Page 52 of The Library at Hellebore

“Sully never did appreciate his good fortune,” said Adam, his expression brittle. No wonder he loathed Sullivan so. Two sides of the same coin, one coddled and the other commoditized. Never mind that Sullivan, rest his digested soul, hated his predicament, that Sullivan was just as desperate to crawl from his destiny. Adam saw him as favored, a golden child. Ironic given how Sullivan’s narrative resolved but then again, Adam seemed the kind to nurse a grudge from cradle to crypt.

“Anyway,” he said. “If you ever bring up my fucking mother again, I’ll burn you to ashes.”

I was saved from having to answer when a familiar voice uncoiled through the air, low and eager and breathy.

“Deathworker, darling, dearest death,” said something in the gloom above us, in echo of words spoken so many strange months ago. “I’ve found you at last and when I eat you, I’llfinallydie.”

“Oh,” sighed Adam, standing. “Hello, beautiful.”

He was wearing the excitement of a child at a circus, one ready for a harmless spectacle or at least one where he had no stakes. No, that wasn’t right. His was the face of the gore hound, the ambulance chaser. He wanted the crash, wanted the six-car pileup mess of body parts and screaming people.

“Give him to me. Give the deathworker and I’ll give you the cursed song, a favor for another, a gift for a gift in return.”

“Gracelynn,” I whispered as a shape peeled out from the darkness.

High above us, the Librarian emerged, looking for all the world like a hand puppet being thrust out from behind a velvet curtain. It was smiling with every single one of its mouths; it was practically porous with good faith. Most of its hands were steepled, all but two: one held Gracelynn’s sagging frame by their nape while the other gestured toward its captive. Blood sheeted from their face like a mourning veil, and maybe it was a good thing we were all going to die here or I’d spend the rest of my life dreaming of bloody hands.

Gracelynn blinked their eyes open.

“No, no,” they panted, looking like a sacrifice. “You were supposed to run.”

“I fucking tried,” I shouted and they laughed, a long and hollow noise not unlike a coyote’s sobbing call.

I felt fingers try to curl around my ankle.

“Alessa,” said Rowan, spitting what was left of his cigarette out. “Now. Now’s when.”

“What—”

“It’s happening. What Ford said,” he said, each word costing him more than he had, every syllable syruped with blood. “It’s okay.”

“You’re so gorgeous,” sighed Adam, his eyes only for the Librarian. “But you don’t have what I want. Keep the bitch.”

“I can hold it,” shouted Gracelynn from above. “Take Rowan and—”

“What are you talking about?”

“My death,” said Rowan and it was sweet somehow, that red-gummed smile of his, fierce and sure. I remember thinkingohas I stared down at his face, beautiful in its fatalism. “He knew you’d be worth it. You’re going to make this worth it becauseyou’ll make him fucking pay.”

Ford also said half live if Rowan dies. He didn’t sayhowRowan needs to die. I turned to the Librarian and shouted, my voice loud as the snap of a breaking bone, despair sanding away whatever self-preservation I had left. Fuck all of this. “You can have him!”

“Alessa.” Adam’s voice gleamed with warning.

“Take him.”

“Yessss,” sang the Librarian, accelerating across the ceiling, unfurling, Adam and his threats and flirtations forgotten, its eyes only for me and Rowan as the latter wincingly propped himself up to meet his end. “Finally, I’ll die. I’ll die, I’ll die, I’ll die at last. At long last.”

Snarling, Adam blanketed the air with a bright blaze of blue flame, earning a wail from the Librarian. It fell back, crawling halfway down a wall again with its myriad hands, Gracelynn clutched like a childhood charm, screeching what I suspected were curses in a language dead and old as compassion.

“He’smine,you fucking centipede.”

Adam erupted into a star. I could almost see a humanoid shape in that terrible whiteness: it’d been cauterized of any extraneous fat; it was barely more than smoldering bone. Still, he rose into the air, still he bellowed. “So stand the fuck down.”

“No,” sang out the Librarian. “No, I think I will not.”

I kissed Rowan then as the Librarian dove forward, through the inferno of Adam’s refusal, immolation hardly a significant obstacle when one’s long anticipated death was waiting there with an exhausted smile. I kissed him not full on the mouth but on the leftmost edge of his lower lip, where a scar ran to his chin. Carefully, because he’d been hurt enough. And softly, because I could. Because I’d rather remember him this way than broken, his blue eyes as clear as the winter sky. It wasn’t technically my first kiss but it was the first that I’d offered of my own free will and Rowan tasted of ash and blood and too many things unsaid.

My hand closed around his jaw. He pressed his cheek into my palm, his eyes softening. When we broke apart enough, he was smiling at me with heartbreaking sweetness, every capillary in his eyes burst. Rowan was dying, dead already, really. I didn’t love him could barely say I even liked him, but he’d always been in my corner and I was tired of losing everything.

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