The Gate Thief

7

Danny had first come to Parry McCluer High School as a long-dreamed-of adventure. And the dream had come true. He had made friends. He had learned how to use his power and he had done good things with it. A few pranks, too, but he hadn’t used it to win races and he hadn’t hurt anybody, unless you counted humiliating Coach Bleeder.

Now, though, he came as if he had graduated, then found out he had flunked a test after all and had to come back. Only nobody knew he had been gone. Nobody knew he had failed. His friends didn’t believe him when he told them.

They were gathered in the old smoking area-the one that the teachers regularly checked. But since they were only talking, not smoking anything, it was a good place for Danny and his friends to gather.

“So can we use the gate?” asked Pat.

“I told you, nobody can.”

“I thought you said it was wild,” said Wheeler. “Anybody could use it.”

“We’re not letting anybody get near enough to use it,” said Danny.

“Then what’s the big deal?” asked Hal. “Is it, like, the last gate you can ever make?”

“No, I can make as many as I want.”

“So can you take us to that other world?” asked Laurette.

“Why would I do that?” asked Danny. “You’re not mages, it wouldn’t do you any good, and what if you got stranded there? It isn’t a safe place.”

“You’re right,” said Pat. “Here, you can only get run over by cars or catch some hideous disease or get blown up in chemistry class.”

“I didn’t blow anybody up,” said Hal.

“But you tried,” said Wheeler.

“I tried to get them to cancel school for the day,” said Hal.

“Can we stop talking about your failures, Hal?” said Xena.

“Yeah, let’s go back to talking about mine,” said Danny.

Xena gripped his arm and spoke so earnestly and pressed so close that he could feel her breath on his cheek. “You haven’t failed at anything, Danny North,” she said. “You’re, like, a god.”

“The god of screw-ups,” said Danny.

Xena kissed his cheek. “Your screw-ups are better than other people’s successes.”

“So you went to the other world. Westil,” said Laurette. “That was supposed to make you more powerful.”

“I don’t feel any different,” said Danny.

“Well, can you do stuff you couldn’t do before?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you know?” asked Laurette.

“There isn’t a manual,” said Danny. “They kill mages like me. They don’t exactly provide me with instructions.”

“Who reads the instructions?” asked Laurette. “Haven’t you tried anything?”

“I wouldn’t even know what to try,” said Danny. “I made gates before. I can still make gates.” He shrugged.

“So you can take us to Disney World?” asked Sin.

Danny hadn’t expected that-not from the goth with constantly infected piercings. “You want to go to Disney World?”

“I’d say Paris, but I don’t speak French,” said Sin. “Come on, I’ve never been.”

“Me neither,” said Xena.

“I don’t want to go,” said Pat.

“I don’t like using gates to steal,” said Danny.

“Who said anything about stealing?” asked Sin. “Just get us in.”

“And then get us through all the lines and into the rides without tickets,” said Laurette. “Is that so much to ask?”

“They’ll catch me,” said Wheeler. “I always look guilty.”

“How about Cape Canaveral?” asked Hal.

“You provide the security badges, and I’ll get us in,” said Danny.

“This isn’t even fun,” said Pat.

“What about all those people trying to kill you?” asked Xena. “Are you safe now?”

“I don’t know,” said Danny.

“And what about teaching us how to help you?” asked Hal. “Or is that off, just because you screwed up and made some gate angry?”

“I can’t have you help me,” said Danny. “I’d just screw that up, too, and then you’d get killed.”

“Wow, he’s really down on himself,” said Laurette.

“He needs cheering up,” said Xena. She kissed his cheek. Not a sisterly peck. Her lips brushed his cheek and lingered. It made him feel a tingle in his legs and in his butt. He didn’t know that tingling could be so weirdly dislocated.

“Don’t go there, Xena,” said Hal.

“Even if you are a warrior princess,” said Wheeler.

“Jealous?” asked Xena.

“Yes,” said Wheeler.

Everyone looked at him in surprise.

“It’s just Danny, and all of a sudden you’re getting all kissy with him,” said Wheeler.

“Yeah,” said Laurette. “Just because he’s a god, why would you want to kiss him?”

“You’re right,” said Xena, clinging to Danny all the more tightly. “I want to have his baby.”

