Tristan said, “Ashley’s in there. We don’t want her arrival to coincide with yours, and you’ve shown up a lot. We already came pretty close with you and her being within a day of each other. Her being connected to Chris is less bad, and he won’t even be human. Let’s keep them from making the complete connection.”

I saw his hand move. Flat, at an angle, as if telling me to stop, but not quite stop.

He was trying to communicate something with me?

Caution? Something else?

“Okay,” I said.

He gave me a little nod, turning back toward the screen. “We send you in if it gets ugly.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t,” Rain said.

“Is Ashley in their clairvoyant’s usual range?” Tristan asked.

“Yes,” Kenzie said. “Should we call her anyway?”

“No,” Tristan said.

I wanted to ask why he’d signaled me, but I could hardly do that. I likely wouldn’t get an answer until this was over with.

The villains were gathering. The initial group that appeared was roughly the same size as Advance Guard’s group.

I could see Kenzie’s labels with the attached names. Love Lost was in the crowd of villains. Snag was absent.

Colt was hanging back, not far from Nailbiter.

On the wall, the Advance Guard mugshots were filling in. I looked for the familiar first and found them already named. Spright, Shortcut.

Mayday, Siren, ReSound, Gong…

“Mayday,” Kenzie said. “He was Baltimore.”

Signal Fire, Flapper, Prong…

“I trained under Signal in San Diego, too,” Kenzie said, adding, “I’d really like to use that training someday soon.”

“Someday,” Tristan said.

“You dropped the ‘soon’,” Kenzie said. “We need to talk about that, after.”

This was difficult enough without you getting involved, Advance Guard, I mused.

“Every time I run into Advance Guard, it’s a headache,” I said. “I run into the one incorrigible asshole in the group, their timing sucks, their choice of where to show up sucks, or it’s more than one of the above.”

“Must be how Prancer feels,” Tristan said. “Heroes turning up out of nowhere.”

The two groups advanced until they were in sight of each other.

One of the capes on Advance Guard’s side held up a hand. She continued approaching until she stood halfway into no-man’s-land between the two factions.

Kenzie’s computer blipped as the label connected to the individual at the front. ReSound was the spokesman, apparently. Her outfit had a lot of circles reminiscent of records or speakers, with the depthed concentric shapes and circles of color in the center of black circles. The icon on her chest was made of crescent shapes, not triangles, with the shield being a half-circle.