Without even waiting to check Kai’s wounds, she turned to the door. ‘Open to the Library,’ she demanded in frantic haste, throwing all her strength into the words as she grabbed the handle.

The cold metal fizzed under her hand, buzzing with an energy like static electricity, only more powerful and far more dangerous. The door didn’t want to open to the Library, or perhaps the Library didn’t want to let the door open onto it. Or perhaps Irene was being unreasonable in imagining personalities here, and it was simply the difficulty of reaching from a high-chaos world all the way to the Library.

The door tried to cling to the jamb, holding shut as she strained at it. She could feel the connection, she knew she’d reached the Library again, but the door held closed. Bookcases toppled and books fell as the floor rippled towards them, rising slowly like a tidal wave.

She’d failed in her earlier attempt to open to the Library. But she was not going to lose now, not at the cost of the two friends who’d risked their lives to come and save her.

‘Open!’ she commanded.

The door wrenched itself open, pulling against its hinges with a creaking scream of wood that was audible above the roaring flames and the falling shelves. Beyond was a dark corridor lined with books, achingly familiar.

Vale thrust the staggering Kai through the doorway, then halted on the step. His expression was one of sheer incomprehension as he pushed at the empty air, his hands pressing at the gap of the doorway as though there was an invisible sheet of glass between him and the safety on the other side.

He’s still chaos-contaminated, Irene realized, as though she was reading it off the title card in a silent film. The Library won’t let him in. She’d thought, she’d hoped, but none of it had been enough. She would just have to do something about it instead.

Once before, she’d expelled chaos by naming herself and forcing out everything that wasn’t Irene. I am Irene, I am a servant of the Library, she had said in the Language, and it had acted to remove anything that refuted those words. She’d hesitated to try it on Vale because she’d been too worried about hurting or even destroying him, if she couldn’t describe him accurately. He wasn’t a Librarian, after all.

But there was no time left. And in this place, the Language had answered her intent rather than her exact words. She could only try, and pray. All her life she had been taught that the Language allowed its users to shape reality. But if reality said that Vale couldn’t enter the Library, then she was going to change that reality.

She grabbed Vale by the hand. ‘Your name is Peregrine Vale,’ she said, her voice audible through the crash of falling books and the rumble of the shuddering floor. ‘You are a human being. And you are the greatest detective in London!’

The shock was like a deep organ-note, humming in her bones and making her stumble. Vale rocked back as if he had been hit by a blast of wind. Chaotic power vented out around him, crumbling the floor underneath him to fragments and transforming the blowing fragments of paper into ash. He fell to one knee, his face white under the smears of dust that marked them both, and his breath came in great heaving gasps.

She grabbed Vale’s hand, pulling him forward as she threw herself through the doorway. And he followed her.

The world was blurry in front of her eyes, and she barely stayed on her feet. Both Vale and Kai were shouting at her, holding her up as she swayed, the world swinging round her in huge stomach-churning arcs. She blinked to see the open doorway in front of her, looking out on a landscape that was all inferno, where flames devoured books and shelves and ground and sky, and the wind screamed for vengeance.

There was something she had to do. Yes. That was it.

‘Door, close . . .’

The door slammed shut with a thud that echoed down the book-lined corridor, cutting off the flames and fury, and leaving the three of them in silence and darkness.

Then slowly, one by one, the lights started to come back on.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

‘Put your hands there, Winters.’ Vale positioned her hands to hold the pad in place while he bandaged the gash across Kai’s midriff.

Irene tried to focus, but it was too much effort. She simply knelt there and let herself be used as a convenient surgical clamp, while Vale applied strips of torn-up shirt and Kai bled. The gashes weren’t life-threatening, but they were nasty and they might leave scars.

‘I hope your uncle isn’t too annoyed that you came here,’ she said, vaguely following the thought through to a logical destination.

‘And thank you for favouring us with your attention, Winters,’ Vale said, sitting back on his knees and wiping his hands on the remaining rags. He seemed to have pulled himself together with barely a moment’s pause, all self-possession and control once more. ‘I take it that inferno was a success?’

‘It looked quite successful to me,’ Kai said. He tried moving his bandaged arm, and winced. ‘Irene, I’m sorry. I should have had more faith in you.’

‘It was hardly how I’d have planned it,’ Irene admitted. She was feeling more coherent now, though horribly exhausted. The knowledge of what she’d done to the books lay like a lead weight at the bottom of her mind, dragging all her other achievements down with it. She’d burned them. Unique books – stories that would never be found again – and she’d burned them all. There should have been some other way. There must have been some other way. If she’d tried harder, if she’d been more intelligent, then perhaps she would have found a way to save the books, as well as stopping Alberich.