“So, you ready?”
“Just want to wash my hands and grab a jacket. Where should we pop out? Right at the Javits? They’ve got a dedicated ‘beam in’ spot; Sker’ret installed it yesterday.”
“I don’t know. It’s a nice day. Thought we might go into Grand Central and walk over.”
“Not Penn Station?”
“They’re doing something to the gates, the manual says. Penn’s offline.”
“Oh, great. That has to be driving Rhiow nuts.” Nita laughed. “You know, we’re going to have to have something else to call him if we’re going to talk about him and the station at the same time.”
“Easy. Penn Station is Big Penn. Our mentee is Little Penn.”
“Yeah, in terms of needing to be cut down to size.”
“Looks like it’s gonna take a few minutes for your blood sugar to sort itself out . . .”
“Shut up.” But Nita laughed. “Let’s go.”
9
Manhattan: Javits Center
GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL at midmorning, for Nita at least, had a surprisingly restful feel. The worst of the morning rush hour was over, the Sun shone in beautifully through the big windows, and lots of people strolled casually or purposefully across the bright, echoing space without there being too much of a feeling of stress or hurry. Nita was quite aware that her own history with this place tended to affect her perceptions; any space tends to look serene when it’s not full of angry dinosaurs or about to be trashed by the Lone Power in a bad mood. But that didn’t stop her from enjoying the slower pace.
She and Kit transported as usual into the commuter-free “safe space” at the far end of Track 23 just off the Main Concourse—where the onsite worldgating team had the terminal’s security cameras permanently spoofed, and a simple on-demand light-bending stealth-spell operated 24/7 to keep any unexpected nonwizards in the area from noticing when the emplaced worldgate operated. As it happened, Nita and Kit arrived during a brief quiet period between train arrivals, and it took only a moment or two for them to make sure no one on adjacent platforms could see them. They were heading toward the edge of the stealth field some meters away when something down low near the floor passed through it and faded into visibility, trotting down the platform toward them: a small black cat with its tail held cheerfully in the air.
“Rhiow!”
“Well, look what the Queen dragged in!” said the most senior of Grand Central’s worldgating team as she came up with them in mid-platform, rubbing against one of Kit’s shins and then rearing up against Nita’s.
“Yeah, and dai stihó to you too!” Nita said, reaching down to scratch her between the ears.
Rhiow dropped to all fours again and gazed up at them with big golden eyes. “Cousins, I can’t stay, the Lexington gate got stuck in the middle of its maintenance cycle again and I have to go debug it. But it’s fine to see you! You’re on your way over for the Invitational?”
“Yeah,” Kit said. “I saw that Penn Station’s gate’s down, though. That must be a nuisance for you with all the people coming through . . .”
“Oh no, it’s because of the Invitational that it’s down! Just a temporary service reconfiguration. We can’t leave a set of short-term gates operating so close to the permanent gate structures at Penn: they’re too territorial, they’d start making trouble for each other. So all the Penn Station worldgate traffic’s being rerouted through here for the day. Not such a big deal.”
“Oh, that’s okay then, I guess,” Nita said. “We were worried something was broken.”
Rhiow’s ears went flat for a moment. “Powers That Be, don’t even think it! Things are busy enough as it is.”
“Too busy for you to stop by Javits later?” Kit said.
“This evening? Most likely there’ll be time. Tell them to save me some of that upstate milk.” And she flirted her tail at them and headed briskly on down to the end of the platform again, leaping off of it and vanishing into the dark.
“No problem,” Nita called after her. “See you later!”
“Upstate milk?” Kit said as they headed on down the platform in the other direction and the stealth field released them into visibility.
“There’s this dairy farm in the Catskills that’s been selling milk in one of the city farmers’ markets on weekends,” Nita said. “She and Hwaith have it bad for this stuff. They keep going on about the cream on top, apparently it’s not homogenized . . .”
They made their way up the ramp from the Grand Concourse and out through the bright brass doors into the sunshine, turning right on Forty-second and heading west. Cabs blared horns, trucks rumbled by, a fire engine honked its way past in a blur of red and white, lights flashing and siren yipping as it braked at the intersection of Forty-second and Lex, then slid through against the lights, still yipping. People going both ways on the sidewalk pressed in around them, brushed past them, trailing fragments of conversation over them. “But then I thought, why in the world would I—” “—not going to do that—” “I never made that bet with you!” “—starts making fun of my hat and I said, ‘You know nothing, and anyway this isn’t a fedora, it’s a trilby—’”
“You thought he was going to give you trouble?” Kit said as they paused at the intersection of Forty-second and Madison, waiting for the light.
“Who?”
“Penn. About the chat.”
Nita let out an annoyed breath. “Or I was going to give him some, yeah.”
The light changed: they headed across. “Not that he wouldn’t have had it coming,” Kit said.
“Yeah. It’s just that—I don’t know, I keep getting the feeling that every time I try to have a conversation with him, he’s saying one thing and meaning something else.” Nita made a face. “Possibly something creepy. Or else he’s writing me off as too girly to listen to. No middle ground with him.”
Kit looked amused. “You know,” he said, “we could turn Lissa loose on him.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Wait, is she going to be here?”
“Yeah, I saw her on the incoming visitor list in the manual this morning.” Kit grinned. “After ten minutes or so of Lissa in I’m-talking-tech-to-you,-stupid mode, he’ll be so grateful for you.”
The notion made Nita smile, though there was a slightly sour edge to it. I should be able to do that to him myself, she thought. As they came up to the next light at Fifth Avenue, Nita gazed across and leftward at the New York Public Library and the great couchant lions guarding the doors. She was briefly distracted by the idea of them leaping off their pedestals and roaring down Fifth Avenue in the darkness years ago. Then she realized that Kit was watching her with a worried expression. “What?”
“You look pissed off.”
“I am,” Nita muttered.
“Look—” Kit’s expression was slightly nervous. Nita stared at him, confused. “Lissa’s not . . . I mean, there’s nothing you should—”
Nita thought of what Carmela had said to her a while back: You two get so used to reading each other’s minds that you forget how to talk. She had to smile: there was truth in it. But she didn’t see why she couldn’t still tease Kit about it. “For someone who’s usually all about finding the right words, you sure get tongue-tied sometimes.”
“What I mean is . . .” Then Kit caught Nita’s tone and knew that everything was okay, and laughed. “I don’t know what I mean.”
She realized that Kit was looking down at her hand, hanging beside his. His was twitching a little. Nita looked up at him and said, “I know what you mean about not knowing what you mean.”