He hesitated, then jumped back. “Sir… on your hip-”
My jacket had caught on Smudge’s cage when I pocketed that book, exposing him to view. “He’s a bomb- sniffing spider.” I did my best to sound officious and impatient, as if this poor fellow was the only one who hadn’t gotten the memo about the spiders. “It’s a new initiative from the feds. Spiders are even more sensitive to chemicals than dogs. He can detect microscopic amounts of explosive residue by touch alone.”
“I… yes, sir.” He opened the gate and backed away, giving us a wide berth. “You’ll need to sign in.”
I kept my badge open and waited. He bit his lip, scanned my ID again, and backed down.
“I’ll just make a note myself.” He scribbled something onto a clipboard, then hurried to a small trailer parked just inside the fence to retrieve a pair of hard hats. “We haven’t found any evidence of an explosion. The whole thing just collapsed. We’re thinking the water from the river could have seeped out, softening the ground beneath the library to create a sinkhole.”
“How many casualties?” asked Lena, donning her helmet.
“About thirty.” Sweat had painted lines down his dust-covered jowls. “Witnesses say one moment everyone was minding their own business, the next the whole thing was falling down.” He pointed to a second boundary of tape, strung on metal poles in the debris. “That’s the safe line. You’ll want to stay on this side. The whole structure’s still settling.”
“Thank you,” I said. I glanced at the name on his jacket, barely legible through the dirt. “How long have you been here, Akers?”
“Fourteen hours, sir.” He straightened his back and raised his chin, as if consciously trying to throw off the effects of exhaustion.
I wanted to order him home to get some rest. He’d probably obey, but as I had no real authority here, that was likely to create more problems. So I settled for clapping his arm and saying, “You’re doing good work.”
He nodded his thanks, then turned away, leaving Lena and me alone. I started to tuck the ID badge away, but Lena caught my wrist.
“What is that?” She tugged the badge free. “It’s blank.”
“Psychic paper. Works great for getting through airport security, too.” I surveyed the library. Somewhere beneath our feet was the thing that had killed Ray. All we needed to do was sneak inside past the workers and their dogs, not to mention the students with their cameras.
I reached for a copy of Alice in Wonderland. “Give me five minutes, then join me in that port-a-potty over there.”
“We’re sneaking in through the toilet?”
“Not exactly.” In some ways, the toilet would have been preferable to what I had in mind.
Our arrival had drawn a few curious looks from the workers, but most were too intent on finding survivors to care about us. As for the students, how many people were going to pay attention to a guy using the john? Even if they never saw him emerge.
By the time Lena squeezed in beside me, I had created two glass bottles marked “DRINK ME” from the book and set a bit of broken concrete in the bottom of the door to keep it from closing completely. I let Smudge out of his cage, then passed one of the bottles to Lena.
“You know, when most guys try to get a girl alone for drinks, this is not how they do it.” She eyed the bottle warily. “Dare I ask what’s in this?”
“Ask Lewis Carroll. All I know is that it will help us get inside, and that according to Deb, it works great in Jell-O shots.” The potion was an odd blend of flavors, fruity and sweet and surreal. I set Smudge on the plastic seat as I began to shrink, clothes and all. I stabilized at a mere ten inches high.
Lena grinned. “Librarians: now in convenient travel size.” She downed her own potion, and soon stood level with me once more. “So you don’t think someone’s going to notice a pair of animated Barbie dolls scampering over the debris?”
“We’re not done yet.” I flipped to chapter four of the book. As I performed yet another act of magic, a distant whisper raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
“Tut, tut, child! Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.”
“What’s wrong?” Lena raised her bokken, each one now roughly the size of a toothpick.
“Nothing. I’m fine.” I pulled out a small cake, doing my best to block out the voices.
“But I don’t want to go among mad people.”
I closed the book and jammed it back into my pocket.
“You’re sweating,” said Lena.
The first line had come from the Duchess. The second was Alice herself. Alice in Wonderland tended to sneak into your head faster than most books. I had a theory that the surreal, at times psychedelic nature of the story thinned the boundaries between reality and fantasy, lending itself to libriomancy. But the same ease with which I reached into Wonderland made it that much simpler for Wonderland to whisper back.
I slowed my breathing and focused on my surroundings: the foul smell of human waste, the mechanical pounding of the equipment outside, the crease in Lena’s brow as she watched me. The more I anchored myself in this world, the easier it became to shut out those voices… for now.
“I’m all right,” I said quietly. “Here, have some cake.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing serious, as long as I’m careful.”
“You’re doomed,” she said. Her tone was playful, but worry wrinkled her brow and the corners of her eyes.
I ripped the cake in half, stuffing part into my mouth. Every bite shrank me further. I kept eating until I was roughly two inches high.
“Not bad,” said Lena as she ate. “I’m more of a cheesecake girl, myself.”
Smudge crawled down to the floor and studied us, his eight dark eyes taking in our newly diminished size. We were all roughly the same height now, but Smudge significantly outmassed us.
Lena peeked out the door. “Making our way through all that is going to take time.”
I grimaced. “It would if we were walking.”
Lena looked from me to Smudge and back again. “You’re joking.”
“I’ve done it once before. He should remember.” Much as I loved that spider, some primal part of me shuddered as I approached. The bristles on his back appeared to be the size of pencils, every one of them a powerful heating element. “I had to sneak into the Henry Ford Museum. A pair of kids managed to summon up the ghost of Ford himself. Smudge and I crawled in through the vents.” I took her arm, pulling her closer. “You’ll want to stand behind me.”
She slipped her arms around my waist. “Like this?”
“That’s good.” The words came out a bit higher in pitch than I had intended. Her breath tickled my left ear. I could feel her hips and breasts pressing my back, her hands resting on my stomach, just above the button of my jeans.
“What next?” she whispered.
That was when Smudge began spinning several loops of sticky silk around us both.
“This is just to help us stay on his back.” The strands reminded me of strings of rubber cement, flexible and sticky, but strong. I felt Lena tense with each pass. “Did you know spiders could produce different types of silk?” I asked. “They use lines of different strength and stickiness, and in Smudge’s case, flammability.”
“That’s so comforting.” She tightened her arms. “How long did it take to train him to carry a rider?”
“I didn’t, really.” I closed my eyes, thinking back to the report I had sent to Pallas shortly after creating Smudge. “He just… understood. He was written to help the ones he cared about. I think the fact that he’s a product of my magic gives him an added familiarity with my mind, making it easier for him to understand what I need.” Unfortunately, that understanding didn’t work both ways.
Once Smudge finished, he backed away and turned in a circle, tangling more silk onto his own body. When he finished, I stepped up to the narrow part where his thorax met his abdomen. “On three?”
I counted down, and we swung our legs carefully over Smudge’s back. Had Smudge been a real tarantula, this would have left us thoroughly perforated, but his bristles were thick and blunt. I tried not to think about what would happen if those bristles heated up.
“Lean forward,” I said, pressing myself down until the silk around us stuck to the lines he had wrapped
