“Okay,” I said. “Okay, priorities: Put the skull-bursting-parasite issue aside for the moment. That leaves me in charge of a veritable doomsday machine that the White Council and everyone else is gonna flip out about. But they aren’t going to flip out about it today, because presumably they don’t even know I’m alive yet, and if I don’t stay focused on the next twenty-four hours, I might not live long enough to have all that fun. So we forget about that for now, too.”

“SENSIBLE PRIORITIES.”

“I’m glad you approve,” I said. I was pretty sure something that didn’t understand minutes and seconds wouldn’t be big on getting sarcasm either. “You’ve still got a problem. I need you to explain it to me.”

“YOU ARE TOO LIMITED,” Demonreach said. “IT WOULD DAMAGE YOU, AS IT DAMAGED YOUR SPIRIT.”

I held up both my hands and half flinched. “For God’s sake, don’t think it at me. You think way too loud.”

The glowing eyes looked somehow disgusted. “THIS MEANS OF CONVEYANCE OF IDEAS IS INEFFICIENT AND LIMITED.”

“Words, words, words,” I said. “Tell me about it. But it’s what we’ve got, unless you can draw me a picture.”

Demonreach was still for a moment—and then vines abruptly twined up out of the floor. I almost jumped, but stopped myself. It clearly hadn’t done me any harm, apart from what I’d done to myself, and if it wanted to hurt me, I wasn’t going to be able to stop it anyway. So I waited.

The vines twined up into my bag and came out wrapped around Bob’s skull.

“Harry!” Bob squeaked.

“He’s one of mine,” I said in a hard voice. “You hurt him and you can forget me helping you.”

“LITTLE ENTITY,” Demonreach said. “YOU ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE WARDEN. YOU WILL TRANSLATE. YOU WILL NOT BE DAMAGED.”

“Hey!” I said, and took a step between Demonreach and Bob. “Did you hear me, Hopalong? Put down the skull.”

“Harry!” Bob said again. “Harry, wait! It heard you!”

I scowled and turned to look at Bob. He looked like the same old Bob. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” the skull said. The eyelights were flicking everywhere, as if watching dozens of screens at once. “Man, this thing is big! And old!”

“Is it hurting you?”

“Uh, no . . . no, it isn’t. And it could if it wanted to. It’s just . . . kind of a lot to take in. . . .” Then the skull quivered in the grip of the tendrils and said, “Oh!”

“Oh, what?” I asked.

“It’s explaining the problem,” Bob reported. “It had to take it through several levels of dumbing-down before I was able to get it.”

I grunted and relaxed a little. “Oh. So what’s the problem?”

“Hang on. I’m trying to figure out how to dumb it down enough for you to get it.”

“Thanks,” I growled.

“I got your back, boss.” Then Bob bounced up and down in the tendrils a few times. “Hey, Hopalong! Turn this thing around this way!”

Demonreach glowered at the skull.

Bob jiggled a little more. “Come on! We’re on a schedule here!”

I blinked at that. “Damn. You went from scared to wiseass pretty quick there, Bob.”

Bob snorted. “’Cause as big and bad as this thing is, it needs me to talk to you, and that makes me important. And it knows it.”

“LESSER BEINGS ONCE KNEW TO RESPECT THEIR ELDERS,” Demonreach said.

“I respect the crap out of you,” Bob complained. “You want me to help, and I’m telling you how. Now turn me around.”

A sudden breeze passed through the cavern in a long, enormous sigh. And the vines stirred and twisted the skull toward the nearest wall.

Bob’s eyelights brightened to brilliance and suddenly cast double cones of light on the wall. There was a scratchy sound that seemed to emanate from the skull itself, a blur of a sound like an old film sound track warming up, and then the old spotlight-sweeping 20th Century Fox logo appeared on the wall, along with the pompous trumpet-led symphony theme that often accompanied it.

“A movie?” I asked. “You can play movies?”

“And music! And TV! Butters gave me the Internet, baby! Now hush and pay attention.”

The opening logo bit faded to black and then familiar blue lettering appeared. It read: A LONG TIME AGO, PRETTY MUCH RIGHT HERE . . .

“Okay, come on,” I said. “You’re going to buy me a lawsuit, Bob.”

“Hush, Harry. Or you’ll go to the special hell.”

I blinked at that, confused. I’m not supposed to be the guy who doesn’t get the reference joke, dammit.

On the wall, the black gave way to a star field that panned down to a blue-and-green planet. Earth. Then it zoomed in and in and in until I recognized the outline of Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes, and came closer still until it got to the outline of the island itself.

Bob is invaluable, but man, he loves his wisecracks and his drama.

The image sank down until it showed a familiar landing point, though it had no ruined town and no Whatsup Dock and no row of wooden piles in the water. It was just a little beach of dirt and sand and heavy, brooding forest growth.

Then a ribbon of light maybe eight feet long split the air vertically. The light broadened until it was maybe three feet wide, and then a figure appeared through it. I recognized the signs—someone had opened a Way, a passage from the Nevernever to the island. The figure emerged, made a gesture with one hand, and the Way closed behind it.

It was a man, fairly tall, fairly lean. He wore ragged clothing in many shades of grey. His grey cloak had a deep hood on it, and it shadowed his features, except for the tip of his nose and a short grey-white beard covering a rather pointy chin.

(Letters appeared at the bottom of the screen. They read: MERLIN.)

“Wait? You saw Merlin?” I asked Bob.

“Nah,” Bob said, “but I cast Alec Guinness. Looks good, right?”

I sighed. “Could you get to the point, please?”

“Oh, come on,” Bob said. “I wrote in this romance triangle subplot and cast Jenna Jameson and Carrie Fisher. There’s a love scene you’re gonna really—”

“Bob!”

“Okay, okay. Fine. Sheesh.”

The movie shifted into fast motion. The grey-clad figure became a blur. It walked about waving its arms, and directed oceans of energy here and there, settling them all in and around the substance of the island itself.

“Wait. Did Demonreach tell you how he did that?”

“No,” Bob said, annoyed. “It’s called artistic license, Harry.”

“Okay, I get it. Merlin built the island. However he did it. Get to the part with the problem.”

Bob sighed.

Merlin walked into the woods in comically fast motion and vanished. Then time passed. The sun streaked by hundreds and then thousands of times, the shadows of the island bowing and twisting, the trees rising, growing, growing old, and dying. At the bottom of the screen, words appeared that read, A LOT OF TIME PASSES.

“Thank you for dumbing that down for me,” I said.

“De nada.”