Feathering was in her usual spot behind the library’s entrance desk, and I began to seriously consider whether she might be some sort of supernatural being. There were never any other librarians here, and no matter what time you called upon the books, Feathering was always on duty. When did she sleep? I’d never seen her eat, and there were no empty coffee cups or glasses of water littering her desk. The whole thing left me slightly unsettled, as though I might be dealing with a vampire or a werewolf or a particularly humourless poltergeist.
Today she wore a black turtleneck poncho and a silver necklace with an amber pendant shaped like lily of the valley. The black lipstick was so perfectly applied it cut a neat line across her face, and her sheets of dyed silver hair were so smooth they could’ve been a wig. I tried offering her a smile – maybe if she smiled back I’d be able to tell how pointed her canines were – but it was no use. She was as cold, distant and unidentifiably paranormal as ever.
‘Hi,’ I said, attempting to imbue my voice with strength despite the fact the walk here had left my wounds hot and sharp. I pulled my tweed blazer tighter around myself, folding my arms across my abdomen to stop my hands from shaking. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way Salem’s body had felt in my hands; soft and rigid and awful. It felt like I might die from the shame of it.
‘Can I help?’ Feathering asked in her usual blunt manner.
My heart began to pound, though I couldn’t pinpoint why, exactly. ‘I was wondering whether the library had any books by T.A. Renner?’ Of course, I already knew it did, but I was hoping there might be more than one copy – one without missing pages.
Her long emerald-green nails clacked on the keyboard as she ran the search. Then, impossibly, she shook her head. ‘No, sorry. What’s his subject area?’
I frowned. ‘Erm, philosophy, I think?’
She arched a dark, thin brow. ‘You think?’
‘Yeah. Yes. Philosophy. There’s a book about divine command theory in nineteenth-century convents. I can’t remember the title, though.’ A lie and a slightly off-pitch description, so she didn’t know how important the book was to me.
Feathering shrugged impassively. ‘Sorry. Nothing here.’
Disappointment crested in my chest, shortly followed by the sensation of missing a step. Why would the system say the book didn’t exist when I knew for certain that it did?
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘No problem. And you’ve never heard of the author?’
‘No. Sorry.’ The words were slow and deliberate, as though she were speaking to an idiot.
I waited for the prickle of irritation, the righteous annoyance that a librarian would treat me like a moron when it was her literal job to provide the information I’d requested, but of course the irritation never came. I was fresh from the ritual, all traces of malevolence vanished from my psyche, and all that came out was a bright smile and a ‘thank you so much for your help’. I was practically Lottie. All I needed was a packet of sweets in my hand and an infuriatingly luminous grin.
Since Feathering had insisted neither the book nor the author existed in this library, I figured it was fair game to go and take it for myself once again. If it wasn’t on the system, what was the harm? And while the pages I needed were missing, perhaps there would be some clues inside that would help me track down another copy – an author bio, maybe, or at the very least information about who had published the book in the first place. It hadn’t appeared out of thin air, so it was a simple case of following the breadcrumbs.
I climbed the winding spiral staircase to the philosophy section, running my hand over the cool wrought-iron bannister in an attempt to distract me from the searing wounds on my torso, but when I arrived at the relevant shelf, the book was nowhere to be seen.
How could it have gone? It didn’t formally exist, so how could it have been checked out of the library? I thought of the small, round bloodstain on the corner of the ritual page, of my suspicion that someone else at Carvell had performed it too. Had they come back to get it – also desperate for answers? If so, how could I find that person? If we put our heads together, we might have more luck.
As I headed out in the direction of my late-morning seminar, I felt uneasy. Something about the whole exchange with Feathering felt off, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. Traipsing over the dew-slicked cobbles, I ran over the conversation in my head until I found it.
She’d said ‘what’shissubject?’
Unless she’d just defaulted to male pronouns without thinking, Feathering knew the author was a man. So why did she pretend she’d never heard of him?
*
My ancient ethical theory seminar took place in a drafty old classroom next to the patch of cobbles beneath the North Tower where Sister Maria fell to her death – and all the other victims thereafter. Great efforts had been made to brighten up the room; windowsills lined with potted peace lilies and asparagus ferns, framed paintings of Northumbrian landscapes by Carvell alumni, a dusty record player with its matte-gold arm permanently raised.
Dacre looked even more dishevelled than ever, with the pink-rimmed eyes and sour scent of the painfully hungover. He fumbled over every sentence, and paused for too long after a student had answered a question, as though he might have been taking a brief nap while they spoke. My newly minted good heart felt a bit sorry for him. I couldn’t imagine having to teach Plato while perilously hungover.
As he waffled on about Socrates’ aporetic writings inEuthypro, I glanced over at Hafsah, whose seat was adjacent to mine. She seemed to be breathing more heavily than was really required of the situation, and her skin was clammy with sweat. She was muttering under her breath with the ferocity of an incantation, but I couldn’t make out the individual words.
‘Hafsah?’ I whispered, trying to get her attention, but she didn’t hear me. Her hands gripped the sides of her desk, stretching her knuckles taut. ‘Hey. Are you okay?’
‘Please please please please, not now, no no no no,’ she muttered, and there was something familiar in her tone that sent a cold wave of dread shoring through me. Her eyes were wide and unblinking, and she shook her head wildly as though trying to vanish an unwelcome voice.
I thought of the small, round splotch of blood in the ritual book, and I justknew.
Before I could really process what was happening, she climbed abruptly to her feet and sprinted from the room, leaving all her belongings behind. A loose sheaf of paper drifted to the ground. I picked it up and turned it over as though it might contain some kind of clue, but it was blank except for some ragged blue holes; by the looks of things, she’d been stabbing into her notepad with her fountain pen.
I’d seen her in the library on the night of the murder, I remembered. Talking to Poppy Kerr, who had been gripping her notebook like a weapon.
Poppy Kerr, who was found dead a few hours later.
‘Fuck,’ I groaned, louder than intended.
Dacre looked at me in puzzlement. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘I’m going to go and check on her,’ I said, my voice hoarse even to my own ears as I gingerly hauled myself out of the chair and grabbed my briefcase. The painkillers Lottie had doled out like Love Hearts were wearing off fast.
As I crossed the room to the door, I felt dozens of eyes on my back; none more potent than Dacre’s. He’d stopped teaching entirely, staring at me like we’d made his morning far more interesting.
The classroom was situated opposite a harsh stone staircase that led up to the art studios, and beneath the staircase was a small ladies’ bathroom with two wooden cubicles and a single sink. I found Hafsah on her hands and knees in the middle of the floor, panting as though undergoing some kind of werewolf transformation.
It’s how I imagined I’d looked right before I begged Lottie for her blood.