He gave her Paris, New York, Dubai, Singapore, Katmandu, Accra, Brisbane, São Paulo, a dozen other cities—not to mention the Greek Family’s office building in Athens, the North Family compound in Virginia, and the Library of Congress. “It’s practically the whole atlas,” said Veevee admiringly.

  “I’ll add as many gates as you want,” said Danny.

  “No, I’m not jealous, and I know you’ll open a gate to anywhere I want. What I’m worried about, Danny, is that there’s no gate that takes me to you.”

  Hermia nodded. “We have all these gate mouths with us. But we need a gate whose tail always leads to wherever you are.”

  “I can’t have you popping out of my pocket,” said Danny.

  “I know,” said Veevee. “Have us come out of an old-fashioned oil lamp. We can be your genies.”

  “Amusing as that sounds,” said Danny, “I don’t want you popping up when I’m on the john.”

  “What if you need our help?” asked Hermia.

  “I’ll always know where these gates are. If I need to, I can move the tail of one of your portable gates to a place near me.”

  “Unless you’re unconscious,” said Veevee.

  “I’ll think about this,” said Danny.

  “You can lock it,” said Hermia. “And then unlock it if you need us. We aren’t going to intrude on your privacy.”

  “We unlock it ourselves only if we think something is really wrong,” said Veevee.

  “We peek through ahead of time,” said Hermia.

  Danny hated the whole idea. It was one thing to give them the power to go anywhere by using their amulets. But to give someone constant access to him—that wasn’t going to happen. Even if they promised not to use it.

  “I don’t think he sees a difference between peeking through a gate and coming through it,” said Veevee. “He doesn’t want to be spied on.”

  “You have to trust us,” said Hermia.

  “I said I’d think about it,” said Danny.

  “Meaning the answer is no,” said Veevee.

  “It’s really unfair,” said Hermia. “You can make a gate anytime you want, no matter what we’re doing. We can’t hide from you, but you don’t think we can be trusted not to spy on you or intrude when you’re kissing some girl.”

  “We won’t take pictures,” said Veevee. “Or at least we won’t post them online.”

  “I said,” Danny began.

  “He’s getting testy now,” said Veevee.

  “I don’t spy on you,” said Danny, “and I know you won’t spy on me. But that’s how power is—just because you have a power doesn’t mean you want other people to use their power on you. Fairness only seems reasonable when the other person is more powerful than you.”

  “As it seems to us,” said Hermia.

  “I hate to sound like one of the Family,” said Danny, “but . . . you’re just going to have to live with it till I get used to the idea. Maybe someday I’ll wish I had made gates that follow me around like puppies, so you can always find me. But right now I don’t know how to do that, and I don’t think I even want to, and so . . . I won’t.”

  “Tough guy,” said Veevee.

  “He’s not so tough,” said Hermia. “He sounds like he’s apologizing. Real assholes don’t even pretend to be sorry.”

  “True,” said Veevee. “It isn’t in his nature, so he’s not good at assholery yet.”

  “Thanks,” said Danny. “I think.”

  “Well,” said Hermia, “I’d better go, or the Family will track me here.”

  “You’ve got to get those gates out of her,” said Veevee.

  She was right.

  Danny studied Hermia, and then passed a gate over her, one that left her exactly where she was.

  “What was that about?” asked Hermia.

  “I didn’t know what I might have gained by going to Westil,” said Danny. “For all I know, I might always have had the ability to attach gates to portable objects. And maybe going through a Great Gate doesn’t affect the mage who made it. But I think there is a difference. When you went through the gate I just made, I could feel a difference in you—the places where the gate was trying to heal you and meeting with resistance. Maybe that’s what it was, anyway. I counted five places like that.”

  “You should just send her through an airport scanner,” said Veevee. “They’ll show you exactly where the trackers are implanted.

  Danny laughed. “Of course. Veevee, will you come along and make a distraction?”

  He took them to the Roanoke airport. Veevee got to the end of the security line and then started wailing. “Where’s my ticket! I had my ticket right here!”

  Her noise drew everyone’s attention, and in the moment, Danny put Hermia right in front of the security gate, ahead of the person at the front of the line. Then he opened a peephole over the shoulder of the TSA official working the screen.

  Veevee, seeing Hermia in place, took off on an elaborate charade of searching for her lost boarding pass. The guard waved Hermia into the machine.

  Danny had been right about the trackers. Five of them, exactly where he had felt the gate trying and failing to heal her. The trip to Westil had given him more power. A sharper focus, a greater awareness.

  He moved the porthole to a spot an inch from Hermia’s ear. “Gate to my house in Buena Vista,” he said. Then he gave the same message to Veevee.

  In a moment they were all there. “I spotted all five trackers,” said Danny. “I think I can gate them out.”

