Page 100 of The Society of Unknowable Objects

Magda goggled in disbelief at this impossibility, reaching for the desk to steady herself as her knees threatened to collapse.

“We’ll meet again, Magda,” Cassie said to her, looking over her shoulder. “Very soon, I promise.”

Cassie stepped through the door and pulled it shut behind her.

A moment passed, a silent second of questions and disbelief, and then Magda sidestepped out from behind the desk and hurried through the shop, yanking open the door to find only frigid air and darkness, a taxi cab humming past. There was no blue sky nor mountains, just BellStreet, and Cassie was gone, disappearing impossibly into a summer’s day that wasn’t there.

“My god,” Magda whispered, her whole body trembling.

She shut the door and returned to the desk to pick up the business card.

“‘The Fox Library,’” she said, reading the embossed words. There was a single email address, no phone number, no address.

Magda stood by the desk in silence for a moment, replaying what had happened, what it all meant. Then she scrambled to the foot of the stairs, yelling James’s name, desperate to tell him all about the woman in the strawberry-colored coat and the Fox Library.