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.