  “ ‘Think’ ?” said Hermia. “This is my body we’re talking about.”

  “I’ll have a nice big gate ready for you to pass through so when I get each one out, you can heal yourself instantly. What can go wrong?”

  “Famous last words,” said Veevee.

  But after another minute of dithering, Hermia said, “Oh, just do it.”

  “Are you sure?” said Danny.

  “Do it, gate boy,” said Veevee. “Can’t you tell when a woman’s saying ‘yes’ ? You really are young.”

  In about ten seconds, Danny was done. There were five chips on the table, and Danny had passed the healing gate over Hermia after removing each one. It was very quick.

  “It did hurt,” said Hermia. “Surgery is surgery.”

  “Sorry,” said Danny.

  “I was just reporting, so you’d know,” said Hermia. “I never thought it would be painless, so it wasn’t a complaint.” She picked up one of the chips. “So my parents thought it would be a good idea to put these things in their baby girl.”

  “The question is, what do we do with them?” said Veevee. “I say gate them to an incinerator.”

  “Or implant them in somebody else,” said Hermia.

  “That wouldn’t be nice,” said Veevee.

  “I was thinking, what about the President? Or Prince Charles?” said Hermia. “Or some dictator somewhere. Make my Family go chasing them.”

  “Or five different people,” said Veevee. “Make them go crazy trying to figure out which one is you.”

  In the end, Danny gated one tracker under the skin of each of the Hittite-Armenian assassins and sent the other trackers about a mile deep in the Atlantic. Then he gated the two assassins from the jail to the Greek Family’s offices in Athens. “Let my folks deal with them,” said Hermia.

  “Are you going to tell them what the bastards tried to do to you?” asked Veevee.

  “No,” said Hermia. “Let them try to talk to each other. They’ll know we picked these clowns to receive exactly two of the trackers for a reason. They’ll know it wasn’t random. But if I tell my family, they’ll just kill them. Even if they’re seriously angry at me, they won’t approve of assassins from another Family going after me.”

  “So you think the assassins won’t talk?” asked Danny.

  “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.

  2013

  Off to See the Emperor

  A four-room school in Aberdeen, Dakota Territory, September 1889

  The teacher introduced six-year-old Frank Joslyn Baum as one of the new first-graders. “Young Frank’s father is Mr. L. Frank Baum, editor of our town’s newspaper. Does anyone know the name of the newspaper?”

  One hand went up—that of a nine-year-old girl. Frank noticed that the bands of fabric around the bottom of her dress were darker, the colors deeper. The dress must always have been too big for the girl, but over the years during which she wore it, the hem had been let down three times, exposing fabric less faded by the sun. Frank liked to notice things like that and figure out what they meant.

  The teacher seemed reluctant to call on the girl. “Why don’t you tell us the name of your father’s paper?” the teacher asked him.

  “She knows,” said Frank, pointing at the girl, who was now sitting with both hands tucked under her bottom.

  “Do you think she does?” asked the teacher with an air of condescension. “Dotty, what were you raising your hand to say?”

  Dotty looked straight at Frank. “Your father’s store went bust,” she said. “He owned Baum’s Bazaar.”

  Frank blushed. It was shameful that the store went out of business; no one spoke of it.

  “I fail to see what that has to do with the name of the newspaper,” said the teacher. Then, in a voice loud enough for all to hear, she said to Frank, “Now you know why I rarely choose to call on Dotty.”

  “It was a wonderful store,” said Dotty. “Your father gave Auntie Bess credit, and it got us through the winter.”

  “That is enough, Dotty,” said the teacher.

  Auntie Bess. Frank knew Bess Krassner was one of the customers whose failure to pay had led to the bankruptcy. Frank didn’t miss much. Mrs. Krassner was a stern woman who frightened most children with her cold glare, but Frank was not afraid of her. He could look right at her even when she glared.

  “The newspaper is the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer,” said Dotty, “and Mr. Baum writes the column ‘Our Landlady.’ ”

  Then Dotty sat down.

  Frank read his father’s column every week, every word. He should not be in first grade, but the teacher would not hear of advancing him. “Children learn raggedly unless they have guidance,” she had said. “Whatever he thinks he has learned on his own will almost certainly have to be taught to him again, but now in its proper order.”

  When Mother told this to Father, he laughed. “I’m sure our poor boy has his letters all inside out. She’ll set him straight.”

  At first Frank wanted to tell his father that he did not have any letters inside out, but then he realized that Father was joking. Father always made everything either funny or very dramatic. Father was an actor at heart. He used to own a theater but it burned down. Father had written plays. Mother often said that a man like that had no business running a store. Frank heard everything. He remembered everything.

  After school, instead of walking straight home, he went up to the older girl, Dotty. “Why do you care about my father?”

