Effie again remembered Rollo’s words, but all of them this time. We can’t have a galloglass in our midst. We can’t have a galloglass with access to the Great Library. Bringing the book back was bad enough, however right it supposedly was. Who knows what would—What had he been going to say after that?

The woman on the table by the window finished her double espresso and looked at her watch.

“Allora. Well, I’m going back,” she said to the man. “See what we can do with all this.”

She got up and went over to the little desk where you showed your papers before going through to the Otherworld. Effie had never actually been through this portal. The first time she’d come here she hadn’t had her mark or papers, and then not long after that she’d got the calling card that took her directly to Dragon’s Green. She knew it was a one-way portal, and had no idea how you’d get back from wherever it took you.

She wondered about following the woman to see where she went, and what she was going to do with this information. But . . .

The man drained the last of his coffee as well, then got up and put his coat on. He thanked Octavia Bottle and headed for the door back out into the Realworld. Effie was supposed to be checking on Lexy, but all that went out of her mind. She was now wondering if she should she follow the woman, or the man.

Or follow her heart back to Truelove House and right into the Great Library, where she could finally put an end to the threat of the Diberi, just as her mother had obviously tried to do.

17

SO THEN WHAT HAPPENED?” asked Maximilian.

Wolf sipped from the cup of strong milky coffee that Nurse Underwood had given him when he’d turned up ragged and freezing after running the seven miles to get here. She had been on her tea break, but now she’d gone back to work. Wolf was in Maximilian’s bedroom with a blanket around him. The coffee had gone quite cold. Wolf had been talking a lot: He’d been telling Maximilian about his adventure in the Borders with the AI called Aizik.