“And whatever Danny’s doing, your arrival won’t help him,” said Pat.

“Well, I’ve already interfered with his plans too often as it is,” said Hermia. “I won’t bother Danny until I really need to. And Pat. You treated me better than I deserved.”

“Yes,” said Pat. “But with any luck, we all get treated better than we deserve, from time to time.”

“You deserve Danny,” said Hermia, “and Danny deserves you. And that may be the most completely true and nice thing that I’ve ever said to anybody in my life.” Hermia leaned close and kissed Pat on the cheek. “Work on your windmagery, darling—it’s nice that you can make quick getaways, but you need to make sure you have a powerful offensive weapon, too, when the war starts in earnest.”

And then she was gone.

Pat just stood there in Veevee’s apartment, trying to think of some reason why it wasn’t completely disastrous for Hermia to have gained this ability.

Then Pat walked out onto the balcony and worked on whipping up a powerful twister with edges so clearly defined that nobody on the beach felt even the slightest uptick in the wind. The twister whirled at monstrous speed fifty feet up, and reached high into the atmosphere. Pat then brought the top of it down so that the twister was no thicker than a frisbee, though it was half a mile wide, a disk of intensely destructive wind.

It was so exhilarating.

She slowed it. She sped it up. She narrowed it, then widened it. She took care to keep it out of the flight path of any airplanes, though she couldn’t resist capturing a couple of hopeless kites and whipping them away at such speeds that they were instantly torn to shreds. The wind was so hungry to feel that power and kites were cheap and easy to replace. The young men who were flying them would have a story to tell. “The kite just … disappeared. A jerk on the line and then it was dead, and there was nothing left, like some invisible bird came and ate it whole.”

Everybody wins. And I have an offensive weapon already. If I ever need it. Oh, please, let it be that I never, never need to use this against a person.

Veevee came out onto the balcony after a while. “Playing with your windmagery?”

“Better than teaching a traitor how to move around the world on seven-league boots.”

Veevee made a show of pouting. “Her you can teach?”

“Now that I’ve seen how she learned, maybe I can teach you,” said Pat. “If you really want to know.”

“Of course I—”

“Hermia thought that you weren’t willing to concentrate on the things that are actually pertinent.”

“The word ‘bitch’ was invented just so she could grow into it,” said Veevee.