Page 23 of The Library at Hellebore

All the color fled Rowan’s face: he was white as chalk, as clean dead bone. He withdrew a single step, his face closing like a door, his expression banging shut. It was so hard to ascribe any malice to Eoan, with his soft eyes and softer brogue, the congenital melancholy that seemed to permeate his elfin features, but not for the first time I wondered if it was an act. I scanned his face as he spoke but from where I stood, it remained sinless as marble. “None of us are good people. We aren’t. We deserve this.”

“Just because you’re a sell-out,” hissed Rowan.

“I am. Never said I wasn’t. But I fed her, the Librarian,” said Eoan after a moment, curling into a ball. “So she won’t hurt anybody. I did it for all of us. That has to mean something, doesn’t it? Don’t hate me. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

“Too little too late on all those fronts, don’t you think?” I asked. “We’re still fucked.”

“But we’re not dead. Not yet.”

I couldn’t help the sneer from crawling onto my face.

“Ain’t that a pity.”

BEFORE

Silently, we made our way back to where Sullivan and Portia sat. More students were pouring into the dining hall, their voices echoing strangely in the cavernous space. A queue was forming through the doors and was being kept honest by a trio of those meat stewards. The presence of the latter only helped to confirm Professor Stone’s comments, an attempt by Hellebore’s administration to keep costs down because already, the air was spoiling with the reek of decay. I risked a backward glance at where Stone had stood but if he was still there, he’d been swallowed by the crowd.

“Is it something related to epic fantasy?” said Rowan as we came within inches of the table, startling me.

“What?”

“Your name,” said Rowan. “Is it like aLord of the Ringsreference or something?”

“Nope.”

“Is it a science fiction thing?”

Sullivan smiled courteously up at us both as I sat down beside him, Rowan settling beside a less than enthused Portia.

“No,” I said to Rowan, grateful despite myself for the irreverence, this break from being so thoroughly unsettled.

“Did you make it up yourself?” said Rowan, ignoring Sullivan.

“No.”

Then as Portia was about to speak, Rowan bellowed with unabashed delight.

“Noooo. No way,” he said, pointing at me.

I froze.

“Are you named for theSilent Hillchick?”

“Silentwhat?” said Sullivan, too well-bred to know his schlocky franchises.

Thinking back, that was perhaps my best memory of Hellebore: Rowan barraging Sullivan with lore and theories about the lore surrounding the inescapable cursed town, Portia adding non sequiturs where she could, winking at me where she couldn’t, her earlier aloofness somehow eradicated by our camaraderie. It was good and if I’d known what would come later, I might have savored those hours with them, the last vestiges of safety I’d possess, tenuous as they were given the company I was keeping. I learned both Sullivan and Rowan had enrolled voluntarily: Sullivan out of obligation, Rowan because he, in his own words, wanted pussy.

“There are easier ways to get laid,” said Sullivan.

“But not hotter,” countered Rowan, waggling his eyebrows at Portia who’d left and returned with a glass of iced coffee, which she poured over his head without a second word.

“Why areyouhere?” Portia asked me, after Rowan had staggered, cursing, away to the bathrooms and she had come back with a cup ofhotcoffee, settling back into her seat.

“They kidnapped me.”

She and Sullivan exchanged looks.

“It happens,” said the boy gently, something ineradicably different about how he looked at me: his face was gentler, his eyes softer, so much softer. Someone else might have melted like butter but I knew that expression. He was looking at melike the corpse of a dove he’d found on the roadside, beyond saving but not above pity.

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