free night in his bookstore or apartment, reading handwritten texts on magic, examining artifacts, and discussing the possibilities of magic.
Ray had personally recommended me for a research position in Die Zwelf Porten?re. He had given me purpose and a goal. When I screwed that up, he helped to arrange my job here. While he had never said anything, I had no doubt he had argued on my behalf, to keep Pallas from booting me out altogether.
My cell phone buzzed. I dug it out of my pocket. The caller ID read UNKNOWN. My fingers moved mechanically, accepting the call and bringing the phone to my ear.
“Isaac? Thank God. Are you all right?”
I recognized the faint New York accent at once. “Three sparklers tried to kill me this afternoon, and now I find out Ray’s dead? What the hell is going on, Deb? Why aren’t the Porters doing something?”
Deb DeGeorge was a fellow libriomancer and librarian, but whereas I worked for a small public library, she held a position with the Library of Congress in Washington DC. She had a pair of Master’s degrees, spoke and read five languages and could spout obscenities in six more, and worked as a self-described “cataloger of weird shit.”
“I’m sorry about Ray, hon. I only learned about him a few hours ago. You said you were attacked? The vampires-”
“Are ash.”
She gave a disbelieving snort. “Three sparklers? Damn, Isaac.”
“I had help. Lena Greenwood showed up and did her ass-kicking thing. Deb, I couldn’t get through to Pallas either.”
“She’s alive,” Deb said quickly. “You’ve heard about Harrison? Whoever killed him found a way to hack the spells he cast protecting our communications. We’re still working to secure everything, and until we do…”
Until then, our murderer could be listening to every word we said. “I understand.”
“Stay put, Isaac. I’ll be there soon.”
“But what-”
“Stay!” The phone went dead before I could respond.
“What did she say?” asked Lena.
“Not much, but she sounded nervous.” This was a woman who had faced down a homicidal Chilean mummy and walked away without a scratch.
Between Smudge, Lena, and my personal library, we should be safe for the moment. I looked out the kitchen window. Trees secluded the houses from one another, and this part of town was quiet enough the neighbors’ kids down the street sometimes played an entire set of tennis in the road without having to move for cars.
Lena reached over to touch my arm. “What is it?”
“I’m not a field agent.” Deb and the others would investigate Ray’s death. They would figure out who took Doctor Shah. They would stop whoever had done this, while I… filed paperwork and stayed out of the way. “Ray was my friend.”
We sat in silence for a time. My thoughts were manic and uncontrolled, jumping from the attack at the library to Ray to the other deaths. “It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Individual vampires are tough, but in an all-out war, they wouldn’t stand a chance. More than half of them are helpless during the day, and at last count, humans outnumbered them a million to one.”
“Some sort of civil war among the vampires?” Lena scooped up the last of the ice cream.
“The Porters would have heard.” Though whether or not they would have bothered to tell me was another question entirely. “Have there been similar attacks in other countries?”
“Not that I know of.”
Most vampires were perfectly content to live in peace, but plenty of them were still monsters at heart. If they were attacking Porters with impunity here, it wouldn’t be long before others followed suit.
Meaning if this wasn’t stopped soon, we could be looking at a worldwide war with the undead.
Chapter 3
Magic had always messed with my dreams. According to years of Porter research, brainwave excitation during REM sleep immediately following the use of magic tended to mimic the patterns seen in active magic use. And according to Porter gossip, Nicola Pallas had once awoken following a day of intensive spellcasting to find that she had transformed herself into a two-hundred-pound green rabbit in her sleep.
I wasn’t powerful enough to suffer such problems. Instead, I simply endured surreal, too-vivid dreams in which my magic failed me when I needed it most. Sometimes I reached into my books, only to find myself unable to pull my hand free. Or I would fling the book away and watch in horror as what remained of my arm slowly dissolved, consumed by the book. The worst nightmares were when I fell through the magical portal I had opened in the pages, or worse yet, something on the other side of that portal pulled me in.
Tonight was one of the bad ones. I jolted awake so hard I fell out of bed. Remnants of my dreams screamed that I was tumbling deeper into darkness. Soft fingers touched my shoulder and I shouted, slapping them away.
“Take it easy,” said Lena. “It’s me.”
I tried to shove her back, but it was like trying to uproot a tree. Slowly, reality pushed the dream aside, and the pounding of my heart eased.
She helped me to my feet. I sat down on the bed, rubbing my eyes. The sheets were damp with sweat.
Doctor Shah had once prescribed pills that were supposed to help me sleep. Unfortunately, I had thrown my remaining supply away two years ago. Even if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have risked them tonight. I needed my mind clear if anything happened. “What are you doing in my bedroom?”
“Someone just pulled into your driveway,” said Lena.
The sky outside was dark. The red glow of the alarm clock provided just enough light to make out Lena’s shape as she sat down beside me, one hand still gripping my arm. I heard Smudge stirring in his tank beside me. At night, he slept in a thirty-gallon aquarium lined with obsidian gravel and soil.
A single cricket chirped somewhere inside the tank, probably roused out of hiding by all the noise. That was a mistake. A scurry of feet and a faint spark followed, and that was the end of the cricket.
I flipped on a light, which helped to banish the dream. Smudge froze, cricket clutched in his forelegs. He watched me as if making sure I wasn’t about to reach in and steal his snack, then retreated into a thick web that reminded me of unspun cotton.
I snatched up the Heinlein paperback I had left on the bedside table, fighting a shiver. I had fallen asleep in my blue jeans, and the cold air raised bumps along my naked chest and arms.
Lena stared unabashedly as I grabbed a flannel bathrobe from the floor and pulled it on. I ignored her, opening the book to the page I had dog-eared earlier.
The doorbell rang just as we reached the entryway. Lena gripped one of her bokken with both hands while I skimmed my book, then peeked out the front window.
I doubted vampires would be so obvious, but after yesterday, I wasn’t taking chances. I relaxed at the sight of Deb DeGeorge standing impatiently on the front porch. “Go ahead.”
Lena unlocked the door, and Deb stepped inside. “Oh, good,” she said. “You’re still alive.”
I snorted. “Nice to see you, too.”
Deb was in her early forties, with gray hair cut playfully short and a trio of silver rings in each ear. I had never seen her wear any color but black, and today was no exception. A thigh-length black jacket covered a matching shirt and long skirt.
She gave me a quick hug before moving toward the living room. Her breath smelled of gum and mint mouthwash. Her nose wrinkled at the sight of the books spilling over the end table and spread over the floor.
“Don’t even start,” I said, tossing the Heinlein onto the closest pile.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You don’t have to.” I jabbed a finger at the books. “I’ll have you know that I’ve developed a highly refined, if unorthodox, cataloging system.”
