chapter two

I was the newest member of our research branch, having been promoted a mere two months earlier, and none of my work had anything to do with electronics or e-books.

Jeneta plucked another raisin from the ereader and handed it to the large spider soaking up the sunlight on the deck railing. Smudge and Jeneta had taken to each other at once. Smudge lazily extended his forelegs to take the raisin from her fingers. A droplet of red fire appeared between his legs, and he stuffed the burning snack into his mouth.

"I had another dream last night," Jeneta said quietly, not looking away from the fire-spider.

I reached over and took my reader back. "No more raisins. You know the rules. You're on a twenty-four hour magic ban after the nightmares." I did my best to keep my tone comforting, but to my ears, I came off more like a cross between a school counselor and a babysitter trying too hard to be cool. This was why the Porters had trained therapists on staff. "What were you doing yesterday?"

"I dunno. I just…after campfire, I needed a break. There's been a lot going on, you know? Three weeks ago I was in summer school, trying to make sense of geometric proofs. Now I'm doing magic."

Her mouth softened into the first unguarded smile I had seen from her all afternoon. "I went down to the docks to think. I got to watching the minnows swimming around. After a while, I tried reading to them."

"You read to the minnows?"

"Shut up. It was amazing. At first I was just sitting there, going through a collection by Sonia Sanchez. I was reading 'Personal Letter Number 3,' and I noticed the minnows were moving to the beat of the words, even though I'd been reading to myself. When I started reciting the poems out loud, they went nuts. Like they were dancing."

I checked to make sure my digital recorder was getting this. Pulling raisins from poetry was one thing. I'd been swiping toys from science fiction and fantasy novels for years. Using the emotion of a poem to influence others, even minnows, was a whole other school of magic. "Could you do it again? Not today, but in a controlled environment where I could observe? I could set you up with some of Smudges feeder crickets

"Probably. I didn't do it on purpose, though. It just happened. They felt what I felt. Sanchez makes me want to move."

"How long did it last?"

"An hour. Maybe two. I lost track of time." She tossed her thin braids back over her shoulders. "When are you going to give me a straight answer about these dreams?"

"I told you they're not just dreams."

Jeneta groaned melodramatically. "Please don't give me the boundaries lecture again." Her voice turned deeper, a passable imitation of me, though she mangled my accent. "The more magic you use, the weaker your boundaries become, and the easier it is for the magic of your books to infiltrate your thoughts. Let me tell you about this time at Mackinac Island—"

"I wasn't going to talk about Mackinac Island," I lied. "I was about to say I know what you're going through."

She stopped playing with Smudge. "You've had them, too?"

"A few months back. I was down in Detroit, and I tried to—" I caught myself. Jeneta was as inquisitive as any other libriomancer. If I told her I had been able to reach through a book to spy on another libriomancer, she'd be trying it herself before the week was out, no matter how dangerous the consequences. "It doesn't matter what I did. I charred the crap out of the book, and someone…something came after me. Like magic was an ocean, and I had stirred an Old One from the depths. It tried to drag me down, to tear me apart."

"To devour everything that made you you."

I pretended not to notice the tremor in her hands. "Exactly. Mindless rage

and hunger."

"How did you stop the dreams?"

"By going into a coma." I stared at the garden beyond the deck, walled by rosebushes so colorful they seemed unreal. "I told you, they're not dreams. I was awake when it came after me. Lena brought me to Nicola Pallas' place. She managed to pull me back."

Even the Regional Master of the Porters had been hard-pressed to save my sanity that time.

"They warned me about possession," she said. "How characters and poems could start talking to me, trying to lure me in."

Overuse of a book's magic thinned the metaphorical walls between that book and the real world. Every case of possession varied depending on the books involved, but they all ended with an incurably insane libriomancer. "What we saw isn't possession, either."

"So what is it?" she demanded.

"We don't know." Since before the founding of the Porters, something had lived within magic itself. Something that fought to break through to our world and consume it. None of us knew exactly what it was or where it had come from. Or how to stop it.

This was the other, secret purpose of Die Zwelf Portenære, The Twelve Doorkeepers. A select few among the Porters devoted themselves to understanding our enemy and learning how to keep it from entering the world.

My encounter earlier this year had earned me a place among that group. Gutenberg had assigned me to identify our enemies, to answer questions that had baffled the Porters since their founding. That was why strings had been pulled to get Jeneta a fully-paid trip to summer camp in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, along with an "Advanced Youth Opportunity" internship working with me at the Copper River Public Library.

"You don't know," she repeated flatly. "I mean, I'm glad I'm not hallucinating or going crazy, but you're telling me there are magical monsters trying to eat my mind, and nobody knows what they are?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"Damn." She thought for a moment. "How would these devourers even evolve?"

Typical libriomancer response. Something weird wants to kill us? Cool! Where did it come from, and how does it work? And, depending on the inclinations of the libriomancer, how can I catch one and take it apart?

"I don't think they did." I had multiple theories, based in part on research done by previous Porters over the years and reports on the aftermath of the

handful of recorded encounters. There were many conflicting explanations, all but impossible to test. "I think we created them."

"You mean the Porters?"

"Not necessarily, but people, humans." I sprawled back in my chair. "It's a hunch. They could be three-headed psychic aliens from another dimension or the astral projections of dinosaurs from millions of years ago.