"Hello, Grubbs," the thing that was once Juni Swan gurgles. "Have you missed me?"
There's no time to answer. Right behind Juni, dozens of guards file in three abreast, weapons cradled to their chests. Spreading out, they take aim. Before a stunned Shark and his team can react, an officer bellows a command and the air around us is ripped apart by a lethal hail of bullets.
Without magic we'd have perished instantly. But magical energy streams through the window, as it always does when a passageway between universes is opened. Tapping into that instinctively, I throw up a barrier between us and the guards. The bullets mushroom against it and drop harmlessly to the floor. As more troops flood into the room, I strengthen the barrier and start thinking about ways to make it a one-way shield, so that we can fire at them.
Before I can do that, Juni barks a short command. The window pulses, then snaps out of existence. The flow of magic stops, and though a strong residue is left in the air, I now have to work off a dwindling supply. Altering the shield would take a lot out of me. Too much.
"How long can you hold that?" Shark yells.
"A couple of minutes," I guess.
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