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“Do it now!” I stood to face her. I didn’t trust her lies. “To the hospital. Great Ormond Street!”

“This place, the Exchange, the wood that stands between worlds…This place is now. Always now.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but before I got the words out, she was at the pool’s edge, kneeling beside Sophie. She scooped a little water into her palm then tipped it out a couple of feet above Sophie’s face. The glistening droplets hung there in the air, almost like in those zero-g shots from space.

“I will send her to the place of your choosing before the water hits her. She will change no more than the water does.”

“Fuck you.” That oppositional defiance coming out again. “You could just save her first.”

“I hope to save you first, Frederick Archer.”

“My name’s Red.” I used the objection to cover my surprise. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I am an assistant. I work for the Library.”

“Huh…” I’d seen a huge room and a metric shit ton of books, but I’d been rather distracted. “Nice.” It was Xavier’s job I wanted, but even a glimpse of that place where Sophie had been was enough to tell me I needed to see more. “What do you want with me?”

“You are a crack in the world.”

“Not this shit again. I’ve heard it all before.”

“You are a danger to yourself and to others. The Smiths thought you might also be a danger to the Library, and that is also possible, though they lacked the patience to use you. Instead, they discarded you and fashioned other tools. Rose Penrose is the one with the keenest edge and the one that the Great Smith is determined to employ.”

Mention of that name allowed my anger to bubble up through the Exchange’s layered peace. “Who is that guy? What’s his deal? He needs locking up!”

“He is a man and an office. In combination he is an archetype. Humanity’s ingenuity.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. I mean…yes…he’s an awful, awful person, but ingenuity’s bad now?” I couldn’t believe I was almost defending the guy. I blamed the Exchange for somehow making me see both sides against my will.

“Cleverness is a knife. Surgeons use them, and so do murderers.”

“You’re against cleverness now?” I was far from sure this plastic freak was on my side any more than the Great Smith was. “We should all be stupid?”

“Cleverness is quick, it sees the immediate advantage and takes it. Expose cleverness to the bigger picture. Show it century upon century of consequence, and it becomes wisdom. Your smith is clever, not wise. Hungry, not moral.

“But we are not here to speak of the Great Smith and his order. You are a crack in the world, Red.” The assistant gestured at the fractures around me and the strange, cold light that leaked through them. She turned her gaze toward Sophie. “You will hurt her. You—”

“I won’t!” I moved back to stand beside my sister, but even as I did, one of the cracks slid through her and broke her peace, making her flinch and grimace. The water above her slipped an inch toward her face. “This is that curse, right? The curse on the witch’s book! You can lift it. Break the spell. Make me right.” The desperation reached my voice despite all efforts to keep it back.

“You were cursed, Red. Cursed to live a thousand years. Injuries done to you, be they hammerblows or worm bites, are spread across that millennium. You feel them, do you not? And you will feel them for century upon century. At some point, sooner rather than later, the accumulation of pain will drag you down. But still, you will not die. That is the curse.” She raised a white finger to forestall me. “That you are cracked is a deeper, older matter. A more urgent one.

“There is, at the center of every main chamber in the Library, a healing circle. This place would heal your sister, removing the worm’s venom from her blood.”

“Let’s go!” I reached for Sophie.

“It would heal you too. Close your cracks. Remove the danger you pose. Take away the witch’s curse.”

“Bonus!” The sarcasm was mostly fake. Obviously, I wanted the curse gone. What the assistant had said rang true. Director Smith’s hammer should have killed me, and although it didn’t, I could still feel the echoes of it in my bones. It would be hard to sleep with. And as to being “special,” I could say goodbye to that too, without regret. Though that one also felt like criticism somehow…of me, that I wasn’t good enough for the world as I was, that I needed to be changed.

“The circle would change you though, in ways it would not change your sister.”

Was she reading my mind? “How?”

“You would no longer be the same person. You are a crack in the fabric of reality. That is who you are, Frederick Archer. If that crack were sealed, you would no longer be Frederick Archer. You would look like him, hold the same memories, still love your sister.”

“But not be me?”

“No.”