I slowed my breathing and focused on my surroundings: the foul smell of human waste, the mechanical pounding of the equipment outside, the crease in Lena’s brow as she watched me. The more I anchored myself in this world, the easier it became to shut out those voices… for now.
“I’m all right,” I said quietly. “Here, have some cake.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing serious, as long as I’m careful.”
“You’re doomed,” she said. Her tone was playful, but worry wrinkled her brow and the corners of her eyes.
I ripped the cake in half, stuffing part into my mouth. Every bite shrank me further. I kept eating until I was roughly two inches high.
“Not bad,” said Lena as she ate. “I’m more of a cheesecake girl, myself.”
Smudge crawled down to the floor and studied us, his eight dark eyes taking in our newly diminished size. We were all roughly the same height now, but Smudge significantly outmassed us.
Lena peeked out the door. “Making our way through all that is going to take time.”
I grimaced. “It would if we were walking.”
Lena looked from me to Smudge and back again. “You’re joking.”
“I’ve done it once before. He should remember.” Much as I loved that spider, some primal part of me shuddered as I approached. The bristles on his back appeared to be the size of pencils, every one of them a powerful heating element. “I had to sneak into the Henry Ford Museum. A pair of kids managed to summon up the ghost of Ford himself. Smudge and I crawled in through the vents.” I took her arm, pulling her closer. “You’ll want to stand behind me.”
She slipped her arms around my waist. “Like this?”
“That’s good.” The words came out a bit higher in pitch than I had intended. Her breath tickled my left ear. I could feel her hips and breasts pressing my back, her hands resting on my stomach, just above the button of my jeans.
“What next?” she whispered.
That was when Smudge began spinning several loops of sticky silk around us both.
“This is just to help us stay on his back.” The strands reminded me of strings of rubber cement, flexible and sticky, but strong. I felt Lena tense with each pass. “Did you know spiders could produce different types of silk?” I asked. “They use lines of different strength and stickiness, and in Smudge’s case, flammability.”
“That’s so comforting.” She tightened her arms. “How long did it take to train him to carry a rider?”
“I didn’t, really.” I closed my eyes, thinking back to the report I had sent to Pallas shortly after creating Smudge. “He just… understood. He was written to help the ones he cared about. I think the fact that he’s a product of my magic gives him an added familiarity with my mind, making it easier for him to understand what I need.” Unfortunately, that understanding didn’t work both ways.
Once Smudge finished, he backed away and turned in a circle, tangling more silk onto his own body. When he finished, I stepped up to the narrow part where his thorax met his abdomen. “On three?”
I counted down, and we swung our legs carefully over Smudge’s back. Had Smudge been a real tarantula, this would have left us thoroughly perforated, but his bristles were thick and blunt. I tried not to think about what would happen if those bristles heated up.
“Lean forward,” I said, pressing myself down until the silk around us stuck to the lines he had wrapped around himself, gluing us in place. I slid my arms through another line. With our makeshift seat belts ready, I squeezed gently with my legs, sending Smudge scrambling out the door.
“How do you steer?”
I grinned and pulled a small laser pointer from my pants pocket. I projected a green dot onto the floor, and Smudge scrambled forward. “Red lasers don’t work. I think the green reminds him of fireflies.”
Lena rested her chin on my shoulder. Her bokken jabbed my ribs as we made our way through the shadows. “And what happens if something spooks him?”
“I never said it was a perfect plan.” We crawled over broken concrete steps, sneaking through cracks and rubble until we reached the edge of the library’s foundation. Smudge was getting warmer, but so far, it was a low, nervous heat. He didn’t like the idea of going in there any more than I did, where who knew how many tons of broken library waited to crush us. Not to mention a psychotic vampire. “He won’t hurt us, though.”
“I hope you’re right.” Lena’s arms tightened as we crawled along a steel I-beam that had twisted like hot plastic. The sides of the beam created a tight but safe passageway deeper into the darkness. Blood rushed to my head, but the spider silk kept us from falling. I gripped my jacket with one hand to keep my books from tumbling loose. “If he sets my ass on fire, I’m holding you personally responsible.”
“He can’t,” I said, trying to wrench my imagination away from Lena’s perfect posterior. “He’s completely loyal to his companions. It’s how he was written. He might singe us a bit, but he’s incapable of seriously hurting us. Like a computer program, he can’t break those rules.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to kick myself. Lena was a product of libriomancy, just like Smudge. And her “programming” was far crueler than his. When she finally answered, she sounded distant. “Can you change the program?”
“No more than you can uncarve a statue. I’m sorry.” Stupid! “I didn’t mean-”
“I know.” She gave me a quick squeeze. “You keep Smudge around, even though he has no choice but to help you? Essentially a slave to his nature?”
“He’s my friend,” I said sharply. “I can’t set him loose, and I couldn’t just dissolve him back into his book.”
“Hm.” She didn’t push the point.
I aimed the laser to the left, and Smudge scurried toward what would have been the eastern stairwell. Only the faintest slivers of light penetrated here. I pulled a flashlight from my pocket and handed it to Lena. Smudge was perfectly comfortable in darkness, but I wasn’t.
“Where are we going first?” Lena asked.
“The archive.” That was the only reason I could think of for a vampire to come here after killing Ray.
It was a long journey to the basement. Smudge rarely broke pace, keeping to unbroken sections of wall and floor when possible. I wasn’t normally prone to motion sickness, but as he worked his way down, moving to and fro like a miniature eight-legged roller coaster, my stomach began to protest.
I sucked air through my teeth to filter out the dust, and kept my eyes on the terrain ahead. Watching a fixed point helped slightly with the motion sickness, but if this got much worse, I was going to vomit all over my fire-spider.
Lena had no such trouble. She laughed as we climbed down the underside of a fallen wall. “If you ever get tired of the library, you could make a fortune selling tickets for spider rides.”
The pounding of the work crew had dulled, muffled by the wreckage. Occasionally, deep groans and creaks echoed through the building as it continued to settle. Water dripped from broken pipes. Rubble pattered in the distance like hailstones. Unpleasant reminders that the whole place could shift and crush us like bugs at any time. And of course, if Ted was right, there was also the fugitive vampire to deal with.
Smudge grew warmer as we worked our way down. Dust soon covered us all. My throat and nostrils were caked with it. The wreckage here was worse, and we kept having to backtrack to find our way through.
Yet there were also places that had escaped most of the damage. We passed a small study area that appeared intact. Old journals were neatly shelved, and a black L.L. Bean backpack sat abandoned beside a small desk. Only a few feet beyond, girders had smashed through the ceiling.
The first body I spotted was a girl of about twenty who had taken shelter in a doorway. Good instincts for an earthquake, but the doorway had collapsed, crushing her. From the looks of it, her death had been quick.