“Penn,” Kit said. If he fist-bumped with Penn, it was reflex. It also distracted Penn from noticing Kit’s glance over Penn’s shoulder at the disbelieving expression on Nita’s face. “That looked pretty good there.”
“Yeah, they’ve been eating it up. Got something like—” Penn picked up his manual, glanced down at one page where a bar graph was showing. “Sixty-eight tokens already. And it’s not even lunchtime! If it keeps going like this, there’ll be three or four hundred by the time the judging’s done. I am gonna sweep this thing!”
“Long time between lunchtime and five p.m.,” Kit said, “but let’s see how it goes.” He glanced at his watch as if he had some reason to. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover . . . we should go. But we’ll look in on you every now and then.”
“Aw, come on, stay for one whole run-through and bask in the reflected glory, huh?”
Reflected. Glory. Kit grinned, and hoped it didn’t look too fake. “We wouldn’t want to distract anyone from the idea that what you’re doing’s all yours,” he said. “Go right on ahead.”
“Wouldn’t want to deprive you of any reflection, either . . .” Nita said, heading down toward the next exhibitor’s space with a slight smile on her face.
Penn turned to watch her go. “Kit,” he said after a moment, with the air of someone asking a delicate question among Just Us Guys, “do you find her kind of . . . hard to understand sometimes?”
“Well, every now and then,” Kit said, “yeah. But you know what? The Lone Power has exactly the same problem.”
And he gave Penn what he hoped would be mistaken for a conspiratorial look and went after Nita.
When Kit caught up with her, Nita was thoughtfully looking over a very compact and elegant spell diagram that was about a tenth the size of Penn’s. Kit quietly leaned over her from behind and whispered in her ear, “I’m so sad now.”
She didn’t turn around. “Sad why?”
“Thought you were gonna pretty-little-head-butt him into another time zone. I was getting ready to put the manual on record.”
Nita gave him a sideways look as they moved on together. “I had something else in mind.”
“Oh?”
“Chilling him out a little. Pluto’s nice this time of year.”
Kit snickered. “That place where you dumped Dairine’s bed that time . . .”
“Nice crevasse,” Nita said. “Dark. Deep. Cold.” Then she sighed. “Kit, he’s not worth it. I want to wander around here and look at all these other wizardries.”
“Yeah,” Kit said. “And drop a bunch more tokens.”
Nita nodded, but didn’t say anything else for a few moments. Kit stayed quiet.
“I’m done with him,” Nita said. “Absolutely done.”
“Which could be a problem, since as far as he goes we’ve barely started.” Then it was Kit’s turn to sigh. “You know, though, I just had this awful thought.”
“Yeah?”
“Think what he’s going to be like if he makes it through to the quarter-finals.”
Nita covered her eyes briefly. “It is bad to secretly wish your mentee will get deselected with extreme prejudice,” she said. “So bad.”
“When we’re supposed to be helping him win? I guess.”
“Great. On top of everything else, guilt. I needed guilt so much.”
She rubbed her face, then looked up at Kit almost challengingly. “Never mind. He doesn’t need us hanging around; we’ve done everything we can for him. And we’ve got more things to think about than Penn.”
“Yeah. Like where’s Dairine?”
Nita laughed. “I really am that transparent, aren’t I.”
“Lucky guess. Come on, let’s go admire everyone’s stuff and drop tokens all over them to make up for Elvis back there.”
10
Javits Center: The Cull
DAIRINE AND MEHRNAZ and Spot popped out in the sheltered green space at the far end of the Callahans’ backyard and made their way up through the garden toward the house. At least it’s not raining, Dairine thought. The weather forecast had mentioned a chance of showers, but there didn’t seem to be any in the neighborhood right now. Nothing showed through the leaves of the trees but blue sky and sunshine.
Mehrnaz was staring at everything with absolute delight, and spun around once as they walked toward the back of the house, as if trying to take in everything at once. “Everything’s so small and pretty!” she said. “It’s like something out of a storybook!”
“Seriously?” Dairine said, and laughed at the thought of anyone considering a suburban New York tract house surrounded by chain-link fencing as being at all charming or cute. “Well, let’s get our butts into the storybook house, because I’ve got to change out of this.” She pulled her tunic away from her waist, making a face as she felt it peel away. “I thought I didn’t mind humidity. I mean, it gets humid here, but wow, in your part of the world it’s been raised to an art form. Five minutes outside and look at me!”
“Well, you were the one who wanted more bhajis!”
“Yeah, thanks for reminding me of that, and you are in so much trouble for getting me hooked on the ones with the chilies—”
“Oh, this is my fault, is it?”
“It is, and I’ll tell the world, so don’t play innocent.” They went out the side gate to the driveway, and Dairine led the way up the steps to the house and unlocked the back door. “Come on, I’ll just be a few minutes . . .”
Mehrnaz followed her through the kitchen and dining room, and looked around in wonder. “It’s all so snug! I could wear it like a coat.”
Dairine snickered as she headed up the stairs to her room, because sometimes when the house got full of people, or wizards, or both, it felt that tight. “You seriously don’t like having all that extra space?”
“Sometimes,” Mehrnaz said, following her up. “There are a lot of us, sometimes the place gets awfully full. But it’s so empty when everyone’s out doing things. I start feeling like a bean in a gourd, rattling around . . .”
They chatted while Dairine rifled through her closet for a tank top and a loose shirt to throw over it, now that she was out of an environment where she didn’t feel the need to cover up so completely. Mehrnaz bounced on her bed and gazed around at Dairine’s desk and books and posters, and Spot clambered up on the bed beside her and watched them both curiously. As she ducked out and down the hall to the bathroom to change, Dairine caught a glance from one of his spare eyes as it stalked around to follow her.
She likes you.
Possibly a good thing, Dairine said silently to Spot as she closed the bathroom door.
And she thinks you might be a friend.
Yeah, I was getting that. The funny thing about it was that Dairine didn’t have many of those who were local. All the people I like are from far away, she thought. And sometimes it seems like the farther away they are, the better I like them.
There’s a message there somewhere, Spot said.
Dairine wondered about that while she got out of her sweaty clothes and into the fresh ones. No question, she’s nice. But I don’t want to hurt her feelings, don’t want her expecting anything from me that’s not going to happen. Need to make sure she knows that after this is over, I have to get back to business. Got somebody to find . . .