Ending nodded. “Something,” she said, “has gone very badly wrong.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

LIGHTING A BEACON

“BUT THE SPELL worked,” Alice said, putting a hand on The Infinite Prison. The disconcerting buzz had vanished. “It’s holding. I can feel it.”

“It worked,” Ending said. She padded back and forth, more agitated than Alice had ever seen her. “The problem is that everyone felt it. Geryon must have had a personal ward I didn’t know about. When it collided with the spell, it radiated energy on an incredible scale. The very fabric of the labyrinth itself seems to have been affected. An old Reader could sense power like that on the other side of the planet. My brothers and sisters are contacting me to ask what happened. When I don’t have a good answer for them, they’re going to come and investigate. And half the library is going mad.”

Ending looked over Alice’s shoulder, eyes distant as she felt the weave. “Every creature on the other side of a portal is trying to get through, and some of them are succeeding.”

“What do we do?”

“You’ll have to speak to them.”

“Speak to them?” Alice said. “What am I supposed to say?”

“Reassure them,” Ending muttered. “They are gathering right now, and Ashes should be back in a few moments with Mr. Black.” Ending had summarily dispatched the cat back to the house the moment Alice and Ashes had appeared in the library.

“How am I supposed to reassure anyone?”

“I don’t care,” the big cat snarled. “Think of something. A few jittery sprites are hardly our biggest problem right now! It won’t be long until the other Readers respond. I’m trying to stall . . .”

She vanished into the shadows with a swish of her ebony tail. Alice turned and saw that the aisle she’d come down now led to a large open space among the shelves, in which a crowd was already gathering.

It was certainly the strangest crowd Alice had ever seen. No two people in it were alike. A tall gentleman in an elegant dark suit, expertly tailored to accommodate his six arms, stood beside a smoke-belching clockwork spider. A young woman appeared to be melting, her form sagging and indistinct. Several variations on the basic theme of sprites—thin, gangly humanoids with colorful eyes and hair—stood in a group, glaring daggers at one another. In the back, a lion with a human face and a crocodile tail sat in a prim, Sphinx-like pose that reminded Alice of Ashes when he was being particularly difficult.

Ashes himself arrived just as she’d nerved herself to step out in front of this bizarre multitude, with Mr. Black, Mr. Wurms, and Emma on his heels. The cat dashed out in front of the crowd and over to Alice, and she scooped him up and set him on her shoulder.

“What did Mother say?” he whispered.