Unregistered

Priya had cataloged 40,000 books in eleven years. She could tell the age of a binding by its resistance, read a provenance from a bookplate in under a minute, and identify the decade of most printing techniques by smell alone.

She had never seen this book before.

That was not, in itself, unusual. The Minerva Library's collection contained approximately 800,000 volumes. One slipping through without proper registration was possible, if unlikely. What was unusual was that when she ran her scanner over the spine label, the database returned: *No record found.*

The library was closing in four hours. The movers were already in the east wing, boxing periodicals. Priya had three hundred items left on her final reconciliation list.

She opened the book anyway.

It was not very old — late twentieth century at most, the paper suggesting a 1980s printing date. No author. No publisher listed on the title page. The title was simply: *Accounts.*

The first eighty-odd pages appeared to be a dry history of the building itself. Construction dates. Renovations. Minor incidents. She skimmed until something stopped her hand.

Page 84. A list of names, in neat columns. Dates beside each name. She recognized the format: it was a visitor log, the same format used by the library until digitization in 1999.

The last entry was today's date.

Her name.

She looked around the empty room. The afternoon light came through the high windows at a familiar angle. Everything was exactly as it should be.

Except the ink beside her name was still drying.