She pounded my chest with one hand. I nodded and spread my arms for balance as my winged sneakers lifted us aloft. It was like walking on marshmallows. I leaned forward and tried not to think too hard about the physics.

I failed. With an unstable source of lift anchored to my feet, we were far too top-heavy. We should have toppled head over heels within seconds of leaving the deck, but the wings and their magic seemed determined to keep us upright. Even if they strained my ankles to the breaking point in the process.

I crouched until my knees touched my chest, which eased the stress somewhat, and gave me one more reason to be grateful for invisibility magic. We would have looked completely ridiculous flying over the waves in a deep squat.

We were a good thirty feet up now, high enough for a painful belly flop should things go wrong. Halfway to the nearest ship, I saw a group of men using some kind of rescue net to haul a siren on board. Another siren was sprawled on the deck. A group of people huddled over her body, securing her while a man knelt and did something to her mouth and throat, no doubt to mute her power.

Wind wasn’t enough to stop this. I paused in our flight and grabbed Control Point again. Instead of aeromancy, I switched to portamancy, the magic Cole’s protagonist used to open doorways to an alternate dimension. Cole’s soldiers had found other uses for a two-dimensional rift in reality.

I didn’t bother trying to anchor my gate to a real-world location. I simply sent the gate hurling through the air like a Frisbee.

It sliced the tip of the bow from the first cutter as neatly as a light saber through a vampire.

It was like throwing a lit firecracker into a wasp nest. Dozens of guardsmen swarmed over the deck. Some checked the damage while others searched the water for the source of the attack. I’d dissolved the gate, so there was nothing to find, but that didn’t stop one of them from shooting into the waves.

I hovered in place and waited for the mental afterimages to fade. Those gates were particularly challenging to work with, especially since I was trying not to hurt anyone. I simply needed to turn the ships away, or to distract the crew long enough for the sirens to escape and for us to find out exactly who had issued these ships’ orders.

I started forward, then hurled myself to the side as three figures burst up from the water in front of us. Deb’s grip tightened into a noose around my neck. The shift in weight dragged my body into a backward arch. I windmilled my arms, but I couldn’t right myself with Deb dangling from my neck. My head was pounding, and I struggled to breathe.