“Don’t play stupid. Someone helped you through that labyrinth. We couldn’t trace who it was, but I have my suspicions.” He grinned again, showing his teeth. “You’ve always been friendly with this Isaac, but I see it goes further than that. Tell me, what has Anaxomander promised you and Ending for turning on me?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Alice said desperately. “Ending helped me in the labyrinth, I should have told you that, but she asked me to keep it secret, and I didn’t see the harm—”

“Didn’t see the harm in keeping secrets from me? Don’t expect me to believe that.”

The swarmers pushed the book onto the table, edging it back into position where the real book had been. As they were setting it down, one edge slipped on the slick marble, and it dropped into position with a slight thump. Geryon’s eyes flicked over. Alice dropped to her knees and began to sob loudly. She released the thread, summoning a particularly loud moan as the swarmers vanished with faint pops.

“I’m sorry,” she bawled as she hadn’t done for real since she was four years old. “Please. Don’t hurt me.”

Geryon’s eyes narrowed. “Is this supposed to arouse my sympathy?”

“I just . . . Ending said . . .”

“I don’t know what game the two of you are playing,” Geryon said, walking past her, “but I’ll soon find out. That treacherous cat will not be able to help you here. And then we’ll have the truth of where you went while I was away.”

He went to the side table and frowned for a moment at the red book. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Then he snatched it up and flipped the cover open.

“I can see,” he muttered, “that I made a mistake with you—”

Then his expression changed to a wild anger, and he dropped the book as though it were a poisonous snake. He rounded on Alice, who had gotten back to her feet.

“You—” he shouted.

Alice took a step back. Something formed in the air around Geryon, a sphere just a bit bigger than he was, translucent at first but rapidly solidifying. It was a mirror, a curved one, like an enormous drop of mercury, and Alice could see herself reflected huge and distorted in the outer surface.

“Alice!” Geryon’s shout was twisted, like he was speaking into a malfunctioning loudspeaker. “You stupid girl! You don’t knooooooo—”

The voice rose into a scream, not a human shriek but the sound of metal twisting against metal. It climbed higher, through fingernails-on-a-chalkboard and into an impossible, inaudible vibration that bypassed the ears and clawed at the inside of Alice’s head.

Something flickered across the surface of the sphere. A crude face, two black holes for eyes and a slash for a mouth, bent into a slight smile.