“Miranda, believe me, there are many things that I cannot do, and some things I can only do with the assistance of mortals. I am grateful for your help.”

She stood up and considered the landscape. “How do I handle the nightmare maze? What did I do wrong that made me run into a dead end?”

“You did nothing wrong. A dead end means something you don’t yet understand or can’t face.” He said it in a neutral tone, careful not to upset her again.

She glanced down at him, then started to walk toward the maze. Startled, he scrambled up and followed her.

“I’m going in again,” she insisted, striding with determination.

“Of course you are,” he said gently, “but last time you went in fearful. This time you’re going in angry. There may be some effects.”

She turned on him fiercely. “Then you go in with me. Hold my hand, or whatever is necessary.”

Chance blinked, startled into stillness. He slowly nodded. “I can do that.”

He held out a hand to her. She took it as carefully as she had touched the angel’s finger, and that new reserve to her movements told him that she was now fully aware of the otherworldliness in him that she had chosen to overlook before. She even squeezed it slightly, as if testing the strength of the illusion of bones and sinew beneath the indigo skin.

She exhaled and closed her eyes. “Go ahead. Lead me.”

He led her in.

First there was darkness, then the sound of laughter in a boy’s voice, harsh and loud and self-conscious, as if laughing to prove his amusement to someone else. They walked toward that sound, and the light grew to show a rough trestle table, darkly lit with the kind of light that would come from a lantern hanging high above. Seated at the table on low benches on opposite sides were Walther Grey and a boy with no face.

No face. No mouth to be laughing with. No features at all, only a smooth golden blur in the amber light. The only characteristics that mattered were the thin wrists, and the bare upper body with its ribs outstanding like the keys of a macabre xylophone under semitranslucent skin, slightly sliding with each breath.

Walther Grey was not laughing either. He stared at and maybe through the boy with a small, fixed smile that meant nothing.

The laughter faded into the background, a murmur of conversation began and grew louder, and louder yet was the sound of footsteps approaching. It was Kieran, wearing an expression of kindly distraction, bearing a platter with a bowl of steaming soup. He set it before the faceless boy, between those thin wrists, and went away again.