nhuman length, starting as a hissing in her lungs and rising in intensity until it was the growl of a rabid wolf. Boils, red and livid, grew and burst along her right arm and spread across her body. Her white hajib, now stained with her blood, began to smoke as her skin gave off an ochre incandescent glow. Whatever force she had used to hold Shrike in place broke, dropping her, along with Spyder and Lulu, to the floor.
Spyder took Shrikes face in his hands. "Are you all right? Talk to me. " He held her until she opened her eyes. "You cant get away from me that easy," he said.
"Look," said Lulu. She pointed to Madame Cinders.
The old woman was gone, her gurney and the wheezing pumps that kept her alive were melted to slag on the tower floor. The blackened shell of the book kicked off staggering waves of heat. The book was scorched ruins, a pile of vaporized steel and shredded paper. The flagstones where it lay softened to a gray putty and slowly engulfed both the book and Madame Cinders remains. When it had swallowed them both, the floor again turned to solid stone.
Spyder and Lulu helped Shrike to her feet. They searched from room to room in the tower until they found her father-alive, though confused. Taking some of the guards clothes from a barracks room, they bundled Shrikes father down from the tower.
Madame Cinders servants waited anxiously in the courtyard as the four left her tower.
"We need a coach and horse," Shrike told them. The servants didnt need to be told twice.
They rode back through the Medina and just managed to squeeze the cart into the tunnels that ran from Alexandria to Alcatraz. Shrike held her sleeping father in her arms the whole way, speaking to him quietly as they
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