The Library of Shadows

The Safety and Security office was its own special circle of hell, buried in the basement of the administration building. The air was thick and musty, a smidge damp. Something dripped in the distance, a faucet or a leaky roof tile, but no one in the office seemed to notice or care, instead opting for willing ignorance as the gray room succumbed to rot.

The rest of campus was an immaculate postcard, but the tucked-away corner was a more accurate portrayal of how Este felt this afternoon.

She was still a student at Radcliffe Prep by some miracle, but that miracle hinged on convincing Mateo to give her back the book he stole. And to do that, she had to find him.

Students snaked through a roped maze as if they were in line for a new steel roller coaster rather than to speak to the disinterested clerk, and after twenty minutes of waiting, Este was finally third to the front. Then, the smoked glass door at the entrance whined on its hinges, and a flash of sienna hair barreled into the otherwise quiet office.

Este ducked her head as Posy veered for the back of the line. Something a lot like guilt twined between her rib bones, but she shook it away. Posy would be thrilled to see her because Posy was thrilled to see everyone. She was a human golden retriever. Este was a crab, all pinchers and an exoskeleton shell.

They hadn’t spoken since the campus tour. Posy’s door had been shut when Este got back to their dorm last night, still covered in spire dust and cobwebs, and that was fine by Este. She preferred to keep the number of classmates who knew she was a delinquent at risk of expulsion at an absolute minimum.

“Do you want to know the truth about what haunts campus?” Posy asked now, peddling flyers to tired students just trying to get their student ID photos taken or find something lost in the move-in day shuffle.

Este trained her eyes forward, straightening her spine. She focused on the buzz of the fluorescent bulbs, the pattern of bricks on the walls, and the clerk’s neon-green acrylic nails as they tapped on her keyboard. She willed herself invisible as Posy’s voice drifted closer and closer.

“If so, join the Paranormal Investigators! We’re Radcliffe’s first school-sanctioned ghost-hunting club.” Posy held out another flyer before she registered who she was speaking to. “Este! What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for something,” Este said, reaching for the flyer. On the page, there was an illustration of a navy flashlight with a bright yellow beam, and the words Paranormal Investigators had been printed in a dripping, ghoulish typeface. “You made all these last night?”

Posy bounced from foot to foot. “You know that huge printer in my room? Over the summer, I self-published a magazine exploring local mysteries, so my parents bought it for me. It’s, like, a million years old, and sometimes I think it’s possessed, but that’s fine.”

The girl in front of them was the pinnacle of private-school poise. She’d paired a plaid skirt with knee-high socks, and when she stepped up to the counter, she said, “My name’s Bryony Pritcher, and I’m in room Vespertine 204C. The lights flickered all night.”

“Oh, you definitely need one of these,” Posy said, thrusting out a flyer. To Este’s surprise, the girl took it, folded it neatly, and slipped it into a pocket between the pleats of her skirt. Posy reeled back to Este. “That’s ghosts if I’ve ever heard it.”

Este was beginning to piece together that everything was ghosts with her roommate.

“Anyway, yeah. I convinced Dr. Kirk to advise the club last night after the tour, so I stayed up and made these,” Posy said, beaming. “Where’d you run off to?”

Este plastered on a flimsy smile. While Posy was speed printing propaganda, Este had also barely gotten any decent sleep. Every interaction with Mateo replayed on a loop through her dreams. She hated him just as much in REM.

Before she could answer, the clerk’s tinny voice called, “Next!”

“Hi,” Este said sweetly. “Could you help me find something?”

The clerk reached below the countertop and plunked a plastic bin in front of her. Someone had written Lost and Found on the side. Inside, there were phone chargers, someone’s desk calendar, and a stray tennis shoe, but no books with gilded edges.

“Something else, actually. I’m trying to find a boy named Mateo.” Este leaned onto the linoleum counter. “He stole a library book, and I really, really need it back.”

“Last name?” the clerk asked.

A stone sank in Este’s chest. “I’m not sure. He didn’t say.”

The clerk—Tammy, according to the name embroidered on her lapel—rolled her beady green eyes. She gnawed on a wad of bubble gum that threatened to slip out of her mouth at any moment. The computer’s fans whirred as her search loaded. “No students on the roster with that name.”

“Maybe it’s his middle name?” Este asked, but her reservoirs of hope were quickly depleting.

Tammy typed, waited, shook her head.

“Nickname? Short for Matthew, Matthias . . . Mattholomew?”

