Danny had been right about the trackers. Five of them, exactly where he had felt the gate trying and failing to heal her. The trip to Westil had given him more power. A sharper focus, a greater awareness.

He moved the porthole to a spot an inch from Hermia’s ear. “Gate to my house in Buena Vista,” he said. Then he gave the same message to Veevee.

In a moment they were all there. “I spotted all five trackers,” said Danny. “I think I can gate them out.”

“‘Think’?” said Hermia. “This is my body we’re talking about.”

“I’ll have a nice big gate ready for you to pass through so when I get each one out, you can heal yourself instantly. What can go wrong?”

“Famous last words,” said Veevee.

But after another minute of dithering, Hermia said, “Oh, just do it.”

“Are you sure?” said Danny.

“Do it, gate boy,” said Veevee. “Can’t you tell when a woman’s saying ‘yes’? You really are young.”

In about ten seconds, Danny was done. There were five chips on the table, and Danny had passed the healing gate over Hermia after removing each one. It was very quick.

“It did hurt,” said Hermia. “Surgery is surgery.”

“Sorry,” said Danny.

“I was just reporting, so you’d know,” said Hermia. “I never thought it would be painless, so it wasn’t a complaint.” She picked up one of the chips. “So my parents thought it would be a good idea to put these things in their baby girl.”

“The question is, what do we do with them?” said Veevee. “I say gate them to an incinerator.”

“Or implant them in somebody else,” said Hermia.

“That wouldn’t be nice,” said Veevee.

“I was thinking, what about the President? Or Prince Charles?” said Hermia. “Or some dictator somewhere. Make my Family go chasing them.”

“Or five different people,” said Veevee. “Make them go crazy trying to figure out which one is you.”

In the end, Danny gated one tracker under the skin of each of the Hittite-Armenian assassins and sent the other trackers about a mile deep in the Atlantic. Then he gated the two assassins from the jail to the Greek Family’s offices in Athens. “Let my folks deal with them,” said Hermia.

“Are you going to tell them what the bastards tried to do to you?” asked Veevee.

“No,” said Hermia. “Let them try to talk to each other. They’ll know we picked these clowns to receive exactly two of the trackers for a reason. They’ll know it wasn’t random. But if I tell my family, they’ll just kill them. Even if they’re seriously angry at me, they won’t approve of assassins from another Family going after me.”

“So you think the assassins won’t talk?” asked Danny.