What is this, some kind of warehouse? thought Todd. And then he realized. He was in a library.

The library was massive. The ceilings were high enough to need ladders (Todd imagined a store clerk wobbling at the top of one of them, as if in a silent movie), and the walls were huge. The entire stock of Legolas Books would have fitted against one of these walls.

He wandered through the shelves, the Harley forgotten. There were famous books here, classics of English literature—and French literature, and Russian and German literature, and even Chinese and Arabic literature. There were science books and art books and children’s books. But mostly there were novels. Some he knew well, and some he’d never heard of. Some were new, and some were so old the gilt had worn off the spines. Todd had a feeling that if you had time, you could find any book you wanted in here.

Todd stopped by a shelf and pulled a book out at random. The Poor Man and the Lady by Thomas Hardy. Not one he’d heard of. He pulled out another. A Brilliant Career: A Play by James Joyce. Joyce wrote plays? he thought. Another one, much older. Adam Unparadised by John Milton. Love’s Labours Won by William Shakespeare.

Todd was starting to feel pretty ignorant now, and a little bit annoyed. It was like the books were conspiring to make him look stupid. He slammed one more back into place—Gibbon’s History of the Liberty of the Swiss—and decided that he’d had his fun, and now it was time to find the exit and get out of here.

The library was a maze. Yeah, I get that one, thought Todd, as he tried to make his way out through the towering shelves. But the farther he went, the deeper into the library he seemed to go. It was as if the paper in the books had remembered its origins and was trying to become trees again. Todd was seriously thinking of looking for some thread to mark his path when he found himself in what he couldn’t help but think of as a glade.

The shelves had parted to make a kind of square. Empty shelves loomed above him. He knew he was in the middle of the library. He listened for a moment. No motorbikes. Todd had been walking for—minutes? hours?—and decided it was time for a break. He sat down on the floor.

Then he noticed that he’d been wrong about the shelves being empty. There was something on the bottom shelf. Unsurprisingly, it was a book. Todd went over and picked it up.

All My Colors. By Jake Turner.

“Typical,” said a voice, so suddenly that Todd nearly dropped the book. “They never have the book you want, right?”