by Jim C. Hines
“What happened in Dearborn?” I asked. “Is Doctor Shah all right?”
Lena’s eyes tightened as she turned away. “You’ve got company.”
I stepped to one of the wire spinner racks and grabbed an old pulp adventure. I flipped to a familiar page, and my fingers sank into the yellowed paper until I brushed the chrome-and-steel handle of a good old-fashioned laser gun. The weapon was cool to the touch, a quirk of the built-in coolant system that prevented the tiny nuclear battery from going critical.
I tried not to think about that too hard.
“Another gun?” Lena’s eyebrows rose. “Kind of a one-trick libriomancer, aren’t you?”
Outside, a heavyset man with a sweat-slick brow hurried toward the library steps clutching a bolt-action deer rifle in both hands. Damp clumps of hair clung to his worn denim sleeves like tiny brown slivers. “Everyone okay in there?”
“We’re fine, John.” I flipped the metal switch on the laser to power it down before sliding it into my pocket. John and Lizzie Pascoe ran the barbershop across the street. They were great neighbors, always willing to pitch in and help a friend . . . exactly what I didn’t need right now.
John carefully kept his distance as he peered between us. He had never said anything to me, but I knew Smudge made him nervous. “Damn, Vainio. That is one busted library. What the hell were you doing, hosting an open bar for itinerant hockey players?”
I turned around, and it finally began to sink in just how thoroughly we had wrecked the place. Broken shelves spilled piles of books onto the carpet. Cracked and broken monitors lay beside upended tables. The door looked like it had lost a fight with a pissed-off grizzly, and then there was the smashed wall.
“Lizzie called the cops when we heard the commotion,” said John.
“Thanks.” Explaining this to the police was going to be almost as hard as explaining to my boss. “We had a wolf.”
“A wolf?” John repeated, his skepticism as thick as the smell of pipe tobacco on his breath.
“Someone must have left the back door open last night,” I said. “I figure it came inside to get out of the rain and hid in the basement. Squeezed up onto the furnace to keep warm. When I went down to investigate, it freaked.”
John’s face screwed up in a scowl. “And the hippies down in Lansing want to protect the damn things.”
I doubted John would be happy to know which side I had been on during the last battle over keeping wolves on the endangered species list. The DNR was right that the wolf population had returned to healthier levels, but the Porters continued to fight to regulate the hunting and killing of wolves . . . and more importantly, to help protect the werewolf packs living in the wilds of the U. P. “It didn’t hurt anyone. Just made a little mess, that’s all.”
“A little mess?”
I forced a grin. “It knocked over some shelves and tables, and toppled Smudge’s cage. Scared the poor thing half to death. But all the wolf wanted was to get away.”
“You’re a lucky man, Isaac.”
“Believe me, I know.” I glanced at Lena, who had thrust her bokken through her belt and was standing with folded arms. “Lena here chased it off.”
She took that as her cue, holding out her hand. “Lena Greenwood. I heard the commotion from outside. I found Isaac trying to fend the wolf off with some old science fiction book.”
“That sounds like Isaac,” John said with a laugh. He looked her up and down before returning the handshake. “So you went after the wolf with a stick?”
“Bokken,” Lena corrected. “I’m a second dan in kendo, and I’ve also studied gatka—Indian stick fighting. I figured I had a better chance than he did.”
John grunted. “You’re a friend of his?”
“I worked with him once or twice, downstate.”
“Isaac doesn’t talk much about his life as a troll,” he said.
Lena shot me a quizzical glance.
“Folks who live in lower Michigan,” I clarified. “Below the bridge.”
Sirens screamed in the distance. I stepped past John and checked the street. We had acquired a few gawkers, but there was no sign of more vampires. Smudge had cooled off, so I trusted we were safe for the moment.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” John clapped my arm, making sure to grab the side away from Smudge. “You look like you’re about two seconds from passing out.”
“Adrenaline.” That and the normal aftereffects of magic. It would be several hours before my heart slowed to its normal rate. It would take even longer for the emotional thrill to fade. “I’m just a little shaken.”
The police were getting closer. If they started questioning Lena or looking into her background, I’d be in even more of a mess than I was. “Lena, why don’t you wait for me at my place? I’ll be over as soon as I’m finished here. I’m on Red Maple Drive, on the east edge of—”
“I know.” She pulled me into a quick hug that probably looked spontaneous to John. Her fingers laced behind my neck, and her breath tickled my ear. “Be careful this time. Keep Smudge and your books with you, and watch your back.”
She nodded to John and hopped down the steps, where she strode toward the motorcycle parked a short way up the street. She tucked the bokken into a case strapped to the side of her bike, pulled a green helmet over her head, and pulled away.
John’s lips quirked. “You’ve been holding out, boy. How long have you and she—”
“Lena’s just a friend.” A friend I barely knew, and hadn’t seen in several years. A friend whose woodsy smell lingered pleasantly in my nose. I could still feel the heat of her body pressing against mine.
“Right, ’cause all of my ‘friends’ hug me like that.”
“Jealous?” I asked.
“Yes, sir.” John grinned and glanced over his shoulder, as if to make sure his wife hadn’t overheard.
