Codex Born by Jim C. Hines Read Free Book Online

using him to keep an eye on me. A warning system?”
    “Isn’t that what you use him for?”
    “That’s not fair. I also use him to repel mosquitoes.” I stretched my arms, grimacing at the tension in my back and shoulders. My jaw ached, too. I must have been clenching it in my sleep. “How long?”
    “You’ve been asleep five hours.”
    The good news was that I had successfully cast a spell I would have thought was impossible only a few months ago. The bad news was that it had kicked my ass. “Gutenberg tosses magic like that around all the time.”
    “Gutenberg has been practicing for more than five hundred years. You’ve had what, a decade?”
    “Exactly. I’m young and spry and energetic.” I winced and rubbed my neck. “Young and energetic, at least.”
    “You seem to have survived the experience with your mind intact. Which means you should be able to tell me what the
hell
you were thinking out there!”
    I could think of a few things more surprising than NidhiShah losing her temper and shouting at me. Smudge spontaneously breaking into a tap-dancing routine, for example. Gutenberg giving up magic and devoting himself to competitive macramé.
    I couldn’t even remember the last time Nidhi had raised her voice, let alone yelled at anyone. “I was trying to find out who killed that wendigo.”
    “By experimenting with magic you couldn’t control?” She started to say more, but caught herself before she could speak. She clasped her hands tightly together, and took three deep breaths. Her body visibly relaxed. “I’m not your therapist anymore, Isaac. I’m your…I’m trying to be your friend.”
    “I know that.”
Friend
was as good a word as any. The closest term I had come across for “my girlfriend’s other lover” was “metamour,” but the word suggested an uncomfortable level of intimacy between Nidhi and me.
    Her lips pursed. “As your friend, I will call your therapist and have you yanked off this investigation if I think you’re endangering yourself or the people around you.”
    Every Porter was required to see a therapist on a regular basis. It seemed a wise precaution for people who routinely rewrote the laws of existence to suit their whims. “We just saw a man who might be a libriomancer help slaughter a wendigo. I don’t think I’m the one we should be worrying about right now.”
    Nidhi didn’t even blink. “The closest Porter therapist would be Doctor Karim. I assume Pallas assigned you to her when I was removed from your case?”
    My silence was confirmation enough.
    “I’ve got her on speed dial. I consulted on one of her cases last year, a bakeneko with bipolar disorder who was living as a barn cat in Ohio. In her manic phase, she liked to reanimate dead mice and chase them through the house.”
    “Wait, how do you treat a shapeshifting cat for bipolar disorder?”
    “Stress management techniques, a light box for winter, lithium when she’s in her human form, and diet control. Particularlythe catnip tea. Don’t change the subject. I’ve lost Porters before because they didn’t respect their magic. They didn’t understand the risks. I’m not going to lose you.” Her gaze slipped away. “I won’t let Lena lose you.”
    I tightened my fist. “I understand the risks.”
    “You understand the dangers,” she said. “You don’t believe in the risks. Not to you. You think you’re too clever, just like every other Porter who ended up destroying themselves.”
    “Three vampires tried to kill me in my own library earlier this summer. Then a possessed Porter sent an automaton after me. If that wasn’t enough, I ended up ripping open a book that almost consumed Lena and me both.” I stared at the wall, remembering the charred pages of that damaged book ripping free like a dam crumbling from the weight of its magic. Unformed power trying to escape, followed by a presence Gutenberg had described as Hell itself, ripping me into nothingness, devouring my very