by Jim C. Hines
When I entered the house again, the crackle of bone and popping joints filled the room. Jeff had managed to tug off the moonstone necklace. It was glowing beneath the couch where he must have kicked it to block the light. When he finished wrenching himself back to human form, he collapsed into an old recliner and started pulling on his underwear and pants.
I grabbed my jacket from the floor, pulled Time Kings from one of my pockets to fix my gun, then froze. Mister Sanchez was staring at us from the hallway. The black Lab cowered behind his legs.
I watched as he gathered his courage. His hands were shaking, but he straightened and stepped closer. “What are you?”
Nidhi spun. “I asked you to stay in the bathroom, Laszio.”
He stared at the broken window and door, the bloodstained carpet, and the ruins of the yard and street outside. “This is about the man who used to live here? The one who was murdered.”
“Yes,” said Nidhi.
He gave a small nod, looking simultaneously grateful and frightened by her honesty.
“We’ll find a way to cover the damages,” I said softly. If the Porters wouldn’t take care of this, then I would, and to hell with the rules. There were plenty of books I could use to produce everything from gold to gemstones.
His attention flitted about, stopping briefly with Jeff, then moving to Lena and her broken sword, and finally to me. His gaze dipped to Smudge. “Your spider. Is it on fire?”
I looked down. “A little bit, yeah.”
“Laszio, look at me.” Nidhi moved to impose herself between him and the rest of us. “We came here because of Victor Harrison, but this fight wasn’t about him. It was about us. You and your family will be safe once we’re gone.”
He managed a nervous smile. “No offense intended, Doctor Shah, but if that is the case, I hope you’ll leave quickly.”
“We will,” Nidhi promised.
And once we were gone, Nicola would send someone to alter the family’s memories, just as easily as a Hollywood writer reworked a script. Just as Deb was manipulating the minds of the police outside, burying the truth beneath layers of magical falsehoods.
“He’s a fire-spider. His name is Smudge.” I think the words surprised me as much as anyone else. Nidhi gave me a sharp look, but didn’t argue when I lifted Smudge’s cage to eye level. With my other hand, I grabbed the Red Hots. “I created him when I was in high school. He’s saved my life several times.”
I brought a candy to the edge of the cage and waited for Smudge to snatch it up.
Laszio took a half-step closer, the fear in his eyes joined by a glimmer of curiosity. “He eats junk food?”
“Every chance he gets,” I said. “He loves chocolate, but that can get messy. He tends to melt it, and you end up with stains all over the carpet.”
Laszio looked down at the bloody, blackened carpet. “Yes. We wouldn’t want that.”
He sounded so serious, and I laughed before I could stop myself. He joined in a moment later, though I think it was more a release of fear and exhaustion than humor.
“The fire,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt him?”
“It’s how he protects himself. How he protects me and helps me to stop people like the ones who attacked your home.”
“I don’t understand.” Laszio kept watching as Smudge devoured his treat.
“I know,” said Nidhi. “Neither did I, the first time I saw something like this. You’re handling it far better than I did.”
I doubted that, but I didn’t say anything. Instead, I returned Smudge’s cage to my hip and opened Time Kings. Laszio flinched when I lifted the gun. He looked back to the hall, and I knew he was thinking about his wife and children.
“It’s all right.” I shoved the gun back into the pages, letting the words and images of the readers transform the weapon from an empty relic back into a fully-charged shock-gun. “This is what we do.”
“Ay dios mio,” he whispered. Both Nidhi and Lena were watching him very closely now, ready to intervene if he lost it. “Those creatures outside. What did they want?”
“You should see to your family,” Nidhi interrupted. “Reassure them. We will be gone very soon, and I promise we’ll make sure you’re safe.”
I took that as my cue. “Lena and Jeff, could you come with me? We need to inspect every house on this street to make sure Harrison’s swarm left with him.”
I pocketed the shock-gun. Deb appeared to have things under control outside. One of the police cars was already pulling away, its sirens dark.
“Why did you tell him about Smudge?” Lena asked as we exited the house.
“Because it didn’t matter.” I was surprised at the anger boiling up inside me. “Because we’re going to rip every memory of today from his head. Not to protect them, but to protect us.”
They wouldn’t remember what had happened, but we couldn’t completely erase the trauma. Even after we stole their memories, they would be exhausted and jumpy for a long time.
Lena stopped at the end of the driveway to pick up the broken mailbox. She twisted the post free and turned it in her hands, shaping it into a serviceable club. Then she looked back at the house. She stood there for so long I thought something was wrong. Had she spotted one of Harrison’s bugs? But when I touched her shoulder, she merely turned to kiss my cheek. “I think you’re wrong,” she said softly. “I think it did matter.”
None of the neighbors had emerged to see what was happening. I took that to mean they hadn’t yet woken from Sarah’s magic slumber. Smudge didn’t turn into a fireball when we entered the first house, which was another encouraging sign.
“Do you think the automaton will be able to stop them?” Lena asked.
I thought about August Harrison and his swarm, the half-breed wendigos, and the ghosts that had devoured our magic. “No.”
