Kaley snapped her fingers between the group of us. “Helen? Are you even listening?”

My gaze flickered up. “Huh?”

“I was telling Emily about that coffee recipe you made the other day with the orange—”

I stopped hearing Kaley’s words when something moved in my cup. It took me a moment to register what it was. An eye opened in my coffee, bobbing in the liquid; a bright gold iris around a shiny black pupil. I thought I was imagining it, but then it blinked.

I screamed.

My chair toppled backward as I scrambled from the table where Kaley and Emily gawked. My back slammed the café window and all the chatter in the building went quiet.

“Helen…?” Kaley stood too.

Emily tossed a wad of bills onto the table and grabbed her purse. “Whelp. I guess we’re done here,” she said. But she paused to survey the other tables. “What are you all staring at?!” she snapped, and instantly the onlookers spun back to their own conversations.

I burst into my bedroom twenty minutes later, clutching my thick leather bag of notes, and I grappled for the violet tome on my dresser, knocking a cold mug of coffee to the floor. I cracked open the book, flipping pages without stopping.

I’d spent the whole previous night hunched over, reading with my flashlight. I’d penned sixteen sheets of notes until I ran out of paper, and then I’d written the rest on my arm. Remembering, I paused to yank up my sleeve.

Right. That’s why I hadn’t showered.

I grabbed a pen and searched for a blank paper or unfilled margin. I pulled a messy page from the pile, barely recognizing my own scrawl, and my pen hit the blank corner:

AN EYE IS HERE.

IRIS: GOLDEN.

IT CAN BLINK.

I stared at my words for a moment, inhaling, exhaling. I scratched my hairline, then grabbed the pages I’d written the night before. The one on top—the last one I’d been focused on before I fell asleep on the floor at 4 a.m.—had bars of musical notation I’d sketched out. Below the bars, I’d scribbled:

Chapter 7 says the Guards of Doors were commissioned by the King of Truth during the first age of Winter to keep the intersects from being tampered with.

Only a Guard has authority over doors between the Trites and the Rime Folk.

I think they can make new doors too.

I dragged my Volume over and scanned chapter seven for the part that explained how to get a Guard’s attention. Finding the place, I read how a certain cherished, ancient hymn would scale the winds to find a Guard for anyone in need if it was hummed. I thought it was an outdated promise, because when I’d tried humming the music last night, nothing had happened.

“Good grief…” I muttered and paused my flipping to stare at the wall. Had I just gotten the attention of a Guard of Doors?