“The book is titled The Daily Reader. It’s a children’s book.”

“I know it,” said Owen. “Stay here for a minute. Let me get it.” He strode into the back room next to his office where the small book hospital was, along with a table stacked with new books to be processed for circulation. He went to the trash bin in the corner and dug down. His hands went directly to it. The Daily Reader rose again like a silver mummy. He brought it to her. “You can keep it,” he said.

“Seriously?”

“Keep it,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s heading for the chopper.”

She thanked him profusely and was gone in a minute. As he headed back to the office, he wondered if Shiela Tobac was subsuming other works of fiction into the ever-increasing, downhill-rolling snowball of her massive story. Immediately upon contact with his chair, he fell into a deep sleep—no traveling, no dreams, just pure oblivion. A solid hour passed without the bell attached to the front door going off. When he woke, he rose to consciousness slowly, like a diver trying to avoid the bends. There was the brutal pressure of so much to deal with in the waking world—monsters and schemes of assassination.

He stood and stretched his arms out, yawning. It was so quiet away from town, near the woods, and no patrons, that he heard a car pull over to the curb out on the street. He left his office to see who was visiting. Although she’d already been in once, he wouldn’t mind seeing Shiela Tobac again. There was something about her mad energy he found enchanting. The car by the curb was a ’70s Buick Skylark, metallic green, like something from his father’s era. He couldn’t imagine Shiela Tobac driving anything so stodgy. The door opened on the driver’s side, the side away from the library, and out stepped a man. He was a little stooped, with a bald head save for a ring of white hair. Owen knew it was Crenshaw.

A vision of his own mutilated corpse, thorax split open and leaking blood all over the children’s section haunted his thoughts. “Shit,” he whispered, and bolted before the old man could look up and see him through the glass door. Owen could taste the adrenaline. His legs felt as weak as in a dream, and his mouth had gone perfectly dry. All he could hear was the sound of his own heartbeat. He made it to the counter and ducked behind it just before he heard the door alarm in his office. The Ambrogio was in the library.

“Mr. Hapstead,” the old man called. “Mr. Owen Hapstead! I’ve come to return the favor of last night.” The voice sounded to be coming from the children’s section. “Mr. Hapstead, meet me tonight in dreamland, why don’t you?”