  “I don’t,” said Dotty. “And I don’t care about you.”

  “Why did you say that about him giving credit? Your aunt never paid him back.”

  “She will,” said Dotty. “She is a woman of integrity.” She turned her back on him and started walking along the dusty road, the opposite direction from Frank’s way home. He followed behind her.

  “It’s too late to pay him now,” said Frank. “The store’s already out of business.”

  “It is never too late to pay a debt,” said Dotty.

  “It’s too late for it to do any good,” said Frank.

  She turned to face him. “Do you want me to poke you in the nose?”

  “Why did you tell about your family needing credit to get through the winter?”

  “One must never be ashamed of poverty, my Auntie Bess says. One must only be ashamed of wealth that one does not share with those in need. Your father shared. Auntie Bess says that makes him a good man, even if he does hate Indians.”

  “Everybody hates Indians,” said Frank. “They scalp people and they’re savages.”

  “It’s also good for children to have minds of their own, and not to echo the opinions of adults.”

  “Your aunt says.”

  “I am wise enough to pay close attention to my aunt.”

  “So you echo her opinions,” said Frank.

  Dotty glared at him, but it was not as icy a glare as Bess Krassner’s. “I have independently reached the conclusion that my aunt is right.”

  “About everything?” asked Frank.

  “So far,” said Dotty.

  “Why are you bothering to talk to a six-year-old?” asked Frank. “The other fourth-graders don’t talk to us younger children.”

  “One must be especially kind to the little and stupid,” said Dotty, “or they will not get wiser along with bigger.”

  “Auntie Bess again?” asked Frank.

  “No,” said Dotty. “It was one of my own. Here’s why I’m talking to you. First, your father is a good man, so I owe courtesy to his son. Second, you can already read and write as well as a fourth-grader, but you don’t make a show of it. Third, you followed me and won’t shut up.”

  She stepped out of the lane and into the brown scruffy grass beside it.

  “Where are you going?” asked Frank.

  “I’m following the road,” said Dotty. She continued walking farther into the grass, heading for a cornfield.

  “No you’re not,” said Frank. “It goes that way.”

  “That road goes that way,” said Dotty. “Feel free to follow that road, if you want.”

  “What road are you following, then?”

  “I always follow the yellow road,” said Dotty. She walked on resolutely.

  Frank followed her. “Where is it?”

  “I admit that even I can hardly see it here,” said Dotty. “There’s only a brick or two visible, and then only when the light is right. But by now I know this part of the road by heart.”

  “What bricks?”

  “The light isn’t right,” said Dotty. “But there’s one right there, in the morning, on a clear day.”

  Frank looked where she was pointing. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Because you are not sufficiently observant.”

  “I’m very observant,” said Frank hotly. “Father says so.”

  “And yet you are not observant enough.” Dotty broke into a run.

  “Dotty!” Frank called. “I can’t run as fast as you.”

  “I’m counting on that,” she called back.

  He ran as fast as he could and caught up with her by the scarecrow in the middle of the field, its pants and a shirt and a hat stuck on a pole, with straw stuffed in the clothes. Crows sat on its shoulders. It was clearly not very effective. Dotty was conversing with it.

  “If he can follow me, then he can come,” Dotty said.

  The scarecrow said nothing, but Dotty answered him as if he had spoken. “See? Here he is. Nobody else has been able to follow me this far.”

  Again, silence from the scarecrow.

  “Of course he can’t hear you,” said Dotty. “He hasn’t yet been noticed by the Emperor.”

  Silence.

  “I have so, or I could never have found you and talked to you in the first place. So I’m going on, and as long as he can follow me, I’m taking him with me.”

  Again she seemed to listen, until she grew quite impatient and held out a hand toward Frank. “Hold my hand,” she said. “I’m taking you with me no matter what he says.”

  “Taking me where?”

  “To see the Emperor of the Air,” she said.

  “Where does he live?”

  “In. The. Air,” she said.

  “We’re on the ground,” Frank pointed out. But he made his legs trot along fast enough to keep up with her, despite her long-legged strides farther through the corn. “Are there more yellow bricks now?”

  “Yes, there are,” said Dotty, “and I don’t mind that you can’t see them. Everybody knows I’m crazy, which is why they call me ‘dotty’ even though my name is Theodora.”

  “I’ll call you Theodora if you want,” said Frank.

  “Just keep up,” she said. “You’re doing very well so far, but we have a long way to go before dark. I brought an oilcan, you see.” She reached into her lunch bag and held it up.

  This made no sense to Frank, but it was an adventure, and she was a big kid who admired Father, and he was sure that eventually the small oilcan she brandished would make some kind of sense.

  “Be careful now,” she said. “We’re coming into the trees. And don’t let go of my hand. I don’t want to lose you halfway between.”