by Jim C. Hines
“Nidhi was conflicted, too, when she learned the truth about me. This is what I am. I can’t change that. And there are a lot of people out there who . . . well, their fantasies aren’t something I ever intend to become.”
I couldn’t even figure out who I was angry at. Whatever hack had written Lena’s book couldn’t have known what he was creating. From the sound of things, whoever pulled her acorn from the pages had been an untrained amateur. Otherwise, why leave it in the woods? As for Lena herself, she was simply trying to survive, to take some kind of control over what she would become.
Of everyone she had met in her time with Doctor Shah, she had chosen me. She was entrusting me with her life and with her self, with who she would become.
I thought back to her unwillingness to kill, the way she had described vampires as victims of magic, shaped and defined by their magical nature. “I’m sorry.”
Her answering silence lasted long enough for me to realize how inadequate my words were, and then she shrugged. “Everyone has problems.”
“Couldn’t you—”
“Don’t try to fix me. I am what I am.” Her sudden, mischievous smile eased the mood. “It’s a lot to process, I know. I’m thinking of putting together a pamphlet. ‘What to do When a Dryad has the Hots for You.’ What do you think?”
How had Shah lived with herself? Yet if I said no, Lena Greenwood could become far more dangerous than any vampire. “So what are you supposed to do?”
She took a deep, slow breath. “I’m not asking you to make a decision, or to commit to anything. Just please think about it.”
I was going to have a hard time thinking about anything else.
Chapter 6
I WAS NO LESS CONFLICTED when we reached the Mackinac Bridge three hours later. I pulled into line at the toll booths and asked Lena, “Do you have an M&M?”
She fished one from the bag in her pocket, her head cocked in confusion.
I used the candy to lure Smudge off the dashboard and out of sight as we pulled up to the booth. I wasn’t aware of any laws forbidding the transportation of large spiders, but I tried to avoid giving people heart attacks when possible. Smudge stayed on my lap, hidden by my jacket as I paid the toll and drove onto the bridge.
“You look pale,” Lena commented.
“I’m fine.” I shifted gears, staying in the right lane and keeping my eyes fixed on the road ahead.
“Do you want me to take a turn driving?”
“The only thing worse than driving over this bridge is sitting in the passenger seat while someone else drives. No offense. It’s a control thing.”
The Triumph’s built-in enchantments provided protection against everything from rocks to bullets to dragonfire (though I’d never tested that last one). None of which made me any more comfortable as the road sloped higher and we left the U. P. behind.
Five miles of steel suspension bridge connected Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas. At its center point, the Mackinac Bridge rose two hundred feet above the churning water. At that height, you’d fall for roughly three and a half seconds, slamming into the water at around 110 feet per second, or roughly 77 miles per hour.
Discomforting as the math was, it helped keep my mind occupied. I soon found myself stuck behind a slow-moving station wagon. Passing was out of the question. The center lanes were grated steel, which meant they generated enough vibration to make you feel like you were trapped inside a pissed-off bumblebee. Not to mention the fact that the wind rising through the grate could flip a small vehicle.
Sure, it had only happened once, back in eighty-nine. But I wasn’t taking any chances.
My companions had no such fears. Smudge returned to the dashboard and squeezed into the lower right corner of the windshield in order to better watch the thick steel cables as we passed. I wondered if he saw this as a kind of enormous metal web. Lena was smiling as she peered out at the water.
“Is it true there’s a colony of lake trolls living at the base of the bridge?” she asked.
“Not since seventy-one.” I peeked out at the blue water below, where Lake Huron met Lake Michigan. Whitecaps highlighted the waves.
“Tell me about Gutenberg.” Her calmness reminded me of Doctor Shah, and I wondered if this was a deliberate attempt to distract me. “If he drank from the Holy Grail, why can’t you do the same thing and become immortal, too?”
