“Welcome to part two,” Whitney crowed.
Whatever the stuff was, it hit the metal creatures like a blowtorch to an igloo. By the time Toni switched off the fan, the moose had fallen backward in a frothing, bubbling mass. The crumpled water tower had begun to dissolve as well. The pools of water in the parking lot bubbled and steamed like a Halloween cauldron.
Whitney closed her book, clipped it back onto her belt, and collapsed to the ground.
“What book was that, exactly?” Lawrence asked.
Whitney managed a grin. “Mort, by Terry Pratchett. That was pure scrumble. One of the most potent drinks in all of Discworld. You should try it. That shit makes the best tequila taste like distilled water. Now shut up and let me do something with this leg.”
If she had tasted the stuff and survived, then presumably it wouldn’t do to flesh what it had done to metal. I made my way down to the road, gun ready in case any stragglers had survived. “If you messed up my car with that crap, I…oh, no.”
I sprinted across the road. On the far side of the water tower, partly hidden by the wreckage, was the flattened remnant of an old SUV. The metal continued to dissolve, courtesy of Whitney’s aerosolized scrumble. Though the shattered windshield obscured the details, I recognized Loretta Trembath in the driver’s seat. She was a regular at the library, always coming in to e-mail her grandchildren.
I reached instinctively for a book from one of my front pockets, but it was too late for magic to make any difference. From the look of things, Mrs. Trembath had died instantly.
I made my way to the restaurant next. It had begun its life as a residential home back in the early 1900s. From a distance, it seemed to have escaped more or less unscathed. Not so the people inside.
The doorframe was splintered inward. Blood mixed with the water pooled on the floor. Metal claws had gouged deep lines in the walls.
I spotted three bodies in the dining area. I knew them all. Andy Marana fixed computers for the mine and sold racy pinup-style oil paintings on the side. I had gone to high school with Peg Niemi’s little sister. Joe Malki had just started up a landscaping business this summer.
“I’m sorry, Isaac,” Lena said quietly.
I moved toward the kitchen. “Is anyone there?”
The restaurant was silent. I found Steve Guckenberg in the back, along with a metal beast that looked like a housecat with six-inch blades for fur. I switched the shock-gun to setting six and melted a hole through the damned thing.
How many more bodies lay broken and dead throughout Copper River? No magic, at least none the Porters knew of, could truly restore the dead. The few recorded attempts to do so had ended badly. “August Harrison came here because of me.”
“This isn’t your fault,” Lena snapped. “If not you, then he would have gone after some other Porter. It would have happened anyway.”
“It happened here.” I knew this place, these people. Peg walked her hyperactive border collie past the library every morning, rain or shine. I always thought the crazy thing was going to yank her arm out of the socket. Joe had mowed my parents’ lawn after I went downstate for college.
I walked outside, stopping at the remains of the metal moose. It lay on its side, broken and pinned by the wooden sword that continued to grow through its body. Roots dug into broken concrete, and bright green leaves had begun to uncurl from new-formed branches.
The smallest bolt was thicker than my thumb. The cables inside were too big to flex. They might as well have been steel rods.
“More mining equipment?” Lena guessed.
I nodded. “The rear legs look like rock drills.” Normally, the drills could punch deep holes into solid rock, but they had been magically warped to fit the shape of the moose. A few kicks from those could easily have brought down the water tower.
Toni was walking down to join us. She held a slightly-charred wooden yo-yo in one hand, and was replacing the string. A corroded beetle was stuck to one side of the yo-yo. That must have been how she had held off the rest of the bugs, by whipping this one in a whirling pattern and imparting the same motion to its friends. “The moose charged the tower before we could stop it. Lawrence barely had time to jump free.”
Sweat sparkled on her forehead, and she was on the verge of hyperventilating. “No more magic,” I said, tugging the yo-yo from her hand. “You need a break.”
“We all do.” She coiled one of her dreadlocks around her hand and closed her eyes. “The other teams around town report that they’re in a little better shape. We’ve got three injured and one dead. Damn.” She blinked and stared at me. “Apparently a trio of shotgun-wielding werewolves in a pickup truck just ran down a wendigo. Your doing?”
“Jeff’s,” I said gratefully.
“Nice.”
“Remind them that the wendigos are victims,” Lena said. “Harrison did this against their will.”
“Will do.” Toni tucked her chin into her shoulder, relaying the reminder through her own hair. “Nicola, what’s happening with Bookmaster G?”
While Toni communed with Nicola, I turned to Lena and Nidhi. “How many ghosts do you think there are? How many broken minds trying to dig and claw their way back into the world?”
“Too many,” said Lena. “Thus the word ‘Army.’”
“They’ve found the tree,” Toni said before I could respond. Her next words turned relief to dread. “The mine was abandoned. There were a few ambushes and some partially-constructed metal nasties, but no wendigos, no resurrected cultists, and no dryad.”
“They knew we were coming.” I could use Bi Wei’s book to find them again, but not without Deifilia and the Ghost Army being aware.
Could she have gone after Jeneta after all? I grabbed my phone to call the camp, but before I could dial, Lena’s fingers clamped around my wrist.
“I know where they went,” she whispered, her face pale.
“How—” Understanding sank its fist into my gut. “Your tree.”
“She’s inside me. I can hear her.”
Nidhi took Lena’s elbow, and we lowered her carefully to the ground.
“What’s going on?” Toni asked.
Lena could barely stand. I had a shock-gun, a giant spider, and a collection of books that would probably cost me my sanity if I tried to use them at this point. There was no way we could take on Deifilia by ourselves, let alone the ghost wizards she had resurrected.
Gutenberg might have a chance if they struck fast enough, hitting Deifilia with everything they had.
“What about the graft from your tree?”
She glanced at Toni, then switched to Gujarati. “If I hadn’t taken that graft, I’d be comatose right now. You don’t understand. She’s inside me. I can’t separate myself.”
Meaning if Gutenberg dropped a magical nuke on Deifilia, it would kill Lena as well.
Lena grimaced. “She’s offering a trade. The books…”
I nodded to show I understood. The books for Lena’s life. I took out my car keys. “Toni, I need you to hide something for me.”
“Oh, hell, Isaac. What are you planning?”
I peeled the square of tape from my shirt. To Nidhi, I said, “If you don’t hear from us in thirty minutes, tell them.”
Nidhi nodded. Together, we helped Lena to her feet. Her body was trembling. She rested against me and whispered, “My oak is just the start. If you don’t give her those books, she’ll destroy Copper River and everyone in it.”
20
I often wonder what became of my first oak, whether it yet survives in the woods outside of Mason, or if it succumbed to old age or one of the winter ice storms. Or those woods might have been bulldozed years ago, paved and transformed into another subdivision with spindly maples and anorexic pines in place of the majestic trees that once grew there.