At that, Danny pulled away. Joking around was one thing. This was something else. “I just have to think,” he said.

“He can’t think if all his blood has rushed out of his head,” said Laurette.

“I’m just trying to figure out if there’s a way I can keep you guys safe,” said Danny.

“We’d be safe in Disney World,” said Sin. “It’s the safest place on earth.”

Danny thought of what he needed his friends to do. Gate them as emissaries to the Families, to explain the terms they’d have to agree to in order to pass someone through a Great Gate. Danny couldn’t go himself, and he couldn’t send Veevee or Hermia, either. The Families would set traps for them. But what would be the point of trapping drowthers?

That was the problem. Since the Families didn’t regard drowthers as having any value, they wouldn’t hold them as hostages. If they got annoyed, they’d just kill his emissaries.

In fact, as soon as anyone realized that Danny had friends, they might try to use them against him. Threaten them. Follow them. Kidnap them. Kill them. Without waiting for Danny to send them anywhere.

He couldn’t concentrate on all of them at once. He couldn’t keep them safe. “What have I done to you guys?” asked Danny.

“What are you talking about?” asked Laurette.

Danny explained his worry.

“Cool,” said Wheeler. “It’s like being inside a comic book.”

“Except we’re collateral damage,” said Hal.

“We’re the red shirt guys,” said Pat.

Danny made a gate, a very small one, and put it directly above a small stone lying in the clearing. “Hal,” said Danny. “Would you pick up that stone?”

Hal didn’t bother looking to see exactly which stone. He just lunged for the general area, reaching for any stone, and when his hand brushed the gate, he fell into it and he was sitting ten feet away. “That is disorienting,” he complained.

“That wasn’t what I wanted,” said Danny. “I’m trying to see if I can tie a gate to a thing instead of a place. Just move the stone, somebody. Laurette, keep your hand low and move it slowly and I’ll tell you which stone.”

She moved carefully-though Danny also noticed that she bent over at such an angle that her considerable cleavage was aimed right at him. Was that because it was her habit, or because she was thinking the same way Xena was, that because Danny could do magery he was suddenly cool enough to be worth flirting with?

“That one,” said Danny.

Laurette picked up the stone.

The gate stayed in the air above where the stone had been.

“Damn,” said Danny.

“Didn’t work?” asked Laurette.

“I was hoping I could do it because I went to Westil. The enhancement of my powers.”

“Bummer,” said Hal. He was back in the circle now.

“Who cares?” asked Sin. “It’s just a rock.”

“He wants us to be able to carry gates around with us,” said Pat. “So we can stick a finger in a gate and be somewhere else.”

Sometimes she surprised him. Sour as she was, she was always thinking. Maybe when you don’t care whether other people like you, you have more brainspace for analysis.

“Well, there’s no reason it shouldn’t work,” said Hal. “Whether you went through a Great Gate or not.”

“What do you know about magic?” said Xena contemptuously.

“What I know about is physics,” said Hal. “Basic, elementary, pathetic, every-semi-educated-moron-should-know-it-level physics.”

“Xena slept through the physics unit in eighth-grade science,” said Laurette.

“Danny always attaches his gates to small moving objects,” said Hal. “He’s never done anything else.”

Danny looked at the gate he had just made, the mouth and tail of it, and couldn’t figure out what Hal meant.

“The surface of the Earth is spinning one complete revolution per day,” said Hal. “At the equator, that means it’s moving at a thousand miles an hour. Here, it’s about eight hundred miles an hour. The Earth is also moving around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour. So when Danny’s gates seem to stay in the same place, they’re really moving incredibly fast-so they’re attached to something.”

“You said ‘small moving objects,’” said Laurette.

“Compared to the Sun, Earth is a small moving object,” said Hal. “Compared to the galaxy, Earth is a blip. The only reason we think it’s big is because we’re even smaller.”

“Thanks for the info, Science Boy,” said Xena.

“Like he said, everybody knows that,” said Wheeler.

“Oh, you had sixty-seven thousand and eight hundred miles an hour sitting there in your brain?” said Pat.

“No, but I knew that the Earth spins completely around once a day,” said Wheeler. “And I knew it went all the way around the Sun once a year. That means it’s a seriously fast-moving object. Duh.”

“If you’re so smart, how fast is the solar system moving around the center of the galaxy?” Pat asked Hal.

