“That’s because you haven’t got proper fur,” Ashes growled. “It ought to be done away with.”

“We can ask Geryon to get you a nice warm coat.”

He gave her a withering look, and Alice smirked. She put one hand on Ashes’ back to steady him and sprinted ahead of Mr. Wurms. The kitchen door was open, and she slipped gratefully into the warmth.

Mr. Black was waiting for her, a hulking, gigantic figure in coveralls and a dirty cap. His dark curly hair met his beard and mustache to form a thick black mane, from which his eyes peered out, tiny and suspicious. He grunted what might have been a greeting and turned away.

Alice understood, now, why Mr. Black had never liked her. Before she’d arrived, he’d been the chief among Geryon’s servants, but as a magical creature, he would always be inferior in status to a Reader, no matter how young. In the past, he hadn’t been shy about expressing his distaste, but since Alice had kept her mouth shut on the matter of Mr. Black’s selling information to Esau, the big groundskeeper had treated her with a modicum of respect. Mostly this meant avoiding her whenever he could and speaking in monosyllables when he couldn’t.

Now, seeing how he also wouldn’t meet her eyes, Alice wondered if he was afraid of her too. With her threads coiling at the back of her mind, she certainly was no longer afraid of him; he might be big and tough, but he wasn’t as strong as Spike or as indestructible as the Swarm.

“Alice,” he muttered. He didn’t call her “girl” anymore, either. “And the furball. I thought you were banned from the house after that business with the slippers.”

“I am here,” Ashes said primly, “at the master’s invitation, on Mother’s behalf.”

Mr. Black grunted again and glanced at the door, where Mr. Wurms was just entering. “Come on, then. He’s waiting.”

The two armchairs in Geryon’s study had been pushed aside, so Alice and the others had to line up in front of him, like troops being reviewed by a general.

Emma was already there, standing straight-backed, with every indication that she would be willing to do so until she collapsed from exhaustion. She was a skinny, freckled girl, taller than Alice, with a painfully blank expression. Unlike Mr. Wurms and Mr. Black, she was human, and had once been an ordinary girl with the Reader talent, just like Alice. She’d either refused to become Geryon’s apprentice, or failed the old Reader somehow—Alice had never discovered which—and Geryon had removed the talent from her. The procedure had left Emma more like a robot than a human, mindlessly following instructions without any will of her own. The thought that this could have happened to her often figured in Alice’s nightmares.