Page 34 of Bedeviled

“I will award credit to those of you who managed to keep your paper from burning, and extra credit shall go to those whose magic I cannot see. Make sure to write your name on your paper if you want credit.

“Oh,” she adds, “and I will be reading the messages—do with that what you will.”

I scribble down a message, then briefly doodle around it.

Thanks to my past life, wards are a part of spellcraft I’m actually proficient in.

So I take a little longer to draw around my note before I fold it up.

Pressing two fingers to the folded sheet of paper, I murmur in Sarmatian, “Make this paper impervious to fire.” As I speak, I draw my fingers down the folded note.

Curling tendrils of my magic follow my touch. When it clears, I can see the faint orange glimmer clinging to the paper, evidence that my ward took. And if I tilt the folded note just so, I can see what looks like loose threads on a loom. It’s my own spell signature.

I’d been in the bathroom while Mistress Wormwood went over how to mask a ward, but this, too, I’ve done before. Like the rest of magic, this one starts with intention.

“Hide my ward from sight,” I incant, drawing on my magic.

Another small gust of my power rolls out from my palm, spreading over the paper. When it clears, the folded note looks ordinary once more. No glinting magic or spell signatures remain.

It’s there but hidden—in many ways, like my memories once were.

I think about those memories, filled with both blood and sweetness. I’ve been handling them like they are old mementos, ones that have little impact on me now, but they do. Most obviously when it comes to Memnon, but then there’s also now the matter of Eislyn, the fairy who, two millennia ago, entombed Memnon and killed me.

Eislyn, who I’d like to pretend lives in the past and the past alone.

The bell rings, shaking me from my thoughts. Someone’s crow squawks at the sound, lifting up into the air and circling the top of the room.

“Papers in, papers in!”

I descend the steps of the small lecture hall and drop my note off at the front of the class, my thoughts lingering on the fae woman. If she has truly been around all these years, then perhaps there are traces of her lingering in the world’s histories.

I just have to find them.

I stare up at the pale stone and Gothic architecture of Beldame Library, the night air nipping at my cheeks, my hand resting on Nero’s head.

Since the school year began, I haven’t had much reason to approach the library, though it frankly feels like a crime that I haven’t found an excuse to before now. Beldame houses one of the largest collections of magical texts and supernatural histories in North America.

I’m counting on its reputation to find what I’m looking for.

I pass another set of Henbane’s stone lamassu as Nero and I head up the marble stairs and enter through the library’s oxidized bronze doors. My footsteps echo against the vast, vaulted ceiling.

Inside, the stone walls are lined with row upon row of books. Stone columns dot the space, each one carved to look like fanged gargoyle rests atop it, and the few areas bare of shelves have grand tapestries hung from them.

A grand staircase splits down the center of the room, and on the second story I can see tables lit with taper candles, the light dancing upon the gilded spines of books. I can even see rickety iron staircases spiraling up to a third story.

Several low iron chandeliers flicker with dripping wax candles, and the air is filled with the must of old books and magic.

Deep in one of the recessed corners is a reference desk. A witch with a Roman nose and wiry, steel-gray hair peers through her half-moon spectacles at the spine of a book when I approach, sparing Nero a moment’s notice.

“I need a little help,” I admit.

Her eyes draw to me, and she sets her book down. “Then you’ve come to the right place,” she says.

I give her a small smile. “I’m looking for any texts that might mention a fae named Eislyn.”

“So a historical figure,” the librarian murmurs. “What time period?”

“Anything at all you have.”