Page 61 of The Tribes of Magic
“Without being seen?”
“That’s right. Because we have this.” I showed him the magic token Conner had given me. “I can use this to make us invisible. The Watchers won’t even see us.”
That was the plan, anyway. I’d used the token to hide me and Marlow, so it should be able to hide me and Dutch.
“All right. Come in closer. We need to be holding hands for the magic to cover us both.”
Dutch offered me his hand, and I was surprised by how sweaty it was. Thanks to the cloud cover, it wasn’tthathot anymore. The sweat had to be because he was nervous. So was I. We were about to break into the Watchers’ headquarters. If they caught us…
I tried not to think about that. Bronte’s future was in my hands. I couldn’t afford to lose my nerve. Not now.
“Look. There’s our way in.”
A big, black SUV drove up to the gate. The driver exchanged a few words with the Watcher standing guard outside. Then the gates parted, and the SUV drove inside. I turned the knob on the coin, then Dutch and I slipped in after the vehicle, totally invisible to Watchers and cameras.
“See? I told you there’s nothing to worry about,” I said as the gates slammed shut behind us.
“Are you sure we should be talking?” he whispered. “Can’t they hear us?”
“No one can seeorhear us, Dutch. Now, come on. We need to hurry. We do not want to be here when the token runs out of juice.”
“How long until that happens?”
“I’m not sure, actually.”
“Well, isn’t that reassuring.”
We followed a group of Watchers into the building. The Black Obelisk wasbusytoday. There were Alchemist Knights everywhere.
You could identify an Alchemist immediately by their orange and brown armor and their plethora of magical gadgets and tools. The Alchemists were the tinkerers of the magical universe. They forged weapons, mixed potions, and crafted objects of power.
Right now, they were busy installing the magic upgrades Dutch had told me about earlier.
“You weren’t kidding,” I said. “From the looks of it, the Black Obelisk is getting a complete security upgrade with advanced magic detectors.”
“Does that mean they can see us?”
“No. Luckily for us, the Alchemists aren’t finished yet. They haven’t brought the new system online yet. If they had, we never could have snuck in here. An invisibility spell is no match for a full-blown magic detection system, but it’s good enough to fool anything they currently have running.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”
I held back the groan as I turned to face Altair, one of the mentors. He was dressed in a set of orange-brown leather armor, complete with a thick utility belt filled with all sorts of magical tools. He also held a tool in his hands, an enormous, two-handed wrench whose purpose I can only guess at—but didn’t want to. It looked brutal.
“Savannah Winters.”
Altair turned one of the many knobs on the pair of brass goggles he was wearing. His goggles were big, bizarre, and they had more knobs on them than one of my mom’s sophisticated research microscopes. Unlike those microscopes, though, the goggles were magical. I knew that from the faint glimmer—and the fact that Altair could see us, even though we were invisible.
Altair wasn’t a Dreamweaver. He couldn’t peel back the layers of dimensions and realms. But hecouldbuild devices to perform all kinds of amazing magic.
He adjusted a knob on the headphones attached to the goggles. Actually, the goggle-and-headphones set was so interconnected it was more like a headdress.
“Why am I not surprised to find you skulking around the Black Obelisk?”
“I am not skulking,” I told him. “I am exploring with purpose.”
Altair chuckled, and I relaxed a little. It wasn’t a sinister chuckle. At least I didn’t think it was.
“Why are you here, Savannah?”
