Ellory often thought Bailey was too suffocating to study in; it was more of an altar to the literary gods, and she wasn’t pious enough to ignore that none of the frescos featured scenes from books by Black authors. Walking past dozens of white characters, suspended in their famous tales, only reinforced her fear that she didn’t belong at the university. At least in Graves, she could pretend that she did.
Hudson paused by the elevator that would take them up to the reading room. “Maybe we should try the rare-books room first?That’s in the basement.”
Ellory’s chest felt tight. “Why?”
“If I had something to hide, I would keep it in a place with few visitors.”
The strangled sensation only worsened. He pressed the DOWN button, and she had to clench her fists at her sides to keep from slapping his hand away. She didn’t want to go down there, and she had no idea why she didn’t want to go down there, except it reminded her of her first week on campus and her exploration of the Graves, that feeling of being buried underground. Trapped.
There were stairs, she told herself. If anything happened, she had an escape route. She had Hudson.
But the anxiety persisted until every breath became a struggle.
The elevator descended into the bowels of the library.
Once the doors opened, Ellory trailed after Hudson, concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other. The rare-books room was at the end of a long, dimly lit hallway, interspersed with flickering lights. There was a humidifier to keep the books at the optimal temperature, but even the sound of it running wasn’t enough to hide the skittering of vermin in the corners. Their footsteps were loud on the stone floor, warning anyone present that they were getting closer. Not that there was anyone down here.
She hoped there was no one down here.
“What should we be looking for, exactly?” Ellory whispered as the light bulb flashed another warning. “I don’t think any ghosts are going to jump out and introduce themselves.”
“Hidden passages. Discarded journals.” Hudson unlocked the heavy doors, his expression cast in shadow as the light flickered off again. “Ghosts are appreciated, but not required.”
Ellory had never been inside the rare-books room of any library.Shelves wrapped around all four walls, making space only for the door that had let them inside. A glass cage took up half the room, filled with even more books, whose yellowed pages looked like a single touch would dissolve them. There were desks with books stacked on top of them and podiums with books open on them. Dark lamps hung over them as the humidifier droned on.
She rubbed the goose bumps that had risen on her arms, unsure if they were being caused by the temperature or from the nerves that churned in her gut. But the sooner they found something, the sooner they could leave.
Haunted Hallowed Hallsfeatured an entire chapter on Graves Library, but there wasn’t anything about Bailey. Ellory had suggested meeting at the bigger library instead, but Hudson had made the sound point that anything buried on campus was likely to be in the oldest buildings rather than the newest. While he tugged at the spines of the books on the shelves, probably hoping for some cartoonish wall panel to slide open, Ellory wandered over to the nearest desk. Every book had an embossed title, and every spine was unbroken. She would have thought they were brand-new if not for how faded the text was. A small brush was abandoned by the side of one stack, the dust of newly cleaned tomes clinging to the bristles.
The hairs on the back of Ellory’s neck stood up.
She peered over her shoulder, but nothing was there. Hudson moved silently around the room, and the humidifier roared its presence, but neither explained the way her instincts had shot to life, every nerve ending crying,Danger, danger, danger…
She turned her attention to the drawers. In the first one, she found more brushes and a larger feather duster. There was a notebook with numbers scratched on every page, and a key card that looked at leasta decade old. The next drawer revealed pens, an empty planner, and an opened pack of batteries.
Her skin prickled with the feeling of being watched. She stopped with her hand on the handle of the third and final drawer, straining to listen. Beyond the humidifier, beyond Hudson’s fruitless search, she could have sworn she heard a whisper.
Danger, danger, danger…
Ellory opened the drawer with shaking hands. It was empty.
Her heart was racing. She rubbed her chest as she knocked the drawer closed with her hip. “Hey, maybe we should—”
That was as far as she got before all hell broke loose.
32
It started with a rumbling. Ellory cut her sentence short to stare wide-eyed at the shelves, which vibrated like they were at the epicenter of an earthquake. The books quailed with them, rustling against one another like leaves in the wind. Hudson backed away from the ones he’d been examining until he was standing between her and the trembling walls, arm extended to keep her from trying to get past him.
A red book slid free of the shelf and shot toward them.
“Get down!” Hudson called.
Ellory hit the floor, the impact reverberating up her arms. The book slammed into the desk, right where she had just been standing. Hudson, crouched next to her, was still staring at the shelves in open horror. A blue book shook loose and hovered in the air before flying in their direction. Then a green book, a gold book, a leather-bound brown book—faster and faster, each pausing to search for them every time. Dust clung to Ellory’s skin as she rolled out of the way, throwing her arms over her head in time to avoid getting concussed by a first edition ofThe Mysterious Affair at Styles.
“The desk,” she shouted. More and more books joined the cacophony, swirling into a tornado of paper in the middle of the room. “Get under the desk!”
Hudson threw out a hand, and a podium screeched across the room to shield them. Whatever memory he had sacrificed to cast that spell saved them just in time. Hardcovers hit the walls, one another, the glass case, and the latter began to crack under the assault. Book after book struck the podium so hard that the wood splintered, and still they keptcoming. Ellory flinched and huddled closer to Hudson; his breathing was calm where hers was labored, and she tried to match his level of peace before she hyperventilated.