“He locked the book. Most holy books are locked, actually.” Given how violent humans could get over matters of religion, this was one of the few things almost every Porter agreed on. “Basically, he seals the text, preventing anyone from using its magic. Libriomancy works through the resonance among copies of a book. Locking one seals them all, and the original, locked copy goes to one of our archives.”
“Is it something they do often?”
“Often enough. It’s getting harder to keep up with new titles these days. Catalogers flag potentially dangerous books. Take David Brin’s Earth. He wrote about a microscopic black hole that fell into the planet’s core, threatening to devour the entire world. That black hole would be small enough to fit through the pages, meaning any fool kid with magical talent who didn’t know better . . .”
“Would it really destroy the Earth?”
“It’s tough to say. The amount of energy it would take to create a black hole, even a pinpoint one, is immense. It might just swallow the kid and pop back out of existence, but in theory, it could also become self-sustaining as it devoured more mass.” There were plans upon plans for such world-threatening eventualities, developed by Porter researchers. “We get review copies of every new book from the major publishers and most of the small presses. We usually catch and lock the troublesome ones before they’re released to the public, though Harry Potter gave us some trouble.”
J. K. Rowling had received a visit from Gutenberg himself, asking her to eliminate that damned time-turner from future books. Before I could say more, Smudge scrambled off of the dashboard and onto the steering wheel. Heat rippled from his back as he spun around to glare at the windshield.
“What’s wrong?” asked Lena.
The windshield began to fog over, gray wisps creeping inward from the edge. “Not now, dammit.”
We were more than halfway across, but that left another two miles to go. Keeping one white-knuckled hand on the wheel, I reached out to try to wipe the windshield clean. My efforts had no effect. This wasn’t frost; it was smoke, trapped within the windshield itself.
“Vampires?” Lena asked.
“Phone call.” I flipped on the emergency blinkers. The driver behind me honked the horn, making me jump. “The windshield is crystal, not glass.”
Smoke condensed into a young, translucent face with an arrogant smirk. I already knew who it was. Only one person could seize control of the car like that: the same person who had enchanted it to begin with.
“I’m in the middle of the goddamned Mackinac Bridge!” I shouted.
The image vanished, reappearing as a much smaller face in the rearview mirror. “Isaac, my friend. So glad to find you alive and well. I hear you’re having an interesting week.”
I kept my attention on the road. “Lena, meet Juan Ponce de Leon. Explorer, sorcerer, retired bounty hunter, ex-Porter, and all-around dick. His hobbies are magic, conquering native populations, and butting into people’s lives at the worst possible time.”
De Leon laughed. “Guilty on all counts, I’m afraid.” His black hair was cut stylishly short, and his tan skin was so flawless it made me wonder if he was wearing makeup.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“The same thing as you. To find out what happened to Master Gutenberg and his missing automatons.”
I feigned confusion. “Something happened to Gutenberg?”
Another laugh. “Banishment hasn’t blinded me to the world of magic, Isaac. And you’re far too young and inexperienced to play games with me. Don’t think I’ve forgotten what you stole from me.”
“It
had been impounded for nine years!”
He frowned. The face in the mirror was a mere two inches high, but the annoyance of even a miniaturized Ponce de Leon was enough to send chills through my blood. “Do you realize how easy it would be for me to accelerate that car and strip off the traction spells, even from here?”
“Point taken.”
De Leon pursed his lips. “Do the Porters have any leads?”
“I wouldn’t know.” I had called Pallas again when we stopped for gas an hour ago. She hadn’t answered, but her voice mail message had said, “Isaac, check in and let us know what you find in East Lansing.” When Lena called the same number, she got a generic prompt to leave a message, so apparently Pallas was finding new ways to bypass whoever had hacked the Porters’ communications. Not what I had expected, but if she was giving me tacit permission to continue snooping, I wasn’t about to argue. “The vampires think Gutenberg is behind everything, that he’s working against them.”
“To what end?” De Leon steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “Johannes wouldn’t simply abandon the Porters. He’s invested too much. He’s very possessive of his creations.”