“Four hundred eighty-three thousand miles an hour,” said Hal.

“And how fast is the Milky Way moving toward Andromeda?”

“That’s impossible to say,” said Hal, “because they’re moving toward each other and there’s no stationary point of reference.”

“The whole galaxy is moving one point three million miles an hour, compared to the CBR,” said Pat triumphantly.

“What’s the CBR?” asked Sin.

“Cosmic Background Radiation,” said Hal, “and that’s not what you asked, Pat, you asked about how fast the Milky Way was moving toward Andromeda.”

“This is all so sad,” said Sin. “While other boys were memorizing football players’ stats, Hal was memorizing the stats of astronomical objects.”

“I wonder if Earth will make the playoffs this year,” said Laurette.

“And you girls memorize what George Clooney eats for breakfast,” said Wheeler.

“That walking fossil?” said Xena.

“The cast of Twilight, then,” said Wheeler.

Apparently the girls couldn’t argue with that one.

It was no secret that Hal was smart. And Pat was the smartest of the girls. And Danny knew all this stuff too-he knew everything he had ever read. The difference was that Hal had realized it applied to this situation.

“I get the point,” said Danny. “I’m attaching the gates to a point on the surface of a spinning, moving object, so there’s no reason I can’t attach it to a pebble except that the pebble is smaller.” Danny gazed steadily at the stone, trying to figure out how to attach a gate to it the way he had attached the gate to a spot in the air above the stone.

Meanwhile, Sin had a question. “How do you wizards or whatever you are, how do you know we don’t have magic?”

“Don’t talk to him, he’s making gates,” said Laurette.

“We don’t know you don’t have magic,” said Danny. “Our blood has been mixing with the rest of the human race for thousands of years, so you probably have some Mithermage ancestry.” He tried to hold the image of the stone in his mind and create a gate solely in relation to the stone, not distracted by any other surrounding feature.

“So send us to Westil,” said Sin. “Maybe we’ll come back with superpowers.”

“Yeah,” said Hal.

“Cool,” said Wheeler.

Danny’s concentration broke. He was impatient with himself, but they only saw that he was annoyed.

“Sorry,” said Laurette.

“Stop distracting him!” said Xena protectively.

“Why don’t you hold it in your hand and really focus on it?” asked Pat. “Disconnect it from the ground.”

Laurette handed him a stone. Danny took it, bent over it, stared at it, made a gate.

He moved the stone a little to the left.

The mouth of the gate moved with it.

It was that simple. Remove the pebble from its context, concentrate a little, and he had an enchanted stone.

“You look happy,” said Xena. “Does that mean you’re thinking of me naked?”

“It means he attached a gate to the stone,” said Pat. “We all try not to think of you naked.”

“So … what now?” asked Hal. “You give us each a stone to use if we need to make a quick getaway?”

“A stone’s a lousy idea,” said Laurette.

“Why?” asked Danny. He had thought it was a pretty good idea.

“First,” said Laurette, “what if we drop our stone? How could we tell which one was ours, except by brushing our hand against it and taking off like Hal just did? And then we still don’t have the stone-but maybe whoever was chasing us finds it and follows us.”

“Don’t drop the stone,” said Wheeler.

“Right, like none of us ever drops anything,” said Pat.

“Second,” said Laurette, “suppose somebody handcuffs us and searches us and finds a stone in our pockets or purses or whatever? How many people our age carry rocks around?”

“Okay,” said Danny, “Not a stone. I was just learning how to do it, and there are plenty of stones.”

“A ring,” said Sin.

“A nose ring,” said Xena. “Then every time you blow your nose, you’ll transport somewhere.”

“Or you sniff and you get sent to the moon,” said Wheeler.

“‘One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them,’” intoned Hal. “‘One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.’”

“Are you saying we’re on Sauron’s side?” asked Wheeler, a little angry.

“Sauron doesn’t have a side,” said Danny. “You forget, the Families are all the gods, all the fairies, all the elves and ghosts and werewolves and poltergeists and everything. Good and bad, the Families are on both sides of everything. There’s no good or evil with them. Just … whatever they feel like doing, and have the power to do it.”

“That sounds like as good a definition of evil as I’ve ever heard,” said Pat.

