“War is coming,” said Deb. “The Porters aren’t going to win this one. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“You fired a machine gun at me!”

“I was aiming for your legs.” She shrugged. “If you’d have let me into your mind like your friend here, I wouldn’t have needed the gun.”

That was where the headache had come from. I grinned and tapped my head. “Blame that on the fish in my brain.”

Deb stared. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Telepathic fish.” I shrugged, using the movement to scan the closest shelves. What kind of weapon would take out a Renfield? “You need to read more Douglas Adams. The fish translates other languages by eating incoming thought waves. Turns out it provides a bit of a buffer against mental assaults, too. Gobbles up psychic attacks like candy. I wrote a paper on it three years ago.”

“You put a fish in your brain.” Her fingers inched toward her jacket. “You’re an odd man, Isaac Vainio.”

“Why are the vampires really attacking us, Deb?”

“I didn’t lie to you. Someone, probably a Porter, has been working against the vampires. But we didn’t attack the library, and we didn’t take Gutenberg.” She snatched a book from her jacket.

I kicked the cricket across the floor, then lunged for the copy of Starship Troopers on the closest shelf. Deb had a head start, but as I had hoped, the cricket broke her concentration long enough for me to find the scene I wanted.

A chittering sound filled the room, and Deb froze. Between the buzz of enormous wings and the click of chitinous bodies moving together, it was like I had ripped a hole in the side of a giant insect hive.

Disturbing as the noises were to me, I was human. Deb, on the other hand, had become a creature who lived by consuming the strength of insects and small animals. Her book forgotten in her hands, she reached toward mine, toward the enormous insectoid aliens within the pages.

I sidestepped to pick up the book she had used to fire at me. Her magic was still active. I set Starship Troopers on a shelf and gripped Deb’s book with both hands. “Let Lena go and drop your books. The jacket, too. Then we’ll talk.”

She wrenched her attention away from the sound long enough to glance at Lena, who started as if woken from a dream.

“Good. Now drop them.”

Deb stared at the pages of her book, and for a moment I thought she was going to try magic. Her knuckles whitened with pressure.

I raised the book, and my fingers sank into the paper, touching Deb’s magic. I could feel the staccato concussions of gunfire within the text, waiting to be released. “Please don’t make me do this.”