Pat let them bandy words. She was trying to find the ka of someone important to her. But she had experienced Veevee’s ka when Danny was moving her around, trying to teach her. Had Pat ever really sensed anybody else except those Westilian boys?

But maybe it wasn’t just a matter of finding people. Maybe …

And there she was, in the clearing in the woods above Parry McCluer High School. Just like that. It was a place she knew well. A place she had gated to before.

There was somebody there. It was during high-school hours, but there were a girl and a boy, vigorously snogging.

Xena. Yes, of course Xena. And … oh, not possible. Wheeler.

Before she could make a sound, Pat was gone again. To another place she knew very, very well. The bathroom mirror where she had spent so many hours of her life washing her acne-plagued face with benzoyl peroxide soaps. A place she knew better than any other.

I don’t have to go where Danny is. I can go to places that I know well. And when I was there in the gathering place in the woods, I didn’t recognize Xena and Wheeler by face, I knew them by their kas. I knew them. I could find them again no matter where they were.

But at this moment, she didn’t want to find them because she knew where they were and what they were doing and she couldn’t imagine that she would be a welcome visitor.

There were two people looking into the bathroom mirror. Hermia was beside her. “You came here?”

“Second choice,” said Pat. “I went to the clearing in the woods first.”

“I thought you made two jumps,” said Hermia. “But I’m not good at this yet.”

“Places I’ve been to a lot,” said Pat. “Places that were emotionally important to me. Easy to find them. To just go.”

“Are you really so vain that your bathroom mirror is—”

“I had terrible acne till Danny healed me,” said Pat. “I wasn’t being vain when I stared into this monster movie screen.”

“You poor dear. And also, lucky you.” Hermia squinted.

Even squinting, she was pretty. Pat really should hate this woman.

“So what place has ever been so important to me?” asked Hermia.

And then she was gone.

It was Pat’s turn to follow her. She knew the place at once—behind the gym down at the high school. “Where you first met Danny, knowing he was a gatemage,” said Pat.

“Knowing he had started to make a Great Gate,” said Hermia. “I don’t know how I understood that, because it’s not as if I had ever seen one. But it was all entwined. Lots of gates together. So … I knew. And there he was.”

A moment’s pause, and she was gone again.

Again, Pat followed.