The owner had also mentioned the state-of-the-art radar, which he used to pick up flocks of seabirds that led him to the best fishing locations. Unfortunately, the Coast Guard’s radar was probably much better than our own. Between that and their radar detection systems, we needed another way of sneaking up on them. “Take the helm, love?”

Lena kissed my ear and slid past me to grab the wheel.

I traded the Lewis for another book. “Time to engage the cloaking device.”

Lena glanced over her shoulder. “Stuart Little?”

“In the book, Stuart had a mouse-sized car.” I hadn’t read this one in years, but it had been a favorite when I was in kindergarten. I reached into chapter eleven and pulled out the miniature automobile. It was just as I’d imagined it: half a foot long, bright yellow with black fenders. “You see that tiny button on the dashboard? That’s the invisibility button.”

“And a mouse’s car has an invisibility button because . . . ?”

“Because it’s cool!” The nice thing about using children’s books for libriomancy was that you tapped into a different kind of belief. Children had less skepticism about such things, fewer questions about how invisibility would or wouldn’t work. If a button made a car invisible, then that’s all there was to it. Press the button, and the car became impossible to see.

I drew that piece of the car’s magic into myself, then pushed it into the Nemo. “Watch your step, Deb! We’re about to disappear.”

She tossed the remainder of the bucket overboard, wiped her hands on her pants, and grabbed the rail.

“Are you all set with your heading, Lena?”

She glanced at the stars and the moon. “I’m good.”

I used the tip of a pencil to press the tiny button in the car. It vanished from normal sight, along with the rest of the boat. Lena, Deb, Smudge, and I disappeared as well.

“That’s disconcerting,” commented Lena.

We continued to cruise along the waves, appearing to fly just above an abnormally smooth V where the bottom of the Nemo flattened the water beneath us. I removed my glasses and focused not on the ocean, but on the magic flowing over the boat and ourselves. It was a bit like the final scene of The Matrix, only instead of seeing glowing green computer code, I saw the black-inked characters from the book.

“A thousand bucks to anyone who can explain why my glasses blur my magical vision even when they’re invisible,” I muttered. It had to be either a side effect of the charring on my retinas, or else something to do with the logic of young Stuart Little fans.

A loud thump vibrated the cockpit, followed by copious swearing.

“Mind the canopy,” I said.

“Bite me.” Deb rubbed her head. “How far until we reach the sirens?”