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Ray rolled his eyes. “Do you see that line of portals? There’s gotta be twenty of them—”
“Twenty-four.”
“—so I’m gonna need all the juice for linking them, not for straining across half an acre of space. I have to be close.”
“How close?”
“The closer the better. Preferably right next to one.”
“Right—” Zheng looked at him like he was crazy, which, okay. Couldn’t really argue with that.
“We can’t get over there,” I told Ray, wondering how this wasn’t apparent. “The fey are facing the portals.”
He scowled. “Like I don’t see that? What am I, blind?”
“No, but you intend that they should be,” Louis-Cesare said, sounding slightly more alert.
Ray nodded. “See that? The crazy guy knows what I’m talking about.”
“There’d be a reason for that,” Zheng muttered.
“I am not crazy,” Louis-Cesare told Ray. “But your plan may be.”
“But you just said you can do it—”
“I can—for a limited amount of time.”
“Wait,” I said, looking at Ray. “You want him to work that thing for you? When he’s never done it and in his condition?”
“No, I want him to get me over there so I can!”
“Which is the problem,” Louis-Cesare said. “I can shield another, but it decreases the amount of time that I can hold the Veil even further.”
“How much?” Ray asked, starting to look worried.
“Under the circumstances?” Sculpted lips pursed. “Thirty seconds.”
“Thirty—”
“Perhaps. Certainly no more.”
Ray looked outraged. “Well, what the hell kind of a master power is that? What good is that to anybody?”
“In a duel?” Zheng asked sardonically. “A lot.”
“Yeah, but we’re not in a duel! And we’re not gonna be, even if they see us. A massacre would be more like—”
“How much of the thirty do you need?”
I cut in. Because this was no time for Ray to get going.
He looked at me incredulously. “How much? Like all of it? If I can even—”
“It could work,” I said, looking from Zheng to Louis-Cesare and back to Ray. “Just.”
“How?”
I told them.
