The Library of Shadows

Este woke up with a hangover from hell. Literally.

Her head throbbed and lips burned. When she pulled her eyelids open, they scraped against her dry eyes. Every corner of her body ached. Crashing her mom’s Atlantic blue Outback against a tree in the Catskills while she was learning to drive had done less damage.

A few candles had been lit in the senior lounge, but the wall sconces were blessedly extinguished. Her hatching migraine couldn’t have handled the extra light. Someone had put the surviving rivean ivy blossoms in a glass vase, and their heady perfume swept through the room.

Este’s fingers pressed into the smooth fabric of the velvet chaise, sitting upward despite the protests of every swollen joint. The antidote envelope sat on the table next to her, emptied. Was that why her mouth tasted like month-old salami?

The door creaked open. Mateo nudged through, arms cradling a tower of bits and bobs like he’d accidentally walked into a Target without a list.

When he lifted his eyes, he flinched at the sight of her. She winced as everything he’d carried crashed to the floor.

“Criminy, Este,” he said as he scooped up boxes of bandages and ointment bottles and a stray thermometer that scattered all the way to the fireplace. “Give a man a warning before you rise from the dead.”

“How did I get here?” Este asked, smearing her hands over her tired eyes.

Mateo toed a wrinkled Persian carpet heaped on the floor. “Once I got the rug underneath you, dragging you down the hallway was easy enough. Had to get Daveed’s help to get you up the stairs, though.”

Este cringed. She could picture her body splayed in different directions, mouth sagging open and drooling, as Mateo slid her around the Lilith. Not exactly the most flattering image.

“What’s all that stuff for?” she asked as he shuffled across the room. His balancing act almost crashed and burned a few extra times before making it to the base of the chaise.

“Do you remember anything?” Eyes wide, Mateo’s line of vision drooped to Este’s waist, and hers followed.

Memories waded through a black tide. The ivy nectar, the heat against her cheeks, her eyes the size of moons when she looked at Mateo. Oh, god. She made such a fool of herself. She winced at the thought, and her side stitched with pain.

Bile climbed up her throat. This wasn’t just the worst hangover ever. Her cable-knit cream sweater had been shredded. Crusted rust-colored stains coated the threads. She pinched her eyes closed and reopened them in case the sight was a hallucination from remnant toxins clinging to her bloodstream, but the mess stayed. Whatever adrenaline surged through her veins was enough to mask the immediate pain, but when she actually had to feel those claw marks, it wasn’t going to be pretty.

The acrid taste clung to her tongue as she said, “The Fades.”

“Got her hands on you pretty good.” Mateo dropped his stack of supplies next to her. Suddenly, the pile of gauze made a lot more sense.

The Fade’s face, her rotten breath, her bone-bare hands. Este couldn’t have done anything to escape. Through the murkiness of her memory, she felt the searing touch pierce her skin, and then nothing at all. The Fades had vanished.

“What stopped them?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, like it killed him to admit.

The sound of the Fades’ singing pounded through Este’s head. Each harmony threatened to split her skull wide open. “Please tell me you brought Tylenol.”

“Sorry,” Mateo said. “Back in my day, all we had was morphine.” It only took one sharp look for him to throw his hands up in surrender. “Yes, Este, I brought normal, run-of-the-mill acetaminophen. No leeches, no arsenic. I think you’ve had enough strange concoctions this evening.”

A blush swept over Este’s cheeks. Or maybe that was a fever blooming from remnants of rivean sap on her tongue or the infection surely sprouting at her waistline.

“I could understand them,” she said, digging her fingers into the threads of the chaise. “The Fades. I knew what they were saying. The nectar worked, Mateo. It actually worked.”

“How do you feel now?” His eyebrows tugged together.

“Horribly sober.”

“Good to know the antidote works.” The chaise gave as Mateo sank into its cushion. “We need to get you cleaned up. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“Why don’t I go to the health center where there are actual nurses who know what they’re doing?”

“Do you want to tell them you were attacked by an ancient, bloodthirsty spirit who tried to kill you?” he asked, drenching a cotton pad with hydrogen peroxide. “Or should I?”

