I strode down the hall toward Aunt Lyssa’s office with Roger half a step behind me. I was in the lead again and back to my old self. I had a plan and felt so much better because of it. I still wasn’t sure that I was going to tell Aunt Lyssa anything about the Whisperer in the Dark, of course. But I could slip that laser pointer off her desk and get it safely stowed in my hip pack. We got on the elevator and I pressed the button for Aunt Lyssa’s floor.

“Just follow my lead,” I said to Roger.

“As if I had any choice,” he replied with a little smile, the first real one he’d cracked since the day before when we took Bootsie to Doc Fox.

We hadn’t solved anything, not really, but we both felt as if we had turned a corner. I was even humming as we got off the elevator and headed for the administrative corridor.

But when we rounded the corner and reached Aunt Lyssa’s office door, we found another unpleasant surprise waiting for us.

The door to Aunt Lyssa’s office was shut. I knew I would find it locked even before I attempted to turn the knob. The only time my aunt’s office door was ever closed was when she was gone for the day. Aunt Lyssa is one of those people who lives her life like an open book. Plus she adores visitors and loves to talk. Even when she’s out to lunch or at a meeting somewhere else in the building, that door of hers is kept open. People usually gather around her doorway—if not to chat with my aunt then to see what new cartoons about libraries and librarians she has posted on her door under her treasured picture of Conan the Librarian.

It wasn’t just the locked door that told us my aunt was gone, but also her note. It was not in her usual neat writing, but had been hastily printed on a sheet of yellow lined paper pulled so quickly from her notepad that the top edge was roughly torn.

FAMILY

EMERGENCY

HAD TO GO