It was a bullet. The nose was smashed in flat, until it vaguely resembled a small mushroom.

Our eyes got kind of wide.

Lea spread her hands and said calmly, “Faerie godmother.”

I shook my head, stunned. It had taken me years to design, create, and improve my leather duster’s defensive spells, and even then, the protection extended only as far as the actual leather. Lea had whipped up a whole-body protective enchantment in minutes.

I suddenly felt a bit more humble. It was probably good for me.

But then I tilted my head, frowning. The power involved in my godmother’s gifts was incredible—but the universe just doesn’t seem to be willing to give you something for nothing. That was as true in magic as it was in physics. I could, with years of effort, probably duplicate what Lea’s gifts could do. The Sidhe worked with the same magic I did, though admittedly they seemed to have a very different sort of relationship. Still, that much power all in one spot meant that the energy cost for it was being paid elsewhere.

Like maybe in longevity.

“Godmother,” I asked, “how long will these gifts endure?”

Her smile turned a little sad. “Ah, child. I am a faerie godmother, am I not? Such things are not meant to last.”

“Don’t tell me midnight,” I said.

“Of course not. I am not part of Summer.” She sniffed, rather scornfully. “Noon.”

And that made more sense. My duster’s spells lasted for months, and I thought I’d worked out how to make them run for more than a year the next time I laid them down. Lea’s gifts involved the same kind of power output, created seemingly without toil—but they wouldn’t last like the things I created would. My self-image recovered a little.

“Lea,” I asked, “did you bring my bag?”

Glenmael opened the trunk and brought it over to me. The Swords in their scabbards were still strapped to the bag’s side. I picked it up and nodded. “Thanks.”

He bowed, smiling. I was tempted to tip him, just to see what would happen, but then I remembered that my wallet had been in my blue jeans, and was now, presumably, part of the new outfit. Maybe it would reappear at noon tomorrow—assuming I was alive to need it, I mean.

“I will wait here,” Lea said. “When you are ready to travel to the first Way, Glenmael will take us there.”

“Right,” I said. “Let’s go, princess.”

“Of course, Sir Knight,” Susan said, her eyes sparkling, and we went into the church.

Chapter 39

Sanya was guarding the door. He swung it open wide for us, and studied Susan with a grin of appreciation. “There are some days,” he said, “when I just love this job.”

“Come on,” I said, walking past him. “We don’t have much time.”

Sanya literally clicked his heels together, took Susan’s hand, and kissed the back of it gallantly, the big stupidhead. “You are beyond lovely, lady.”

“Thank you,” Susan said, smiling. “But we don’t have much time.”

I rolled my eyes and kept walking.

There was a quiet conversation going in the living room. It stopped as I came through the door. I paused there for a second, and looked around at everyone who was going to help me get my daughter back.

Molly was dressed in her battle coat, which consisted of a shirt of tightly woven metal links, fashioned by her mother out of titanium wire. The mail was then sandwiched between two long Kevlar vests. All of that was, in turn, fixed to one of several outer garments, and in this case she was wearing a medium-brown fireman’s coat. Her hair was braided tightly against the back of her head—and back to its natural honey brown color—and a hockey helmet sat on a table near her. She had half a dozen little focus items I’d shown her how to create, none of which were precisely intended for a fight. Her face was a little pale, and her blue eyes were earnest.

Mouse sat next to her, huge and stolid, and rose to his feet and padded over to give me a subdued greeting as I came in. I knelt down and roughed up his ears for a moment. He wagged his tail, but made no more display than that, and his serious brown eyes told me that he knew the situation was grave.

Next came Martin, dressed in simple black BDU pants, a longsleeved black shirt, and a tactical vest, all of which could have been purchased from any military surplus or gun store. He was in the midst of cleaning and inspecting two sets of weapons: assault rifles, tactical shotguns, and heavy pistols. He wore a machete in a scabbard on his belt. A second such weapon rested in a nylon sheath on the table, next to a blade-sharpening tool kit. He never looked up at me, or stopped reassembling the pistol he’d finished cleaning.

A small chess set had been set up on the other end of the coffee table from Molly, next to Martin’s war gear. My brother sat there, with Martin (and, once he had finished greeting me, Mouse) between himself and the girl. He was wearing expensive-looking silk pants and a leather vest, both white. A gun belt bearing a large-caliber handgun and a sword with an inward-curving blade, an old Spanish falcata, hung over the corner of the couch, casually discarded. He lay lazily back on the couch, his eyes mostly closed, watching the move of his opponent.

Murphy was decked out in black tactical gear much like Martin’s, but more worn and better fitting. They don’t generally make gear for people Murph’s size, so she couldn’t shop off the shelf very often. She did have her own vest of Kevlar and mail, which Charity had made for her for Christmas the previous year, in thanks for the occasions when Murphy had gone out on a limb for them, but Murph had just stuck the compound armor to her tac vest and been done. She wore her automatic on her hip, and her odd-looking, rectangular little submachine gun, the one that always made me think of a box of chocolates, was leaned against the wall nearby. Murph was hunched over the chessboard, her nose wrinkled as she thought, and moved one of her knights into a thicket of enemy pieces before she turned to me.

She took one look at me and burst out giggling.

That was enough to set off everyone in the room except Martin, who never seemed to realize that there were other people there. Molly’s titters set off Thomas, and even Mouse dropped his jaws open in a doggy grin.

“Hah, hah, hah,” I said, coming into the room, so that Susan and Sanya could join us. No one laughed at Susan’s outfit. I felt that the injustice of that was somehow emblematic of the unfairness in my life, but I didn’t have time to chase that thought down and feed it rhetoric until the lightbulb over my head lit up.

“Well,” Murphy said, as the laughter died away. “I’m glad you got out all right. Went shopping after, did you?”

“Not so much,” I said. “Okay, listen up, folks. Time is short. What else did we manage to find out about the site?”

Murphy told Thomas, “Mate in six,” took a file folder from beneath her chair, and passed it to me.

“You wish,” Thomas drawled lazily.

I eyed him and opened the folder. There were multiple pages inside, color aerial and satellite photos of the ruins.

“Good grief,” I said. “How did you get these?”

“Internet,” Murphy said calmly. “We’ve got an idea of where they’re setting up and what security measures they’ll need to take, but before we can talk about an approach, we need to know where we’re going to arrive.”

I stroked a thumb over my mother’s gem and consulted the knowledge stored there. Then I went through the maps until I found one of the proper scale, picked up a pen from the table, and drew an X on the map. “Here. It’s about five miles north of the pyramid.”

Thomas whistled quietly.

“What?” I asked him. “You can’t do five miles?”

“Five miles of sidewalk, sure,” Thomas said. “Five miles of jungle is a bit different, Dresden.”