pressing the book to her mouth and nose. As the pounding in my head eased slightly, a new sound made me wince: a high, piercing beep.
“Smoke alarm,” I gasped. I staggered toward the bedroom. Most of the gas had stayed with me, but some had dispersed through the house. I found Smudge curled in a ball at the bottom of his tank. Bits of blackened, smoldering web clung to his body, and the air smelled like smoke, but he wasn’t burning anymore. He wasn’t moving at all.
I yanked off the lid and carefully scooped him free, setting him on the bed. I lowered the book over his body like a tent.
Come on, I prayed. You’ve faced worse than this. Arachnid lungs weren’t the same as ours, but even if I had known everything there was to know about spider anatomy, Smudge was no ordinary spider. I had no idea how much gas would be toxic to a fire-spider.
A wisp of smoke rose from beneath the book, and I sagged with relief. I pulled the book away, and Smudge crawled slowly toward me. I lifted him into my hand. Together, the three of us made our way back out to the kitchen, where I set Smudge down on the counter.
There was no sign of Deb. I put the book down and poured a cup of water for Lena, then got another for myself. The cold both stung and soothed my throat. I felt like I had swallowed a sandblaster.
I made my way back to the living room and grabbed The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe from the shelves. I turned to a dog-eared page and pulled out a small crystal vial full of red liquid. I opened the vial and allowed a single drop to fall onto my tongue.
Instantly, the pain began to recede. I passed the bottle to Lena. “You should only need one drop,” I said in a voice that sounded almost human again. “It’s supposed to heal any injury.”
Once Lena finished, I poured another drop onto my fingertip and extended it to Smudge. His mandibles tickled my fingertip, and soon he, too, was back to his old self.
I picked up Deb’s World War I book and squinted at the edges of the pages, where the paper was glued to the spine. Lines of ragged black seared the inner margins, invisible to anyone not trained to see it. The char wasn’t bad enough to be a threat, but further use would cause problems.
I sealed Starship Troopers next, then returned my bat and shield to their respective texts. I considered keeping the medicine, but I was pushing things too far already. I remembered Ray Walker lecturing me on the importance of terminating my spells.
“Every time you reach into a book, you’re creating a portal, a hole into magic.” He had punched a hole in the top of the half-empty pizza box to demonstrate. “The more of that energy you return, the faster those holes heal. Now, the universe is pretty tough, and you can get away with keeping the occasional fire-spider, but don’t push it. Not unless you want to rip open something you can’t fix.”
I returned the vial to the book, then surveyed the damage to my library. Angry as I was at Deb’s betrayal, seeing the bullet-ridden texts was worse. It was one thing to shoot at me, but to destroy my books… I picked up an Asimov paperback, examining the tattered hole through the spine and pages.
“So you have vampires among the Porters,” Lena commented. “That’s new.”
“Deb’s not exactly a vampire.” I set the damaged book on the arm of the chair-she had shot my chair, too! — and returned to the kitchen to finish the rest of my water. “Muscavore Wallacea, from a ninety-year-old book called Renfield. It’s a sequel to Dracula, written by Samantha Wallace. In her book, the Renfield character wasn’t mad at all, and actually gained certain powers by consuming the smaller lives of insects and other creatures. Renfield was strong, fast, and able to influence the thoughts of others. Let a child of Renfield into your head for too long, and that ‘madness’ becomes infectious.”
Lena whistled. “In other words, I owe you a thank you.”
“After the sparklers at the library, I think we’re at one save apiece.”
Her answering smile took some of the sting out of the past twenty-four hours. She picked up her bokken and strode out the back door, glass crunching beneath her bare feet. “Do you think she’s right about someone from the Porters working against the vampires?”
“I don’t know.” I took a slow, shaky breath, trying in vain to calm myself. I was in way over my head, but I no longer cared. “But I say we get out of here and find out.”
I stood in front of the open hall closet, staring at a brown suede duster on a wooden hanger.
I’m officially reassigning you back to the field.
One little sentence, alluring and seductive, offering me a path to my dreams, then snatched away before I could seize it. Before it could seize me.
My breathing was rapid, and my heart continued to beat double-time. I hadn’t just fallen off the magical wagon; the wagon had run me over and dragged me six blocks down a pothole-ridden street. The effects were worse after two years away. My body was no longer used to channeling this kind of energy.
Two years behind a desk, cataloging magic but never able to touch it. Two years of purgatory, redeemed in that one little sentence.
I reached for the hanger. My hand trembled, to my great annoyance-another aftereffect of magic and adrenaline. The duster was heavy, lined with a polyethylene fiber weave that could stop small caliber bullets or turn away a blade. It held up pretty well against zombie horses, too.
I had sewn pockets into the lining, carefully sized and positioned to accommodate most American book formats. Twin constellations of black dots marked the leather shoulder pads where Smudge had ridden in the past. I slipped the familiar weight onto my body and brushed dust from the sleeves. The jacket still smelled ever so faintly of smoke.
“Looks good on you,” Lena commented.
It felt good. Familiar. It conjured memories of hope.
I returned to the library to stock up, a ritual my body remembered well even after so much time. My hands moved automatically to pull books from the shelves: Heinlein, Malory, L. Frank Baum, Le Guin, an old James Bond adventure. The spines were worn, and the pages fell open to the scenes I had used most often. I looped rubber bands into the books, top to bottom, to mark the pages I might need.
All total, I was packing sixteen titles when I finished, including a hardcover in the front that should provide a little extra protection for the heart.
“What about Deb?” Lena asked softly. “Shouldn’t you let the Porters know?”
“She’s not completely turned,” I protested weakly. Deb had tried to recruit me. Why would she bother unless something of our friendship remained? But when that failed, she had also tried to shoot holes in me.
“How do you know?”
“Someone can do magic or they can be magic, but not both. As Deb’s transformation continues, she’ll lose the ability to perform libriomancy.” She had to know the cost of her transformation. No libriomancer would willingly sacrifice their magic.
“We could go after her. If there’s any way to save her…”
I shook my head. Deb wasn’t like a drug addict who could check into rehab and get her life back. This kind of magical transformation was irreversible. I didn’t want to turn her in, but I had no choice. Given her access to the Porters, the damage she could do was too great.
I turned away and picked up the phone. Pallas wasn’t answering, so I left a brief voice mail letting her know our friend Deb had been “poached by a competing firm.”
“What will they do to her?” asked Lena.
“Knowing Pallas, she’ll assign someone to hunt and destroy her. Destroy the thing she’s become, I mean.” My words sounded distant. Mechanical. Deb was already lost. Knowing that didn’t ease the guilt for signing her death warrant.
“They’ll kill her for what someone else did to her?”
“Whatever bug-eater wormed their way into Deb’s mind killed her.”
“Isaac, she’s a victim.”
“I know that.” Just like Nidhi Shah. If Shah was alive, would the Porters have to destroy her as well? I slammed the phone back into its cradle. “I’m sorry, Lena.”
She peered out the broken door without answering.
“Of course, until Pallas says otherwise, Deb’s still an agent of Die Zwelf Porten?re. As such, I’m obliged to follow her orders.”