“Well, look what I just did,” said Danny. “I felt like attaching a gate to a stone, and when Xena suggested that I really focus on it, then I could do it. Was that evil?”

Pat shrugged. “Depends on whether you throw the stone at some other high school’s quarterback and jump him ten yards back and drop him on his ass.”

“That’s just a prank,” said Wheeler. “Can you do it?”

“He wouldn’t need a stone,” said Hal. “He could just do it.”

“And it would be evil,” said Pat. “Hurting somebody else just for the fun of it.”

“So was it evil when I messed with Coach Lieder?” asked Danny.

“A little bit maybe,” said Pat.

“But mostly funny,” said Hal.

“And he deserved it,” said Wheeler.

Danny remembered the men he had terrified into submission out over the Atlantic, and then stashed in a jail. They were murderers, or meant to be. They deserved worse than he had done to them. But it didn’t make him feel all that great about the fact that he had the power to torture them like that. And that he had just done it, the moment he thought of it.

“Something you already carry with you,” said Danny. “And I’ll try to put the gate on it in such a way that you don’t just accidentally pop through it. So don’t give me your wallet.”

“Wheeler can give you the condom he always carries,” said Hal. “He’s never going to use that.”

Wheeler glared at him. “They gave it to me in fifth grade. It’s like a rabbit’s foot, I’m not going to use it, it’s older than my dick by now.”

“Ew,” said Laurette. “You made me think of your weenie.”

“Said the girl with the constant cleavage,” said Wheeler.

“Please,” said Danny. “Something you carry but you don’t touch, but you could get to it in an emergency.”

Pat already had a tampon out of her purse.

“Our turn to say ‘ew,’” said Hal.

“Every girl carries them and nobody thinks anything about it,” said Pat.

“I don’t,” said Sin.

“I carry extras,” said Laurette, getting two tampons out of her purse.

“Then I am using my condom,” said Wheeler, reaching into his pocket.

“I don’t carry a purse,” said Sin. “What am I supposed to do, tuck it behind my ear?” She handed the tampon back to Laurette.

“You don’t carry a spare just in case?” asked Laurette.

“I’m never early and I’m not afraid of a little blood anyway,” said Sin.

“Are you afraid of a little vomit?” asked Hal. “Because this is making me sick.”

“Welcome to girlville,” said Pat. “But since you’re never going to have a girlfriend or a wife, it won’t matter if you’re squeamish.”

“What if I’m rummaging in my purse for something else and I brush against it?” asked Xena, looking doubtfully at the tampon she was holding. “And should I unwrap it?”

Danny took it out of her hand.

“He’s touching one,” said Hal.

“Girl cooties,” said Wheeler.

Danny studied the thing. Squeezed it. Pushed his finger against the end. “Just give me a second,” he said.

He made a really tiny gate completely inside the end of the tampon. He tossed the tampon around on his hand and nothing happened. But when he pushed his finger into the end, he jumped through the gate-this time only a few inches away. But it still made him lose his balance.

“Oh, a three-inch gate,” said Pat. “That’ll show ’em. ‘Better be nice to me or I’ll move another three inches!’”

“I’m just testing,” said Danny. “You have to push your finger into the end before the gate will work.”

“What happens if you forget which one is the gate and you use it?” asked Hal.

“I thought you didn’t like talking about messy girl stuff,” said Laurette.

“I can’t help what pops into my head,” said Hal.

“Please tell me you’re not picturing me using it,” said Pat.

“Well now I am and thanks so much,” said Hal.

“I don’t have anything that isn’t hard and shiny,” said Sin.

“Your lip gloss,” said Pat.

Sin pulled a tiny canister out of her pocket. “It’s hard and shiny,” she said.

“The stuff inside is black and squishy,” said Pat.

“I can put the gate down inside,” said Danny.

“If you hide a gate in here I can’t use it and my lips will get pink,” said Sin.

Laurette pulled a stub of black licorice out of her purse. “Here, it’s black. And it’s squishy.”

Sin took the licorice and studied it. “What century was this made in?”

“It’s old, it’s black, and it’s gross,” said Laurette. “Nobody will be surprised that you have it in your pocket. Or does your mother wash your jeans?”

Sin gave a disdainful toss of her head. “Washing is so bourgeois.”

