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“So you picked up another book. Out of every book in the world, why did you have to pick this one?”

“Would you believe it was pure chance?” Derik Holt asked. He was sitting in the mahogany wooden chair in the Founder’s library, holding the book in his hands, turning pages without looking at it. His face was older than it ought to be, and his very posture betrayed an exhaustion that should have been foreign. The book looked older than it ought as well, red leather binding peeling and the thin pages almost transparent but for the black letters that seemed to shimmer as the pagers whispered while Holt turned them.

Booker—named well for a librarian’s job, as everyone always joked—shook his head. “I don’t believe in chance anymore than I believe in the likelihood of winning the lottery if I don’t buy a ticket.”

“So never and never,” Holt said.

“Never and never,” Booker agreed. There was a moment of silence, one of those awkward pauses that isn’t awkward until it’s broken. “So,” Booker said.

Holt just looked up at him. His fingers still caressed the leather bound volume, cradling it close like that book was the last thing in the world.

“Are you going to tell me what the other book was?” Booker asked.

“I don’t think I remember,” Holt said. “And I really don’t think it ever mattered.”

“Let me be t he judge of that,” Booker said. He seated himself on the velvety red carpeting with heavy geometric designs that covered the entirety of the library floor. “Tell me.”

Holt shook his head. “I’m not the man you go to for story time, anymore.”

Booker pulled his knees to his chest and looked up at Holt, trying to make his eyes wide and appealing like a small child. Holt never could resist small children. But Holt managed to resist Booker’s failed look.

“No,” he said, and made as if to stand. Then he settled back into his seat, as though the effort were too great. Booker shook his head. Sometimes—

“Sometimes you need to be more careful,” he said.

“Careful,” Holt echoed. He smiled. “Sometimes, you need to watch what books you put into your library, my friend.”

Booker glanced down at the volume between Holt’s fingers and shivered internally. Careful of what went into the library. That was an understatement. The very air of the place had changed overnight when that particular volume had shown up. The way it felt to be alive had changed. Booker wished he hadn’t been on leave when it had come in.

“Are you ready, though?” Holt asked. “It’s almost time.”

The air of the library felt even heavier, like it was getting ready to pounce, as though it were a living being, stalking prey. Booker nodded. “I’ve been ready,” he lied. He could feel the lie leave his tongue, dripping off the edge instead of jumping the way the truth did. It was an awkward feeling.

He was sure Holt knew he’d lied, but Holt said nothing, did nothing to indicate such.

“Then when the last bell chime sounds—“

“I know,” Booker said. “I’m just going to miss you, is all.”

Holt laughed, then, a strange, stray sound. For a moment, Booker wasn’t sure if it was a laugh, truly, or if it was something else. If it was a finality, a giving in. If something had come in and displaced the spirit that was located within.

“Are you sure you have everything?” Holt asked.

Booker nodded. “Salt, sand, candles, rope, wire.”

“And the knife?” Holt looked serious. “Do you have the knife?”

“Yes,” Booker said. He glanced over at the pile of stuff adorning the mahogany table laid out in the open aisle between shelves. There was barely room to squeeze around it. He’d just have to hope that nothing went wrong.

“Good,” Holt said, but the way he said it was so resigned that Booker wondered if what he actually meant was, “Damn.”

“You sure you won’t tell me anything more about this?” Booker asked. “Just so I can know for the future?”

“You’ll find out all you want to know and more when it happens,” Holt said. His voice had a tone of finality that allowed for no argument and no further questions. Booker took that as his signal to just be quiet, allowing for the silence and the beautiful majesty of the library to overwhelm him.

He was so lucky to work here. Amid the stacks of books in every color, bound in leather and plastic, hardcover and soft, with mysteries, magic, plays, prose, poetry and perfection hidden somewhere in each cover. And demons in some. That was the downside of working in the Founder’s library—along with all the perks, there were some serious drawbacks. The fact that Booker was limited to a few days a month when he could actually leave the building. That there were no real visiting hours, and no time to hang out with friends. The practice of watching the stacks at two in the morning.

