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“It’s done,” he murmured, keeping his mind focused on the imaginary books in the safe. He stepped away and took himself to the couch, closing his eyes to maintain his focus. He couldfeelthe simulacrums in the woman’s safe. He kept the Book of Illusion gripped in his hands, and soft colors continued to seep out from the edges of the pages.

He heard Cassie close the door again, the woman’s safe with it.

“Are we good?” Cassie asked. Then, presumably after a series of nods, she said, “I’ll call the Bookseller.”

Soon be over, Azaki thought. One way or another.

The Plan, Part Five (2)

“Go ahead,” Cassie said. “Take your best shot.”

The woman watched her for a moment, and then she smiled at Cassie.

“Is this where you want me to use my books?” the woman asked, tilting her head slightly. “Is this where you want me to realize my books are gone?”

Cassie’s brain froze as her plan was knocked suddenly off its tracks; her plan was a train careering down a hillside as the woman looked on calmly.

As Cassie licked her lips, as her insides boiled with fear, the woman peered into the purse hanging from her elbow. She withdrew a book and gazed at it without expression. Almost immediately the book became insubstantial, only a suggestion of a book in the air. And then nothing, just the woman’s empty hand.

Her eyes flicked to Cassie.

“Did you think I wouldn’t know?” the woman asked, as she pulled out the other books, one after the other, each of them dissipating into nothing at her touch. “I know the books,” the woman said. “I know how they feel.”

Cassie was frozen to the spot, the woman between her and the ballroom entrance.

She’s only got the Book of Mists!Cassie’s brain shouted. But Cassie remembered what the woman had done to Yasmin, Drummond’s friend, with the Book of Mists.

“I don’t know you, though,” the woman said, her eyes drilling into Cassie. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know how you got to my books. But I saw you with the Librarian. I saw you here, at the last auction.”

The woman took a few steps forward.

“Tell me who you are.”

“It doesn’t matter who I am,” Cassie said, her voice croaking, her mind racing and trying to come up with a plan.

“Oh, it matters,” the woman answered. She ran her eyes slowly up and down Cassie. “I am going to keep you alive,” she said. “But you will wish you were dead. I am going to make you sing to me of your pain. I am going to delight in your agonies for weeks and months.”

The woman took another step forward.

“The Librarian is behind this,” she said. “Tell me, blond woman, where is the Librarian? What was his plan? Did he think he could stop me just by taking away my books?”

Cassie swallowed, fear a large dry rock in her throat. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think.

Then the woman reached into her purse again, but this time she pulled out a handgun, a revolver, the end of the barrel a massive black hole in Cassie’s vision.

“Do you think I need books?” the woman asked. “This is the gun I killed my father with. It took him many days to die. I shot off pieces of his body and then dressed the wounds to keep him alive. I didn’t have books back then, you see, but I could still make him sing to me.”

Cassie found herself hypnotized by the barrel, the dark eye watching her.

“Stop.”

Cassie glanced over the woman’s shoulder. Drummond was there suddenly, coming out of nowhere, from behind Azaki’s veil of invisibility. Azaki was there too, and Lund, and Izzy farther back. Cassie felt relief wash over her.

“Enough of this,” Drummond said. His eyes flicked to Cassie, checking she was okay, and then back to the woman.

“The Librarian,” the woman said. “And... others.”

She smiled as if delighted.