“That’s not why I asked her here, no.” To Bi Wei, I said, “If you don’t hear from us in two hours, do whatever it takes to tear this place to the ground. If the siren assault begins before that and we can’t stop it—”

“I’ll do what I can. And I’ll be waiting to try to help Kiyoko.”

A National Guard truck approached, painted in desert camouflage. Potts was bringing in military reinforcements. “Angels and ministers of grace, defend us,” I muttered.

“Hamlet, right?” said Talulah.

“Yah. Also McCoy from Star Trek IV.” We waited for the truck to stop at the gate, then sprinted onto the road. I boosted Lena onto the right rear tire. She gripped the cracks in the tread to climb higher, then stabbed one of her bokken into the wheel well, hooked her knees over the handle, and dropped upside down to grab my hands.

Her bokken was already sending out branches. Lena pulled me up beside her, then did the same for Talulah and Deb. We pressed flat as the wood grew into a large, curved cage. From the outside, if anyone spotted us, it should look like a bit of tumbleweed stuck in the well.

That was the easy part.

One of the guards circled the truck and opened the back. Another was talking to the driver, checking paperwork and asking about their orders, what equipment they’d brought, how long they intended to be on-site, and so on.

“Anything magical?”

“No, ma’am,” said the driver.

As boots crunched along the pavement, I retrieved a book from my borrowed messenger bag.

“Captain Underpants?” Lena whispered.

I plucked a ring from the pages. “The books straddle the line between comic books and novels. That makes them harder to use, but the popularity of the series means there’s a stronger pool of belief, which balances it out.”

“Hold on. I’m sensing something near the back.” A woman dropped to one knee and peered around. She was better equipped than I expected, with both a mundane semiautomatic and a JG-367, currently set to disintegration mode. In addition to her own inherent empathy, she wore an amulet from Tamora Pierce’s In the Hand of the Goddess, allowing her to see magic. She clicked a flashlight on and shone it beneath the truck.

As quickly as I could, I pointed the Hypno-Ring from The Adventures of Captain Underpants. “You were mistaken. There’s nothing here. You can go about your business. Move along.”

The woman straightened. “Looks like I was mistaken. There’s nothing here.”

“You know the drill,” said a bored-sounding man from the other side of the truck. “Let me take a look, too. Back up a bit?”

Lena grimaced in pain as a second set of boots approached. Smudge scampered from my body, retreating to the back of the cage. The magic of my ring started to fade.