Libriomancer

Chapter 15

If I had to choose the single most important moment of my life, the turning point that determined who and what I would become, it would be the day Ray Walker invited me to join the Porters. He had changed everything. Even as a cataloger, I had been a part of something magical. And now I had thrown that away.

I relived my conversation with Pallas again and again as I drove. I knew she was doing what she felt was right. She was playing by the rules, pulling me off the investigation until they could be certain I hadn’t been contaminated by whatever it was I had seen in Detroit. Or maybe, as Lena suggested, she was genuinely trying to protect me.

I stopped at a gas station to ask for directions to the nearest library, which turned out to be a small white building squeezed between the post office and the police department. I pulled into the parking lot and spent the next five minutes trying to bribe Smudge back into his cage. He was not happy about going back there, but leaving him loose in the car wasn’t a good idea, and I didn’t want to try to explain his presence to the local librarian.

“The Porters have spent four days looking for Jakob Hoffman,” Lena said as she followed me inside.

“I’m sure they’re doing the best they can.” I sat down in front of a public computer terminal and opened up the library’s catalog in one screen and an Internet browser in another. “But I know the other libriomancers in this area. One’s a mechanic. Another works for a museum. None of them are librarians.”

I flexed my fingers, doing everything I could to ignore the hollowness in my chest. “I need you to do me a favor.”

Lena settled into the chair beside me. “What is it?”

“Time me.” I attacked the keyboard, clicking between windows. An Internet search pulled up more than a thousand results for “Jakob Hoffman,” including a character from a 2010 movie and a rather embarrassing YouTube video. I clicked through page after page of results, but found nothing.

The library database was no better. Not that I had expected it to be quite that easy. The Porters had already looked for Hoffman and come up short.

I cleared the screen. I couldn’t count the number of times I had helped patrons track down ancestors on genealogy sites or locate long-lost classmates, and I had found books with far less information than a character’s name. I was a pretty good libriomancer, but I was a damn good librarian.

I pulled up online book distributor sites next. No luck. If Hoffman was a character, he wasn’t important enough to be included in the book’s summary. The bookstore databases didn’t give me any results either.

I sat back, steepling my fingers and glaring at the computer as if I could will it into giving me the information I wanted.

“Ten minutes.” Lena said, smiling oddly.

“What?”

“Did you know you bite your tongue when you’re concentrating?”

I very deliberately closed my mouth and tried the fanfiction sites next. Fanfic writers often wrote about secondary characters, but once again I came up empty.

“All right, let’s cheat.” I removed my necklace and placed the stone in the middle of the keyboard. The screen flickered, and then a new window appeared, giving me access to the Porters’ database. Not only could I search through our catalog, but the site gave me a back door into various other organizations’ data. I could check law enforcement to see if “Jakob Hoffman” had ever been used as an alias, or- “Shit!”

Black smoke poured out of the front of the computer. The screen popped and fizzed, the image shrinking to a single line of white light. The hard drive made a sound like someone had jammed a screwdriver into the spokes of a bicycle wheel.

The man behind the front desk hurried toward us. “What happened?”

The Porters had locked me out of the database. I picked up my necklace and stared at the orange stone which had been created specifically for me, giving me access to centuries of knowledge and records.

“Sir?” The man, whose ID card read “Ro,” leaned past me to try the keyboard.

“I don’t know what happened,” I said numbly. “It just died.”

“Did you spill anything?” He dropped below the desk and yanked the power cord, but foul-smelling black smoke continued to rise from the box. He leaned back and raised his voice. “Stacy, would you call J. J. and tell him to get up here?”

Pallas would have known I’d head straight to the library. She had probably killed my access before I even left the driveway… just as the rules required.

I blinked, ashamed to realize how close I was to tears. I stood and backed away, leaving the staff to worry about the now-useless computer. Useless unless you needed a boat anchor, maybe.

Lena touched my arm. “Porters?”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I jammed the necklace into my pants pocket and moved to another machine. With each breath, I pushed the grief back down until I could focus on the screen.

“Time?” I asked, my voice tight.

Lena glanced at the clock on the wall. “Fourteen minutes.”

The U.S. copyright database was no help. Nor were various social media sites. I checked phone directories as well, but my gut told me Jakob Hoffman wasn’t a real person. I had felt the different voices in that libriomancer’s head, lost and incomplete, struggling to survive in a world utterly different from the ones they were used to.

