I couldn’t hear the impact, but Lena staggered. “Remove all magic,” Kiyoko said calmly.

When I hesitated, she put another bullet into Lena, who gasped. “I’ve been instructed to capture Isaac Vainio alive. I have no such orders for your companion.”

“Those bullets are enchanted.” Babs sounded utterly drained of emotion. “Lena’s armor won’t protect her.”

I raised my hands. Whatever Kiyoko might be, her body was human. She couldn’t last long with a sword in her gut. I needed to stall her. “Let me help my friend.”

“This is not a negotiation.” She turned the gun toward me and fired again. There was a burst of heat from my hip, and the cage broke away. Another shot tore through the center of the cage.

I dropped to all fours. Smudge lay in his cage, blue flame shooting like a welding torch from the front of his body. Kiyoko’s bullet had sheared off his right foreleg.

“Remove Lena Greenwood’s invisibility,” Kiyoko said calmly.

“All right!” Swallowing hard, I grabbed Smudge’s cage, crawled over to Lena, and started to unravel her invisibility. I took my time. Nobody else performed this kind of libriomancy, so she couldn’t know how long it was supposed to take. As Lena slowly faded into view, I looked past her to the portal.

Lena was bleeding, but the bullets didn’t seem to have gone all the way through. I focused my concentration on the portal. All those stories strung together on the floor, powerful and fragile at the same time. Left to its own devices, it would dissolve on its own within the hour.

I wiped my hands on my jacket and felt the lump where I’d tucked the enchanted compact mirror away. I couldn’t leave anything that might allow Babs and the rest to recreate my work.

“If you cooperate, they will survive,” said Kiyoko. “Back away.”

I mentally reached out to the portal, seizing its text in my mind and flipping it like a giant magical pancake. I grabbed the compact and tossed it and Smudge’s cage to the floor next to Lena, just before the portal landed atop them. They disappeared, and the portal dissolved an instant later.

“There goes your leverage,” I said quietly. “You really shouldn’t have told me your bosses need me alive. Especially since I don’t think I feel the same way about you.”

Kiyoko’s body was human, but she’d been born of magic. I seized that magic and pulled, ripping away the heart of what made her more. I turned my attention to Babs next, grabbing the power of her tattoos and her jewelry and turning it against her and Kiyoko both.