The Library of Shadows

“If this is the part where you axe murder me,” Este said, hands braced against the stairwell’s clammy walls, “promise me you’ll donate my organs.”

The entrance to the spire was an arched door on the fifth floor across from Ives’s office, and they’d slipped inside with absolutely no fanfare—it hadn’t even been locked. The real door, Mateo assured her, was at the top of a spiraling staircase as pitch dark as it was narrow. Este’s feet kept slipping off the steps, and her white-finger grip on the walls was barely enough to keep her upright. Apparently, the Radcliffes hadn’t believed in handrails.

Ahead of her, Mateo huffed, “I’m not going to do either of those things.” He marched, sure-footed and swift, up the stairs without sparing her a look back.

As soon as they’d pried open the spire’s fifth-floor entrance, a damp quiet had surrounded them. Here, there was no residual library soundtrack—no chime of the circulation clerk scanning library cards for checkout, no quiet chatter and whispered secrets, only cold stone walls that soaked up the sound of their voices. Trailing a boy she barely knew into a secluded tower wasn’t her best idea, but with her dad’s key warming in the palm of her hand, she knew she had to see where it led.

If only she could see her own feet.

“Is there seriously not an elevator?” Este whined.

“Oh, there is.” Este didn’t need to see his face to know Mateo’s lips were twisted into a skewed smile. She could hear it in his voice, the way it lilted with a laugh. “But it’s in Ives’s office and a bit of a tight fit for two.”

“Could you at least put on your phone’s flashlight?” she asked. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to break my neck, and I left mine in my dorm.”

“I don’t have one.”

Who didn’t own a phone? Este tracked the shape of Mateo, his outline muddled in the black. She hadn’t pegged him as an off-the-grid hipster. “Not even a flip phone?”

“Nope.”

Finally, gray-blue light sifted through the stairwell as they approached one arched window after another. A sliver of waxing moon cast silver streams over the limestone staircase, guiding them up and up and up. Through the streaked glass stood the pointed tops of pine trees, coated by a layer of evening fog rolling down the hills. Este lost track of how many flights they climbed, but she was certain she’d done enough cardio for the entire semester. And they were only halfway up.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Everyone I know is around here.” Mateo spun on his heels, taking the steps backward so that she had nowhere to look but up at him. It would take an hour to unravel the stitch in Este’s side, and he hadn’t even broken a sweat. “I was born and raised right here in Sheridan Oaks.”

Sheridan Oaks, Vermont, wasn’t much more than a pinprick on the atlas. Este and her mom had careened through the countryside for miles before she glimpsed the wrought-iron gates and brick perimeter that separated Radcliffe from the rest of the world. And a library like this? With its ornate exterior and sprawling collection of antique texts, the Lilith exuded a permanence unlike anything else in Este’s life. She couldn’t imagine having it all right in her backyard.

“Do you ever think about leaving? Going somewhere else for college?” she asked.

Mateo shook his head in a single, taut stroke. “This place is all I’ve ever known. I don’t know if I could leave it behind if I tried.”

That kind of constant was a foreign language Este hadn’t heard in years. After her dad died, her mom uprooted everything—sold the house, packed the Subaru, and strapped Este into the back seat for a three-year road trip. They’d eaten ice cream for breakfast and drank Slurpees for dinner, nursing the stomachaches that came with it.

When Este got her license last summer, she and her mom had taken turns driving while the other chose their next destination. She learned how to say goodbye over and over again. It was so much easier than holding on too long. She’d seen what heartbreak could do. She’d watched her mom cave in on herself beneath the weight of grief, caravanning across county lines searching for something she’d never find.

Now, with her hands clawing at timeworn stones in a desperate attempt to find some connection to her dad, Este wasn’t sure she was any better. The staircase widened until they reached a curved onyx door cloaked with streams of ivy pockmarked by dainty purple flowers. Each blossom stretched its petals when moonlight slanted on its bulbs and shied away when fog shade drenched the staircase back into darkness, winking closed.

“The honor is all yours,” Mateo said, stepping aside on the wide landing.

Este braced herself against the wall, dizzy from the nectarine scent radiating from the flowers, the anticipation of stepping through the threshold, and how closely Mateo stood. She couldn’t tell which was the most responsible.

Thick twines of ivy circled the brass knob. Roots wedged inside the keyhole. She’d imagined the Radcliffe collection tucked inside a pristine vault, something with tufted velvet chaises and polished gold—not an overgrown attic.

Suddenly, a wave of nauseating anxiety crashed against her chest, threatening to pull her into the undertow. She raked her nail against a petal, and it shrunk into itself. If Este walked through the spire door, there would be no turning back.

“Are you sure we should do this?” she asked, scrunching up the bridge of her nose.

“Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet already. We haven’t even seen what’s inside,” Mateo crooned. His voice was hushed and harsh at once. Este wasn’t sure if it was his words or the hallway’s damp chill that grew goose bumps on her neck.

