Codex Born

of my hand.

Lena’s bokken hummed through the air. Nidhi tried to grab the bugs off of my skin, but for every one she ripped free, three more found me. Others landed on the book and began chewing through the cover and paper.

I ended the spell and flung the book to the ground. Lena joined Nidhi, and crushed several of the things in her bare hands, but by the time we tugged the last one off of me, the rest had returned to the tree.

They had bored numerous holes through Why Sh*t Happens. The spine had suffered the most damage. When I picked the book from the dirt, half of the pages tore free.

“How many?” I asked.

“I can feel nineteen crawling around.”

I picked a metal horsefly from the ground. The microwave had been a little too effective, warping and melting the delicate metal.

I headed back toward the house. “I need something I can dissect.”

Once inside, I pulled The Demon Trapper’s Daughter by Jana Oliver off of the shelves. I had cataloged this book for the Porters several years ago, and I knew exactly which scene I wanted.

My hands tightened around the cover as I recalled the opening pages of the story, in which the protagonist tried to capture a Biblio-Fiend, a small, mischievous demon who liked to urinate on books. No way in hell I was letting that into my living room. But later on, when she faced the larger demons…

I flipped to the chapter I needed, shoved my hand into the story, and pulled out a glass sphere the size of a softball. “Let’s see what happens if we freeze them.” Looking at the hole where the ladybug had vanished, I added, “Assuming we can find the damn things.”

“They go after magic, right?” Lena jammed her bokken into the ceiling and gripped the hilt with both hands. Her fingers sank into the wood. Tiny spikes split away from the blade, sprouting buds that uncurled into small, waxy leaves.

I hefted the sphere. I didn’t have to wait long.

“Get ready.” Lena flinched. “That stings,” she muttered, then yanked hard. Chunks of plaster ripped free, exposing broken slats and insulation. The end of Lena’s wooden blade had grown like a bonsai tree on superfertilizer. The ladybug was burrowing into the wood, but as I drew back to throw, it took flight, swirling erratically toward the back door.

Lena yanked her tree—sword—whatever it was now out of the way, and I hurled the sphere at the fleeing bug. Glass smashed against the doorframe. Magic spread like liquid nitrogen, creating a white cloud. The door frosted over, and a web of cracks spread downward.

Lena stepped back and brushed a shard of curved glass off of her arm. Tiny slivers shone in her hair and clothes.

“Are you—”

“I’m fine,” she said. She pulled a piece of glass over her hand to demonstrate. The shard dented her skin, but didn’t cut her. “Tough as bark.”

The living room felt like a meat locker. I had never used Oliver’s books before. Those things were more potent than I had expected. I hurried into the kitchen to check on Smudge, who was huddling protectively over his half-eaten candy, his body burning merrily against the chill. The water pooled in the other dishes was frozen around the edges. Once I knew he was safe, I returned to the library and joined Lena in searching for the ladybug.

Glass crunched underfoot. The ladybug had to have been caught in the cold, but with so much glass and ice scattered across the floor, it was hard to find a little blob of silver metal.

“Isaac.” Lena pointed to the door. The ladybug had gotten halfway through the glass when I caught it with the sphere. Before I could figure out the easiest way to work it free, Lena tapped the door with her sword, bringing the whole thing down in a shower of pebbled glass.

“What happened?” asked Nidhi, running onto the deck.

“We’re fine.” Lena’s bokken slipped from her hand. Nidhi started toward her, but Lena waved her back. “I’m all right.”

I grabbed a pair of pliers from the junk drawer in the kitchen. Already the ladybug was trying to move, legs and wings clicking erratically. I tightened the pliers around the body until I felt the metal shell begin to bend.

I brought it to the office and switched on my lamp. The shell was grooved silver. Two of the six legs had snapped off from the cold. One of the wings beneath had burned away, leaving little more than a stub. I fetched a Q-tip from the bathroom and tried to clean the soot from the other, but I succeeded only in snapping it. Under the light, the broken wing looked like a tissue-thin strip of nacre peeled from the inside of an oyster shell.

Beneath the shell were gears that would have made a Swiss watchmaker weep with envy. The eyes were like droplets of red wine. Garnets, maybe?

“What is it?” Lena asked.

“Not a clue.” Disproportionately large copper mandibles clicked at my fingers. “What steampunk adventure did you sneak out of? Cherie Priest? Girl Genius? You’re gorgeous, whatever you are.”

“And in the meantime, its friends are drilling deeper into Lena’s oak,” Nidhi said tightly.

I winced. “Sorry. I got—”

“It’s all right,” said Lena. “We’re used to you. ‘Look at the shiny magic thing trying to kill us, isn’t it awesome?’ I’ll be happy to admire them with you as soon as we get them out of my tree.”

I held the tip of a wooden pencil in front of the ladybug’s head. It snapped cleanly through both wood and graphite. “I see several types of metal in there. Copper and silver. Possibly steel.”

“Were they created with libriomancy?” Nidhi asked.

“Most likely.” Only a few people could manipulate raw magic. Far more could use books to help them shape that power. “I’ll check the Porter catalog when I’m done here to see if I can figure out what book they might have come from.”

I looked around the office. I didn’t know where my magnifying glass had gone, but I spotted something else that should work. Holding the pliers tight, I squeezed past Lena to the 10” telescope tucked into the corner. A built-in rack on the side of the scope held a set of eyepieces. I grabbed one from the middle and returned to the desk.

Holding the two-inch-long metal-and-plastic tube to my right eye, I peered at the insect. I had to look through the wrong end of the eyepiece to bring things into proper focus, but it worked well enough.

“There are no welds. The shell looks like it’s riveted to the body.” The rivets appeared to be copper, but they were impossibly tiny, as were the hinges and joints below.

The ladybug snapped at me, the mandibles clicking audibly. The sight of those magnified, serrated pincers reaching for my eye made me jerk back so hard I almost dropped the pliers.

I tested a magnet next, but it had no effect. Whatever metals this was made of, they weren’t ferrous. “I need a better way to hold this thing while I study it.” Superglue on the joints should effectively paralyze it, though that might obscure the finer details.

Before I could go digging for the glue, Lena reached past me and stabbed a toothpick through the center of the ladybug’s body. She gave the toothpick a vicious twist, eased the pliers from my hand, and set them aside. She raised the still-squirming thing into the air. “Hold it by this end.”

I swallowed and took the toothpick. With the eyepiece lens, I could see the tiny white threads growing from the toothpick through the interior workings, like parasites devouring the bug from within. I would have felt bad for it, had its cousins not been doing the same thing to Lena.

A coiled spring down the center of the back appeared to provide movement, but I saw no place for a key, no way of winding that spring once it died. I might be able to wind it with a pair of jewelry pliers, but more likely I’d just break something else. I set down the eyepiece and used a straightened paper clip to fold one of the legs back. A gear the size of a snowflake popped out of place as a result of my clumsy efforts.

I pulled the lamp closer. Mechanically, this made no sense at all. Tiny pistons and gears manipulated the legs, but I saw no way to coordinate or control their movement. “Let’s see if you have some sort of brain in there.”