Diane Duane - A Wizard Alone

She found herself doing that right now, staring vaguely at the clutter on her desk — pens and pencils, school notebooks, sticky pads, overdue library books, a few CDs belonging to the downstairs computer. And her manual, closed, sitting there looking like just one more of the library books. Overdue , she thought, glancing past it at the other books. That’s not like me, either. I’m so obsessive about getting them back on time, usually…I should take them back after school today .

But taking them back just seemed like too much trouble. It could wait another day, or two, or three, for the little fine it would cost her. Maybe I’ll feel more like it over the weekend .

Nita let out a long breath as she looked at her manual. It wasn’t as if it was alive in any way, as if it had anything with which to look at her…

…but it was looking at her, and she wasn’t sure what to make of its expression.

She flipped it idly open to the back section, where the status listings were. Turning a few pages brought her to Kit’s listing, which she scanned with brief, weary interest. Then she paged along to her own.

CALLAHAN, Juanita L.

243 E. Clinton Avenue

Hempstead, NY 11575

(516) 555-6786 power rating: 6.76 +/-.5 assignment status: optional Nita stared at that for a long moment, never having seen anything like it on her listing before.

“ Optional” ?

Since when am I “ optional” ?!

She sat there looking at the listing for a few seconds longer. Jeez , she thought, that sounded more like Dairine than me

…

It was still a strange listing. And the longer she looked at it, the less she liked it.

But that brought her to her next order of business for the morning. Reluctantly, Nita got up and went across the hall to Dairine’s room. “Dari…” she said, knocking on the door and knowing what was going to come next.

“ Ngggg, said a voice from inside.

“Get up.”

“In a minute.”

“Don’t make me laugh, Dari. Say it in the Speech.”

Nita grimaced. Dairine was twisty and shifty in all kinds of ways, but even now, even angry and upset with life as she was, she would not dare say anything in the Speech that wasn’t true.

“Dairiiiiiiiiine…”

A pause. “Must you be so disgustingly responsible at this hour of the morning?”

“Yes,” Nita said, unimpressed by either the volume or the sentiment. “Get up, Dairine. I have things to do besides deal with you all morning.”

“Then go do them, and give them my regards.”

“Not a chance. Get up.”

“No.”

And so it went for another fifteen minutes or so. Nita’s temper started fraying. I might have seen the daybreak

, she thought, but I’m still going to be late for Millman, thanks to Dairine. Again .

I’ve had about enough of this!

Nita held out her hand for her manual, which obligingly picked itself up off her desk and came cruising along into the hall. She plucked it out of the air and began paging through it. Okay, today’s the day

, she thought. Today I actually use that spell instead of just thinking about it. But I have to add something fast

Nita spent a moment wondering under which category she would find the addition she was contemplating for the wizardry she had in mind. Well, it’s a teleport, but now it’s complex rather than strictly inanimate

… “Dairine,” Nita said. “This is just another cheap attempt not to go to school.”

“It’s not an attempt.”

“Uh-huh.” We’ll see about that. Okay, here we go. The shape of the wizardry’s a little weird now, but if I constrain the feeder end of the spell like this — and this— Yeah. Quick and dirty, but it’ll do the job

. “You really ought to think about the consequences of your actions,” Nita said, “especially insofar as they affect what Dad’s gonna have to say to you when school calls him at work to find out where you are.”

“Nita, that’s my problem, not yours, so why don’t you just butt out for a change instead of trying to run everybody’s life. You’re no replacement for Mom, no matter what you may think you’re doing, and—”

A tirade

, Nita thought, already halfway through the spell. Good . She paused just long enough to admit to herself that the remark about their mom did, indeed, really hurt, and then went on with the spell. Dairine was meanwhile still in full flow. “… when you come to your senses again, some time in the next century, you may discover that— OWl”

From inside Dairine’s bedroom came a loud thump, the sound of a body hitting the floor — or, more accurately, parts of a body hitting the floor, and parts of it coming down hard on some of the many and varied things that Dairine routinely shoved underneath her bed. One-handed, Nita snapped her manual shut with a feeling of profound satisfaction.

“ Where’s my bed ?!” Dairine shrieked.

“It’s on Pluto,” Nita said. “On the winter side, somewhere nice and dark and quiet, where you won’t find it if you look all day — which you’re not going to have time to do, because you’ll be in school.”

“Hah! I’ll sleep in your bed!”

“You hate my bed,” Nita said. “My mattress is too hard for you. And what’s more, my bed and every other piece of furniture in this house have been instructed that after I leave, they’re to teleport any living creature they touch right into the part of school where you’re scheduled to be at that particular moment in time. How you explain your appearance there is going to be your problem.”

“I’ll take the wizardry apart.”

“I’ve password-locked it. If you want, you can spend all day trying to unlock it from outside the house… and then still have to explain to Dad why you weren’t in school again. After he’s just spent an hour discussing the same subject with your principal. Meanwhile, if you want to sleep anywhere, you can do it on Pluto, if you like — but you’re not doing it in this house till after you get back from school.“

The bedroom door was flung open, and Dairine stormed through it, past Nita and toward the bathroom, head down, in a fury, refusing to give her sister so much as a glance. The severity of the effect was somewhat lessened by the dust bunnies that parted company with Dairine’s pajamas along the way, floating gendy in the air behind her .

“I wish I knew what alien force has kidnapped my sister and left this vindictive thug of a pod person in her place,” Dairine said to the air, slamming the bathroom door shut. “Because when I find out, I’m going to hunt it down and kick however many rear ends it has from here to Alphecca!”

Nita stood there for a moment, watching a final dust bunny float toward the floor. “Enjoy your day,” she said sweetly, and went to get her book bag.

Her meetings with Mr. Millman were always about an hour before homeroom, so that they were finished ten or fifteen minutes before other students started to arrive for the day. The covert quality of the meetings was enhanced by the fact that Mr. Millman didn’t even have his own office, because he traveled from school to school in the district every day. Neither he nor anyone else in school knew where he was going to be from one session to the next. Nita most often found him in a spare office down in the administrative wing of the school, a room furnished with a metal desk and a few wooden chairs and not much else. Today he was there, sitting behind the old beat-up desk with the office door open, and working intently on one of those metal-ring puzzles in which the five constituent rings have to be interlaced.