The Library After Dark: A Novel(56)

Who is she, in her head? Does she think of herself as Aria, or does a part of her still answer to her childhood name, Eden Riordan?

And more important, what is stopping her from collecting her inheritance?

From the first moment she saw the library, she’s been apprehensive. Only it isn’t just that, is it? I’d assumed her anxiety and attempts to convince me to leave are because I’d all but coerced her back where she was raised, and where she’d been rejected as a child.

But what if she hasn’t merely been anticipating painful memories? What if in bringing her here, I’ve forced her to confront the sins Evangeline had been hiding? Sins—secrets—perhaps she’s been forced to keep, as well?

A trickle of sweat snakes past my eye. The pieces fit together too well. Which means two things.

One, Callum Greene might actually, against all odds, be telling the truth about his Faustian bargain. Evangeline Riordan could have been a serial killer and somehow— No, I’ll stop there. I’m not nearly convinced that her ghost is at work now. Against all reason, Evangeline might have been a murderer. And someone is trying very hard to keep it a secret.

And two, Aria might’ve known about Evangeline’s serial tendencies.

She might’ve known all along.





Chapter Thirty-six


Aria

Jasper’s back presses against the open door as he lets us through, and relief washes over me as I pass, grazing him as my boots hit white marble with a squeak.

Everything is dappled in gray and orange light from the stained-glass ceiling—it’s brighter than we’ve seen in ages. I rush onto the narrow balcony and fold over the railing, taking in the beautiful, heavenly foyer with its black and white diamond tiles.

Only, freedom is three stories down.

What the hell did I just do, standing up for Callum? I didn’t plan to. Having him shuffled into a closet would’ve been one step closer to getting away from the others, to finding my own way out.

Instead, I chucked the opportunity away. What possessed me?

“Thank heavens,” Saskia exhales next to me. “The emergency exit’s halfway down this side.”

The last bits of restoration before the gala are still underway, the white bookcases draped in thick plastic construction sheets like ghostly sentinels. Our feet scuff against the pale marble, grow muted over a canvas tarp.

A staccato knocking reaches my ears, and my body prickles. It’s the sound of heels.

Another memory forces its way to the surface: that sound every single day for months at two on the dot, Evangeline meeting me in the vestibule. Her driver could’ve driven just me to the hospital, but Evangeline wouldn’t hear of it. Staring out the window as the tall buildings slipped by us, I drew strength from the scent of her musky perfume and the Daedalus clinging to her clothes, her knobby hand in mine every time we stepped inside the room that would be my mother’s last.

“Who would you like me to call?” Evangeline had asked, her silk jumpsuit and emerald heels entirely out of place in the hospital waiting room.

“I think I have an aunt,” I told her. “In Minnesota.”

But when she asked for a name, I didn’t have one.

“Then you’ll stay with me,” she said with a sharp nod, easing back against the plastic cushion. “As long as you need.”

And that was it. If Ruth and Jasper are right, and Evangeline—not Evangeline the Terror of the Auction Floor, but the woman starting to take shape in the golden haze of my fractured memories—was murdered, could I actually leave without knowing who killed her?

Fingers brush over my forearm and I nearly lose my skin with a jump. Jasper.

His gaze is on Saskia’s and Callum’s backs. “Tell me Callum is insane.”

Here we go. I can’t even summon a laugh.

“Aria.”

“I don’t know.”

“You lived with Evangeline. You would’ve been here around the time Michelle saw Dorothy. Were you—”

“I wasn’t the only child in the building, all right?” I’m mindful of the others ahead. “There were plenty of others. Members, families of sellers and buyers, and who knew what else. Dorothy could’ve been anyone.”

Sunlight cuts across a boy’s face, his lips curved in an awed smile. My fingers push the slender wall and it slides inside, over. The shadows inside rise to meet us.

I inhale sharply. I remember the rotating door of collectors who would come meet Evangeline, sometimes bringing their families. I played hostess, taking the kids to the children’s section and a couple other places. Evangeline always liked that, and honestly, I liked getting to show off how much I knew of the library that others didn’t.

I tense.

One family came multiple times one summer, intent on purchasing…something, I didn’t care what. They had a son, and by the end of the summer, I was smitten.

In fact, I showed him that one way into the Natural History section, didn’t I? The passageway through the wall panels, behind the book wheel. I was eleven or twelve, and the boy was about my age. Rory’s age.

“I’m not asking if it was anyone,” Jasper murmurs. “I’m asking if you were Dorothy.”

“If I was, do you think I’d still be alive?”

“Is it possible, feasible for Evangeline to actually have killed someone? Multiple people?”