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That was the last thing she wanted, but she couldn’t tell him so. “Let’s talk about it later,” she suggested finally, and went back to work feeling inexplicably guilty.

When it was finally time to quit, Mistaya was so exhausted that she could only just manage to eat a little of her dinner before announcing to Thom that she was off to bed. Because of her obvious exhaustion he was quick to tell her that they would talk about their plans for returning to the forbidden regions of the Stacks later on. He offered to help her to her room, but she insisted she could get there on her own, a task that turned out to be just manageable.

She slept without waking or dreaming until something soft touched her face, and she woke with a start. Her bedside candle was still burning, if barely, or she wouldn’t have been able to make out Edgewood Dirk seated next to her, whiskers brushing her cheeks as he washed himself. She blinked and tried to sit up, but failed.

Dirk jumped down from the bed and walked to the door. “Coming, Princess? It is already after midnight.”

She didn’t know what time it was and she didn’t care. All she wanted to do at this point was go back to sleep. But at the same time she realized the importance of finding out what was happening in the Stacks and in the cavern down in Abaddon. She needed to know whether her magic was working on the Throg Monkeys.

So she climbed from the bed, still wearing the clothing she had fallen asleep in, pulled on her boots, and followed the Prism Cat out the door. They didn’t say a word to each other as they walked down the hallway to the library and entered the Stacks. Mistaya was too tired for conversation. Dirk, taciturn as usual, sauntered on with no apparent concern for whether she was keeping up or even following. She found herself thinking how bizarre it was that she was trailing after a talking cat in a library filled with something called Throg Monkeys in search of stolen books of magic, and she wondered how Rhonda Masterson, were she there, would feel about doing something like that. Some things, she guessed, were best left to the imagination.

She was suddenly, inexplicably homesick. She missed Sterling Silver and her mother and father and Questor Thews and Abernathy and all the other creatures that were so much a part of her life. If she could have made a wish that would have taken her home at that very moment, she would have seized it with both hands.

But she was stuck with things as they were, so she pushed the feeling aside and tried to concentrate on the task at hand. She couldn’t help thinking as she did so that all this was much tougher than she had imagined. She wished she could do more using her magic, but it was too dangerous. It was risky enough using magic to deceive the Throg Monkeys. Attempting anything more would almost certainly give her away.

Once they had gotten deeper into the Stacks, she began seeing her unsuspecting accomplices. They crept down the aisles and through the shadows like gnarled wraiths, their arms loaded with books. To her delight, they were carrying the books away from Abaddon. Apparently her plan was still working.

“I need to go back down to that cavern to see how far they’ve gotten,” she told Dirk.

The cat nodded wordlessly, and she left him at the entrance and passed through the breach in the wall. Was she imagining things or was the hole getting smaller? She stared at the rough edges, trying to remember how they had looked the day before. Larger and more jagged, she thought. She hadn’t heard the building’s voice for a while, either, an indication that it wasn’t as desperate for help as it had been. Perhaps because that help had been given? By her? She smiled to herself, liking the idea and feeling good about the possibility that she had helped it come to pass.

The passageway leading down to the cavern where the books were stored was empty as she descended. She was only yards from the opening in the wall before she passed the first of the Throg Monkeys she had seen since starting down, a group of three, all with arms laden. She caught a glimpse of titles on the spines, some containing the word magic in bold print, so she had her proof that things were going as intended. She was surprised at how easy this had been, how simple the solution to the problem.

At the opening in the wall, she crawled out onto the rock shelf, taking care to crouch as she did so, still not entirely convinced that she couldn’t be seen. Edgewood Dirk could promise to shield her, but there were counter spells that could undo his efforts. She knew that much from her time studying with Questor.

When she peered down, she was excited to discover that the shelves that had held all the stolen books were virtually unchanged. Wolves continued to patrol the perimeter and winged sentries still flew overhead while some of the black-cloaked figures walked among the books and others chanted spells from the book with the red leather cover. No one seemed to notice that anything was wrong. Perhaps they didn’t know the difference between magic and farming, she thought, muffling the urge to laugh. She could see the Throg Monkeys watching these wraiths, avoiding them whenever possible. Now and then, one of the little monsters would snatch a book furtively from the shelves, replace it with one it was carrying, and edge away from the tally takers until it was able to slip up the stairway unnoticed.

Her plan was working! She wanted to shout it aloud, but managed to restrain herself.

How much longer would it be until all of the books were replaced? How many more books were there? She couldn’t think of any way to find out that didn’t involve her going down into the cavern and having a closer look. That seemed too risky, even if she was supposed to be invisible. She could ask the Throg Monkeys, perhaps. Or she could wait until they were no longer bringing books back out of Abaddon. That way she would know they were all safely spirited away.

Would that be enough to close the hole in the library wall, or was something more needed?

She stayed where she was for a little longer, reading what she could into what she was seeing. Finally, unable to determine anything more, she turned away and crept up the steps to the hole and back into the Stacks.

Edgewood Dirk was waiting, sitting on his haunches and studying her. “Is your plan working?” he asked.

“I think so. But what should we do about the hole in the wall? Can we close it over?”

Dirk blinked. “Libiris is organic, like Sterling Silver. She will heal herself if the wound is not enlarged by further thefts and by the continued chanting of spells.”

“Then we need to make sure that it all stops, don’t we? We need to do something about His Eminence and Pinch.”

The cat hesitated. He arched his back in a long stretch, his fur shimmering with a strange, silvery glow. “Perhaps you should leave that to Ben Holiday and his companions. They seem more suited to that sort of work.”

“But I started this and I want to finish it!” she insisted. “I know how to be careful.”

The Prism Cat gave her a long, steady look that suggested he might be weighing the merits of this assertion. Then, his interest in the subject exhausted, he turned away and started back down the aisle toward the front of the room. “Time to go back to sleep,” he called over his shoulder. “We can discuss this further tomorrow.”

She thought it a reasonable suggestion, even though she was already certain that she wasn’t going to change her mind no matter what sort of arguments he mounted. This was her chance to make up for Carrington, her opportunity to prove herself to her parents. Once she had restored Libiris and exposed His Eminence and Pinch, they could no longer deny her request to remain in Landover and to take charge of her future. She would be allowed to continue her studies with Questor and Abernathy. She would be accepted as an equal and no longer treated as a child.

The trek back through the stacks was endless. Mistaya was bone-weary and muddle-headed from lack of sleep, and she could barely manage to put one foot ahead of the other. If Edgewood Dirk noticed or cared, he was not giving evidence of it. He minced along ahead of her, a cat on its way to someplace of its own choosing. She might have been wallpaper for all the difference she made to him.