She grabbed the thing’s back legs and lifted. It was heavy, but Spike’s strength was prodigious. Alice pivoted on one bare foot like a shot-putter, hoisting the rocky creature into the air. She spun in a half circle, building up momentum, then let go. The thing flew across the room and smashed into a wall with a clatter like colliding billiard balls, sliding to the ground amid a new cloud of dust.

Alice waited, panting, to see if it would get up again. The red glow flickered, then grew brighter again, and she saw the dim outline of the dog-thing climbing back to its feet. She frowned.

“You don’t know when to give up, do you?” Alice stalked forward, rock chill against her bare feet—transforming, as always, had left her shoes behind—and raised her hands. “Come on. Let’s get this over with—”

“No!”

Alice stopped in surprise. Another figure, this one humanoid and close to her own size, had appeared from nowhere and put itself between her and the dog-thing. It held a long, black spear, tipped with a dangerous-looking glass shard, which it leveled directly at Alice’s throat.

“No!” the thing said again. “Leave him alone, Reader!”

CHAPTER SIX

FLICKER

ALICE PULLED UP short and called on the devilfish for more light. The dust was clearing, giving her a better look at the person standing opposite her.

He was slim and pale-skinned, wearing only a pair of ragged shorts. Though he had long hair and fine, androgynous features, Alice decided she thought he was a boy. If he’d been human, she would have guessed he was close to her own age. His eyes shone a deep red from within, but it was the brilliance of his hair that held her attention.

To say that it glowed wasn’t doing it justice. It shone like liquid fire. It wasn’t a solid red, but a shifting mass of color, crimson and orange and yellow, swirling and flickering around one another in a never-ending dance. It lit up the tunnel just as real fire would have, the light rising and falling, clashing with the cold green glow of the devilfish.

He was breathing hard, letting out little puffs of steam, and his hands were tight on the shaft of his shaking spear.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. He ought to be able to understand her. Geryon had explained that the magic of Readers allowed them to communicate with practically anything.

“You were hurting Ishi.” The spear-point wavered a little.

“Ishi? That’s your . . . pet?” Alice said. The boy—a fire-sprite, surely—nodded. “It attacked me. I didn’t mean to hurt it.”

“He . . . didn’t know it was you.” The spear dropped a fraction. “You’re not supposed to be up here. No one is. When we heard something moving around, we thought . . .”