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“Try,” Rose asked. She couldn’t last much longer. “Please.”

“Where is it? Exactly?” Red pulled a hand free to wave at the wall, and instantly Rose felt as if she were falling, their connection weakened.

“Here, I think.” Rose reached for the nearest wall and pulled Red toward it. She waved her open hand in front of the packed shelf, feeling the plucking pull of this novel or that one, the rejection of many more, bound in the law of the land. Here in the world above, it would be easy to dive back into any of the welcoming books. She called it “the world above,” refusing the word “real.” This place was only a story in a book within some other world, just as other worlds were contained within the books in Miss Havisham’s library. “Somewhere here…”

She wondered for a moment if there might not be a greater library than Miss Havisham’s, one where the stories from all these layers were gathered and shelved together without one holding sway over the next. Was this the library that the bookworm or its master sought access to?

Proximity to the witch’s book made Rose’s palms prickle. The writing on her skin writhed and swam as if watched through rippling water. “Here. This place.”

With his free hand, Red started to take books from the shelf. First one, then three, then as many as he could grab between finger and thumb. Awkwardly placing them on the floor, handicapped by Rose’s fierce grip on his other hand. In the cleared space, there was nothing but the uneven plaster, painted the blue of a lark’s egg.

“Tap it,” Rose urged, frustrated by his slowness. “See if it sounds hollow.”

Red did as he was bidden and began to rap his knuckles against the wall, one part then the next.

“There!” Rose cried. “That bit was different!”

Before Red could reply, another voice, cultured and mildly amused, spoke behind them.

“Checking for dry rot?”

Rose craned her neck and saw that the speaker was a handsome young Black man in a tweed jacket.

“Xavier!” Red spun around and Rose lost her grip both on his hand and on the entire place.

And in that moment Rose’s own world hauled her back. The cave and the crystals reasserted themselves abruptly, with enough force to send Rose to the uneven floor.

“Fiddlesticks!” She remembered that Red had said a better F-word, something much more punchy, but in the moment she had forgotten it. She lay sore and panting. “Fucklesticks?”

Rose got up slowly, rubbing her backside and trying to brush the gritty grime from the remnants of what had once been quite a pretty skirt. The enormous crystal that she had had her palms pressed against was no longer a window into the bookshop with the scruffy boy and the striking young man. Instead, the entire crystal had turned an ominous black, as if filled with night. The twilight cast by the thousands of other crystals fell upon the large one and was swallowed whole.

Without warning, a white hand swum out of the darkness within the crystal and rapped long-nailed fingertips against the inner surface. Not Red’s hand. This one was fish-belly white, the fingers long and gnarled, the knuckles like knots on a twig. The rapping made no sound but was eerily reminiscent of Red’s own efforts.

The hand vanished back into the swirling darkness.

“Wait…” Nervously, Rose stepped up to the crystal, unsure whether she wanted to touch it or not. When it had been Red on the other side, the choice had been a very different one.

The great cave felt suddenly colder, and the darkness deeper than could be accounted for by the removal of just one crystal’s light, however big. Some small noise, some creak where nothing should creak, turned Rose’s gaze away from the facet before her, and as she turned back, a white face came swiftly out of the black waters, mouth full of darkness and grinning an awful grin just an inch or two from Rose’s cheek.

Once more she fell to the ground, this time tearing her back against a smaller crystal, crying out in pain and shock in equal measure, as terrified as she had been when the worm had turned the Rat against her in the loneliness of the Riverbank winter, deep in the Wild Wood. She knew then that she had made a terrible mistake. Something awful was guarding this book.

“Red!” She shouted his name, willing her voice to reach him. “Red! Don’t do it! I was wrong about the book!”

Chapter 18

The Library

Far beneath London is a vault built and forgotten by a bureaucracy more enduring than the governments that come and go. The Great Smith strides restlessly within this vault, and Dalion, his creation, follows, bronze feet clunking on the concrete floors.

“I am not well pleased.” The Smith eyes his array of hammers. Once again, it is time to choose a tool. One fit for the task.

“No, sir.” Dalion bows his head, although he knows the blame doesn’t sit with him.

“Have I not built a tool that will break open the Library? Did I not reflect and find my humility and listen to Yute’s words?”

Dalion is not sure about this alleged humility, but it is certainly true that, following his ejection from the Exchange, the Great Smith explored the power of stories, something he had previously dismissed as frippery, as distraction from the facts and fundamental truths that would deliver him the power he so desired. “Yes, sir.”

“Why can’t I find her then?” His voice booms along the gallery. “Why must I do everything myself?”