Codex Born (9 page)

He struck too quickly for me to see. The web clinging to the ladybug went up like gas-soaked rags. The flame didn’t hurt the metal, but whatever the wings were made of, they weren’t as strong. One broke away and fluttered, smoldering, to the floor.

The ladybug charged Smudge, who left a blackened path along my ceiling as he retreated. The insect darted in again and again. I couldn’t see what it was doing, but every missed strike caused a thread of white dust to fall from the plaster.

Smudge raised his front four legs, waving them like tiny flaming swords. The ladybug hesitated, then sealed its shell and ran directly into the fire.

Smudge flared blue and fell. I lunged without thinking, catching him in an outstretched hand before he hit the floor.

Pain travels quickly along the nerves. I had a moment of clarity as I realized what I had just done, and then I was screaming, “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” through my teeth and fighting the urge to fling the burning spider away. I ran to the kitchen and transferred him to the tile floor.

The ladybug was burrowing back into the hole. Keeping my burnt hand curled against my body, I raised the book with my other hand. But the ladybug disappeared before I could get the shot.

An angry buzzing sound warned me as the wasp swooped toward my eyes. I dropped to the floor. Forget guns and books, I needed a laser-powered fly swatter. I searched the shelves, trying to see where it had landed. It hadn’t followed its buddy into the ceiling, and the room was silent, which meant it was creeping around, waiting for a better chance to attack.

The back door slid open. Lena gripped one of her bokken with both hands. “Don’t move.”

She was staring at a spot on my back. I slowly twisted my head until I spotted the wasp perched on the waist of my jeans. “Aw, crap.”

Lena’s bokken whipped past, close enough to tug my hair in its wake. The insect shattered into fragments, and her weapon embedded itself in the floor. She wrenched it free and leaned against the shelves.

“There’s another one,” I said. “It burrowed into the ceiling. I want it in one piece.”

“Why?”

“So I can take it apart.”

I grabbed a metal spatula and used it to carry Smudge to the kitchen sink where I could examine his injuries. Clear fluid that smelled faintly like diesel oozed from cuts on his forelegs. Blue flame danced over the cuts, never actually touching the fluid. Like gasoline, it was probably only flammable when it evaporated. Leaving the book on the counter, I returned to my library.

My classification was loosely based on the system we used at the Copper River Library, but in addition to sorting books by genre and author, mine were also classified by magic. Healing texts were on the end of the middle shelf, where they would be easy to get to in case of emergency. I picked out a copy of
Household Tales
by the Brothers Grimm and flipped pages one-handed until I came to “The Water of Life.”

My hand throbbed, the pain growing worse with every beat. My palm was red and blistered, with blood oozing from the edges, but it was the blackened skin in the middle that most worried me. The pain wasn’t bad there, which suggested nerve damage.

Shock threatened to make me drop the book. I sat on the floor, resting it in my lap. “It springs from a fountain in the courtyard of an enchanted castle,” I read softly, imagining the scene in my mind. The prince hurrying to get to the spring before the clock chimed twelve, grasping the cup in one hand, reaching…

Through the yellowed pages, I touched the hammered metal cup in the prince’s hand. I eased the cup from his grip and carefully pulled it free. I spilled half the water onto my shirt. Lena caught my hand, guiding the cup to my lips.

A single swallow of the cool water was enough. The blisters dried, and the charred skin sloughed away from my palm. I used my fingernails to scrape away the worst of the dead skin and dried blood.

My arm was trembling, and sweat streamed down my face and neck. I pulled myself up and brought the cup to the kitchen. I spilled several drops into the sink where Smudge was resting. He didn’t move.

“Come on, buddy.” I reached down, but yanked my hand back when his flames flared higher. I grabbed the spatula and tried to nudge him toward the water. He just twitched and curled into a tighter ball.

Lena slipped a hand into my pants pocket and pulled out my box of Red Hots. She took one of the candies between her thumb and forefinger, dipped it into the cup, and placed it in the sink in front of Smudge. A single droplet clung to the candy’s surface.

