Beale stared at the note in his hand for the hundredth time. It was written in Niles’ neat, angular handwriting, and simply gave a time and a place, with the word “Please” written at the bottom. He wasn’t sure why the warrior king felt the need to add that, but it certainly meant that Beale was going to be there. You don’t turn down a king who asks nicely.

  He showed up at the coffee shop a few minutes early, perusing the menu while his mind was a million miles away. He did appreciate that the offerings seemed to have broadened lately - he felt sure it had something to do with the rumored cookbook writers who were working in the Library now - and slowly he became engrossed in figuring out which coffee drink he wanted to try. He had just about made up his mind when he heard a polite cough at his elbow.

  Nuereddin looked up at him, fighting the urge to glare at the wayward member of their team as they stood in line. The boy had been so caught up in the menu of all the different ways bean water could be mixed with other things to make it taste like something other than bean water that he’d completely missed seeing Nuereddin walk in. If there had been a battle, Beale would have been dead before he had the chance to cry out at the sight of his attacker. Nuereddin sighed internally, reminding himself that it wasn’t his job to teach the boy situational awareness, and jerked a thumb back to a table in the corner. “Once you’re ready, we’re back here,” he said gruffly, and waited until Beale nodded in acknowledgment before walking back to the table.

  Sonya smiled over her cup of tea (a lovely orange blossom oolong that she would have to remember in the future) as she watched the exchange, and she gave Beale a cheery wave when he looked over at the table. He returned it, then turned back to the menu and stepped up to the counter. With a sigh, she turned to Niles. “Do you think this is a good idea?” she asked for what felt like the hundredth time.

  Niles nodded, taking a moment to finish the bite of sugar cookie he had taken just before she asked her question. When he swallowed, he answered her. “We need to let him know about Veronica, and he may have some information about the universes that have been damaged that we need to know.” His face became serious as he contemplated the other man, who was finally ordering a drink. “He would never forgive us if we didn’t tell him about Veronica and he found out some other way.”

  Sonya nodded, conceding the point. Nuereddin returned to the table and hoisted himself into a chair on Sonya’s other side, scowling a bit to himself. “That boy’s going to get himself hurt one day, how little attention he pays to his surroundings,” he muttered to himself. “I just hope he knows something. You said that the team he’s working with is investigating that other book Veronica found?”

  “Yes, that Children of Darwin thing. I heard that they were able to talk to the author of the book, who had hidden herself in the book itself somehow. I’m not sure how they were able to interview her, but here’s the man who can tell us!” Sonya nodded to Beale as he walked up, holding an enormous cup of something that smelled vaguely of coffee.

  Beale saluted her awkwardly with the cup in his hand, then sat down between Niles and Nuereddin. The dwarf studiously refused to look at him, but Niles smiled encouragingly. Beale set the cup down in front of him and focused on Sonya. “Were you talking about Children of Darwin? Yeah, the team was able to talk to the author, but…” he trailed off, tracing a finger around the lip of the cup. Sonya let the silence hang between them until Beale leaned forward, desperate to fill it.

  “OK, that team is weird. Like, incredibly weird. You thought Cassidy was weird? They’re nothing compared to the rest of their team. Did you know that Lady Ruby has been in the Library for, like, generations? I’m not even sure how many generations, but she refers to Prime as ‘the Land of Men.’” He sat back, spreading his hands wide. “Like, seriously? I think I heard Veronica talk about that term a long time ago, but…” Beale trailed off as he looked around the table and seemed to notice something for the first time. He deflated a bit, wrapping his hands around his coffee cup again. “Where’s Veronica?”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Sonya sighed, shifting in her chair and trying to figure out the gentlest way to tell the young man the news. She took too long, however, and Nuereddin had no such concern for Beale’s feelings. “She’s missing. We think she’s been kidnapped. What do you know about it?” The dwarf folded his arms across his chest and glared up at their wayward team member.

  Beale felt his world screech to a halt as he tried to figure out what he had just heard. Missing? Kidnapped? Veronica couldn’t be missing…wait, why did Nuereddin think he knew anything? He focused on the accusing tone, and glared back at him. “Why would I know anything? This is the first I’ve heard anything about this! When did she go missing? Are you sure she’s missing and not, I don’t know, hiding somewhere? You know how she can get sometimes, when she gets really anxious.” He looked back at Sonya, willing her to tell him that this couldn’t be true.

  Niles answered him first. “We’ve been questioning this all morning, friend Beale, and this is the only conclusion we came to.” He reached forward and put a shovel-sized hand on the young man’s shoulder in an attempt to comfort him. “We spoke to Murchand, the earl that Veronica speaks of so fondly, and he saw her attempting to break into the Records Room last night after the main reading room emptied. That was the last time anyone saw her.”

  Beale groaned, leaning forward and putting his head on the table, and Sonya reached over to pat his hand gently. She knew how he felt - she had wanted to do the exact same thing when Murchy told them what he’d seen. “Why would she try to do something so…Veronica’s not stupid, why would she do that?”

  “We think she was trying to get more information about books where the author appeared in their own universe, since she had pulled up information about that Children of Darwin book you’ve been researching with Lady Ruby’s team.” Sonya settled back and took a sip of her tea, waiting for Beale to sit up again. “Murchy said that there are also other universes that have been deliberately destroyed in the past, and that he thinks that might be what’s happening with the shifter universes that we’ve been encountering. We think she might have been looking for information about those, too, but we’re not positive.”

  Beale took a long draw of his coffee, thinking quickly. “That might make sense, considering what we heard from the author of Children of Darwin,” he said slowly. “We interviewed her - well, Lady Ruby’s team did the questioning, I was there to take notes and try to keep from antagonizing her by existing.” He rolled his eyes. “She’s one of those authors who’s, uh, ‘of her time’ and doesn’t like non-white people. Anyway, she got herself into her book because she thought her universe was threatened with destruction, and she wanted to protect it.” He quickly summarized the history of Children of Darwin, filling his team in on what Lady Ruby’s team had learned about the book.

  Niles nodded slowly, breaking off a small piece of sugar cookie and toying with it. “That fits with what Murchy told us about the previous attempts to destroy universes. He said that there were two kinds of universes that were threatened or outright destroyed, and one of them was similar to Children of Man with regards to treating men like apes and being ‘civilized’ by white people.” He popped the sugar cookie bit into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

  Beale cocked his head to the side, remembering something he had heard Cassidy say in passing to Joan. “What was the other kind of universe, did Murchy say?”

  Nuereddin snorted. “Something about universes where the characters were either all animals that acted like people or human/animal hybrids, but there were no humans - or dwarves, or other humanoids - in the universe. It didn’t sound like much of a loss to me,” he added.