I looked past her to Mmadukaaku. He’d never been comfortable with magic, and from the stiffness in his posture and the way he muttered to himself whenever he passed Deb, that hadn’t changed.

“My daughter deserves security.” He broke eye contact. “I’ve been trying to provide that for her.”

“You’ve done great, Dad,” said Jeneta. “I don’t mean—”

He shook his head. “You shouldn’t have to hide.”

“Neither should you,” she answered.

“You’re both right.” I stood to go, feeling far wearier than when I’d sat down. “I’ll do what I can.”

Nidhi found me out back a short time later. I sat on a squeaky wooden porch swing, an unopened book in my lap, looking out at a collection of bird feeders. They all bore metal shields to protect them from squirrels.

She sat down beside me without saying a word. After a while, she sighed and put an arm around my shoulders.

There was nothing romantic about it. Nidhi and I generally landed between friends and siblings on the relationship spectrum. But I found myself relaxing. Nidhi wasn’t here to ask questions or press me for miracles. She was here to remind me we were in this together.

I handed her the book I’d been reading.

She opened the cover one-handed and flipped through the first pages. “There’s no title.”

“That’s one of three copies of Johannes Gutenberg’s autobiography. Would you make sure it’s safe?”

“Of course.”

There were plenty of biographies of Gutenberg out there, and most were woefully incomplete. You could hardly blame the authors. Gutenberg had done an excellent job faking his death back in 1468. He’d even gone back later to destroy his alleged gravesite as well.

Recent months had seen a surge in more “speculative” material on Gutenberg’s life, some of it little more than tabloid nonsense slapped together to cash in on current interest. One edition went so far as to speculate that Gutenberg and Elvis Presley were one and the same. Another claimed he was the second coming of Christ. My favorite was a paranormal romance describing in lurid detail Gutenberg’s affair with a vampiric Marilyn Monroe.

A man of Gutenberg’s power, knowledge, and self-importance would never risk his story being lost to history and rumor. Nicola had discovered his autobiography a month after his death. She’d printed two copies for the Porters, then loaned me the original as part of an off-the-books research project.

Three copies weren’t enough for traditional libriomancy, but there were other forms of book magic. I’d said once that all stories were magic. And all magic was story. This was Gutenberg’s story, in his own words.

A million readers could imbue books with a great deal of power. A single reader . . . or writer . . . with enough power of their own might do the same.