Flower stared at him. She thought of Krysta swinging her hockey stick and almost opening a door. She opened her mouth to tell him, then remembered her promise to Hippy.

"Give me your key," Pierus said.

Flower took the chain from around her neck and handed it to him.

Pierus cupped the object in one hand and studied it. "At last," he murmured. "This might just complete it."

"What do you mean? Complete what?"

"Come with me. I have something to show you." Pierus turned his back on her and hurried up the stairs.

Flower followed. She convulsively gripped the space at her neck where the key had been. She felt empty without it. They went up two more flights of stairs, where she had to tread carefully to avoid breaking her neck on missing stones and sudden dropaways.

Pierus waited for her at the top. "In you come, my dear."

Flower walked through a doorway into a large room. Pierus closed and locked the door behind her, but she barely noticed.

Sunshine filtering from the high windows cast stripes of light and dark across her feet, and over a staircase that wound up to the roof. Tables cluttered with dusty metal instruments brooded in the shadows. Ragged curtains hid whole sections of the place from her view.

Flower's uneasy gaze went inexorably to the far wall, where a vast machine cobbled together from hundreds of wheels and springs and cogs and things she didn't even know the names of dominated the entire room. A huge pipe fitted through the roof poured a continuous stream of quicksilver in from one corner.

"The machine," she whispered. "Oh Nikifor, I didn't believe you."

Pierus stood at her side clasping and unclasping his hands like a delighted child. "I built it all myself," he said. "I had to. You see, this creation is invaluable. With it I can keep track of all my muses and of countless other goings on in Shadow and Dream. I can contact any muse, any time, so long as they have their key."

Excitement surged through her blood. "But this is wonderful my king! You can find all the missing muses!"

He glanced at her. Smiled. "Do you think I would let even one of you escape my sight?"

It took a moment for his meaning to sink in. "Where are they? Do they need help?"

"Not at all, they're quite content. Yes, my dear, I know where you all are now. All but one." He strolled to the machine, ran a hand along it and glanced back at her. "Where is Nikifor? I know you were with him for some time."

"Nikifor went to Quicksilver Forest to free some Freakin Fairies trapped in a silver mine. My king, Shadow needs your help. The Moon Troopers are forcing the Freakin Fairies to mine their silver for-" she faltered and glanced again at the quicksilver pouring out of the pipe.

"Yes?" Pierus smirked at her.

Flower's stomach twisted. "I think I'm going to be sick."

"Please don't mess up my floor." He weighed her key in his hand.

Flower went closer to the machine. She hadn't recognised them at first, but now they glared at her in silent anger, the keys, embedded into the cogs and wheels, lifeless, frozen things, like pieces of a skeleton. Her voice sounded like it came from somewhere far, far away. "My king, what have you done?"

But he ignored her. Instead he spoke a single word. "Kazza."

Kazza appeared in her cloud of smoke in the middle of the room. She pushed back her mane of hair, smirked at Flower and bowed to Pierus. "My king."

"My faithful subject informs me traitors and rebels are mounting an attack on one of my mines. I suggest you deal with it."

"Yes, my king." Kazza disappeared, leaving behind only a whiff of smoke.

Flower gave a squeak of dismay, hardly able to believe what she'd just seen. Of all the outraged words struggling to come out of her mouth, she only managed one sentence. "Nikifor is not a traitor!"

"Did you not say he is intending to attack a mine?"

"Yes, sort of, but-"

"And did he not throw away his key?"

"How did you-"

"You tell me Flower, is Nikifor loyal to me?"

Flower pressed a hand to her mouth. She'd asked him that very question. I hope he rots in a pit until the end of his days, he'd said. "No," she whispered.

"And you? Are you loyal to me?"

"I have always been your most loyal subject." The words made her sick to her stomach, because they were true, and right now she hated herself for it. "But I don't understand. Why? Why all this? And where are the muses?"

"Oh, Flower. Dear, sweet, loyal girl." Pierus tipped her chin up, and this time when she looked into his eyes she saw what she'd never seen before. Cold. Something a little dead. Something that was pure malice. "You know full well my life is the most important thing in Shadow. If I die, so does everyone. I need this machine to watch for threats on my life. Of course it would have been much easier to build had a certain horrid little fairy not stolen something vital from me, but in time I'll find that too."