If Hoffman was a character, he had to be important enough for readers to identify with him, to believe in him. But he didn’t come up in any of the bookstore or publisher listings…

What if the author hadn’t used a regular publisher? I opened up a new window and began searching for blogs and review sites that specialized in self-published titles. “Bingo.”

“Twenty-four and a half minutes,” said Lena, leaning over my shoulder.

I was getting rusty. “Jakob Hoffman is the hero of a self-published World War II fantasy called V-Day. He’s an American soldier in Germany who discovers that Hitler is raising an army of vampires.” I jabbed a finger at the screen. “Hitler enslaves the vampires using a mystical silver cross.”

“Who wrote it?”

“The review doesn’t say. There’s no link, no ISBN or other information.” I couldn’t find a single copy available for sale online, new or used. The title wasn’t registered with the copyright office, the Library of Congress, or anywhere else. “This isn’t right. It’s like the author went out of their way to make it hard to track down a copy of the book.”

“Like they’re trying to hide it?”

Few self-published titles sold well enough to create the communal belief necessary for magic. This one obviously had, and had done so while bypassing traditional sales and distribution channels. That couldn’t be a coincidence. I sent a copy of the review to the library printer. “He wrote this book himself.”

“The other libriomancer?”

“To create a weapon.” I pulled up the library catalog again. “It breaks one of Gutenberg’s cardinal rules.”

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it had been common for libriomancers to double as writers, trying to create weapons and artifacts they could use. That experience had taught the Porters two important lessons. First, writing was harder than it looked. Second, and more importantly, the dangers of possession increased exponentially with books written by libriomancers. Something about our own magic infused the text, weakening the barriers between story and reality, and endangering any reader with the slightest bit of magical ability.

I jumped to my feet and headed for the science fiction and fantasy section of the library, moving with newfound determination.

“You think they’ll have a copy?” Lena asked doubtfully.

“Nope.” I skimmed the shelves until I got to the M’s. I pulled out a worn paperback of Robin McKinley’s Beauty.

“Are you going to explain, or are you going to grandstand?”

“A little of both.” I stepped deeper into the shelves, making sure nobody was watching. “This is McKinley’s retelling of Beauty and the Beast. In her version, the beast’s library contains a copy of every book ever written, past and future.”

McKinley wasn’t the only author to have imagined such a library, but the Porters had rules restricting the use of these titles. Some had been charred too badly to risk using them again, while others were supposed to be preserved for emergencies. Normally, I would have needed to write a three-page requisition to use this one, but there were advantages to being a freelancer. The Porters would come after me if I proved a danger, but I should be able to get away with minor tricks.

I skimmed to the library scene and reached into the beast’s castle, concentrating on the title I wanted.

“How do you create a book you’ve never read?” asked Lena.

“Remind me later, and I’ll give you a copy of Price’s treatises on metamagical manifestation. In brief, we can’t create ‘future’ titles. The book has to exist in our world.” Two libriomancers had been disciplined for trying to get an early copy of the last Harry Potter book. “It’s all about resonance. I know the book I want, and magical resonance allows me to create a clone of the work from existing copies. At least, that’s Price’s theory.”

I held my breath and grabbed what felt like a slim trade paperback. I turned it sideways, tugged it free, and showed it to Lena with a flourish. “Be honest. Don’t I deserve a little grandstanding?”

“Read first. Grandstand later.”

I shoved V-Day into my jacket, reshelved Beauty in the proper spot, and followed her toward the door. There were now three people hunched over the corpse of the computer I had fried, like necromancers trying to resurrect a corpse.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Ro waved my apology away. “Not your fault. It looks like the power supply shorted out, fried the whole thing.”

His cheerfulness only made me feel worse, and I grabbed a bookmark with the library’s information on the way out. Once I got back home, I’d send them a check to try to cover the damage I had caused.

I wondered if Pallas had canceled the grant that covered my salary, or if she’d leave that alone until it expired at the end of the next fiscal year. Either way, this library didn’t deserve to take the hit for my mistake.

But first, I was going to find this bastard.

“Where do we go next?” Lena asked.

“I don’t know yet.” I flipped to the copyright page. “Listen to this. ‘This work is copyright Charles de Guerre, and may not be reproduced, quoted, sold, or reviewed under penalty of law.’ Someone doesn’t get how copyright law works, but it might have helped him hide the book from Porter catalogers.”

