“A nose ring,” said Xena. “Then every time you blow your nose, you’ll transport somewhere.”

“Or you sniff and you get sent to the moon,” said Wheeler.

“‘One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them,’” intoned Hal. “‘One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.’”

“Are you saying we’re on Sauron’s side?” asked Wheeler, a little angry.

“Sauron doesn’t have a side,” said Danny. “You forget, the Families are all the gods, all the fairies, all the elves and ghosts and werewolves and poltergeists and everything. Good and bad, the Families are on both sides of everything. There’s no good or evil with them. Just … whatever they feel like doing, and have the power to do it.”

“That sounds like as good a definition of evil as I’ve ever heard,” said Pat.

“Well, look what I just did,” said Danny. “I felt like attaching a gate to a stone, and when Xena suggested that I really focus on it, then I could do it. Was that evil?”

Pat shrugged. “Depends on whether you throw the stone at some other high school’s quarterback and jump him ten yards back and drop him on his ass.”

“That’s just a prank,” said Wheeler. “Can you do it?”

“He wouldn’t need a stone,” said Hal. “He could just do it.”

“And it would be evil,” said Pat. “Hurting somebody else just for the fun of it.”

“So was it evil when I messed with Coach Lieder?” asked Danny.

“A little bit maybe,” said Pat.

“But mostly funny,” said Hal.

“And he deserved it,” said Wheeler.

Danny remembered the men he had terrified into submission out over the Atlantic, and then stashed in a jail. They were murderers, or meant to be. They deserved worse than he had done to them. But it didn’t make him feel all that great about the fact that he had the power to torture them like that. And that he had just done it, the moment he thought of it.

“Something you already carry with you,” said Danny. “And I’ll try to put the gate on it in such a way that you don’t just accidentally pop through it. So don’t give me your wallet.”

“Wheeler can give you the condom he always carries,” said Hal. “He’s never going to use that.”

Wheeler glared at him. “They gave it to me in fifth grade. It’s like a rabbit’s foot, I’m not going to use it, it’s older than my dick by now.”

“Ew,” said Laurette. “You made me think of your weenie.”

“Said the girl with the constant cleavage,” said Wheeler.

“Please,” said Danny. “Something you carry but you don’t touch, but you could get to it in an emergency.”

Pat already had a tampon out of her purse.

“Our turn to say ‘ew,’” said Hal.