Codex Born

6

The glares began the day Frank brought me home. The whispered insults followed soon after. Tramp. Bitch. Slut. Freak. Over time, the whispers grew louder. Marion Dearing followed me into the woods one night, but I was faster. I vanished into my oak, laughing at our game as I left her wandering lost among the trees in the cold and the dark.

She tried to kill me two days after I made love to her husband for the first time. I was working in the chicken coop, an oversized jar of Vaseline in one hand. There was supposed to be a snowstorm that night, and I was coating the combs, feet, and wattles of each bird to help prevent frostbite.

I had heard Marion and Frank yelling after dinner. I had never understood why she hated me. I don’t think I even realized she hated me, any more than I realized how much Frank and I had hurt her. We belonged to Frank, and we each worked to make him happy. I smiled, remembering the weight of his body atop mine.

“What are you?”

I jumped, dropping the Vaseline. I broke the jar’s fall with my foot before it hit the floor. “Hello, Marion. I didn’t hear you.”

Marion might have been pretty once, a long time ago. She was heavier than I was, with thin gray-brown hair and a perpetual frown. Wrinkles spread like cracks from her eyes and the corners of her mouth. Her skin was spotted from age, and she dressed in a way that hid her body, making her look like a misshapen sack. She was strong, though. Those thick hands could kill and dress a chicken or birth a calf.

Her eyes were red. She clutched a thick book in one hand, a Bible with a gold cross embossed on the cover. “You’re not human. Where the hell did you come from?”

“I don’t remember,” I said automatically.

She snorted and stepped closer. “Wandering naked and lost in the woods, with no memory where you’d been. Did the devil send you to us?”

I shook my head. “Why would you ask—”

“I know what you are. Sent to prey on the weakness of men. To seduce and corrupt them. I won’t let you have him.”

“But he wants me.” I was simply being honest. I didn’t mean to hurt her, but the truth of my words struck her harder than any physical blow.

She lunged forward, and her balled fist crashed into my jaw. I staggered against the cages. “Get out of my home, you whore!”

The blows didn’t hurt as much as I had expected. I raised my arms to protect my face. The next time she swung, I caught her by the wrist and tossed her away as easily as I flung bales of hay for the cows.

Marion bounced to her feet, the Bible forgotten on the wooden floor. Blood welled from scrapes on her face. She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her jacket. Fear flickered past her anger: a quickening of her breath, a widening of her eyes.

I shivered with anticipation. I was enjoying this, almost as much as I had enjoyed making love to Frank. Her fist cracked against my jaw, and my heart pounded harder. I laughed and slapped her arm aside.

She stepped back. “What are you?”

I was too far gone to answer. I buried the ball of my foot in her stomach, kicking her so hard she retched. She crawled away and seized the hoe we used to clean the bottom of the coop. She thrust the end at my face, then swung the blade down. I twitched my foot out of the way, and the hoe gouged the floor.

She attacked again, more confident now. I allowed her to drive me back, then sidestepped, snatching the hoe with one hand. As my fingers curled around the old wood, I felt…a memory was the closest word I could find to describe it. An ash tree standing in the sun, roots gripping a grassy hillside. The ash that had been cut down and shaped into this tool.

The handle of the hoe reacted to my touch. Roots sprouted from the end, twining around Marion’s hand. She screamed and pulled away, but the roots bound her fingers.

I imagined Frank standing over us, watching us battle for his affection. Seeing proof of how much we loved him. Joy suffused my blood. My delighted laughter filled the barn, and I twisted the handle until the bones of Marion’s hand snapped like old sticks in winter.

ONCE NIDHI AND JENETA had left, I returned to the house long enough to change into warmer clothes and fetch my sleeping bag from the closet. Even in August, the U.P. could get chilly at night. I stopped in the kitchen and searched the refrigerator, but nothing looked appetizing. I settled for grabbing a handful of vitamins, which I washed down with a Sprite. Even that was enough to make me queasy, but I clenched my stomach until the surges of nausea passed.

I tacked a makeshift curtain over the broken door, then picked a handful of books from the library and a small reading light, slung my laptop case over my shoulder, and returned to the garden. Attempting more magic so soon would be madness—literally, if I wasn’t careful—but I couldn’t stop thinking. Our enemy knew Lena’s tree, and that meant she was vulnerable. She had survived the loss of her tree before, but while she had never spoken much about the experience, I got the sense it had come closer to killing her than she wanted to admit.

She had transferred herself into this oak. Perhaps it would be wise to do so again, to find a tree deep in the woods that nobody knew about. But would that be enough? The insects had found her here. If they could sniff out the magic of her tree, what was to stop them from tracking her down no matter where she went?

