by Jim C. Hines
“Can she do that?” asked Jackson.
Behind him, the armillary sphere reconfigured itself in response to his question. A brief exchange between Jackson and Bi Wei over the date of Jackson’s birth confirmed the answer: Yes.
“She’s desperate,” said Ponce de Leon. “We know Lena can survive the death of her oak. If we strike quickly enough—”
“Are you that confident you can destroy the sphere before she looses her army?” I asked. “And what about Jeneta?” I spun to face the desk. “If we destroy the sphere, will Jeneta Aboderin be harmed?”
Yes.
“Will she die?” I pressed.
The sphere didn’t respond.
“Jeneta is one child.” Ponce de Leon raised his cane like a baseball bat, and for a second I thought he meant to physically smash the sphere. Instead, he rested it on his shoulder and sighed. “We might yet find another way to rescue her, but if we can’t, she’s too dangerous a weapon to leave in Meridiana’s hands.”
“She’s not a weapon,” I shot back. Nobody answered. They didn’t have to. With the exception of Jackson, we all knew what Meridiana had accomplished with Jeneta’s magic.
“Is Meridiana’s offer of a truce genuine?” Nidhi spoke so quietly I almost missed it, but the sphere heard.
Yes.
“If Meridiana releases the Ghost Army now, will she be able to control them?” I didn’t know which possibility was more frightening.
No.
Ponce de Leon swore under his breath.
“We’re at a stalemate,” I said. “We’ve got Meridiana’s life in our hands, and she has the Ghost Army.” As well as Jeneta and Lena’s oak. To the sphere, I asked, “Can you hear us if we move into the hallway and shut the door?” The archive was both physically and magically soundproofed, but we didn’t know the sphere’s full abilities.
No.
I kissed Lena on the forehead and stood up, leaving her with Nidhi. I tapped Ponce de Leon and Nicola, who followed me out of the room.
“You have an idea?” asked Ponce de Leon once the door was closed behind us.
“Maybe.” I turned to Nicola. “Who took over tech support for the Porters after Victor died?”
“Kirsten LaMontagne.”
I didn’t know the name. “Meridiana is using Jeneta’s magic. Together, they’re working libriomancy beyond anything I’ve seen, but it’s still done through e-books and other electronics. Her monsters? Transformed using books from her e-reader. The devourers she sent through the television in Chicago? She probably uploaded them somehow.”
“Where are you going with this?” asked Ponce de Leon.
I smiled. “Ask Kirsten how close I’d have to get to hack Jeneta’s e-reader.”
If I hadn’t known how much trouble was waiting at my house, Smudge would have warned me. The closer Lena and I got, the more he flattened himself against the floor of his cage, red flames rippling over his back like the northern lights.
“What the hell?” Parked cars lined my street, most of them clustered directly in front of my place. A few had pulled onto the grass, and a white news van blocked the driveway. I had to drive to the end of the block to park the Jeep. “This doesn’t look good.”
“Meridiana is in my grove.” Lena had stopped sweating, but her face remained pale. “There’s a crowd. I can feel their feet on my roots.”
“The Ghost Army?” I checked my shock-gun out of habit, reached for Smudge’s cage, then changed my mind. Bringing Smudge along wouldn’t warn us of anything we didn’t already know. It would simply put him in danger, too.
“I can’t tell.”
As we walked back to the house, I searched the street for the Porters who were supposed to be watching the place. I didn’t find them.
Lena readied a single bokken, leaving the second thrust through her belt. I switched my gun to a lower setting, one that would stun but not kill. None of our weapons were likely to do much against Meridiana herself, but hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
A familiar, shrouded figure approached us on the street. I fought the urge to look away. So long as the burqa hid the gorgon’s gaze, we were safe. Lena and I spread apart as we walked, wordlessly preparing to hit the gorgon from both sides should things go wrong.
“Hello, Deanna,” I said.
“Deanna?” Lena repeated.
“That was her name, back when she was a Porter. Before Meridiana killed her. Deanna tried to warn me about Meridiana’s angel, back in Rome.”
