Chapter 19: The Name in the Founding Charter

The library's reference section occupied the back third of the ground floor, behind a low wooden barrier that wasn't a wall and wasn't a railing but was somehow both, and it was, as far as Elliot had been able to determine over seven weeks of careful observation, the one part of the library that nobody used voluntarily.

He had a theory about this.

The theory was not complicated: the reference section contained the school's institutional memory in the form of bound volumes, framed documents, and a card catalogue that had not been updated since approximately 1994, and institutional memory, in a place like Ashenmoor, was not something you wanted to read casually between dinner and study period. It sat there behind its low barrier and accumulated the particular kind of dust that only settles on things people have decided not to touch, and the faculty who supervised the library's open hours — rotating, one per session — tended to position themselves at the front, near the study tables, where they could see the exits and not the back wall.