“Who else has the power to eliminate him and take control of his automatons?” I swallowed, then added, “Aside from yourself?”
He waved my accusation away. “I’ve tried to unravel the secrets of Johannes’ mechanical golems. I failed. Gutenberg hates them, you know. A passionate, burning hatred, but he needs them.”
“Could they have turned against him?” asked Lena.
De Leon blinked. “Interesting . . . but no, I don’t think so. Their loyalty to Gutenberg is enchanted into their very core.”
“I assume you’ve tried to find him?” I asked.
“Naturally. But my resources are limited. Ironic, isn’t it? If Johannes hadn’t banished me to Spain, cursing me to remain within her borders, I might be better prepared to help find him. I can confirm that he is alive, and that he is as human as ever. That’s all I know.”
Meaning if vampires were involved, they hadn’t turned Gutenberg yet. It was more than we’d known before. “If this explodes into all-out war between vampires and humans, what will you do? Whose side will you take?”
His lips quirked. “I suggest you find Gutenberg, and quickly.”
“The Porters are—”
“The Porters have their own problems to deal with.” He leaned closer, with that smile that could charm a rabid hippogriff. “You know how to reach me, Isaac. If this does mark the dissolution of Johannes’ little club, you’re going to need all the allies you can get.”
His visage dissolved into smoke before I could figure out the safest way to respond. Smudge kept low as he crept carefully back to his trivet on the dash.
Lena opened the window, venting the burnt-dust smell of frightened fire-spider. “Is he really who he claims to be?”
“Yep. He was an explorer in the service of the Spanish Empire.” I swerved past that damned station wagon and hit the gas, speeding down the highway. “That much the history books got right. But he was also a sorcerer. In 1521, he was shot in the thigh with a poisoned arrow. He sailed to Cuba, where he spent the next month using his magic to fight the poison. He created a potion, blending the juice of the manzanilla de la muerte with the waters of a magical spring.”
“The fountain of youth?”
“From what I’ve been told, it was more like the mud puddle of youth, but yes. It saved his life, but the damage remained. There might have been a magical element to the poison. He walks with a limp to this day.”
“Do you think he could be involved with the attacks or Gutenberg’s disappearance?”
“He’s kept pretty quiet in the decades since Gutenberg banished him.” He might have been pulling strings from Spain, but my gut told me he had been telling the truth. “Even if he wasn’t involved before, he won’t hesitate to take advantage of the situation.”
Meaning in addition to rogue vampires, missing automatons, and Gutenberg, we could potentially have a sorcerer with power second only to Gutenberg himself to worry about. If I had been a fire-spider, I would have been blazing like a bonfire right about now.
After losing an hour to construction on southbound 127, we reached East Lansing shortly before sunset. Ray Walker had lived in an apartment above his used bookstore on Grand River Avenue, across the road from the northern edge of Michigan State University.
I found a parking spot a block away in an oversized orange-and-blue parking garage. I checked to make sure nobody was watching, then popped the trunk.
Ted yawned and held up a hand to shield his eyes. “Come back and get me after the sun goes down, eh?”
“No problem, but I need somewhere to store the leftovers from dinner.” I tossed a pizza box into the trunk beside him.
Ted bolted out like I had electrocuted him. He snarled at me, fully awake and fully pissed off. “Asshole.”
“Hey, at least I didn’t ask for anchovies with the extra garlic.” I slammed the trunk shut. “Come on.”
East Lansing lost a significant chunk of its population over the summer, but plenty of students lived here year-round, filling the sidewalks and moving in and out of various shops. I had adjusted to East Lansing during my time at MSU, but after spending two years back in Copper River, the city felt uncomfortably crowded. I did my best to ignore the people and the traffic as we headed back behind the various stores.
