A Wizard Abroad, New Millennium Edition Read Free Page B

having too much fun fighting. Time it stopped.” The smile she turned on him was grim. “You be the good cop… I’ll be the bad cop.”

    Kit sighed and looked at Nita with a grin that was a bit sad around the edges. “The missing-you-already thing?” he said. “Got that too.”

    Looking at him, Nita saw it was true. The bad mood started falling off her, because if there was anything she hated more than being miserable, it was seeing Kit that way. “It’s only six weeks,” she said.

    “Yeah, well… I’d say that six weeks won’t be a problem and we’ll do it standing on our heads,” Kit said. “Except wizards don’t lie, and a lie that big could be seen from space. And you wouldn’t believe it anyway.”

    Nita’s smile was admiring if not happy. “Nope,” she said. “But I’d give you extra credit for trying.” She sighed, stood up. “Never mind. We’re running out of air. Let’s just get down there and get on with it. The sooner we start, the sooner it’ll be September.”

    ***

    Saturday came.

    Kit went with Nita and her parents on the late-afternoon ride to Kennedy Airport. It was a grim, silent sort of ride, broken only by the kind of strained, fake-cheerful conversation people make when they desperately need to say something, anything, to keep the silence from getting too thick. At least it seemed silent to the parents, which was an illusion Nita didn’t mind perpetuating in her present mood. They got cranky enough about her and Kit constantly texting each other under the table at dinnertime or while doing homework. If they found out that the two of them could pass thoughts back and forth as well, God only knew how hard they would have freaked.

    Telepathy wasn’t all that simple a matter, and the two of them had gone off it somewhat since they got started—partly because mindtouch often got itself tangled up with a lot of other information you didn’t need or want the other person to have. Talking often turned out to be safer. But at this point, habits or not, they were going to have to get a lot better at the mindtouch for quick communications until the digital end of their wizardry got a little better sorted out.

    The car could have a breakdown… Kit said silently.

    Nita sighed. No.

    I’m not kidding. It wants to do that already. It can feel how everybody is! It hates this. And there’s this one valve that’s kinda loose..

    No! If I miss the flight they’ll just reschedule me, and it’ll cost more. Let’s not make this worse than it is.

    Not sure that’s possible…

    She sighed again, because today it was Kit who was more depressed about what was happening—possibly because he’d been hoping Nita’s folks would have a last-minute change of heart. She’d tried telling him this wasn’t on the cards, but then it was one of Kit’s specialties to always be holding the door open, mentally, for something better to happen. It’s going to be okay, she said, as soon as we get through all this. Honest.

    You’re really believing that at the moment, he said.

    Don’t have much choice, Nita said, as the car took the exit off the Southern State Parkway for Kennedy. As soon as they’ve dumped me and I’m on the plane, I want to talk to you about that smartphone app, I don’t know if I’ve got it configured right.

    Okay—

    And then within minutes they were caught up in the inevitable steps of the dance: the airport traffic, the airport parking, the airport shuttle bus, the crowded terminal, the check-in lines, the baggage check-in—Nita’s wheeled suitcase wasn’t too huge and she could handle it herself without too much trouble, though she was privately determined to make it weightless if she had to carry it anywhere alone. And then, of course, after the passport check at the counter, came the passport and boarding-pass check conducted by the unescorted-minor representative from the airline, who talked over Nita’s head to her parents while regarding Nita herself