Page 22 of The Library at Hellebore

“Something’s wrong with him,” Rowan said urgently, shifting his weight from one foot to another. “You might want to give him some space.”

“No more,” moaned Eoan again, shuddering. The front of his shirt was very red and so damp it plastered over the ladders of his ribs.

“You’re okay,” I said, wishing I had some way to protect my hands. Luckily, Rowan had his gloves. With care, he lowered himself to a knee, gathering Eoan from the floor.

“What’s going on here, Eoan?” said Rowan.

Eoan laughed shakily, eyelids trembling.

“I had to—I had to make sure she—”

“It. They tell us to useit.”

“—the Librarian’s not a thing, is she? She’s a person,” moaned Eoan as Rowan carefully draped an arm under the former’s own, holding him upright. Despite the boy’s delicacy, Rowan still staggered a little from his weight. “Should treat her like this one.”

“What happened, Eoan?” I asked, registering too late he’d mentioned the Librarian.

“Fed her. Fed her until she was stuffed. Only thing I could do. If she’s full, she won’t eat us. Maybe that way, shewouldn’t—” Whatever else he might have said went lost in the paroxysm that followed, Eoan seizing first at the fingers, the wrists, the arms, back arching until he lifted out of the cradle of Rowan’s embrace, toppling onto the ground again, convulsing.

“What the hell is going on?” I backed up as did Rowan. “Did you let him touch your skin?”

“No, no. Fuck, no. I wascareful.”

Whimpering in agony, Eoan began to creep toward a machine embedded in the pulpit. The contraption was a bizarre monstrosity of glass tubes and metal filaments, unidentifiable blocks of metal through which tendrilled a million small wires, weaving it to the inside wall of the pulpit. A funnel constructed of matte black plastic protruded from the stand where a scripture might have rested. Eoan, groaning, crawled up to his knees and bent his head over the funnel.

Then he started to retch.

What came out wasn’t vomit but slick white meat, meat that writhed and wailed and laughed sometimes like a child as it was fed down into whatever pipes circulated through the pulpit because there had to be some; where else would it all be going? Thank fuck I couldn’t see its face, couldn’t tell if there was a mouth or eyes. In my life, I’d witnessed some truly profane things—the consumption of Sullivan Rivers being a prime example—but this still was a firm contender for the cake.

Rowan went pale. “The fuuuuck.”

“The goddamned steak,” I said suddenly as Eoan continued to groan; he was practically bellowing, the sounds crawling out of him scarcely human, more tortured bull than anything identifiably person-like.

“What are you talking about?”

I shook my head as Eoan lolled bonelessly back onto the floor, drenched by a spray of pale tendrils, like intestinal worms or maybe veins leached of all color. “That’s why their food was separate from ours in the dining hall. The faculty’s.”

“I thought it was because it was fancy shit.”

“If only.”

Gently, Eoan removed a shimmery blue pocket square from his coat—the color was surreally bright, lurid even like a piece of the open sky cut out and placed in his palm—and cupped it over his mouth, gagging as he began to pull at those colorless threads. Clumps loosened and came free.

“You kept the school fed,” I said with a brittle tenderness even as Eoan wadded up the bloodied pocket square, storing it away. “The faculty, the Librarian. You kept them from digging into us.”

“They told me it’d only be a year,” the Scottish boy panted, lacquered with sweat, his eyes no longer white but their soft pastel green again. “Serve for a year and they’d close up the portal inside me. But they lied, I suppose. I don’t know why I thought they wouldn’t.”

He broke into a sobbing humorless laugh, cackling until there wasn’t any air left in him and he was wheezing like an animal with its throat cut.

“I should have known better,” said Eoan when he had recovered enough. “We all should have.”

“You knew?” Rowan was hollow-eyed. His hands crooked into claws, face blazing with a fatal grief. “You fucking knew. You knew this was waiting for us. How could you let this happen? Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Ididn’t know anything about this,” whimpered Eoan, crawling backward from us or at least trying, his hands skidding frictionless through the gore he’d left on the base ofpulpit. “They didn’t tell me. They said to feed them. That’s all. I didn’t know. I thought, it’s not actually human flesh, is it? Whatever comes out of the portal. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. If I’d known I’d have said something. I swear it. It’s my fault for not asking the right questions, but I did not know this was how it’d end. I—I only did this to make the pain stop. Please, you have to believe me.”

“Give me one good reason,” Rowan said.

“You’d have done the same too.”

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