Ten minutes later, they all had something flexible with a tiny gatemouth inside it. Three tampons, a licorice stub, a condom package, and a lion-shaped eraser that Hal had in his pocket.

“Why a lion?” asked Sin.

Hal shrugged. “Got it as a prize at the dentist one time.”

“And you carry it with you,” said Sin.

“Lost a tooth, got a lion,” said Hal.

“It’s Aslan,” said Wheeler.

Hal looked really angry.

“Stop it,” said Danny. “Have some loyalty, Wheeler.”

“He told about my condom,” said Wheeler.

“So if one of us pisses off another one of us, then suddenly we’re all about getting even?” asked Pat. “Oh, that’ll work.”

“We don’t tell each other’s secrets,” said Laurette. “And we don’t make fun of each other.”

“Does that mean I can’t mention your cleavage, ever?” asked Danny.

“We don’t make fun of things that matter,” said Laurette. “Making fun of my cleavage is just another way of telling me that it’s working.”

“I think that’s a good rule,” said Danny.

“We all make fun of how Laurette shows her boobs?” asked Xena.

“We don’t make each other feel bad,” said Danny. “We don’t tell each other’s secrets to outsiders.”

The others agreed.

“All of your gates,” said Danny, “they’ll take you here. But there’s a chance one of the Families will find out about this place, so when you get here, if it’s an emergency, just reach out to this tree.” Danny showed them the one. “And here under this branch, there’ll be another gate. Can you all reach it?”

They all proved that they could, even Xena, whose arms weren’t all that long.

“Where will that gate take us?” asked Pat.

“Someplace far away. Someplace where I’ll put a stash of money and a weapon. You’ll never have to use it, but it’ll be there, in case somebody’s following you through the gate.”

“So you don’t have any idea yet where it’ll go,” said Pat.

“I’m thinking Disney World,” said Danny.

“A weapon in the Magic Kingdom?” asked Sin. “That’s just wrong.”

“I’ll find someplace safe, where I can stash a weapon and nobody will find it,” said Danny. “For now, though, I’ll make it lead to a place in DC. And then I’ll make another gate there and show you all where it is, so you can get back to Buena Vista but in a different place.”

“So we can try it out? It’ll just be sitting there and if we want to go to DC we can use it?” asked Wheeler.

Everybody looked at him. “Once,” said Danny. “You can try it once, to show that you know how to use it. But if you do it any other time, somebody might see you and then they’d know. It only works as an emergency escape if nobody knows, and that means you never use it. If you want to go to DC I’ll send you there.”

Wheeler laughed nervously. “This is really, like, serious and all.”

“I thought you already understood that,” said Danny. “If you stay friends with me, if you help me, you’re going to be in real danger. And you’ll need a real escape route. But if you want to beg off, then do it now. Let’s not go any farther. I can leave this school any time. Without me here, you’re safe. You haven’t been seen doing anything yet.”

“No,” said Xena.

“We’ll be good,” said Hal.

Only Wheeler said nothing.

They all waited.

“I feel like I’ve already totally screwed up and you won’t ever trust me no matter what I say,” said Wheeler miserably.

“I’ll trust you until you do something that shows me I shouldn’t,” said Danny.

“But I’m an idiot,” said Wheeler.

“I told you he knew it,” said Sin to Pat.

“I mean, I forget stuff. I blab stuff without thinking.”

“Well, don’t,” said Danny. “That’s all.”

Wheeler nodded miserably. Then he suddenly disappeared and there he was over by the tree. He put his finger up where the next gate was going to be.

“Wheeler,” said Danny. “You can’t get away from me that way. Every gate I make is a part of me. I know where they go, and I know when people go through them. I also haven’t put a gate in that tree yet.”

“I just wanted to see if you had taken away my gate,” said Wheeler.

“If I ever do,” said Danny, “I’ll tell you. Or I’ll take away the condom.” At the thought, he made a small gate that swallowed the condom even though it was in Wheeler’s hand. He made it plop onto the ground in the middle of the group.

“Wow,” said Wheeler. “You can take it right out of my hand?”

“No, I did that,” said Xena.

“Really?” asked Wheeler.

“He really is an idiot,” said Pat.

“Wheeler, I trust you,” said Danny. “Now trust me, too.” But in his heart, Danny knew that he would never really trust Wheeler. Would never send him out to deliver a message or run an errand more serious than buying sodas or picking up pizzas. Because his first instinct had been to use his gate carelessly. To test Danny. He doesn’t know how to keep a promise.

