A Wizard of Mars, New Millennium Edition (19 page)

Kit was tempted to bang his head on the table. “Nothing blew up!”

 
You don’t fool me,”
 Ronan said. 
“You went off to be with your friend the superegg in the middle of the night.”
 He laughed. 
“The
 Martian 
night! You know, some day you may want to reproduce, but you’re never gonna do it if you freeze off your—”

“Ronan,” Kit said. “I can either shoot you a précis from my manual, or you can force me to embarrass myself directly...”

“Always much more fun,”
 Ronan said, and yawned. 
“Go.”

Kit spent five minutes or so describing what had happened. Ronan stayed quiet during the explanation, then simply said, 
“Creepy.”

“Yeah,” Kit said. “But that thing’s yelled for its friends. I don’t think we’re gonna have to wait for long before something happens up there.”

“And when it does,”
 Ronan said, 
“it makes sense for there to be wizards there. Okay, sit tight and I’ll have a word with my ride.”

Kit’s eyebrows went up. Irish wizards were restricted from casual long-distance transport due to the buildup of ancient spell residue on the island. Normally they had to go a considerable distance to get to a city-based rapid-transit worldgate, unless they were on active errantry and entitled to a personal transport dispensation. “What kind of ride?”

“Five minutes.”

Ronan’s listing in the manual faded down to gray again, while beside it an annotation came up: 
In consultation; please wait.
 Kit pushed his chair back and got up to take his bowl and spoon into the kitchen.

While he was putting them in the dishwasher, he heard someone coming down the stairs. Moments later Carmela wandered in, wearing one of her super-long striped nightshirts. She made for the refrigerator, stuck her head in, and just stood there yawning.

Kit shut the dishwasher and looked with mild interest at his sister, who was still contemplating the fridge’s interior— morosely, he thought. “Looking for something?”

Carmela yawned again and straightened up. “Just thinking that this is the last morning for the next two weeks when I can be sure that if I leave a strawberry smoothie in here when I go to bed, it’ll still be there the next morning.”

Kit headed back for the dining room. “Why? I don’t like your smoothies.”

“I know,” Carmela said. “But Helena does.”

Kit stopped right where he was and stared at her.

“Kit?”
 said Ronan’s voice from the dining room table. 
“We’re all set.”

Carmela’s head snapped around. “Is that who I 
think
 it is?” She pushed past Kit into the dining room.

“No, wait a minute! I mean, yeah—” Kit went after her. “Carmela, wait! What do you mean, ‘Helena does’? She’s not going to be here until next week!”

Carmela was leaning over his wizard’s manual. “
Hiiiii,
 Ronaaaaaan!”

There was a pause at the other end. 
“Uh. Carmela, hi. Kit?”

“Yeah, give me a minute! What did your ride say? When can you get here?”

“Whenever you want. I’m in Baldwin now.”

“What? Already?”

“Yeah. Darryl fetched me over. How long do you need?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Right. Cheers.”

“Byeeeeeee!!” Carmela shouted at the manual as Kit slapped it shut. “Hey, that was rude. I wasn’t done!”

“You can go all gooey over him when he gets here,” Kit muttered, pushing past her to get his vest and jacket off one of the dining room chairs. “It was supposed to be Wednesday she was coming! When did everything get changed?”

“Last night,” Carmela said. “You were asleep. Helena e-mailed Pop: the airline screwed up her flights. She had to either fly today or wait another week. She’ll be here this afternoon.”

Kit groaned as he zipped up his vest. “I do 
not
 need this right now!”

Carmela leaned on the chair opposite. “Kit, give her a chance. You’ve talked to her on the phone lately. You’ve heard her. She’s a lot mellower.”

“You mean she no longer comes right out and 
says
 she thinks I sold my soul to the devil?” Kit said. He laughed. “Forgive me if I’m not convinced.” He put on his jacket. “If I’m lucky, she’ll be too busy running around socializing with her old friends to want to spend much time thinking about her weird little brother.”

“Ooh, bitter...”

Kit sighed and picked up the manual, eyeing Carmela’s nightshirt. “You plan to be wearing that when Ronan shows up?”

Her eyes went wide. “Ohmigosh,” Carmela said, and fled upstairs.

Kit leaned against the chair at the end of the table and sighed. When he’d realized he had to tell his mama and pop that he was a wizard, they hadn’t had incredible trouble coping with the concept— at least after they got over the initial shock. Carmela had actually been delighted. But Helena had been horrified, and as upset by the rest of the family’s relatively ready acceptance as by the idea that Kit could do wizardry in the first place.

Though the whole family was churchgoing, Helena had always struck Kit as more religious than all the rest of them put together; and until she started getting used to the situation, Kit had been really annoyed by the scared or worried looks Helena gave him every time their paths crossed. When she finally went off to college and put some time and distance between herself and what her little brother had become, Helena had calmed down a little... or so Kit had thought.
Oh, please, don’t let her get all freaked out all over again,
 he said to the universe in general. 
The stuff that’s going on right now is so important. It’d be a nuisance to have to sneak around and hide what’s happening so she won’t drive everyone crazy—

Ronan appeared at the other end of the table in a muted 
bang!
 of displaced air that rattled the dining room’s venetian blinds. 
Like that kind of thing, for example,
 Kit thought. 
I was being
 discreet 
about wizardry when Helena was getting all nuts. What’s she going to do when stuff like
 this 
happens out in the open?

Ronan was all in black, as usual: though this morning the black was heavy black jeans and hiking boots, and a black parka better suited to January than June. He glanced around, then pulled a chair out and flopped down on it. “Where’s the Mouth that Roared? Thought she’d be right here.”

“She was. I told her to go put on some clothes.”

