The Library of Shadows

Este was almost positive she wasn’t dead. The unfiltered adrenaline coursing through her limbs assured her that her heart was still beating, and her side seeped red where the Fade grazed her skin, aching something awful. At least, she could only hope death had the decency not to hurt this much.

As the sun lifted overhead, some buried part of Este was cognizant that she was missing her last class before fall break. A week ago, that would’ve sent her spiraling. With her bags half-packed, today her priority list was preoccupied with things like regain corporeality if at all possible and try not to have an entire mental collapse in front of my classmates.

Students flooded the pathways, shuffling from building to building on the clock tower’s chime, and she brushed against them, hoping to feel something solid, but everyone slipped by untouched. Instead of the warmth of the living beneath her fingertips, a dull numbness spread through her tired limbs.

Este wandered beneath the barren trees, wondering if anyone saw her fading in and out of vision whenever the cloud cover split, and the sunlight spilled through. Not everyone would leave for fall break, some preferring the solace of campus and a quiet week of studying. Others carried suitcases and wrapped themselves in cashmere scarves, sprinting to catch their cars at the iron gates early for their fall break getaways, and they didn’t spare a second glance for the girl almost gone.

Her feet paused at the front entrance, the wrought iron swirls of the gate looming ahead. Beyond that, evergreens and the stripped limbs of deciduous trees scraped the overcast sky as they lined the winding drive. Este held her hand through the bars, wiggling her fingers on the other side. The farther she reached, the more her skin shimmered as if made of glass.

Este jerked her hand back inside the gates. Her head felt cloudy, the way it did when she was nursing a head cold. Like her thoughts were too far apart and couldn’t find their way to each other. She thrust her hand out again with the same result. Skin: see-through.

This could not be happening.

She pressed her back against the iron and slid down until her knees coiled to her chest. If she left, she knew she’d end up like the 1937 sacrifice Henry Bordeaux, like her dad, like everyone else who had ever lived and moved on—a figment of people’s memories faded into the nothingness that came next. The ghosts were chained here, prisoners to the Heir, and now so was she.

In a feeble attempt to stave off the asphyxiating panic that roped around her chest, Este fumbled for the cell phone tucked inside her coat pocket. It rang and rang and rang, screen pressed against her ear, until her mom’s bright voice broke through the other line: “Hi, my North Star.”

And despite the gnawing fear working its way through her body and bone, Este smiled. “Hi, Mom. How are—”

A gunshot blasted the other side.

“Wait, where are you? Are you okay?”

“Seeley Lake, Montana. Biathlon,” her mom said. When Este’s brain couldn’t supply the difference between all the -athlons in order to figure out why it justified someone shooting near her mother, she added, “You know, the skiers with the guns at the Olympics.”

Este let out a small oh. “You’re not participating.” She could all too easily imagine her mom, one hand on a ski pole, one holding her phone to her ear, and a rifle draped across her chest. “Are you?”

Her mom laughed, fair and fleeting. “No, no. Let me hike back up to the chalet where my service is better.”

Este would’ve never put watch a biathlon on her bucket list, but her mom was always doing things that Este hadn’t consciously considered important—kayaking the Louisiana bayou, singing at seedy Sunset Strip open mic nights, a brief stint walking Fifth Avenue pooches through Central Park to make enough money for them to eat lunch at The Plaza. But now, with Este’s world quickly shrinking to the square footage of campus, she wished she had done more.

“How is everything going?” her mom asked. After her dad died, Este had been her shadow for so many years, and now she pictured her mom’s brown hair flecked with gray, tied back in a braid beneath one of those knit caps with the huge pom-poms on top. They had the same bunny-slope nose, her mom’s probably ruddy from the cold. “Your classes going okay?”

Este’s throat constricted. “Yeah, things are alright. Fall break starts tomorrow, but I think I’ll stay around here. Get some extra studying in.”

“I bet there are some amazing ski slopes over your way,” her mom said. “Don’t work yourself to the bone, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.” Este’s voice trailed off.

There was the sound of her mom drinking something, maybe hot chocolate, before she asked, “You making friends?”

“Sort of.” She rubbed her thumb over the crease between her brows. “A boy named Mateo was helping me look for one of Dad’s old things, but we got in a fight this week.”

“Mateo, Mateo, Mateo, Mateo . . .” her mom cycled over his name like an ASMR video trying to lull Este to sleep. “I wonder if he comes from a long line of Mateos? What are the chances he’s the son of your dad’s friend?”

“You know about Mateo?”

“Said he saved his life once.” Her mom sighed, a wistful, longing sound.

“Saved him?” Este balked. Tried to sacrifice him was more likely.

“Your dad always said he was the one who told him to leave Radcliffe and never go back. And then he met me, and now I have you, so, really, I owe him all the best things in my life.”

Este leaned her head back to stop the tears brimming in her eyes from falling. She pushed out a shaky breath. Give and take, that was life.

“Yeah, well, he didn’t save him enough,” she said. “We still lost Dad.”

The phone line held an understanding quiet, letting it pass despite all the miles and unsaid things between them.

“You know I still feel like your dad’s with me sometimes?” Her mom’s voice sounded dreamy, distant. “He always wanted a new adventure, to try new things. When I met him, he said life was too short to spend it all in one place.”

“He said that?” Este asked.

“Absolutely. Before he transferred high schools, he’d never been west of the Mississippi. When I met him, he said he wanted to go everywhere. He would’ve loved to see cross-country skiing in Montana. That’s why I’m here.” Her words lifted, and Este knew she wore a faint smile, lost in memories. She used to think her mom was sad when she looked like that, mourning for what she couldn’t have. She never imagined she wasn’t running away from something but toward.

