Then he’d turned off his phone and hoped she didn’t call the police.
Kane banked through gentle curves, the pale morning rising over him and growing thick with birdsong, heat, and the chatter of insects. When the library came into view he stopped short. It was covered in construction materials. A fence lined with green canvas bordered the property, and plastic curtains had been pulled over most of the windows. Through them the library looked empty, a gutted shell of Kane’s memory.
The invitation hummed in his pocket. Around him the chorus of cicadas swelled, urging him forward, except suddenly his secret investigation didn’t feel like so much fun.
Still, as imperfect as this plan might be, it was his.
He stashed his bike in a towering mountain laurel, then snuck through the vacant construction grounds. Except for the cicadas, it was eerily quiet. Opaque curtains hung in the entryway, billowing outward in methodic exhales, and the interior beyond was impenetrably dark.
Kane pulled on Ursula’s flannel. He wondered if he should at least text Ursula the address in case he vanished, but decided he couldn’t risk turning on his phone. Setting his jaw, he plunged inside.
The library had been constructed around an open expanse topped with a skylight that usually saturated every inch of the space with sunlight. Kane’s memory of the space was therefore a riot of oranges and yellows that burned the floating dust in the air to glitter.
The library Kane stood in now was a betrayal to that memory. The skylight had been covered with a tarp, and the sunlight that plunged through the gaps looked almost solid enough to bump into. Only a few bits of dust rocked in and out of the light, like insects. Otherwise, the air was unmoving.
There were no books. Just stripped wood and wires.
But there was noise. A distant chiming in the emptiness, somewhere above Kane. He closed his eyes to listen. When he reopened them, he was not alone.
A dog sat in a spotlight, sleek and black, with cropped ears poised like horns. A Doberman with a fine silver chain for a collar. It watched Kane with urgent eyes, whined, and then trotted toward the stairs. Kane followed obediently, climbing up two stories until he found the dog waiting at the top.
Before the construction, the library’s top floor was reserved for the boring adult books. Now the top floor was a huge open room, barely lit by a grid of blacked-out skylights. Some of the skylights had shed their tarps and the effect was the underside of a pond rocking in slow motion. It lent a murky translucence to the emptiness that was, Kane noticed, not empty at all.
In the middle of the expanse was a room without walls. It glowed warmly, like a spotlighted scene on an empty, black stage. There was an ivory settee lounging across from a stiff and prim wingback chair. Between them sat a mahogany coffee table complete with a gleaming tray of porcelain teacups, saucers, and a teapot. Steam curled up from the pot’s pursed lips, disappearing into a chandelier that blazed with a thousand crystal facets. Kane approached, transfixed. It wasn’t until he was nearly beneath the chandelier that he sensed something about it: its light pulsed, as though alive.
Then something among the scene moved. Like an octopus unraveling from coral, an entire person shifted into focus on the settee as they stood up. The camouflage of their brocade robe against the settee was uncanny. Chills broke out across Kane’s neck. He did not recognize who he saw; he recognized what he heard.
“Did you know,” said Dr. Poesy, the very one who had given Kane the red journal in the Soft Room, “that the female anglerfish evolved a dark lining in its digestive system so the consumption of glowing morsels would not expose it from the inside out to its prey?”
Kane’s eyes flicked up to the chandelier again.
“They live in the dark, you know,” he added. “They’re from the abyss.”
Dr. Poesy was different from Kane’s memory. Standing against the drabness, with his lustrous robe pooling around his shoulders, he radiated with pastel power. The skin of his face glowed beneath rose and peach makeup. His hair had gone from chestnut to a pearly lavender, pushed up high and backward and threaded with pearls—a wig, Kane knew. The edge of something chiffon fluttered out from where the rope fell open.
Was Dr. Poesy in drag?
“Yes, she is in drag,” Dr. Poesy said, once again answering the questions that were plain on Kane’s face. Kane controlled himself, blinking away his wonder.
“Anyways. Isn’t that interesting?” she asked. “About the fish, I mean? I learned that today. It’s a blessing to learn something new every day, but you’d have to inhabit a small world indeed not to. Isn’t that right, Ms. Daisy?”
Dr. Poesy reached out a hand, and the dog lapped at the long fingers. She stroked the animal lovingly.
“Doesn’t Ms. Daisy make a fine escort? I’ve always told her she could make a lot of money if she weren’t so picky.” She sat, crossing bare, toned legs, and motioned for Kane to do the same. Her high heels were monstrous.
“You’re not a doctor, are you?” Kane blurted.
“Well, no, not in the conventional sense.”
“Do you have a doctorate degree?”
“No.”
“Do you have any degrees?”
Poesy—not Doctor, just Poesy then—looked affronted. “Of course.”
“In what?”
“Parapsychic Architectures and what you people might call physics, but I don’t see what that has to do—”
“What do you mean ‘you people’?”
“Americans.”
“Where are you from?”
“Not here.”
“Be specific.”
Poesy tapped a knifelike nail against her rosy cheek, smiling slyly. “The abyss.”
Kane forced the edge out of his voice. “Well then what are you doing here?”
“Having tea. I thought I wrote that on the invitation. Would you like to join me?” Poesy slid off her robe and draped it over the settee, rendering her visible in a shimmering, beaded corset. Around one wrist she wore a bracelet laden with a dozen charms that clinked as she fussed. Kane found himself moving closer to inspect them. He spotted an opalescent skull, a copper starfish, a white wooden key.
He sat down.
There was also a small pewter pine cone. A fat porcelain bee.
“I hope you didn’t have any trouble finding the place. As you can see, I have prioritized our privacy.”
Kane blinked at the tea service of priceless, bone-white china beneath a dizzying lace of gold. Poesy picked up her own cup and used a little silver spoon to stir the tea into a small whirlpool.
Silver on porcelain. It was such a tiny sound. Kane wondered how he had heard it two stories below.