I placed my other hand on the inside of the cab’s door and pushed the story through me, into the metal and plastic of the car. The words were like a windstorm trying to escape, trying to create a gateway back to their book.

I forced them instead to a place I knew well enough to anchor my thoughts against the fragments of Neverwhere swirling around me like a maelstrom. “It’s like herding cats across a river.”

“I can call Nicola if you need help,” said Nidhi.

“No, I’ve got it. Probably.” I pushed the last of the text into place and opened the door. When I climbed out, I emerged from the back of a pizza delivery car parked on the side of a very different road.

Had Gutenberg been alive, I’m sure he would have cast this spell without a second thought, putting us down on the front steps of the capitol building. Given another five hundred years of practice, I liked to think I’d have done the same.

“What the hell are you doing?” The shout came from a young woman across the road, carrying an empty red delivery bag. “Get out of my car!”

“Sorry!” I stumbled away from the car, shoved Neverwhere into my jacket pocket, and checked on Smudge. He didn’t look happy, but he wasn’t about to set anything on fire either, which meant the driver probably wasn’t going to pull a gun and shoot me just yet. I glanced around. I’d put us down in East Lansing, on the campus of Michigan State University. “Technically, we weren’t in your car. We just—”

“What do you mean ‘we’?” She hurried across the road and pushed past me to check the back seat, which was empty. She tossed the delivery bag into the back, aimed her cellphone at my face, and snapped a picture before dialing what I assumed was the police. “What did you take, asshole?”

“Nothing,” said Lena as she emerged from the car.

The poor woman jumped so hard she dropped her phone. Lena caught it before it hit the pavement.

I flexed my hand. The fingertips were a bit numb, but I saw no sign of charring. I checked the magnetic sign on the top of the car. “Georgio’s, eh? I used to eat there all the time when I was an undergrad.” I pulled out my wallet and handed her a twenty. “I’m sorry we scared you. Consider this part of your tip for the night?”

She stared at me, then at the car, where Nidhi now appeared to be climbing out of nothingness. “That’s . . . that’s magic.”

“Pretty cool, isn’t it? If I had more time, I’d tell you how it worked.”

“He would,” Lena said. “Even if you asked him to stop.”