“The reasons are multitudinous,” said her necromancer. Her paint was wearing off in the water; she looked like a grey picture of a melting skeleton. “I had—intended to let you know some of it, before. An expurgated version. And then you looked in my closet … If I had told you my suspicions about Septimus’s meat-puppet on the first day, none of this would have happened.” “The first day?” “Griddle,” said Harrow, “I have not puppeted my own parents around for five years and learned nothing.”
