The window book

Title is AWFUL I KNOW shut up, k


When Abby was little, she had trouble making friends. Her grandfather felt sorry for her, so he gave her the next best(possibly better) thing: a book. But not just any book. A magical book.
This is not like other magical books. It does not transport you to other worlds, or let you cast spells, it isn't a guide to fairytale creatures that secretly exist in the shadows of your reality. It doesn't even read itself aloud.
What it does is it let you look.
So Abby looked. And what she saw through the page was a little boy, much like herself in that he was alone in his room, sitting on his bed, looking unhappily out a very large window. After she noticed the fact that he was alone and looked lonely, Abby began to notice other things. The boy had long, dark hair, and very vividly purple eyes. This did not strike her as odd because Abby was not yet at the age where you start noticing the difference between what is considered odd or normal. She did think of it as mystical. Abby didn't actually know the word "mystical" yet, but she was very aware of the meaning, and the feeling of that word sent a thrilling little chill down her spine.
His clothes were the sort Abby had seen in some of her grandfather's paintings--dark, long, billowing clothes, layers of them, with cruelly curved, pointy, decorative bits of metal attached to the shoulders and around the neckline. The colours of the clothes were very rich and diverse, but also subdued so that you didn't really notice.
The paintings that the boy reminded Abby of were ones that her grandfather had painted himself, and were so real and so lifelike that when you at first looked at them you thought you were looking at a person through a window. Now that she thought of it, Abby realized that the little boy's face, even, was very like the people in those paintings--they had long, narrow, angular faces, very elegant and graceful, but at the same time you knew from looking at them that they could turn viciously cruel in a heartbeat. They'd always sort of unnerved her, but now looking at the little boy Abby didn't feel anything but pity, because despite his hauntingly beautiful features and the ring of twisting, wicked looking metal that sat on his head, he was undoubtedly, undeniably crying.

Abby Solomon befriends the boy, and as they grow older, they grow closer. They tell each other about their different worlds, help each other through hard times, and forge a deep connection across two different universes. Tharalan is a prince of Nelfeld, the land of dark magic--considered by many to be "evil" in his world, though Abby can't see any evil in him.
As the years pass, Abby loses her special book, and loses touch with the prince. She's a young woman now, working as a night janitor in the local library--a very special library. The only reason she really has the job is because her grandfather was friends with the curator. Abby's never managed to amount to anything in life--she's too wrapped up in comics, books, movie, and video games to be bothered with real life. Ever since she lost the magic book, she's been obsessed with finding some sort of replacement. But she never has.
Her life changes radically one night though when the curator of the museum gives her a special key to the upstairs--somewhere she's never been allowed before--and asks her to fill in for the usual night librarian. Abby doesn't ask why a library needs a night librarian, and she doesn't ask about the stairwell that didn't used to be there. She just takes the job, and the bonus pay, and smiles, and nods.
But that night, something goes horribly wrong. As Abby's putting books away, she spies someone stealing a book off the shelf and running off with it. Abby gives chase and follows them through a door that wasn't there before and falls into a place called Limbo--a place between worlds. It's then that she discovers the page in her uniform's pocket--a page from the magic book. It sprouts a thread of light that Abby follows into Tharalan's world, tumbling out of his mirror and into his bedroom.
At first taken to the palace dungeons, Abby is visited soon after by Tharalan himself--now king, after he assassinated his father(who'd killed his mother some months before) and ruler of this land of dark magic. Abby soon remembers her duty to the library's curator and requests Tharalan help her get the book back--to which he refuses, because he wants Abby to remain in his world with him. Forever.
Locking Abby in her guest rooms isn't good enough though. She soon befriends a gargoyle that roosts on her balcony and convinces it to fly her away from the palace, deep into the city surounding it. There, she meets an older manwhore who's out of his prime and being fired from the brothel he's worked at all his life, and a rough-tough drunkard mercenary that frequents it. With their help, and the help of the gargoyle, Abby begins to work her way into the seedy underbelly of the already all-around seedy city in search of the book and the thief--with King Tharalan searching every shadow for her all the while.