“Explain it to me again,” Danny said sharply. “Maybe this time it will make sense.”

Danny looked across the table at Eric and Alana. He’d known both of them since kindergarten. He’d even been close with Eric, before Eric started wearing black and looking haunted all the time. But he couldn’t say he knew either of them.

Carrie sat next to him. They were the only ones in the truck stop out by the highway, the last place in Middleton open past midnight. The hostess watched them with weary eyes from the glass-topped counter. Danny figured she was used to drunken kids who made a mess without leaving a tip. Her nametag read FAY.

Eric looked tired. “What do you need to hear?” he asked.

“You expect me to believe you’re a wizard, I’m going to need a little more proof.”

“Magician,” Eric said. “The term is magician.”

“You have magic powers.”

“Yes.”

“But you let Lonnie Decker shove you into the girl’s locker room every day in eighth grade.” Danny’s voice was flat. He didn’t sound sarcastic. He didn’t have to.

“Danny…” Carrie’s voice was a warning.

“No, no. I’m not making fun of him. If I had magic powers, I’m sure I’d want to hide them from everyone too,” Danny said.

She kicked him under the table, a pretty obvious message: Don’t piss off the wizard.

He didn’t care. Danny didn’t want to be here. He only came because Carrie had told him to, and he’d never known Carrie to be wrong about anything important, as annoying as that was. He’d learned that her deductions were correct as often as his own. He’d come to trust her.

Plus they were having sex now, and a part of his brain told him that might be jeopardized if he didn’t listen to her, no matter how stupid or insane it sounded.

So he listened. But he didn’t have to like it.

“I have to keep my powers secret,” Eric said.

“Sure. I can see why you’d say that.”

Eric glared at him, then put out his hand and made a small gesture. A tiny mushroom cloud, a miniature nuclear holocaust, bloomed in the middle of the table. Eric gestured again, and it was gone, leaving only a small wisp of smoke floating toward the ceiling.

Danny’s face felt hot, and he smelled the odor of his own burned eyebrows, familiar from a thousand small mishaps in his lab. He looked at his hands, saw they were red and sunburned in November.

“Hey,” the hostess shouted from the front counter. “No smoking in here.”

“Sorry,” all four of the kids said at once.

She went back to her copy of People.

“Neat trick,” Danny finally said.

“It’s not a trick,” Eric said.

Okay then, Danny thought.