Within a few moments, the Great Library was no more and I was instead aboard an airship floating high over the home counties. But this wasn’t one of the small fifty-seaters that plied the skies these days; it was a “Hotel Class” leviathan, designed to roam the globe in style and opulence during the halcyon days of the airship. I was in what had once been the observation deck, but many of the Plexiglas windows had been lost, and the shabby craft rattled and creaked as its lumbering bulk pushed through the air. The icy slipstream blew into the belly of the craft where I stood and made me shiver, while the rush of air and incessant flap of loose fabric were a constant percussive accompaniment to the rhythmic growl of the eight engines. The aluminum latticework construction was apparent wherever I looked, and to my left a door gave access to a precipitous veranda where first-class passengers would once have had a unique bird’s-eye view of the docking and landing procedure. In the real world, these monsters had been melted down into scrap long ago, the job of repeater stations for TV and wireless signals now taken over by pilotless drones in the upper atmosphere. But it was kind of nostalgic to see one again, even in this illusory form.

I wasn’t in the main action, the “better dead than read” adage as important to me as to anyone else. The narrative was actually next door in the main dining room, where Thursday, a.k.a. Alice-PON-24330, was attempting to outwit Acheron Hades. This wasn’t how it really happened, of course—Acheron’s hideout had actually been in Merthyr Tydfil’s abandoned Penderyn Hotel in the Socialist Republic of Wales. It was dramatic license—and fairly bold dramatic license at that.

There was a burst of gunfire from next door, some shouting and then more shots. I positioned myself behind the door as Felix8 came running through the way he usually did, escaping from Bowden and myself once Acheron leaped into the pages of Jane Eyre. As soon as he was inside, he relaxed, since he was officially “out of the story.” I saw him grin to himself and click on the safety of his machine pistol.

“Hello, Felix8.”

He turned and stared at me. “Well, well,” he said after a pause. “Will the real Thursday Next please stand up?”

“Just drop the gun.”

“I’m not really violent,” he said. “It’s just the part I play. The real Felix8—now, that’s someone you should keep an eye on.”

“Drop the gun, Felix. I won’t ask you again.”

His eyes darted around the room, and I saw his hand tighten on the grip of his gun.

“Don’t even think about it,” I told him, pointing my pistol in his general direction. “This is loaded with eraserhead. Put the gun on the floor—but really slowly.”