chapter eight

I pushed myself to move beyond the rules Ray had drilled into me.

As it turned out, some of those rules were there for very good reasons. In early July, I accidentally conjured up a two-day thunderstorm that knocked out power to most of Copper River and flooded most of Depot Street. Then there was the stray disruptor beam that took out Spencer Mussell's truck. But I had confirmed that certain rules were rather fuzzy around the edges, and I had figured out several new tricks.

I flipped to a story called "The Dead Past" and started reading. "A lot of science fiction authors wrote up toys to let them see the past," I said. "Time portals and chronoscopes and temporal lenses, almost none of which are small enough to pull through the pages."

"Why not make a bigger book?" she asked.

"The books need to be physically identical in order to anchor reader belief." Though Jeneta's magic threw that rule into doubt. If we built an ereader the size of a parking lot, could she pull a spaceship through? What if we projected an e- book onto an IMAX screen? Maybe I could finally make my own X-wing fighter. I tucked that thought aside for later. "In order for me to use it, you'd need to distribute thousands of copies of those oversized books."

"Be careful," Nidhi said quietly, though I had no doubt Helen heard her warning as clearly as I did.

"Aren't I always?" Nidhi had been my therapist for several years, and she knew better than most the trouble I had gotten myself into when I was younger. I turned the pages and skimmed the story. "You might want to back up a little."

"You do know what you're doing, eh?" asked Helen. I gnawed my lower lip. "Farther than that."

Unlike the lifeless screen of an ereader, the pages of Asimov's story welcomed me. From the opening paragraphs, I could hear Arnold Potterley's quiet desperation as he petitioned for permission to use chronoscopy. I felt the resigned bitterness of the man forced to refuse that petition. I flipped ahead, imagining the excitement and anticipation of a working chronoscope— anticipation shared by countless readers over time.

My fingers sank through the page, sending a thrill through my body. I had performed this same act hundreds of times over the years, and there were days I still fought to keep from giggling like a kid on Christmas morning. No matter what happened, no matter what monsters tried to eat my flesh or steal my thoughts, I could do magic.

I saw the chronoscope in my mind, a template created by the imagination and belief of the readers. Normally, the next step would be to use that template to transform the magical energy into solid form and pull it free.

The hard part was not doing so. All my training urged me to create, to grasp the chronoscope from Asimov's world, even though I could never bring it into our own.

In magical terms, I was manipulating a semi-collapsed matrix of potential energy through an open portal maintained by my own belief and will. Practically speaking, it was like carrying a Labrador retriever over a tightrope and having a squirrel race past.

I pulled my hand free while trying to draw that partially formed energy into our world. My connection to the text wiggled away like a fish diving back into the pages. I rubbed my eyes and concentrated on slowing my breathing before trying again.

"This would be easier if the book wasn't forty years old," I muttered. Belief didn't last forever, though it was impossible to calculate the exact rate of decay.

"Why not use a newer one?" asked Helen.

"Because Gutenberg magically locks pretty much everything to do with time travel or spying on the past. Partly because the amount of magical energy it would take to actually travel in time would probably burn you to a crisp, and even if through some miracle you survived, there's too much risk of accidentally stepping on the wrong butterfly and destroying all of humanity."

"What's the harm in just looking?" asked Lena.

"If I had to guess, I'd say Gutenberg doesn't want anyone prying into his past." I tapped the book. "Asimov's chronoscope has a limited range. If you try to look more than a hundred and twenty years in the past, you get interference, meaning Gutenberg's early days are safely out of reach." I wiped my hand on my shirt and tried again to touch the book's magic.

"Relax," said Lena. "I might not know as much about libriomancy as you do, but I've seen you do magic, and you don't normally look like a constipated librarian trying to pass a hardcover."

I made an obscene gesture in her direction. "Maybe later," she shot back.

I snorted, but the exchange did help me to relax. I tried again, allowing my eyes to unfocus until the text became a blur of ink on the page. I reread the story in my mind, concentrating not on the specific details, but the emotion, the excitement and wonder, the possibilities blossoming from Asimov's story.

With this book, you could watch the truth about the JFK assassination or see what really happened right before the Berlin Wall came down. Or if you preferred, you could just hunker down on your couch beneath the blankets and watch the lost episodes of Doctor Who when they first aired.

More than a century of history at your fingertips. The technology could be abused, as the ending demonstrated, but that was true for most technology, magic or not. And there was so much we could learn.

"Isaac," Lena whispered.

When I blinked, static fizzed across my vision. It vanished before I could focus. "Did you see that?"

"Only for a second or two," said Nidhi.

I almost had it. I reached deeper into the book until my arm appeared to end

just below the elbow. I could feel the fuzz of static electricity, like I was touching an old glass television screen.