It wasn’t entirely well-mannered to look a gift horse in the mouth, but there were times when it seemed to be necessary. Case in point: Andy Sharma’s surprising invitation to the Spring Equinox Ball. It had seemed like an adventure when the ostentatious black carriage appeared at his doorstep earlier that afternoon, but the two-hour ride, his fruitless questioning of the masked footman, and his maddeningly opaque conversations with the mysterious strangers had left him with more questions than answers—so he’d taken it upon himself to do a little exploring of his own. which was what led him up multiple staircases to the library, which was... something else. 

As Andy stood in the middle of the grand library, he gazed up in awe at the endless rows of leather-bound books and other equipment, from a large globe dotted with scrawled inscriptions to an antique revolving reader. He couldn’t help being reminded of university—though it baffled him now, as it sometimes did, that some people’s earnings outstripped that of an educational institution—and he had just stopped in front of a bookcase with particularly colorful spines, a hand on his chin as he pondered their titles, when he saw the shadow at the corner of his eye move.