Report Number: NS-US5-194
Submitted by: Nidhi Shah, MD, PhD
Location: Mason, Michigan
Subject Name: Lena Greenwood
Description: Ms. Greenwood is a physically healthy Caucasian female, approximately five foot six inches. She appears to be in her late thirties to early forties. She is overweight, but not obese. Her skin lacks any visible blemishes or wrinkles. Based on her account of the work she performed on Frank Dearing’s farm, she is significantly stronger than she appears.
Magical Assessment: The two field agents, John Senn and Michael Angell, concur that Lena is a dryad of some sort, though her appearance and abilities differ significantly from the descriptions of known dryads in the Porter database. Lena has demonstrated the ability to manipulate her tree’s roots to fight back after being struck by an ax. She showed no sensitivity to cold, despite the low temperatures.
Angell and Senn were able to unearth Frank Dearing’s remains after Lena had been removed from the scene. While multiple eyewitness claim that Mr. Dearing was alive one week ago, his body had decomposed to little more than a skeleton. Angell used magic to verify that this was indeed Frank Dearing. It would appear that Lena’s tree somehow consumed him.
Lena’s love for Frank Dearing comes across as genuine. I’m uncertain whether the tree acted independently, or if Lena simply doesn’t recognize what she had done to Mr. Dearing.
While Lena shows little awareness of the passage of time and even less understanding of the world around her, both her recollections and the information we gathered from Marion Dearing suggest Lena was living with Frank for at least forty years, which would make her a minimum of sixty years old. If so, she has aged extremely well.
Psychological Assessment: Lena Greenwood is in many ways a child, isolated from the world, and knowing little beyond her life with Frank Dearing. Her eagerness for attention and affection make me suspect she may have been badly deprived of both while growing up, though she hasn’t yet shared any information about her childhood.
She spoke freely of her relationship, describing the details of her sexual activities with Dearing as casually as she recounted the l
ast breakfast she prepared for him. I’ve observed no sign of duplicity. On the contrary, she has been eager to share with me, though she remains wary of other Porters. I would estimate her I.Q. to be significantly below average, perhaps to the point of mild disability, though I’ll need to run a number of tests to confirm.
She talked about the temptation to remain in her tree and “go deeper.” Given her grief and obvious fear of life without Frank Dearing, I believe Lena to be a very real suicide risk. I am requesting temporary reassignment to help her acclimate to the larger world.
Threat Risk: I disagree with the report prepared by field agent Angell. I do not believe Lena Greenwood poses a threat to the Porters or to humanity. While she has demonstrated a willingness to use her abilities to protect herself, I believe her essential nature is that of peace.
WE FOUND HARRISON’S INSECTS in the five houses closest to the Sanchez family. The insects weren’t asleep, exactly, and they reacted when we approached, but they were sluggish, refusing to stray very far from their chosen hostages. Lena clubbed most of the insects into scrap. I caught two more with a hammer I picked up from the garage of the second house.
We got back to find Nidhi hauling the spare tire out of the trunk of her car. The rear tire had been blown apart in the fighting. The driver’s side window was broken as well. Nidhi gave me a look, but didn’t say anything.
On the bright side, having a Renfield around made it a lot easier to change a tire. Who needed a jack when Deb could lift the car with her bare hands? Lena helped with the tire while I swept out the pebbles of glass the best I could.
Deb stepped back, brushed her hands on her pants, and folded her arms. “The head bloodsuckers in Detroit aren’t going to be happy about losing Nicholas and Sarah.”
“I’m not thrilled either.” I didn’t remind her that Harrison had killed Moon as well. Or maybe she remembered, and the vampires simply didn’t mind losing that particular sparkler.
I grabbed Heinlein’s Friday from my jacket. The vampires had taken care of their side of the bargain, after all. The Shipstone battery I created was no larger than my wallet. It could light the entire vampire city, deep in the underground salt mines, but it might not be enough to make up for the death of three of their number. “Be careful.”
“Don’t worry about me, hon. Anyone asks, I’m putting all the blame on you.” Deb shoved the Shipstone into her pants pocket. “Watch your back. And give me a call if you change your mind about wanting a few extra years of reading and study.”
We waited for the first of the Porters’ clean-up crew to arrive. A pair of fresh-faced field agents nodded a greeting, then set about erasing our mess. One strode into the Sanchez house as if he owned it, while the other used some kind of purple crystal to search for fragments of magic, like the expended pellets from my shock-gun.
Once we were back on the road, I examined a handful of fragmented insect parts: wings and shells, mostly, along with a few gears, a bit of wire that might have been an antenna, and a pair of oversized grasshopper legs. I squinted through my enchanted sunglasses, but the scraps were magically dead.
We knew where the bugs had come from, but where had Harrison found his accomplices? How had he persuaded them to help him butcher wendigos? More importantly, what did they all want? Harrison was motivated by power, but what did he hope to do with his magically-boosted brute squad?
And why come after me? If he had gotten into Victor’s system, he could have tracked down any Porter he wanted, but I hadn’t heard of any other break-ins. Harrison had come to the U.P. and hacked my computer. I looked out the rear window toward Lena, thinking of my private notes. There were things I had learned about her that I refused to share even with the Porters.
