“Take it off, ” Fort said, practically begging now. “Please! We weren’t going to do anything, we just wanted the Summoning book.”

“And why would she need that?” Colonel Charles asked. “She has Damian, and he can summon whatever he wants, clearly.”

“It was for me,” Fort said. “Dr. Opps thinks my father might still be alive, and I had to use the magic to get him back!”

This made Colonel Charles stand back up in surprise. “Oppenheimer thinks that?” He seemed dumbfounded for a moment, then leaped forward and grabbed Fort by the uniform, his eyes wide. “What proof does he have? Why has he never told me this?”

“I don’t know,” Fort said miserably. “He just thought it was possible.”

“My son was taken by the same creatures!” the colonel said, releasing Fort and turning around. “Why would he never tell me this? It can’t be true, not this long after… can it?”

Sierra whimpered on the ground, and Fort’s stomach hurt just hearing her. “Please, I’ll do whatever you want, just let her go!”

“Ah, no, we won’t be doing that,” Colonel Charles said, barely giving Fort a look. “Now that we have her, I intend to keep her. I don’t know how we’ll get her out of Oppenheimer’s mind, but even if we can’t remove her, she’ll still be an asset.”

Sierra slowly looked up at him, her face—Dr. Opps’s face—contorted in pain and fear. “You… you can’t… keep me… locked up!”

“Locked up?” Colonel Charles said, still distracted. “Of course not. You’ll be working for us. Oppenheimer wasted you while we had you. Think of the good I could do around the world with your magic. I’ve been testing both the Mind and Summoning books for the last week or so, but Oppenheimer declared that they had to be put back in storage for safety. I agreed at first, then realized this was ridiculous. His passivity has been holding us back, keeping us in danger, when we should be using the magic we have! So I took them back.”

“I… will never… be your… prisoner !” Sierra shouted, and Dr. Opps’s body seemed to bulge strangely, like it was too full or something. Fort’s eyes widened, but Colonel Charles didn’t notice.

“Call it what you want,” he said. “But you will—”

And then his mouth dropped open as his own amulet floated up and off of his chest, then over to Sierra’s hands behind her. As it did, the handcuffs around her wrists ripped in half, freeing her.

“How did you do that?” Colonel Charles demanded, stepping back to pull a glowing red orb out of his pocket.