“Yes, I am,” he said, cold as the heart of a glacier. “Nowdo you understand what you’re facing here? It’s nothing that books will help you against. And even if they could, you shouldn’t be trying to learn at seven minutes to closing, in a library that turns into a nightmare the moment those doors are locked.”
“It’s not seven minutes to closing. I only just got here.”
“Another thing you clearly don’t understand,” he said in a voice that almost sounded exasperated—like a teacher with a particularly difficult student. And he carried on in that way, too. “Time moves differently here, bookworm. You have to keep careful trackof it. You need a watch on your wrist, an analog watch, preferably one that you wind. And you must keep it wound, and then pay attention to what it says, even if your mind tells you it’s only been ten seconds.”
She couldn’t take his words at face value, however.
She had to brush them off. “The guidebook didn’t say anything like that.”
“The guidebook tells you whatever it feels like telling you.”
“That’s a completely deranged system. It doesn’t even make sense.”
“Nowyou’re getting it.Nowyou’re seeing that this isn’t a fun wonderland, where all your dreams come true. It’shell,” he said, that last word so overemphasized it sounded like it had two syllables. “And you’re down to three minutes, by the way.”
“That’s not possible. It’s been thirty seconds.”
“Yes, and I told you what thirty seconds can be here.”
“I don’t believe it. You’re just trying to stop me from unearthing your weakness.”
“And what weakness is it that you think there is to find, little bookworm?”
He stepped toward her the moment the question was out. Just a little, but a little felt like a lot from someone so enormous. His shadow slid over her before he was even that close. And she could feel that cold. That burning cold. It made her want to beg him to step back. Or burst out with anone of your business.
But before she could do either, the lights went out.
All at once, directly to darkness.
And it was followed by athunkthat she knew was a lock sliding home.
“Well,” she heard him say, through the dark and hovering silence that followed. “Time’s up.”
But she didn’t wait for whatever he had planned next.
She simply shoved the table between them, hard enough that she felt it hit him. Then before he could recover, she ran. Right into the deep velvety darkness, as fast as she could go. Faster than that even. She thought of him cutting her off in the hall of headmasters, even as she went flat out. And she went harder. She flung herself, at full tilt.
But it made little difference.
She heard him loud and clear, a second later—despite the fact that he didn’t seem to speak loudly. His voice was almost hushed, yet still it found her. As if he was barely an inch away. “Don’t be a fool, bookworm,” he said, as she pressed her back against a bookshelf. “The deeper you go into this place, the deadlier it gets.”
And even though it seemed like a bad idea to give away her position, she couldn’t help it. She let words burst out of her, thick with venom. “The only deadly thing in here is you, you horrible fuck.”
“You’re wrong. I’m the last shot you have now of getting out of here alive.”
“Oh? And what exactly do I have to do to receive this sudden generosity?”
“Leave Harrowhall the moment we escape. Leave and never return.”
She laughed mirthlessly into the darkness. “So the low, low price of giving up everything I’ve ever longed for.”
“Somehow, I don’t think you longed for being ripped apart by wraiths.”
Liar, she thought the second he said it. Mainly because the books hadn’t said a thing about creatures like that, haunting the library after closing. He was just trying to strong-arm her, to scare her until she took his deal. It was obvious, absolutely obvious. A fool wouldn’t have fallen for that.
Yet somehow, she held her breath anyway.
She listened, just to see if she could hear anything moving around in the darkness. Wraiths were the tattered remnants of souls that had made terrible mistakes with magic, she knew, and they were meant to make a sound like sobbing. Like grief, if it was turned into a noise.