He dropped the pad into her hand, and the solution bubbled against the grime on her fingertips. Maybe he was right. She wasn’t even sure if she could walk all the way to the medical building in this condition—let alone resign herself to getting poked and prodded when she tried to explain the truth.

Mateo’s voice was feather soft, even shy, as he said, “I’m sorry I won’t be able to help more. Just follow my instructions, okay?”

She nodded. Anything to make the pain subside.

He let loose a small cough. “You’re, um, going to need to take off your shirt.”

Oh. Right. Este fumbled with the hem of her sweater. Her heart raced as she peeled the fabric over her head—half from the frantic way it tried to keep her alive, and half from Mateo’s proximity. At the bottom of her vision where her skin met the waistband of her denim jeans, an ugly maroon smudge stained her skin, sticky and still warm.

“I look like I got in a street fight with Freddy Krueger.” It was probably the least sexy thing she could say half-naked. “I really don’t want to do this.”

“Well, I really don’t want you to die either.” His words were clipped, like he’d bridled himself, afraid of saying the wrong thing.

When she peeked at him, Mateo stared ahead, rod-straight with his fingers digging into the knees of his wool pants. His eyes were trained on the bookcases, modest.

How annoyingly Victorian.

“You’re allowed to look at me,” she said, mouse quiet.

After a long, winding moment, he snuck a glance over his shoulder. Este pretended she didn’t notice the way his eyes drifted down the curve of her bare shoulder and shot right back up to her face. “You need to clean the wound with the peroxide soon before the infection spreads,” he said. “It’ll probably—”

Este wailed as the cotton skimmed her skin.

“—burn slightly.”

She huffed, breathless until the pain subsided. “Thank you for that astute observation.”

“Are you okay?” he asked, turning to face her again. Concern and something deeper laced his voice.

She grunted in response and tried the cotton pad again, this time gritting her teeth as the peroxide washed away the blood and dust. The Fade’s fingertips carved four gnarled stripes into the soft dip on her waist, halfway to her belly button. The pulped flesh stung with each swipe of medicine.

“What next?” she dared to ask, already fearing the answer.

Mateo slid a roll of beige bandages across the chaise toward her. “I’m so relieved you’re alive. You—” Este turned as he leaned his nose toward the ceiling rafters and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Trying so hard to look anywhere but at her. “You shouldn’t be. The Fades don’t usually leave leftovers.”

A quiet breath wove through the room, stitching them closer together in a way words couldn’t. She’d never expected death’s gruesome stare to wear sparkly pink eye shadow, but it did. She could have died. Este should’ve been crying jagged sobs that tore her open from the inside, but the tears didn’t come. Even when hot spikes radiated from the gorged flesh in her side, carved by the hand of death herself, Este only clenched her jaw.

It would sink in later, she was sure. But for now, she had adrenaline in her veins, ivy residue coating her tongue, and a ghost at her side who smelled like New England forests and candle smoke and crisp, yellow pages—like home, if she had one.

As if hearing her thoughts, Mateo dragged his eyes away from the ceiling and looked at her again, eyes round as reflecting pools, revealing all the things that scared her most. He followed the curve of her hips to the dip of her waist and upward until her face warmed beneath his gaze. “For a moment, I thought I’d surely lost you. It’s a vulnerable thing to have, a body.”

Este didn’t dare blink, afraid that if she closed her eyes for even a moment, he’d disappear like smoke on the wind. She nudged the roll of bandages back toward him. There was enough electricity humming through her bones to light up New York City.

“Could you hold this while I wrap?” she asked finally.

Mateo spooled out yards of elastic bandaging, and Este wound it around her abdomen, tight enough to stop the bleeding. The wounds were deep and carrying books up and down the Lilith’s stairs was sure to be a bitch for the next few weeks, but she probably didn’t need stitches.

Este twisted, letting out a small groan when her waist protested. She needed to see him, needed to watch his brows knit together or his mouth quiver with a treasonous smile, his face an atlas to his thoughts as she whispered, “If they hadn’t left, I guess I would’ve spent eternity here. It doesn’t seem so bad.”

Mateo shook his head. “You don’t want that. You don’t want to be like me.”