“You know, you might not want to be standing here with a rifle when the cops start asking questions,” I said gently.
He chuckled and pulled back the bolt of his gun, ejecting a bullet, which he slid into his shirt pocket. “You let us know if you need anything,” he said over his shoulder as he left. “I can talk to my brother about fixing that door if you want. He’s a damn good carpenter, though I’ll deny it if you tell him I said so.”
“Thanks, John.” I headed back inside as the police car stopped in front of the library, lights flashing. I reached up to pet Smudge, gently brushing the bristles along his back, then returned him to his cage. I had just enough time to dissolve the laser pistol back into its book before the police officer knocked on the doorframe.
I barely heard. Other books called to me from the shelves, their long-lost whispers as sweet and seductive as Lena’s fingers trailing over my neck. There were items in those pages that would hypnotize the police and my boss both, letting me speed through the inevitable questions and get back home to find out what the hell was going on.
“Sir, are you all right?”
I gripped the edge of the desk and nodded. Using magic to protect my life was one thing, but the emergency had passed, at least for the moment. As I turned my back on the shelves, I felt the same aching despair in my gut that I had experienced two years ago after walking away from all things magical.
Prometheus had stolen fire from the gods and suffered the consequences. I had returned the gift of the gods, and the price had been my dreams.
“I’m fine.” I forced those memories down and walked over to talk to him and his partner.
For the rest of the day, I recited essentially the same story I had given John, while passersby stared and gossiped from the sidewalk. A fire truck showed up at one point, sirens screaming. I overheard enough to know I had Mrs. Trembath to thank for that one.
“We’ll have someone from DNR stop by to check the basement,” another officer said as she walked out of the library. “You might want to talk to an exterminator, too. We found small holes bored through some of those studs by the door.”
I swallowed, remembering Lena’s comment about her living bokken putting out roots. “Thanks.”
“Isaac!” The shout came from a forty-something woman making her way up the sidewalk.
“That’s my boss,” I said. “Do you mind if I go fill her in?”
The cop gave me a sympathetic smile. “Good luck.”
Jennifer Latona had moved to Copper River shortly before me, taking over for the previous library director after he retired. She wasn’t completely comfortable with small town life yet, and it often felt like she was trying to prove herself.
She climbed the stairs to look inside, then spun back around. The steps gave her almost a foot of height over me. “The police said there was a wolf in my library.”
“Nobody was hurt, and the insurance company should cover the damage.” Just as long as nobody found out what had really done this. Few policies covered acts of vampires.
“There was a wolf. In my library.” She ran her fingers through her frazzled hair.
“The spider doesn’t seem so bad now, does he?”
That earned a glare. I was saved by a passing fireman who commented, “Could have been worse, eh? Eight years back, we had a bear get into the corner store down the street. Gorged himself on chocolate and smashed the Slushee machine to pieces.”
“I want new doors on this place,” Jenn said firmly. “Steel doors, with deadbolts.”
“John said his brother could do the work. I’ll give him a call. I can also get that insurance paperwork started, if you want.”
She nodded, glaring at the library as if trying to will the damage to repair itself. There was a witch down in El Salvador who could have done exactly that, but she charged way too much for this kind of job.
I gestured at the crowd and the flashing lights. “I’ll have an easier time of it if I work from home . . .”
“There was a wolf in my library.”
I took that as permission. A minute later, Smudge and I were in my truck speeding toward home, Lena, and—hopefully—some answers.
Every libriomancer I had ever met had one thing in common: we were daydreamers.
Sure, lots of kids imagined what it would be like to be Superman or Wolverine, or secretly tried to use the force to levitate a toy car, but we obsessed over this stuff. Night after night, I had lain awake pondering whether heat vision could be pinpointed with enough accuracy to kill a mosquito, or whether a lightsaber could be modified to recharge via a regular AC outlet. I fantasized about what I would do if I were ever to develop superpowers. Where would I fly, what global problems would I solve first, where would I go when I needed to get away from it all? (I had eventually decided to build my own private moonbase.)
Some children outgrew such things as they grew up. My daydreams had simply grown more complex. In high school, I couldn’t read a history lesson without wondering how Batman would have foiled the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, or whether a single time traveler with a laser and high-tech armor could have changed the course of the Battle of Chickamauga.
Imagine spending your whole life yearning for that kind of magic, only to discover it was real.
Imagine discovering that magic, like so much else, came with a price. With rules and limits and old men looking over your shoulder. You might as well bring a kid down on Christmas morning, show him a mountain of shiny presents, and then tell him he can only open three or else Santa will beat him up and stuff him into his own stocking.
I learned that I had never truly wanted to be the superhero. Oh, I imagined it, sure. As a kid, I thought about taunting the bullies, then laughing as they injured their fists and feet against my rock-hard muscles. In ninth grade, I constructed one fantasy after another in which my powers allowed me to save Jenny Johnson from various dangers, and how she might express her appreciation once I had flown her to safety . . .
But what I truly wanted, what I dreamed about as an adult, was magic itself. Understanding its rules, its potential . . . I had studied under several researchers with the Porters, but you couldn’t become a full researcher without first serving your time in the field. And you couldn’t work in the field if you lost control of your own magic.
