The first note says MONSTER WHORE in block letters, black marker on lined paper ripped from a spiral notebook. The second says ORC LOVER with an exclamation point, like the person got excited halfway through the hate.
I find them on the floor inside the mail slot when I open the library Friday morning, mixed in with a seed catalog and three overdue notices that the system auto-prints. Somebody pushed them through the slot between when I locked up yesterday and six-fifteen this morning, which means somebody stood on the front steps of my library in the dark and fed handwritten slurs through the brass plate I polished last week.
My hands don't shake. They stay steady while I read each note twice and fold them into squares and put them in the bottom drawer of my desk under a box of spare date stamps. I don't call the police. I don't tell anyone. I slide the drawer shut. I can deal with paper.
Except my hands start shaking ten minutes later, at my desk, with my coffee going cold. Not fear. Anger. White-hot and sudden, the kind that makes my jaw ache from clenching.Someone stood on the steps of my library. They watched me and picked up a marker, the fact that I can picture it—the steps, the brass slot, a hand pushing paper through—makes my skin crawl.
Someone saw me at Colt's house last night. Someone watched me walk up his porch steps, or watched me drive away at nine, and that person went home and tore pages out of a notebook and picked up a marker.
I close the drawer. I open the library. I run story hour at ten, check in fourteen returns, help Mrs. Desmond find the large-print mysteries, and eat lunch at my desk with the drawer six inches from my knee.
Nobody comes back. The notes sit where I put them. By three o'clock I've almost convinced myself it's nothing.
By five I've locked the front door and turned off the overhead lights and I'm pulling the returns cart through the reading room with the desk lamp on and rain tapping the windows. Spring break means no after-school kids, no Lily arguing about Le Guin, no Colt standing at the counter at four o'clock pretending he isn't watching me.
The building creaks and I flinch. Four years I've closed this library alone and the sounds never bothered me, the pipes, the rain and the old wood settling. Tonight every noise has an edge to it. Tonight someone knows I'm here.
No Colt at all. He hasn't texted since I left his house last night. I sat at his kitchen table and ate his dinner and laughed at his stories and he walked me to the door and I drove home with my hands shaking on the wheel. Twenty-two hours ago. My phone has stayed quiet since. I'm not too sure why I expect him to text, but I felt something change between us last night.
I keep shelving. Nonfiction, top shelf. The routine is all I've got.
I'm on the stepladder reaching for the 800s when somebody knocks on the front door.
My whole body locks. The knock echoes through the empty building and my mind goes straight to the notes,to someone standing on my steps in the dark.
I come down the ladder, cross the reading room and look through the glass.
Colt stands on the front steps. Damp from the rain, glasses fogged, messenger bag over one shoulder. He sees me through the door and doesn't wave, doesn't smile. Just stands there.
I unlock the door.My hands are shaking again and I hope he doesn't notice.
He steps inside, the cold air follows him along with the smell of rain and leather and underneath, sharp and alive, something that's not human.
"Lily's at Rex and Holly's tonight," he says. "Holly volunteered for a sleepover." He wipes his glasses on his top. Without them his face changes, broader, the green-grey of his skin darker in the low light.He opens his mouth. Closes it. Puts the glasses back on.
"I don't—" He stops. Runs his hand over the back of his neck. "I've been sitting in my truck in the parking lot for forty minutes trying to talk myself out of knocking on the door."
I'm not sure what to do with that.
"Your scent." He says it like it hurts him. "It's still in the house, from last night, and I can't—" He stops again. Shakes his head. "I mowed the lawn in the rain today, Ellie. I reorganized the club's entire accounts receivable. I read a monograph on Victorian property law. And the whole time I' was breathing through mymouth because when I breathe through my nose, all I smell is you in my house."
"I don't understand, I don't wear perfume."
"I know." He closes his eyes.
I lock the door behind him. My fingers are steadier than they should be.
He takes a step into the library and stops. He looks at the floor, then at me. "I don't have a speech. I didn't plan this. I just—you sat at my kitchen table last night and fit there. Lily stopped calling you Miss Frost halfway through dinner and I didn't correct her. And when I walked you to the door you looked at me and I almost—"
He doesn't finish. His hands open and close at his sides.
"I haven't wanted someone in eight years," he says. "I don't know how to do this."
The library is so quiet I can hear the rain on the skylight above the reference section. I'm standing four feet from him with my hand still on the lock and my pulse hammering in my ears.
"Tell me about her," I say. "Maren. Tell me the real version." I don't know why I say it, but I want to know everything about Colt.
His hands go still at his sides. "Why?"