Better to defend her tree, strengthen it against attack. There were plenty of books that described magical fertilizers and spells to empower plants. With the right combination, I could grow Lena’s oak as tall and strong as Jack’s beanstalk. Though given the end of Jack’s tale, perhaps that wasn’t the best plan.

Or I could grow Lena a new tree. Did she have to live within an oak? I could grow a whomping willow from Harry Potter, giving her tree the ability to defend itself. No, Gutenberg had locked Rowling’s work. Perhaps one of the ent knockoffs from various fantasy tales, a tree with the ability to uproot itself and move about.

What would happen if I planted Yggdrasil, the world tree from Norse mythology? I doubted such a seed would fit through the pages of a book, but if I could break off even the smallest twig for Lena to graft to her oak…

“Right,” I muttered to myself. “Because nobody would notice an enormous tree growing miles into the sky.” The roots would probably devour most of Copper River. I tried to imagine how much water a tree like that would consume. It could drain half of the Great Lakes, killing off most of the surrounding vegetation in the process.

I set the book aside, jumped up, and paced the length of the garden, doing my best to avoid stepping on the plants. At the rate the pumpkins were growing, we were going to have some amazing jack o’lanterns for Halloween.

What if Lena grafted branches from her oak onto multiple trees? Would spreading herself in such a way help to protect her from attack, or would it splinter her mind?

My thoughts were scampering about with all the frantic energy of Smudge in a rainstorm. I hadn’t even begun to consider what Jeneta had done tonight. Why had my magic set things off like a rock to a wasp nest when hers merely lulled them to the flowers? I had watched her work with e-books and print alike, and as far as I could see, there was nothing unusual about her process.

I stopped in mid-step. I had been assuming it was something she was doing, a technique others could learn and master to take advantage of electronic books. What if, instead, it was something inherent in her? What if she was simply more powerful? True sorcerers could shape magic with their minds alone, and if she did possess that kind of power, it might explain why the devourers were drawn to her.

I forced myself to sit down, but couldn’t stop my legs from bouncing to an unheard beat. A bad case of post-magic twitchiness was essentially Restless Leg Syndrome for the whole body. Perhaps pleasure reading wasn’t the safest idea tonight. After ripping into so many books today, the barriers between myself and these books was dangerously thin.

Deb DeGeorge liked to describe spellcasting as shooting holes in a beer keg filled with magic. Shoot a single bullet through the keg, and you can fill your cup from a steady stream. Fire a few more, and the magic starts flowing faster than you can keep up with it. Blast the whole thing with a shotgun, and you end up soaked in the stuff.

It was an elegant trap, one which had claimed the sanity of many libriomancers over the years. As you exhausted yourself physically and mentally, your judgment eroded as well, leading you to make mistakes when you could least afford them.

Sleep was the best cure. Naturally, insomnia was a common side effect of magic use. As much as I loved being a libriomancer, sometimes magic was a pain in the ass.

I set my books aside, powered up the laptop, and began filling out a requisition form for my shock-gun. Porters were supposed to avoid carrying magical artifacts around long-term, but I thought the circumstances justified keeping the gun until this was over.

My cell phone went off before I could finish. I glanced at the screen and swore. A call from Jeff DeYoung at this time of night couldn’t mean anything good.

He wasted no time on niceties, and his terseness confirmed my sick sense of foreboding. “We’ve got another dead wendigo. Right around the same area. I think this might have been the first one’s mate, come to see what happened. Two weres heard the noise and interrupted the son of a bitch, but it was too late to save the wendigo.”

I straightened. “Did they see him? Were they able to track where he went?”

“Laci didn’t see shit,” Jeff snapped. “And Hunter died before we could get him to the hospital.”

“I’m—” I bit back the word “sorry.” A werewolf wouldn’t appreciate empty words. “I can drive out with a healing potion.”

“Laci’s got a thick head. She’ll be okay. She and Hunter had snuck off for a late-night romp, and weren’t expecting anyone to try to kill them. They found the body, then something attacked them from behind. Whatever it was, he was strong. Tossed Laci into a tree, and clubbed Hunter hard enough to crack the boy’s skull.”

I hadn’t seen anything to suggest superhuman strength in either of the two figures who had killed the first wendigo.

“What the hell is wrong with these kids?” Jeff continued. “There’s no excuse for letting yourself get caught unaware, I don’t care how horny you are.”

“Did Laci notice any insects by the body? They would have been metal.”

“Not that she mentioned, but I’ll check when she wakes up.” He sighed. “How are you and Lena doing? Neither one of you looked to be in great shape this evening.”

“I think whoever killed those wendigos tried to take out Lena’s tree. We dealt with it, but she’s pretty wiped.”

“Any idea who or what we’re looking for?” There was a hunger to his words, an eagerness that made me nervous.

“We’re working on a few things,” I said carefully.

