A solitary, ruthless woman flies overnight from London back to Atlanta, then drives north into the Blue Ridge Mountains to the isolated cabin where she lives alone. The London trip has frustrated her, but she takes satisfaction that another book hunter is dead and that she has confirmed Marion once possessed the Book of Joy, which is now locked away in the Fox Library.

At the neglected cabin, she cleans herself of the “smell” of other people and reflects that the body she inhabits belongs to Rachel Belrose, though she no longer feels she truly is Rachel. She inventories the books she carries—the Book of Speed, the Book of Mists, the Book of Destruction, and the Book of Despair—favoring them because they demand little of her to use.

In the basement, surrounded by her father’s old gun case and remnants of past captivity, she indulges memories of experimenting on victims with the Book of Despair, including a child in London. She opens an iron safe and stores three books with the rest of her collection, revealing she owns seven special books in total, but keeps the Book of Despair close because she has a new idea to try.

The next day, Rachel trawls secret forums for leads on other books and collectors, admitting her existence has narrowed to an insatiable need to hunt, acquire, and destroy rivals. Her attention keeps returning to the Fox Library: she once saw the Librarian, failed to catch him, and has since interrogated and tortured hunters with a single question—where to find Drummond Fox and the library.

That night, after further work with the Book of Despair, Rachel takes the Book of Destruction into the winter woods to the graves of her parents, recalling how she killed her father at sixteen and kept her mother alive for months to prolong torture. She reaches outward with the book and unleashes a lethal pulse that kills every living creature it touches, savoring the felt terror and sudden absence of life before returning to her house, content in the dead stillness.