Wheeler laughed. “Reality is so overrated. In between catastrophes it settles down to the most-boring-possible-explanation-for-everything. ‘That can’t happen,’ until it does. ‘Things don’t work that way,’ until they do.”

“Girls can never find a god to fall in love with,” said Xena, “until they do.”

“Girls find gods to fall in love with all the time,” said Pat. “Then they wake up pregnant and the god is gone. All that’s left is an asshole.”

Everybody laughed at that, even Danny, tired as he was.

“‘Who’s the father of your baby?’ ‘Oh, Daddy, it was a god,’” said Pat. “‘What does he look like?’ ‘Oh, Mother, he forbade me to turn on the light and see his face.’ Nobody ever wants to admit they fell for a lying moron. Every bastard ever conceived is the love child of a god.”

“Yeah, but there’s also been a lot of genuine drowther-boinking,” said Danny. “The Mithermages have a lot of descendants scattered through the human race. In fact, by now I’d say that every living human has a Westilian ancestor.”

“So why didn’t the Great Gate waken the mage in me?” asked Hal.

“Maybe it did,” said Danny. “It takes time to learn how to find your affinity and make things happen.”

Right then, a little dust devil formed in the middle of the group, stirring up a bit of dust. And then it was gone almost as soon as they noticed it.

“OK, who did that?” asked Danny.

Nobody said anything.

“We’re talking about finding your affinity,” said Danny, “and one of you shows the power of a windmage.”

The dust devil reappeared and then skittered over to spatter dust and leaves on Wheeler. He jumped up and brushed himself off. “Sneak attacks are against the rules,” he said, brushing himself off.

“You wanted to have a monster chase you,” said Hal.

“Seriously, who did that?” asked Danny.

Everybody acted innocent. They were all curious about it, looking at each other, but nobody fessed up.

“What’s the point of hiding who can do this?” said Danny. “That’s really good, that’s like what a second-year windmage learns to do. And dumping the stuff on Wheeler, if that’s who you were aiming at, that’s why I call it a second-year thing. Nobody can do that in their first year.”

Danny watched to see who showed pride when he said that. But nobody showed anything on their faces. Which is why Danny was reasonably sure that it was Pat. She was the only one who could keep her face a complete blank, when she wanted to.

But if she had some reason for not coming forward in front of the others, Danny would respect that.

“I know why you’re in high school, Danny,” said Sin. “It’s your secret identity.”

“Clark Kent at the Daily Planet,” said Laurette.

“Without the glasses,” said Sin.