“No he’s not,” said Veevee.
“We just saved his life in the desert because he was catatonic in the hot sun. Please find me a definition of ‘lunatic’ that doesn’t include that!”
Danny had no answer to that. He knew she was wrong. He knew that what Loki learned was right. Or at least he trusted that it was right.
But maybe he only believed it because he had worked so hard to get at the memory.
“Don’t let her talk you out of this,” said Veevee. “She doesn’t know anything.”
“No, but I am attached to the rational universe,” said Hermia. “Not meaning to give offense, but Veevee, you spent your whole life convinced you were a gatemage without any evidence at all.”
“But it turned out that I was,” said Veevee.
“But you believed without evidence,” said Hermia. “It doesn’t make you a reliable judge of weird theories like this. Don’t you get it? Danny’s probably completely right about what Loki learned. Only he was a loon learning from a loon, and Danny’s a loon using a lunatic process to recover their lunacy, and we’d have to be loons to take it seriously.”
“Since you’re the expert on lunacy,” said Veevee, “just what do you think should happen?”
“I think it’s time to let the Families use the Great Gate,” said Hermia. “There’s no reason to keep people from passing between worlds. There are no kas and bas that take possession of people’s bodies. There’s no Dragon waiting to pounce. He doesn’t exist. It’s from the craziest book in the Bible, for heaven’s sake.”
Danny pressed his palms against his eyes. “I’m so tired,” he said.
“You just put yourself through torture, nearly to the point of death,” said Hermia. “I’d say, yes, you need a nap.”
“I missed a whole day of school,” said Danny.
“That’s why we knew something was wrong,” said Veevee. “Your friends got worried and so they had the girl with the cleavage look up your records in the office and call me.”
“I thought you guys were already looking for me,” said Danny.
“I was,” said Hermia. “I just didn’t know where to look.”
“You mean that it didn’t occur to you to ask a drowther,” said Danny.
Hermia shrugged.
“But my drowther friends, they’re the ones who actually took action,” said Danny. “They’re the ones who saved me.”
“What are you doing in high school, Danny?” asked Hermia. “What is your obsession with drowthers? It’s time to let the Families through the Great Gate, and restore the proper order to the world.”
Danny looked at her, filled with dark despair. “That’s not how you used to talk.”
“Maybe I finally realized that the world was no more screwed up when the gods were running the show, using the power they got from passage back and forth with Westil, than it is now, when scientists and engineers put the instruments of slaughter into the hands of drowthers.”
“Let me think,” said Danny.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” said Hermia.
“Yes you do,” said Veevee.
“I don’t want to be rude,” said Hermia, “but sometimes truth is rude. You’ve been playing at high school. You’ve gotten all sentimental about drowthers. But look at your friends, Danny. They’re appalling human beings. And now they worship you, yes? You rule over them, only what a pathetic little band of worshipers you chose for yourself, don’t you think? Was that really the best you could do?”
Danny could hardly bear it. A part of him was furious that she would judge his friends like that. And a part of him saw her perspective and wondered if she was right, if he wasn’t just like all the other mages, exploiting the worship of drowthers. If that was true, then they weren’t friends at all. Just … tools. He was just using them.
The way he had used Hal and Wheeler to help him dig a cave. As if he had a right to command them to take hours out of their life to go to Egypt to dig sand. Just because Danny was a Gatefather.
I’ve reinvented all the worst features of the snobbery of the Families, and I did it in the name of trying to be a regular high school kid. On the first day, I’m putting people through gates and taking charge of their lives as if I had a right. I’m as bad as any of them.
Hermia was looking at him with a weird combination of concern and smug superiority.
She is not my friend, Danny realized.
But Hal and Wheeler, Xena and Laurette and Sin and Pat-they’re my friends. Even if I’m a lousy friend to them, they’re good friends to me.
Screw the Families. Screw the Great Gates. Whether Loki was right or wrong about the Dragon or Belmage or Satan or whatever, he was definitely right to close all the gates and keep them closed for a thousand years.
“You know what, Hermia?” said Danny. “I like my friends. They don’t try to get me to treat other people badly just because they’re not as powerful.”
“You’re such a drowther,” said Hermia.
“You used to feel the same way,” said Danny.
“I grew up.”
“In the past couple of weeks?” asked Danny.
“Oh, I see where we’re going with this,” said Hermia. “You think I’ve gone through a sudden personality change. You think I’m possessed by the Dragon.”
“What an interesting suggestion,” said Veevee. “I never would have thought of that, but now that you bring it up…”
“You do realize,” said Hermia to Danny, “that if you now start thinking that anyone who disagrees with you must be possessed by Satan, that is the road to genuine lunacy.”
“It never crossed my mind that you were possessed,” said Danny. “Not by the Belmage. I think you’ve been talking to your Family. I think they found you even though we removed the tracers. I think they’ve talked you into being with them.”
Hermia’s silence, along with a slightly reddened face, were enough of a tell for Danny to know that he had hit it aright.
“I’m sorry they got to you,” said Danny, “and I’m sorry that you agree with them now.”
Hermia regarded him in silence.
“Well, this is awkward,” said Veevee.
“Not really,” said Hermia. “He’s saying that if I had held my current views when we first met, he would never have accepted me as his partner in this project.”
Danny shook his head. “You didn’t have these views, that’s all I know. But you also helped me learn to control my abilities. I haven’t forgotten that.”
“But we’re not friends now,” said Hermia.
“We’re friends who disagree about something important,” said Danny.
“No, I think that by talking down your drowther friends, I actually elevated them in your estimation, and lowered myself.”
Danny couldn’t disagree. That summed it up pretty well.
Hermia walked to the sink and refilled Danny’s glass. As she did, she spoke. “See, Danny, you hate your Family. And Veevee doesn’t really have one. But I love my Family. I can’t erase my old loyalties. I can’t turn against them.”
“You did, though,” said Danny.
“Because I was excited about finding real gates in the world,” said Hermia. “Now I’m over the first rush of excitement. I’m back to my true self.”
“Back under the thumb of your Family,” said Danny.
“Whatever,” said Hermia.
“I made a deal with all the Families,” said Danny.
“No, you imposed a diktat on them,” said Hermia.
“Which you agreed to.”
“Because you’re the Gatefather and I’m not,” said Hermia. “But I always thought you were wrong.”
Veevee gave a quiet little hoot of laughter. “You really have a talent for revising history, kiddo,” she said.
“I’ve gone from ‘dear’ to ‘kiddo,’” said Hermia. “I’m in a death-spiral here, aren’t I.”
“I’m sticking to the deal I offered the Families,” said Danny.
“You think you’re so egalitarian, but look how you’re treating me, because you’re the Gatefather and I’m just a Lockfriend.”