promise whatever is left of you will answer to me.”
He disappeared before I could respond.
“It isn’t right,” Lena said. “Rewriting a man’s mind. Stealing his memories.”
“We don’t know what Hubert did.” It was little more than a token protest. Punish me, imprison me, even kill me if the crime warranted it. But don’t strip away the very thing that defines me.
“I won’t let the Porters do that to you,” Lena said, as if reading my thoughts.
“Given what de Leon said, that might be a moot point.” I pushed the gas pedal, and the needle jumped past eighty. “How long until we reach the camp?”
“About a hundred miles or so.”
My knuckles were white on the wheel. “Plenty of time to see what Ponce de Leon’s custom-spelled car can do.”
It took most of the afternoon to find our way to the dirt back roads leading to Charles Hubert’s hunting cabin in the woods. The little convertible jolted and lurched through ruts and canyons left by spring rains. Birch trees leaned together on either side, their branches forming a canopy that blotted out the sky.
Hubert wasn’t the only one with property in these woods. We passed four other hand-painted signs before reaching the turnoff another mile or so down the road. I shifted into first gear. Tree roots jabbed the tires, and exposed rock scraped the underside of the car, making me cringe.
We had to stop twice so that Lena could clear fallen branches from the road. They had been there for a while, judging from the dead leaves, which meant nobody had driven this road for weeks.
The air over Smudge rippled with heat, though whether that was due to whatever waited for us at Hubert’s cabin or to my own driving, I couldn’t say. I checked my directions, then killed the engine. “The camp should be another quarter mile up ahead.”
“I’ll check it out.” She retrieved her bokken from the back and thrust them through her belt. She walked to the nearest birch and climbed it like a ladder, her fingers sinking into the wood as she pulled herself higher. Once she was about twenty feet up, she strode from branch to branch, holding the trunks for support. The leaves soon hid her from sight.
I checked my books, mentally reviewing which weapons would be best against a possessed libriomancer. The Odyssey was starting to show signs of char, but I should be able to get more Moly, and I needed to be able to counter whatever Hubert might throw at us. A stun grenade would be good if we could get the drop on him.
I thought back to what de Leon had said. Whatever Hubert had inside of him, it was enough to frighten one of the most powerful sorcerers in the world. If de Leon was nervous, my chances were pretty dismal. But if we could sneak in long enough to find and rescue Gutenberg…
Invisibility. Speed. Silence. We needed to be magic-enhanced ninjas. I picked out a few more titles, then looked over my books for healing magic. Possession couldn’t be cured, not once it had gone this far. There was nothing I could do to save whatever remained of Charles Hubert.
Lena rapped on the window. I yelled and dropped the books I had been studying. Okay, I needed some ninja magic. Lena seemed to be doing fine on her own.
“It’s abandoned,” Lena said as I climbed out of the car. “Looks like he left a while ago.”
“Dammit.” I lifted Smudge to my shoulder. He was hot to the touch. “Are you sure? This is not a happy spider.”
“The place is a wreck, Isaac. Nothing lives there now except maybe the raccoons.”
I gathered my books and followed her down the road. A short distance on, it branched to the left into an overgrown clearing beside a plain-looking wooden cabin. What was left of it, at any rate.
“Automatons?” asked Lena.
“Maybe.” Something had smashed its way into the cabin. Only two of the four walls remained. Half of the roof had splintered and fallen in, and the rest sagged dangerously. A wooden staircase on the far side led downhill toward a small stream.
The interior walls that remained were unfinished, and the floorboards were bare plywood. A flannel jacket hung from a peg on the wall. A set of shelves had collapsed, spilling canned food beside a rust-dotted refrigerator that looked to be at least forty years old. Torn, moldy books were strewn through the wreckage, along with something metallic.
I stepped closer, testing the floor. An ominous cracking made me back away. “Could I borrow a sword?”
Lena handed me one of her bokken. I used it to poke at the books, searching for the glint I had spied. After a few attempts, I uncovered a gold coin slightly larger than a quarter. I slid it close enough to pick up and brushed it off on my sleeve. Though worn, I could make out the image of a stern-looking woman and the words “Dei Gratina.”
“What is it?”
“A two-guinea coin.” I flipped it to Lena. “A piece of treasure from Treasure Island. It’s a training exercise. Ray had me create and dissolve that same coin time and again in our first year working together.” I stared at the ruined books. “Hubert was practicing.”
“You think the Porters noticed?”
“And sent an automaton to deal with him? Maybe.” I turned in a slow circle. A clear, grassy area the width of a two-lane road led down to the stream. On the other side of the clearing, a pair of pine trees had toppled over, the trunks splintered like matchsticks. Most of the needles had fallen off, forming a brown carpet on the ground.
“Hubert walked away from this,” said Lena. “So what happened to whoever or whatever attacked him?”
I took Heart of Stone from my jacket and pulled out the enchanted sunglasses I had used before. Beneath one of the fallen trees, the air rippled slightly, like a cloaking device from an old SF flick.
Smudge grew hotter as I approached. I heard the telltale puff as his body ignited, and leaned my head to the left to avoid singeing my ear. I pointed to the distortion. Lena readied her bokken and moved downhill, approaching from the other side.
Something clinked underfoot. I held up a hand for Lena to wait. I couldn’t see anything in the dirt or grass. I crouched, moving my hands slowly through the knee-high weeds until I found what I had stepped on: a pair of invisible metal blocks, each one the size of a small LEGO brick. Both were smooth on all but one side, where small ridges formed the letters I and W.
I clutched them in my fist and continued toward the magical distortion. Lena extended one of her bokken, giving whatever it was a gentle poke. “It’s heavy,” she said. “Feels like metal.”
Ponce de Leon would have yanked the concealment spell aside like a stage magician pulling a tablecloth from beneath a vase. I had to do it the hard way.
I went through six sprigs of Moly, setting them around whatever it was and watching each flower wilt and die as it leached away the magic hiding this thing from our sight.
I removed the sunglasses and hung them from a belt loop. Even without them, I could now make out a dark shape, larger and broader than a man. Smudge ran down my body, igniting dead pine needles as he scurried away. I stomped out the small flames he left behind. Smudge scrambled up an old beech tree, where he turned around and refused to come back down.
“That’s not a good sign.” I pulled out a blaster and aimed it at the shape, just to be safe.
I had always thought the dissolution of magic should have more pizzazz: swirling lights, colored smoke… even just a loud popping sound. Unfortunately, the universe didn’t share my taste in special effects. I saw the shine of metal, and then-
“Shit!” I scrambled back, tripping over fallen branches.
Sprawled before us, pinned face-up by a four-inch-wide branch that speared it to the earth, was one of Gutenberg’s automatons.
Chapter 17
Few people ever saw one of Gutenberg’s mechanical enforcers. Far fewer walked away from the experience. I swallowed and stepped closer. A layer of dirt and pine needles blanketed the automaton, meaning it hadn’t moved in a while. The trunk of the fallen tree had rolled to one side, crushing the automaton’s left arm and leg into the dirt
