Wizards At War

“But it took longer than usual,” Nita said, struggling to get out from under the throw. “Ponch, don’t worry! It wasn’t your fault. It’s got to be the expansion—it’s throwing everything off.”

“Tell that to your dad,” Kit said, sounding rather grim. “I get to do it with mine in a minute. Or if my luck runs out, with my mama.”

Nita swallowed. Her dad—who knew if he’d been trying to reach her? And if he had, why hadn’t her phone gone off? Tom and Carl did the wizardry on it, she thought, it should be okay! But if wizardry wasn’t behaving correctly in some of the places they were going—And then again she saw it, the shimmer of a hand that was a claw, and eyes that willingly blinded themselves behind a sheen of darkness—

She covered her face with her hands and tried to pull everything together so that it made some kind of sense. This may take a while… “Okay,” she said to Kit, pushing her hair back, “give me a minute or two to kick my brains into shape. What’s everybody else doing?”

“Getting up,” Kit said, “like they had a choice.” He glanced in Ponch’s direction with a slightly exasperated look. “I kept him out of here as long as I could. But Ponch had himself a good time with everyone else first. Don’t even ask what he tried to do to Filif.”

Ponch, who had spent the past few moments investigating everything in Nita’s pup tent that he could stick his nose into or under, now bounded back wearing an expression of complete innocence. I wasn’t really going to do that! he said. It was just kind of funny for a moment…

Kit gave Nita a skeptical look. “Let me get the humorist out of here,” he said. “You want something to eat before we go?”

“I’ll grab something,” Nita said. “You go ahead.”

Kit and Ponch went out. Nita finally managed to get completely free of the throw. She got up, folded the throw and chucked it over the back of the sofa, then pulled on jeans and sneakers and a soft shirt, shrugged into the vest-with-too-many-pockets that she’d brought along, and started going through the pockets in search of a candy bar. Sugar, she thought, I really need some sugar. Nita turned up, in rapid succession, a wad of shredded facial tissues, an empty gum packet, a clear plastic mint box with one lone mint left rattling around in it, an extremely sticky ice-cream wrapper, and, finally, a slightly squashed chocolate-and-peanut bar. She unwrapped it and ate it in three bites. Hand. Claw. An eye goes dark—

Nita crumpled up the wrapper of the candy bar and shoved it in yet another pocket. Making notes on what she’d seen was going to have to wait, but at least she wasn’t likely to forget that image in a hurry. She went fishing among the pockets for her phone, and finally turned it up.

Nita hit the “dial” button and waited. The somewhat altered dial tone of a cell phone running wizardly routines came on, and then cut out… and Nita broke out in a sweat. Oh, please don’t let this be broken. This really needs to work right now—

“Hello?”

“Daddy!” Nita said. “It didn’t ring.”

“It rang here,” her father said, “which I’ve been waiting for it to do for four days! You said you were going to keep in touch—”

Nita could understand how annoyed and upset he sounded; she was annoyed herself. “Dad, I’m sorry, but for once it’s not our fault,” she said. “For us it’s just been eight hours or so since we left. It looks like the dark-matter expansion is screwing up our transit times.”

“Well, that’s just great,” her dad said. “Is this going to keep happening?”

“I don’t know,” Nita said, and rolled her eyes. I wish somebody would ask me a question I know the answer to. “I’ll call you as often as I can, but if time’s running weirdly for us, I don’t want to wake you up in the middle of the night and worry you even more.”

“I’ll take my chances with that,” Nita’s dad said. “Has anything bad happened? Are you all safe?”

“We’re fine,” Nita said. “We’re just getting up. We had a few hours’ sleep. Not as much as I would’ve liked.”

“Well, I didn’t get as much last night as I’d have liked, either.”

Nita made an unhappy face. “Daddy, what time is it for you?”

“It’s twenty-five after six.”

“Did you have a bad time in the shop today?”

“Why?” Just as it had sounded like he was calming down a little, her dad sounded angry all over again.

Nita’s eyebrows went up. “Uh, you just sound… really on edge.”

She heard her dad take a long breath and let it out again. “Not that I wouldn’t have reason to be,” he said, “what with what’s going on with you, and the way everything else is here at the moment, but—” He paused. “Yes, you’d be right to say that I’ve been feeling the strain a little more than I usually would.”