Free Codex Born by Jim C. Hines Page B

skin, but didn’t cut her. “Tough as bark.”
    The living room felt like a meat locker. I had never used Oliver’s books before. Those things were more potent than I had expected. I hurried into the kitchen to check on Smudge, who was huddling protectively over his half-eaten candy, his body burning merrily against the chill. The water pooled in the other dishes was frozen around the edges. Once I knew he was safe, I returned to the library and joined Lena in searching for the ladybug.
    Glass crunched underfoot. The ladybug had to have been caught in the cold, but with so much glass and ice scattered across the floor, it was hard to find a little blob of silver metal.
    “Isaac.” Lena pointed to the door. The ladybug had gotten halfway through the glass when I caught it with the sphere. Before I could figure out the easiest way to work it free, Lena tapped the door with her sword, bringing the whole thing down in a shower of pebbled glass.
    “What happened?” asked Nidhi, running onto the deck.
    “We’re fine.” Lena’s bokken slipped from her hand. Nidhi started toward her, but Lena waved her back. “I’m all right.”
    I grabbed a pair of pliers from the junk drawer in the kitchen. Already the ladybug was trying to move, legs and wings clicking erratically. I tightened the pliers around the body until I felt the metal shell begin to bend.
    I brought it to the office and switched on my lamp. The shell was grooved silver. Two of the six legs had snapped off from the cold. One of the wings beneath had burned away, leaving little more than a stub. I fetched a Q-tip from the bathroom and tried to clean the soot from the other, but I succeeded only in snapping it. Under the light, the broken wing looked like a tissue-thin strip of nacre peeled from the inside of an oyster shell.
    Beneath the shell were gears that would have made a Swiss watchmaker weep with envy. The eyes were like droplets of red wine. Garnets, maybe?
    “What is it?” Lena asked.
    “Not a clue.” Disproportionately large copper mandibles clicked at my fingers. “What steampunk adventure did you sneak out of? Cherie Priest?
Girl Genius
? You’re gorgeous, whatever you are.”
    “And in the meantime, its friends are drilling deeper into Lena’s oak,” Nidhi said tightly.
    I winced. “Sorry. I got—”
    “It’s all right,” said Lena. “We’re used to you. ‘Look at the shiny magic thing trying to kill us, isn’t it awesome?’ I’ll be happy to admire them with you as soon as we get them out of my tree.”
    I held the tip of a wooden pencil in front of the ladybug’s head. It snapped cleanly through both wood and graphite. “Isee several types of metal in there. Copper and silver. Possibly steel.”
    “Were they created with libriomancy?” Nidhi asked.
    “Most likely.” Only a few people could manipulate raw magic. Far more could use books to help them shape that power. “I’ll check the Porter catalog when I’m done here to see if I can figure out what book they might have come from.”
    I looked around the office. I didn’t know where my magnifying glass had gone, but I spotted something else that should work. Holding the pliers tight, I squeezed past Lena to the 10” telescope tucked into the corner. A built-in rack on the side of the scope held a set of eyepieces. I grabbed one from the middle and returned to the desk.
    Holding the two-inch-long metal-and-plastic tube to my right eye, I peered at the insect. I had to look through the wrong end of the eyepiece to bring things into proper focus, but it worked well enough.
    “There are no welds. The shell looks like it’s riveted to the body.” The rivets appeared to be copper, but they were impossibly tiny, as were the hinges and joints below.
    The ladybug snapped at me, the mandibles clicking audibly. The sight of those magnified, serrated pincers reaching for my eye made me jerk back so hard I almost dropped the pliers.
    I tested a magnet next, but it had no