“Mom, I—”

A stiff bout of static surged through the line, cutting Este’s words off. Then, her mom’s laugh sliced through. “Apparently Montanans don’t need reliable cell coverage. Sorry, I keep losing you.”

“That’s okay. I have to go,” Este said, shaking her head. She promised she’d call more often as she pried herself off the ground, knees shaking beneath her weight, frozen stiff. The words felt faraway, tucked into the corners of her mind, but Este dragged them out like a dusty encyclopedia. “I love you.”

“Love you too, sweetie. Don’t be a stranger.” Her mom made a kissy mwah, and the call flatlined.

As Este drifted down the paths, the call replayed through her head. Could Mateo have saved her father? Vespertine Hall met her with a hearth-warmed swell of cinnamon. Mateo saved her father? Her dorm room welcomed her, quiet and still, and she trudged into her bedroom. She tossed balls of fuzzy socks into her suitcase, just to keep her hands busy. Mateo?

Physically, she grabbed a heap of sweaters and folded them into her suitcase, but mentally, Este was unraveling thirty years of knots tying her and Mateo together. Even as she packed up everything in her room, she could still see the traces of him here in negatives—the empty spot on her bed where he had lain next to her, the absence of his shadow in her periphery. Her mom said Mateo warned her dad. Which meant he must’ve taught her dad about the Fades, told him he was being targeted, and maybe he even led him to The Book of Fades the same way he did Este.

But it was a trap, right? The same kind he used to snare Este in his scheme.

Except that if Mateo wanted her father dead, he would’ve done it quietly. He would’ve stripped soul from bone to use its power to stay immortal, remained in control of the Fades, and lived happily ever after—at least for the next ten years when he’d need another sacrifice. Her dad would’ve kicked a Hacky Sack with Daveed, debated modernist theories with Aoife, and danced a foxtrot around the senior lounge with Luca. He would’ve become part of the tapestry, and Este wouldn’t have existed at all.

She zipped up her suitcase and rolled it toward the door. On her dresser, she rapped her nails against a stack of books she needed to return to the library, the yearbooks her dad had checked out. No need for those anymore. It was over—who cared if they never found the chapter missing from The Book of Fades? She’d slide the books into the first-floor drop box and pretend this quarter had never happened.

Even so, she flipped the 1967–68 yearbook open. Este fanned through the pages until she found a familiar face—Aoife in her natural habitat: tucked behind a book. She and another student craned their heads together over an atlas. Este couldn’t make out the other girl’s face, hidden behind a swath of black hair, but she had a ring on her finger with a blue gem the size of a pepperoni.

Something about it felt familiar, and Este yanked open the 1987–88 yearbook, fanning to the photo of Daveed in the stacks. There he stood, smiling. The girl next to him had her arm around his shoulder, and on her hand was the same sapphire ring

Este reached for the yearbook from 1977–78. She’d never met the ghost from this decade, but instead she looked for a streak of black hair, for the glint of a ring. She found them in the front row of a journalism club photo, hands folded in the lap of a girl who stared right at the camera. Someone had encircled the girl in blue ink, smudged with the heel of a left hand Este knew had to belong to her dad.

It couldn’t be the same student, but it was definitely the same ring. Was that one of the sacrifices? Pressure built behind Este’s eyes. Someone had to have the answers she needed.

Este reached for her laptop and loaded the Ghoul School forum Posy was obsessed with and did a quick search for the Radcliffe disappearances. The top thread had been started by someone called PocketfulOfPosy—the profile’s smiling face was undeniably her roommate.

Doing a deep dive on the Radcliffe legacy, Posy wrote, and look what I found in the archives! Original photos from before the fire of 1917, compiled by a former student. You guys have to see these.

With each scroll, Este traveled back in time. In 1901, there was a ribbon across the gates announcing Radcliffe Preparatory Academy at its grand opening, and then mustachioed Robin Radcliffe dusting off a plaque naming Vespertine Hall, followed by Judith holding a toddler wearing a crowned nest of tangled curls who Este immediately recognized as Mateo.

The next photo was a vignette of school life in the early twentieth century—a snapshot of the architecture, students in their old-fashioned clothes, and toward the center of the photo a girl with long, black hair stared at the camera with a lopsided smile. Basked in sepia, it was a hazy fragment of what life must’ve looked like in full saturation a century ago, and the girl’s features were grainy, softened by time. Slanted, smudged blue ink scrawled a handwritten caption that read: 1917—Lilith Radcliffe, age 15, shortly after her parents died.

A noise escaped from Este’s mouth, something small and involuntary between a gasp and a laugh. It was unmistakably his handwriting. Her dad had been here every step of the way.

In the photo, Lilith wore a smile like a harnessed stallion—wild and desperate to escape. She was trapped in time at the library, frozen in a moment otherwise forgotten. Clutched in her arms was a stack of textbooks, and Este touched her fingertip to the screen over one in the middle, a book with black binding and gold lettering that Este had returned to the library last night. On her finger, a familiar stone glistened.

The same dark hair. The same blue eyes. The same cocky smile. Every ten years.

Panic zipped through Este’s chest, each breath short and burning. She stared and stared, waiting for something to convince her that she was being deceived, but the truth smiled back in the photograph, wide-eyed and determined. Lilith’s hair had since lost its impossible luster, and taffeta wrinkles now webbed across her skin, but Este knew the deep wells of Lilith’s blue eyes, the soft curl of jet hair, and her dignified, rod-straight posture, not only because they resembled Mateo’s so starkly but also because she’d seen glimpses of them since September. She’d spotted her between the stacks, heard the echo of her steps against the library’s floors, and helped her in the archives for weeks.

Which meant that Mateo wasn’t the Heir of Fades. Lilith was.

And Ives was Lilith Radcliffe.