The hazy memory of her nectarine daydreams begged to differ. She wanted to feel the calluses on his hands, etched from years climbing library ladders, wanted them to smooth over the broad stroke of her thighs. The ivy’s lingering heat burned a pit at her navel.

“I bet I’d have time to read every book in the Lilith,” she said, clipping the bandage in place. “I’d read every page in this place. I could spend year after year finding new favorite stories.”

“Year after year, after year, after year . . .” Mateo’s shoulders sagged. “I’m tired of waiting. I want to know what it’s like to grow old, to see the world. Gray hair? The things I’d do to see myself with gray hair.”

Este stifled a laugh that cinched her side with pain. “You want that?”

“A life? To die and know that I’d lived as much as I could. Yes.” Mateo’s face softened, and he let out a sighing laugh. “You know, I used to coat my hair in dust and stand in front of the mirror. Just to see what I might’ve looked like if I’d been given the chance.”

The bandages compressed Este’s waist, making her lungs feel too shallow. It was almost impossible to imagine him anywhere but here. He belonged the way the cornices and the crown molding did, like he’d been built into the structure of the library, a load-bearing wall.

“I used to think I had everything I ever needed.” His laugh was a lopsided sound—half-humored, half-hurt. “I’ve had a lot of time to learn how wrong I was.”

Sitting next to Mateo felt like looking at a Renaissance fresco. There was something ancient underneath his tough shell, something strong enough to last the ages. From a distance, she could only see the shape of him—hard lines and polished edges, faded over time—but she couldn’t help but think that if she let herself get close enough, she would be able to see all his gentle shading.

Her red-stained fingers inched toward his on the swells of blue velvet but stopped shy of his skin. Because of course they did.

Este’s chin sank to her chest. She curled her fingers away from Mateo’s and slipped her sweater back over her shoulders. “All I’ve ever wanted to do was make my dad proud, to come to Radcliffe Prep like he did. He always said we could find all the answers we needed in a library.” She couldn’t help it—a jaded laugh seeped out of her. “We’ve searched this place up and down, and all I’ve got to show for it are more questions, a gash on my side the size of Kentucky, and a poetry exam I’m not ready to take.”

Mateo touched the tip of the ointment bottle to her chin so that she had no choice but to look up at him. “We’ll figure it out. I’m certain Dean would be proud of you for trying, and I can help you study. I’ve had nothing better to do than audit classes for the last century.”

Este could imagine him poring over a typewriter, pounding out papers for classes he wouldn’t even get graded on. Perhaps he’d take a few courses and then disappear for a couple years as the professors rotated and students graduated—no one would notice he’d been here all along.

“Thank you,” she said softly, picking at the hem of her sweater. In a different life, maybe they could have had a normal college experience together. His arm could have wrapped around her as they fanned through pages of Byron and Browning. Her frame might have fit into the crooks of his body as they trailed their fingers along blank meter pages, figuring out all his stressed and unstressed syllables, the scansion of being known. “But none of it even matters if I can’t find those pages. I’m not sure what’s worse: the Fades or facing the wrath of Ives if she finds out I broke into the spire again.”

It wasn’t only her academic destiny in jeopardy anymore. Mateo’s resurrection was riding on the line. The ghosts were relying on her. It was all too much—Este was going to let everyone down.

“Your mother’s still around, right? Maybe she knows something we don’t.”

“Barely.” She could try to call her back, but she didn’t even know what time zone her mom was in these days. Este had ignored every voice mail, silenced all her calls. Sometimes talking to the only person who understood hurt too much. “Who knows where she is? Losing my dad made her lose herself, too. Love just makes things messy, and then it’s over. And it’s always over eventually, whether you’re ready or not.”

Mateo looked at her. Really looked at her—slowly blinking, forehead creased, lips split with words he seemingly couldn’t decide if he actually wanted to say. Finally, he pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and shrugged. “No, I don’t believe that, even a little bit.”

“You don’t?” If anyone was going to be disenchanted by the impermanence of love, Mateo would’ve been Este’s first guess.

He shook his head, eyes scanning the senior lounge’s hardback books. “When you love someone, it’s like building a library and filling the shelves. It doesn’t matter how many years it’s been since Austen wrote Emma or Fitzgerald wrote This Side of Paradise. We can still pull them from the bookcases and dive back into the words, the same as the day they were written. All the years and memories are still right here, cataloged inside us.”

