The Library at Mount Char

The narrative returns to the past, when Carolyn is about 16. David rapes and kills her. When Jennifer brings her back to life, she asks why Carolyn fought back, angering David enough to break her jaw and nail her to her desk. Carolyn hides the truth, which is that she had to keep David from seeing the text she’d hidden among the other books on her shelf. 

David has raped most of the librarians. Peter is completely traumatized by it, Jennifer reports. She also says that David and Margaret have a monthly ritual—Margaret’s idea—in which David kills her, then himself, and Jennifer has to bring them back the next morning. Jennifer suspects Father and David go easier on her to ensure that she’ll always bring them back if they die. 

Carolyn asks Jennifer what she would do if Father ever died. Jennifer warns her never to mention or even think about that again and threatens to tell Father if she does. She says Carolyn is showing signs of the “craziness” David and Margaret have, an avoidance mechanism in which they try to make everything as bad as possible.

Carolyn has been using invisibility, a power explained in a book she discovered, for three years to study texts and gain knowledge from other catalogs.