The gorgon turned to me. “Meridiana asked me to give you this.” Her slender, jaundiced hand offered an old e-reader.
I checked the monochrome display, but didn’t touch it. “Douglas Adams?”
“This is for your protection.” Her words were like honey and tea, sweet and seductive, with a thick Texan drawl. You barely noticed the shifting and hissing of her hair. “I’m told the effect is called a ‘somebody else’s problem’ field. Stay close to the reader, and nobody else should pay any attention to your presence.” She stood motionless for several seconds, like she was listening. “Your phone. Please turn it off.”
“No way. I’ve got an open connection to Nicola Pallas. If that call goes dead, so does Meridiana.”
“All right.” She motioned for me to take the e-reader.
I hesitated, but if Meridiana wanted to kill us, she didn’t need to trick me into taking an e-book to do it. My fingers brushed Deanna’s. Her skin was hot and dry. I wondered if she was warm or cold-blooded. Between the sun and the burqa, she couldn’t have been comfortable.
“Do you remember who you were?” asked Lena.
She stopped in midstep and studied Lena closely. “Do you?”
Deanna led us around the house. A little over a month ago, Jeneta Aboderin and I had sat on the deck discussing dreams and magic and poetry. Now Meridiana waited before a crowd in front of the oaks. Her angel perched twenty feet up, white wings outstretched among the branches.
Meridiana looked much as she had the last time I saw her. She wore a pink-and-white leather jacket with fake jewels decorating the sleeves. I assumed they were fake, at least. Colorful plastic beads clicked at the end of her braids. She stood upon a tangle of roots, giving her an extra foot of height over the crowd. Her own e-reader was clutched in her left hand.
“There are forty or so people here,” I muttered for Nicola’s benefit. “Including a news crew near the front.” Their camera was rolling. Jeneta’s parents would see this. What was I supposed to tell them when they called?
Lena and I each held one end of the older e-reader, but that didn’t stop Jeneta—Meridiana—from spotting us. She gave a brief nod of acknowledgment, then addressed the crowd. “If you had a plentiful supply of water and came across a man dying of thirst, would you refuse to offer him a drink? Would you stand by and watch him expire?”
The angry muttering made me suspect Meridiana had been working them for a while, stoking their emotions. I couldn’t tell if she was using magic to strengthen her influence.
Deanna wove through the crowd and slipped between the trees of the grove, disappearing into the shadows.
“Magic is not a thing to be feared,” Meridiana continued. “The world is sick, starving for hope. How many people have died in conflicts that could have been solved with magic? How many loved ones have you lost to disease and death? There is a vacuum, an emptiness in the world where magic was always meant to exist. Thanks to those who hoard their secret power, that void has come to be filled by suffering and despair.”
The worst part was that I couldn’t entirely disagree. Obviously, things weren’t as simple as she made it sound. Magic brought new dangers of its own. And yet the Porters had the ability to help so many people . . .
I glanced down at my phone and activated the app Kirsten had e-mailed me. It immediately began pinging for other devices. It picked up a number of other smartphones as well as the neighbors’ wireless modem, but I didn’t see Jeneta’s e-reader on the list yet.
Meridiana raised her hands to quiet the crowd’s anger. “The men and women who kept this secret are human, just as you and me. We are all flawed beings under God. But their flaws have brought the world to the edge of damnation. You know of the Porters, I assume?”
Shouts of affirmation and accusation. By now, everyone had seen or heard about Bi Wei’s letter.
“The Porters have unearthed an artifact from a thousand years ago, a prison for unimaginably powerful souls, ghosts who would devour this world.”
She looked at me when she said “devour.” My nails dug into my skin. Jeneta was the one who had coined the term “devourers” for the Ghost Army, during a conversation here in my backyard.
“I can protect this town. I can prevent another massacre like the one you suffered before.” Meridiana pointed to the angel. “This is Binion, a friend who found the courage to leave the Porters to help me do what’s right. He, Deanna, and a handful of other courageous souls will do everything in their power to stop an even greater threat.”
