I hesitated. There were a number of spells which could have collapsed the small passageway. I flexed my hands, feeling the magic coursing through my veins, crackling for release. When I had returned my weapon to its book, voices from another galaxy had insinuated themselves into my thoughts, just as had happened with Alice in Wonderland.

“I’ve got this,” Lena said, watching me with much the same focus as Doctor Shah used to. She returned to the wall where we had emerged and dropped to her hands and knees. I did my best not to stare at the way her jeans hugged her thighs and backside as she pushed her bokken into the tunnel.

I could just make out thin roots and branches sprouting from the end of the weapon. Dust and bits of concrete began to fall as the tendrils bored into the tunnel.

Lena rose and brushed her hands together. We avoided the grates, walking instead until we came to a locked door that, once Lena worked her lock-picking magic, opened into a basement hallway. We strode past what appeared to be grad student offices. Only a few of the old wooden doors were open, and none of the students gave us a second glance as we found our way to a stairwell and left, emerging about a block east of the library.

“Wait.” I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and closed my eyes.

“What are you doing?”

“Listening.” Searching beneath the clanking of construction equipment, the grumble of distant cars, for any trace of magical energy. “The more magic I use, the more . . . permeable I become to that magic. It can cause problems if I push too hard.” The whispers in my head were only the first symptom. “I’m hoping I can use it. If someone else was controlling this vampire, I might be able to sense them.”

“Permeable?”

“The more you reach into books, the easier it becomes for those books to reach back into you.” The past few days had left me hypersensitive to magic. The locked books gave off a cool, heavy pull that made me think of dead stars floating in space.

I opened my eyes and turned in a slow circle. I could feel the Triumph in the parking garage, which was an accomplishment all by itself. As long as I pushed myself to the brink of madness, I’d always be able to remember where I parked. But I heard no other magical whispers, no trace of another presence.

If someone else had destroyed that vampire, they had either done so from a distance, or else they were strong enough to hide from my amateur attempt to find them.

Gutenberg could have done so with ease.