IGMS Issue 30 Page 11

  "This is very good cocoa," said Danny.

  "Daddy buys me only the best. There's not much he can do for me, but he can get me first-rate cocoa. He's so gruff with other people, but he's really very kind to me. I like to think that only I get to see who he really is." She looked at him over the cocoa cup as she took a sip. "I know he was angry with you. That's why I came to the door."

  "Thanks for saving me," said Danny. "I think your father has a low opinion of my team spirit."

  "He cares so much about his teams," said Nicki. "He wants everyone to do their best, but Perry McCluer High School isn't noted for the ambition of its students." Then she touched her mouth again. "I can't believe I said that. I haven't . . . I haven't been sarcastic in years."

  "Then you're probably overdue," said Danny. "I think everybody needs to say something sarcastic at least once a week. Of course, I'm years ahead."

  "And I'm years behind," said Nicki. "But it's getting late. I don't want you to be called in to the vice-principal's office on account of me and my cocoa."

  "I'm far more afraid of Coach Lieder than of any vice-principal. Besides, when I get in trouble I end up talking to Principal Massey."

  "Only the best for you," she said.

  "Or else it's only the worst for him," said Danny.

  She laughed. So did he; but he also got up and carried both their cups to the sink. Coach Lieder's cup remained unfilled on the table.

  "I'm sorry you only know my father in his grumpy moods."

  "I'm glad to know that he has any other. I'm assuming you've seen nongrumpy moods yourself, and aren't just repeating a rumor."

  "That would be gossip," said Nicki. A moment's hesitation. "Will I see you again?"

  "I doubt it," Danny answered truthfully. "I think your father is very unhappy that I accepted your invitation this time."

  "But if I invited you again?"

  "Does your father own a gun?"

  "Yes, but he doesn't know how to use it. I think he bought it to make a political statement."

  Or because he was afraid of some student coming to assassinate him some dark night, thought Danny. "Thanks for the cocoa. I'm very warm now."

  "Me too," she said.

  He made it to the door unescorted, but Coach Lieder was waiting outside by his car. Danny expected to be yelled at, but instead Lieder only said, "Get in. I'll drive you to school."

  Danny tried to assess what Lieder was planning -- was he only speaking softly because he was afraid Nicki could hear him? But then he thought: If I don't like what he says, I can always gate away.

  Then he rebuked himself. I've already made three gates today, and it hasn't been a full day since I vowed never to make another here in BV.

  Except the one that would take him to Marion and Leslie in Yellow Springs, and the one that Veevee used to get back and forth between his house and Naples, Florida. He'd reconstructed those last night, when he got his gates back from the Gate Thief.

  Inside the car, Coach Lieder was strangely silent. But when he spoke, he sounded as menacing as ever. "What do you plan to do with my daughter?"

  Danny wanted to say, You mean besides healing her of whatever was killing her? Instead, he answered, "I don't plan to do anything. She invited me in for cocoa. I drank cocoa. We talked. That was it."

  "She likes you," said Lieder.

  "I liked her," said Danny. "But no, in case you're worried, I don't like her that way, she's just nice and we had a nice conversation and that's it. Nice. So you don't have anything to worry about."

  Lieder was silent for a long time. Not till they were going up the last steep hill to the school did he speak again. "I've never seen her talk so freely with anyone."

  "I guess she was having a good day," said Danny.

  Silence again until the car came to a stop in Lieder's parking place. Apparently even coaches who didn't have a lot of winning seasons still got their own named parking space.

  "You haven't asked me what's wrong with her," said Lieder as Danny opened the car door.

  "Nothing's wrong with her," said Danny, letting himself sound puzzled.

  "She's obviously sick," said Lieder, sounding annoyed.

  "It wasn't obvious to me," said Danny, lying deliberately, since by the time he got home tonight she would be markedly improved, and in a week she would probably look fantastic, compared to before, and Danny wanted Lieder to think it had already been happening before Danny even got there.

  "Then you're an idiot," said Lieder.

