“My family won’t dangle them upside down over the ocean,” said Hermia. “Or maybe they will—but they won’t do it as cleverly and magically as you did.”

“We are gatemages, aren’t we?” said Veevee with some satisfaction. “It’s so much fun to prank everybody at once.”

They went to Veevee’s favorite gelato place—Angelato, on Arizona Avenue in Santa Monica—and ate their gelatos on the Third Street Promenade. Then all three of them gated away to wherever they were going to spend the night. Veevee laughed in delight as she prepared to stick a finger into one of her rings. “Oh, I feel so powerful. Like the first time I got the keys to the family car.” Then she was gone.

Alone in his little house in Buena Vista, Danny could hardly believe what he had done in a single day. Went to Westil and met the Gate Thief. Created portable gates for his friends. Removed the tracking chips from Hermia. Ate dessert in California and got back before bedtime.

Botched a Great Gate.

He really wanted to think about Xena as he went to sleep. But all he could think about was the angry gate that Marion and Leslie were tending now. How could he do something that stupid?

And then, inexplicably, he thought of Coach Lieder’s daughter, Nicki. How was she doing? Had they realized yet that she was healed of her cancer?

That, at least, was something Danny hadn’t screwed up.

Search

8

SEARCH

It should have been easy for Wad to find the windmage from Mittlegard whom Danny North had called Ced. Not only was there a swath of destruction across a long stretch of Hetterwee, making it easy to narrow down his location, but even if he tried to blend into the local population, even if he had acquired local clothing, his foreignness had to be obvious from his language.

Hetterwee was a broad plain that got heavy snow in winter but scant rain in summer. The grass was fast-growing and the sod was thick, but the whole world turned brown by midsummer and the grazing herds now stayed close to the many streams that flowed down from the Mitherkame, the High Mountains.

Mitherkame was high and thickly forested, a place where mages of stone and water, tree and eagle prospered and grew strong. Wind could whistle and whine through canyons and narrow passes.

But Hetterwee was a wide-open land where the wind made waves in the high grass, rippling for miles. There the wind could dance.