What I wanted was to send a bolt of lightning into Meridiana’s lying mouth. But their magic was strong enough to deflect or dissolve anything I could throw their way, and in the unlikely chance something did get through, it would hurt Jeneta more than Meridiana. Binion hadn’t chosen to leave the Porters. Meridiana would have battled him to exhaustion, transformed his body, and ripped out his mind, replacing him with one of her ghosts. Whoever he had once been was gone, either dead or sent to join Meridiana’s ghosts, to be tormented in his afterlife until nothing remained but power and madness.
“The Porters hope to use this prison on me, to bind me with the mindless souls of the dead. And then they would destroy it.” She raised her voice, and her next words sounded like she was standing right beside me. “I brought you here to warn you. If the Porters destroy the sphere, they will release an army of ghosts upon the world with no one to control them. Whatever your fears, nothing would be worse than such unchecked chaos and death. They will destroy everything and everyone they touched.”
“Do you think she’s right?” Lena whispered. “Would destroying the sphere free the Ghost Army?”
“I don’t know.” Meridiana knew her prison better than anyone. She might be bluffing, but she had to know we’d use the sphere to confirm anything she said. Which suggested she was telling the truth. I raised my phone. “Nicola, could you relay that question to the sphere?”
“What is that angel thing?” asked a man near the front of the crowd. “Is it safe?”
“He is exactly what he appears to be.” Meridiana extended a hand.
Binion’s wings stirred powerful gusts of air as he dropped to the ground beside Meridiana. He towered over the girl like a god. People near the back shoved to try to get a better view.
“Magic is real.” Meridiana tilted her e-reader and tapped the screen. “If Binion’s presence doesn’t convince you, perhaps this will.”
She began to read. I couldn’t understand the language—Italian, maybe?—nor could I sense the magic itself. But I felt its effects. Her spell stirred a sense of longing, reminiscent of the siren’s song, though thankfully not as potent. Her intonation changed, and now laughter spread through us all. I found myself grinning as well.
Without magic of my own, there wasn’t a damned thing I could do to fight it. Plugging my ears didn’t stop her spells from penetrating my body and manipulating my emotions. Bi Wei and Ponce de Leon had shielded my memories of their location, nothing more.
The next spell evoked rage. Meridiana cut it off after only a few seconds, but it was enough to bring several people to blows. I realized I had turned my shock-gun to maximum and brought it to bear on Meridiana.
“That was no sleight of hand,” said Meridiana. To the camera, she added, “Those of you watching on your televisions will have felt only an echo of my power.”
An echo which hadn’t entirely faded, or maybe the angry thudding of my pulse was the aftermath of adrenaline. I slowed my breathing, trying to calm myself enough to think clearly. I needed to get close enough for my phone to connect to Meridiana’s primary e-reader.
Meridiana bowed her head. “Isaac Vainio was given the gift of libriomancy, the magic of books. He could have used that magic to help you all. Instead, he brought the Porters’ war to Copper River. How many of you lost friends and family to the monsters that fought in your streets?”
Too damned many. I handed the e-reader to Lena and pressed into the crowd. “Why don’t you tell them where those monsters came from?”
Meridiana folded her arms. The creak of her leather jacket was the only sound. I could see confusion on people’s faces—friends and neighbors squinting at me as I stepped out of range of the old e-reader’s magic.
“You spent a thousand years gathering the broken shells of the dead,” I said. “Building your army. You sent them to attack Copper River. I did everything I could to stop them.” My voice cracked. “I was the one who found Loretta Trembath after one of your creatures killed her.”
I remembered every detail: the web of cracks in the smashed windshield, the flattened metal, the wide, frozen eyes of a woman I had known and joked with for years. I hadn’t told anyone about finding her body, or how she and others haunted my nightmares.
“You blame me for that attack?” asked Meridiana. “I thought your war was against the students of Bi Sheng. Another innocent group the Porters tried to destroy. Or was it a battle against one of your own, a father who turned against the Porters after the death of his son? You have so many enemies, so many secrets, it’s difficult for me to keep track.”