"Fairy?" Flower squeaked.

"Yes, you'd remember her. Hippy Ishtar. Dreadful creature, she's dead, thank Shadow. And now that you're here with your key I can finally complete the machine. Then nothing will stop me from finding Nikifor and any other threat to my life. You, meanwhile, will very soon join the other muses. Don't worry, you'll be quite happy there." He patted her on the cheek and walked back to the machine.

Flower stared, too shocked to react. "They were right," she whispered. "They were all right."

"How very tiresome," Pierus said. "I do hate it when other people are right, don't you?"

Flower didn't think much about what she was going to do next. She sprang at Pierus, collided with him and sent him sprawling into the machine. She seized her key from his hand and ran for the door, only to find it locked. She hammered on it. "Pinky!" she yelled.

"Even if you get through that door, there's no escape. You cannot leave the Arch without my help." He tapped her on the shoulder. "Give me the key."

Flower ducked away from him and ran for the stairs in the middle of the room before she remembered the fetches on the roof.

He stalked her. "Don't be tiresome, Flower. And don't make me angry."

She backed away from him, clutching the key behind her back. "You're a monster. I don't know how I spent all these centuries believing in you."

"Because you're gullible, like all your kind. You especially provided me with no end of amusement. I never knew a muse to follow me around with such doe-eyed devotion for so long. Now give me the key." He held his hand out.

"Never."

"My patience is not infinite, Flower. I trained you to obey orders, now obey me. Give me the key."

"No." Flower edged along the wall. Her hand brushed a curtain. There was space behind it.

"Flower."

"I quit!" she yelled, and yanked the curtain from its flimsy hangings, but there was no escape behind it, only a fresh horror. She bit her lip to keep from screaming at the sight of Shazza chained inside a tall, narrow cage, her face ugly and blotchy from crying, a gag stuffed in her mouth.

"You might want to rethink that, my dear. Let me show you what happens to people who quit my employ." Pierus strode to the cage, reached through the bars and pushed a lock of hair out of Shazza's eyes. "Comfortable, my dear?"

Shazza shook her head furiously. Fresh tears stained her cheeks.

Pierus withdrew his hand and pulled on a lever next to the cage. Flower jumped back when the cage sparked and popped. Shazza shook violently in the iron confines and screamed behind the gag.

Flower screamed too, unable to believe what she was seeing. She collapsed to her knees. "I'm sorry Sharon," she whispered.

"Don't be so dramatic." Pierus pushed the lever back up and the shaking stopped. "It won't do her any damage, she's made of smoke and silver. But it does hurt her, since she remembers being human, unlike the later models." He tilted his head and studied Shazza as though she were an insect. "Now Flower, give me the key."

Flower got to her feet, wary now, the key clutched in her fist. "Let her go."

"I'm losing my patience." He held out his hand.

Flower glanced at Shazza's swollen, puffy eyes, then around the locked room. She wondered where Pinky was and if she'd get out of this alive. Somebody had to. She tightened her fist around the key, took two quick steps forward and punched Pierus in the face.

He was ready this time. He hardly seemed to feel the blow. Before Flower could move away, the back of his hand connected with her temple. She stumbled back, tripped over debris, jarred her head on the corner of a table and landed face down on the stone floor.

Flower jumped to her feet, ready to fight, but she wasn't in that terrifying place anymore. She was in Krysta's study. She yelled in fright. Pierus had knocked her out, he was going to get the key.

She looked at her hands and found the key still clutched there. She was here, he didn't have it yet.

Krysta walked in, leaned the hockey stick against the wall and sprawled into the chair. She put her head in her hands and groaned.

"Krysta." Flower went to her, put her hands around the girl's head and clutched the key to her forehead. "Krysta you have to help me."

Krysta's back went rigid. She shuddered.

"Krysta Ishtar only you can help us now." A sob shook Flower's ribs, the only one she'd allow herself. "Please tell someone. Please find a way to get a message through, I'm trapped in the muse king's castle with Pinky and Shazza, I think he's going to kill us all and do something awful with that machine. Please help."