  "Oh, I'm pretty sure of that," said Danny. "Thanks for the ride." Then he was gone.

  It occurred to him as he walked into school that Lieder was thinking that Danny might be useful to brighten his daughter's spirits during her last weeks of life. While it might be amusing to watch Lieder try to be nice to him -- it was clearly against the man's nature -- it wouldn't be fair to Nicki. Especially because Nicki was not going to die. At least not of her disease, whatever it had been. When Lieder realized this, when the doctors told him she was in complete remission, he'd very quickly want to be rid of Danny. So Danny would spare them both the trouble and never go back there again.

  The real problem today was going to be dealing with the kids in gym class, who had no doubt spent the whole evening last night telling everybody they knew about the experience of going up the magical rope climb and ending up viewing the whole Maury River Valley from a mile high. Whatever Lieder had seen yesterday, he hadn't mentioned it today. Yesterday, he had seemed to blame Danny for the whole thing. "They're riding it like a carnival," he had said. "You did this," he had said. But today he hadn't mentioned it at all.

  And as Danny walked through the halls and went into his first class, he didn't see any unusual excitement and didn't hear any mention of the magical rope. It bothered him -- how could high school kids not talk about such a weird experience? But he wasn't going to bring it up himself.

  It wasn't till he saw Hal in his next class that Danny was able to ask about it.

  "Are you kidding?" asked Hal. "Nobody's telling anybody about it because they'll all think we're crazy. Hallucinating. On something."

  "But you know it really happened."

  "I do now," said Hal, "cause you apparently remember it. What was that, man? What happened?"

  This was so weird. People claimed miraculous things happened all the time, even though nothing happened at all. But this time, when it was something real, they weren't talking about it. It's as if when something really scares people, the blabbermouth switch gets turned off.

  "I don't know any more than you do," said Danny. One of the gifts of gatemages was that they were good tricksters, which meant they were good liars, since it's hard to bring off any kind of trick if you can't deceive people.

  Hal looked hard at him. "You look like you're telling me the absolute truth, but you're the one who told me to hang on to the bottom of the rope and spin, and then I shot up to the top. You're the one Coach Bleeder told to get me up the rope, and so what am I supposed to think except that you did whatever it was."

  "And if I did," said Danny, "what then? Who would you tell? How far would the story go?"

  "Nowhere, man," said Hal. "You saved my ass all over the place, you think I'm going to do anything to hurt you? But you took off yesterday, you went outside when the rope trick stopped working, and when I went out after you, you were gone. Vanished. What are you, man? Are you, like, an alien?"

  "A Norse god," said Danny.

  "What, like Thor?" Hal laughed.

  "More like Loki," said Danny.

  "Is this your final answer?" asked Hal. "Am I really supposed to believe this one?"

  "Believe what you want," said Danny. "Class is about to start." Danny went to the door and Hal followed him into the classroom.

  Hermia was sitting in the Applebee's on Lee Highway, looking out the window at cars pulling in and out of the BP next door, when her mother slid into the booth across from her.

  "Have you already ordered?" Mother aske
d.

  Hermia felt a thrill of fear. She was too far from the nearest gate to make any kind of clean escape. Mother was a sandmage, which should have meant she was powerless in a place as damp as western Virginia, but as Mother often pointed out to her, her real affinity was for anything powdered or granulated, from snowflakes to dust, from shotgun pellets to salt and pepper and sugar. The table was full of things that Mother could use.

  Besides, wherever she was, Father would not be far away, and he was a watermage -- a damward, able to choke her on her own saliva, if he chose. If they wanted Hermia dead, to punish her for running off and not reporting to them about the gatemage she had found, she could do nothing to stop them or avoid them.

  So apparently they didn't want her dead. Yet.

  "They're getting me a hamburger," said Hermia. "There's not much you can do wrong with a hamburger."

  "They could leave it on the counter for twenty minutes, letting it get cold while the bacteria multiply," said Mother. "And then they bring it to you, without apology, assuming that you're the mousy little thing you seem to be and won't utter a word of complaint."

