chapter forty-five

The driver's license identified her as Christina Quinney, age fifty-three. Killed by monsters because she was in the way. I returned the wallet and closed her eyes. As I stood, I ripped the blanket away

from my hand and stretched the armored fingers, then donned my enchanted sunglasses. "Come on."

Lena tested the edges of her bokken, then nodded. I debated preparing an additional weapon or two of my own, but I didn't want to push it. Not yet. Smarter to wait until I knew exactly what would be most effective at ending August Harrison.

We made our way around the back of the church, keeping close to the wall. The pickup had driven through a small flower garden, overturning a bench and smashing a birdbath before coming to a stop by the trees. A starburst of blackened grass and the smell of sulfur showed where the automaton had taken another shot at the truck. Through my glasses, the charred grass shimmered as if someone had spilled gold glitter: the remnants of the automaton's magic.

The battle had moved to the edge of the woods, where three people stood around the automaton. Insects lay dead and scattered, like flickering embers. Harrison and his wendigos formed a second ring, but only those inner three were actually fighting. Each held a book, and with the sunglasses, I could see three ghosts circling the automaton, draining the life from its body.

What the hell were they? I had seen possession before, where fictional characters crept into the mind of a careless libriomancer. If I kept pushing things, I'd see it a lot closer. But that was a known and somewhat understood magical phenomenon. Like possession, these beings appeared to come from books, but they behaved like the absence of magic.

"How long do you think we have before the police show up?" Lena asked. "They won't. Not until this is over. Automatons can become invisible when

necessary, but they also divert the attention of anyone who doesn't know what they are. Call it an apathy field, for lack of a better term." The automaton stumbled. A patch of metal fell away from its wooden body, and three of the spells woven into its shell went dark. "Anything magic I throw their way, they can intercept."

Lena stepped away, returning a short time later with several chunks of broken blacktop. "So we hit them hobbit style. Nothing magical about a flying rock."

"I don't know what's sexier," I said. "Watching you prepare to take on bad guys, or the fact that you're making Lord of the Rings references as you do it." I pulled out a copy of The Marvelous Land of Oz. "If we hit them from two directions, we should be able to draw off their attack enough for the automaton to start smacking heads."

The automaton staggered, and the others closed in. More of its armor dropped into the grass. Two more insects flew in and burrowed into the exposed

wood.

I set the Oz book aside and grabbed Plato's The Republic. Reading was tricky with only one working hand, but I soon held the Ring of Gyges. I had done an honors paper as an undergraduate, arguing the similarity between Plato's tale and Tolkien's One Ring. I shoved The Republic back into my pocket and started in on The Marvelous Land of Oz.

"Dare I ask what you're planning to do with a ring and an old pepperbox?" Lena asked when I was done.

I beamed. "It's a surprise. Give me two minutes to get ready."

I slipped the ring onto my finger and vanished. In theory, true invisibility should have left me blind. Vision relied on the interaction between light and the cells at the back of the eye, but thanks to the ring, the light passed through me as if I wasn't here.

Fortunately, libriomancy obeyed belief over physics, and few modern-day readers thought about invisibility on a cellular level. I ran back to Christina Quinney and took a lipstick from her purse, then hurried toward the garden. Once there, I dropped behind the overturned bench.

The seat and back were slabs of polished black granite. The engraving along the back read, In memory of Annette Butler. Had the truck hit this thing head-on, it probably would have broken both the bench and the truck, but it looked like they had struck it at an angle.

"I'm sorry about this, Annette." I uncapped the lipstick and drew two red eyes and a large mouth. I wasn't much of an artist, especially since the lipstick had turned invisible when I picked it up, but it left visible, waxy lines on the granite. I added a pair of angry eyebrows as well, along with uneven ears to either side.

I put the lipstick away and pulled out the pepperbox. Creating the powder of life from The Marvelous Land of Oz had been the easy part. The challenge was getting through the ritual to use it. I opened the box and sprinkled the powder over the bench, then raised my left pinky and said, "Weaugh." Next was the right thumb. "Teaugh." Finally, I raised both arms and waved them like a dancer doing jazz hands. "Peaugh."

L. Frank Baum wrote some weird magic. I just hoped I had pronounced it correctly.

Through my glasses, the powder looked like white sparks melting into the metal and granite. The whole contraption gave a shiver. Lipstick eyes blinked, and the ears perked up.

"Hello there," I said. "I need you to do me a favor…"

A wendigo was the first one to spot the bench bounding toward them. With

a snarl, it broke away from the circle to meet this new threat.

The bench didn't even slow down. It charged with a straight-on waddle, as if it wanted nothing more than for that wendigo to plop down and enjoy a nice, comfy seat. Instead, the wendigo grabbed the bench and lifted one end into the air.