Pages & Co.: Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales. Anna James

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      s soon as the door was closed behind them Grandad went to speak, but Seb glared at him and put a finger to his own lips.

      ‘Wait until we’re somewhere private,’ he whispered urgently, and so they walked in a silent line into another office, this one much more sparsely decorated than the last.

      ‘I refuse to be stamped!’ Grandad said, as soon as the door was closed. ‘It’s an obvious and egregious infringement of my rights as a person and a bookwanderer. The Underlibrary has no legal right to do anything to us.’

      ‘No, of course not,’ Seb said. ‘But it does have powers over bookwandering, and it is within its rights – if on dubious ethical grounds – to say, for example, that only stamped bookwanderers are permitted to wander within books under the jurisdiction of the British Underlibrary. You know a stamp isn’t permanent – Tilly isn’t still stamped from when Chalk was following her.’ Tilly shuddered at the memory.

      ‘Come on, Seb, you don’t need to do this,’ Grandma said.

      ‘I would never even think of it,’ Seb said, affronted. ‘But it’s not me that’s doing it. I only found out this was the plan during the Inking Ceremony when my friend Willow warned me. Amelia thinks that I should ingratiate myself with Melville, so I can report back. But I don’t think he’s convinced of my allegiance yet, and he’s sending along someone else to do the stamping so I can’t sneak you out. The only thing that I can think of is to—’ At that moment the door banged open and a petite woman walked in.

      ‘I’ll take over from here, Sebastian,’ she said formally.

      ‘Of course, Angelica,’ he said. ‘I’ll just take Tilly and Oskar next door.’

      ‘Why?’ she said, frowning.

      ‘Didn’t Mr Underwood tell you? Because of his new guidelines for child bookwanderers, they’re being stamped by Willow a few doors down, so there’s a separate record for under-eighteens. Surely … Melville told you, didn’t he? How embarrassing if I’ve spilled the beans before I was supposed to.’

      ‘Of course not,’ Angelica said, blustering. ‘I knew that – I was just checking you did. I’m actually rather in the inner circle nowadays,’ she said, smiling smugly.

      ‘Yes, yes,’ Seb said, ushering Tilly and Oskar out of the door. ‘Well done, very important I’m sure. I’ll take them in. How long do you need?’

      ‘Only ten minutes or so,’ she said.

      ‘What about Grandma and Grandad?’ Tilly hissed at him, as Seb shoved her and Oskar into an empty room.

      ‘I am sure they will think of something,’ he said. ‘If it came down to it, I’m sure they would prefer to make sure you don’t get stamped. They’re more than capable of fending for themselves.’

      ‘Can Underwood check if we’ve been stamped, though?’ Oskar asked Seb nervously.

      ‘Well, he can check the record, yes,’ Seb said. ‘And I will duly be writing your names down so they appear to be there. And if he checks the stamp to see where you’ve been then it won’t show any record of bookwandering.’

      ‘How does he check?’ Oskar asked.

      ‘The stamps are linked to what ends up looking a lot like a diary,’ Seb explained. ‘Where you’ve bookwandered will be recorded in a list showing when and where you went. Yours will stay blank because you’re not actually being stamped – but he’ll assume that he has frightened you into submission. Showing that he does not know you very well, I might add.’

      ‘Couldn’t you do that for my grandparents as well?’ Tilly said.

      ‘I think Melville would be more suspicious if they were showing as not bookwandering at all. There’s no chance he would think he could scare Archie and Elsie.’

      And despite how worried she felt, Tilly couldn’t help but feel a little proud.

      ‘So what is it that Angelica is actually going to do to them?’ Oskar said. ‘Tilly didn’t realise when she’d been stamped, so it’s obviously not, like, a big ink stamp … Is it?’

      ‘No, not quite so literal,’ Seb said, smiling despite the situation. ‘Chalk must have secretly stamped Tilly that first time he visited Pages & Co. To put a library stamp on someone you just need to get a little bit of book magic to stick to them, and then you can trace that magic trail. As Melville said, it doesn’t tell anyone where you are in real life, it simply creates a sort of diary, or map of the books you’ve wandered into. It’s not harmful, but Melville’s plan to use so much book magic is deeply concerning. This magic is woven into the structure of stories, but extracting it is a violent thing. You have to break a story a little bit, cause a rupture, and then you can siphon off some of that book’s magic. In the Underlibrary our main source, when and if we need it, is from books that are out of print or that have a major error in them and can’t be sold or loaned. We buy them up and pulp them, and can distil a little bit of book magic from them. Our method may not extract such potent magic but it doesn’t endanger stories in the same way. Remember, books are just the holders of stories, not the thing itself. And so, if someone wants to be traced – say if they are going into a dangerous book – they can wear a little bit of book magic in a locket, or simply dab a bit on to their body. It looks a lot like ink. In fact, as you saw at the Ceremony earlier, the ink used there has book magic in it to bind the Librarians to the Underlibrary and vice versa.’