one angry, economical gesture, she whipped the wand

around her, dropping her most frequently used transit circle to the stones, the one that would take her home. It was a little harder to speak the spell

than usual. Her throat was tight, but not so much so that she couldn't say the words that would get her out of there. In a clap of imploding air, she

was gone, and spray from a wave that crashed against the jetty went through the place where she had been.

Friday, Early Evening

KIT RODRIGUEZ JUST SAT there on the concrete platform at the bottom of the Jones Inlet light tower for some minutes, looking at the spot where Nita had

vanished, listening to the hiss of the surf, and trying to work out what the heck had just happened.

What did I say  Kit went over their conversation a couple of times in his head and couldn't find any reason for her to have gotten so upset. What is her

problem these days  It can't be school. Nobody bothers her anymore; she does okay.

It was a puzzle, and one he'd been having no luck solving. Maybe it was because he'd been so busy... and not just during the last couple of months,

either. Granted, lately he'd been spending a lot of time on the bottom of the Great South Bay. And over the past couple of years, he'd also been to

Europe, and had stopped off on or near most of the planets in the solar system, though only on the way to places much farther out, including some places

that weren't exactly planets. Even Kit's mother, who initially had been really nervous about his wizardry, had eventually started to admit that all that

travel was probably going to be educational, and theoretically ought to make him, if not smarter, at least more mature. But Kit was beginning to have