Eleanor looked past the Editor at the stack of books beside the worktable. Some of the titles she didn’t recognize, but there, in a neat pile, were ones she knew very well. Otto Ellis. Philippa Foster.

“You’re rewriting all of us,” Eleanor said. She felt a bit sick.

“Yes, and at an increasingly rapid pace. You’re not my only books, you know. But you are taking up an absurd amount of my time. And you’re not content with only your own books, no! Look at this! Do you have any idea how many of these are here because of you?” She waved her hand at the stacks of books beside her. She plucked one from the stack and brandished it at them. Eleanor sucked in a breath as she saw the title on the cover.

The Small, Cursed Town of Eden Eld.

The Editor slammed it down onto the desk. “I am the only Editor in this place, and we have stories from every world. Every. World. Which is why I really cannot afford to be interrupted. If you had any idea the stress I’m under, you would understand.” She revealed two more hands, just so she could bury her face in them and groan.

“She sounds like my dad when he’s on deadline,” Pip muttered. The hedgewitch snorted in amusement.

Eleanor was still staring. “You have a book for Eden Eld?”

The Editor reached over and flipped through it. The pages were splattered with random globs and lines of red ink. “It’s a travesty. Absolute chaos,” she said. A page detached from the binding and slipped onto the table.

“Can you fix it?” Otto asked.

She made a hum of mixed annoyance and agreement. “Luckily, most of the other continuity errors have mostly sorted themselves out. Minor holes, nothing world-breaking,” the Editor said. “This book is the only one that’s truly a mess. The only way to fix it would be to correct the original paradox by returning the girl to her timeline . . .”

“Not happening,” Eleanor, Pip, and Otto said together.

“. . . or reverting to the previous draft,” the Editor said. “We always make a backup anytime there are major changes like this. I can use it to return the text to its state right before the timeline changed. In this case, the moment of the eclipse.”

“Everyone would come back?” Eleanor asked. “And the January Society, they’d be gone?”

“Indeed.”

“And Thea—she’ll still be Thea?” Eleanor asked.

The Editor nodded. “It creates some contradictions, of course. Katie Rhodes existed, but doesn’t anymore. Thea shouldn’t exist, but does. But it should all hold together well enough to prevent any further damage.”

“Great,” Pip said. “Let’s do that, then. And then we can go back and have plenty of time to deal with Mr. January.”