A loud honk jolted me back into awareness. The streetlight was green, and I hadn’t noticed. My face warmed as I sped through the intersection, waving an apology to the driver behind me.
After two years, I could still hear Nicola Pallas’ words as clearly as if she was sitting beside me in the truck. Nicola was Regional Master of the Porters, essentially a magical middle manager, though your average manager didn’t spend her free time trying to crossbreed French poodles with chupacabras.
“Resign from the field, Isaac.” She had driven up from her ranch in Illinois to meet with me. Her voice was flat, like she was discussing what color to paint her living room instead of my future with the Porters. “We’ve decided to set you up with a desk job as a cataloger if you’re interested. We think you’d do well there. But you’re done with fieldwork.”
In other words, I was done with magic. She was asking me to turn my back on the joy and the awe and the wonder, to leave those things to people with better self-control. I remembered grimacing, my face raw and stiff from partially healed burns. “What’s my other choice?”
Her black eyebrows came together slightly as she stared at me. “You misunderstand. This isn’t a choice.”
The most infuriating part was that she was right. I was a damn good cataloger. I saw the magical potential of every book I read.
I simply wasn’t permitted to touch that magic.
When I reached my house, a one-story structure with a metal roof and aluminum siding in desperate need of power washing, I spotted Lena’s motorcycle parked on the edge of the dirt driveway. The black-and-pine-green Honda sport bike was polished to a liquid sheen. A silver oak leaf was airbrushed onto the side, and her helmet hung from the back.
I killed the engine and grabbed Smudge’s cage. He was relaxed enough to finish off the last of the Jelly Belly, which was good enough for me.
A pair of squirrels abandoned the bird feeder and raced into the branches as I approached the front step. They chittered angrily at me while I unlocked the door and stepped inside.
An empty Mountain Dew can sat beside the sink, and a note was taped to the table. I had forgotten to give Lena a key, but that obviously hadn’t stopped her. I grabbed the note.
Back soon. Watch yourself, and don’t get killed. –L
I had bought the house from my parents shortly after my reassignment. They had moved out to Nevada when my father got a job offer from one of the silver mines, but the lousy housing market meant they hadn’t been able to sell this place. It was a full six months before I stopped thinking of this as my parents’ house.
I set Smudge’s cage on the kitchen counter and entered the living room, which I had converted into my own personal library. Floor-to-ceiling cherrywood bookshelves lined three walls. A worn recliner was tucked into the far corner beside the sliding glass door that led to the backyard. The lock for that door had broken years ago, but a broomstick in the track kept anyone outside from opening it.
I closed my eyes, feeling the tug of the books. This was my refuge, my fortress of solitude. Standing in this quiet cave, surrounded by walls of books, was normally enough to ease my mind no matter how stressful things got . . . but not today. Today the books called to me. Every one was a gateway to magic, waiting to be unlocked.
I forced myself to turn away, returning to the kitchen to grab this morning’s newspaper. I slid one sheet after another into Smudge’s cage, pressing them down over the gravel. Smudge tried to sneak out, but I nudged him back. “Sorry, buddy. I need you working security.”
I moved his cage into the hallway, directly beneath the smoke detector. Once he was in place, I grabbed a baggie of chocolate-covered ants from the fridge and dropped a few in with him. He deserved them for helping take out a vampire, and he would need the calories after all that flaming.
With my makeshift security alarm prepped and content, I retreated to my office. More books waited here, stacked on the desk and below the window. Hardcovers and paperbacks, all jammed together like some sort of literary Tetris, waiting to be shelved.
I tried calling Pallas first, but she didn’t answer. I left a vague message about “problems on the job site,” then tried Ray Walker, the archivist down in East Lansing and my former mentor. His cell phone went straight to voice mail, and I gave up on calling his store after the twelfth ring. I glared at the phone, trying to decide who to call next, when the door creaked open behind me.
I spun, heart pounding. Lena leaned in the doorway, her twin bokken tucked beneath one arm. She was doing a lousy job of hiding her amusement.
“This is what you call watching your back?” she asked.
I ignored the gibe. “Didn’t you lose one of those swords at the library?”
“I made a new one.” She stepped inside and studied the office. Her gaze lingered on a framed print of the Space Shuttle Columbia from its original 1981 launch, signed by both John Young and Robert Crippen, the commander and pilot of that first mission. “The trees told me you were back.”
“The trees?”
“I was resting in the big oak in your backyard.” She gave me a half-shrug. “They talk to each other. I can watch the entire house through the root system, if I sink deeply enough into the heart of the tree.”
That simple statement set off a cascade of questions in my head. I knew Lena had to return to her tree, and that many of her superhuman abilities came from that connection. The tree’s strength was her own. She wasn’t invulnerable, but a tree’s roots could crush concrete and stone. Lena could do much the same.
But I knew nothing about what happened when she entered a tree. How could she perceive what happened outside? Did those senses weaken with distance? If that connection passed through the roots to other trees, did those trees have to be the same species? Were some trees more conducive to magic than others?