AUGUST HARRISON’S FRIENDS WEREN’T the only ones who could counter magic. I peeked down at the phone as I typed out the message.
My phone tried to correct the last word to “airmen.” I fixed it and hit Send, then brought the phone to my face. “We’re coming out. Call the wasps back.”
I waited for the insects to retreat from the door. An answering text arrived a few seconds later.
I stepped onto the porch. “The wendigos, too.”
“In time.” Harrison sounded every ounce the gentleman now that he believed he was in control. He stood behind the SUV’s hood, watching me. “Your friends will be free to go as soon as you’ve joined us.”
An aborted squeak made me whirl. Deb froze, a guilty expression on her face, then slowly wiped her mouth on her sleeve. She was moving better, and her knife wounds had stopped bleeding. She swallowed, grimaced, and offered me a halfhearted shrug.
I looked past her to the empty birdcage. “You didn’t.”
“Hey, if that woman hadn’t stabbed me when all I was trying to do was help, maybe—”
“What is
“Nothing, anymore.”
I was tempted to shoot her myself. “When this is over, you’re buying this family another bird.”
My phone buzzed with another text message. I glanced at the screen. I didn’t have time to deal with Deb. With a disgusted glare, I turned back to Harrison. “Sorry about that. We’re coming out.” A low double-beep signaled another incoming call as I descended the steps. When my foot touched the bottom step, I pretended to stumble. I caught the rail with one hand. With my other, I tapped the phone, bringing Nicola Pallas into a three- way call with August Harrison.
Even with the phone away from my ear, the opening bars of Pallas’ song felt like she had plugged an electrical cable directly into my eardrums. I flung the phone into the grass and clung to the rail with both hands while I waited for the world to stop spinning.
As unpleasant as that tinny melody was for me, how much worse must it have been for August Harrison, who had his phone clamped to his ear. Pallas’ bardic magic dropped him with the first notes.
“Go,” I yelled.
Jeff bounded out the door, knocking me off my feet. Deb and Sarah followed close behind, and I saw Rook flying from the window, swooping into the street like an enormous geeky raven.
Lena hauled me inside, then grabbed her weapons. I did the same, scooping up books and my shock-gun, and clipping Smudge’s cage to my jacket. Outside, the two libriomancers were doing their thing, presumably trying to suppress the magic coming from Harrison’s cell phone. But even if they succeeded, the damage was done. He wouldn’t be waking up for a while, and that meant he couldn’t command his swarm.
“Isaac, there were more around back,” Lena shouted as she followed the others outside. “Make sure they don’t cut through the house.”
Flames danced through the bars of Smudge’s cage. I heard claws scrabbling overhead. “Watch the roof!”
Lena jumped down to the sidewalk as the first wendigo landed on the porch. She spun, one wooden sword raised high, the other low for stabbing. The wendigo ripped the iron railing from the concrete and hurled it at her. She lunged to the side, using both swords to bat the railing out of the way.
“Dumbass,” I muttered, and shot him in the back. I opened the first of my books to a dog-eared page and skimmed the text. As a second attacker bounded around the corner of the house, I finished my spell and flung the book at his chest like a Frisbee. The cover flapped open as it flew, and the dust jacket tore away to flutter to the ground.
The cover art showed a single bee beneath the title:
The bees emerged en masse and angry. They wouldn’t have been a threat to a true wendigo with its thick armor of ice and fur, but this wasn’t a full wendigo. He—no wait, this one was female—scrambled backward, swatting furiously.
Sarah’s scream echoed down the street. I turned to see her falling backward, her extremities dissolving into dust. I couldn’t tell what the two wendigos had done to her, but by the time she hit the road, only a skeleton remained. That crumbled away within seconds.
A third libriomancer had joined the other two, and I counted a total of seven wendigos in an all-out brawl with Deb, Jeff, and Rook in the middle of the road.
Lena sprinted toward them, and the green-haired girl raised her book like a shield. Lena veered toward her, one sword slashing at the book.
The sword snapped like a rotted stick. Lena flung the hilt at the girl’s face, then dropped low to kick her feet out from beneath her. Before she could follow up, a wendigo leaped onto the top of the SUV and pounced.
I took another shot with my shock-gun, but as before, the lightning failed to reach its target. It looked like they had ended my spell with the killer bees, too.
I ran toward my phone and dialed Pallas’ number again. “It’s Isaac. We could really use that automaton