Codex Born (11 page)

“You’re…you want to freeze the books?”

“I want to
save
them. Freezing minimizes the damage while we get them shipped off to be vacuum dried.” I talked over his protests, channeling a particularly obnoxious and arrogant Art History professor from Michigan State University. “That’s just the first step. If we don’t get this place dried out quickly, we’ll end up with mold, fungus, and possibly even…” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “
Silverfish
.”

The counselor stammered an apology and went to fetch Jeneta. He must have been running, because she picked up only three minutes later.

“Do you have any poems that could draw insects out of a tree?” I asked the moment I heard her voice.

“Seriously? You dragged me out of bed for a termite problem?”

“I called because I need your help.”

“Oh, really?” I could hear her grin through the phone. “Before I agree to anything, does this mean you’ll take me with you next time you run off to do something interesting? Because if I’m going to be—”

“It’s Lena,” I said. “It’s her tree being attacked.”

Jeneta hesitated. “How serious is this? If you’re calling now instead of waiting until morning…”

“They’re killing her tree. Killing
her
.”

“Oh.” In that single syllable, I heard fear evict the excitement and bravado of moments before. “I’ll try, but I’ve never done anything like this before, Isaac. I’m not sure it will work.”

“I’ve seen what you can do, Jeneta. You can handle this. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” When I hung up, I found Nidhi watching me with a flat, expressionless look I remembered from our sessions together. “You disapprove.”

“She’s fourteen years old. What happens if she can’t control these things? What if they attack her like they did you?”

“Do you have a better suggestion?”

She turned away. “If I did, I’d have stopped you.”

“I don’t like it either,” I admitted. “If you see another one of those things, get the hell out of here. I’ll leave Smudge in his travel cage. He should give you enough warning if anything goes wrong. Keep him with you, but don’t let him get into another scuffle with the bugs.”

I looked through the window. Lena sat in the archway of the garden, her back to the house. Even from here, I could see tension and weariness in the set of her shoulders, the slump of her head. “Call me if anything—”

“I will.”

Jeneta wore an oversized blue sweatshirt with the moose-and-lake logo of Camp Aazhawigiizhigokwe on the front. She spent the drive reading, and the soft light from her e-reader cast odd shadows over her face.

“How do you stand it up here?” she asked. “There’s only
one building at camp with a decent Internet connection. The wireless signal doesn’t even reach the cafeteria, and the cell reception sucks.”

“It’s like working with stone knives and bearskins, I know.” The Triumph’s traction spells kicked in as we rounded a curve. It felt like an invisible lead blanket had settled over my body, stopping me from sliding into the door. “You’d think they were trying to get you to talk to each other instead of spending all your time checking your phones. Total madness, I know. Someone should file a complaint with protective services.”

“Your jokes get worse when you’re worried.” She didn’t look up from her screen. “What happened to that rule about no magic for twenty-four hours?”

“Your nightmare was last night. In another ten minutes, it will be midnight, and I’ll be able to tell Nicola Pallas that I didn’t ask you to do anything magical until the following day.”

“Uh-huh.” She packed whole paragraphs worth of skepticism into those two syllables, as only a teenager could.

“I’ll be right there with you,” I said.

“Will you be in my nightmares if the devourers come back?” she demanded.

“You can stay with—” My brain caught up with my mouth at the last second. My house had been attacked once today, and there was no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. Not to mention the creepiness factor of a grown man inviting a fourteen-year-old girl to spend the night. “With Doctor Shah.
If
anything happens, she’ll be able to help.”

By the time we reached the house, Jeneta had donned a cloak of pure confidence. I all but dragged her through the house to show her the headless ladybug and the other melted insects. “This is what we’re dealing with.”

“Cool,” she said, studying the broken bug. She picked up the head and poked the mandibles with her fingertip. “Nasty, too.”

“Can you get them out of Lena’s tree?”

She tapped her reader on her palm. “I’ve got an Emily Dickinson poem I think should do the trick.”

I stopped to grab a few more books from the library.

“Whoa, what happened to your back door?”

“I’m remodeling.” I stepped carefully through the broken doorframe, then crossed the yard to the garden. The roses muted the light from the back porch. Within the garden, we found Lena and Nidhi resting on a hammock made of interwoven grapevines. Smudge’s portable cage hung from a higher loop of vine.

Nidhi’s hair was disheveled, and her clothes appeared rumpled. She was sweating, and her shoes and socks had been tossed in among the pumpkins. I stopped in the archway. Nidhi and Lena had been together for years, but I had never walked in on them during or immediately after the act.

I knew Lena’s nature. I knew she drew strength from her lovers. It made perfect sense for her to turn to Nidhi for comfort. It was a smart move. But it still felt like I’d been punched in the esophagus.

“When did you plant grapevines?” I asked, stammering slightly.

“Tuesday morning.” Lena climbed out of the hammock and grabbed my free hand, pulling me in for a quick kiss. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“You’re really a dryad?” Jeneta asked.

Lena smiled and picked up her bokken. At her touch, a single green bud sprouted from the wood. “The tree behind us is as much my body as this flesh. And right now, something’s trying very hard to kill it.”

“No problem.” Jeneta sat cross-legged on the ground and switched on her e-reader. “Do you have any clover growing around here? The flowers would be perfect, but even if it’s not in bloom, it will help.”

“Give me a minute.” Lena walked from the garden. Nidhi followed, leaving her shoes and socks behind.

Jeneta watched them go. “Were they just…?”

“Focus on your magic,” I said.

“But I thought you and Lena were—”

“We are.”

