CHAPTER 60

"That, my dear Grim Reaper, remains to be seen." When Murray spoke, his voice was deep and booming, but his lips didn't move. Instead, his mouth was frozen in a macabre grin that showed all his teeth and his tongue. "But yes, dear child, this is no social visit. For I am Mehkhkahrel, and I have gathered us here today to determine if the end is nigh."

Eulalie yawned. Her jaw opened wider than her fist before popping, causing her venomous fangs to slide free from their hiding place. Blinking away the sleep, she saw a terrified rat holding a long broom. It was staring up at her from the floor below. She could smell the hot breath of other rodents watching her from the shadows of the Library.

"Did you wake me up?" she asked while cradled in a small web she had built in an abandoned supply closet on the first floor of the Library. Sofia had given her the space as temporary accommodations while they had tried to do research on the weirdo in the front yard.

The rat bolted through the door. Several other rats followed, leaving the stink of fear behind them. At the foot of the door, a tiny blue figure leaned into the opening.

"Sofia said to get you up," Cerulea squeaked. "She needs you right away."

"I'll be there in a minute." Eulalie yawned again and tumbled casually out of her web. She landed in a crouch, her legs splaying wide for support. Stepping out of the closet, she smiled at the sight of the enormous stacks of books that stretched impossibly into the sky. Cerulea was nowhere to be seen, but her glitter trail was still falling from the sky.

Her mother would have loved this place. It had every book known to man, and then some. The wide-open spaces were also perfect for climbing, and Eulalie was eager to explore every inch of it once she got the chance.

Outside her room was a giant stack of books that she had gone through last night. They had all been dead ends with nothing of value to offer her.

Wondering what could be so urgent, she walked toward the main lobby of the Library. The giant globe that hovered in place was an absolute marvel to behold, held in place by magic. Beneath it, Sofia stood over a small contingent of rats. She looked up at Eulalie, a look of concern on her face.

"The house is missing." Sofia's voice was steady, but Eulalie detected several trembling undertones. There was fear, sadness, and more than a little bit of concern. Each emotion was its own musical chord, and she could hear them all.

"How do you lose a house?"

"The magical book that we use to get there is still here, but it no longer opens a doorway to the house, and all of the rat portals that go there have been closed."

Eulalie looked at the small crowd of rats, then back at Sofia. "All the portals are closed? We have no way back?"

Sofia shook her head. "Not that I'm aware of. The rats are capable of opening portals, but only on the orders of the Rat King himself."

"I see." Eulalie walked up to the small group and watched as the rats backed away from her. Each one of them had its own scent, and they all smelled delicious. She narrowed her eyes as she studied them. "Where is this king?"

"I assume back at the house. He is the only one who speaks our language, so even if we wanted them to help us, we have no way to communicate with them." Sofia looked calm and collected, but Eulalie could hear even more emotions in her voice. Shock. Despair. The cyclops was so caught up in her own feelings that she likely wasn't processing information properly.

"Let's not be short-sighted." Eulalie pulled out her phone and frowned. "We don't have internet here, do we?"

"None of the companies will give us a good quote." Sarcasm from Sofia sounded an awful lot like a squeaky violin to Eulalie.

"If he's the only one who can talk to them, then how did you get them to wake me up?"

Sofia lifted her eyebrow. "I didn't ask them. I asked Cerulea."

Eulalie spotted the fairy fluttering overhead. "Can you talk to them?" she asked.

"No," she replied. "I was trying to use the broom to wake you and they decided to help me out."

"I can work with that. We need a sequence to follow." Eulalie pulled a band of webbing from her spinnerets and began weaving. The rats didn't understand English, but solutions came easy to those who looked for them. "Establish communication with rats. Communicate desire for portal home. If no portal home, then portal somewhere safe, investigate current situation. What does their king look like?"

"You probably saw him. Crown with glasses." Sofia walked toward her. "What are you doing?"

"Bypassing the language barrier to accomplish our first task. If they can understand situational context, it should be possible to convey our needs." Weaving a rat with a crown was child's play, especially done in a chibi art style. When she held up her final product, it was an image of their king in the middle of a tapestry of silken strands.

The rats chittered excitedly for a moment, then went silent as she wove another image. When she held it up, their fear stink faded even further. This image was a picture of her surrounded by food and cartoon hearts. She was certain that Sofia probably had pen and paper somewhere, but her web art was far more precise than anything she could do by hand.

That, and she had a bad habit of nibbling on crayons. It was a childhood habit she just couldn't break, and she hated having to pick wax out of her teeth.

"What are you doing?" Sofia asked.

"Establishing that I'm not a threat." Her next image showed her and the king holding hands. The rats looked at one another, but it seemed they were grasping the situation. "Do we have any idea how they figure out where they're going?"