“Bad enough to kill those white-furred cannibals in our territory, but now they’ve killed one of our pack. That makes it personal. You Porters can do whatever you’d like, so long as you stay the hell out of our way.”

Vigilante werewolves. Just what we needed. “Jeff, this guy tore up two wendigos, tossed a pair of werewolves around like dolls, and has magic I’ve never seen before.” Not to mention the devourers. “This is a bad idea.”

“He jumped a pair of dumb kids who weren’t expecting trouble. We’ve hunted these woods for generations. We’ll find the bastards.”

“Or they’ll find you.” I had no idea how many insects Victor had made. I imagined metal hives hidden in the trees, a cloud of magical bugs descending upon the werewolves.

“Let ’em.”

“You don’t even know what you’re hunting.”

“What in God’s name am I supposed to tell Hunter’s family, Isaac? Not only are we burying one of our own, now you want us to lock the doors and sit around with our thumbs up our asses, hoping nobody else gets killed while we wait for you Porters to do your thing? All your magic has done so far is show us a shitty snuff film and knock you on your ass.”

I hated werewolf-style negotiation. “First of all, bite me,” I said. “Second, this is my investigation. One of your pack is dead, and that gives you the right to be involved, but you work with me. Be here tomorrow at nine A.M. We’re driving down to Ohio to investigate a lead.”

“What lead?” Jeff snarled.

“Do we have a deal?” When he hesitated, I added, “If these things are half as dangerous as I think they are, you do not want them coming after Tamarack. I’m going to find whoever did this, Jeff. Either be here tomorrow morning, or else stay the hell out of my way.”

When Jeff finally spoke again, he sounded almost cheerful. “Nine o’clock, you said?”

“See you tomorrow.”

As long as I was worked up, I went ahead and called Deb to arrange a deal with the vampires. By the time I got off the phone, it was almost two in the morning. I shut down the laptop and bundled it and the books into a plastic garbage bag for protection, crawled into the sleeping bag, and settled against the base of the oak.

Lena retained some awareness of what happened outside her tree, though I wasn’t sure how much. But she would know I was here, and that was enough.

I awoke with a stiff neck, sore back, and Lena looking down at me with a crooked smile. She showed no sign of pain or weariness from yesterday. Lucky dryad.

“I need a shower and a change of clothes,” she announced, grabbing my hand and hauling me to my feet. “And so do you.”

The shower took a bit longer than usual, but it was certainly rejuvenating. By the time we emerged and dressed, I felt almost human again. I filled her in on the call from Jeff, then checked my messages to make sure everything was set for today.

In exchange for helping us talk to Victor, the vampires wanted either a Shipstone—a battery from Heinlein’s work that would power their underground lighting needs for a century—or an official apology from Gutenberg for the incident in Detroit. A message from Nicola Pallas confirmed that the Shipstone was the more feasible choice, and authorized me to take care of it when we finished in Ohio.

My biggest concern was that the vampires would try to turn the Shipstone into some kind of weapon, but if they were foolish enough to try, they would most likely just blow themselves up. I had stressed that fact repeatedly to Deb on the phone. Even if they succeeded, Gutenberg’s automatons should be able to deal with any magic-fueled weapon.

Both Jeff and Nidhi arrived as I was restocking my books. In addition to my book bag, I had retrieved a brown leather duster from the hall closet. I had lost my old jacket during the troubles earlier this year, but in at least one respect, the new one was even better. This one was fireproof.

“How’s Jeneta doing this morning?” I asked as I shoved books into the various pockets sewn into the lining, trying to plan out the tools and toys I might need.

“Frightened and trying not to let it show. She spent the first hour curled up on the couch, teasing Akha with her braids.”

“Sounds like she was in good company.” If anyone could help Jeneta to relax, it was Nidhi’s cat. Akha was, in Lena’s words, a total attention-slut. She would curl up in your lap and purr until she drooled.

“Will she be safe at that camp?”

“Safer than she’d be with us. Her e-reader was destroyed, and as long as she doesn’t do any more magic, there’s nothing to attract attention.” I tucked my microrecorder into a front pocket to make sure we could review everything we learned. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to bring along a few potential weapons that would work against the undead, just in case. “She has Nicola’s number as well as mine.”

Nidhi watched me prepare. “Jeneta was exhausted, but she looked better than you do.”

“Sleeping outside isn’t as much fun as it used to be.” I double-checked the safety on the shock-gun, switched it to setting four, and slid it into an outside pocket. I also grabbed books that would allow us to avoid attention and persuade any bystanders to cooperate. The final pocket got a box of Red Hots for Smudge.

Nidhi stepped away to greet Lena, leaving me with Jeff. An old-style Bowie knife was strapped to his belt, and he had holstered a revolver on his opposite hip. I doubted either was legal. Werewolves tended not to worry overmuch about things like laws or permits.

