“Do it.” I picked up one of the disposable cellphones Talulah had bought. “Speaking of long shots . . .”

I wasn’t surprised when a tinny voice said the number I was dialing had been disconnected. Getting Ponce de Leon’s help would have been like bringing an Abrams tank to the Revolutionary War. But the old sorcerer had always valued his privacy, and he’d gone deeper into seclusion after Gutenberg’s death. From what I knew, Ponce de Leon tended to sit back and let crises pass him by, like a squirrel hibernating through a harsh winter.

I hung up and handed the phone to Lena. “We could use some additional help.”

She grinned. “I’m way ahead of you.”

I’d testified to the Joint Committee on Magical Security that I didn’t know the whereabouts of Bi Wei and her fellow students, and that much was true. I had no idea where they were currently located, nor did I have a reliable way of getting in touch with them.

They’d asked Lena the same questions. The only difference was that Lena had lied.

A half hour later, I sat with an untouched burger on my plate, watching as Talulah pulled up satellite imagery and military communications. She was working on a borrowed laptop, but had hooked the display up to the flat-screen television in the living room so everyone could see.

New Millennium was nothing but a pixelated blob. One of many steps Babs had taken to protect our privacy was to shield us from overhead photography, including drones, satellites, helicopters, and so on.

Jeneta plopped down beside me. Her smile held a hint of her old mischievousness. “I’ve been thinking. If this doesn’t work, maybe we ought to we have a fallback plan.”

My lips quirked, matching her grin. “I’m listening.”

“How would you feel about colonizing Mars?”

“I’m listening very attentively.”

“E-books aren’t as limited as your dusty old paper books. I can do libriomancy on a cellphone, a tablet, anything that can display electronic books.” She pointed to the television. “No more size limitations.”

“I’d wondered about that,” I admitted. “We never got the chance to really test what you can do . . .” I trailed off, remembering why we’d been unable to finish exploring the possibilities of Jeneta’s power. I noticed her father watching us from the corner. He rarely let his daughter out of his sight these days.

“When this is over, however it plays out, I want to break in—” She glanced at her father. “I mean, I want to rent an IMAX theater. Ms. Polk can work the projector. Put one of your science fiction books on the screen, and I’ll pull out a ship capable of transporting the first group to Mars. Add some terraforming technology, and we could be living there within a year.”