“Guerre is French for war, right?”

“This isn’t his real name. A nom de guerre is another term for a pseudonym.” I checked the back of the book. “There’s nothing to indicate where the book was printed. Mister de Guerre didn’t want anyone tracking him down.” I gnawed on my lower lip as I studied the name. “Keep an eye out for a bookstore.”

I watched her drive, her attention focused entirely on the road. Now that she knew Nidhi Shah was alive and human, she had no need of me. Did I change from a potential mate to simply another human, like moving a file from one drawer to another?

Or was she simply pretending, hiding her feelings for me so that she could return to her lover when this was all over? I thought back to the way she had watched me in the library. I almost asked, then thought better of it. Shah was alive, and Lena loved her. As for me… I would do whatever it took to make her happy. She deserved that much.

I adjusted my seat back and examined the book more closely. I had seen some gorgeous self-published books in my time. This was not one of them. The cover photo was dark and pixelated, and the interior font was several sizes too large. The whole thing was just under three hundred pages.

The first chapter introduced Jakob Hoffman as the typical white, American everyman, born in 1925 on an Iowa farm that had been in his family for three generations. The day he turned seventeen, he kissed his perfect girlfriend good-bye and walked six miles to enlist in the Army.

I skimmed through the next few chapters until the first monsters appeared. There was no complexity or depth to de Guerre’s vampires. They were evil, soulless creatures who delighted in blood and death: the perfect complement to Hitler’s Nazi army. The writing was rather dialogue-heavy, but overall the book was better than I had expected. The battle scenes, in particular, were quite strong, written with gritty, vivid detail that suggested de Guerre had done his research.

I continued to skip ahead, scanning the pages for words like “vampire” and “magic.” I stopped on chapter twelve and read more closely. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Only one?”

“Hitler gets his hands on an artifact called the Silver Cross, an angelic tool created by God and used by the Church during the Crusades.” I cleared my throat and read from Hitler’s monologue. “Handed down to King Richard the Lionhearted by the archangel Michael, the cross gives the wielder power over all unnatural creatures. The hellbred spawn of Satan shall be transformed into an army of righteousness, kneeling before he who carries God’s almighty blessing! His servants shall look through the eye of the cross and see God’s true glory.”

“Unnatural creatures,” Lena repeated. “Like me.”

Or the manananggal we had seen in the Detroit nest. I closed the book, marking my spot with one finger. “Hitler’s forces were primarily made up of vampires, but they also included ghosts, werewolves, and more.”

“Can you create your own version of the cross to fight back? Free his servants, or turn them against him?”

“Normally, yes. The book provides a template, so a libriomancer could theoretically make as many copies of the cross as they wanted. At least until the book charred and they lost control of its magic. But not in this case.” I flipped to an earlier chapter. “Jakob’s character has a vision the first time he touches the cross. There’s a flashback to King Richard receiving the cross from the archangel, who warns him not to try to understand or duplicate its power. ‘Remember the lesson of Babel. God’s mysteries are His alone. This is the one true cross, the weapon of the almighty and His faithful. Should any attempt to re-create it, His wrath shall cause the fraudulent cross to sear him with the fires of Hell itself.’ Charles de Guerre, or whoever he is, deliberately wrote this book so that only one cross could exist at a time. If I try to make another, it will come with its own self-destruct mechanism.”

I flipped to the front of the book. The copyright was dated last year. How many copies had he printed in that time? A few hundred? A thousand? There was no price, because he wouldn’t have tried to sell them. This wasn’t about profit; it was about getting the book into the hands of as many readers as possible so he could access the book’s magic. He would have given them away to readers most likely to appreciate the story. “Hitler uses the cross to command an army. Our libriomancer has only enslaved a handful of individual vampires, suggesting the book’s magic is still limited.”

“How long until he’s up to full strength?”

“The equations are messy. It depends on how strongly the readers believe, and whether those readers have any magical ability themselves. Time is also a factor. Belief fades over time, though there’s no consistent half-life. A thousand people reading a book in a year will create a stronger cumulative belief than if the same number read it over a decade.”

Lena swerved across two lanes and onto the exit ramp, earning a yelp from me and an angry puff of smoke from Smudge. I started to protest, but she cut me off. “You said you needed a bookstore, right?”

