thirty
Eliot
AVOIDING THE LIBRARY WAS INCONVENIENT AND ANNOYING, but avoiding Tess Matheson was even worse.
Eliot hadn’t seen Tess since she’d blown into his office like a hurricane on Monday, and now, on Wednesday night, he had the realization that he’d have to go back eventually.
But maybe, if he went when the library was technically closed and keyed in with his code, he wouldn’t have to see Tess’s face and be reminded of the way her mouth looked when she smiled.
The sun was setting when Eliot parked in the faculty lot. He had an invitation for dinner from his father on his voicemail—”Eliot, Lucille wants to see you again this weekend. She says you’re spending too much time by yourself. That builds character, being alone, but she’s insisting. Call me back. We will have dinner on Sunday”—and he had no desire to begin to think about a response.
As expected, Jessop was dark and quiet, and the reading room was blissfully empty. With Eliot’s luck, he figured he’d accidentally arrive when there was an event keeping the library open late, or even worse, right as Tess was leaving.
Eliot stalked across the library, not realizing until he was halfway up the stairs that he was tracking footprints behind him.
He stopped, noticing the trail of dark liquid on the tiled floor. It started from the circulation desk, from what he could tell. There was a laptop left behind on the desk and a bag in the shadows underneath it.
Eliot crouched down, closer to the trail up the steps, and dipped his fingers in the liquid. When he brought his hand closer to his face, he smelled the bite of copper. Blood.
Blood from the circulation desk, disappearing up the stairs. Eliot’s heart clenched with fear.
Tess.
He raced up the stairs. The blood didn’t stop at the second-floor landing. Eliot had a horrifying suspicion as he continued up another floor.
On the third floor, the trail continued down the walkway and then curved into a door. His door.
The keys to his office were heavy in his hand. He didn’t know what he would find on the other side of that door—God, he didn’t even want to look—but it was not going to be good. And worst of all, there was a chance it was—
No. He could not allow himself to think Tess was there.
He had his phone with him. He could call the police, tell them he’d found blood in the library, that he needed help. But there were his bloody footprints all through the library. Eliot was alone. If there was something heinous on the other side of that door, he did not know how to answer any questions for why he was here, and more specifically, why he was here by himself.
Eliot did not have an alibi.
He could not call for help. He had to know what was on the other side of the door. Because if it was it was something explicable, like a wounded animal or some odd side effect of a spell he’d miscast, then he could use a spell to clean up the blood and act like nothing had happened.
And if it wasn’t …
All he could hear was Tess’s voice in the back of his head: Have you had any strange experiences since we took the book back?
Eliot crept forward. The key was warm from being pressed into his palm, and he was sure when he opened his hand, there would be a reddened indent in its shape.
Three steps away. If Tess was in there, he didn’t know what he’d do.
One step away. He didn’t know who he was amidst the cloud of fear within him.
He unlocked the door. This old building creaked incessantly, and his door was no exception. The sound was like a scream in the silence of the library.
At first, as his eyes were adjusting, he thought it was fine. The trail ended near his carpet, but then shapes began to form. His desk. The hump of his chair. A stack of books, dangerously close to the edge of his desk.
And there, a black shape in the middle of the burgundy rug.
A body.
thirty one
Tess
IT WAS NEARLY 9:00 WHEN TESS‘S PHONE STARTED RINGING. She was greeting a table but she could feel it there, buzzing in the leftmost pocket of her apron, whirring against her thigh.
The call was from an unknown number. Tess ignored it and switched her phone to Do Not Disturb.
At 9:30 she checked her phone again. She had thirteen missed calls now, all from the same unknown number.
“Hey, Lou?” Tess said, catching her manager’s arm. “Mind if I step outside for a minute?”
“Sure,” Lou said.
Tess went out back and moved a few feet away from the two kitchen guys who were sitting on crates, smoking cigarettes. She hadn’t even fully unlocked her phone when the call screen came up. The same number again. A Pittsburgh number, judging by the area code.
“Hello?”
“Tess, thank God.” To her surprise, it was Eliot’s voice on the other side. At least, she thought it was. His words were shaky, uncertain, breathy.
“Eliot? What’s going on?” And then, because it just occurred to her: “How did you get my number?”
“It’s in a binder. On the front desk. Tess, I need your help.”
“Why are you at the library?” She checked her watch. Obviously, Jessop was closed, and it had been for hours. But then again, Jessop’s hours of operation had never mattered to Eliot before.
“I needed—oh, that’s not the point. What are you doing?”
“I’m at work,” she said.
“Can you get away?”
Tess frowned. No, not really. But deep down, she knew Eliot wouldn’t be asking her, wouldn’t even be calling, if it wasn’t an emergency.
“I can try.” Tess bit her lip.
“Please.” Eliot’s voice was shattered glass and exhaustion and fear.
After their tense discussion the other day, Tess was certain he wouldn’t call her—wouldn’t even speak to her, probably—unless there was an actual emergency. She’d find a way to get out of work. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Even though, just days ago, he’d been asking for space.
Why am I doing this? But there was the sound of Eliot’s voice, terrified on the other side of the line. Tess sighed.
