Pages & Co.: The Treehouse Library


 
 
 
 The Pages & Co. series
 
 Pages & Co.: The Bookwanderers
 Pages & Co.: The Lost Fairy Tales
 Pages & Co.: The Map of Stories
 Pages & Co.: The Book Smugglers
 Pages & Co.: The Treehouse Library
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 PHILOMEL BOOKS
 An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
 
 
 
 First published in the United States of America by Philomel Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2023
 First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2022
 Text copyright © 2022 by Anna James
 Illustrations copyright © 2022 by Marco Guadalupi
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 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
 Ebook ISBN 9780593327241
 US edition edited by Cheryl Eissing. • Cover art © 2021 by Marco Guadalupi. • Cover design by Kelley Brady. • US edition designed by Ellice M. Lee, adapted for ebook by Andrew Wheatley.
 This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
 The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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 For Claire, who believed in bookwandering from the very beginning.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1
 No Ordinary Train
 
 
 
 The train rattled gently beneath Milo Bolt as he stared out at the great expanse of darkness surrounding him. Through the windows of the Sesquipedalian he could see only inky nothingness, interrupted occasionally by a burst of glittering shadows. For the Sesquipedalian, or the Quip for short, was no ordinary train. Powered by ideas, it could take you anywhere you could imagine. And Milo was its Driver.
 This was a very new state of affairs. It was only hours before that his uncle Horatio, book smuggler of note, had been in charge of the Quip, but it felt like a lifetime ago. A poisoned book and an alchemist intent on controlling all the world’s knowledge had turned Milo’s world upside down. Now the Driver’s whistle was Milo’s, and he was the only person who could tell the train where they were headed next. And he’d chosen to set out on his own, slipping away from Tilly and Pages & Co. quietly, with only—
 “Milo?” a voice called.
 “I’m in here,” he shouted back, and a few moments later a pale face popped round the door to the engine room. Alessia was the Alchemist’s daughter, which was just about as complicated as it sounds. She’d stolen away from her father’s home in Venice on the Quip—and also stolen a lot of his research and recipes while she was at it. This was just as well, for Horatio was currently lying poisoned and unconscious in the Pages family’s spare bedroom, and the only way to revive him was with the recipe in Alessia’s notebook.
 “What are you doing in here?” she asked, looking around the cramped, stuffy engine room.
 “Habit, I suppose,” Milo said, stretching his arms. Until very recently, he had spent a lot of his time keeping the engine topped up with the wooden orbs charged with imagination that kept the Quip traveling smoothly through the world of Story. Now he had the run of the train without anyone to tell him off, and yet it still felt like he was trespassing when he used Horatio’s office. Even though he could have slept in one of the fancy guest carriages, Milo was staying put in his cozy, cluttered quarters right toward the back of the train. Alessia, however, had immediately and happily installed herself into the finest guest car, decorated with richly embroidered hangings and jewel-colored cushions.
 There was barely enough room in the engine cab for Alessia to sit down next to Milo on the floor.
 “Do you reckon they’ve noticed we’re gone yet?” she asked.
 “I suppose so,” Milo said, thinking about the noisy Pages family kitchen they’d just slipped away from. “It’s been at least an hour, right? I bet we’ll get a letter in the postbox before too long.”
 “Will they ask us to come back?” Alessia wondered.
 “I’m not sure. I hope they understand why we’ve left . . . Tilly will, at least. But I am feeling a little bad about abandoning my uncle with them without asking.”
 “They’ll look after him well,” Alessia reassured him, “better than we could by ourselves here. They’ll understand.”
 
 
 
 Milo knew she was right, but he couldn’t quash the lingering guilt about leaving his poisoned uncle with a family he really barely knew. Horatio had only ended up at Pages & Co. in the first place because Milo had insisted that the one stolen dose of the Alchemist’s antidote be used for Tilly’s grandad first. He had been the first victim of the poisoned book, but he was awake and recovering now. This at least demonstrated that they could probably trust the recipe Alessia had smuggled away from her father in Venice. Not that they had any of the ingredients they needed to actually make it.
 Horatio wasn’t even supposed to have been poisoned—he would still be awake if he hadn’t been trying to stop Milo from touching the tainted book.
 “I can see you doing it