Smudge scrambled up the closest wall, burning like a beacon. This was the sort of threat Gutenberg’s automatons had been created to fight. They could absorb magic, devour whatever this thing was and destroy the book in the process. I, on the other hand, was close to losing myself to my own magic.

Smoke and blackness began to coalesce. I could feel the thing pushing, struggling to find form. Arms and legs separated from the smoke. A man-shaped shadow took a slow, shuddering step toward us. The whirling pages clung to its body, a blackened paper skin. “I think . . . I think it’s a character from the book.”

“Which one?”

I listened to the voices as the thing took another step. “All of them.”

The figure didn’t seem to care about the various laws of magic its existence violated as it trudged toward us, propelled by the one drive every character in the book shared: the need to destroy their enemies.

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

I STOOD FROZEN AS THE THING APPROACHED.

I had faced monsters before. I had my books, my magic . . . if I could shut out the voices long enough to use them. But I didn’t know what we were fighting. It looked like nothing so much as a burnt corpse. There was no face, nothing but faint impressions that could have been eyes and a mouth. I couldn’t even figure out what to call it.

Lena’s swords flattened in her hands. I could feel the wood responding to her magic, like a low, warm buzz through my bones as the edges grew sharper.

I shouldn’t have been able to feel it. That was another warning sign. The boundaries between me and magic were dangerously thin.

“Is that thing contagious?” Lena asked.

I hadn’t even considered whether it would carry the virus. “Possibly.”

“No offense, but I don’t like Plan B anymore.” Lena slid one foot forward and swung.

Her bokken hit the thing’s neck and snapped like a rotten branch. The impact knocked the creature back a step, but didn’t appear to have injured it. Lena stared at her broken weapon.

Georgia McCain was the protagonist of the book. If this was a conglomeration of characters, she should be the strongest. “Georgia, I know you’re in there. Can you hear me?”

It snatched up the other piece of her sword and began to gnaw on it, doglike.

“She’s feeding on magic,” I said. Meaning any weapons I might be able to conjure would be worse than useless. Blasting the thing with a disruptor beam would only make it stronger. I glanced at Smudge, who was staying safely out of the way. But if this got worse, he would try to help. He had to. It was how he was written. And he would be nothing but a bite-sized snack to this thing.