The boy did not move, but the bowl did. A shadowy figure reached down shadowy hands and took the soup away. The boy still did not move, and neither did Walther Grey, though his smile grew sardonic.

Kieran returned swiftly, harried and concerned now, and placed another bowl filled with soup in the same place as before. He had barely disappeared before it met the same end as the first, carried off by shadow into shadow. The murmur and chatter had the disconcerting normality of a cocktail party hum, and the vague background surged and shifted with the turgid ennui of a crowd of people assembled to elegantly waste time.

The boy’s hungry ribs breathed, and that was all.

Kieran brought bowl after bowl with greater and greater haste; the boy did not move, but his mouthless, noseless breathing became panting; and Walther Grey smiled and grinned and finally erupted into laughter—the laughter of a boy who is in pain and trying to hide it.

The boy leaped up onto the bench, lunged over the table, and snatched at something around Walther Grey’s neck. Grey’s laughter turned to a groan of sick fear. He clutched the two thin wrists easily with one hand; the other hand rose, wielding a cleaver . . .

“No!” yelled Miranda.

The cool green light of the maze’s deep interior pushed back the nightmare. Miranda was breathing in shallow, rapid gasps, her face hidden in the rough, rustic cotton of Chance’s shirt.

“Why did the boy have no face?” he asked her gently.

She swallowed. “I looked at the pathologist’s report, but I couldn’t bear to look at the pictures.”

He was silent. He let her grip the fabric of his shirt with angry fists, understanding very well that the anger was not for him.

At last she burst out, “I think he might have been one of the street children that Kieran feeds sometimes. They come to the basement door. I pretend not to notice. I was afraid I might recognize him.”

She cried for a short while. Chance stood still and tried to organize his thoughts, to separate what she had dreamed and what he had included from his own store of disjointed images. The trestle table was, now that he thought about it, exactly like the one that had been in the shelter under a festive tablecloth and a buffet of seasonal excess. The golden light was the light of the streetlamp in the alley where the Mermaid had been attacked. The idea of Grey punishing the boy for attempted theft came from the pathologist’s remarks. Or did it?

“Miranda, I know that Walther Grey never bothered to explain his reasons for the murders. But tell me, did he at any point complain about someone trying to take something from him?”