retelling of Beauty and the Beast. In her version, the beast’s library contains a copy of every book ever written, past and future.”
McKinley wasn’t the only author to have imagined such a library, but the Porters had rules restricting the use of these titles. Some had been charred too badly to risk using them again, while others were supposed to be preserved for emergencies. Normally, I would have needed to write a three-page requisition to use this one, but there were advantages to being a freelancer. The Porters would come after me if I proved a danger, but I should be able to get away with minor tricks.
I skimmed to the library scene and reached into the beast’s castle, concentrating on the title I wanted.
“How do you create a book you’ve never read?” asked Lena.
“Remind me later, and I’ll give you a copy of Price’s treatises on metamagical manifestation. In brief, we can’t create ‘future’ titles. The book has to exist in our world.” Two libriomancers had been disciplined for trying to get an early copy of the last Harry Potter book. “It’s all about resonance. I know the book I want, and magical resonance allows me to create a clone of the work from existing copies. At least, that’s Price’s theory.”
I held my breath and grabbed what felt like a slim trade paperback. I turned it sideways, tugged it free, and showed it to Lena with a flourish. “Be honest. Don’t I deserve a little grandstanding?”
“Read first. Grandstand later.”
I shoved V-Day into my jacket, reshelved Beauty in the proper spot, and followed her toward the door. There were now three people hunched over the corpse of the computer I had fried, like necromancers trying to resurrect a corpse.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Ro waved my apology away. “Not your fault. It looks like the power supply shorted out, fried the whole thing.”
His cheerfulness only made me feel worse, and I grabbed a bookmark with the library’s information on the way out. Once I got back home, I’d send them a check to try to cover the damage I had caused.
I wondered if Pallas had canceled the grant that covered my salary, or if she’d leave that alone until it expired at the end of the next fiscal year. Either way, this library didn’t deserve to take the hit for my mistake.
But first, I was going to find this bastard.
“Where do we go next?” Lena asked.
“I don’t know yet.” I flipped to the copyright page. “Listen to this. ‘This work is copyright Charles de Guerre, and may not be reproduced, quoted, sold, or reviewed under penalty of law.’ Someone doesn’t get how copyright law works, but it might have helped him hide the book from Porter catalogers.”
“Guerre is French for war, right?”
“This isn’t his real name. A nom de guerre is another term for a pseudonym.” I checked the back of the book. “There’s nothing to indicate where the book was printed. Mister de Guerre didn’t want anyone tracking him down.” I gnawed on my lower lip as I studied the name. “Keep an eye out for a bookstore.”
I watched her drive, her attention focused entirely on the road. Now that she knew Nidhi Shah was alive and human, she had no need of me. Did I change from a potential mate to simply another human, like moving a file from one drawer to another?
Or was she simply pretending, hiding her feelings for me so that she could return to her lover when this was all over? I thought back to the way she had watched me in the library. I almost asked, then thought better of it. Shah was alive, and Lena loved her. As for me… I would do whatever it took to make her happy. She deserved that much.
I adjusted my seat back and examined the book more closely. I had seen some gorgeous self-published books in my time. This was not one of them. The cover photo was dark and pixelated, and the interior font was several sizes too large. The whole thing was just under three hundred pages.
The first chapter introduced Jakob Hoffman as the typical white, American everyman, born in 1925 on an Iowa farm that had been in his family for three generations. The day he turned seventeen, he kissed his perfect girlfriend good-bye and walked six miles to enlist in the Army.
I skimmed through the next few chapters until the first monsters appeared. There was no complexity or depth to de Guerre’s vampires. They were evil, soulless creatures who delighted in blood and death: the perfect complement to Hitler’s Nazi army. The writing was rather dialogue-heavy, but overall the book was better than I had expected. The battle scenes, in particular, were quite strong, written with gritty, vivid detail that suggested de Guerre had done his research.
I continued to skip ahead, scanning the pages for words like “vampire” and “magic.” I stopped on chapter twelve and read more closely. “We’ve got a problem.”
“Only one?”
“Hitler gets his hands on an artifact called the Silver Cross, an angelic tool created by God and used by the Church during the Crusades.” I cleared my throat and read from Hitler’s monologue. “Handed down to King Richard the Lionhearted by the archangel Michael, the cross gives the wielder power over all unnatural creatures. The hellbred spawn of Satan shall be transformed into an army of righteousness, kneeling before he who carries God’s almighty blessing! His servants shall look through the eye of the cross and see God’s true glory.”
“Unnatural creatures,” Lena repeated. “Like me.”
Or the manananggal we had seen in the Detroit nest. I closed the book, marking my spot with one finger. “Hitler’s forces were primarily made up of vampires, but they also included ghosts, werewolves, and more.”
“Can you create your own version of the cross to fight back? Free his servants, or turn them against him?”
“Normally, yes. The book provides a template, so a libriomancer could theoretically make as many copies of the cross as they wanted. At least until the book charred and they lost control of its magic. But not in this case.” I flipped to an earlier chapter. “Jakob’s character has a vision the first time he touches the cross. There’s a flashback to King Richard receiving the cross from the archangel, who warns him not to try to understand or duplicate its power. ‘Remember the lesson of Babel. God’s mysteries are His alone. This is the one true cross, the weapon of the almighty and His faithful. Should any attempt to re-create it, His wrath shall cause the fraudulent cross to sear him with the fires of Hell itself.’ Charles de Guerre, or whoever he is, deliberately wrote this book so that only one cross could exist at a time. If I try to make another, it will come with its own self-destruct mechanism.”
I flipped to the front of the book. The copyright was dated last year. How many copies had he printed in that time? A few hundred? A thousand? There was no price, because he wouldn’t have tried to sell them. This wasn’t about profit; it was about getting the book into the hands of as many readers as possible so he could access the book’s magic. He would have given them away to readers most likely to appreciate the story. “Hitler uses the cross to command an army. Our libriomancer has only enslaved a handful of individual vampires, suggesting the book’s magic is still limited.”
“How long until he’s up to full strength?”
“The equations are messy. It depends on how strongly the readers believe, and whether those readers have any magical ability themselves. Time is also a factor. Belief fades over time, though there’s no consistent half-life. A thousand people reading a book in a year will create a stronger cumulative belief than if the same number read it over a decade.”
Lena swerved across two lanes and onto the exit ramp, earning a yelp from me and an angry puff of smoke from Smudge. I started to protest, but she cut me off. “You said you needed a bookstore, right?”
The store she had spied was tucked into a shopping center. Much of the store’s space had been taken over by toys, videos, and electronics. I strode past the science fiction and fantasy section, heading for astrology and new age.
Lena gave me a skeptical look as I plucked a book from the top shelf. “ The Ancient Wisdom of Crystals? That stuff actually works?”
“Libriomancy is all about belief. Most crystals don’t have any inherent magical power, but the ones in here…” I checked the front matter. “This is the sixth printing. That should be more than enough for what I need.”
I paid cash for the book and hurried out the door, reading as I walked. A car honked, and Lena yanked me back to the curb so they could pass. “Eyes up, genius.”
I did my best to split my attention between the book and the cars. By the time we reached the Triumph, I had found what I needed.
“Unakite,” I said, skimming the description. “A more recent mystical discovery, unakite crystals affect the