Krysta stared straight ahead. She exhaled a long breath. "Holy freaking hell!"

"I'm getting through!" Flower closed her eyes, concentrated like she never had before and poured the whole story, everything that had happened, in through the key and straight into her writer's waiting mind.

Krysta picked up her pen and furiously scribbled on her notepad.

Flower came to so suddenly she was left dizzy and disorientated. Some tall, evil figure bent over her. Cold fingers prised her fist apart and dragged the key relentlessly from her grip.

She groaned. Her head felt like there was an axe buried in it.

Pierus gave her a none-too-gentle nudge in the ribs with his boot. "Get up."

She got to her feet. Her head pounded. Her ribs hurt too. She looked around and, through the haze, saw a chunk of stone at her feet that had come loose from the floor. She silently thanked Hippy Ishtar for cursing this castle to crumble around him, picked up the stone and followed the king across the room. He had his back to her while he fit the key into the machine.

"Don't get me wrong," he was saying. "I admire your conviction. I wish things could be different, Flower, but my life has to come before everything. I saw my death at the hands of Nikifor and some kind of tall fairy. If that means I have to kill or imprison every muse and fairy in Shadow then that's what I'll do. It's for the greater good."

Flower made sure her swing was wound up for the maximum impact. Then she smashed her piece of stone into the back of Pierus's head.

He dropped without a sound. The key went flying across the floor. Shazza made a muffled sound behind her gag.

Flower glanced from the king to the false muse to the machine, then at the rock in her hand. She bashed the rock into the nearest cog, but it barely made a dent. She shifted her attention to a long, heavy iron pipe rising from the machine and bashed at the brace keeping it there until it came away from the wall, then pulled the thing free.

A trickle of silver came from the end and fizzed on the surface of the machine. Flower weighed the pipe in her hands. It was heavy. She took one end, just like she'd seen Krysta do with her hockey stick, and slammed it into the machine.

Shazza squealed.

Flower slammed her pipe into every inch of the machine she could find. She shattered wheels, bent springs and pipes and dented cogs completely out of shape. Every inch of her rage against Pierus went into pummelling the machine into a mangled, useless piece of scrap metal. When she finally reached the pipe through which the quicksilver flowed, she smashed the join with one mighty swing, then jumped out of the way when silver sprayed all over the machine. The mangled remains crackled and sparked.

Shazza gave another muffled scream.

Flower dragged Pierus out of the way of the spraying silver and went through his pockets until she found a set of keys. She hurried over to the cage, hands shaking now from nerves, and tried each key until the cage and then the manacles opened. Shazza spilled out of the cage and ripped the gag off. "That thing's gonna blow up!"

Flower said a bad word. She grabbed her key off the floor, pocketed it and took hold of one of Pierus's shoulders. "Help me with this."

"Do I have to?"

"If he dies Shadow could end! Do you want to take that chance?"

A crack from the machine became an ominous rumble. Shazza and Flower both threw themselves to the floor on top of the unconscious king.

The blast of heat went right over them and blew the door off its hinges. Shards of metal flew like missiles through the room and embedded themselves in the walls. A coil bounced off the stone a bare inch from Flower's face. She thought the shirt would be seared from her back.

Then it was over. They sat up and looked at the smouldering, mangled remains of the machine.

"I'm not dead," Shazza said.

"Me neither. Let's get out of here."

"No, you don't understand." Shazza turned a shell-shocked stare on her. "I was trying to warn you when you were smashing it up. He used that machine to make all us new muses. I thought if it was broken, we'd all die. II sort of hoped" she put her head in her hands, then gave Flower a haunted look. "I'm not a human anymore. I'm not a muse, either, I'm just something he broke. I thought maybe this nightmare would be over."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

An order lashed across the cave from the midst of the vampires. "Identify yourselves."

Clockwork snickered. "Come out here and I'll give you my life history if you want."

The voice went a shade nastier, but it was impossible to see which of the vampires was speaking. "Identify yourself, Fairy, and explain how you escaped."

"Come and get me." Clockwork gave them a stiff middle finger.

The hissing grew louder. The rage that ebbed out of that cave matched Nikifor's own. These vampires stood between him and saving Flower from whatever fate the king had in store. "We're wasting time."