“Um, how am I supposed to take out two guards?” I asked nervously.

“You don’t have to take them out. You just have to get past them,” Florence said.

“They’ll probably use magic to fight you, and by the time they notice that it doesn’t work on you, you should be through the portal,” Owen added.

“Maybe we can do something out here that will draw their attention so you can sneak past,” Earl suggested. “I’m sure we can pull off another diversion.”

“Oh, that’s a great plan! I like that idea!” I said, perhaps a wee bit too enthusiastically.

“We’ll make the guards at the gateway scream for help,” Earl said, and the tone of his voice implied that he’d greatly enjoy doing something to make them scream.

“First, let’s make sure you’re immune,” Owen said. He squeezed my hand tighter for a few seconds, then released me and stepped back. I felt the tingle of magic surrounding me, but didn’t notice anything else happening. “Okay, you’re immune,” he said, perhaps a bit mournfully.

“Then let’s do this,” I said. I wanted to get it over with before I lost my nerve—and before I had to spend another minute in this crazy place.

We entered the park, the gargoyles flying ahead. It didn’t look like a park to me now. It was just a blank space with a couple of plain benches and a few shapes that might have been trees and bushes. Instead of having the wall of a building at the far end, the space stretched on, the way it had the first time we’d found it. Just beyond where the wall should have been stood the first two guards.

By the time we reached the guards, the gargoyles were already upon them, dive-bombing them and grabbing at them with their talons. I’d experienced a gargoyle attack like that, and I didn’t envy the guards.

According to plan, the guards started shouting for help. I hoped the portal guards were the ones to respond because things would get a lot more complicated if other guards appeared and we ended up with more people to fight.

And, of course, as luck would have it, reinforcements appeared from elsewhere in the park. Earl and his friends turned just in time to fight them off. “There goes my cover,” Florence muttered as she joined the fight. Owen held me off to the side so I’d be ready to run as soon as the way was clear.

Our luck improved when one guard arrived from beyond the gateway. “This may be the best we can hope for,” Owen said.

I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I gave him what I hoped was a firm nod. There wasn’t really anything firm about me at the moment, as my legs seemed to have turned to jelly and my insides felt all watery. But I still managed to run as Owen and I dashed past the first set of guards and through the gateway out of the containment area and into the elven realm.

Without the illusion of dense park vegetation or whatever else they’d used to hide it, I could see the portal just ahead, a shimmering oval casting a greenish glow on the surrounding area. We stopped at a safe distance, and he waved a hand in what I recognized as a veiling spell. “So, I just go through it?” I asked, even as I winced at how badly my voice shook. “No spell, incantation, or anything?”

“I think it should be as simple as just going through it. With the kind of energy required to create a portal between realities, they’d have to keep it open.”

“What’ll I find when I get through to the other side?”

“That would be the tricky part,” he said with an audible gulp. “It should be that same warehouse where we first found the other end of the portal, but what’s there now, we don’t know.”

“And I should be able to go through, in spite of being immune to magic?”

“It shouldn’t make much of a difference.”

“Then what stops them from sending me right back here?”

“They can’t mess with your head the way they did before, and they’d have to use physical force to make you go through the portal.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

“This was your plan,” he reminded me.

“Yeah, I know, and I still can’t think of a better option.”

“Me, either,” he admitted. “You’re on your own after this. I can’t go any farther.”

“What’ll happen to you on this side?”

He gave me a smile that strained at being cocky but didn’t quite make it. “Remember, you’re going to come rescue me.” More seriously, he added, “If we can hold off the guards long enough, I may be able to do something about these wards. It’ll take time, but now that we’re here and have the guards busy, we’ll see what I can do. I may join you before you know it.”