chapter eighty-two

The automaton was centuries old, charred and cracked from the unimaginable heat of Isaac's battle. Fingers of carved walnut hung limp, hinged with pegs fitted so precisely they were invisible. The body and limbs were oak, taken from a tree that had stood for more than a hundred years before falling to the bite of the ax.

The jaw creaked open, shedding chips of black-and-gray carbon. "You'd be risking your life," said Isaac Vainio.

He didn't understand. How could he? He was human. Had been human, rather. Before he pulled his dying flesh into the body of a wood-and-metal monster, a golem built by one of the most powerful magicians in history, all to stop a madman.

I could feel the life slipping from the wood, like water leached away by too much sunlight. The automaton was dying, and Isaac with it. Had it been a tree, the leaves would be brown, and the branches would have snapped in the slightest wind.

Gutenberg had known. He understood my nature far better than Isaac. Better than Nidhi. Perhaps even better than me. I loved Isaac Vainio. Loved him as much as Nidhi, though in different ways and for different reasons. I couldn't let him go.

My fingers tightened around the burnt limb. With my other hand, I pulled myself up to touch the carved, featureless face.

"What are you doing?" he asked. "I'm not sure."

I reached for the memory of oak, and the feel of Isaac's arms around my body, my mouth on his. He had tasted like coffee with not enough cream, just as I had doubtless tasted of waffles and strawberries, but neither one of us had been willing to break off that first frantic kiss.

My fingers sank into the automaton, and I felt my own life fighting to inhabit the dead wood. Cells long-since dried and broken struggled to heal, and then to grow as I forced myself deeper into the broken body of my lover.

And then we were one. The libriomancer and the dryad, joined in a way I had never known, not with Nidhi, nor with Frank.

Nidhi's love had given me strength and power. Now Isaac's love gave me the strength to use that power in a way I had never imagined.

If you ask Isaac when we first made love, he'll say it was two days later, in the damp grass of his backyard. Which isn't as romantic as you'd think, given the mosquito population here in the U.P. They didn't bother me, but he kept squirming and slapping until I laughed and rolled us over, climbing on top of him and driving all other distractions from his mind.

But what we did beneath the cloudy sky that night was merely the completion of what we began in that dying wooden body.

"CALL GUTENBERG," I said. "Tell him what he's facing." "What is he facing?" asked Nidhi.

"Hell if I know." The Ghost Army wouldn't care about restoring Victor Harrison, which meant Jeneta should be safe. They cared only about their own return. "Bi Wei, when Deifilia restored your two companions, what did she do to their books and their readers?"

Her grief surged through me, confirming my guess. "How did you know?"

"We're very clever. She destroyed them, didn't she?"

"Chu Zao was the first to be brought back. No sooner had Deifilia drawn him forth than she used the insects to destroy the book. His reader was taken away to become another wendigo. What remained of Chu Zao…his body lives, but my friend is gone. I tried to stop Deifilia, and her insects almost killed me. By the time I awoke, she had done the same to another of us."

"They've tried to possess Porters through the years, but even when it worked, they were trapped in a damaged body with an even more damaged mind. They tried to take you, but you fought back."

"It appears I owe you thanks," Bi Wei said. "Deifilia would have torn my own book to pulp if you hadn't taken it, and I would be dead."

"Wei, are the other books the same as your own? The same appearance, the same format and title?"

"The Yang/Soul/Story, yes."

There was no equivalent English word, but I saw in her thoughts the untranslatable characters from the cover of her own book. The Yang/Soul/Story of Bi Wei, safeguarding her spiritual soul. "I have an idea, but I'll need names."

She saw what I had in mind, and gratitude flooded through our shared connection. In that instant, I knew the names of her fellow students as well as she did.

Raw fury followed a moment later, so sudden I cried out. Lena yanked me away, and Nidhi slammed the book shut. A part of me cringed to see such an old book handled so roughly, but it worked. My connection to Bi Wei weakened, though I could feel her horror and guilt as she realized what had happened.

The Army of Ghosts was still inside her. I hadn't sensed them through our connection, but they had been listening from the shadows of her mind. "I need McKinley's Beauty, and we're about to have visitors."

"No more magic," Nidhi insisted. Lena moved to stand beside her, their shoulders touching. Jeff simply looked puzzled.

"Deifilia restored two more of the students of Bi Sheng. And then she destroyed their books. It ripped their minds and souls apart, leaving the bodies as vessels for the Army of Ghosts. She's going to do the same to the rest."

"The ghosts—the devourers—were deranged," said Lena. "How is Deifilia controlling them?"

That made me pause. "I have no idea."

"Call another libriomancer," Nidhi insisted. "Let them do the spell."

"They don't know the books we need." I could see the titles in my mind, but I lacked the words to explain them, even to a fellow libriomancer.

I touched the duct tape square on my shirt.