We passed what might have once been a warehouse, but was now little more than a blackened patch of cement surrounded by weeds. A few metal support beams jutted from the ground at the edges.

Weeds brushed the underside of the car as Lena pulled into a crumbled blacktop parking lot. I retrieved Smudge and climbed out. The movement reawakened the throbbing pain in my neck and head.

I adjusted the familiar weight of my armor-laden jacket, then grabbed the paper bag full of books out of the back of the car. The air here smelled like dandelions, clover, and urine. I strode past the nearest building. The outer wall was long gone, and the pillars within the three-story structure made it feel like a parking garage.

An old, wooden boat with a cracked hull and peeling paint had been dragged inside. It looked like someone had dumped it here, where it had been repurposed into a makeshift shelter.

“This place was the cutting edge of modern technology during World War II, rolling out bombers and other military hardware,” said Lena.

Glass, wood, and rubble crunched under my feet. We cut through the corner of the building and emerged into a courtyard of sorts. Brick walls rose up on two sides. Little grew here, the ground being smothered in a layer of debris and red bricks. Green vines climbed the far wall, nearly reaching the top of the three-story building.

I brushed off a broken slab of cement and sat carefully on the edge, then turned Smudge loose to hunt. This place was pretty much an all-you-can-eat buffet for a creature who lived on insects. He was relatively cool to the touch, which was reassuring.

I pulled a book from my jacket and used it to create a gold-plated handgun.

“What are you doing?”

I gripped the gun with both hands, sighted in on a patch of bare earth, and pulled the trigger twice. Dirt and pebbles sprayed the air, and Smudge flared into a tiny torch. He settled down quickly, though not before giving me a nasty eight-eyed glare.

“Signaling to anyone here that this is a good time to make themselves scarce.” I set down the gun and grabbed the first book from the paper bag. This was an older fantasy novel by Fred Saberhagen, and included a magical sword with the power to kill anyone, anywhere in the world.

“You haven’t told me what you’re doing,” Lena said.

I read the first few pages, searching for the tingle of magic. I felt nothing but the unpleasant jolt of the lock. “A locked book is magically useless to anyone except maybe Gutenberg himself, but not even he should be able to use its power. Not unless he first rips away that lock.”