This conversation wasn’t going quite the way Janet had thought it would. She didn’t expect to like Umber, but she hadn’t expected to hate Him so much. She was hoping for more of a charming-supervillain type. That she could relate to. But Umber wasn’t charming. He had a way of not taking responsibility for things. She may have been a bitch, but at least she copped to it.

“This is all really fascinating,” she said. “Truly. But it’s not actually why we wanted to talk to You.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Which by the way,” Josh said, “since we’re talking, why did You sort of run away just then, and then stop running away?”

“Oh!” Umber looked surprised. “I thought you’d like that. Bit of a chase. Wasn’t that what you wanted?”

“Not really, no,” Janet said.

“Though I did like the part when I saved everything,” Josh said. “That was good. You know, with the portal.”

“There!” Umber said. “You see? And you needed the exercise too.”

This had the effect of canceling out Josh’s triumph. Poppy patted his arm.

“Well, whatever,” he said. “Look, what about this apocalypse thing? End of the world. How are we going to stop that? That’s Your thing, right?”

Umber actually looked wounded.

“The apocalypse? Oh, no. That’s not one of Mine.”

“It’s not?” Janet said. “Wait.”

“Goodness no. Why would I do that?”

The two queens and the king looked at each other. Something began dying a little inside Janet. Oh yes—hope. That’s what people called it.

“But if You’re not—?” Poppy said. “Then how are we going to—?”

The astonishment was plain even on Umber’s inhuman face.

“Stop it? You can’t think I would know! I don’t think you can stop it. How would you stop an apocalypse? It’s just nature. It happens by itself.”

“So you can’t . . .” Josh said, but he trailed off.

“But then—” Janet said. She couldn’t finish her sentence either. She’d been sure this was it. The answer, the end of the quest, at last. She’d been so sure.

The impulse came over Janet out of nowhere; nowhere was where she got a lot of her best impulses these days. It suddenly all linked up in her head: Umber had taken Martin’s humanity, and He made it all sound like a lark, like what else could He do? But Martin had become the Beast, the Beast had bitten off Penny’s hands and crushed Quentin’s collarbone and made Alice turn herself into a niffin. And he’d eaten that girl back in school, what was her name. That all went back to Umber.