Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

When Clay returns to Penumbra’s for his shift the following night, the store is closed with only a brief note, in Penumbra’s hand, stuck to the door: “Closed (Ad Libris)”(98). Clay feels anger, worry, and shame and considers these different reactions as he stands outside the store eating chips. He has not been there long before Rosemary Lapin appears and, for reasons unknown even to himself, he hides behind a trash can while she, in some distress, inspects Penumbra’s note. Clay then follows her home and knocks on her door. Nervously, she lets him into what he describes as “the burrow of a bibliophile hobbit” (101). Lapin declares she can’t tell Clay anything about where Penumbra may have gone so, in an effort to get her to talk, he shows her the visualization he made of the store. She is amazed and tells him that it must be the reason Penumbra left. Clay asks her to tell him what it’s all about and, though she is forbidden to speak of it she reveals that she is “a novice in a fellowship known as the Unbroken Spine. It is more than five hundred years old” (103). There are three orders in the fellowship: novices, the unbound, and the bound.