LIBRARIES ON EARTH WERE PRETTY LAME, in Theo's professional opinion.

There were lots of things wrong with the library at which Bihatra and Theo arrived that early afternoon. First of all, although Theo couldn't read the sign posted on the side of the building, he knew it for the name of the place. Libraries, labeled for convenience? Absurd!

Secondly, a person could saunter right through an actual front door without digging six feet into the ground to find it, or dangling off of a cliff, or even so much as constructing a ladder out of cats.

Once they were inside, his low impression of the place was underlined by the presence of bright, cheery posters featuring smiling children and slogans. And the librarian? The librarian was pleasant!

Where was the danger? The intrigue? The threats of death and dismemberment on top of exorbitant fines?

As Bihatra approached the librarian, who was smiling beatifically, Theo looked around at the shelves of books, none of which were screaming or leaking blood. He pitied the citizens of this quaint little town. He really did. Their libraries were woefully inadequate to equip them for careers in sorcery, let alone necromancy.

"I would like to see the obituaries for the past two months," Bihatra said to the librarian.

"All right, sweetie. Are you looking for local obituaries?"

"Yes."

"All of them should be online if the deceased was cared for through a local funeral home. Here, I'll help you log in to the computer." The librarian beckoned Bihatra away, leaving Theo to his own devices—devices which soon enough took him to the children's section of the Pinkleton Public Library.

About thirty minutes later, Bihatra found Theodosius sitting cross-legged on a fuzzy purple rug. Theo could not make sense of the alphabet on Earth, but he could make sense of pictures, and he was deeply absorbed in a story about rabbits stealing cabbages from an angry-looking farmer.

"Theo, let's go," Bihatra said.

"Just a minute," Theo said, turning another page. "I think he's going to get caught!"

Bihatra scowled and snatched the book out of Theo's hand, then slapped him in the back of the head with it. "Let's. Go."

Rubbing the back of his head with a petulant frown, Theo got to his feet. He trudged along behind Bihatra, who led the way back through the lobby of the library toward the front doors. "What were you looking for, anyway?" he asked.

"An obituary. It's a sort of death announcement they use here, and they typically list the survivors in a family. Paula was 68 when she kicked the bucket and she never married or had children, but she's got a sister still living in Pinkleton. A quick Facebook search, and I was able to piece together what her house looks like from her photos. I don't think there'll be many houses in town with a pumpkin-orange front door and dozens of tacky lawn ornaments out front."

They stepped back onto the street. It was early afternoon, and Theo was still sore and tired from three days of poring over headstones in the Pinkleton cemeteries. He thus felt an enormous amount of gratitude when he saw that the house directly across the street from the library matched Bihatra's description perfectly. It was a cream-colored cottage with a hideous orange front door, and the front lawn was covered with an army of lawn ornaments ranging from pink flamingos to cement donkeys with wagons full of flowers. The most widely-represented classification of lawn ornament was, by far, the lawn gnome: there was a dizzying variety of them in a rainbow of colorful, pointed hats.

Bihatra and Theo stared at the house together in silence, standing side by side just outside of the library doors. When Bihatra glanced up at Theo a moment later, she snorted in impatience. "Why in the Devil's name are you crying?"

"I'm just...so...happy," Theo sobbed.

With a look between disgust and exasperation, she shook her head. "Happy? We haven't even gotten our hands on her remains. We're not even halfway done with this wretched mission."

Theo sniffed, wiping his nose with the hem of his baggy T-shirt. "No, I know. I know. But it's just..." He pointed at the house, his eyes sparkling with tears. "Finding the house. You know? Something was finally...Easy."

Stories about produce-stealing rabbits had distracted Theo from the obvious hiccup in their plans to resurrect Paula Wolfe: if Bihatra was right in her guess and Paula had been cremated, there would not be much of a body left to be used in their necromantic experiment. But that was a bridge Theo would cross—carefully and anxiously—when he came to it.

For now, it was enough to revel in the ample, but doubtless temporary, mercy which the author of his (mis)fortunes had seen fit to bestow upon him.

(That's me. The author of his misfortunes is me. But you're reading this, so you're complicit.)

Theo turned and glared through the screen. He shook his head. "What did I ever do to you, Dear Reader? I ask you!"

And then, you turned the page.