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 gonnareally-"

"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."

Then the camera slowed. Again, Merlin appeared. Again, oceans of power rose up and settled into the island. Then Merlin vanished, and more years passed. Maybe a minute later, he appeared again-looking exactly the same, I might add-and repeated the cycle.

"Hold on," I said. "He did it again? Twice?"

"Ah," Bob said, as a fourth cycle began on the screen. "Sort of. See, Harry, this is one of those things that you're going to have trouble grabbing onto."

"Go slow and try me."

"Merlin didn't build the prison five times," Bob said. "He built it once. In five different times. All at the same time."

I felt my brows knit. "Uh. He was in the same place, doing the same thing, in five different times at once?"

"Exactly."

"That does not make any sense," I said.

"Look, a mortal jail is built in three dimensions, right? Merlin built this one in four, and probably in several more, though you can't really tell whether or not he built it in a given dimension until you go there and measure it, and the act of measuring it will change it, but the point is: This is really advanced stuff."

I sighed. "Yeah. I'm getting that. But what's wrong?"

The shot zoomed out, rising up to give a top-down view of the island, which became a blurry shape. A familiar five-pointed star blazed itself across the surface of the lake, its lines so long that the pentagon shape at its center enfolded the island entirely. Within the pentagon, a second pentacle formed, like the first one drawn in the manner to preserve and protect. The camera tightened in, and I saw that the second pentagon enfolded the entire hilltop where the cottage and ruined tower lay. The camera tightened more, and I saw more pentacles drawn, this time not flat but at dozens of intersecting angles, their centers encircling the dozen tunnels full of evil beings beneath the island.