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By the start of the twenty-first century Drummond Fox, the sole descendant of Edmund Fox’s nephew, was the Librarian, the person responsible for looking after the collection of special books and for continuing the search for more. The quiet life in the Fox Library on the west coast of Scotland suited him. He loved books, special books or ordinary books, and he could pass weeks by himself reading or studying or trying to understand all that special books could do.
Occasionally he would venture out, and he made friends with other people from other parts of the world who each had their own special books. These were people who shared Drummond’s interests, but also his perspective that special books should be kept safe, away from thosewho might use them for the wrong purposes. They were museum items, to be studied and understood, but to be used rarely if at all.
But then the world became a much more dangerous place. From nowhere a threat appeared, and when Drummond’s friends were slaughtered in Washington Square Park and their books taken from them, he knew that it was no longer safe for the Fox Library to exist.
Drummond had traveled back to Scotland, the Book of Shadows his ally in his flight, and he had hidden himself away in the Fox Library, knowing that terror could follow him there. So he had used the Book of Shadows in a way it had never been used before: He made it so that the entire house in which the Fox Library was kept slipped sideways out of reality and into the shadows, a place impossible to reach. It became a house in nowhere, a house waiting to be visited and a library of books waiting to be opened and read.
The house still existed, with all of its books and furniture, its windows and its doors, but there was no way to reach it now, not in the shadows.
Unless, of course, someone could open one of the internal doors from a completely different place.
If someone had the Book of Doors.
Coffee in Lyon
They stood on the street catching their breaths and looking around.
They were alongside a broad river, tall trees leaning over toward the water like dancers in a line. The branches of the trees were bare but discarded leaves gathered along the edge of the curb in orange and brown drifts. It was dark, but dawn was coming, the night sky lightening in the distance, and Cassie could make out narrow buildings lining the far side of the river, painted orange and yellow and cream.
Drummond arched backward to stretch his spine, as if he had pulled a muscle when he had fallen through the door, and asked, “Where are we?”
“Lyon,” Cassie said, some part of her mind that wasn’t frozen in shock conjuring the words her mouth produced. “I was here years ago.”
“I always liked France,” Drummond said, speaking more to himself, as if he were lost in memories of happier times. Then he looked at Cassie, and at Izzy. “Great pastries here. Come on, we need to find food. We need to eat.”
“It’s still early,” Cassie observed. “We might not find anything open.”
“Let’s try,” Drummond said.
Izzy looked back and forth between the two of them. “That man was throwing people around!” she exclaimed. “How was he doing that?”
A cyclist zipped past, pulling a curtain of air behind him and glancing toward the noisy Americans with a frown.
“Come on,” Drummond urged. He walked off before waiting for an answer and Izzy turned her stare on Cassie.
“Cassie, this is madness! That man...!”
Cassie nodded, trying to placate Izzy, but she was struggling to string together words. Instead she headed after Drummond. Izzy rolled her eyes unhappily but followed her.
They walked along the river in silence for a few minutes, passing through pools of yellow splashed by the streetlights and feeling the sharp edge of the winter breeze cut through to their bones. There were signs of the city waking up, a few other people moving along the streets, the headlights of cars cruising past, but they had to walk for a while until they found somewhere to get a hot drink. It was a small café just opening up for the day, a doorway of warm light and a woman maneuvering tables and chairs into place on the sidewalk, an awkward dance involving too many legs and music of clanks and scrapes.
“This’ll do,” Drummond decided. They approached and Drummond indicated at one of the tables as the woman retreated back into the café, and she nodded agreeably.
Drummond pulled out two chairs and gestured to Cassie and Izzy like a waiter, and then sat down on the opposite side of the table and turned his eyes to the river, his nose up like that of a dog sniffing the air. Cassie realized she was trembling, as adrenaline and shock coursed through her body. She looked at her hands, willing them to be still.
The woman reemerged from the café and greeted them with a singsong “Bonjour!” like a doorbell.
“Coffees?” Drummond asked, and both Cassie and Izzy nodded.
“Three coffees?” the woman said, slipping into English with the ease of someone used to tourists.
“I don’t suppose you have any whisky?” Drummond tried.
The woman gave him a crooked grin and then pointedly looked at her watch. “Non, monsieur.”
“Croissants?” Drummond asked instead. “We need to eat.”
“Oui.” She nodded and then disappeared back into the café with a smile on her face as if Drummond had amused her.