They’re all young. Maybe none of them do.

But he was in high school. These were the friends he had.

And it was cool that he could attach a gate to an object. I’ve made enchanted amulets, even if they are just tampons, licorice, a condom and a little-kid’s eraser. No magic writing on them, nothing but a tiny gate embedded in them. It made him feel clever and powerful.

And there was Xena’s hand on his arm again. He liked it there. He didn’t pull his arm away.

Then he remembered that he didn’t actually feel any attraction to Xena.

That was before she was attracted to him. Now she was very attractive.

I’m such a teenager myself, thought Danny. He remembered Lana, Ced’s wife back in DC. How she made him feel. Xena was much nicer than Lana, and a lot less crazy. What if Danny had a girlfriend for a while? Not somebody who would seduce him and mock him for succumbing. Not a succubus. An actual girlfriend.

Then he remembered the stories of Zeus raping women all over the Aegean. And Hermes-how many women did the old myths have Hermes seducing? There was no lock on a bedroom door that could keep him out.

Xena’s basically saying I can have her if I want. I could go into her bedroom tonight and sleep with her and her parents would never see me come in or go out. And she’d let me. She’d think it was cool.

Until we’d done it. Then she’d think we were together. And we would be. What if she got pregnant? What if she thought it made her cooler than the other girls and it caused a rift in the group?

Keep your pants zipped and your brain out of Xena’s bedroom, Danny told himself.

She leaned her head on his shoulder.

Danny turned his body to face Xena. She put a hand on his chest. He took the hand and held it between his. “We’re friends, Xena. And fellow soldiers in a war. Let’s see what happens when the war is over.”

Xena tossed her hand and stepped to Pat. “I told you he was gay.” Then she laughed as if it had been a joke. Which it was. Mostly. Maybe.

I have no business trying to lead a group of any kind. I should take back all these gates and leave right now and never come back. Everybody will be better off it I do that.

Everybody but me.

He’d been lonely his whole life. This was the first time he had friends. And he couldn’t give them up. He didn’t want to give them up, and he could do whatever he wanted, and so he was going to stay here with them. Because they thought he was cool. They liked that he was powerful. They weren’t trying to kill him. And they liked him before they knew he could do this thing with gates.

And he was going to be thinking about Xena in spite of the fact that he wasn’t attracted to her. Or to any of the girls. He was sixteen now, so any offer was going to make him obsess for a while. Knowing that it was just his hormones making him feel this way didn’t make the feelings go away. Might as well enjoy the feeling. As long as he didn’t do anything about it.

That night Danny went to DC and Stone agreed to let him put the tail of the emergency gate in his attic. “But no gun,” said Stone.

“What if someone’s coming after them?” asked Danny.

“Be creative,” said Stone.

What Danny came up with was a stack of pennies with gates on both sides. As long as you handled them by the edge, you didn’t go anywhere. But if you touched heads or tails, you found yourself someplace interesting and public. Just inside the gate of the White House. The middle of the Capitol rotunda. Lincoln’s lap. On the nose of the giant in the Awakening statue. If one of his friends was getting chased through the gates, they come to Stone’s attic closet, grab a penny, and throw it at whoever comes through the gate after them.

“Weaponized money,” said Stone. “But if one of your friends comes through just for fun, I get to throw a penny at them.”

“They’re nice,” said Danny. “I don’t want them getting treated badly just because they’re drowthers.”

“You know me better than that,” said Stone. “I’ll treat them badly because they’re teenagers.”

When Veevee and Hermia heard about the portable gates, they both demanded some of their own. Veevee had a charm bracelet, which she loaded up with rings, each one a gate leading to a useful place-her condo, the Silvermans’ farm, Danny’s house, Danny’s school, Stone’s bedroom. “I’m his wife, I don’t have to use the attic,” she said.

“What if somebody steals the bracelet?” said Danny. “I suppose if Hermia locks them for you and you only open them when you-”

“While you were playing with your little friends,” said Hermia, “we were working.”

“We can’t make gates,” said Veevee, “but now I can lock them and Hermia can unlock them. We both have lock and key now.”

