“The forbidden materials shelf is just past the biography section, near fiction.”

She pointed. The area where she pointed was as far from them as the entrance, in the opposite direction. There would be no escape if they were noticed. They both considered this. Jackie sat down on institutionally patterned carpet, her head in her hands, and allowed herself a few seconds of self-pity. Then she stood up, her eyes steady on her destination.

“Listen, Diane,” she said softly, clearly. “It made sense for us to do this together because we both need something. But you can go now. You’ve found . . .” She looked again at the photograph in Diane’s hand and shuddered. “Anyway, you have a son who needs you. You have to go home to him. I can do this.”

Diane thought about Josh, and she wanted to agree. The important thing was to get out of the library to her family, her sullen, solitary, teenage family. And so she felt furious about what she was going to say next.

“No. We came into the library together, we’ll leave it together.”

“Diane, you don’t have—”

“Jackie, if I left you here and you died, I would feel bad about it. I’d probably feel bad about it for the rest of my life. And I don’t like to feel bad. So let’s go.”

Jackie smiled. She didn’t mean much by it, but she meant some by it. Diane smiled back, meaning mostly the same.

She looked at Troy’s useless file and shrugged, deciding to take it with her. There wasn’t much to it, and they had come this far. She tucked it under one arm.

They started out for the forbidden shelf, past the biography section and, terrifyingly, the fiction section near it.

Nothing attracts a librarian more than fiction, as even the smallest child of Night Vale knows.

“I hope there is anything there about King City,” Jackie said.

“BRRGGHHHHH,” the fountain said.

This time there was definitely another noise along with it. Like a laugh but angry. Like crying but aggressive. Like a claw or a tail or a wing moving against bookshelves.

Diane and Jackie didn’t hear it, although there was nothing they could have done differently if they had.

THE VOICE OF NIGHT VALE

CECIL: . . . or anyway, all of them that had survived. And that is why police and emergency medical crews no longer feel obligated to search for remains in any public library.

We are getting confirmation from several concerned citizens that something is very wrong with those cute plastic flamingos everyone bought from Lenny’s Bargain House. Those who get too close to the flamingos or, worse, touch them, are disappearing. Some of these unfortunates appeared again just moments later, sagging into shriveled skin with long gray hair, as though a lifetime had passed.