This time, Tammy didn’t even bother searching the roster. She blew a hot pink bubble and popped it with the taloned point of her acrylic.

A groan parted Este’s lips. “Dammit, Tammy. He has to be around here somewhere.”

“Try spelling it with one t and two, just in case,” Posy said, wedging herself next to Este. “You met a cute boy and didn’t tell me?”

“You really don’t have to stay,” Este said. Once Posy learned what she’d done, there would probably be an exposé in the school paper—Rogue Student Sneaks into Restricted Spire, Ruins Reputation. “I’ve got this. I’ll meet you back at the dorm.”

But Posy grinned, determined. Her sunshine made Este’s shadows starker.

Tammy’s nails tapped as she typed, and then she licked the tip of a ballpoint pen and shuffled a stack of papers. “Nothing on file. Would you like to make a formal incident report?”

Este slumped lower, dropping her chin in her hands. Everything Mateo had told her had been a lie, even his name. She shouldn’t have been surprised, but maybe she’d wanted to believe him. “If I do, will you hang up Most Wanted signs around campus?”

Tammy blinked, unenthused. “No, but I can let you know if we find your book.”

Even if the thought of having her mistakes in writing made her stomach churn, Este conceded. She answered a stream of preliminary questions like her name and year of study before Tammy asked her to explain, in as much detail as possible, the incident. She held herself upright with a tight grip around the counter and prayed no one behind her was eavesdropping. “Yesterday, I went with Posy—”

“That’s me,” her roommate chirped.

“—to Dr. Kirk’s campus tour, and I met this hot jerk allegedly named Mateo.”

The pen in Tammy’s hand stalled. “You want that on record? Hot jerk?”

“Yes.” Este’s frustration bubbled to the surface. “A senior. Tall, obnoxious, walked around like he owned the place. The very definition of hot jerk. He wanted to show me the spire—”

“Is that a euphemism?” Tammy asked, a bored lilt shifting into her voice.

“No, it’s not,” Este said flatly. “He asked me to help him look at a book in the spire collection, and I did.”

Posy gasped. “You went inside the spire? How?”

Este didn’t think. She clamped her hand over Posy’s mouth, anything to get her to shut up, and continued like everything was totally normal. “Ives came upstairs to, um, see how we were doing, but by then Mateo and the book were gone. Poof. Missing in action. So, Ives wants me to make sure it gets returned.”

“What’s the title?” Tammy asked, blowing another bubble.

“The Book of Fades. I need to find The Book of Fades.”

Posy’s eyes peeled wide open, and her arms flailed. She tried to say something, but with her words muffled, it just ended up with a lot of saliva on Este’s palm.

Gross. Este yanked her hand off and wiped it on her jeans.

Posy offered Tammy a wide smile, sounding surprisingly calm for someone who had just taste tested a hand. “If you’ll excuse us, we’ll be leaving.”

Este didn’t have time to protest because Posy jerked her away by the straps of her backpack. She didn’t let go until they pushed through the heavy glass doors at the mouth of the administration building and stepped into a sheet of midday sun. Tawny light doused campus in a warm glow that dripped from the branches and splashed onto the cobblestones. Wisps of cotton clouds spilled over September’s otherwise blue sky.

“Let me get this straight,” Posy said. “You disappear from the library tour, meet a hunky upperclassman, somehow go into the single most haunted part of the entire library that has been super locked since before we were born, are looking for a book about Fades—hello!—and you didn’t tell me immediately?”

If she’d had it her way, Este never would’ve told Posy. She’d messed up big time. One wrong move was all it would take for all this to be over.

She’d tried all day to hold it together through hours of mind-numbing syllabus lectures and classroom icebreaker games to get to know her classmates, but her brittle veneer was cracking. She took the stone steps two at a time to hide the red that rimmed her eyes, that crawled up the column of her neck.

Este could practically hear Posy’s thoughts whirring behind her skull. Her roommate buzzed. “How did you go to the spire? Was there a secret passageway? Tell me you saw a ghost.”

If Este didn’t respond, Posy would probably just keep talking.

They ducked beneath the canopy of sweet birches and sugar maples, their deep green leaves still clinging to the last few drops of summer. A couple people tied hammocks between the trees or wandered through the floral courtyard surrounding the Lilith. Despite the sun, a chill seeped through the thick knit of Este’s sweater.

