Page 113 of Flickerstate

Two minutes later, he knocks on our block door. When I let him in, he’s breathing fast, like he ran the stairs. “The keycard’s gone.”

As one, Vik, Candace, and I check our phones. A minute till we need to leave.

When the minute ends, Candace says: “Now.”

Outside, snow falls faster, sugar-dusting turrets and spires. We zigzag around buildings and across footpaths to the library, the future we saw in flickerstate throbbing in our minds.

We approach the library from the back and coil through a side door. At the Archive, Vik puts a finger to his lips and taps his key card to the reader. When the door clicks open, he steps through, glances around, and waves us in.

The Archive’s entry room is empty. I’m about to sigh in relief when I notice a dim glow beneath the Lucasson Collection door.

Mirabel. Any second, she could pop from her section and bust us.

We can’t do anything about it now.

Vik, Candace, and I creep around the desk and stop in front of the Highwall Collection. “This may be harder,” Vik whispers.

He may mean that the probability of a spontaneous malfunction opening an electronically locked door is lower than anything we’ve managed before. Or he may mean that each time we league, we deplete ourselves. After we break into the Highwall Collection, we’ll need to deal with Griffin somehow. We’ll need to league through a second locked door. And we don’t know what we’ll find on the other side ofthat.

I shrug. Candace rolls her head on her neck like a boxer before the starting bell.

A smile ghosts across Vik’s mouth.

Searching the mansion takes longer this time, maybe half aminute. When we drop out of flickerstate, blood oozes around my mouth; at some point, I bit my cheek open. Red cords stretch from Candace’s nostrils to her upper lip. Vik swallows hard like he might puke.

The door clicks and unlocks.

Once we step through, I close the door, but it sighs open again. Whatever malfunction we forced busted the latch. I leave it ajar. No help for it.

I lead the others down the stairs to the back of the Highwall Collection, where I saw the locked door behind the boxes. When the right shelf comes into view, I stop dead.

Boxes stand in chest-high piles in the back corners. Empty space gapes on the shelf where the boxes used to rest. The secret door, unlocked, opens onto a dark stair shaft, traveling down.

We haven’t run into Griffin.

And someone’s already gone through the door.

Vik squints at the shadowy descent. “Who said, ‘Once more unto the breach’?”

“Henry the Fifth,” I say.

“Trying to conquer France,” Candace adds. “Not sure the allusion’s apropos.”

“Either way.” Vik walks to the back wall. “Easier to slide between shelves than move the whole thing, I think.”

I join him and hold out a hand. He steadies me as I brace my foot on the empty middle shelf and slide my other leg through. Soon I’m sitting on the shelf with the dark stair shaft swallowing my feet. Releasing Vik’s hand, I shimmy like I’m playing limbo tillmy butt clears the metal and my shoes meet the concrete stairs.

My heels are planted on a step, my toes in empty air. I hold on to one of the shelf’s vertical struts and shuffle so I’m entirely on the step. Below me, in deep shadow, the staircase switches back. A blind corner.

“Shove over,” Candace hisses.

Vik helps her through. I steady her when she misses the narrow landing and almost windmills into the dark.

“Give him room,” I say to her. To Vik I call softly, “Careful. Landing’s skinny.”

Candace and I brace against the shaft walls and slant our bodies so we can catch him if he missteps.

He makes it. Quick feet.