I took Heart of Stone from my jacket and pulled out the enchanted sunglasses I had used before. Beneath one of the fallen trees, the air rippled slightly, like a cloaking device from an old SF flick.

Smudge grew hotter as I approached. I heard the telltale puff as his body ignited, and leaned my head to the left to avoid singeing my ear. I pointed to the distortion. Lena readied her bokken and moved downhill, approaching from the other side.

Something clinked underfoot. I held up a hand for Lena to wait. I couldn’t see anything in the dirt or grass. I crouched, moving my hands slowly through the knee-high weeds until I found what I had stepped on: a pair of invisible metal blocks, each one the size of a small LEGO brick. Both were smooth on all but one side, where small ridges formed the letters I and W.

I clutched them in my fist and continued toward the magical distortion. Lena extended one of her bokken, giving whatever it was a gentle poke. “It’s heavy,” she said. “Feels like metal.”

Ponce de Leon would have yanked the concealment spell aside like a stage magician pulling a tablecloth from beneath a vase. I had to do it the hard way.

I went through six sprigs of Moly, setting them around whatever it was and watching each flower wilt and die as it leached away the magic hiding this thing from our sight.

I removed the sunglasses and hung them from a belt loop. Even without them, I could now make out a dark shape, larger and broader than a man. Smudge ran down my body, igniting dead pine needles as he scurried away. I stomped out the small flames he left behind. Smudge scrambled up an old beech tree, where he turned around and refused to come back down.

“That’s not a good sign.” I pulled out a blaster and aimed it at the shape, just to be safe.

I had always thought the dissolution of magic should have more pizzazz: swirling lights, colored smoke . . . even just a loud popping sound. Unfortunately, the universe didn’t share my taste in special effects. I saw the shine of metal, and then—

“Shit!” I scrambled back, tripping over fallen branches.

Sprawled before us, pinned face-up by a four-inch-wide branch that speared it to the earth, was one of Gutenberg’s automatons.

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

FEW PEOPLE EVER SAW ONE OF Gutenberg’s mechanical enforcers. Far fewer walked away from the experience. I swallowed and stepped closer. A layer of dirt and pine needles blanketed the automaton, meaning it hadn’t moved in a while. The trunk of the fallen tree had rolled to one side, crushing the automaton’s left arm and leg into the dirt and leaving that single branch protruding from its chest.