Smudge slowly uncurled his legs and crept forward. His two front legs hung like snapped twigs ready to break away. The cuts had stopped burning, leaving only a tarry, blackish scab on each leg. His mandibles closed around the end of the candy.

“Thank you,” I said, surprised at how difficult it was to get the words out past the knot in my throat.

She kissed my cheek. “You’re welcome.”

I didn’t look away until Smudge began to move his forelegs again. A ripple of red fire spread over his body, vanishing as quickly as it had begun, except for the scabs on his legs. Those continued to burn, smelling like burnt hair and oil, until both legs were clean and whole once more.

I left Smudge in the sink with another piece of candy and picked up
Why Sh*t Happens
. “I’d call that a successful proof of concept. Let’s go clean up your tree.”

I circled the oak to make sure stray microwaves wouldn’t accidentally fry anything behind the tree. “Where are they?”

Lena pointed with one of her bokken. “The lowest is dug in at knee level.” She tapped the bark with her weapon, marking each of the twenty-eight insects. The highest was a good twelve feet up.

“This will probably hurt,” I warned her.

Nidhi clasped Lena’s hand and said, “Think of it as radiation treatment to burn away a tumor.”

“The dragonfly in the house cooked fast.” I reread the pages I had used before. “I’ll need you to lure them to the surface.”

Lena nodded and dragged her fingers through the bark. It wasn’t long before she jerked her hand away.

I aimed the book at the tiny pincers, which sparked and popped. Lena hissed in pain, but when I pulled the book away, she said, “Don’t stop. It’s working.”

I cooked the insect until Lena confirmed it was dead. I didn’t want to linger too long in one spot, as the microwaves could also boil the water in the tree, drying and cracking the wood. Lena touched the tree again, luring a second insect to the surface.

“They’re burrowing,” Lena said.

I aimed the book skyward while I waited for her to bait the next. “You said they couldn’t get to the heart of the tree.”

“They’re not going deeper. They’re trying to get out.”

She pointed to where the first insect was emerging, and I cooked it in place, but they were digging free on all sides. I got two more, and then they were flying toward me. I stumbled back, trying not to trip over the pumpkins. For someone who rarely ate vegetables, she grew an awful lot of produce. I moved the book back and forth, trying to blast insects out of the air. A miniature lightning bolt jumped between two of the bugs, and both fell like tiny burning meteorites.

A beetle landed on my arm. Pincers dug through my shirt and the skin beneath. Another attacked the back of my hand.

Lena’s bokken hummed through the air. Nidhi tried to grab the bugs off of my skin, but for every one she ripped free, three more found me. Others landed on the book and began chewing through the cover and paper.

I ended the spell and flung the book to the ground. Lena joined Nidhi, and crushed several of the things in her bare hands, but by the time we tugged the last one off of me, the rest had returned to the tree.

They had bored numerous holes through
Why Sh*t Happens
. The spine had suffered the most damage. When I picked the book from the dirt, half of the pages tore free.

“How many?” I asked.

“I can feel nineteen crawling around.”

I picked a metal horsefly from the ground. The microwave had been a little too effective, warping and melting the delicate metal.

I headed back toward the house. “I need something I can dissect.”

Once inside, I pulled
The Demon Trapper’s Daughter
by Jana Oliver off of the shelves. I had cataloged this book for the Porters several years ago, and I knew exactly which scene I wanted.

My hands tightened around the cover as I recalled the opening pages of the story, in which the protagonist tried to capture a Biblio-Fiend, a small, mischievous demon who liked to urinate on books. No way in hell I was letting
that
into my living room. But later on, when she faced the larger demons…

I flipped to the chapter I needed, shoved my hand into the story, and pulled out a glass sphere the size of a softball. “Let’s see what happens if we freeze them.” Looking at the hole where the ladybug had vanished, I added, “Assuming we can find the damn things.”

