The Library of Shadows

Of all the terrible ideas Este had this quarter, this could easily have been the worst.

Her hypothesis was simple. When Este was little, her dad used to hike her up onto his shoulders to pick honeysuckle blooms from the trellises around their house, and if she pinched her eyes closed tightly enough, she could still taste the drop of summer-sweet sap they’d pulled from the blossoms.

So, it really wasn’t that much of a stretch to think that her dad might have picked one of the spire’s purple blooms, tasted the drop of nectar on his tongue, and then—whoops! Suddenly, he could see the unseeable and read the words unknown like the poem said. All he had to do was take the antidote to stop the poison from seeping so far into his bloodstream that it fried his brain into a potato pancake, and he was good to go.

Testing the hypothesis, however, was not as straightforward.

Este arrived in front of the head librarian’s office for their third Tuesday morning meeting with an extra cup of coffee in an effort to bribe her way back into Ives’s good favor. She’d even splurged and went to the on-campus coffee shop so that the coffee didn’t taste like the months-old beans they had in Vespertine Hall. But Ives, as it turned out, was not a coffee person. When she opened the door, the whole office smelled like freshly brewed Earl Grey. Este’s worst nightmare.

“Good morning, Miss Logano.” Ives eyed Este’s double-fisted caffeine fix as she stepped inside. “Late night?”

Este shook her head and resisted the urge to look over her shoulder. “Long day ahead.”

She couldn’t see him, but she knew that Mateo had made it inside the office when a cool breeze brushed against her hand. His familiar scent of cedar and ink calmed her nerves.

That was happening more and more lately, with and without Este’s permission. She was spending less time in her dorm room where Posy, Shepherd, and Arthur huddled on the couch holding horror movie marathons after class and more time in the senior lounge, pretending to study while sneaking glances at Mateo like he might vanish entirely if she looked away for too long. On a scale from irritating to highly anticipated, she’d say his presence had, at some point, veered past tolerable and into the enjoyable zone.

“How do you feel the first few weeks of school have gone?” Ives asked as she sank into the hardback chair on the other side of her desk.

Este knew exactly which drawer held the spire key. It would take ten, maybe fifteen, seconds for Mateo to reach in, grab the key, and stuff it inside Este’s backpack. Her mission was to make sure Ives didn’t notice.

She forced a smile. “Things are going well, I think.”

“I have been adequately impressed with your performance as an archival assistant,” Ives said with a sip of her tea. Which was probably the closest thing to a compliment that had ever come out of Ives’s mouth.

“Thank you?” She’d meant to say it definitively, but the end of her inflection curled up in a question mark.

“Your grades, however.” Ives tapped her nails against the ceramic mug in a way that made Este’s entire body tense. “I admit that I have some concerns.”

The drawer jiggled. Este coughed into her elbow trying to cover up the sound.

Mateo just needed to open it up, slip a hand in, and grab the key—

The drawer didn’t open. Locked.

This was not part of the plan.

Este swallowed thickly. “Concerns. Like, what?”

“Mr. Donohue spoke to me after grading your first essay.” Ives slid Este’s stapled essay across the desk, and there was a circled red C-plus in the top-right corner.

Not bad for a girl who graduated from the Homeschool of Hard Knocks to attend an elite college preparatory academy, but the disdain on Ives’s face told Este now was not the time to state that particular case.

“I trust you remember our agreement,” Ives said.

Este pressed her palms into the knees of her jeans to steady herself. “Return The Book of Fades in one piece.”

Another sip of Earl Grey. “And your grades need to stay above a 3.5 GPA. All archival assistants must be eligible for the dean’s list for academic honors. Dr. Kirk has expressed concerns about your history scores, and I’ve spoken to Ms. Eberly in advance of your poetry exam because . . . Well, Este, like I said. I’m concerned.”

Este’s focus wasn’t on Ives anymore, though. Behind her, Mateo must have been searching for something to open the drawer with because a few books floated as if being picked up one by one and piled into his arms. As if Ives would hide the key under a book the way her parents used to keep the spare under the porch mat. As Mateo’s stack grew precariously high, Este had to intervene before he toppled over.

She took a quick inventory of everything on top of Ives’s desk. A heap of books in various states of repair. A recently lit candle with lukewarm wax drips still clinging to the sides. A staple gun—tempting. Under a stack of papers stamped with the school letterhead, the gold handle of a letter opener caught her eye.

“As for finding the book,” Ives said, “have you made any progress?”

Este blinked like she was trying to solve a complicated equation. Sure, she could have told Ives exactly where the book was if she wanted to. End her deal with Mateo right now and be done with him and the ghosts for good. Three weeks ago, she wouldn’t have hesitated to serve his head to the head librarian on a silver platter, but now she busied herself with a suspiciously long drink of coffee. One gulp, two, three. It burned the whole way down.

The pile of floating books froze, and Este could envision Mateo’s reaction even while he was invisible—on the surface, he’d look calm, almost amused, but she knew how his shoulders went rigid, Atlas beneath the weight of the world.

