“Neither do I,” said Sin, “but Kierkegaard said it.”

Hal started reading off her phone. “‘Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life’s relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the windowpanes, which vanish with the warmth.’”

“Sounds like a depressed Dane,” said Pat.

“But he’s a great Dane,” said Wheeler.

“Woof,” said Xena.

Sin was reading again. “OK, here’s one. ‘Don’t forget to love yourself.’”

“Maybe Danes need to be reminded of that. Especially in winter,” said Pat. “But Americans usually need to be reminded to love somebody besides themselves.”

“‘The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays,’” said Sin.

“If Danny’s a god,” said Wheeler, “I wonder if anybody prays to him.”

Danny held up his hand, knowing that somebody would start doing it just to be cute. “Please don’t. Please be my friends and don’t ever call me a god. I don’t act like I think I’m a god, do I? I try not to.”

“You just, like, cast out Wheeler’s devils,” said Xena. “You may not be a god but you’re something.”

Danny buried his head in his hands. “I’m Danny North, and I’ve got way more power than any human being should have, but I still can’t figure out what I’m supposed to do with it. A lot of terrible things are happening and worse ones are coming and it’s partly my fault, so I think it’s my job to stop them but I don’t know how and, hell, I don’t even know how things are supposed to look when I set everything to rights, because the world kind of sucked before I found out I was a gatemage, and I know that wasn’t my fault. So do I scale back the suckage until it only sucks as much as usual? Or am I supposed to fix the whole thing? Or just stop the worst suckathons and then crawl in a hole somewhere like Loki did after he closed all the gates?”

“Danny is confused,” said Laurette.

“He doesn’t like to be confused,” said Sin. “He’s an organized person. This is not the right planet for him.”

“There is no right planet for me,” said Danny, “and I’ve been to all three.”

“Stay on this one,” said Pat. “For me.”

“Love is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” said Xena brightly. “Don’t correct me, Laurette, I wasn’t being stupid, I was being ironic.”

“‘It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards,’” read Hal. “‘But they forget the other proposition—’”

But he couldn’t finish, because the others howled him down. “Forget Kierkegaard,” said Sin, taking back her phone.

“‘People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought, which they seldom use,’” Hal recited quickly.