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.