The Library After Dark: A Novel
Ande Pliego
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Confirmed Guest List for the Daedalus Library’s After-Dark Tour
SASKIA VOSS
Librarian at the Daedalus and guide for the after-dark tour ARIA STOKES
Jasper Knox’s plus-one; bookseller and library and information science graduate student JASPER KNOX
Architect CALLUM GREENE
Professor at the University of Edinburgh and rare manuscript expert MICHELLE BAUDELAIRE
Award-winning middle-grade fantasy-horror author PIPER KINGSTON
Journalist covering the Dark Hearth Tales anniversary celebration RUTH HOWARD
Retired nurse WESTON MARTINEZ
Prep school teacher, book enthusiast DOROTHY JESSEL
Unknown
The Night of the Tour
The guillotine blade glinted, lodged halfway through her shoulder.
It’d been quick, and not nearly quick enough. For a heartbeat, shock caught us all by the throat, and squeezed.
The first scream rang out.
It ricocheted off the floor, the walls. The dark room spun like a carousel, my shoes squealing against the floor and frigid air rushing by me. Something battered against my back—or I battered into it, my fingers scrabbling at cold, smooth glass.
Something black poured through my veins, opening up a pit inside of me. This was not how the night was supposed to go.
Swears, shouts, shoes cracking against the floor, someone retching. Panic incarnate, layered and repeating. A high-pitched whine rang in my ears like a thousand fingers tracing the rims of a thousand wineglasses as I stared at her, suspended like a broken doll in the shadowed doorway.
A pool of dark syrup crawled toward us.
I’d done that.
Only one person was supposed to die, just one. And then it’d all be over, the secrets of the library safe and locked away. Two can keep a secret, if one of them is dead.
But I’d gotten it wrong.
A popping resonated in my jaw—my teeth, grinding together. I’d killed three people now. That made me a serial killer, didn’t it?
Their mouths were carved wide, their glittering eyes rimmed in white in the darkened room. Teeth flashing like fangs and spittle flying as they turned on one another, and the silent library filled with the song of horror.
I was pretty sure I was screaming too, doubling over as my stomach shriveled like a dried cherry. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I was surrounded by people, more people than were supposed to be here tonight.
And now, I couldn’t let a single one of them leave alive.
Part I
Once Upon a Lie
EVANGELINE RIORDAN, FOUNDER OF “THE LIBRARY OF DEATH,” DIES AT 76
The Well-Read New Yorker
By Helene Armitage
NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 4, 2025—Evangeline Riordan, 76, widow of Thomas Riordan, has died in her penthouse in New York City just before her seventy-seventh birthday. Due to the circumstances of her death, an investigation is ongoing into the quality of her care in her final days, with one source citing the possibility of an accidental overdose.
Little is known about the Eastern European immigrant before she eloped with the heir to one of the largest American real estate companies, but Riordan has often been hailed as this era’s Andrew Carnegie for her revolutionary contribution in founding the highly controversial Daedalus Library, publicly nicknamed “the Library of Death.”
For forty years, Riordan has worked closely with architects, artists, sculptors, and engineers to renovate the historical buildings into a neo-Gothic library, complete with elaborate rooms themed after the genres they house. One of Riordan’s greatest acquisitions for the library is the only remaining volume of The Dark Hearth Tales, a controversial eighteenth-century collection of fairy tales. The gruesome anthology is said to be the precursor to famed children’s stories such as “Hansel and Gretel,” The Adventures of Pinocchio, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The book’s previous three owners have each died under questionable circumstances.
Riordan’s fascination with the macabre has caused several to question the mysterious accidents at the library, but investigations ruled each of the deaths as accidental. Some, however, are not convinced. After the unclear circumstances of Riordan’s overdose, some even speculate that the long string of deaths has finally caught up to her.
While Riordan’s missing daughter has been an ongoing source of conjecture for the last fifteen years, she is survived by one estranged grandchild.
Chapter One
Aria
Every time that damn bell over the door rings, I have a mini heart attack. How mortifying that something as mundane as a date could smite me with something like fear.
The warped floorboards moan under my thick-heeled boots as I shimmy through the forest of cramped bookcases, their mismatched shapes encroaching overhead like trees. The highest shelves haven’t met a duster in the last century and the smell of burnt coffee beans has soaked into the wood, but I never feel more at peace than when I’m surrounded by books.
At the little card table with the sign Perfect Gift! Blind Date with a Book, I swap one brown-paper package reading Trope-Filled Rom-Com for the one saying Serial Killer Thriller, so their actual titles are alphabetized. But that’s ridiculous, because they’re wrapped, so I re-swap them. And now I’m the ridiculous one.