If August Harrison had found those files, it would take time to decrypt them, but if he was even half as smart as his son had been, he would get there eventually. Whether or not he could do anything with that information was another question. He had no direct magical ability. I had no idea what else his would-be libriomancers could do.
I called Nicola Pallas. “The serenade worked beautifully, thank you. Please tell me the automaton has Harrison and his friends.”
“Not yet.”
“Dammit.”
Jeff turned in his seat. “What’s taking so long? I thought those things were supposed to be unstoppable.”
“Not exactly,” Nidhi said mildly. “Isaac destroyed four earlier this year.”
Jeff cocked his head and stared at me like I had just turned into a were-rabbit. Admittedly, this was a tremendous improvement over wanting to tear me limb from limb. “Well, shave my ass and call me a poodle. How the hell did you manage that?”
“You have to know how they think.” Which August might also know, depending on what he had gotten out of my computer. This just got better and better. To Nicola, I said, “Why doesn’t it materialize in front of their truck, punch out the engine, and be done with it?”
“As far as we’ve been able to determine, the automaton is having trouble seeing them.”
Perfect. “I need to talk to Gutenberg. The people August had with him were using magic I’d never seen or read about before.”
“Hold on.”
I’ll say this much about Nicola: she was efficient. It couldn’t have been more than five seconds before my phone beeped.
“What have you learned?” asked Johannes Gutenberg. It was his customary greeting. Never “Hello, Isaac,” or “Great job cleaning up that will-o’-the-wisp situation at the strip club last month, Isaac.” All he cared about was whatever new knowledge I had uncovered, whether it was the innermost secrets of a forgotten branch of Egyptian magic or the extra ingredient Loretta Trembath used for her spicy Cudighi.
I had never been able to describe Gutenberg’s accent. I would have expected his words to be colored by his upbringing, but I heard no trace of Germanic when he spoke. Instead, his voice was simply…precise. Every word, every syllable was carefully chosen and articulated. It made sense when I thought about it. How many languages had he learned and relearned over his lifetime?
“August Harrison has help,” I said. “Three people, all young and Asian in appearance. They used books to absorb or dissipate magic. I think the books held some kind of ghost that diluted or consumed whatever we threw at them.”
“Describe these ghosts,” Gutenberg said sharply.
I did the best I could, beginning with Nicholas’ complaints about other ghosts. Nidhi and Jeff chipped in additional details. “Who the hell are these people? You said you sent me the full, uncensored history of the Porters for— For my research project. There was nothing about this style of magic.”
“Tell me about the books.”
I closed my eyes. “They were hardcovers. Larger than most modern books. Quartos, maybe, bound in red cloth or leather. They looked like something you’d keep in the rare books section of a library.” But such uncommon or one-of-a-kind editions shouldn’t work for libriomancy. Books had to be mass-produced to build up the cumulative belief and power you needed for magic. “I didn’t see any embossing on the cover. The pages looked yellowed.”
“Did you see what language the books were written in?”
Was I imagining the urgency in his words? “I didn’t get close enough.”
“It’s not libriomancy,” Gutenberg said quietly.
I waited for him to explain. Eventually, I started to realize I could be waiting a very long time. “Then what is it?”
“I’m not sure.”
I didn’t buy it. He might not know for certain, but he wouldn’t be this pensive if he didn’t have suspicions. “So guess, dammit.”
The silence that followed gave me time to realize I was barking orders at the founder of the Porters, a man with five hundred years of magical experience who could probably fry me through this phone without a second thought. I saw Nidhi’s hands tense on the wheel, and even Jeff gave me a small shake of his head.
“I won’t know anything for cer
tain until you bring me back their books.”
I forced myself to count to ten, in Latin, before responding. I should have gone to at least thirty. “You remember I’m a researcher now, not a field agent, right?”
“You are whatever I order you to be, Isaac Vainio. The Porters are not your personal social club. We are a guild, bound to a purpose, and I am master of that guild. I’ve given you a great deal of leeway, due to your contributions and potential. But there are limits to my patience.”
“Yes, sir.” The words slipped out automatically in response to his unspoken threat. “But can’t the automaton bring back whatever you need?”
“Normally, yes.” His anger shifted into frustration. “However, as near as I can determine, my automaton is stuck. I’ll send you the location.”
“Stuck?”
“Locked up. Paralyzed. Bluescreened. Frozen.”
“How?”
“Presumably your friends with their book-ghosts have found a way to throw a wrench into my magic.”
“Are you serious?” The words slipped out before I could stop them. “If these people can overpower your spells, what exactly do you expect me to do?”
“Improvise. As you did before.”
Take control of the automaton. I shook my head. “Lena and I both could have died last time.”
“Then find a better tactic. Our enemies have shown themselves to be exceptionally good at avoiding detection. We may not have another opportunity. If you strike now, while their efforts are concentrated on containing and depowering the automaton, you may not need such extreme measures.”
“All right.” I took a deep breath. “Any other advice?”