“We’re working on moving gates,” said Hermia. “I think I moved one. Just the tail.”

“But she can’t do it again,” said Veevee.

“So then it doesn’t have to be a ring,” said Danny. “I can attach a gate to anything, and it only works when you want it to.”

Hermia handed him a euro. “Put a dozen or so gates on this,” she said. “I’ll only open the ones I need, when I need them.”

Her list of destinations was longer than Veevee’s, but she had to stay a jump ahead of her Family. Danny attached two dozen gates to the coin. At first he tried to arrange them in some orderly way, but Hermia just laughed. “Danny, I can see them all, I can tell them apart, I know where they go, and I can keep them all locked except the one I want to use. Go ahead and pile them on in a jumble.”

He gave her Paris, New York, Dubai, Singapore, Katmandu, Accra, Brisbane, Sao Paulo, a dozen other cities-not to mention the Greek Family’s office building in Athens, the North Family compound in Virginia, and the Library of Congress. “It’s practically the whole atlas,” said Veevee admiringly.

“I’ll add as many gates as you want,” said Danny.

“No, I’m not jealous, and I know you’ll open a gate to anywhere I want. What I’m worried about, Danny, is that there’s no gate that takes me to you.”

Hermia nodded. “We have all these gate mouths with us. But we need a gate whose tail always leads to wherever you are.”

“I can’t have you popping out of my pocket,” said Danny.

“I know,” said Veevee. “Have us come out of an old-fashioned oil lamp. We can be your genies.”

“Amusing as that sounds,” said Danny, “I don’t want you popping up when I’m on the john.”

“What if you need our help?” asked Hermia.

“I’ll always know where these gates are. If I need to, I can move the tail of one of your portable gates to a place near me.”

“Unless you’re unconscious,” said Veevee.

“I’ll think about this,” said Danny.

“You can lock it,” said Hermia. “And then unlock it if you need us. We aren’t going to intrude on your privacy.”

“We unlock it ourselves only if we think something is really wrong,” said Veevee.

“We peek through ahead of time,” said Hermia.

Danny hated the whole idea. It was one thing to give them the power to go anywhere by using their amulets. But to give someone constant access to him-that wasn’t going to happen. Even if they promised not to use it.

“I don’t think he sees a difference between peeking through a gate and coming through it,” said Veevee. “He doesn’t want to be spied on.”

“You have to trust us,” said Hermia.

“I said I’d think about it,” said Danny.

“Meaning the answer is no,” said Veevee.

“It’s really unfair,” said Hermia. “You can make a gate anytime you want, no matter what we’re doing. We can’t hide from you, but you don’t think we can be trusted not to spy on you or intrude when you’re kissing some girl.”

“We won’t take pictures,” said Veevee. “Or at least we won’t post them online.”

“I said…” Danny began.

“He’s getting testy now,” said Veevee.

“I don’t spy on you,” said Danny, “and I know you won’t spy on me. But that’s how power is-just because you have a power doesn’t mean you want other people to use their power on you. Fairness only seems reasonable when the other person is more powerful than you.”

“As it seems to us,” said Hermia.

“I hate to sound like one of the Family,” said Danny, “but … you’re just going to have to live with it till I get used to the idea. Maybe someday I’ll wish I had made gates that follow me around like puppies, so you can always find me. But right now I don’t know how to do that, and I don’t think I even want to, and so … I won’t.”

“Tough guy,” said Veevee.

“He’s not so tough,” said Hermia. “He sounds like he’s apologizing. Real assholes don’t even pretend to be sorry.”

“True,” said Veevee. “It isn’t in his nature, so he’s not good at assholery yet.”

“Thanks,” said Danny. “I think.”

“Well,” said Hermia, “I’d better go, or the Family will track me here.”

“You’ve got to get those trackers out of her,” said Veevee.

She was right.

Danny studied Hermia, and then passed a gate over her, one that left her exactly where she was.

“What was that about?” asked Hermia.

“I didn’t know what I might have gained by going to Westil,” said Danny. “For all I know, I might always have had the ability to attach gates to portable objects. And maybe going through a Great Gate doesn’t affect the mage who made it. But I think there is a difference. When you went through the gate I just made, I could feel a difference in you-the places where the gate was trying to heal you and meeting with resistance. Maybe that’s what it was, anyway. I counted five places like that.”

