Kit watched Penn’s face work as he thought that over. I can’t believe, Kit thought, that he’s genuinely wondering whether the Powers That Be are screwing him over.
“All the same,” Penn said, “before the Cull stage, why do more diagramming than to the proof-of-concept level? If I go through, I’ve got five days or a week before the eighth-finals. Plenty of time to fill in the holes. Why knock myself out? No one else is going to.”
“I wouldn’t put any money on that,” Nita said. “Better do the work early and have time to fix it if something goes wrong.”
“Don’t see how much could,” Penn said. “But maybe you’d like to backstop me.” He looked at Nita admiringly.
The look she gave him back was one of amused pity. “Oh, Penn,” she said, “if you want me to do your homework for you, you’re going to have to ask me way more nicely than that. The soulful look hasn’t worked on me since—second grade? Maybe third. But meantime? Not a chance. You’re going to want to get started the minute we walk out the door, because you’ve got a lot to do before Cull Day.”
Penn smirked and turned away. “You had your chance,” he said. “Guess you’ll have to watch and learn.”
“Guess I will,” Nita said. “Is there a bathroom down here somewhere?”
“First door on your right.”
“Thanks.” She left the room.
After a few moments Penn said, “Just one question real fast. You passed her all that stuff, didn’t you? You’re just giving her a boost.”
Kit stared at him. “What?”
“None of that stuff was in her specialty. I looked that up! She does—” He waved his hands around. “Visiony stuff. And whales, lately. I don’t think we need her around for that.”
How can anyone be this clueless? And what use is a wizard who doesn’t read? “I don’t need to pass her anything, Penn. For one thing—” There were about thirty things, but Kit was controlling himself hard, aware that his annoyance if let loose could make him get rude with someone in whose house he was a guest. “Besides a ton of brains, she happens to have the spirit of wizardry stuck in her head.”
Penn put his eyebrows up. “Ahhh. No wonder she’s so fast at working out what makes a spell tick.”
Kit frowned. “She’s fast at working out spells because she’s smart.” His thoughts went back suddenly to a round patch of ground inside a freeway exchange, a long time ago, and the image of the girl looking silently down at him. Out of the memory he said, “And she’s also really good at making friends.”
“I bet she is,” Penn said softly.
Kit didn’t quite know how to take that. Half of Penn’s utterances were accompanied by a smirk, as if he considered everything that came out of his mouth to be at least potentially funny. Well, Kit thought, you’re not half as funny as you think you are.
“She made friends with a hundred-foot-long great white shark once,” Kit said. “That looks like the gold standard of friend making to me. But if you’re going to stand there making what-do-we-need-her-for noises, well, better check with the Powers That Be, because they’re the ones who insisted she be here. Theoretically, to give you a fighting chance of winning. Want to cut us loose and go it alone? Say the word.”
He pointedly turned his attention back to the spell diagram on the floor, half wishing that Penn would say, Yeah, I don’t need you. But instead Penn hurriedly came around in front of him, saying, “Hey, Kit, listen. No offense, right? It’s just important to shake out who’s doing what early on. Easy to get confused about something like that.”
Because you’re assuming I’m doing the heavy lifting in this team, Kit thought. It’s going to be so much fun to watch you keep making that kind of mistake . . .
“So easy to get confused,” Kit said. Down the hall, a toilet flushed; a door opened.
A few seconds later, Nita brushed through the dome of the spell diagram. “So,” she said. “What’s the plan?”
“I’d say we need to meet at least a couple times this week,” Kit said, “to see how Penn gets along with filling in these blanks. Tuesday?”
Penn pulled out an iPhone, did a few thumb-touches to its screen. “Tuesday’s good,” he said. “Your time zone or mine?”
“Ours sounds good,” Nita said. “About point three suit you?”
“Sounds excellent.” Penn put his phone away, reached out to Kit for a handshake. Then he held his hand out to Nita.
Kit watched Nita look thoughtfully at the hand for a second. Then she took it.
Penn lifted her hand, bowed over it, kissed it. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I misjudged you.”
“Yes, I’d say you did,” Nita said. She recovered her hand without any undue show of haste, and unexpectedly offered the other one to Kit.
He hesitated only a second before taking it, hoping the uncertainty didn’t show. Nita looked at him. “Shrubbery?” she said.
“Shrubbery,” said Kit.
They vanished from Penn’s house with less air displacement than might have been caused by a passing butterfly.
A few moments later they were in among the rhododendrons, and Nita was scrubbing the hand Penn had kissed against her jeans. She was also laughing in sheer disbelief. “What—the hell—was that?” she gasped.
“The cheesiest line ever uttered by a living being?” Kit said, laughing too. “Listen, the next time we see the Powers, we absolutely need to knock them on their butts. What have they stuck us with here?”
“An ego on legs,” Nita said, still laughing helplessly. “That spell had better be useful for something, because if I come down with the chronic cooties because of that—” She flapped the offended hand around in front of her. “Oh, God, Kit, I need antiseptic. What a waste of time!”
The two of them laughed a while more until they ran out of breath. “But not a waste of power, I guess,” Kit said. “Because here we are, on Their business. And we wouldn’t be here if this wasn’t for something useful.”
“Yeah . . . yeah.” Nita sighed and leaned against the exposed trunk of one of the rhododendrons. “While I was in the bathroom, I heard what you were saying.”
Kit flushed hot. “Okay,” he said, “but I had to, right? What kind of person would I be if I’d stood there and let him trash-talk you?”
“You shouldn’t feel like you have to protect me,” Nita said. “This is like being out in the playground again, except this playground’s full of wizards. Believe me, if I needed to tear Penn a new one, I would.”
“You almost did,” Kit said.
“Yeah,” Nita said, “and I would’ve had reason. Oh, God, Kit. ‘The birds and the bees’ . . . !”
They laughed again together for a moment. Kit felt some of that uneasy tightness go out of his chest. “But honestly, this guy exhausts me,” Kit said. “Everything he says is a brag, an insult, or an innuendo. What is his problem?”
“Trouble at home, maybe? There’s some evidence for that. Hormonal junk? Nerves?” And she rolled her eyes. “Or maybe he’s just an asshole.”
Kit laughed again. “Have we been living a sheltered existence, or something? Because this isn’t the kind of wizard we normally run into . . .”
“It’s true,” Nita said, in a musing sort of way. “We don’t know that many asshole wizards.”