The fact that there were curses laid on so many of the works that passed through the doors. There were ordinary books, ones out in the front with the hot lights and air and people. The back of the Founder’s library was less modern, more medieval, created in a way that defied conventional reality—the vaulted ceilings and the huge lines of books, spread along wooden shelves that stood three times a man’s height.

Booker didn’t mind watching the stacks. He didn’t even mind being bound to the library. It was when things like this happened—when someone brought in a book as a donation and slipped it into the “Return” books before it could be processed and understood. Before someone could take a look at it, to make sure that it was a safe book.

There was no telling who or what might come in, in a book. Literature was dangerous.

“Come here,” Holt said, recalling Booker. “It’s almost time.”

Why things always had to happen at midnight in movies had confused Booker for a very long time. In books, midnight was the witching hour, but it was the full hour, not exactly-on-the-dot, not to-the-second when magic might happen. And in reality, neither was correct anyway. It was two-thirty, according to the last scribe he’d read. Two thirty in the morning, when he had to work the rites.

But it was midnight to someone somewhere, he supposed. Maybe books didn’t obey time laws the way the rest of the world did. Maybe books decided what they wanted to do on their own, on a whim, as they pleased. Or maybe it was just books in general.

The library looked down at Booker, and he felt the surface spirits, inside the walls and paintings in Founder’s library, looking at him. They were all judging him, waiting for what he was going to do.

Holt had made the mistake, but Booker realized he was going to be paying at least part of the price. It was the price of being friends, he supposed.

“You still not gonna tell me what happened?” Booker asked Holt.

“No,” Holt said. “I’m not. It’s not a story I want to tell and it’s not a story you should be hearing. You like this place. I never did.”

“That’s news to me,” Booker said. “Didn’t you give up your chance to go home once just to stay here?”

“That was a long time ago,” Holt said.

“Quite acting like you’re sixty five or something,” Booker said.

Holt just looked at him, and Booker finally looked away, unable to meet a gaze that looked like it ought to belong to a man about to die, not a man who was about to be freed.

“I’m sorry,” Holt said.

Booker did not respond.

“I’m sorry,” Holt said again but it was not as though the apology was directed at Booker himself. Booker could feel it—Holt was apologizing to the library, the spirits that kept the place in one piece, to the spirits that kept the place running. He was going to do something big. Something possibly disgraceful. Booker had no idea what it was. Only that he was going to help.

“Come here,” Holt said as the bells began to chime for two thirty. “It’s starting.”

There was limited time. Booker grabbed the salt and string and came over, to lightly bind Holt’s wrists together, avoiding coming into contact with the red bound book as best as he could. There was a flavor of horror to it, amongst, the way the scene felt like it was playing out.

Holt was silent, and even his breathing was quiet—so shallow as to be almost nonexistent. It was freakish. Booker tried not to look at him too long, focused instead on tying the knots just right so that there would be no lost circulation, and nothing wrong afterwards.

“Do it,” Holt said, but Booker knew it wasn’t time yet. He took a pinch of salt and sprinkled it between the pages of the book, a bit against Holt’s hands. Holt hissed as though he were being burned.

Booker looked away, trying to ignore the hard sounds.

“This is gonna hurt,” he said.

The final charm was approaching as two thirty drew nearer.

“Do it,” Holt said. “Just fucking do it.”

Booker looked at the knife in his hand and then down at the book in Holt’s and had to pause. He wanted to not do anything. Even though...even though...

“Do it!” Holt exclaimed. “Do it now!”

There were brief seconds when Booker’s mind just shut off. He did what needed to be done, his hands line up properly as he said a prayer in silent, mentally to himself, asking whatever might live upstairs to make this work.

Then he rammed the knife home into Holt’s heart.

“I’m sorry.”

Holt didn’t say anything. Warmth rushed down over Booker’s hand, and the red book slipped out of Holt’s grip for the first time in months. Holt’s body leaned forward, pressed against Booker’s hand so he was holding up the corpse with one hand alone. Booker let go of the knife and grabbed Holt’s shoulders, to sit him back upright in the chair.

Now all that was left was the waiting.