Deep Wizardry-wiz 2 by Diane Duane Page B

does the Walter Cronkite of the bird world have to say about all this?”
    “I’ll find out.”
    Monsters? Nita mouthed at Kit. “Listen,” she said hurriedly to Tom, “I’m going to get off now. I’ve got to be around the house when my folks leave, so they won’t worry about my little sister.”
    “Why? Is she sick?”
    “No. But that’s the problem. Tom, I don’t know what to do about Dairine. I thought nonwizards weren’t supposed to notice magic most of the time. I’m lot sure it’s working that way with Dairine. I think she’s getting suspicious...”
    “We’ll talk. Meanwhile, Carl—what does the bird say?”
    “Oh, it is, it is a splendid thing/To be a pirate kiiiiiiiiiiiiing!” Picchu was singing from somewhere in Tom’s living room.
    “Picchu—“
    “What’sa matter? Don’t you like Gilbert and Sullivan?”
    ”I told you we should never have let her watch Pirates on cable,” Tom remarked to his partner.
    “Twice your peanut ration for the week,” Carl said.
    “... and I did the deed that all men shun, I shot the Albatross...”
    “You’re misquoting. How about no peanuts for the rest of the week—“
    “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!”
    “How about no food?”
    “Uh—“ There was a pause. It didn’t take Nita much imagination to picture the look that Carl was giving Picchu. She was glad no one had ever looked at her that way.
    “Give.”
    “Well.” The bird paused again, a long pause, and when she spoke her voice sounded more sober than Nita could remember ever hearing it. “Do what the night tells you. Don’t be afraid to give yourself away. And read the small print before you sign!”
    Kit glanced at Nita with a quizzical expression; she shrugged. At the other end of the line, sounding exceptionally annoyed, Carl said to Picchu, “You call that advice? We asked you for the odds!”
    “Never ask me the odds,” Picchu said promptly. “I don’t want to know. And neither do you, really.” And that end of the conversation swiftly degenerated into more loud squawking, and the excited barking of dogs, and Carl making suggestions to Picchu that were at best rather rude.
    “Thanks,” Nita said to Tom. “I’ll talk to you later.” She squeezed out of the phone booth and past Dog, who growled at her as she went. Behind her, Kit said, in entirely too cheerful a tone of voice, “So, Carl, what about the monsters?”
    Nita shook her head and went home.
    The Blue’s Song
    “Giant man-eating clams,” she said to Kit later, as they walked down an isolated stretch of Tiana Beach toward the surf. “Giant squid—“
    “Krakens,” Kit said.
    “I don’t care what you call them, they’re still giant squid. And squid belong in sushi. I don’t like this.”
    “With luck, we won’t see any of them, Carl says.”
    “When have we ever had that kind of luck? ...”
    “Besides, Neets, even you can outrun a clam...”
    “Cute,” she said. They splashed into the water together, glancing up and down the beach as they did so. No one was in sight; and they had left Ponch up in the dunes, looking for a good place to bury the remains of his latest water rat. “Look,” Nita said, pointing.
    Several hundred yards out, there was a glitter of spray, and sunlight glanced off the curved, upleaping body of a dolphin as if from an unsheathed, upheld sword. Wild, merry chattering, a dolphin’s laughter, came to them over the water, as the leaping shape came down with a splash and another shock of spray.
    “Hotshot,” Kit said. “Let’s go.”
    They struck out through the breakers, into water that was again surprisingly warm. This time Nita wasn’t able to enjoy it quite as much; the thought of undersea volcanoes was much with her. But even she couldn’t be depressed for long when they paused to rest a moment, dog-paddling, and from behind came the nudge in the back she remembered, followed by a delphine laugh. “You rotten thing,” she said, turning to rub Hotshot