“Nidhi filled me in on those metal bugs,” he said bluntly. “She also tells me we’re going to talk to the ghost of the guy who made them.”

“That doesn’t mean one of us is behind this.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, it was your man who put the weapon in their hands.”

I transferred Smudge into his traveling cage, a thin rectangular box with steel mesh walls, which I clipped to a loop on the outside of my jacket. “If someone kills you, takes your knife, and stabs the first person they see, who’s responsible?”

Jeff tightened a fist, deliberately cracking several knuckles. “A man chooses to carry a weapon, he’d damn well better be strong enough to stop anyone from taking it away from him.”

That was when the curtain I had hung over the back door flew aside, and a rush of air passed between Jeff and myself. Jeff staggered back, and a young man in a black trench coat seemed to materialize out of nothingness, perched on the edge of the kitchen counter like a gargoyle with a predilection for goth fashion. He held Jeff’s gun in one hand, the Bowie knife in the other.

Jeff’s upper lip curled back, and he snarled, an incongruously deep-throated sound for a man his apparent age. Lena pulled both of her bokken and started forward.

“You must be Moon,” I said hastily, trying to defuse things before they wrecked my place and each other.

“Sorry, man. I heard you two talking, and I couldn’t resist.” Moon twirled the knife and grinned, black-lined lips pulling back to reveal perfect teeth.

“He’s the other part of my arrangement with the vampires,” I explained. “He’s Sanguinarius Meyerii. A sparkler. He’ll be guarding the house while we’re away.”

“Moon?” Jeff’s voice remained an octave lower than usual.

Moon laughed. “Weird name, I know. My parents were old-fashioned Ann Arbor hippies. You should have met my sister, Starshine.”

“The weapons?” I said.

“Right.” He handed the knife and gun back to Jeff, then brushed off his coat. He wore a black kilt and a heavy metal T-shirt underneath. “No hard feelings, old man?”

“This is who they sent? A child half stoned out of his mind?” Jeff sniffed derisively. “I can smell the pot on his breath.”

“Only because I need ten times as much as I used to,” he complained. “Do you have any idea how long it takes to prep that stuff? First I’ve got to brew it into blood tea just so I can metabolize it, and by then you’ve boiled off half its potency. Not to mention the work I had to do to find an anticoagulant that didn’t taste like filtered diarrhea. And then the stuff barely gives me a buzz. I just drink it to take the edge off the day, you know?” He winked at Jeff. “You look like you could use a hit yourself, gramps.”

“Not today,” I said, cutting in before they could go any further. “Moon, I’m not sure how much they told you downstate, but the people we’re hunting killed a werewolf last night and sent another to the hospital.”

“Shit.” Moon sobered at once. “Sorry, man. I didn’t know.”

“Just keep an eye on the place. Call me if anything happens.”

Moon gave me a two-fingered salute. “Cub Scout’s honor.”

Having spent six years in scouting as a kid, somehow that didn’t make me feel better.

I spent much of the drive asleep in the back of Nidhi’s car. I awoke with my mouth dry and my shoulder damp from drool. Wind swirled through Jeff’s open window, and a Hindi pop song was playing softly on the satellite radio.

I rubbed my eyes, then wiped my face on my sleeve. It was strange not being able to understand the words of the song. Normally, the telepathic fish in my head, courtesy of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, translated other languages automatically. But there was no mind in this case, no thoughts for the fish to latch onto. Just cold, dead electronics.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“We’ll be leaving Michigan in about fifteen minutes,” said Nidhi.

According to the dashboard clock, I had slept well into the afternoon. On the bright side, I had missed crossing the Mackinac Bridge. Strange how that bridge—particularly the fear of plummeting off of that bridge—disturbed me more than the idea of meeting up with vampires to talk to a dead man.

I checked the back window and spotted Lena following on her motorcycle. She could have joined us in the car, but had chosen to let me sprawl out and nap in the back seat. Or maybe she just wanted an excuse to ride the bike. Though the idea of taking that thing over the Bridge would have given me nightmares.

Nidhi turned down the volume. “We picked up lunch for you.”

Wordlessly, Jeff passed a paper sack into the back seat. Neither cold fries nor the greasy burger smelled the least bit appealing, but I managed to force them down without puking, which was a good sign. Between the food and the sleep, by the time we reached Columbus, I felt almost human.

We made our way around the edge of the city to a street with a row of brown townhouses on one side and a public park on the other. The houses looked identical to me, but Nidhi didn’t hesitate. As far as I knew, she had been here only once before, when she was called down to help the Porters examine the scene of Victor’s death.

A blue minivan with a dented door sat in the driveway, and a sedan with dark-tinted windows was parked across the street. We pulled in behind the sedan. I heard the growling of Lena’s bike as she parked behind us. For one very tense moment, I thought the sound had come from Jeff.