Sweat dripped down my sides, but I hadn’t been willing to leave my jacket and books in the car. The jacket also allowed me to hide Smudge, who was currently riding in a small, rectangular cage, clipped to my belt loop with a steel carabiner. It lay flat against my hip, creating an awkward bulge, but it kept him safe and out of sight.
Yellow crime tape marked the back entrance to Ray’s shop. Flyers in every color covered the windows, advertising local bands, tutoring services, fundraisers, and more. I peered between the flyers, looking in at the darkened store. Row after row of cramped plywood bookshelves stood with bulging shelves, exactly as I remembered them.
“Are you all right?” Lena asked softly.
I walked past the store to a glass door that led to a split staircase between Ray’s store and what had once been a barbershop, but appeared to have been converted into a tattoo parlor. I had climbed those steps a thousand times as a student, heading up to Ray’s apartment for my true studies.
“There’s a security camera,” I said softly as I led my companions through the door and down the steps. Incense from a new age shop hung heavy in the air. I ducked into the cramped opening beneath the stairs.
While Ted examined the graffiti scratched onto the wall, I pulled out a Robert Asprin paperback and skimmed the pages. “Hold this, please.”
While Lena gripped the edges of the book, I reached inside with both hands and tugged out a sheet of invisible fabric. I had to stop several times to roll and crumple the material so it would fit through the book. Invisibility was a common enough trick, but most rings and cloaks were only good for one person. This sheet should be enough to cover us all.
Minutes later, we were climbing back up the stairs to the apartments above, invisible to humans and cameras alike. Unfortunately, the sheet also trapped the stench of death, rot, and Old Spice rising from Ted’s body as he pressed close to me.
I swear he was deliberately treading on my feet as we walked, but it was Lena’s body against mine that was truly distracting. She held the edge of the sheet in one hand and her twin bokken in the other, but her hip and thigh brushed mine with each step.
“No need to ask which apartment,” Ted commented.
Toothpick-sized splinters littered the worn seventies carpeting of the hallway where the deadbolt and lock had been smashed in. A new latch was bolted to the door and frame, secured by a heavy padlock.
Until now, it had only been words. Stories. Here was proof of Ray’s death, of the violence of the attack. His killer had stood in this very spot.
Lena set h
er weapons against the wall and picked up a six-inch sliver of wood. “Are you ready?”
I checked Smudge, who was calm and cool, then nodded. Lena slid the sliver into the padlock. Moments later, the door swung inward.
“Don’t touch anything,” I warned.
“Oh, please.” Ted snorted. “Like this is my first time breaking and entering.”
A powerful antiseptic smell lingered in the air as I stepped carefully into the apartment. It couldn’t hide the metallic scent of blood. Ray’s blood. I reached to the side and flipped on the light switch with my elbow.
Ever since Deb told me about Ray, a part of me had hoped it was a mistake, that somehow he had survived and escaped into hiding. Seeing the ruins of his apartment crushed that hope, leaving only a hollow sensation in my rib cage.
Black fingerprint powder covered light switches and the wall of the arched doorway to the kitchen. Clean, rectangular stripes cut through the dust where the police had lifted prints.
A half-finished mug of tea sat on the end table beside the fold-out sofa in the living room. I had crashed on that couch many times after late-night magic sessions, or in one case, a Mystery Science Theater marathon.
I stepped closer, examining the book that lay open on the carpet: a collection of Shakespeare’s comedies. I could see Ray’s handwriting, tiny and machine-precise in the margins.
He always wrote in his books, a habit that had driven me crazy from day one. I could barely bring myself to highlight my textbooks, and he desecrated every one of his books with notes, analyzing historical context, referencing other books and stories, analyzing word choice . . . he would have made a great literature professor if he had been more comfortable speaking in front of groups.
The drywall behind the couch was cracked, a round indentation showing where the attacker must have slammed Ray’s head against the wall. A few small shards from a broken lamp lay on the carpet, though the lamp itself was gone. The upright piano to the right of the couch had been smashed. Broken ivory keys and snapped wires made it looked like a gutted animal.