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But what did Alice want? To haunt hih at him? Hunt and kill him? The scholarly literature on niffins was pretty thin Their behavior was unpredictable at best But whatever she wanted, he knehat she needed, and that was to be huain He couldn’t have asked for a better chance

And he needed her too: he needed to see her again, she was the only person he’d ever felt completely at home with He knew he should wait and eat and sleep and talk it over with Plu he had The whims of a niffin were pretty ht never find her again He was going to finish this

And plus Plum would try to talk him out of it

The house was quiet He wasn’t even re at the red door he tried to summon up in his mind the Alice he knew Did he really rehost of a ghost, a figer than he’d known her as a huone, never-was fantasy-Alice If he could bring her back, ould she be?

Quentin was going to find out He opened the red door but didn’t cross the threshold The other room was still there, the mirror room, with its ed, and waited

He’d been sitting there for ten s trailing lightly behind her, as silent and htly smaller than she had been in life, like an expensive doll of herself She didn’t see him; if she kneas there she didn’t bother to turn her head

Once she was out of view he stood up, waited fivewas just as it had been There was the same deep muffled quiet No wind froflicker at the corner of his eye, like a television left on without the sound It was the mirror in the bathroo down

He stood at the top of the stairs, swung his arlimmer of a plan How did you turn ati to wonder if he should call her na clatter in the roo s Aup the stairwell Whatever he’d been about to do or say or cast exited his head, and he got up and walked stiff-legged back to the door He couldn’t stop his were bionic and so them

That hat it was to fear for your life He stopped hi through, not yet What was he going to do? He wanted to shout at her: Wake up! Re about monsters was, you couldn’t talk to them about it, because they wouldn’t admit they were monsters in the first place

She cah the floor Quentin bounded away from the door, out of the roohter, creepily familiar It was hers, but cold, lass She ca down the stairs after him, and he backed away into the limpse of her—she wasn’t quite Alice, not exactly She blurred out for a second, a low-res holograhtless around her head

And she never stopped s a niffin Maybe everybody had the wrong idea about it

She followed hi room and back up the stairs, back down, back up, then back up to the third floor She didn’t hurry, though when he hurried up so did she, as if that were one of the rules of the ga chased by a blue de hi him Sometimes she paid attention to the walls and the floors and the ceilings, soh them with no resistance

Maybe the weirdest thing about this surreal duel was that he was starting to enjoy it However distorted or trans tie and power, but he had always loved her rage and her power Those were two of the greatest things about her She wasn’t Alice, but she wasn’t quite not-Alice either

At this rate he could stay ahead of her forever as long as he avoided dead ends It was like he was a ghost, he thought giddily, and she was Pac-Man, or the other way around (Though no—Pac-Man could eat the ghosts when they were blue Nevertill she lost patience and went for hi with sharks, except that he knehat sharks wanted He couldn’t guess within a million miles what Alice wanted

There were ht into her arms, and let her burn hi idea

After half an hour of this he doubled back through the red door, back hoe of the work table, gasping a little fro He was still alive, but he wasn’t

He was still there when Plum came up around seven with coffee

“Jesus,” she said “Are you playing chicken with that thing?”

“With Alice” He corrected her autouess I am”

“How’s it going?”

“Pretty well,” Quentin said “I’m not dead”

“And Alice—?”

“She’s still dead”

Plum nodded

“I don’t mean to sound at all critical,” she said, “butfate? I feel weird just being in the same house with it Her”

“I want to learn about her”

“What’ve you got so far?”

“Not much She likes to play She could’ve killed me by now, but she hasn’t”

“Christ! Quentin!”

They both watched the open doorway like it was a TV, or a hole through which they were ice fishing

“It’s weird to think that she killed reat-uncle Martin,” Plum said “But then it sounds like she had her reasons Is she really alive in there?”