Last to Die: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

books?”
    “No, it’s just one of the peculiar features of this building. I think old Cyril Magnus liked surprises, because it’s not the only door in this house that’s disguised as something else.” Lily led her down a windowless corridor, the gloom accentuated by dark wood paneling. At the far end, they emerged into a room where tall arched windows admitted the last gray light of day. Maura stared up in wonder at gallery upon gallery of bookshelves that soared three stories to a domed ceiling where the plaster had been decorated with a painting of fluffy clouds in a blue sky.
    “This is the beating heart of Evensong,” said Lily. “This library. Anytime, day or night, the students are welcome to come in here and pull any book from the shelves, as long as they promise to treat it with respect. And if they can’t find what they’re looking for in the library …” Lily crossed to a door and opened it, revealing a room with a dozen computers. “As a last resort, there’s always Dr. Google.” She shut the door again with a look of distaste. “But really, who wants the Internet when the real treasures are right
here
.” She gestured to three stories of books. “The collected wisdom of centuries, under one roof. It makes me salivate, just looking at them.”
    “Spoken like a true teacher of the classics,” said Maura as she scanned the titles.
Napoleon’s Women. Lives of the Saints. Egyptian Mythology
. She paused as one title caught her eye, stamped in gold on dark leather.
Lucifer
. The book seemed to call to her, demanding her attention. She pulled out the volume and stared at the worn leather cover, with its tooled illustration of a crouching demon.
    “We believe that no knowledge is off limits,” said Lily quietly.
    “Knowledge?” Maura slid the book back on the shelf and looked at the young woman. “Or superstition?”
    “It helps to understand both, don’t you think?”
    Maura walked down the room, past rows of long wooden tables and chairs, past a series of globes, each representing the world as known in a different age. “As long as you don’t teach it as fact,” she said, stopping to examine a globe from 1650, the continents misshapen,vast territories unknown and unexplored. “It’s superstition. Myth.”
    “Actually, we teach them
your
belief system, Dr. Isles.”
    “
My
belief system?” Maura looked at her in puzzlement. “Which one would that be?”
    “Science. Chemistry and physics, biology and botany.” She glanced at the antique grandfather clock. “Which is where Julian is right now. And his class should just be ending.”
    They left the library, returning through that dark-paneled corridor to the entrance hall, and climbed the massive stairway. As they passed beneath the tapestry, Maura saw it flutter against the stone wall, as if a draft had just swept into the building, and the unicorns seemed to come alive, trembling beneath the lushly fruited trees. The steps curved past a window, and Maura paused to admire the view of wooded hills in the distance. Julian had told her his school was surrounded by forest, that it was miles from the nearest village. Only now did she see how isolated Evensong truly was.
    “Nothing can reach us here.” The voice, so soft, startled her by its nearness. Lily stood half hidden in the shadow of the archway. “We grow our own food. Raise chickens for eggs, cows for milk. Heat with our own wood. We don’t need the outside world at all. This is the first place I’ve truly felt safe.”
    “Here in the forest, with bears and wolves?”
    “We both know there’s a lot of things more dangerous than bears and wolves beyond the gate.”
    “Hasn’t it gotten any easier for you, Lily?”
    “I still think about what happened, every single day. What he did to my family, to me. But being here, it’s helped me a great deal.”
    “Has it? Or does this isolation just reinforce your fears?”
    Lily looked straight at her. “A healthy fear of the world is what keeps some of us alive. That’s the lesson I learned two years ago.” She continued up the steps, past a shadowy painting of three men in medieval robes, no doubt another contribution from Anthony Sansone’sfamily collection. Maura thought of unruly students stampeding past this masterpiece every day, and she wondered how many milliseconds this art would survive intact in any other school. She thought, too, of the library with its priceless volumes bound in gold-stamped leather.