I grabbed Smudge’s traveling cage, slipped on my jacket, and waited for Nidhi to pop the trunk so I could fetch my book bag as well. I didn’t need a fire-spider to know what was in that sedan. My gut churned with the instinctive need to flee. The smell of death and rot fouled the air as we approached.

Deb DeGeorge was first out of the car. While not a true vampire, she was no longer human, either. She was Muscavore Wallacea, a so-called child of Renfield. Like the character from Stoker’s novel, she consumed the lives of smaller creatures, which made her stronger. Faster. Better. A magical six-million-dollar, bug-eating woman.

She looked like hell.

Deb had lost at least twenty pounds since the last time I saw her, accentuating the bones of her skull and face. Her skin was pale, and her short hair was noticeably thinner. Her bloodshot eyes flitted toward Smudge.

I reached into the pocket with my shock-gun. “Don’t even think about it.”

“I wouldn’t dream of hurting Smudge!” she protested, but I could see the hunger in her eyes. She barely noticed my companions. By now, her condition would have stripped her of her own magical abilities, but if she wanted to, she could rip open Smudge’s cage and snatch him away before I could move. Which was, no doubt, why red flame had begun to ripple over Smudge’s body.

Deb sighed. “Hon, if the two of you are this jumpy around me, you’re really not going to like Nicholas.”

I retreated a step as she opened the back door of the sedan. Three more vampires emerged. Two guards gripped the arms of the third, a handcuffed figure with a heavy blanket cloaking his head and upper body.

One guard, a woman built like a snowplow, had a set of sharpened wooden stakes strapped to her thigh. Her choice of weapon meant Nicholas was one of the vampires who could be killed by wooden stakes, and in all likelihood, she wasn’t. The second guard was smaller, almost classically nerdy, save for the semiautomatic rifle slung over his shoulder. His ears were slightly pointed, and the lumpy bone structure of his face made his condition obvious to anyone who knew what to look for. His tortoiseshell glasses perched on a lump at the bridge of his nose.

Deb nodded to both in turn. “Sarah and Rook have the pleasure of being Nicholas’ keepers today.”

Either of them could probably kill me between one heartbeat and the next, but it was Nicholas who made me want to get back in Nidhi’s car and put a few hundred miles between us. Beneath the hood of his blanket, he made Deb look positively healthy. Yellow-and-purple blotches covered his white skin like bruises. His lips made me think of bloated purple leeches, and his limp brown hair hung past his eyes like greasy seaweed.

Smudge was a tiny furnace in his cage, glowing like an eight-legged coal in a barbeque. I saw Lena’s grip tighten around her bokken. A low growl emerged from Jeff’s throat. I don’t know if he was even aware of it.

Blood oozed from cracks in Nicolas’ lips as he smiled, revealing incongruously white teeth, clean and straight and perfect. I got the sense that he not only knew exactly how he was making the rest of us feel, he was enjoying it.

“This is the ghost-talker?” I asked.

“Strongest one in the Midwest,” Deb confirmed. “They’ve got a prettier one down in Dallas, but you said you were in a hurry.”

Nicholas stepped toward me, dragging his guards like a dog straining at the leash. Up close, his breath smelled of rotted meat. A silver chain was locked around his neck like a collar, and a smoldering wooden cross hung over his flannel shirt. Both guards clutched him by the arms, their fingers digging deeply enough to make a mortal man scream in pain.

I had been hoping for a nice Sanguinarius Meadus from the Vampire Academy novels. I had no idea what species Nicholas was. Possibly an experiment, fed and transfused with blood from other species, mutated into a tool and a weapon.

Over the centuries, vampires had deliberately worked to preserve as many subspecies as possible. Even the most monstrous and dangerous were kept around, locked away from “civilized” vampire society on the off chance their powers might one day be needed. I wondered how long it had been since Nicholas had seen the sun, or been given any kind of freedom.

“You think we should head inside before someone calls the cops?” Lena suggested.

“Nobody will call the police,” said the woman with the stakes, her voice low and dreamlike. “The neighbors will pay no attention, and the family inside is sleeping.”

“How long have you held them in a trance?” asked Nidhi. “Did you check to make sure they were okay?”

Sarah’s face crinkled in confusion.

“They should be fine,” I said softly. “I read that research paper, too. ‘In the first twenty-four hours, side effects of magically-induced sleep were rare. Of the observed effects, the most common was bedwetting.’ Better that the family has to do an extra load of laundry than someone starts taking potshots at us for breaking and entering.”

“When did you read that?” Nidhi asked.

“At dinner last week. You were making enchiladas. You had the papers on your coffee table.” I gave her a halfhearted shrug. The study had been done four years ago by a pair of Porter researchers, a continuation of a project started in Hungary. “I see words, I read them.”

