Kit could only shrug. “She spends half her time watching the alien versions of the Discovery Channel. It could be true.”
“It is true,” Carmela said. “For silicon-based life-forms, one of the chemicals in chocolate is an aphrodisiac.”
“Oh, now, wait a minute!” Kit said, and covered his eyes with one hand.
“But most warm-blooded carbon-based species just really like the taste,” Carmela said. “Every time a new species finds out about chocolate, they send someone here to get cocoa plants so they can take them home and genetically tailor them to their physiologies.” Carmela smiled a bright and infuriating smile. “See, I don’t ‘waste’ all my time in alien chat areas. I’ve been doing educational things. Like telling my chat buddies which brands of chocolate are best.”
Kit was left with the image of some intergalactic SWAT team turning up on his doorstep and arresting his sister for being a cocoa pusher. “Why do I get the feeling that you are totally out of control?”
“Your control,” said Carmela, and wandered off, smiling angelically. “You’re just now noticing?”
Kit clutched his head as Nita stifled a laugh. “It’s not funny,” Kit muttered. “And here I was just hoping we might survive the next month or so! Now I have to worry about my sister getting our whole planet put on probation for corrupting underage species or something.”
The doorbell rang.
Aha, Kit thought, and braced himself.
Nita’s amusement at the way Carmela was putting Kit through the wringer was diverted by a weird feeling she couldn’t quite analyze. It was like feeling the sun on sunburned skin; and it felt directional, so that she could get a sense, in her mind anyway, of where it was coming from. She turned to look toward the front door. Now what the—
“Probably just another of the thundering herd,” Carmela said, frowning, and heading that way herself.
“Don’t let any of your would-be boyfriends in here!” Kit said.
“Are you kidding?” Carmela said. “There’s a lot cooler stuff happening in here than mere guys.”She vanished around the corner into the living room.
“Someone’s being unusually cooperative today,” Kit said under his breath. “I bet I know why.”
Nita looked at him. Oh no, she said silently. She doesn’t think that just because she knows about what’s going on, that she might get to go along with—
If she gets that idea, Kit said, believe me, I’ll get her past it. Way past it. We have more than enough problems.
Nita heard Carmela open the front door. The silence that followed was entirely uncharacteristic, so much so that Nita looked in that direction, still wondering at that uneasy “sunburn” sensation.
A voice at the front door said, “Uh, is Kit here?”
Nita’s eyes went wide.
Oh… my… God, she thought.
“Or Nita?” the voice said.
“Uh, yeah,” Carmela said, after another of those unusually long pauses. “Yeah. Can I tell her who’s asking for her?”
Nita stood there for several seconds more getting used to what was happening, and then got up and headed for the Rodriguezes’ front door.
Carmela stood there looking up at a tall dark figure dressed in black jeans, black shirt, a black leather jacket over it all, and with that shaggy longish dark hair hanging down over one eye, in just the way Nita remembered.
“Ronan,” Nita said.
Ronan Nolan Junior glanced over Carmela’s head at Nita, and actually smiled, though as usual for him it was a rather grim and edgy smile. “Hey,” he said, “dai stihó.”
“Dai, cousin.” Nita thought for a moment, and then said, “Or is it ‘cousins‘?”
He rolled his eyes. “Some days,” he said, “your guess’d be as good as mine.” He looked from her to Carmela. “Can I come in?”
“Sure,” Carmela said, sounding rather stunned.
Ronan stepped in and glanced around the living room. “Listen,” he said, “normally I wouldn’t just show up without warning—”
“Is anything normal at the moment?” Nita said.
“Now you’d be asking.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Nita said. “Believe it or not, it’s kind of good to see you.”
“Kind of?”
She smiled slightly. Ronan smiled a little, too, then looked down at his feet. Nita followed his glance. To her surprise, Spot was standing in front of Ronan, staring up at him with multiple stalked eyes.
“Three matters unknown but soon to be:
The way of the Gods with the created,
The way of the created with the Gods,
The way between them across the bridge of Being.”
Ronan blinked as Spot walked away again, toward the TV and the DVD and DVR, where he sat down on the rug and both legs and eyes vanished.
“You remember Spot,” Nita said.
Ronan raised his eyebrows. “Had an upgrade, from the looks of him,” he said.
“Yeah. Well, he’s started doing poetry. Haiku, sort of.”
Ronan shook his head. “Triads,” he said. “In Ireland we used to get a lot of prophecies that way: everything in threes.”
Nita shrugged. “His basic logic’s trinary, Dairine says. But at least it beats him sitting in the corner going ‘uh-oh’ all day.”
Ronan snorted. “Been hearing a fair amount of that myself,” he said. “That’s why I’m here. You’ve been in touch with your Advisories about the trouble that’s coming—”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Did they seem a little less helpful than usual?”
“A little,” Nita said, hating to admit it.
Ronan nodded. “It’s the same all over. Well, things are moving already, and we have to be part of it. But I need your help. We need it.”
He looked uncomfortable as he said “we.” That, at least, was in character. “Come on,” Nita said, and led him toward the dining room. Then she paused and turned, responding again to that sun-on-sunburn feeling. “It’s here, isn’t it?” Nita said.
“What’s here?”
“The Spear. You’ve got it with you.”
Ronan nodded. “Thought you might notice.”
Now it was Nita’s turn to laugh a little. “How do you not notice that?” she said, for she’d been present at the forging of the Spear of Light, and had been more frightened by it than by almost anything else she’d seen or experienced during her practice of wizardry. It wasn’t that the Spear was a bad thing: absolutely the opposite. But it was hard to be in the neighborhood of a power of pure goodness for very long. That Ronan could handle the full force of the Spear—had apparently been destined to handle it—made Nita as nervous as the thought of the Power that lived inside his head with him and made dealing with the Spear possible.
“Is it a problem?” Ronan said.
Nita shook her head. “Right now we can use all the help we can get—and that means weapons, too. Where have you got it? In an otherspace pocket?”
“No, in this one.” Ronan reached inside his jacket and came out with a plastic ballpoint pen.
Nita blinked. “That?”
“Mightier than the sword, theoretically,” Ronan said, clicking the point in and out a couple of times. Nita got just the briefest glimpse of a spark of blindingly white fire at the tip of the ballpoint, as if its ink were lightning. “Don’t think I carry it around in its normal shape all day, do you? It’s murder on people’s woodwork.” He slipped the pen back into the inside pocket and went into the dining room past her. “Dai stihó, everybody—”
“Dai stihó,” said five audible voices and one silent one.
Nita stood there watching them all get acquainted with the newcomer. Ronan looked taller somehow. Seems a little late for a growth spurt, Nita thought: Ronan had to be around seventeen now, maybe more. But there was always the possibility that what Nita was picking up was something to do with the Other that lived inside him—a being much older, and far more powerful, than any of them.