In the face of a vote of confidence like that, there wasn’t much Nita could do but put her cold tea down and go hug him.
Her dad smooched her on the top of her head and hugged her back. “There,” he said. “Wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”
“Good.” Nita grinned at his relief, let him go, and shoved her tea in the microwave, pushing the button that would give it a minute to heat up. “So are we okay?”
“For the moment,” her dad said.
Nita threw him an oh no, what now? look.
“Well, I’m not sure it’s responsible to have this talk just once,” her dad said. “The whole idea that you can just get it over with . . . As if conditions might not change in the future, for you, for me . . .” He shrugged. “Remember when you were six or so and we had that talk about you not crossing the street without looking both ways?”
Nita had no memory of that at all. “It was kind of a long time ago . . .”
Her dad gave Nita a look that suggested her attempt to deflect his question without hurting him had been noticed, appreciated, and was being allowed to pass without comment. “But it’s not like, having given you that long talk, I was just going to stop worrying forever about whether you were crossing the street safely, right? What kind of sense with that make? Of course I’m going to keep worrying about it. And we might need to talk again some time when you have more data. Or things change some other way. But I’ll leave that with you.”
“Okay,” Nita said.
Her dad finished the last of his coffee, ran some water into the mug and left it in the sink. “Gotta go,” he said. He felt around in his pockets for his car keys. “Seeing Dairine? I keep missing her, her hours are so strange right now.”
“Yeah, probably I will.”
“Thank her for getting the garbage out, okay?”
“Sure.”
Her dad kissed her again and headed out the back door: it slammed behind him.
Ten minutes of the birds and the bees, Nita thought as the microwave pinged at her. Just before I get ready to gate halfway around the planet. What is my life . . . ? She’d calmed down a bit by the time Kit turned up: though her dream of this morning was still very much on her mind as he came in and she spent a few moments looking carefully into his eyes.
The look he gave her in return was bemused. “Is there something on my face?”
“One of your normal expressions,” Nita said. “Which I’m glad to see.”
“Another of those dreams . . . ?”
“Yeah,” Nita said. She turned away.
“Pancakes?” Kit said.
“Not today,” Nita said. “Sticking to toast. Want some tea?”
“What’s that, the peppermint stuff? Yeah.”
She made him a cup and they sat. “So,” Kit said. “Tonight’s the night.”
“Yeah. We’re due at Penn’s when?”
“Four o’clock, our time. Then over to Canberra.”
Nita nodded. “You know,” she said, “I’m thinking those unworthy thoughts again.”
“What? Wishing that he’ll get knocked out?”
“Well, the odds are a lot better this time . . .”
“For us, you mean.”
“Yeah.”
Kit sighed. “True. You want to know what’s kind of embarrassing?”
“Tell me.”
“That I’m wishing that too.”
“So it’s not just my nerves he’s getting on more and more . . .”
“Not so much him,” Kit said. “But you know, I’m not so excited about going to the far side of the Moon.”
Nita reached out and stroked Kit’s arm. “I know. And you know what? Neither is Dairine.”
“Similar reasons, I guess,” Kit said.
“Yeah.” Roshaun’s terrifying disappearance had come mere minutes before Ponch’s climactic battle with the Wolf That Ate the Stars.
“But if she’s going,” Kit said, “I need to go too. If only to remind her that happy endings are possible . . .”
All Nita could do was sit there for a moment regarding him in shameless admiration. “You know,” she said, “you’re not only a terrific wizard, but you’re a nice person.”
Kit threw her a look that was skeptical on the surface of it, but he was still smiling. “So,” he said. “Onward to the semis.”
“Yeah. But I’m betting that before that, we’ll have at least a few other things to distract us.”
“Such as?”
“Penn being a jerk,” Nita said. “Again, and again, and again . . .”
“And if I can get you lovely ladies to turn your ever-so-fickle attention to the unique power control segment—”
“Penn!” Nita said.
He looked at her brightly. “And there’s a question from one of them now!”
Dear Powers That Be, give me strength. “Penn, I truly almost hate to break this to you,” Nita said, “but even though more than half of the people judging you today are going to be female, an even more significant portion of them, say a hundred percent or so, are going to be more experienced than you. And another significant percentage, kind of hard to evaluate but let’s be kind and just say most, are going to be smarter than you as well. So you need to amend your attitude right now or you are not going to do well.”
“You’re taking this way too seriously, way too personally! But it’s not your fault you can’t see how easy this is going to be for me.” Penn’s tone was almost pitying. “I know you’ve always had to try hard, it’s written all over your service history, but some of us just don’t have to go down that road. It’s going to be okay, Juanita, seriously, you’re worrying way too much about this—”
“Penn,” Kit said sharply, “it’s not funny, and it’s not cute. They’ll laugh you out of there. If you call Irina Mladen a ‘lovely lady’ to her face, after she’s done with you you’re going to wind up wishing that the Earth would open up and swallow you. In fact, considering her specialty, the odds are better than even that it will.”
In turn, Penn threw Kit a sly look. “I see what the problem is,” he said. “She’s been getting to you.” He glanced at Nita. “It’s okay . . . I know what you’re really thinking.”
Kit covered his face.
Nita waved her arms and pushed herself away from the wall at the side of Penn’s downstairs rec room where she’d been leaning. “Nope,” she said. “Nope, nope, nope. Kit? You mind if I go ahead?”
The slightly wistful look he gave her suggested that he wished he’d thought of it first. “No, go on,” Kit said.
“Mmm,” Penn said to her, “can’t stand the heat?”
“Don’t go there, Penn,” Nita said. She pulled her transit circle out of her charm bracelet—preloaded with the coordinates for the venue in Canberra—and dropped it, glowing, to the floor around her. To Kit she said, “A couple hours?”
“Yeah.”
Nita breathed in, breathed out very hard, and said the activation word for the transit circle before she could be tempted to stick around and reduce the number of semifinalists by one.
The arrangement for the wizardly space at the convention center in Canberra was much the same as it had been in New York: a spell-shielded area to keep the nonwizards at bay, various meeting rooms, and a big, beautiful, airy public space conducive to a large number of people getting together after the business of the meeting was done. It was a smaller space, though, than the New York venue had been. With only fifty or so participants presenting projects privately to a panel of judges instead of out in the open, there wasn’t any need for a huge space that would resemble a carnival fairway.