“Then you know one person in that study ended up in a coma for a week.”

“And the longer we argue about this, the longer those people stay asleep.” Deb pulled a tin from her back pocket, popped the lid, and snatched a live snail from inside. She crunched it down, shell and all. When she noticed me staring, she extended the tin and grinned. “Help yourself.”

I grimaced, and my stomach threatened to evict my lunch. Deb just laughed and shoved the snails back into her pocket.

She had been a friend once. I wasn’t sure what we were now. Her laugh was sharper, honed by bitterness and cruelty. The last time she was at my house, she tried to kill me with a Tommy gun, but she had the decency to feel bad about it afterward.

“Do you miss it?” I asked as we walked up the driveway. “Being human?”

She sighed, knowing exactly what I wasn’t asking. Do you miss the magic? “As long as I stay fed, I feel stronger and healthier than I ever have. Don’t let the skin condition fool you. And there are plenty of other advantages.” She cocked her head and gave me an appraising stare. “You might even appreciate the lifestyle.”

Give up magic and start a lifelong diet that would make a Klingon puke? “I don’t think so.”

She smiled slightly. “Isaac, do you remember the moment you first realized you were mortal? That no matter what happened, you would never live long enough to read every book you wanted to read? That you’d die having accomplished only a fraction of your goals?”

I had been eighteen and fresh out of high school. Ray Walker had taken me to New York to meet with a Porter who worked for one of the big publishers. It was the first time I truly understood just how many books a single publisher put out every year.

I had known intellectually that nobody could ever hope to read or learn everything, but that was the moment I did the math and started to understand how many books there were in the world, and how many more were being written every day. For every book I explored, there were literally hundreds I would never have the chance to know. Likewise, for each bit of magic I mastered, an infinite number of possibilities went unexplored.

“What would you give for an extra century?” Deb asked, giving me a knowing look. “Time to read and learn twice as much as you could in this life?”

Trade my magic for greater knowledge. “Is that how they convinced you to let them turn you?”

“Let’s just say their form of persuasion was more aggressive than mine.” She chuckled bitterly and climbed the concrete steps to the front door. A wrought-iron railing bordered the small porch, and a sunflower-decorated sign welcomed us to the Sanchez home. Deb tried the doorknob, which was locked. She didn’t appear to exert any effort, but the doorframe suddenly splintered inward. “There are other benefits, too.”

The house smelled like dog fur and old Play-Doh. I stepped cautiously onto the brown plush carpet of a cramped family room. A thirty-something Hispanic man was asleep on the couch. A three-legged black Lab sprawled on the floor in front of him. On the TV, two New York cops interrogated a drug addict. A birdcage hung by the window. Inside, a blue-and-white parakeet lay with his head in his seed dish.

It was creepy.

Nicholas doffed his blanket and strode through the room, pulling the rest of us in his wake. He moved so smoothly he appeared to float over the floor. He stopped abruptly, reaching out to touch a patch of wall on the arched entryway that connected the family room to the kitchen. “Victor Harrison,” he murmured, as if to himself. “He was afraid.”

I bit back an unexpected surge of anger. Victor had been afraid because a gang of vampires had broken into his home to kill him. Fresh paint and new carpeting hid the signs of violence, but they couldn’t erase what had happened here. I wondered how much the Sanchez family knew about the former owner. “Can you talk to him?”

“Given time,” Nicholas said lazily.

On another day, I would have been fascinated to study a ghost-talker’s magic up close. Some of the bitterest feuds among Porter researchers revolved around the matter of ghosts. There was no question that, in certain cases, something lingered on after death…but was it truly the spirit of the departed?

One school of thought argued that ghosts were nothing but memories given form by survivors. Living humans created ghosts through the mourning process, much as readers provided the belief libriomancers used for our magic. That theory had been mostly debunked, as there were documented cases of ghosts providing information the survivors shouldn’t have known.

Others believed that people with magical powers of their own could leave behind an “impression” of themselves, a kind of magical shadow. Unfortunately, the research had never found any statistically significant correlation between reports of ghosts and magical ability.

And then there was the theory that so-called mediums actually used a form of temporal projection, mentally reaching backward through time to read the minds of the deceased before they died. Given what I had seen and done yesterday in the woods, this line of thought held possibilities.

“How much time?” I asked.

Nicholas waved a hand. His skin reminded me of mildew-damaged paper.

Jeff’s upper lip curled back in distaste. “This place smells like blood, bleach, dog piss, and too many damn people.”

“Do any of those people smell like the man from the woods?” Nidhi asked. “If Victor left something behind, anyone from this family might have found it.”

“I can’t say for sure in this form.” From the front pocket of his jeans, Jeff tugged out a worn leather pouch. He picked at the knotted cord, then peeled back the pouch to reveal an object wrapped in black velvet. “Hold this.”

