Several arms folded down to grab hold of the dinosaur. But Spike was a good deal heavier than he looked, and his charge carried astonishing momentum. One of the monster’s hands managed to close around a horn, only to be wrenched around, as though it had tried to grab hold of a freight locomotive. Spike hit the creature like a lead shot put and barely slowed, carrying the big thing backward until they both slammed into the iron fence at the edge of the roof. Metal popped and groaned, and the pair of them might have gone over if the spider-thing hadn’t reached out with all available limbs and taken hold of the fence on either side. A whole section of iron rails tilted dangerously outward under the combined weight.

Alice darted forward, grabbing the astonished Soranna by the hand.

“Alice.” Soranna blinked. “You came to get—”

“No time. Come on.”

“It can climb the tower,” Soranna said. “We won’t be able to outrun it.”

Alice nodded grimly and dragged Soranna to the top of the staircase. She closed her eyes and felt again for that strange, slippery fabric she had grasped, briefly, that had led her to this tower. There was a tension in it, as if someone else were tugging at the other end, but Alice could still grab hold of a tiny section and pinch. She felt space twisting around her, and without opening her eyes or letting go of Soranna’s hand, she took a blind step forward.

The heat and sullen red light of the tower were gone. When she opened her eyes, the stairway led into a quite different tower, with ordinary stone walls and the usual mound of books in the center of the floor. Alice led Soranna down a few steps, then stopped suddenly as a bolt of phantom pain ripped through her. The spider-thing had lifted Spike into the air, bending the poor dinosaur’s limbs in directions they weren’t meant to go; Alice hurriedly willed him into nonexistence, and at the same time released the pinch of space. The fabric snapped back, the pathway between here and there closed, and they were safe.

“You came to get me,” Soranna said, in her low, whispery voice.

The two girls had collapsed against the pile of books. Alice wished for a moment that Torment would show himself, so she could laugh in his face and scream defiance. She could feel him pull on the fabric, his distant, ice-blue eyes watching her. Go ahead and watch. I’ll save them all.

“Alice?”

Alice realized her attention had drifted. She looked over at Soranna. The girl’s face was flushed, and there were a few ragged tears in her leather clothes, but she didn’t seem seriously injured. Thank goodness.

“Hmm?” Alice said.

“Why?”

“Why what?”