no sign of Dex or Soranna. Isaac was nowhere to be seen.

Alice stared around wildly. The pile of books looked different, she was sure of it. She circled it at a run, but couldn’t find the spot where she’d slept. It was hard to tell after running in circles on the staircases, but she thought the doorway was in a different position too.

It’s not the same tower. Her mind filled with panic. He moved me. And now—

She turned around and raced back up the steps, fighting a vicious stitch in her side. By the time she got back to the roof, she was panting for breath, but she flung herself against the rail and looked down for any signs of the other apprentices.

They could be anywhere. In her mind, she could still hear the echoes of Torment’s awful laugh. One? All alone in the dark?

There! A light bloomed, far below, and Alice recognized the piercing beam of Ellen’s halo amidst a small group of hurrying figures. They were running from a tower doorway onto a long bridge—being chased out, Alice saw, by a swarm of flapping, bat-like things. The creatures circled the light in a vast shoal, swinging toward it in unison, only to be driven away by a burst of brilliant energy from Ellen or waves of shadow from Garret. Beside the two teenagers, the other three apprentices ran hunched over, shielding their faces from the swarm of fliers.

Alice looked down at the bridges radiating out from the tower she was standing on and did a rapid calculation. None of them would lead her directly to the others, but one would pass over them. From the right spot, a sufficiently insane person could jump, and hope very hard to be on target . . .