“You should just send her through an airport scanner,” said Veevee. “They’ll show you exactly where the trackers are implanted.

Danny laughed. “Of course. Veevee, will you come along and make a distraction?”

He took them to the Roanoke airport. Veevee got to the end of the security line and then started wailing. “Where’s my ticket? I had my ticket right here!”

Her noise drew everyone’s attention, and in the moment, Danny put Hermia right in front of the security gate, ahead of the person at the front of the line. Then he opened a peephole over the shoulder of the TSA official working the screen.

Veevee, seeing Hermia in place, took off on an elaborate charade of searching for her lost boarding pass. The guard waved Hermia into the machine.

Danny had been right about the trackers. Five of them, exactly where he had felt the gate trying and failing to heal her. The trip to Westil had given him more power. A sharper focus, a greater awareness.

He moved the porthole to a spot an inch from Hermia’s ear. “Gate to my house in Buena Vista,” he said. Then he gave the same message to Veevee.

In a moment they were all there. “I spotted all five trackers,” said Danny. “I think I can gate them out.”

“‘Think’?” said Hermia. “This is my body we’re talking about.”

“I’ll have a nice big gate ready for you to pass through so when I get each one out, you can heal yourself instantly. What can go wrong?”

“Famous last words,” said Veevee.

But after another minute of dithering, Hermia said, “Oh, just do it.”

“Are you sure?” said Danny.

“Do it, gate boy,” said Veevee. “Can’t you tell when a woman’s saying ‘yes’? You really are young.”

In about ten seconds, Danny was done. There were five chips on the table, and Danny had passed the healing gate over Hermia after removing each one. It was very quick.

“It did hurt,” said Hermia. “Surgery is surgery.”

“Sorry,” said Danny.

“I was just reporting, so you’d know,” said Hermia. “I never thought it would be painless, so it wasn’t a complaint.” She picked up one of the chips. “So my parents thought it would be a good idea to put these things in their baby girl.”

“The question is, what do we do with them?” said Veevee. “I say gate them to an incinerator.”

“Or implant them in somebody else,” said Hermia.

“That wouldn’t be nice,” said Veevee.

“I was thinking, what about the President? Or Prince Charles?” said Hermia. “Or some dictator somewhere. Make my Family go chasing them.”

“Or five different people,” said Veevee. “Make them go crazy trying to figure out which one is you.”

In the end, Danny gated one tracker under the skin of each of the Hittite-Armenian assassins and sent the other trackers about a mile deep in the Atlantic. Then he gated the two assassins from the jail to the Greek Family’s offices in Athens. “Let my folks deal with them,” said Hermia.

“Are you going to tell them what the bastards tried to do to you?” asked Veevee.

“No,” said Hermia. “Let them try to talk to each other. They’ll know we picked these clowns to receive exactly two of the trackers for a reason. They’ll know it wasn’t random. But if I tell my family, they’ll just kill them. Even if they’re seriously angry at me, they won’t approve of assassins from another Family going after me.”

“So you think the assassins won’t talk?” asked Danny.

“My family won’t dangle them upside down over the ocean,” said Hermia. “Or maybe they will-but they won’t do it as cleverly and magically as you did.”

“We are gatemages, aren’t we?” said Veevee with some satisfaction. “It’s so much fun to prank everybody at once.”

They went to Veevee’s favorite gelato place-Angelato, on Arizona Avenue in Santa Monica-and ate their gelatos on the Third Street Promenade. Then all three of them gated away to wherever they were going to spend the night. Veevee laughed in delight as she prepared to stick a finger into one of her rings. “Oh, I feel so powerful. Like the first time I got the keys to the family car.” Then she was gone.

Alone in his little house in Buena Vista, Danny could hardly believe what he had done in a single day. Went to Westil and met the Gate Thief. Created portable gates for his friends. Removed the tracking chips from Hermia. Ate dessert in California and got back before bedtime.

Botched a Great Gate.

He really wanted to think about Xena as he went to sleep. But all he could think about was the angry gate that Marion and Leslie were tending now. How could he do something that stupid?

And then, inexplicably, he thought of Coach Lieder’s daughter, Nicki. How was she doing? Had they realized yet that she was healed of her cancer?

That, at least, was something Danny hadn’t screwed up.