“Well, let me check…”
“I’m free,” said Sker’ret immediately. “One or another of my relief people can take those shifts for me. Powers forbid I should miss a party of yours!”
Nita wanted to start shouting practical, sensible things like No, wait, this is all going way too fast, are you nuts…? But she took a deep breath, stood there hating Thanksgiving enough to be willing to think about anything else, especially when it involved going straight on past it, and peered over Carmela’s shoulder at the tablet. “That’s really gorgeous. Where’d you get that?”
“It’s part of her detached staff package,” Sker’ret said. “Didn’t you get yours, Nita? I’ll see that it comes to you.”
“Okay, Sker’, thanks,” she said. “What day is that?” Nita said to Carmela.
“December 20th,” Carmela said. “And hey, the next day is the Winter Solstice. Very symbolic!” she said to Filif, elbowing him somewhere among his fronds and needles. “We’re having a sleepover on Almost The Longest Night! We can stay up all night and watch movies and eat popcorn and all kinds of things.”
“Mela,” Nita said. “Your mama and pop… you haven’t even asked them yet!”
“They’ll say yes,” Carmela said, waving a hand. “We’re going to do it exactly the way you did yours when Sker’ and Fil came to visit the first time. Elective-access ‘puptent’ accesses in the basement….”
“I can always spare powering structures for ten or twenty of those,” Sker’ret said. “Let me know what you need. If the party’s heavily attended we can always install a temporary secondary gating hub like the one in your closet.”
Nita rubbed her eyes for a moment. It’s always possible they will say yes right off the bat… And certainly since she became a wizard, stranger things had happened.
Carmela was talking to Filif a mile a minute about popcorn garlands and boughs of holly and snow and Christmas cookies. “And a star, Fil, an actual star for the top of you instead of a baseball cap…”
“But I like my baseball cap!” The protest didn’t have a lot of energy behind it: Filif was already starting to shake with excitement.
“Just a temporary thing. Something festive! For the season. And lights, Fil, all colors of lights, and glass balls and ribbons and…”
If she does get her mom and pop to say yes to this, Nita thought, this is going to be amazing. And it’s been such a crazy year. I could use some amazing right about now…
“Sker’,” Nita said very softly, watching the armwaving continue and Filif’s delighted, excited vibrations increase. “Tell me something.”
“Anything.”
“Remember that paperwork I cosigned with Mela when we were here last, after Mars…?”
“Yes?”
“Is it possible…” Nita’s mouth went dry. She tried swallowing, had to work at it. “…that as far as the intergalactic community is concerned, I’m, uh, one of the people who… rules the Earth?”
Sker’ret burst out in one of his ratchety laughs. “What? Rules? Oh, no! Not at all.”
“Okay, that’s a relief,” Nita said. “Good.” And she sagged a little.
“But you are on the governing board.”
Nita’s mouth dropped open again. Then she closed it, because she simply could not find a reply.
“We should go,” she said after a moment. “You two have business, and we’ve got a guest list to write.”
“Of course. I’ll let you get on with it. And we’ll see you at your place again! This is going to be so exciting. In… fifty days?”
“Sounds about right,” Nita said.
There was more hugging, and then Filif and Sker’ret took themselves off down the concourse. Carmela kicked her hoverscoot back into levitation mode, climbed aboard, and said to Nita, “So that’s settled. Come on, Neets, we’ve got the far end of the concourse to look over…” And off she went, already humming “Feliz Navidad… Feliz Navidad… Prospero Ano y Felicidad…”
This is going to be interesting, Nita thought. “Mela, wait up!”
“I want to wish you a merry Christmas… I want to wish you a merry Christmas… from the bottom of my oooh wow look at that!”
Nita sighed and scooted after her.
***
Of course, even when you’re a wizard, getting the basic permissions settled for a house party for an indeterminate number of wizardly or wizard-friendly guests isn’t necessarily that easy.
In the Rodriguezes’ living room a man was sitting in the easy chair closest to the entertainment system, with a tabloid newspaper open in front of his face. In front of him, sitting crosslegged on the floor in a position that was supposed to read as subordinate, and wearing what was meant to be a winsome smile, was his younger daughter.
“Daaaaddyyyyy…”
“I just got home, Carmela. From a shift that felt three hours longer than it really was. During which every single machine I touched found a new and interesting way to screw up.” Kit’s pop worked with the printing-press machines at the big Long Island newspaper, and since the operation had gone digital, he had been complaining more or less nonstop about the crankiness of the new equipment he worked with compared with the beautiful, reliable old printing presses of old. Kit had told Nita often enough that her dad had complained just as hard and as constantly about the old printing presses, way back when, but this didn’t seem to be a good time to remind anybody of that. “My head is aching, even my ears are aching, and the aspirin hasn’t kicked in yet, so if we could, you know, let this wait half an hour…”
“But all you have to do right now is say ‘yes’ and then it’ll be quiet!”
The newspaper behind which Juan Rodriguez was presently concealing himself rustled in a very brisk way. “Let’s try it the other way around, shall we? Let’s try having the quiet now, and then maybe the ‘yes’ will happen later!”
“Okay, right on time, that was the appeal to reason,” Kit said in Nita’s ear. They were lurking in the kitchen, pretending to be getting something to eat while listening to the conversation through the passthrough window between the kitchen and the living room. ”Let’s see if she’s buying it.”
“Seriously, pop-pop, it won’t be a big deal! I’m going to take care of all the food and drinks myself, and I’ll clean the house, before and after—”
“Uh oh,” Kit said, very low. “Reverting to what she used to call him when she was eight. Helpless baby daughter and responsible cleaner of the house? Not a good match.”
“That we’re having this discussion right now tells me that it’s a big deal already,” Kit’s pop said. “And that I should be wondering just why you’re leaning on this so hard. And whether I should go off the whole idea right now, so as not to indulge your instant gratification issues.”
“But daaaaaaaddy—”
Kit rolled his eyes at Nita. “Nope, logic’s the only thing that could have saved her there…”
The newspaper being held up between Juan and his middle daughter dropped just long enough for her, and the two in the kitchen, to get a glimpse of eyes that were rather dangerously narrowed. “Answer hazy,” Kit’s pop said, rather pointedly, “ask again later.” And he went back behind the newspaper again.
Carmela picked herself silently up off the floor and swanned off toward the back of the house and the stairs to her bedroom in a manner that just narrowly avoided being a flounce.
Nita and Kit turned their attention back toward the sandwiches that they were theoretically constructing. Nita hadn’t actually gotten much further than the bread. “How’s this going, you think?” she said, very low.
“Hard to tell,” Kit murmured, opening a cupboard and pretending to rummage around in it. “Sometimes she gets a lot of mileage out of the ‘I’m your favorite daughter’ thing. Some days, nothing at all. Especially when he starts thinking about her and Helena being in college.”