Диана Дуэйн - Not On My Patch

“Oh, all right…”

“One thing first,” Nita said, as Ronan and Dairine wandered off toward the edge of the field, with Spot trailing after, to set up a new set of transit circles.

“What?” Kit said.

“Right here…” Nita had bent down to examine the spot where she’d smashed Jackie to the ground. Some pulp and smashed skin fragments still lay there. She started turning over the broken pieces carefully.

Kit got down beside her. “What?” he said.

“Here,” Nita said. Under one of the broken pieces she found a few pale white seeds. Carefully she picked them up and slipped them into the pouch that held her manual. “You see any more of these?”

Kit helped her look. “A few under here…”

“Good.” After a few moments Nita sat back on her heels and accepted them from Kit, considering for a moment. “I think we take these home and leave them out to dry a little.”

“In the oven?”

“No, just near the radiator, I think. Then put them away…wait for spring, start the seedlings going, plant them out. Daddy was talking about starting a vegetable patch. I bet he wouldn’t mind some pumpkins.”

Kit gave Nita a look that even in this moonlight was plainly visible as a teasing one. “Not sure this really counts as changing the equation…”

“What?”

“You have got to stop giving things nicknames.”

She gave him a look of deadly amusement. “’Kit’,” Nita said, “is a nickname.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t give me—”

Nita pulled off Kit’s crooked mustache, chucked it away, grabbed him by the collar and pulled him close in the dark.

“What are you two doing back there?” Ronan said from some yards away. “Hurry up and come on, or the Jedi Pig here’s gonna get ahead of you and raid your bags for all the chocolate.”

For a few seconds there was no answer. Then Kit said, “Tell her she can have it.”

Ronan and Dairine exchanged a glance and a grin, then vanished.

And behind them, the Hallowe’en moon kept shining down, glorious and round and somewhat scarred… like a pumpkin with character.

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