She’d done what she needed to, and she didn’t stop. As she headed for her car, she tried to feel triumphant, but she mainly felt drained. A college friend had helped her set up the Web site. In addition to the text and drawings for Daphne Takes a Tumble, Molly had included a page that listed some of the books various organizations had tried to keep out of children’s hands over the years because of their content or illustrations. The list included Little Red Riding Hood, all the Harry Potter books, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, Harriet the Spy, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, as well as the books of Judy Blume, Maurice Sendak, the Brothers Grimm, and Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl. At the end of the list, Molly had added Daphne Takes a Tumble. She wasn’t Anne Frank, but she felt better being in such wonderful company. She only wished she could call Kevin and tell him that she’d finally fought for her bunny.

She made a few stops to pick up supplies, then swung onto Lake Shore Drive and headed north to Evanston. The traffic was light, and it didn’t take her nearly long enough to get to the moldy old brownstone where she now lived. She hated her second-floor apartment with its view of the Dumpster behind a Thai restaurant, but it was the only place she could afford that would take a dog.

She tried not to think about her little condo, where strangers had already moved in. Evanston didn’t have many loft conversions available, and the building had a waiting list of people anxious to buy, so she’d known it would sell quickly. Even so, she hadn’t been prepared for it to go in less than twenty-four hours. The new owners had paid her a premium to sublease while they waited for the final paperwork, so she’d had to scramble to find a rental, and here she was in this dismal building. But she had the money to repay her advance and settle her bills.

She parked on the street two blocks away because her Slytherin landlord charged seventy dollars a month for a parking spot in the lot attached to the building. As she climbed the worn steps to her apartment, the El tracks shrieked just outside the windows. Roo greeted her at the door, then scampered across the worn linoleum and began to bark at the sink.

“Not again.”

The apartment was so small that she had no place for her books, and she crawled over the packing boxes on her way to the kitchen sink. She gingerly opened the door, peered inside, and shuddered. Another mouse quivered in her Hav-A-Heart trap. The third one she’d caught, and she’d lived here for only a few days.