“Not with everything happening in D.C. right now. Keeler might be working late at his office, but his family should be here.” I had no interest in terrorizing the man’s wife and children, but they’d be able to tell us where to find him. I tried the door, but it was locked.

Lena pressed her fingertips to the door like Spider-Man getting ready to scale a building. Her hands sank into the wood, just as if she was joining with her oak tree back home, though the door was too thin to possibly contain her.

Or maybe it could. I’d never fully figured out what happened to Lena’s body when she merged with her oak. The tree didn’t visibly increase in size or mass. The wood within her flesh didn’t change her human form, either. They simply coexisted in the same space.

I was still thinking when I heard her unlocking the door from the inside. It swung open, and Lena gestured us in.

Deb sniffed again. “Oh, shit.”

Smudge shifted and looked around, but didn’t ignite. “What is it?” I asked.

“Blood.”

The interior of the house was dark, save for the glowing keypad of a security system by the door. Faint voices and flickering light came from deeper in the house.

“The alarm’s turned off.” Lena readied one of her bokken.

We entered the foyer. To the left, an open door led to a small music room. The streetlights through the front window illuminated a baby grand piano. A pair of electric guitars hung on the wall.

I kept checking on Smudge. He acted like we were in no danger, but my gut told me otherwise. I didn’t see anything suppressing his senses.

On the other side of the foyer was a living room as big as my first apartment. A ridiculously oversized television hung on the wall, playing an infomercial about carpet stains. A middle-aged woman sat sprawled on the couch. It was possible she’d fallen asleep while watching TV, but her posture was stiff, her body weighed down by a heavy blanket of magic.

I crossed the room and touched her throat until I felt the slow bump of her pulse. “She’s alive.”

“Keeler’s wife?” guessed Lena.

“Probably.” I studied her more closely. “If I’m reading this right, someone used a copy of Firestarter on her.”

“Wouldn’t that, I dunno, set her on fire?” asked Deb.

“The title character is a magic pyromaniac, yah, but there’s another who can force people to obey his voice. At one point, he commands someone to sleep, and they don’t wake up for six months. All you’d have to do is reach into the book and bring the sound into our world. It’s elegant, but damned dangerous.”

“So whoever did this was a libriomancer,” said Deb. “One of your team?”