  "I'm not mousy," said Hermia.

  "They don't know that," said Mother. "And you look so Mediterranean -- they know you don't belong here in this hotbed of Scotch-Irish immigration."

  "So you've made a study of American demographics and genealogy?"

  "I study everything," said Mother. "People are like grains of sand -- from a distance, they all look alike, but when you really study them, each is a separate creation."

  The waiter came over and Mother ordered a salad. But before the waiter could get away, she said to him, "What do you think of a daughter who suddenly disappears and doesn't tell her mother and father where she's going and whom she's with? What would you call such a girl?"

  The waiter, who had flirted with Hermia a little when he took her order, answered instantly: "Normal."

  Mother laughed, one of her seal-like barks. "Hope springs eternal, doesn't it, dear boy. But I assure you, you're not her type."

  The waiter, looking a little baffled, muttered something about putting her order in and left.

  "You do enjoy toying with them," said Hermia.

  "Observing them," corrected Mother. "Seeing how they respond to unusual stimuli. I'm a scientist at heart."

  She was Clytemnestra and Medea rolled into one, that's what was in her heart, thought Hermia, but she knew better than to say so. "So you found me," she said.

  "Oh, we've known where you were the whole time," said Mother.

  Hermia didn't bother to answer.

  "I know you think we couldn't possibly have traced you, with all your jumping through gates, but you see, when we first realized you might have gatemaking talent, we implanted a little chip just under your jaw. We track it by satellite. We Illyrians are truly godlike in our prescience, don't you think?"

  It had never crossed Hermia's mind that they might have installed a tracking device in her body. She had given Danny away every time she used one of his gates.

  Or maybe not. When she made a jump through one of Danny's gates, it would take time for them to get to where she was. Knowing where she was wasn't the same thing as being there to observe her.

  But last night they'd had plenty of time to get to Perry McCluer High School.

  "You spent the night here?" asked Hermia.

  "In the Holiday Inn Express," said Mother. "It has a nice European feel to it."

  "Meaning that the rooms are tiny and have no room to put your luggage?"

  "We didn't make ourselves known during the festivities. But we saw some of the Norths challenge you, and watched as a couple of mere Orphans brought old Zog's eagle down and then cracked open the earth and swallowed up their truck."

  "They gave it back afterward," said Hermia. "Or did you fall asleep before the end?"

  "From these actions, we cleverly deduced, in our Aristotelian way, that somebody had passed through a Great Gate. I think it wasn't you who made the gate, because if you were able to make gates, you would have disappeared the moment I sat down."

  "No, I can't make gates. You know I can't."

  "I know you have always said you can't. But now I believe you. Maybe."

  "I'm not telling you who --"

  "It's Danny North who's the gatemage," said Mother.

  "Don't you dare lay a hand on him."

  "No habanero powder in his eyes or up his nose?" asked Mother. "Why must you always spoil my fun?"

  "He's not just a gatemage, he's a gatefather," said Hermia. "In all the history of the world there's never been a gatemage like him."

  "The world has a lot of history. And there are two worlds, for that matter."

  "He beat the Gate Thief," said Hermia.

  "Isn't that nice."

  "What do you want, Mother?"

  "My darling daughter to tell me she loves me, even if it's a lie, and to pretend she's glad to see me."

  "I'm not reporting to you anymore."

  "You don't have to report, as I just explained," said Mother.

  "Danny and I and the other gatemage --"

  "So you are a gatemage, and not just a finder."

  "I'm a lockfriend," said Hermia.

  "And the other gatemage? Victoria Von Roth?"

  "A keyfriend."

  "How lovely. It's like you're twins, born thirty years apart."

  "The next time Danny makes a Great Gate, we're going to make sure all the Families and the Orphans have equal access to it."

  "Even the drowthers?"

  "We aren't going to let a Great Gate give one Family an advantage."

