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first collector. That’s his desk on the dais. My grandfather Henry and uncle John took over on the scholarly side. Theo Marvell says they built the biggest private collection of arcane literature in the country. The oldest and rarest books are in the Archives now, but still impressive.”
    While she joined Eddy among the tomes, Sean climbed the dais to try out Endecott’s desk. The top was an acre of mahogany, with an inlaid monogram— ECA —wreathed in laurel leaves. It was more showy than useful, since once he’d sunk into the cushy desk chair, he’d have to stand to reach anything. He spun the chair toward the stained glass triptych and tilted back to look at it. Dad’s “after” photos hadn’t done The Founding of Arkham justice, but photos never did. You needed to see a window on-site, struck to life by the sunlight passing through it. He kept tilting until the chair back rested on the edge of the desk. The center window, twice as wide as the side ones, showed the future Arkham Harbor, with two Mayflower y ships on the water and Puritans on the foreground hill: a governor or mayor (he had fancier clothes than the rest), a minister on his knees praying, and soldiers with breastplates and helmets and muskets. The soldiers were the only ones who noticed the Indians approaching from the right window. No problem, they came in peace. The foremost Indian had his hand up, fingers practically in the Vulcan V-salute, and the other Indians toted a deer carcass and strings of fish.
    Nobody in the center or right windows looked toward the dense forest in the left one. Sean didn’t either until disgust at his cowardice made him shift his gaze. The figure under the eaves of the wood had onyx skin and all-amber eyes. Add its Pharaoh getup, and it was totally out of place in a seventeenth-century scene on the planet Earth. And yet could Nyarlathotep ever really be out of place? Master of Magic, Soul and Messenger of the Outer Gods, wearer of a million skins—maybe a million skins simultaneously! He could be anywhere, at any time, doing business for his cosmic bosses and looking for dumb magicians to enslave. Or dumb potential magicians, like Sean.
    Dad had restored the Dark Pharaoh down to the enigmatic faintness of his smile, but after all, this Nyarlathotep was harmless glass, not a true avatar of the god. Sean could look away, no problem, and he did, lifting his eyes to the crow-familiar Nyarlathotep tossed skyward. Pre-Dad, it had been a winged black blob. Now Sean could see every feather, every claw, the whiskers around its beak, the inky buttons of its eyes; though a minor detail, the crow dominated the Founding by sucking in sun until the excess brilliance seeped out its edges like one of the subliminal haloes in Mom’s paintings.
    Mom’s paintings? And did it—?
    To get a closer look, Sean got up and stood below the left window. The wall beneath was still under his palm. So was its wooden frame and the bit of glass he could reach, just the wildflower-studded turf of the foreground. To touch the crow and check for a Mom-like hum to match that halo, he’d need a ladder.
    In addition to the ladders that slid along bookshelves on steel rails, the library had stepladders that looked tall enough to reach the crow. But when Sean turned back to the windows, the crow had already lost its halo. It must have been the effect of a fleeting angle of sunlight, nothing magical after all, optical illusion, wishful thinking—
    â€œSean?” Helen said. She and Eddy stood at the library doors. “We’re going upstairs.”
    â€œComing.” After a last glance at the crow (no sneaky return of the halo), he jumped the three steps off the dais. It was time for real concerns, like whether Helen would stick him in a bedroom so museum-like, he’d be afraid to touch anything.

 
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    Helen’s bedroom was on the second floor, at the front of the house.