The Night Archive opens at nine in the evening, and by then the rest of the Vienna National Library has gone dark. I sign the register, take the brass key from its hook and walk the long corridor to the reading room where my new post begins. My name is Elara, I am twenty-nine, and I have wanted this job since I was a student who wasn't allowed past the third door.
He is already there. Konstantin, the director of the collection, stands at the far table with a pot of tea and two cups, as if he knew exactly when I would arrive. He is tall, unhurried, and he doesn't offer his hand. He offers the second cup instead.
“You’ll find the catalogue incomplete,” he says. “Deliberately so. Some of the holdings prefer not to be found.”
I want to laugh, but his face gives me nothing to laugh at. The tea is black and smells of smoke and bergamot. When I lift the cup, he watches my hands rather than my mouth, and I have the odd feeling that he is counting something.
The first hours pass among folios that crack when I turn them. He never leaves the room, never eats, never seems to blink at the lamp. Around midnight he brings me a ledger bound in green leather and asks me to note the dates on the loan slips. Every borrower is the same initial. Every date is a century apart.
“Who is K.?” I ask.
He refills my cup without answering. His fingers are cold where they brush the porcelain, colder than the room, and he holds the pot a moment too long, as if the question deserves a better night than this one. Then he says, quietly, “Ask me again when you have decided whether you want to know.”
