My team waited for us in the Wheeler conference room. Talulah’s privacy toys were set out on the table, their magic securing the room. I sagged into a chair and wiped sweat from my forehead.

“There are at least thirty-nine clones of Kiyoko Itô,” Talulah said without preamble. “I can’t get a location on them, and I haven’t found a way into their biological hard drives.”

“What about the security footage at Keeler’s place?” asked Lena.

“Two intruders. Looks like one male, one female. Both wore ski masks.”

“I’ve been digging into Thomas Hayes,” said Charles. “He’s been with the Coast Guard twenty-three years. Joined up right after college. Took over as commandant two years ago. The Porters don’t have a file on him and his family, so he probably didn’t lose his wife to a selkie or anything else that would give him a personal grudge against magic.”

“DHS could have told him the sirens were a threat,” Talulah pointed out. “He might believe he’s doing his job and protecting his country.”

“Hopefully Mr. Potts will be able to answer that question, along with a long list of others.”

“Potts.” Vince all but spat the name. “He was bad enough before he was running things. Now—”

“What do you mean running things?” I interrupted.

They looked at one another. “You didn’t hear?” asked Charles.

“Obviously.”

“Nicola Pallas and Thérèse St. Pierre were both taken into FBI custody for questioning,” he said. “They’re trying to implicate the Porters in this Vanguard mess, particularly the attack on those Coast Guard ships.”

That left only Russell Potts and Heather Neuman as active members of the New Millennium board, and while Neuman was a good doctor, she didn’t have the strength of will to stand up to Potts.

Russell Potts I could handle. I was more worried about Kiyoko, having seen enough of her book to know the violence she was capable of. “Talulah, do you have any way of taking Kiyoko offline?”

She shook her head. “It’s a distributed model. There’s no ‘queen’ ruling over the hive mind. Breaking her psychic link is what causes her stuttering and physical difficulties, so if anyone has to go up against her, your best bet is to isolate her from her clones’ thoughts.”

“Any of those magic-eating pearls should do the trick,” said Charles. “We figure the real reason she wore one was to make sure nobody realized what she was.”

“What’s the plan for taking Potts down?” asked Vince.

“First, I eliminate his leverage. Then we get proof.” The pieces all fit, but I’d been sure about Keeler, too. “Vince, you said Babs had been snooping through my Gateway reports?”

“That’s right.”

“I need you to be my backup plan. If Lena and I get caught, your job is to destroy the Gateway Project.”