This particular Tuesday, a student slid a copy of Caravaggio: The Complete Works across the counter. The cover showed a sliver of The Calling of St. Matthew —a finger of light cutting through a tavern’s gloom.
Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. She took the gold leaf to the art history professor, a brittle woman named Dr. Vance who treated Phaidon books like sacred texts.
The page rippled like a pond. The smell of wet plaster and linseed oil flooded the silent stacks.
And Elara, clutching a library card she knew she’d never have to renew, stepped into the dark.
Elara scanned it. She should have just stamped it "Returned" and shelved it. Instead, she opened it.
It was a Phaidon monograph.