It was heavy and oblong, solid as stone beneath the wrap. I started to peek beneath the layers.

“Not yet, dammit.” Jeff finished unbuttoning his shirt and tossed it onto the floor. He kicked off his shoes, then unbuckled his belt. “The youngsters think it’s cool to keep their clothes on for the change, to burst through the seams like they do in the movies. The shredded shirt and jeans look is always in style, but then they figure out that not only are their parents going to make them pay for a new wardrobe, but shapeshifting in your clothes hurts. You ever tried to rip a pair of jeans with your bare hands? I’ve seen kids howling in pain, stuck between forms and desperately chewing at their own crotch, trying to tear out a stuck zipper.”

Age-spotted skin and tufts of white hair couldn’t conceal the lean strength in his chest and arms. And legs, for that matter. He kicked his shoes and jeans aside and dropped to all fours. Blue boxer shorts followed next.

“You brought me a werewolf strip show?” Deb smirked. “But I didn’t get you anything.”

“Now, if you wouldn’t mind,” said Jeff.

I tugged the wrappings loose. Silver light shone from between the layers. I slid the rest free to reveal a long, gleaming crystal attached to a loop of black leather. “Jeff, is this what I think it is?”

“Yah.” Black fur poked through Jeff’s skin. The sound of popping bones and tearing muscle made me wince. His next words were low and gravelly. “Kristen Britain, I think.”

“Green Rider, or one of the sequels. Dammit, Jeff, do you know how much trouble you could get in for this?” I was holding a moonstone. A muna’riel, to be precise. Britain’s Eletians, essentially an elven race, collected the light of the silver moon in these stones. The purity of the muna’riel made it an exceptional lantern, and the light tended to be off-putting to evil, which might explain why Nicholas was scowling at me. “I thought these things only worked for Eletians. Though I suppose if you pulled it from a scene in which it was already lit, you might be able to lock it into that state…”

“Don’t ask me. I never read the book.”

I could barely understand his words anymore. I didn’t ask him which libriomancer had reached into Britain’s books to create the stone, nor what Jeff had paid for it. The Porters kept a close eye on black-market magic, but they couldn’t catch everything.

Jeff snatched the crystal from me and looped it over his head. His fingers were curled and knotted. He was panting hard. Pointed teeth dug into his lip. He grabbed his hand and bent the fingers back with a grunt of pain. The knuckles cracked so loudly I thought he had broken his bones, and he gasped. He did the same to the other hand. His fingers finally shrank into furred, clawed toes.

“Damned arthritis.” Whatever else he might have said was lost as he finished his transformation into a lean, black-furred wolf. He lowered his gray-dusted muzzle to the floor and sniffed. His lips peeled back in a low growl.

“Oh, cool,” I said.

“What is it?” asked Lena.

“I can understand him.” Jeff wasn’t speaking a true language, but the fish in my head could pick up the thoughts behind his vocalizations. “He doesn’t think the family was involved, but whoever killed those wendigos was here. The scent is too faint for it to be someone who lived here.”

Jeff padded into the kitchen. Dirty dishes and pans filled the sink. Others were stacked in a wire rack to one side. A toddler and his mother slept at a round table, a half-eaten jar of applesauce between them. The toddler lay with his head on the tray, black hair full of food. Nidhi stroked the hair back from his face and used a napkin to wipe a chunk of applesauce from the side of his nose.

“One of ours died here,” Nicholas said, brushing his fingertips over the edge of the sink. He breathed deeply, like he was sniffing a fine wine. “She cried out in pain and anger.”

“Anyone else find this guy creepy as hell?” Lena asked in a low voice.

Nidhi, Deb, and I raised our hands. I glanced at Nicholas’ guards. With a shrug, Sarah raised her hand as well.

I had read the reports of Victor’s murder. He hadn’t died without a fight. His home was well-protected, and his tricks had taken several of his would-be killers with him. A long footnote on page three had proposed several explanations for the pair of fangs found in the garbage disposal, and recommended destroying the disposal altogether rather than attempting to study its magic. I swallowed and turned away. “We need to talk to him.”

“Patience, Isaac.” Nicholas closed his eyes and inhaled. His smile grew. “The instinct to survive is so strong. Stronger than love. Stronger than fear. Threaten a man’s life, and you push him to truly live.”

“That’s why you agreed to do this, isn’t it?” Nidhi asked. “To remember what life feels like. To touch what you lost.”

The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled, and for a moment his smile flickered. The amusement snapped back into place an instant later, along with a dismissive sneer. “You expect me to mourn my lost humanity? To weep for the forgotten days when I scurried about as one of you, an insect scavenging in the dirt?”

Deb cleared her throat. “Dr. Shah, please don’t play mind games with the sociopathic ghost-talker.”

