When he finally spoke, he sounded like he’d aged a hundred years.

“I have never used the book myself. My debts are too steep to risk owing anything more. Though there is not much left for them to take, is there?” He threw back the rest of his drink and slammed the plastic cup on the table. Within seconds, he was pacing again, nervous and agitated.

I followed him to the other side of the room.

“Who do you owe?”

He stopped walking, pulling his robe tighter, as if he was protecting himself from an unseen enemy. “The Far Keep, of course.” There was a mix of bitterness and defeat in his voice. “And they always collect their debts.”

CHAPTER 17

The Book of Stars

The Gatekeeper turned his back to me, moving instead to a glass case behind him. He examined a collection of charms—amulets hanging from long leather cords, crystals and exotic rocks that reminded me of the river stones, runes with markings I didn’t recognize. He opened the cabinet and took out one of the amulets, rubbing the silver disk between his fingers. It reminded me of the way Amma touched the gold charm she wore around her neck, whenever she got nervous.

“Why don’t you just leave?” I asked. “Take all this stuff and disappear?” I knew the answer even as I asked the question.

Nobody would stay here unless they had to.

He spun a large enamel globe on a tall stand next to the cabinet. I watched as it turned, strange shapes spinning past me. They weren’t the continents I was used to seeing in history class.

“I can’t leave. I’m Bound to the Gates. If I venture too far from them, I’ll continue to change.”

He stared down at his bent, gnarled fingers. A chill rushed up my back.

“What do you mean?”

The Gatekeeper turned his hands over slowly, as if he had never seen them before. “There was a time when I looked like you, dead man. A time when I was a man.”

The words were swimming around in my head, but I couldn’t find a way to make them true. Whatever the Gatekeeper was—however reminiscent his features were of a man’s—it wasn’t possible.

Was it?

“I—I don’t understand. How—?” There was no way to say what I was thinking without being cruel. And if he was a man somewhere inside there, he had suffered more than enough cruelty already.

“How did I become this?” The Gatekeeper fingered a large crystal hanging from a golden chain. He picked up a second necklace, made of rings of sugar candy, the kind you could buy at the Stop & Steal, smoothing it back down inside its velvet-lined case. “The Council of the Far Keep is very powerful. They have powerful magic at their disposal, stronger than anything I witnessed as a Keeper.”

“You were a Keeper?” This thing used to be like my mom and Liv and Marian?

His dull green eyes stared back at me. “You might want to take a seat.…” He paused. “I don’t think you told me your name.”

“Ethan.” I’d told him twice now.

“It’s nice to meet you, Ethan. My name is—was—Xavier. No one calls me that anymore, but you can if it makes things easier.”

I knew what he was trying to say—if it made it easier to imagine him as a man instead of a monster.

“Okay. Thanks, Xavier.” It sounded funny, even coming from me.

He tapped the case with his fingers, some kind of nervous habit. “And to answer your question, yes. I was a Keeper. One who made the mistake of questioning Angelus, the head—”

“I know who he is.” I remembered the one named Angelus, the Keeper with the bald head. I also remembered the ruthless expression on his face when he had come after Marian.

“Then you know he’s dangerous. And corrupt.” Xavier watched me carefully.

I nodded. “He tried to hurt a friend of mine—two, actually. He brought one of them to the Far Keep to stand trial.”

“Trial.” He laughed, only there was nothing like a smile on his nothing like a face.

“It wasn’t funny.”

“Of course not. Angelus must have been making an example of your friend,” Xavier said. “I was never given a trial. He finds them dull compared to the punishment.”

“What did you do?” I was afraid to ask, but I felt like I had to.

Xavier sighed. “I questioned the authority of the Council, the decisions they were making. I never should have done it,” he said quietly. “But they were breaking our vows, the laws we swore to abide by. Taking things that were not theirs to Keep.”

I tried to imagine Xavier in a Caster library somewhere like Marian, stacking books and recording the details of the Caster world. He had created his own version of a Caster library here, a place filled with magical objects—and a few unmagical ones.

“What kind of things, Xavier?”

He glanced around the cavernous room, panicked. “I don’t think we should be talking about this. What if the Council finds out?”

“How would they?”

“They will. They always do. I don’t know what more they could do to me, but they would think of something.”

“We’re in the center of a mountain.” My second one today. “It’s not like they can hear you.”

He pulled the collar of the heavy wool robe away from his neck. “You would be surprised at what they can find out. Let me show you.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant as he moved past a heap of broken bicycles to another glass cabinet. He opened the doors and took out a cobalt-blue sphere the size of a baseball.