The Library After Dark: A Novel(99)

Carefully, I lift my healed hand to his face. His eyes flutter shut, long lashes fanning against his cheeks, and heat hums between us. “Am I your bodyguard now?”

“Your qualifications are uniquely up-to-date.”

“Don’t put too much stock in them,” I say, softening. “Not a hero, remember.”

The look he gives me warms me all the way through. “I never said you were.”



* * *





Against the periwinkle sky, the cherry-blossom-dappled trees are dusted in shades of white. We don’t hold hands, but every time Jasper’s shoulder skims mine, the tiniest jolt runs through me. Maybe there is something here I can have. Something I don’t have to steal.

When the dark alley that holds my apartment hostage comes into view, a rather harried man flaps a hand at a black Rolls-Royce down the street, waving it by. He bobbles in a turn, and I stop in my tracks. It’s the primary lawyer for the Riordan estate, the one who supported our story.

Jasper’s fingers graze the small of my back, and I resist the urge to lean into him. I keep my boots rooted against the cement. “Mr. Harrow.”

“Ms. Stokes,” the lawyer says, wielding his briefcase. “It would seem I keep missing you in person, but I have something for you.” He withdraws a slender envelope, one of the large ones you slip a smaller letter in.

My fingers close around the smooth paper, and I study the multiple stamps and stickers scrawling their way across it. My heart grows limbs, trying to climb up my throat.

“This is the letter.” My hands crease the paper, like a child terrified of having a present snatched away. “That Evangeline wrote me. Right?”

He dips his head. “Correct.”

“But the letter was evidence. You said it was gone.”

“It was,” he agrees. “We thought it destroyed. Pity it only arrived yesterday, and not in time for the investigation.”

A faint smile deepens the lines around his mouth.

Without Evangeline to make clear what she wanted from me, I wasn’t going to have anything to do with the library. A fact that hurts more and more as I lie in bed each night and let the memories roll through my head like a movie.

“Well, have a read,” he says, voice chipper. “Here’s my card. If you’d like to discuss, I trust you’ll call.”

The Rolls careens around the corner, halting with a harsh beeeeeep at a sporty thing that swerves into the tiny one-way street.

“That’d be my car.” Mr. Harrow sighs.

But as he pops the door open, he pauses, head poking over the doorframe. “And Ms. Stokes? I am deeply sorry for the loss of your grandmother. She was a remarkable woman.”

I’m shaking, vision blurring as the letter wavers in my hands. If he thinks she was a serial killer, would he be saying this?

Does he know the truth?

“Thank you,” I manage.

After the Rolls’s taillights diminish down the street, Jasper takes a step away from me as if to leave, and my hand lashes out. His head whips to me, startled. “Stay,” I mouth more than say, gripping his sleeve. “While I read.”

Jasper pauses. His voice is gentle. “Of course.”

    My Dearest Ariadne,

It is my great hope that this letter finds you before I’m gone. I suspect you will not agree to meet—I don’t blame you. I don’t expect forgiveness. Some bloodlines are cursed, and some knowledge is cursed, too. But then sometimes, knowledge is also the cure.

The truth—and how ashamed I am to write it—is that years before I ever knew your name, I watched my daughter accidentally kill a man. Alice was the only thing left of my husband, and I loved her more than life itself. Over the years, I became very good at convincing myself that accidents simply happen.

And then there was you. My brave girl.

If I’d allowed myself to accept what Alice was doing, I never would have taken you in; or rather, I would have made other arrangements. But when you first came to me with what you’d seen Alice do, I allowed fear to take hold of me. What do you do when the person you love most in this world is hiding a monster? I don’t know why I said those terrible things to you, accusing you of what she did—the list of my regrets is long, but perhaps that is the foremost. I made you believe you had no choice but to stand by.

I should have known that you, Aria, would always have found another solution. You did what I could not: You put an end to the horrors.

On that day, I lost all three of you. Rory never forgave me for sending you away, and I see now I only made things worse by letting her believe that her mother had abandoned her. Words cannot begin to describe that moment, finding you in the vault, but you must know that I never, ever hated you, never blamed you for what happened. When I sent you away, my heart went with you.

Which is why I’m naming you and Rory co-heirs to the Riordan estate in its entirety. My hope is that you will decide to forge a new path, together—whether that be managing the Daedalus Library, allowing the library to go public, or dissolving it entirely.

My family’s sins are my burden, which I will see to, even in death. I will confess to all of the murders, provide enough evidence that it is an open-and-shut case. But the Daedalus—should you so desire it—is yours to do with as you will, yours and Rory’s. Never have I been so grateful that my pride did not allow me to name this library the Riordan Library. Perhaps it’s time for the Riordan name to be laid to rest.