Page 35 of Bedeviled

She stands up and moves toward the wall behind her. I hadn’t noticed the door set into it, but now she opens it, revealing a long, slender room full of wood and brass filing cabinets. I hear her whisper an incantation, then the sound of drawers rolling open.

A minute later she returns with several large index cards. “Here is all we have on this Eislyn—which looks like quite a lot. Would you like all of them?”

“Yes?”

“Alright.” The witch murmurs another spell beneath her breath.

There’s a slight tremor in the surface of the desk. When I turn, I see a book float out from a nearby aisle. It drifts over to the table, before lazily settling down on the wood surface with a soft thunk.

Another book follows, streaking through the air from the second floor, nearly lighting itself on fire as it careens into one of the chandeliers, and someone curses, presumably as a shower of hot wax drips on them.

“Oops,” the witch says as the slightly singed book makes its way to the reference desk, setting itself on top of the previous book. The witch leans in conspiratorially. “That’s one of the risks of sitting beneath the chandeliers. Books are always trying to be dramatic in here. I think they grow bored of the quiet.”

I raise my eyebrows as two more books cross the library, then two more. On and on it goes, some coming from great distances, some nearby. Another one seems to go out of its way to wallop a witch entirely minding her own business before it stacks itself on the growing pile.

By the time the spell settles, the stack is fourteen books deep.

“Well, there you go. I’ll be here until midnight, as will Corinthia, who’s upstairs at Circulation. She’s who you’ll need to see if you wish to check any books out. Grimoires are located in the far back, and I can help you with those as well.” She pushes the books toward me. “Happy researching!”

The stack of books floats behind me as Nero and I head up the stairs to a table tucked away in one of the shadowy corners of the building. Every so often I glance over my shoulder, just to make sure the books behave themselves. I am forever scarred by the knowledge that these things attack unprovoked.

However, this time, they act like ordinary books—well, ordinary books spelled to float.

A handheld lantern rests on the table I stop at, the flame inside flickering as my stack of books falls with a heavy thud on the wooden surface, a plume of dust wafting out from the impact.

I cough, waving my hand in front of me. Once the air settles, I look over the column of spines. There’s a mixture of old and new books in the pile, and my breath catches.

I don’t know precisely what I’m looking for, but I’m already excited at the prospect of discovering what my old enemy has been up to.

I slide the first book off the pile, an embossed leather tome whose gold foiling has largely rubbed away over time. Its corners have been fitted with filigreed metal protectors.

Laying my hand on its cover, I incant in Sarmatian, “Reveal to me the text that includes the name Eislyn.”

Beneath my palm, the book jiggles, rocking the table just a little and making the iron handle of the nearby lantern rattle. When I lift my hand, the book opens itself, the yellowed pages flipping by until it settles on an innocuous page.

I stare at the block-printed words, my brow furrowing as I take a seat, Nero settling himself against my leg. The book dropped me into the middle of a chapter.

The House of Alder, under the reign of Sable the Patient, grew in size and prosperity. Over his reign he had seventy-one official fae consorts, a restrained number compared to his predecessor. His most favored of which were the fairies who sired his four children, Hark, Theospina, Laela, and Eislyn.

My breath catches at the sight of Eislyn’s name. If this really is her, she’s a fae princess.

I read over the rest of the text, but it only goes on to mention the countless humans Sable also likely banged before discussing the fates of Hark and Laela. There’s no mention of either Eislyn or her other sibling.

I flip through a few more pages, but when it becomes clear that single line was the only mention of Eislyn, I sigh and close the book, pushing it aside.

I’m there for hours, Nero curled up at my feet, flipping through tome after tome. Some books are modern, some are block printed, and some are handwritten. The oldest one is a medieval text with painted pictures along its edges that appears to say nothing of relevance about Eislyn, though a pretty blond woman with pointed ears is painted along the margins.

The references to her all seem to be from official fae records, which means that one, Eislyn appears to be her original name, and two, at some point probably shortly after Memnon and I met our ends, she changed her name or struck it from the records.

A lot of what I find in the rest of the books—besides individuals named Eislyn who don’t appear to be my Eislyn—repeats what I’ve already read about. She was the daughter of the long ago Flora King.

And then, I find something new near the bottom of the stack.

The book is covered in lilac leather and written in a script that is completely unrecognizable. I flip through the pages, noticing the shimmering ink and the stylized floral borders of the pages.

I don’t think this is one of our histories at all. Is this text from the Otherworld?

Like the other books, I have this one flip to the page that mentions Eislyn. The page has been lovingly decorated with vibrant green leaves along the borders, and it’s full of more of that indecipherable script.