“They go after magic, right?” Lena jammed her bokken into the ceiling and gripped the hilt with both hands. Her fingers sank into the wood. Tiny spikes split away from the blade, sprouting buds that uncurled into small, waxy leaves.

I hefted the sphere. I didn’t have to wait long.

“Get ready.” Lena flinched. “That stings,” she muttered, then yanked hard. Chunks of plaster ripped free, exposing broken slats and insulation. The end of Lena’s wooden blade had grown like a bonsai tree on superfertilizer. The ladybug was burrowing into the wood, but as I drew back to throw, it took flight, swirling erratically toward the back door.

Lena yanked her tree—sword—whatever it was now out of the way, and I hurled the sphere at the fleeing bug. Glass smashed against the doorframe. Magic spread like liquid nitrogen, creating a white cloud. The door frosted over, and a web of cracks spread downward.

Lena stepped back and brushed a shard of curved glass off of her arm. Tiny slivers shone in her hair and clothes.

“Are you—”

“I’m fine,” she said. She pulled a piece of glass over her hand to demonstrate. The shard dented her skin, but didn’t cut her. “Tough as bark.”

The living room felt like a meat locker. I had never used Oliver’s books before. Those things were more potent than I had expected. I hurried into the kitchen to check on Smudge, who was huddling protectively over his half-eaten candy, his body burning merrily against the chill. The water pooled in the other dishes was frozen around the edges. Once I knew he was safe, I returned to the library and joined Lena in searching for the ladybug.

Glass crunched underfoot. The ladybug had to have been caught in the cold, but with so much glass and ice scattered across the floor, it was hard to find a little blob of silver metal.

“Isaac.” Lena pointed to the door. The ladybug had gotten halfway through the glass when I caught it with the sphere. Before I could figure out the easiest way to work it free, Lena tapped the door with her sword, bringing the whole thing down in a shower of pebbled glass.

“What happened?” asked Nidhi, running onto the deck.

“We’re fine.” Lena’s bokken slipped from her hand. Nidhi started toward her, but Lena waved her back. “I’m all right.”

I grabbed a pair of pliers from the junk drawer in the kitchen. Already the ladybug was trying to move, legs and wings clicking erratically. I tightened the pliers around the body until I felt the metal shell begin to bend.

I brought it to the office and switched on my lamp. The shell was grooved silver. Two of the six legs had snapped off from the cold. One of the wings beneath had burned away, leaving little more than a stub. I fetched a Q-tip from the bathroom and tried to clean the soot from the other, but I succeeded only in snapping it. Under the light, the broken wing looked like a tissue-thin strip of nacre peeled from the inside of an oyster shell.

Beneath the shell were gears that would have made a Swiss watchmaker weep with envy. The eyes were like droplets of red wine. Garnets, maybe?

“What is it?” Lena asked.

“Not a clue.” Disproportionately large copper mandibles clicked at my fingers. “What steampunk adventure did you sneak out of? Cherie Priest?
Girl Genius
? You’re gorgeous, whatever you are.”

“And in the meantime, its friends are drilling deeper into Lena’s oak,” Nidhi said tightly.

I winced. “Sorry. I got—”

“It’s all right,” said Lena. “We’re used to you. ‘Look at the shiny magic thing trying to kill us, isn’t it awesome?’ I’ll be happy to admire them with you as soon as we get them out of my tree.”

I held the tip of a wooden pencil in front of the ladybug’s head. It snapped cleanly through both wood and graphite. “I
see several types of metal in there. Copper and silver. Possibly steel.”

“Were they created with libriomancy?” Nidhi asked.

“Most likely.” Only a few people could manipulate raw magic. Far more could use books to help them shape that power. “I’ll check the Porter catalog when I’m done here to see if I can figure out what book they might have come from.”

I looked around the office. I didn’t know where my magnifying glass had gone, but I spotted something else that should work. Holding the pliers tight, I squeezed past Lena to the 10” telescope tucked into the corner. A built-in rack on the side of the scope held a set of eyepieces. I grabbed one from the middle and returned to the desk.