A long Saturday afternoon stretched before Neptune. If it had been a school day he could have spent some time terrorizing the younger children. There was one child—a girl—whom he’d seen once in the distance and had felt an inexplicable urge to talk to—as if it was even possible to speak to humans. But, anyway, it was not a school day. Neptune realized that he had a choice to make. Was he going to turn around, go back into the school and get one of the melancholy resident staff to give him a tummy rub, or was he going to accept this call to adventure and set off to find out what had happened to all the missing cats? A third option, of course, was to go and eat another guinea pig. But none of the cat detectives in the stories seemed to eat guinea pigs; they were too busy solving crimes. Perhaps, mused Neptune, he really ought to try again to give up guinea pigs.

He turned toward the school. Maybe just one tummy rub, maybe just half a guinea—

A bolt of lightning suddenly struck the ground in front of him, melting what was left of the snow and ripping a large hole in the rugby field. It was almost as if the universe was telling him to . . . to . . . ? What was that story about the cat who went to London with that queer-looking boy with a handkerchief on a stick? Turn again, Neptune. . . . Turn again. . . . Accept your adventure. This voice was not outside Neptune, but it wasn’t really inside him, either. It gave him the heebie-jeebies. But he knew it was right.

No more guinea pigs. No more tummy rubs. Neptune understood that now was the sacred moment when he was going to leave all this behind and set off. He was going on an adventure, as everyone must do at some point in their lives. He was going to find the missing cats and then . . . He didn’t know what. Perhaps that was the point of adventures. Perhaps you couldn’t know how they were going to end, or what you were going to find. You just had to take that first step into the unknown.

“He was right, it is dark,” said Raven.

“And dusty,” said Maximilian, coughing.

No one noticed the faint traces of glitter in the air, although they were there.

The four friends had gone down three flights of stairs so far. The official library reception area was apparently on the first normal floor. But since the children weren’t really supposed to be in the library, they’d been told not to go to reception. Or not that reception anyway.