Deb waved me away. “For the record, I hate you both.”

We stayed at Am HaTorah until nightfall. I managed a brief nap, full of dreams about running through a maze of twisty passages, all alike. I was either chasing Gutenberg or running away from him. The dream wasn’t clear on that point.

Dinner was canned tuna fish and crackers. Nothing fancy, but there was more than enough for everyone. Once we’d eaten, we thanked Rabbi Miller once more and set out to find a place to stay for the night. Neither he nor Deb said a word about their conversation. He’d arranged for Lupe, the woman with the van—and his wife, as it turned out—to drop the three of us off.

At my request, Lupe let us out in front of a small library, a two-story building with old wood siding that looked close to a century old. Once inside, Deb used her hypnostare to erase our arrival from the memory of the staff. After that, it was just a matter of letting her divert their attention while we settled down to wait for the place to close. I snagged a book from the shelves to pass the time.

“Calvin and Hobbes?” asked Deb. “Really?”

“You know, I’m still trying to figure out what to do with you,” I said. “Bashing Calvin and Hobbes isn’t helping your case.”

I finished three of Watterson’s collections before the lights finally went out. As soon as the doors were locked and the last car left the parking lot, I settled down at one of the computers to pull up the news.

Footage from our attack on the Kagan had already made it onto the Internet, though none of us had been identified. There was blurry video of vampires swooping down to attack the three ships, which had supposedly been on maneuvers as part of a training mission. Another shot showed the ice trapping the ships in place.

The next article included a close-up photo of the Kagan’s bow, highlighting where my magic had amputated the tip. That damage, combined with the ice, suggested the vampires hadn’t been alone. The Joint Committee on Magical Security was demanding a full investigation into the Porters.

I pulled up another story and groaned. “The president is calling for all people to work toward the peaceful integration of nonhumans into our society, but it sounds like he’s also putting the National Guard on standby, and he’s indicated his willingness to sign the newly expanded RAMPART Act.”

“We’re not going to let him round us up into his fucking camps.” Deb snarled and kicked a chair hard enough to crack one of the wooden legs.

“Don’t take it out on the library,” I said without looking up.