Taking the key from around her neck, Este held it out to him. “You should open it. Coming up here was your idea.”

“Ladies first,” he said. “I insist.”

“No, I do.” She dangled the key by its cord, bait for the taking.

His voice dropped. “I can’t.”

Este barked a laugh. “What do you mean you can’t?”

Mateo thinned his lips into a firm line and leaned his head toward the shallow ceiling. With his eyes pinched closed, he said, “I can’t touch the ivy, Este. I’m allergic.”

“Actually, you’re an asshole, you know that?” Este didn’t try to warm the cold snap in her voice. “You really dragged me all the way up here just to give me an earful of lousy excuses?”

She coiled her arms around her ribs as she dipped down the stairwell. Maybe she wouldn’t see the spire tonight, but she also wouldn’t have to spend another moment with someone as irritating as him.

Este was halfway around the first spiral by the time Mateo said, “I guess that’s my mistake for expecting more from a Logano.”

She paused, frozen between steps. The blood drained from her face. Her eyebrows pinched so closely together, she wondered if they’d fuse permanently into one. How did he know her last name?

Turning back, Este barked, “What did you say?”

When she faced him, he leaned against the stone wall, ankles hooked together and a hand slipped into the pocket of his trousers, with the graceful ease of a grand master who moved the rook into checkmate. “Dean Logano,” he said. “Is he of any relation to you?”

“What do you know about my dad?” Este stalked back to the door, fists clenched. A shadow blotted out the light from the moon, and every purple flower on the doorframe closed its blossom—too afraid to watch.

“The whole school’s heard of him. You must know that he was the last person in the spire.”

Este’s mouth hung open, wordless. When she didn’t say anything, Mateo leaned closer. He smelled like a sun-drenched memory—like well-worn book pages and Vermont’s white cedar groves. “Unless, you didn’t.”

Not a question. A realization that he had the upper hand.

“Legend says that while Dean Logano was working on a research project, he took the head librarian’s key—some say stole, some say borrowed, you decide—and snuck into the spire. Whatever he found up there, no one knows. He transferred schools, and the door was left locked.”

“So, what?” Este huffed, hoping he couldn’t hear the frantic way her heart was beating.

“So, no one has entered this section in thirty years, and now you have the key.” Barely louder than a whisper, he said, “I saw your scholarship announcement, Este Logano. You’ve got a legacy to fulfill.”

In that moment, Este hated Mateo. She hated that he lured her up here, all eyelashes and arrogance, and she hated that he was right. Underneath the rhythmic pounding of her heart and the storm of worry brewing behind her sternum, there was a magnetic pull to the spire that Este couldn’t resist. Her dad had been the last person to see the heirlooms. Her footprints would leave tracks in the gathered dust, right next to his.

As she pulled the key from her pocket, Mateo grinned, and if her curiosity didn’t outweigh how much she loathed his incessant cockiness, she would’ve left him standing there. Instead, she scraped away leaves from the lock with a polished fingernail and fitted the key into its slot. Ivy curled away as she twisted the groaning knob. The door hinges whined, one long syllable, as Este nudged it open with the flat of her hand.

Taking a steadying breath, she stepped up and into the spire’s archives.

Oh, my god. She’d need the next seven to ten business days to recover emotionally, mentally, and physically.

Window after window dotted the perimeter of the circular room, and hazy moonlight poured through the veiled sky. Cobwebs strung from the ceiling in lazy silver loops. In the center of the room, bookcases behind iron cages wove a maze of one-of-a-kind texts. Forgotten Shakespearean soliloquies, Italian sonnets drenched in unrequited love, playbooks and philosophies, ancient parables on ink-drenched parchment. Glass cases housed twinkling diamonds and fountain pens, a blade with a ruby hilt, portraits and sculptures, jewels and jade.

And ivy clawed through all of it. Vines wept over the window ledges, the bookcases, the cedar rafters. They crawled down the walls and dug deep into the stone flooring. Those petite, purple flowers speckled the greenery, opening and closing like watchful eyes.

Seeing the same forbidden collections her dad had, every heirloom gem and preserved parchment, sent shivers over her skin. Este couldn’t take it all in at once.

Mateo, on the other hand, clearly didn’t harbor the same kind of awe and reverence. He unceremoniously breezed past her and veered into the stacks. She scrambled to catch up with him, and he dropped a scrap of notebook paper into her hand.

“I helped you,” he said, “and now you can help me find this book.”

Unfolding it, Mateo’s handwriting was as slim and precise as he was. “How are we supposed to find it with this?” she asked, cutting close corners to keep up with his breakneck stride. “BL293?”

Mateo stifled a curt laugh. “Don’t you know how to read a call number?”

“What? No,” Este fumbled. He was a spade digging under her skin. “That’s—no, of course I know the Dewey decimal system.”

