Dairine scowled harder. “‘Vanish’ is absolutely the word. Mehrnaz transited out right after the announcement. Spot’s targeted her and he’s going after; when he finds her, he’ll hold her still and I’ll follow.”
Nita was confused. “But what happened?”
“Knowing her, something complicated,” Dairine said, and turned the word “complicated” into a curse. “I’m not sure yet . . . I have to find out more. But I’ve got my suspicions.” She shook her head. “Neets, Mehrnaz’s family . . . there’s some odd stuff going on with them. This isn’t the place to get into it. But my God, you should have seen her mother.”
“What? Why?”
Dairine was shaking her head, but her expression was grim. Nita’s heart clenched. “Wait. You’re not saying—she’s not being abused or anything—” She trailed off, horrified. Not even wizardry necessarily made you proof against that kind of thing.
But Dairine was still shaking her head. “What? Oh, no. Nothing like that. Or at least not from her mom, I don’t think. There’re just things going on there that . . .” Dairine rubbed her face. “I’ve got to find out if she needs help somehow, because her home life, seriously . . .”
Dairine spent the next few minutes describing to Nita what essentially sounded like a gilded cage, one alternately overcrowded and bleakly empty. Her first thought was that there might be cultural stuff going on that she didn’t understand. But Dairine sounded as if she didn’t think that side of things was entirely to blame—that other things were happening. “There hasn’t been time to find out what, though. At least now that she’s gone through, I have an excuse to find out. We’ll have a ton of work to do to get ready for the next round . . .”
And so will we, Nita thought. With a mentee who now has what he’s going to take as proof of his belief that he’s the best thing since sliced bread. “So what’re you going to do?”
“Tomorrow? I haven’t thought that far ahead. Tonight I want to find her and try to settle her down. Afterward, assuming she’s not already there, we’ll probably go home.”
“Home home or Mumbai home?”
“Mumbai,” Dairine said. “Her mom’s kind of a mother hen . . . don’t think she’s going to rest easy until she has her baby under lock and key again.”
Nita frowned. “You’d better not be speaking literally.”
Dairine sighed. “Oh, if Mehrnaz wanted to be out of there, no question, she could be out in a moment. But they’ve got her not wanting to be out of there. Whatever . . . I need more data before I can work out what she needs, and what to do.”
Nita sighed. “If you need to stay with her, I can let Daddy know—”
“No, it’s okay,” Dairine said. “She might just need a dose of normal, or what passes for her as normal, before anything else happens. She’s got a few days to relax before we have to start putting together her advanced presentation for the panel assessment stage. Not that she’ll have any trouble with that. She knows what she’s up to.”
“You like her, don’t you,” Nita said under her breath.
Dairine looked sharply at Nita, as if she expected to be made fun of. “Yeah,” she said. “So?”
“Don’t look at me like that!” Nita said. “I’m not on your case. For you to like her, she must be nice.”
“Yet also somehow completely different from me,” Dairine said, sounding both grouchy and amused.
Nita held still and considered that for a moment. “You might have a point,” she said. “Suits your personal trend, though. Sentient trees and giant centipedes and alien princes . . .” And Nita laughed. “Kings,” she said, absolutely in unison with Dairine’s voice as she corrected her. “I keep forgetting . . .”
“I don’t,” Dairine said.
“I know you don’t,” Nita said, very quietly. “But at the same time . . . It’s so unexpected. On the surface, anyway, and from what you’ve told me, you and he are unalike in every major way.”
Dairine just looked at her. “Opposites attract?” she said. “Meanwhile, thank you for not saying ‘were.’”
Nita shrugged. “It’s not if he’s a was. He’s an is . . . we know that for sure now. Just not where, or when.”
“Or possibly how . . .” Dairine suddenly gave Nita a curious look. “Neets, have you ever . . .” She trailed off.
“Ever what?”
“Tried to see him. Where he is.” And Dairine made a finger-wiggling gesture in front of her eyes to indicate that she was talking about Nita’s visionary talent.
Nita blinked. It had been difficult enough checking the manual, the first time, to discover for sure whether Roshaun was alive or dead. Her relief at finding that he was something else—though not even the manual seemed sure exactly what—had been huge. But she’d left further investigations strictly to Dairine, whose ideas of who had the right to be doing what were sometimes fierce. “I . . . no,” Nita said. “But Dair, this isn’t something I’ve had great results with. Or a lot of luck controlling. Mostly at the moment the ‘seeing gift’ spends its time running me around in circles and showing me things that make no sense. Then Tom tells me to try harder, and Bobo laughs at me.”
“Well, fine, I get it, you need more practice. But would you try?”
“Sure!” Nita said. “But I may not get anything for days, or weeks. Or till after you solve the problem yourself.” She snorted and drank some soda. “It’s a good thing I have a reputation for blowing things up . . . I can always fall back on that. Juanita the Destroyer of Stuff.”
Dairine stared at her. “Is he still calling you Juanita? Why?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m afraid to ask.” Nita rolled her eyes. “He might tell me.”
Dairine shook her head in amazement. “Seriously, he hasn’t looked at his manual to see what normal people call you?”
Nita snickered. “He’s kind of a selective reader.” Then she grinned. “And I’m pretty sure he’s never seen the page that people keep asking me to autograph.”
“That’s happening to you too, huh?”
“Yeah. Callahan’s Untoward Instigation seems to have a lot of fans. Or a lot of people want other people to think they know the spell’s inventor.”
“Or the person who shot up the Crossings when it was full of hostiles, and got away with it,” Dairine said. “You know, you should be proactive about this. Change specialties! Dump the visionary thing and go into weapons design.”
“Bad idea,” Nita said, with a grim smile. “Going to be dealing with somebody I’d be tempted to test the designs on . . .”
“If he gives you too much trouble,” Dairine said, “let me know.”
“No,” Nita said, “I think I’m up for this. Did you see his latest outfit, though?”
Dairine covered her eyes briefly with one hand. “Please. The top hat. I nearly died.”
Then her head came up suddenly. “Wait. He’s found her.”
“Where is she?”
“As I thought . . . Mumbai.”
“I’ll tell Dad you might be late.”
“Thanks.” And Dairine was off in the direction of the room’s roped-off gate hex without another word.
Nita stood there considering with some amusement (mostly at herself) that it was possible the Powers That Be actually knew what they were doing. She and Kit might be stuck with a would-be solar specialist when they thought Dairine ought to have had him . . . but Dairine had plainly been put together with someone who needed something she had. And she’ll go to the ends of the Earth, or a lot farther, to get it handled.