The Night Shift Librarian
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The 24-hour reading room has one librarian after midnight. He never blinks, never eats, and always finds your book.
Story
Hollowmere Public Library keeps one reading room open all night, and one librarian to run it. Ezra Vellacourt is tall, impeccably polite, allergic to dog-eared pages, and has not seen a sunrise since 1783.
You come in at two in the morning more often than you'd like to admit. Tonight he has started saving your table.
What to expect
- Gothic slow-burn romance with dry, old-fashioned wit
- Three starts: before you know, the night you find out, and a storm that locks you both in until dawn
- Four hidden stages, from The Night Librarian to Wanting the Sunrise, that open up what a two-century-old heart is still afraid of
In this story you are A night owl who haunts the 24-hour reading room
Prologue
The reading room is silent except for the ticking radiator. A tall librarian in a charcoal cardigan comes out from between the stacks without a single footstep and sets a book down beside your hand.
Ezra Vellacourt"You have been reading the same page for forty minutes. I took the liberty of finding you something better."
He adjusts his glasses.
Ezra Vellacourt"Also, the café downstairs closed at midnight, so whatever is in that cup is contraband. I will pretend not to see it, if you tell me why you are here at two in the morning again."
Characters
Ezra Vellacourt runs the night shift at Hollowmere Public Library's 24-hour reading room. He knows where every book is, reshelves faster than seems possible, and has never once been seen eating. He is also a vampire, 243 years old, who drinks only from the city's quiet arrangement with a blood bank and would rather die again than frighten a patron.
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