lessons she had studied under Questor’s tutelage. “If I’d stayed in my room instead of going back into the Stacks, none of this would have happened. I was so stupid it makes me want to scream.”
“So that’s where you were. I came looking for you earlier, but you weren’t in your room.”
“I didn’t want to tell you,” she admitted, giving him a rueful smile. “I’m sorry about that. I wish that I had.”
“It isn’t too late for you to do so now, is it?” he asked.
She smiled and proceeded to tell him everything she had been keeping from him. She even told him about Edgewood Dirk, despite her promise to the cat. It was necessary, she reasoned, given her present situation.
She had kept so much from him, she told Thom, because she was worried about involving him further.
“Also, I was worried about the same things you were,” she added. “I thought it would change how you felt about me, and I didn’t want you not to be my friend.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Funny that we were both so worried when there was no reason for it.”
“Funny peculiar,” she agreed, just managing to meet his gaze. Then she looked quickly away. “Anyway, I messed up.”
He looked away. “Maybe I was the one who messed up. Your getting caught might not have been your fault. It might have been mine. If I hadn’t come to your room looking for you and then gone prowling around out in the Stacks, His Eminence might not have caught me and found out about you.”
“Well, it doesn’t much matter now. It’s over and done with, and we can both take some share of the blame.” She swung her legs around to rest her feet on the floor. “Where are we, anyway?”
“One of the storerooms, down by the kitchen. There’s no way out; I’ve already searched. Even if there were somebody who might try to help us, the walls are two feet thick. We can yell all we want, but no one will hear.” He paused. “Any chance the Prism Cat might help us?”
She shrugged. “There’s always a chance. But Dirk thinks mostly of himself. I don’t think his attention span is all that long, either. If he knows we’re here and feels so inclined, he might choose to help us. But he might just as easily not.”
“Some friend.”
“I wouldn’t call Edgewood Dirk a friend. More on the order of a particularly nettlesome aunt or a nagging teacher.” She was thinking now of Harriet Appleton. But that wasn’t fair, she knew. She tossed the comparison aside. “Dirk is unpredictable,” she finished.
He shifted himself on the pallet so that he was sitting closer. “You told me how you happened to come to Libiris, but not why. You said you were escaping from your grandfather and hiding from your family so you wouldn’t have to come here. But why was your family making you come here in the first place?”
She told him. She started all the way back with her time at Carrington and her troubles with the school administration, culminating in her suspension and disgraced return to Landover. She related the events surrounding her flight from Sterling Silver, although it was unexpectedly hard to explain why she hadn’t wanted to come to Libiris but had ended up coming anyway and then staying. He listened without comment to all of it, and not once did she see even the flicker of a grimace or a look of disbelief cross his face.
“I guess I still don’t understand what happened,” she finished. “I mean, I still don’t know exactly how I ended up here.”
“Well, I think you just wanted it to be your idea,” he said, giving a shrug to emphasize that it wasn’t all that complicated for him. “I think you wanted to come here on your own terms, and that’s what you did. I also think you did the right thing.”
“You do?”
“Yes. Both for you and for Libiris. Maybe for your father and the Kingdom, too. After all, you’ve stopped the book theft and done something to heal the library so that the demons no longer have a way to escape Abaddon.”
“But His Eminence will already have found out what I’ve done! He’ll put everything back the way it was!” She felt suddenly disheartened. “A week ago, it wouldn’t have mattered. I didn’t even want to be here. Libiris was just an ugly building. But now I know the truth about her. She’s so much more—and she’s in such pain, Thom! I wanted to help her get better, and I thought that by tricking the Throg Monkeys into returning her books I had. But it will all have been for nothing.”
Thom shook his head quickly. “Don’t be too sure of that. He didn’t say much of anything when he caught up with me. He doesn’t necessarily know what you’ve done.”