“Victor fought well,” Nicholas said. “But he soon realized there were too many for him to defeat. That understanding broke his will. It marked the beginning of his death.”

“We didn’t bring you here to give you a peep show into Victor’s last moments,” I said tightly.

“No, you brought me because you need my help.” Nicholas turned. “There are too many dead. I have to find the moment the life left his body. Only then will he speak to me.” He scowled and crossed through the family room, then climbed the steps to the second floor. A narrow hallway separated two bedrooms on the left from the stairs and bathroom on the right. The right side of Nicholas’ face twitched as he looked about, his eyes tightening as if he could see through the walls. A moment later, he relaxed. “Ah, yes. Victor retreated to his workshop.”

Nicholas stepped down the hall and opened a door into a pink-painted bedroom. A rainbow-colored ceiling fan spun lazily overhead.

“Watch your step,” said Lena.

A young girl had stripped the blankets and pillows from her bed, turning them into a makeshift fort. She lay sleeping, a yellow pony clutched in one hand. From the array of toys spread through the room, it looked like the Jedi and the My Little Ponies had been fighting an army of Barbies and LEGO figures.

“Victor kills two more vampires here,” said Nicholas. “Metal creatures bore through the heart of the first, reducing him to ash, but Victor is injured. The life and will drain from his body with every step. Another vampire follows him into this room.” Nicholas stepped to the side, as if clearing a path for the phantom assailant. “Victor snaps his fingers, and the overhead light flickers. The vampire’s skin begins to sizzle.”

“Ultraviolet bulbs,” I guessed. They would have burned many species of vampire as effectively as sunlight. “Tell me about the metal creatures. How was Victor controlling them? Where did they come from, and how many were there?”

Nicholas ignored me. “Another enters through the window. His skin sparkles in the light. He smashes Victor into the wall. Pain and confusion flood Victor’s senses. He is angry. Frightened. He isn’t ready for death. There’s so much yet to do.”

“That sounds like Victor,” Nidhi said quietly.

Nicholas whirled. “Be silent!”

Nidhi jumped. Both guards moved in, and Jeff’s hackles rose, but I didn’t think Nicholas was talking to us. His attention was elsewhere, and he sounded genuinely angry.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Death attracts death. The ghosts are pulled to this place. They clamor like children.”

I looked to Deb, hoping she would know whether this was normal behavior or a sign that our ghost-talker was about to snap. She spread her hands and shrugged.

“Victor’s thoughts tunnel inward.” Nicholas’ words grew louder. “Why him? Why now? He doesn’t want to die alone.”

“Enough ghouling.” Deb swatted him on the back of the head like he was a misbehaving puppy. “Can you talk to the dead guy or not?”

“Yes,” Nicholas said grudgingly.

“Ask him about the insects,” I said.

Nicholas mumbled to himself, repeating the questions in another tongue. An old form of French, if I wasn’t mistaken. “He reverse-engineered one of Gutenberg’s automatons.”

Deb was the first to recover her voice. “He did what?”

“It’s all about miniaturization and user interface these days,” Nicholas said. The intonation was Victor’s. It was spooky. “Microscopic spells laser-etched onto the inner workings, telepathic interface, and as much memory and storage as I could give them.”

“Why?” I asked.

“To search out lost and forgotten magic. I sent six prototype scouts into the world. One was eaten by a bass. Another was struck by a locomotive. Three survived to report back, sharing their findings with the queen, and through her, with me.”

“A bass?” I thought back to the damage they had done to Lena’s tree. “That shouldn’t have stopped these things.”

“I could have ordered it to work free, but that would have hurt the fish.”

It was such a Victor thing to say, I couldn’t help but smile. “What about the sixth?”

“Lost overseas.” He shuddered, then stared blankly at the empty air where Victor had died.

“Tell us about the queen,” I said.

Nicholas relayed the question. “A cicada, three inches long, with carbon fiber wings and a titanium exoskeleton. A redundant twin-chip brain. The eyes were tiny black pearls. She was magnificent, Isaac. I wish I’d been able to show her off. You would have loved her.”

“The queen controls the other insects?” I asked.

“The song of the cicada can reach 120 decibels. My queen’s commands are silent to our ears, but her children can hear her even from the far side of the world.”

“What did you tell her as you were dying?” asked Nidhi.

Nicholas stepped back and seemed to come back to himself. “Victor cupped her in his hands.” He brought his own hands together, mimicking Victor’s final seconds. “Past and present flooded together as the barriers of memory crumbled. In his mind, he was a child once more. He was in pain, but didn’t remember where it had come from. He knew only that he wanted comfort. Like a child, he called out.”

“He wanted family,” Nidhi whispered, her words clipped. Her hands tightened into fists.

“Yes,” said Nicholas. “Victor sent the queen to fetch his father.”