“And then you tried to make a land!” She was speechless with silent laughter for a few seconds. “Oh my God, it’s so pathetic! You—Quentin, you could never make anything! Don’t you see? How could somebody like you create something that was alive? You’re a hollow man! There’s nothing inside you. All you could make was that cold, dead mirror-house.

“And do you know why? Because all you ever do is what you think people expect you to do, and then you feel sorry for yourself when they hate you.”

“I’ve changed a lot, Alice,” Quentin said. “Maybe that was true once, I don’t know. But I’ve changed a lot in seven years.”

“No. You haven’t.”

“Think about this: could the Quentin you knew have made you human again?”

Alice was silent for a few seconds, long enough that Plum jumped in.

“Why are you telling us all this anyway?” Plum appeared to have had enough of Alice. “I mean it’s fascinating and all, but it’s sort of not what we expected.”

“I am telling you this,” Alice hissed, “so that he knows what he did.” She was answering Plum, but she stared at Quentin.

“Tell me what I did.” Quentin stared back at her. Her eyes had changed—they weren’t quite the same eyes she’d had before. “I want to know.”

“Then listen: you robbed me.” She spat it. But she was already losing steam, she didn’t even have the energy to be angry anymore. “I was perfect. I was immortal. I was happy. You took all that away from me. Did you expect me to be grateful? Did you? I didn’t want to be human again, but you dragged me back into this body.”

She held up her hands like they were low-grade meat, a butcher’s discards.

“I lost everything, twice. The first time I gave it up. But the second time you stole it.”

CHAPTER 26

Another tremor. It shook Umber awake. He opened His eyes.

“My heart,” He whispered.

But when Janet looked away from the sunset, the sunfall, the god was already gone.

Lots to do. World ending. Can’t hang around. He bounced back pretty fast from His beating, she would give Him that. It crossed her mind that maybe He’d been faking—maybe He’d gone down easy, taken a dive. It would have been like Him.

Either way she was kind of relieved Umber was gone. She didn’t especially want to spend the end of the world with Him.