It took a faked family emergency in an only half-faked shaky voice, but Tess managed to escape work and made her way to Jessop as dark deepened the shadows of the city.
The lights were off in the unshuttered upper library windows when Tess finally reached the building. She would’ve missed Eliot, sitting there on one of the benches in the lobby if he hadn’t quietly said her name.
He was silhouetted in a thin pane of moonlight. His hands were splattered with something dark, and for one weary moment, she wondered if they were stained with ink.
“Didn’t you have anyone else you could call?” Tess asked.
He looked up, clearly caught off guard. “No,” he said. “No, I … Who would I call?”
Tess bit her lip. If she even began to answer that question, he’d know how closely she paid attention to him. “What’s going on?” she asked instead. There was something so lost, so forlorn about him. She lowered herself to a crouch in front of him and laid a hand on his knee.
“There’s a body in my office.”
She couldn’t have heard him right. Tess stared at his face for a long moment, waiting for the catch, waiting for the joke. It didn’t come. “Excuse me?”
“A dead body. I went in to get some papers and there is blood everywhere and a dead body in my office.”
Tess blinked at him. Surely, he was lying. Surely, this was some kind of prank. But if it was, Eliot was far crueler than she could’ve imagined.
“Show me.”
When he looked up, his face was pale and his eyes were red. “Tess, I don’t want to go back in there.”
“Then why did you call?” Tess snapped. And then, realizing the full gravity of the situation: “Did you call the police?”
“No.”
“What the hell, Eliot?”
He closed his eyes again, pressin
g his palms against them, like he could push away whatever he’d seen if he only tried hard enough. Only then did she realize the dark smudges on his hands were blood.
“What was I supposed to do? I was alone in there, with no way to prove I had nothing to do with it. How would that look? I don’t … I don’t …” His voice was lost in a choked gasp.
“Okay, okay. Let’s go look. We’ll figure out what to do from there.” She wasn’t sure why she needed to see it so badly, but it was almost like if she saw it, she could sort through some sort of plan. Or know he was telling the truth.
Eliot nodded. He stood shakily and led the way towards Jessop.
“You should use your code again,” Tess said, and she felt a flare of guilt for it. But if they did file a police report, it would show that Dr. Birch’s code had been used to access the library both times.
Either he didn’t think of the same thing, or he already knew he was complicit. Without protest, Eliot keyed into the library and opened the door.
Tess could smell the blood.
She switched on the light after Eliot shut the door behind them. The fluorescents buzzed to life, bringing the dark blood into rusty red color. And the look on Eliot’s face did not lie: there was a nauseating amount of blood.
“Okay,” Tess said. She was a naturally calm person, and this looked like the type of situation that would require her to keep her wits about her. She thought of her mother cleaning up dead birds from the yard after a rainstorm when Tess was eight. She could be that calm, that detached, even though they were talking about a human body now. “So this looks pretty bad.”
Eliot didn’t answer. He started towards the third floor, and only then did Tess notice the footprints. “Hey. Eliot, watch where you’re walking. I think these belong to …” She trailed off. Whoever had done the crime? The victim?
“No,” Eliot said miserably. “They’re mine.” He lifted up one foot, revealing the faded red tracks on the bottom of his shoe. “I didn’t realize I walked through it.”
Tess sucked in a breath. The evidence against Eliot was piling up by the second. He must’ve realized how bad things were looking for him, because he stopped his ascent and anxiously rubbed his face. The only thing he succeeded in doing was streaking half-dried blood over his cheeks.
If this was a situation that required the police—and she was thinking that it would be—then Tess made a mental note to have Eliot wash the blood from his face before they arrived.
“Okay.” She couldn’t spend any more time dwelling on this, or else she would lose the calm she was trying so hard to maintain. “Show me the body.”
thirty two
Eliot
ELIOT HAD NEVER BEEN SO CERTAIN THAT HE WAS HAVING A heart attack. His heart was thudding so desperately that he was sure it would burst out of his chest and beat away through one of the library windows. And then there were the pauses between, the moments of silence, when his panic was so thick he thought he would choke on it.
Every step drew him closer. Every heartbeat, every move, every furtive glance from Tess.
If he opened that door again …
No. He could get through this, these horrible seconds, and up to his office. He would open the door and Tess would know what to do and who to call and this would end. He was Eliot Birch, shy and quiet, friend of books everywhere. He was not a murderer, even though there was a body in his office, and of course the authorities would know that. Of course.
Except, they would see the books in his office: human sacrifice and demonic rituals. They would see endless papers on reanimation, on healing, on death. And maybe, they would see Tess as more of a cover than anything else.
They reached the top of the stairs. The smears of blood were drying and cracking now. He could hear Tess’s breathing behind him, quiet and even, and it was the only reason he kept going. Around the corner, up another flight of stairs. Every step was another skipped heartbeat, and he wished that he could reach back and take Tess’s hand, because he didn’t know how he could drag his leaden feet any further.
