. . . Meanwhile. Nita finished her soda and realized she was still thirsty. But then it’s so hot in here with the dancing, and with this crowd. Already a lot bigger than it was, people from all over are coming in. She glanced around to search for Kit: she’d bring him one this time. But there was no sign of him. Maybe he went to get another one, too. Let’s see . . .
She wandered over to the nearest of the drinks tables to find out what was “on ice” there—part of the interest being that absolutely no ice was involved. The top of each table in that row had been equipped with a force field with foot-high walls, and wizardry was maintaining the temperature of everything inside the field at a steady four degrees above zero. The only exception was down at the end of the area shielded by the force field, where a plastic bin full of ice cubes was being maintained at ten below.
Inside the field, bottles of all shapes and sizes and colors were ranked up neatly. One of them didn’t seem to be representative of any of the local major brands; the bottle was dark green with a bright green label, and Nita’s first thought was that maybe it was beer . . . except that all the other drinks on this table were nonalcoholic.
Curious, she picked up the bottle. Behind the table, the wizard who was managing it—a shaven-skulled guy in his late teens, wearing designer sweats over a Black Widow T-shirt—said to her, “Need help with anything?”
Nita was trying to read the bottle’s back label, which was not making a lot of sense. “This is—what’s Cel-Ray?”
“Celery soda.” The wizard looked indignant at the incredulous expression on Nita’s face. “I’m not kidding!” he said. “It’s traditional.”
“Where’s it come from?”
“Brooklyn.”
Surprised, Nita shook her head. “I’ve never lived anywhere but Long Island and I’ve never heard of this.”
“Must’ve been a pretty sheltered life so far,” said the young wizard. He flicked a finger at the bottle and its cap vanished. “Go on, live a little.”
Cautiously, Nina drank some. It tasted like . . .
Celery. But fizzy.
Okay. I like celery . . .
“Thanks,” Nita said, glancing around once more to try to spot Kit. Well, no rush, I’ll walk around the room once and see.
So she strolled around the cavernous space in the early evening light, taking a moment by the floor-to-ceiling western windows to watch the Sun going down behind the Palisades, and doing some people watching. It was unusually pleasant to have no need to do anything in particular when surrounded by so many wizards. And others . . . Because there were all kinds of nonwizardly guests there too, family members and friends of competitors and judges and so forth, snacking and drinking and chatting and laughing.
And it all feels so normal. Yet Nita knew perfectly well that the sense of normalcy was an illusion. Outside—in the streets of the city on the near side of the river, in the suburbs across the river and beyond—that was what the world she’d grown up in took for normalcy: a world where magic was a myth, something that might be lovely if it were true, but had nothing to do with hard cold reality.
Nita looked up over the dance floor—where some of the dancers, in reaction to being packed too closely together, had used wizardry to harden the air ten feet up into a broad round platform, and were dancing on that—and thought, I think I like this reality better.
She started strolling again, making her way between the crowd watching the dancers and the people who were now boogying to something from the nineteen-seventies. For a brief moment, as the last gleam of sunlight shot through the room from across the river, Nita thought that through the crowd and off to the far side of the room she caught a glimpse of a magenta carapace. Sker’ret? Did he come in to have a look at the gates? She turned to start making her way in that direction, when from behind her someone grabbed her by the hand and pulled her onto the dance floor.
The next few moments were spent being confused and concentrating on not losing her balance as she was twirled around several times, but after the twirling stopped, Nita found that the person holding her by the hand was Penn. “You’re just in time! Lose the bottle, Juanita, I’ve got an opening on my dance card and you fit in it just right.”
Nita sighed at the typical overstated delivery. Okay, I may prefer this reality but even this one has parts I’m not wild about . . . “Penn, it’s been a long day, don’t get cute.”
“Why not? Your sister says I’m cute! Even Kit’s sister says I’m cute!”
Nita’s first impulse was to quiz him about when and where Dairine had said any such thing, but she discarded it instantly. Because he’s a legend in his own mind, and this is probably another part of it. Her next thought was Oh, Carmela’s here finally, maybe Kit’s with her. The thought after that was And as for you, our sisters think tree-shaped aliens are cute. In fact, our sisters think six-foot-long metallic centipedes are cute. And in their cases, they’re right! You, however . . .
She restrained herself. “It’s possible they might not mean that the way you think they do,” Nita said. “Sorry, Penn, better cross me off.”
“Aww, you’ll break my heart!”
She shrugged, waggled her Cel-Ray bottle at him in what she hoped was an amiable if otherwise noncommittal manner, and did her best to vanish into the crowd. Fortunately that wasn’t too difficult. But when she came out the other side, to the gate hex’s roped-off section, she found that Sker’ret had disappeared. Maybe literally, she thought. He’s got a lot to keep his eyes on, all of them, no matter where he is. Never mind . . . Any sign of Kit?
She glanced around but couldn’t see him anywhere. On this side there were some chairs and cushioned benches, and kids were relaxing on them, drinking and chatting. Nita wandered along down through the seating area, pausing to take a swig of the celery soda. As she lowered the bottle, her gaze fell on one bench nearby that was empty except for the single guy sitting there, a very average-looking sort—jeans, sneakers, a striped sweater, dark blond hair, a bit stocky and round-faced and carrying some extra weight around the tummy. Don’t know if I’d wear horizontal stripes if I was him, she thought, but he seems to pull it off. He had one of those cheerful faces.
He caught the look and grinned at Nita. “Cousin,” he said in the Speech, “I greet thee.”
It wasn’t the usual salutation, and more to the point, the recension was very formal, very . . . old. It wasn’t Enactive: Nita had had a good while to get to grips with that version of the Speech while she was doing her first kernel studies. Wonder where this guy came in from, she thought: there were people from so many different places onsite that Nita had simply stopped guessing their origins.
“Well, I greet you too, cousin,” Nita said. “Taking it easy for a while? Can’t blame you.” She smiled and wiped her forehead. Even with wizardry helping out the air-conditioning, it was hot in here. “Need a drink of something?”
“Oh, thou needst not serve me, cuz!”