Deb ran a hand over the shelves, clucking her tongue. “So many books, and no nonfiction? No biographies or histories?”
“Office library, Miss Snooty. Just because you have no imagination doesn’t mean the rest of us should limit ourselves to dusty old textbooks.”
Deb’s first love had always been history. Whereas I could reach into a sci-fi thriller and yank out a blaster, she could produce invaluable artifacts from three-hundred-year-old texts. Rumor had it the Porters had recruited her at the age of sixteen, after she successfully sold a copy of the Star of Bombay, a 182-carat star sapphire currently housed in the Smithsonian.
I preferred my lasers and magic swords.
Deb’s eyes were puffy, and she moved with a barely-contained manic energy that suggested either recent magic use or a major caffeine overdose. Possibly both, knowing her.
She studied me in turn. “Those are some nasty bruises.”
I touched my throat. I had managed to hide those with my collar yesterday after work, but the bathrobe exposed more of the bruises and scratches left by Mel and her minions. “You should see the other guys.”
My stomach chose that moment to let out a loud growl, earning a sympathetic look from Deb. Magic burned a lot of energy, but it ruined your appetite. Even hours later, the thought of food made me feel mildly nauseated. Magic was a great weight-loss plan, but as any doctor could tell you, losing too much weight too quickly was a bad idea. Magic users had died of malnutrition before. By the end of my time in the field, I had been down to a hundred and twenty pounds. My nails had been yellow and brittle, my blood pressure dangerously low, and I had been cold all the time.
“What’s going on, Deb?” I asked.
She sagged into the armchair. “I would have been here sooner, but there was another attack.”
I braced myself. “Who?”
“Not who.” Emotion roughened her words. “Around eleven o’clock last night, the Michigan State University library burned to the ground.” Her eyes met mine, sharing a pain few others would have understood.
Her words choked away any remaining fatigue. “How bad?”
“ All of it.”
“Why would vampires go after a library?” asked Lena.
“Because,” I said numbly, “the MSU library housed the regional archive for the Porters.” So many books… so much knowledge. “Have any other archives been hit?”
“Not yet.” Deb pulled out her cell phone and checked the screen, then tucked it away again. “Whoever’s behind this, they’re keeping it local so far.”
Lena edged closer. “We know who’s behind this.”
“I don’t think vampires did this.” Deb stared at the floor. “What would you say if I told you Johannes Gutenberg disappeared three months ago?”
“Oh, shit.” I spoke four languages, but sometimes good old-fashioned swearing worked best.
Johannes Gutenberg had invented the practice of libriomancy around the end of the fifteenth century. Growing up, he had studied under a minor sorcerer and friar at St. Christopher’s church in Mainz, but Gutenberg had lacked the raw power of the great mages. He ended his apprenticeship and set out on his own, determined to master the art he had seen.
He devoted his life to the study of magic, a pursuit that eventually led him to the development of the printing press and the mass production of books. Gutenberg theorized that this would allow him to tap into the mutual belief of readers, bolstering his power.
His long gamble paid off. Hundreds, even thousands of people could now read the exact same book in the exact same form. The first recorded act of libriomancy was when Gutenberg used his mass-produced Bible to create the Holy Grail, the cup of life which had kept him alive all these years.
“Not a single automaton has responded to the attacks against the Porters,” Deb said. “We can’t find them, and we can’t find Gutenberg.”
Gutenberg had built the first automaton to be his personal bodyguard and protector around the end of the fifteenth century. Over the next forty years, as libriomancy spread and Gutenberg’s power grew, he created a total of twelve mechanical guardians. They were all but indestructible, tasked with preventing practitioners from abusing their power and helping to hide magic from public view.
I would have given anything to be able to study them, to learn how a libriomancer had produced such things. Nobody had ever managed to duplicate his creations.
“You think the vampires took him?” asked Lena.
“If they’ve turned him…” I swallowed hard at the thought of so much knowledge in the hands of the undead.
“Pallas doesn’t think so,” said Deb. “She says there are spells in place, contingencies from ages ago. None of those have been activated.”
“The vampires at the library couldn’t even stop the two of us,” Lena added. “How could they overpower Gutenberg?”
“They couldn’t,” said Deb. “Not without help.”
“You mean someone inside the Porters.” I waited, but she simply watched me, her head tilted to one side like a teacher waiting impatiently for a student to figure out the lesson. “Wait, is that why I wasn’t told? Was I a suspect?”
“We all were.” Deb reached into her jacket, then made a face. “Weeks like this, what I want more than anything else is a damned cigarette.”
“No way,” I said automatically. “I heard what you were like the last time you quit.” Magic and nicotine withdrawal made for a very nasty libriomancer. If the rumors were true, Deb had used a copy of The Odyssey to transform one particularly unpleasant patron into a pig for most of a day.
“The vampire population has doubled in the past ten years,” said Deb. “Not to mention werewolves and ghosts and the rest. They stay out of sight, but Gutenberg is losing control.” She stood and started toward the bookshelves, but caught her foot. I moved to catch her as she fell. She spun, and something hissed against the side of my neck.
“Sorry, Isaac.” Deb backed away, holding a high-tech hypospray in her hand.
Lena stepped between us, slapping the hypospray away. With her other hand, she seized Deb by the jacket and slammed her into the shelves, hard enough that books toppled to the ground.
“Easy on the library,” I protested. Warmth spread from my neck down into my chest, but for some reason, I wasn’t upset. “What was that stuff?”
“Truth serum.” Deb didn’t move. I wouldn’t have either, given how pissed off Lena looked. “I read about it in your reports. Bujold, I think.”
That would explain my laid-back reaction. Bujold wrote good truth drugs. “You should read the whole series. I’ll get you into spaceships and aliens yet.”
“Is the drug dangerous?” Lena asked.
“Nah.” I shook my head. “As long as I’m not allergic. It just makes the recipient feel content and helpful and uninhibited. And also warm.” Truth be told, this was the most relaxed I had been since the attack. I wagged a finger at Deb. “Three vampires tried to kill me, and you’re worried I’m the bad guy?”
“You’re an ex-libriomancer, yanked out of the field and banished to the middle of nowhere,” Deb said. “You kept a magical pet in defiance of Porter rules, and now you’ve acquired a dryad bodyguard. What would you think, hon?”
“I had to keep Smudge. How do you put a spider back into a book when the spider can set the book on fire? ” More importantly, returning Smudge to his book would dissolve him back into magical energy, essentially killing him.
She tilted her head, acknowledging the point. “Do you know where Johannes Gutenberg is?”
“Nope.” I smirked. “I hear rumors he’s gone missing, though.”
“Are you satisfied?” demanded Lena.
“I’ll be satisfied once I get my hands on whoever’s killing my friends,” Deb shot back. “Isaac, I went to the MSU library with another Porter. The place was smashed, like someone had physically torn down the walls. The kind of damage an automaton could have done.”