I snuck another peek at my phone. Bingo. We had the signal.
“I asked for a truce,” Meridiana continued. “And you brought a weapon to kill me.”
In my anger, I had forgotten about the damned shock-gun holstered at my hip. “Tell them whose body you’ve taken. How you violated Jeneta Aboderin’s mind and infected her thoughts.”
Meridiana looked to the camera. “Jeneta Aboderin was a brilliant, gifted, trusting child. The Porters lied to her family and lured her here under false pretenses so they could study her magic. They failed to protect her from the darker side of magic, the things that live and wait in the shadows. Isaac and his brethren used her, until her mind was damaged beyond repair. I saved her, and she welcomed me.”
“That’s a lie.” Only it wasn’t, not entirely. I had failed to protect Jeneta, and Meridiana knew it.
The crowd moved with restless energy, and I heard my name muttered over and over, growing louder and angrier with each repetition. I had no proof of Meridiana’s actions, and they saw me as a liar who had betrayed their trust.
I had lived most of my life in Copper River, but suddenly I was no longer one of them. I was an outsider. I picked Lizzie Pascoe out of the crowd. If I couldn’t get the crowd to listen to me, maybe I could reach them as individuals. “Lizzie, you would have died in that attack on Copper River if I hadn’t gotten you inside. I pulled you off the street . . .”
She stared at me like I was a stranger. Dammit, the Porters had erased her memories to try to cover their tracks. She didn’t remember how close she had come to dying. The Porters had effectively eliminated anything I could use to defend myself.
“You know me,” I said. “You knew my parents. I’ve never done anything to hurt any of you, or to endanger this town.”
“How many werewolves live in Tamarack?” Meridiana’s words were soft, but her power carried them to every ear within a hundred feet. “Or should we discuss the vampire you befriended in Marquette? The one who was so fond of the blood of young Boy Scouts. What other threats have you concealed from your friends and neighbors?”
Shit. The longer she kept me on the defensive, the more I looked like a criminal and a liar. I spread my hands. “You told me you wanted a truce.”
“I do. Bring me the sphere, and I promise to protect you from the Ghost Army. I will make sure Copper River is safe. Or do you care so little for your hom
e that you would sacrifice it to protect your own power?”
“What the hell are you, Isaac Vainio?” shouted Jaylee Parker.
Walt Derocher shoved me from behind. “We buried my cousin after that attack. The cops tried to tell us it was a bear what did that to her.”
My bowels and gut clenched as I realized what was about to happen. I shoved the phone into my pocket and tried to back away, but I was too late. A stone glanced off of my temple, making me stagger. I reached for my shock-gun, but before I could draw it, they closed around me, grabbing and punching and kicking.
I fell to the ground and rolled to the side. A boot smashed into my upper arm. Someone else stomped on my hand. I kicked a heel into the stomper’s groin and tucked my other arm over my head for protection.
Everyone had grieved for the loss of friends and family. They had watched, afraid, as stories of magic and monsters spread. And Meridiana had brought me here to be a target for their anger and their fear.
I saw my boss, Jennifer Latona, standing a short way back. She wasn’t attacking, but neither did she do anything to try to stop the others. Our eyes met, and she turned away.
Pain jolted my lower back. Hands seized my shirt and hair, hauling me brutally to my feet.
I heard the crack of wood against bone, and thought for a second someone else had struck me. Instead, Jaylee Parker cried out in pain and staggered back. Lena’s bokken hummed through the air and another man fell, clutching a broken knee. She grabbed me with one hand, sweeping her bokken through the air with the other as she dragged me toward the street.
Jaylee held her arm and wept, but nobody followed us. Already the old e-reader’s magic was working, causing them to forget about me, just as I had forgotten Lena’s presence until she stepped in. They looked around in confusion, seeking another outlet for their anger.
Meridiana said nothing. She simply watched as the mob turned toward my house. They didn’t know I was here, but they remembered me. They remembered Meridiana’s accusations, and the deaths of their loved ones.
I tried to get up, but Lena’s grip was unbreakable. “They’ll kill you.”