The store she had spied was tucked into a shopping center. Much of the store’s space had been taken over by toys, videos, and electronics. I strode past the science fiction and fantasy section, heading for astrology and new age.

Lena gave me a skeptical look as I plucked a book from the top shelf. “ The Ancient Wisdom of Crystals? That stuff actually works?”

“Libriomancy is all about belief. Most crystals don’t have any inherent magical power, but the ones in here…” I checked the front matter. “This is the sixth printing. That should be more than enough for what I need.”

I paid cash for the book and hurried out the door, reading as I walked. A car honked, and Lena yanked me back to the curb so they could pass. “Eyes up, genius.”

I did my best to split my attention between the book and the cars. By the time we reached the Triumph, I had found what I needed.

“Unakite,” I said, skimming the description. “A more recent mystical discovery, unakite crystals affect the heart chakra, lifting the blackness from your heart. Holding this stone will also allow you to see through deception.” I grabbed V-Day from the front seat. “A pseudonym is just another form of deception.”

I concentrated. This was harder than pulling swords from a fantasy novel. I didn’t actually believe in the power of crystals, not the way I believed in stories. I had to overcome my own skepticism in order to access the book’s magic, which took a while. But eventually, I managed to retrieve a long, hexagonal crystal, pointed on one end like a fat, stubby pencil.

The stone was polished liquid smooth. The facets were mottled orange and dark green. I set The Ancient Wisdom of Crystals on the floor and picked up V-Day, turning to the copyright page. Gripping the crystal in one hand, I read the name.

“Well?”

The letters blurred as if I was looking through water. I squinted, clutching the stone and concentrating. “Charles… Humphrey. No, Hubert.” The letters continued to come into focus. “Charles Hubert!” I slammed the book shut and crowed, “And that is why you don’t kick the librarian off the investigation!”

“You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Showing off.” She started the engine.

“Damn right I am.”

We stopped at an Internet cafe and coffee shop outside of Gary, Indiana, and sat down for another round of research. Lena squeezed in beside me in a partitioned space with a flat-screen monitor, grungy keyboard and mouse, and a laminated menu tacked to the wall.

One hour and two lattes later, I pushed the keyboard away and rubbed my eyes. Lena appeared untouched by fatigue as she read, her body close enough to mine that I could feel her warmth. She was the first to voice what we were both thinking. “Charles Hubert isn’t a murderer.”

Hubert had been easy enough to find, though there was nothing online about his current address or location. I had pulled up no fewer than a dozen newspaper articles, all between twenty and twenty-four months old. I clicked the one from a Jackson, Michigan paper which read Wounded Veteran Returns Home from Afghanistan. “He was in Iraq twice, and this was his second rotation in Afghanistan. He volunteered to go back.”

“Forty-nine years old,” Lena read. “They sent him home after a rocket-propelled grenade hit his convoy.”

“He received multiple commendations.” I clicked the photo, pulling up a larger image. I pointed to the bandages that covered much of his head. “The man I saw had a scar. He’s skinnier now, but this is him.” Two years ago, he had been a decorated soldier and, from all accounts, a decent man. What had happened to transform him into a possessed murderer?

Lena reached over my hand, clicking on a different article. I did my best not to respond to the touch of her skin on mine, or the way our thighs and hips pressed together as we worked. “He used to work at an independent bookstore in Jackson, Michigan.”

A perfect job for a libriomancer. Only I knew the name of every Porter in the Midwest, and I had never heard of Hubert. Even if he wasn’t formally trained, anyone messing with magic earned a visit from the Porters. How had Hubert mastered libriomancy while completely avoiding our radar?

“Head injuries can lead to personality changes,” Lena suggested. “The man suffered a crushed skull. He’s got an eight-centimeter metal plate in his head. There’s no way he came out of that without damage to the brain. Add the psychological effects of the attack: post-traumatic stress, the horror of seeing two of your buddies torn apart in front of you-”

“That wouldn’t explain the magic. I’ve read of rare cases where brain damage wiped out someone’s ability to perform magic, but never the reverse.” I glared at the screen. “We need access to his medical records.” Normally I would have used the Porter database as a gateway into the military and hospital systems, but I had already blown up one computer today.

Lena pointed to a paragraph buried midway down the article to a quote from Margaret Hubert, thanking God for bringing her son home alive. “Let’s ask Mom.”