Fizzy warmth spread through Este’s body, and this time, she was certain it wasn’t the ivy. Maybe Mateo was right—she could still remember her dad chasing her into the waves of the Pacific, letting her choose the CD on their drive back through the redwoods, laughing at the kitchen table. If she closed her eyes, she could map the constellations they traced on summer nights camping or make out his scribbled penmanship on birthday cards she pretended to read so that she could blow out the cake candles.

“You’re different than I expected,” she said to Mateo. The tremble in her voice couldn’t be disguised. He was a tether, a trail of crumbs to lead her home. She hadn’t realized how long she’d been lost.

He grinned. “Did you want me to be a monster?”

“I did.” All Este could hear was the rhythmic echo pounding inside her chest. I did. I did. I did. Making him out to be some devilish poltergeist masked the horror of the truth: that he was just a boy, carved out from his place in the world.

Mateo reached toward her, as if he were going to place a strand of hair behind her ear. Este closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see his hand turn silvery, cool, and translucent as it washed through her. Could it be enough if all they ever had was almost—almost touches, almost together, almost real?

Warm fingertips grazed Este’s skin, and her whole body stilled. Mateo looped a piece of hair around her ear, and his fingertips trailed down the column of her neck, his thumb brushing circles against her cheek. Hesitant. Delicate.

She lurched upward and immediately regretted it. Her head spun with dizzy stars, and her side screeched with pain. She caught herself with one hand on the sofa, and when the black in her vision subsided, Mateo paced toward her.

“Este, dear?”

Panic seized her throat and tears pricked her eyes, her steely resolve broken by the simple brush of fingers. Her words came out strangled, a sound she didn’t recognize. “What just happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

A shaky smile worked its way onto his lips. “I’m a little out of my element here, too.”

Este sucked down a deep breath in a feeble attempt to steady the pace of her heart and the shake in her hands, but it didn’t work. She backed away from Mateo with every step he took closer.

A horrifying encounter with the Fades was one thing—the makings of nightmares undone by years of therapy down the line if she was lucky. But the touch of Mateo’s fingers against her cheek sent electrifying telegram signals to every nerve of her body.

It was worse because she wanted it.

This was supposed to be impossible. He was supposed to be something she could never have—something she could never lose. But Mateo’s fingerprints had trailed down her cheek, and she felt them, every groove, every callus. She could learn the shape of his fingers and the way they fit between hers.

No, she shouldn’t think like that. Love only ever ended up in broken halves. One buried, one left behind.

Este backed into the lounge’s green door, and Mateo stood toe to toe with her. She lifted her chin and searched his wide eyes for a hint of explanation, as if she could read those blue tides for signs of storms on the horizon.

“The ivy,” she said, mostly to herself, if she was being honest. Her head was filled with gunpowder and glitter, a hundred bottle rockets shooting off without warning. “It’s the nectar in my system. Like how I could understand the Fades.”

Mateo lifted his hand palm up. A peace offering. “Maybe it was a fluke. Perhaps I could try again.”

Este inhaled, nodded. She shouldn’t have, but she whispered, “Do you want to?”

“Very much so,” he said, voice gravelly.

Mateo pressed his finger to her chin, thumb running a stripe along her jaw. The touch was careful, cautious, but real, so real. Este cinched her eyes closed, trying to unravel the knotted thing in her stomach, a tangle of fear and desire.

This couldn’t end well. This couldn’t possibly end well. But with one of Mateo’s hands tilting her chin up and the other snaking around the safe side of her waist, Este wished she was foolish enough to believe it could.

Instead, she reached behind herself, feeling for the doorknob. She peeled into the hallway, squinting in the blinding light, and pretended she didn’t notice a flash of hurt dash across Mateo’s face as she ducked around the corner.

“Sorry,” she said over her shoulder, breathless from the pain in her side and something else. “I just—I have to go.”

The senior lounge faded away behind her as Este drifted through the stacks, the ghost of his touch still warm on her skin. He was just another thing that wouldn’t last.