I waited for her to digest this, and wondered which reaction it would be. Jeff DeYoung’s werewolf-style acceptance of whatever steams your sauna, or the confused condemnation I had received from Pete Malki. Pete lived down the street, and had stopped by a couple of weeks ago to tell me he thought my girlfriend might be making time with that new Indian doctor in town. I guess, “Yeah. Want a drink?” hadn’t been the response he was expecting.

Jeneta landed somewhere in the middle. “That sounds really complicated.”

“It can be challenging,” I admitted.

“Does that mean you and Doctor Shah are together, too?”

“No.” How many times was I going to have to answer that question? I was half-tempted to make a brochure I could hand out.

“There’s this kid at camp, Terry, who’s always talking about sex. He’s been hitting on me and the other girls from day one. Like if he’s persistent enough, if he cracks enough jokes or gives me enough compliments about my hair, one of us will let him into our pants.” She pushed her braids back, then shook her head in annoyance. “If he keeps it up, I’m gonna make him fall in love with a groundhog.”

Lena and Nidhi returned before I could come up with a response to that. Nidhi carried a handful of purple clover.

“Perfect,” said Jeneta. “Clear a spot by the tree and spread them on the ground.”

Lena examined her garden, no doubt studying both the plants on the surface and the roots of her oak below. She finally uprooted four cornstalks and moved them to the side of the garden. The roots immediately began to burrow back into the earth. Nidhi arranged the clover in a small mound.

Jeneta waved us back and began to read.

It was as if she had transformed into another person. Her voice was slower, more confident, and the cockiness that normally infused her words disappeared. When I looked at the clover, the flowers seemed brighter. The scent was stronger, overpowering the roses until my eyes watered.

“Whatever you’re doing, they’re reacting to it.” Lena swallowed, and I could see her skin twitching. Smudge’s cage turned into a miniature lantern as a ripple of flame spread across his back.

I double-checked my book, a novel by David Gerrold that featured a liquid nitrogen weapon. The gun itself was too large to pull through the pages, but I should be able to use the same trick I had tried with the microwave. I skimmed a scene which described the weapon in action. I didn’t need the gun, just the stream of liquid nitrogen. Hopefully I could do this without freezing my fingers off.

The first insect emerged from the tree in a puff of sawdust, about ten feet up. Lena raised her bokken. I took a deep breath and readied my book. This appeared to be a bee or wasp of some sort. It crawled down the tree, glassy wings twitching, then flew toward the clover.

Lena’s own rounded features were tight with pain. A second bee flew out of the oak, following the first. Lena gripped her weapon by the blade and smashed the pommel down on the closest bee. She gave it a vicious twist, and when she pulled back, only broken scraps of metal remained.

Other insects were making their way out of the tree now. I
stepped back, book ready, but they didn’t care about us. They were drawn to the clover, entranced by the power of Jeneta’s words.

“Thank you,” Lena whispered. She stepped closer to the oak and pressed her face against the wood. Her eyes closed, and her fingertips sank into the tree. Her hair wisped forward, clinging to the bark as if static held it in place.

I waited to make sure no more insects would emerge, then aimed the book at the flowers. I dared to hope this might be as simple as it appeared…thus proving that even after close to a decade with the Porters, I still hadn’t learned from experience.

The instant I touched the book’s magic, the bugs went berserk. They rose from the pile of clover as frigid air poured forth, and liquid nitrogen splashed into thick white fog. A brass-and-steel grasshopper leaped out of the cloud, wings a blur as it flew toward Jeneta. Lena spun from her oak and snatched up her bokken. She knocked the grasshopper back like a tiny baseball, but more were emerging from the fog, stunned but not yet dead.

Jeneta screamed. A metal earwig had landed on her e-reader. She flung it away. More insects clung to the screen, digging through glass and plastic as easily as clay. Nidhi grabbed Jeneta’s arm and hauled her out of the garden.

“Whatever works,” I muttered, aiming the book at Jeneta’s reader. Two more metal bugs had joined the earwig on the screen. When the next stream of nitrogen cleared, they looked like tiny frost sculptures. They shattered beneath my shoe, as did the e-reader.

I poured more liquid nitrogen onto the clover, then closed the book while Lena destroyed the rest of the insects. Plants and bugs alike crunched beneath her feet.

“Is that all of them?” I asked.

“Yes. Thank you.” Lena stepped back and sagged against her tree. “Do you think whoever did this will send more?”

“Probably.”

Jeneta was crying like a child half her age. Nidhi sat with
her in the grass, whispering and running her hands through Jeneta’s hair while they rocked back and forth. Jeneta buried her head in Nidhi’s shoulder.

“What happened?” I asked. “Was she hurt?”

Before Nidhi could answer, Jeneta jumped to her feet and ran at me. “Why in the name of ever-loving God would you do that to me?” Her fists slammed into my chest, hard enough to bruise. “Was this some kind of messed-up test? Is
this
why you were asking about my nightmares?”

I stepped back and did my best to fend off her punches. “Jeneta, I didn’t know they’d come after your e-reader.”

She wiped her sleeve over her eyes and stared at me. “You think I’m upset about my
reader
?”

I looked past her to Nidhi, but she appeared to be as confused as I was. Nidhi stepped closer, hands out like she was approaching a wild animal, and said, “Can you tell us what happened to you, Jeneta?”

“You said you needed me to help kill magic bugs. You never said they were devourers.”

It was like she had turned the liquid nitrogen on me, chilling my body from the inside out. “What do you mean?”

She swallowed. “You didn’t hear them?”

“What is it you heard, Jeneta?” Nidhi asked.

“They weren’t attacking my reader. They were trying to attack
me
, through the spell.” She started to shiver again. “Dragging me under. Climbing through my bones and chewing me up, and all the while she’s laughing—”