But few ever achieved the privilege of consulting the Dantalion in the first place. And if Mammon wasn’t alone in the stacks, he wanted to know.

Before long, though, the silence had settled again, so solid and heavy that Mammon had trouble even imagining he’d ever heard anything to begin with. Slowly, he turned down row 94.

It didn’t take him long to come to case K, and there, counting upward, he found shelf 7.

An orderly rank of little brass letters had been screwed into each shelf, just below the identical volumes. A, B, C, D…Even these letters were spotless, polished until they shone.

Mammon rolled his eyes. Seemed like showing off.

Once again, Mammon checked his card:

Row 94, case K, shelf 7, volume H.

And there it was, perfectly centered above the little brass H: his answer.

Just a few steps up the spindly ladder and he’d have it.

Taking the card lightly in his teeth and the rickety rungs in his hands, he began to climb.

He was surprised to find how excited he was. A part of him had assumed that the boy Yehuda Leib would’ve simply found a way to get himself killed by now, and that would’ve suited him just fine. But if the venture he’d proposed was truly feasible…well, there might be quite a lot of profit to be had.

It rather made his fingers itch.

Mammon had already begun reaching out to pull volume H from the shelf when he looked up, and he was so startled by what he saw that he nearly let go of the ladder.

Volume H.

He took the card from his teeth and checked again.

Volume H. He had seen it from the floor.

But there on shelf 7 before him, the space designated for volume H was now empty, volume G leaning lightly against volume I.

He had just seen it. Where had it gone?

Mammon peered through to the other side of the shelf, but there was no room for it to have fallen.

What had happened?

Quickly, Mammon clambered back down to the floor. Something strange was going on.

As soon as his feet met the cold marble beneath him, he gave a gasp and a growl.

There it was: volume H, standing at attention, perfectly in place on shelf 7.

With a sigh, he began to climb once more. Perhaps he had been mistaken about the shelf—he could easily have been looking at shelf 6 or shelf 8 from the ladder.

But no: when his eyes flicked up and down to the surrounding shelves, he found them both fully stocked.

And as soon as he looked back again, Mammon gave an involuntary little bark of discontent. He made sure now: it was shelf 7. And volume H was once again missing.