“Academic libraries use Library of Congress classification.” He forged ahead, zipping between narrow rows of artifacts and precious artworks.

Mateo’s head didn’t swivel side to side at the sight of every relic the way Este’s did as they looped through the shelves’ crooked corridors. Publications were densely packed behind intricately carved, diamond-paned doors, and she trailed her index fingers across the bars as they passed. He barely gave them a second glance.

Finally, he stalled in front of a case close to the center of the room, and Este took her place next to him, shoulders nearly touching. Their reflections stared back at her, warped in the glass—the round curve of Este’s chin, the sharp bow of her lips, a triplet of moles on her cheekbone, all of it framed by a long swath of brown hair, and Mateo’s jagged features mismatched with the soft gleam in his eyes. On the shelf inside, a single tome stood centered on a bookstand, with knotted ivy binding the text in a living casing.

Stamped on a gold plate over the cabinet: BL293.

Este’s hand covered her mouth in disbelief. “That’s the book you want to look at?”

Mateo nodded, his eyes trained against the greenery and the hardback beneath it. “The one and only.”

“It’s absolutely ancient,” she said, breathless. “We should use gloves or something. Did you bring some?”

“Honestly, Este, if the ivy hasn’t hurt it, nothing you do will.” He ran a hand through his curls and offered her a half smile. Not exactly the encouragement she needed.

A groaning sound billowed through the spire, a vibrato baritone. Este couldn’t tell exactly where the sound came from—a northern wind rolling down the Green Mountains or inside the walls of the spire. Either way, an echo of Posy’s ghost stories ricocheted through her mind, suddenly too close for comfort. It spurred her into motion.

Este jerked the cabinet’s handle, but the door caught, its hinges unoiled and untouched for too long. Three decades of dust and grime sealed it shut. She waited for an alarm system to blare and blow their cover, but when the spire stayed silent, she pulled again, harder this time. The gated cabinet flung open, and the force knocked Este into the shelf behind her. A wave of sweetly scented air breathed into the spire, rich as primrose and sharp as pine.

“It doesn’t even have a title?” she asked over her shoulder as she plucked one of the leaves.

“It’s called The Book of Fades.”

Este’s hands stilled. Hadn’t Posy said something about Fades earlier? She groaned, “Not you, too. Is everyone here obsessed with dead people or what?”

“Just—” He pressed his index finger to his temple. Tension rippled through his shoulders. Este had to admit that she kind of enjoyed riling him up like that. “Just grab the book.”

Mateo’s fingers rapped against the cabinet’s glass pane as she pried away the ivy. Her hands tingled, coated in the sap from the greenery. With each vine removed, another wove snugly around the ancient binding, alive and angry. She curled both hands around the text, casting out any guilt twisting in her gut about what the oils on her skin might do to the antique leather, and the book broke free from the last vine with a final pull.

The book was horribly ornate, with a glimmering stitching around the perimeter and corners capped with scalloped, golden pieces. It must have been at least six hundred pages, each painted with a dainty metallic edge. Before she could flip the front cover open, Mateo stripped it from her grip with a quick hand.

“You’re the best, Este,” she said, dropping her voice as low as she could in a flimsy imitation of him. “Thank you for all your help.”

A shade of a smile grazed his lips as he fanned through the pages, but Mateo slammed the cover shut when Este tried again to glance over the book’s head. “Este Logano, I could kiss you right now.”

“You could?” she stammered.

He leaned down so that they were eye to eye, and Este didn’t dare breathe. “But I’m sure Ives will be up here soon. If I were you, I’d make a run for it.”

Este heard it, then, over the adrenaline swirling in her head—the click of high heels echoing from the staircase chamber. Quick, purposeful, and definitely bad news. “We have to get out of here.”

But she quickly realized there was no we anymore. Mateo had vanished.

“Mateo?” she called.

Este’s voice tapered off, answered only by the pearly moonshine, the night silence. Her hummingbird heartbeat pulsed in her ears. He’d used her, and he’d disappeared around the corner cabinet as if he’d never been here at all. Probably jumped into the elevator he’d conveniently deemed unusable on their way up.

She whispered his name again. No use. Tiptoeing to the end of the aisle, the only trace he’d been here at all was an oxford footprint in the dust. The shelves wove together, labyrinthian, and she couldn’t find him in them. Este’s fingernails carved divots into the soft of her palm.

She needed to find the elevator—and fast. Without it, there was only one way out, and she’d never make it back downstairs without getting caught.

Panic roiled in her stomach, acid burning up her throat as the head librarian turned the corner in long, lithe strides. Este’s hands were slicked with dust and sticky with sap, the spire key hung around her neck, and the case swung open on uneven hinges, The Book of Fades missing.

She was totally and completely screwed.

Ives rested both hands on her narrow hips, and a slice of moonlight illuminated half her face—her pointed cheekbones, her red-painted lips. With a flash of white teeth, she said, “Este Logano. I should’ve known it would be you.”