His office door loomed before him. When he closed his eyes he could see the body, just as clearly as when he’d flicked on the lights and realized what he was looking at. The girl was there on the middle of his rug, crumpled on her side. Her arms were outstretched in front of her, and her eyes were wide open. The blood came from her wrists and throat, brutally torn open.
The door was in front of him.
He could not open it.
He couldn’t reach his hands to twist the knob.
Tess said, “Eliot.”
He could not open it.
Tess’s fingers were warm when she threaded them through his. With her other hand, she reached forward and twisted the knob. The door creaked open.
Eliot closed his eyes. He did not want to see.
Beside him, Tess’s breathing was still measured and even. Her hand remained firm. There was no hitch when she saw the body, and she didn’t pull him closer into the office. He could not look.
But Tess could. Because she was infallible, because she was fearless. Eliot felt like he was going to vomit.
“So, uh, is it behind your desk or something?”
“What?”
“The body,” Tess said, and her voice was too calm, too steady for the ruin of the girl in his office.
“No,” he said. He had to look, but to look would be to instantly get sick. “It’s right in the middle …”
“It’s, uh. Eliot.”
Eliot opened his eyes. The door to his office was open, and Tess must’ve flicked on the light. The burgundy carpet was stained dark with blood, and he could make out three points where it was completely soaked. But that was all. The books were still stacked haphazardly on his desk. His chair was pulled out and angled, and there was a sweater draped over the back from last week.
There was no body.
“Fuck,” Eliot whispered. And then, because once wasn’t enough to encompass it all: “Bloody fucking hell.” His hand went limp in Tess’s.
The calm was stripped away from Tess’s voice. “You said there was a body. There isn’t a body. What’s happening?”
He’d been holding his breath. The edges of his vision started to shimmer a little, and he knew he had to take a breath to keep standing, to stay aware in this reality where there was no body.
“There was a body, Tess. Right there. You see the shape of her on the carpet, don’t you?”
Tess released his hand and moved farther into the room. Eliot didn’t want her to go in, but it wasn’t like he could keep her. She already thought he was lying as it was. There was a reddish stain on her gray, long-sleeved Emiliano’s T-shirt, and he focused on it as she knelt down and examined the bloodstain.
“Did you take a picture?” Tess asked.
“Why the fuck would I do that?”
She glared at him, and he tried to regain his composure. “I’m sorry. No, I didn’t.” He ran a hand through his hair and took another breath. “She was here. And it wasn’t just any girl. It was the one you work with.”
Tess’s head snapped up. “It was Regina?” Her voice had an edge of panic to it.
Regina. He’d been avoiding thinking her name, as if doing so would lessen the gore of her corpse. When Tess said it, a new wave of nausea rolled through his stomach and he fought desperately to keep his composure.
“Yes.” He had to convince Tess he was telling the truth. The fact that she’d left work for him, that she’d come all this way just to find the body missing, felt like a cruel prank. “Her laptop. She left her laptop and backpack here. It’s on the desk.”
Tess got up and pushed past him. He watched through the door as she leaned over the bannister, looking down at the circulation desk. He already knew that Regina’s laptop, still half-closed, was there.
Tess didn’t move. She just kept staring at the laptop, at the trail of blood.
“What do we do?” Eliot asked.
She didn’t speak for a l
ong time. The buzzing in Eliot’s ears calmed down a little, but he still wasn’t sure about his heartbeat tripping along. Tess turned back to him, and her face was twisted with confusion. She went back into the office.
Eliot couldn’t quite move yet, so he just watched her. She ran her fingers along the edge of the books and examined them, as if searching for dust—or blood. And then she turned and examined the splotches on the floor. With her face twisted as it was, she looked like she was trying to will the body into existence or coax answers out of the yarn of the carpet.
Then, to his surprise, she crouched down again and pressed her fingers directly into the wettest spot.
Eliot’s face instinctively wrinkled in disgust. Excess liquid oozed from the carpet, pooling around Tess’s fingertips, staining them dark red. She lifted her fingers to her nose and smelled them, as if to confirm that it was, in fact, blood.
Her eyes flicked to his, dark and confused, but not surprised.
“Eliot,” she said carefully. “This is ink.”
And then, terribly, awfully, it was gone. The ink on Tess’s fingers dried and flaked away to dust. Eliot ran out of the office and to the stairs. There, all those bloody footprints, all those pools of inky blood, vanished.
A low, eerie wind swept through Jessop, leaving nothing behind.
thirty three
Tess
THEY WERE THE ONLY PEOPLE AT THE COFFEE SHOP. SITTING across the table from her, Eliot looked irreparably shaken. He’d bought an English Breakfast tea for himself, chai for her, and croissants for both of them, which sat untouched on the middle of the table.
She glanced at her phone, faceup on the table. For her own sanity, she’d tried to call Regina dozens of times. Every call went straight to voicemail.
Something had gone terribly, absolutely wrong, but to fully process it was to be terrified, and to be terrified was to be defenseless. Tess could not let terror distract her; she could not let her guard down.
“Tell me what happened,” Tess said. Again she found herself looking at Eliot, studying him—always, always looking too much at Eliot. She tried to look at the wall, at her phone, at anything else.
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