  "But you already have, silly girl," said Mother. "That cow Leslie now has the power to snatch other people's heartbeasts away from them, and Marion can crack open the earth without causing so much as a three point oh on the Richter scale. They could take down every Family right now."

  "And yet they haven't done it," said Hermia. "Doesn't that tell you something?"

  "Doesn't the fact that we didn't kill you tell you something, too?"

  "It tells me that your hope of getting through a Great Gate is greater than your desire to keep anybody else from getting through it."

  "It should have told you that we mean to play nice," said Mother. "We're going to let you and your boyfriend Danny and his aging mistress Veevee set out the rules and we'll play along."

  "Till you see a way to get an advantage," said Hermia.

  "Wasn't it nice of me to come and inform you? Some of us wanted to kill you and then deal with Danny North separately. We'd pretend we didn't know where you were. They're very angry with you for betraying us."

  "I didn't tell him anything," said Hermia.

  "You didn't tell us anything," said Mother. "But . . . water over the dam, isn't that what they say?"

  "You got your physics degree at Stanford, Mother. Don't pretend to be uncertain of your English."

  "We're going to station an observer at the high school," said Mother. "And we're going to expect you to stay there, too."

  "I'm too old for high school," said Hermia.

  "But you're such a little slip of a thing, they won't doubt that this is your senior year."

  "I don't have to be at the high school. I can gate in and out whenever I want to talk to Danny."

  "As long as he keeps gates available to you," said Mother. "No, we want you there where we can watch you both."

  "And where you can threaten to do violence to me in order to get him to do what you want."

  "Would that work?" asked Mother.

  "I don't think so," said Hermia, "but with Danny you never know. He's not in love with me. I don't think he particularly likes me. But he's a compassionate kid. You could probably just point a gun at a puppy, take a picture, and then send it to him along with the threat, 'Do what we say or we'll shoot this dog.'"

  "Well, we aren't going to threaten to shoot you or a puppy. We think -- some of us think -- that now that you know that we've known where yo
u are all along, and didn't interfere with you, you'll return to us with renewed trust and loyalty."

  "Are you among those who think so?" asked Hermia.

  "I'm only one vote among many," said Mother. "But it's pleasantly needy of you to ask for my reassurance."

  "You know that whoever you send, Danny can just gate away."

  "Oh, I hope he doesn't do that," said Mother. "We'd have to shoot the dog."

  3

  Danny thought he was going to Laurette's house that night for a birthday party. Not the teen-movie cliche of a party so huge that it overflows the house and infests the neighbors' yards and results in the police being called. It was just a get-together at Laurette's house in honor of Xena, Laurette's friend and, since he arrived at Perry McCluer, Danny's.

  But when Danny showed up at the house, and the door opened at his knock, he knew he'd been had. His friends were all there -- the girls Laurette, Sin, Pat, Xena, and the boys Hal and Wheeler. But a big banner high on the wall, plainly visible from the front door, said nothing about birthdays or Xena.

  It said "Intervention," and Danny knew at once that he was the target, the patsy, the subject.

  "What am I supposedly addicted to?" he asked.

  "He doesn't even get the 'How I Met Your Mother' reference," said Sin.

  "He doesn't watch television," said Hal.

  "Wow, we should have intervened about that," said Xena.

  "When are you going to intervene with Laurette about always showing off her cleavage?" said Danny. "It scares the teachers. They think they're going to fall in and get lost."

  "Let's stick to the plan," said Laurette.

  "It's not my plan," said Danny.

  "You're not going to dodge this one," said Sin.

  "You still haven't told me what you're intervening about," said Danny. "Maybe I'll agree with you and we can move on to the party portion of the evening."

  "We want you to stop hiding who you are," said Hal.

  Danny turned to him. "I'm President Obama's love child with a Chicago waitress. I'm actually black, but I act super-white and it fools everybody."

  "We know you have powers," said Sin.

  "You're a fairy," said Xena. "The Tolkien kind."

  "'Elf' is a better word," said Pat.