As they walked, Posy’s fingers flew over her phone’s keyboard, and Este scanned the grounds for a gleam of black hair, but Mateo wasn’t here. He wasn’t at Radcliffe at all. He said he grew up in Sheridan Oaks—maybe there was a public school nearby that he went to, only trespassing onto campus to ruin her life.

“Actually, can we back peddle to poof?” Posy stopped typing only long enough to grab Este by the shoulder. “Oh, my god. Maybe he’s a ghost. Was he see-through?”

“No, Posy. He was perfectly solid, I promise. Just a normal, seventeen-year-old asshole.”

Posy’s shoulders sank, but she recovered quickly. “Do you think he’d want to join the Paranormal Investigators?”

It took every drop of Este’s willpower not to roll her eyes. Instead, she nodded toward Posy’s phone. “What are you doing?”

A text message riddled with all caps took up most of the screen. Now, she added ghost emojis and more exclamation points than Este had used in her entire life. Posy was nothing if not enthusiastic—she had to give her that.

“Calling an emergency club meeting, obviously. You just went into the most haunted part of campus. Arthur isn’t going to believe this.”

Este had to laugh. Her entire world was shattering, and Posy only cared about ghouls and goblins. The message sent with a whoosh. They’d been here twenty-four hours, and Posy had already founded a new club, forged a new friend group, and gotten in the good graces of their teachers.

All Este had gotten was a migraine and an ultimatum.

They rounded a corner, and the limestone columns of their dorm, Vespertine Hall, came into view between the maples. Something deep in Este’s chest panged at the thought that she might not get to call her dorm home again after the end of the quarter if she couldn’t find The Book of Fades.

Este barged into their dorm and kicked her sneakers off by the door. Tufts of deep green suede cushioned her as she flopped onto the couch, letting out a long, miserable moan. “I really don’t have time for paranormal conspiracy theories right now, Posy.”

The air in Posy deflated, and the couch shifted as she settled next to her. “I get it. Classes are about to start, you’re looking for the book, you want to canoodle with the hot jerk.”

“No one is canoodling anybody.” And definitely not Mateo.

Seconds later, there was a knock at the door, and Shepherd and Arthur barged into the living room. Shepherd ditched his lacrosse bag by the counter with a clunk. Sure, just make yourself at home.

Posy leaped up to welcome them, accidentally spilling flyers all over the floor. “Our inaugural meeting! Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

“We live on the third floor,” Arthur said, choosing to curl onto the window ledge like a cat even when there were perfectly good chairs. “It’s not like we had to go far.”

Este stood to leave, but Posy grabbed her by the sleeve. “Where are you going?”

Caught off guard by the way Posy’s eyes rounded, big and hopeful, Este hesitated. She only wants you to stay so that you can tell them about the spire, she reminded herself coldly, trying to snuff out the flicker of friendship that had sparked. Still, she let herself be tugged back down to the couch as Posy launched straight into her opening remarks.

“Let’s start by sharing any supernatural encounters we’ve had. I’ll go first.” For dramatic effect, Posy dropped her voice to a stage whisper. Never mind the fact that it was still broad daylight. “When I was twelve, I found a Ouija board at the consignment shop, and I held an entire conversation with Sylvia Plath.”

Shepherd scrubbed the back of his neck, crooking his head the way a dog does when it’s thinking. “One time, I heard footsteps in my attic when I was home alone. Does that count?”

“Basically every theater I’ve ever performed in has been haunted,” said Arthur.

Three sets of expectant eyes turned to Este. “Oh, um, I . . .”

When she and her mom left Paso Robles for good, they first went to Montana for the wide skies and too-blue lakes. Este had locked herself in the bathroom stall of a Glacier National Park campsite, said her dad’s name three times in the mirror, and accidentally singed off half an eyebrow with a citronella candle waiting for a response that never came.

Was that what they wanted? For her to excavate that part of herself, to put it on display like a museum art piece with a gold plaque? Portrait of a Girl Grieving, oil on canvas.

No, she couldn’t. Shepherd and Arthur, they hung on to Posy’s every word, drinking up the scary stories. They belonged in a way she didn’t, even if she wanted to.

“I’ve never had one.” Este shook out her hands. She hadn’t realized she’d clenched them into fists. “Tell the spirits I say hello, but I think I saw a coffee maker downstairs, and there’s a nonzero chance that unless I get some caffeine in my bloodstream immediately, I’m going to have a headache for the rest of eternity.”

If anyone protested, they didn’t do it fast enough. The front door locked behind her with a separating click. Running from her problems was kind of her specialty.