Alice got to her feet, her legs complaining of so long spent in a single position. With a brief mental gesture, second nature now, she pulled on a thread at the back of her mind and brought swarmers tumbling into the world with a chorus of tiny pops. The little creatures scurried around for a moment, then organized themselves at her mental command, picking the books off their piles and carrying them, three or four swarmers to each. From Alice’s height, it looked like the books had sprouted tiny black legs, following behind her like a line of literary ducklings.

Ashes was waiting for her as she walked back through the narrow aisles, perched atop the shelves and looking down with haughty yellow eyes. He was a small gray cat—a half-cat, he would insist, as a son of the labyrinthine Ending—who had been Alice’s guide when she’d first snuck into the library. He walked beside her atop the bookcases, padding from shelf to shelf, his swishing tail raising waves of dust in his wake.

“Any luck?” he said.

“I got the spell to work,” Alice said. “Ending says it needs testing.”

“Fantastic.” The cat stepped daintily across a narrow gap between shelves. “In another two hundred years, you might make something of yourself.”

Alice had learned to shrug off Ashes’ needling, which meant little more than that he was in a good mood. “I suppose you trained long and hard to do . . . whatever it is you do around here.” She shot him a smirk.

“Training is for those not graced with natural talent, as all half-cats obviously are. And I’ll have you know that my siblings and I are a vital part of the defenses of the library.”

“Defenses against rodents, you mean.”

“Can you see Master Geryon out here chasing the little terrors down himself?”

Alice chuckled, and Ashes hopped to the ground beside her, circling her ankles.

“Well?” the cat said. “Are we going to walk all the way there?”

“You’re going to get fat if you keep being so lazy.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. For cats, being fat just means that you’re winning.”