“Well if it’s that easy to find the books, why isn’t everyone just traveling to other dimensions all the time?”

“They are,” said the haughty voice. “People are always popping off to the Otherworld and the Underworld. Especially since the worldquake. The Otherworld is ten percent closer to us now, which is of course another good reason for shutting it down. It’s having too much influence here.”

“Well why can’t we also just ‘pop off’ in this way?” asked the sulky voice.

“You know why. I thought we explained this. The Diberi are banned from entering the Otherworld by normal means. And to penetrate as deeply as we want to means we need help. A lot of help.”

“And the consciousness of the Truelove girl.”

“Indeed.”

“Good heavens,” said the Northern European voice.

“What is it?” said the Russian voice.

“Well, if we wanted to go to the unfortunate realm known as the Troposphere—long abandoned as simply the closed and dangerous imaginary world of an early twenty-first century novel—we’d only need some holy water and homoeopathic charcoal. But to get as deep into the Otherworld as we want to, we’re going to need to create a rather more complicated spell.”

“And? We can do that, surely?”

“Yes, so long as we can manage to get hold of the Northern Lights, the Bermuda Triangle and the Luminiferous Ether. And obtain, somehow, the eye of a live yeti. Oh, and a pure maiden. Some snakes. And . . . several hundred live cats. Well, that bit will be easy at least.”

“And we’ll have to kidnap the Truelove girl, of course.”

“Yes. That bit should also be . . . Wait. Did you hear something?”

It was true. There had been a noise. The noise had been Raven gasping, for the second time, when these unseen voices had said “the Truelove girl.” Whoever these people were, they were planning to kidnap Effie, and then . . . Raven didn’t understand what they were talking about exactly, but it seemed to involve some sort of raid on the Otherworld—probably Dragon’s Green, where everyone was always trying to get to.

Lexy kicked Raven.

“Shhh,” she said.

It was too late. The footsteps belonging to the voices started moving out of their stack and toward theirs. Raven cast the Shadows, a simple spell that bends the darkness near you in such a way as to make you virtually invisible. She cast it on herself and Lexy, although it seemed to take longer than usual—as if something nearby was weakening her magic.

“There’s no one here,” said the Russian voice.

“Well, let’s close this stack anyway,” said the haughty voice. “I want to see what’s in the next one.”