“Thanks for that,” Ronan said. He sounded actively grateful: but he gave Kit a peculiar look. “You okay? You look pale.”

“I believe you.” Kit laughed, rueful. “Family stuff. My older sister’s coming home for a few weeks. She’s not so clear about who we work for.”

“Uh oh. Going to lie low? Or try to talk sense to her?”

“No idea. Depends on how she is.”

“And you’re not eager to find out.”

Kit shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong. As sisters go, she’s okay. More than okay. But as soon as she found out about wizardry...” He shrugged a helpless shrug. “It’s like... I don’t know. Not just that she thought it was a bad thing. Almost as if my being a wizard 
embarrassed
 her.”

“Best reason to keep it quiet,” Ronan said. “I feel for you. Glad I don’t have to deal with that stuff.”

“You never told your family?”

Ronan shook his head. “Tried it once or twice,” he said. “It never felt right. Might have been something to do with the classified stuff the Champion was up to when he was stuck in my head. But now that he’s gone, I’m not sure I want to rock the boat...”

Bang!
 Darryl appeared in the kitchen doorway, wearing loose savannah-camo baggies, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and one of those many-pocketed vests favored by photographers. “Sorry I kept you waiting,” he said. “I had to feed my turtle.”

Ronan eyed him with amusement. “Looks more like you were feeding the lions. What, are we going on safari? I should get you a pith helmet and an elephant gun.”

“Stop envying my style,” Darryl said.

“Envying?” Ronan snorted. “It is to laugh.”

“You’re not fooling anybody.” Darryl grinned at Kit, then looked around. “We all set? Where’s Miss Neets?”

Despite how eager he was to see her, this kind of question from the others was beginning to grate on Kit’s nerves. “Sleeping in,” he said. “She had a long day dealing with her dad. And she was muttering about something she was doing with Carmela, probably some girl thing...”

Darryl’s eyes went wide. “Oh, Kit, don’t let her hear you say stuff like that! She’ll pull your head right off and beat you over the shoulders with it.”

Ronan rolled his eyes in agreement. “Miss Tough-Mouth Neets doing girly stuff?” he said. “Not usually on her program.”

“Can we worry less about her program and more about ours?” Kit said.

“Right away, O mighty one,” Darryl said, wandering over to the bowl of fruit off to one side and picking up an apple. “Hey, these look nice—” He glanced at Kit.

“Go ahead. Why should a little errantry keep you from eating?”

“I assume you’ve got a plan ready,” Ronan said.

Kit nodded. “Darryl, did he tell you about the signals to the other craters?”

Already three bites into the apple, Darryl paused long enough to give Kit a look. “I read your précis between the second and third bowls of sugar bombs,” he said. “You want to keep up with me, Your Kitness, ‘cause I may be autistic but I’m not dyslexic. You have a preferred target we should investigate first, or should we just flip for it?”

“If there’s any flipping-for to be done,” said a voice from the living room, “it’s going to be by Ronan over 
me.
”

All heads turned as Carmela walked in. She was wearing a short blue dress with a peach-colored tank top underneath it, leggings, and little high heels of the kind Kit had heard her call “kitten heels.” The clothes were the same kind of thing you might see a lot of girls her age wearing somewhere casually, say to the mall. But there was nothing casual about the way Carmela wore any of her clothes anymore—not since last year, when she suddenly discovered she had a figure. The pigtails of ten minutes ago were gone. She had pulled her long hair off to one side, so that it flowed down in a raven sweep over one shoulder, and she carried herself with the gracious queenly condescension of a supermodel who had descended for a time from her usual starry height to walk among the lowly paparazzi. What Kit found strange was that this lofty carriage didn’t look preposterous on her. “Good morning, Darryl,” Carmela said, smiling sweetly at him; then turned her head. “And Ronannnn...”

Kit could only roll his eyes as Carmela stalked over to Ronan with that smile turned right up. 
It’s got to be an act,
was all he could think. 
She’s just messing with him because he thinks he’s hot—!
 For Kit had seen her pull this stunt with egotistical alien royalty in the past. After he worked out what was being done to him, the prince in question had eventually recovered sufficiently to take nourishment and walk around. 
For a while...

“Carmela,” Ronan said in what Kit was beginning to think of as the Tone of Great Forbearance, “don’t you think I’m a little—
old
for you?”

His tone of voice suggested that Ronan expected no answer but “yes.” Carmela, however, just looked at him brightly and said, “That’s okay. In ten years you won’t be.”

Ronan opened his mouth and closed it again.

Kit didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But right now the laughter was threatening to win. “Ronan, don’t we have places to be?”

“Oh,” Ronan said, “uh, yes.”

Carmela just smiled. “Nice save, Kit,” she said, “but it’s just temporary.” She waved the fingers of one hand at them in a toodle-oo gesture as she wandered back into the living room.

Kit watched her go with slight relief. 
Then again, why am I relieved? She’s got a worldgate in her closet. The sooner we’re out of here, the better.
 “Let’s go out back,” Kit said. “It’s shielded there; the neighbors won’t see us.”

They headed out the back door together. Under his breath, Ronan said, “Your sister—” He shook his head. “We have a word for her where I come from—”

 “Maybe I don’t want to hear it,” Kit said. “She 
is
 my sister.” Not that Kit wasn’t finding it peculiar to suddenly be concerned about how Carmela dressed or acted around other people. He wasn’t used to thinking about how girls looked in their clothes— 
except what about Janie Lowell in chemistry the other day?
 said one eager and interested part of his brain from the background. 
That skirt she was wearing, it hardly even covered her—

Kit made a face. Other girls were a different matter. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to be seeing his sister that way, and he wasn’t sure he wanted anybody else seeing her that way, either
. And just a few months ago, I wouldn’t have cared one way or another. This is so weird...