Ives’s eyebrows rose impatiently.

“Some,” Este decided on. “My roommate is helping.”

That was apparently enough for Este to outrun the gallows at least for a while longer because Ives nodded, her tongue tucked into her cheek. “And your shifts? How do you like being an archival assistant?”

Aside from the whole being-haunted montage?

“It’s great,” Este said, forcing a grin far too wide.

“Your father was an archival assistant. Did you know that?”

“I didn’t,” Este said, but pride ballooned in her like she was a kids’ birthday party clown with full authority over a helium canister. Every day, she discovered new secrets to his past.

“Before, of course, he left Radcliffe permanently,” Ives said, taking an imaginary pin to Este’s metaphorical balloon. “It’s always curious to see how history repeats itself. I don’t suppose that boy Mateo has caused any more trouble for you, has he?”

More than you know.

Just over her shoulder, Mateo balanced ten, fifteen, twenty books—and then, before Este could say, Nope! No trouble at all, he wasn’t balancing any of them anymore. Books crashed to the ground, toppling over each other and knocking nearby stacks of books down like dominoes.

Ives whipped around. “What on Earth?”

When she crouched to pick up the books, they skittered across the floor away from her. As if someone with a penchant for getting Este in trouble might have kicked them. She reached for another one, and it went sailing the other way. Not an accident. A distraction.

“Here, let me help,” Este said.

While Ives’s back was turned, Este reached for the letter opener. She gathered a few of the spilled books for the sake of posterity, but as soon as she placed them on the desk, she shimmied the letter opener into the drawer’s brass keyhole. It wasn’t the most elegant solution, but the pins wiggled and budged inside the lock, each one bringing her closer to the spire key, and Ives was too busy muttering about botched repairing techniques to notice.

Plus, the more books she picked up, the more Mateo knocked over. The office was crammed full of texts in various states of repair—some rubber banded, some annotated with strips of paper where they needed to be glued or taped, some pressed between boards to flatten. An endless supply of ammunition.

The letter opener jammed. Este pushed and tugged, but it wouldn’t go out or in. Even if Ives hadn’t seen Mateo’s floating books in her periphery, there was no way she wouldn’t notice the rogue letter-opener-turned-crowbar situation Este had going on.

Mateo must have sensed the panic that radiated off her in tidal waves because she felt a familiar cool touch against her shoulder, gone as quickly as it came, but soft and reassuring.

The lights flickered. Slowly at first, and then full-on Coachella strobe lights. If Ives hadn’t been up to her knees in half-repaired books, she might have noticed the light switch flipping on and off, but instead she tossed her hands into the air, exasperated.

“The quirks of a hundred-year-old building,” she said as she marched to the switch to investigate it herself.

Every time the lights dimmed, Este jerked the letter opener, begging the drawer to budge, and when they surged back on, she straightened a stack of books. Finally, the lock gave.

Este stripped the spire key from the drawer, but as she knocked it shut with her hip, the head librarian’s eyes were on her in an instant like she’d heard code-red alarm bells blaring.

“What are you doing?” Ives snapped.

Startled, the key fell from Este’s fingers and clattered against the floorboards.

Este lurched for it, and instead of the key, her hands found a long-quilled pen along the floorboards. Thank you, Mateo. She popped back up with the quill in hand. “I wanted to jot down some notes about book repair if that’s okay. You were saying something about alkaline buffers?”

Stacking books back into piles, Ives prattled on about the importance of finding the right pH balance for paper, and the spire key skimmed toward the door, hovering over the floorboards without a sound. Was Mateo . . . army crawling? Este bit the inside of her cheek to keep a straight face.

“And that’s why we wear gloves,” Ives said. She lifted the last of the books onto her desk and blew a strand of ink-black hair away from her face, trying and failing to regain her usual composure. “Any other questions?”

In the stack, a book called Poetry Scansion for Beginners snagged Este’s attention—she recognized it from her dad’s circulation history, and, if she was being honest, Ives had made a few good points about her upcoming poetry exam.

“What are all these?” Este asked, plucking it from the pile.

“I’ve been restoring a few texts of interest,” Ives said as another pile toppled. “Perhaps this is a project I can have your assistance with.”

“Can I borrow this one?” Este asked.

“Yes, fine,” Ives said, flustered. “Make sure you scan it out, and I’ll see you next week for our meeting.”

Este walked out of Ives’s office like she had an electric-shock collar on, just waiting for the zap. She scrunched up her face in anticipation for the moment Ives realized what was missing, to be reprimanded. It didn’t come. Ives closed the office door behind her with a click.

In the stacks, Mateo manifested with a sly smile and the spire key in his hands. He dropped it into her palm. “Not too shabby, Logano.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” she said, craning her neck to meet his eyes. “Meet me at the spire door at midnight?”

Her heart skipped a traitorous beat when he said, “You’ve got yourself a date.”