Llyfyr had green skin and wore a gown of living leaves that morning; she smelled like a forest after rain. She lifted her head from the kitchen table and blinked at Emily. “I read too much poetry last night. I’m still drunk. I think I’ll just linger here. There’s a volume of Goldbarth in the living room I haven’t read yet. Hair of the dog.” Her head dropped back down.
Emily kissed Llyfyr on the crown of her head and said, “See you later.” Emily had discovered Llyfyr in the deep stacks of the library when she first got hired, two years before, and they’d both been smitten straightaway. No one loved books like a librarian. Once Emily got used to the strangeness of dating a shape-shifting living book, they’d settled into a relationship of lazy weekends and quiet evenings and enjoyably active nights. In book form, Llyfyr was a fantasy love story, which made her whimsical and romantic; Emily was one of the only people who’d ever read her cover to cover. As a living book, Llyfyr called the fairy library home, but she had the autonomy to check herself out whenever she liked, and often stayed over with Emily in the mortal world.
Time to get to work. Any door would do. Emily picked up her bag and walked to the nearest closet, directed her mind toward the day’s tasks—helping researchers, continuing to catalogue the depths of the rare book archive, shepherding along the digital conversion and preservation projects—and opened the door.
She’d wanted to walk straight into her office, but instead she stepped into the outdoors, at the base of the stone steps that switchbacked up to the library from the dock. She frowned, but fairy magic was unreliable by nature, and at least it wasn’t raining here in the fey realm. The morning was cool and partly cloudy, as usual, and glittering waters surrounded the rocky island as far as her human eyes could see. She started up the stairs—I could probably use the exercise—and halfway up became aware of a commotion.
When she reached the top of the stairs, she saw a crowd of three dozen people milling around on the steps in front of the stately stone vastness of the fairy library. The immense carved wooden doors were closed, as usual—they only opened when one of the rare giant patrons visited—but the smaller inset doors were closed too, and that was decidedly unusual. Even more unusual: a pair of tall, slender guards wearing gilded armor stood blocking the doors, holding spears with nasty-looking complex barbs on the ends. The guards looked more bored than menacing, but something very serious must be going on. The library was full of valuables and had its own security in the form of the formidable Miss Ratchet and her hounds, but Emily had never seen soldiers like these before.
Two of the Folk—they preferred that name to “fairies,” as a rule, though they also responded well to any kind of compliment—hurried toward Emily. They were frequent researchers engaged in long and bewildering scholarly projects, and quite familiar to her. Mr. Ovo was an immense smooth white egg with arms and legs, dressed in trousers and a waistcoat, and the Kenning was an anthropomorphic metaphor who looked like a crow-headed undertaker today. The Kenning squawked and Mr. Ovo signed too rapidly for her to follow—the only words Emily picked up were “outrage” and “theft”—but fortunately, her assistant Faylinn came over too.
Faylinn was an ancient fairy woman with the upright mien of a Victorian governess, her eyes featureless spheres the color of quicksilver. After some initial resistance to having a mortal boss, she’d become devoted to Emily, mostly because Emily had started a scanning project that allowed researchers to examine the contents of rare books on computer screens instead of touching the beloved volumes with their filthy hands. She wrung her long, ink-stained hands. “Emily, something terrible has happened. We’ve all been barred from the library—and look!” She pointed, and Emily lifted her eyes to see winged fairies the size of children streaming out of the sides of the crystal dome atop the library—she hadn’t even realized there were windows that opened up there. Each fairy carried a small cargo net full of—
“Where are they taking the books?” she gasped.
“No one knows!” Faylinn said. “I thought it was theft at first, and I cast a summoning to call Miss Ratchet, but when she appeared, she told me the library was closed and the resources were being reallocated on the orders of Mellifera.”
“That—what—that doesn’t make any sense. Wait.” Emily took her phone from her bag. There was no cell service here—they weren’t even in the mortal world, though she’d never seen any of the fey realm beyond this island—but she could always reach Mellifera, the fairy woman who’d hired her and had ultimate authority over the library. Emily poked at the honeybee icon on her screen . . . but instead of connecting her to Mellifera, the bee flew off the side of her screen and vanished.
That was troubling. Emily marched up the steps to the guards and poked one in the chest plate. He looked at her and frowned, his long, narrow face transforming from bored beauty to cruel sneer. “Begone, mortal. Your kind has no place here.”
“Mellifera hired me personally to oversee the most valuable part of the library—”
“There is no more library. Just a building that will soon be empty of books. Be gone.” He grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, and shoved her—
—and she stumbled out of her closet, into the hallway in her apartment. Her phone buzzed with a text from her former roommate and current best friend, CeCe. Emily had hired CeCe to help modernize the library, and CeCe had put in computer terminals and started an ambitious project to scan and digitize the rare volumes. The text read, Tried to go to work and couldn’t find a path, just walked in circles. What’s up?
Not sure, Emily texted back. Looking into it.
Emily walked through the house, calling, “Llyfyr!” There was no sign of her girlfriend in the bedroom or the living room, though she found a volume of poetry on the living room floor, pages splayed open. That was odd. Llyfyr was usually gentle with books. Emily tried not to worry. Sometimes Llyfyr took on a more human-looking guise and went on walks, but she usually left a note (her handwriting was exactly the same as the typeface that filled her in book form). She’d probably expected to be back before Emily got home, that was all, but—
“Are you Emily Yuan?”
Emily spun around. The armchair in the corner was occupied by a woman—no, she was Folk, her ears pointed and her smile revealing sharp teeth—dressed in black. Her long dark hair seemed to sparkle, as if stars were caught in the shadowy waves. She looked like a theatrical pirate, right down to the cutlass resting across her knees.
Emily resisted the urge to back up a step. As a rule, the Folk scorned the fearful. “Who are you?”
“I’m Sela. We have a mutual friend who needs our help. Mellifera?”
“I’m . . . not sure she’s my friend.”
Sela chuckled. “Nor mine, really, but we’ve known each other for a long time. Mellifera recruited you, though, to run her library?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing here—”
“I’m here to help you get your precious library back, but if you’d rather return to your mortal life—” She began to rise.