With a grin, Henry placed his hand on the door, and I shivered as his spell took effect. “Unless they have a magister with them, they won’t see it,” he said.

I heard shouting in the theater as we ran down the tunnel into the rail station. It seemed like an eternity before the pilot car came back from its last trip uptown, and the entire time we waited, I cast frequent glances at the tunnel, fearing that the locks and Henry’s spells wouldn’t hold. I went weak with relief when at last the car arrived. The Mechanics got it turned around, then connected it to a flatbed car loaded with odds and ends and small machines. “Looks like we’ll have to find a new headquarters,” Alec said wistfully as he took a seat on the pilot car.

“I don’t think I was cut out for a life in the theater,” Colin quipped. Then he looked at his sister, who hadn’t yet boarded the car. “Aren’t you coming, Liz?”

She shook her head. “No, I’ve got work to do here, and I’m useless with machines. I’ll get out through one of the other exits. Someone will have to report on how the mysterious disappearance of the Rebel Mechanics baffled the British.”

Nat stood by her side. “And that’s gonna sell a lot of papers for me.”

“Verity, we’ll talk,” Lizzie said, her tone pleading. I gave her a curt nod before boarding the car with the others.

When the car shot down the tunnel, Henry threw back his head and laughed. “Amazing!” he shouted, grinning widely, and some of the Mechanics grinned back at him. Alec still gave him wary glances, but the others had warmed to him. I couldn’t blame them. This Henry, a blend of the boyish enthusiasm of his cover persona and the daring intensity of his Bandit identity, was irresistible.

Some of the Mechanics and magisters had gone ahead with the other machines, and they were waiting at the end of the line. They’d hooked the flatbed cars carrying the machines that didn’t move of their own accord to the engines. Now we had to get them out of the tunnels and into the city—and then out of the city.

Alec sent a scouting team that included the Mechanic who’d been my guide the week before and one of the magister bandits to reconnoiter. They returned with a report that the immediate area was clear. At that signal, the Mechanics opened a wide set of doors at the end of the tunnel.