Wizard's Holiday, New Millennium Edition by Diane Duane Read Free Book Online Page B

to the entertainment system, but when Kit had later tried to remove the alien content, the TV and DVD player had gone on strike. Kit had been forced to restore the system, and had had to admit privately that his sister’s demands that it be put back the way it’d been after the fix were even more annoying than the system’s refusal to function normally.
    “So what’s your problem?” his sister said.
    “We need to talk about that first thing you ordered off the Mizarthu shopping channel.”
    “Which thing?”
    “The laser dissociator.”
    “Oh, that! It’s in my bedroom somewhere.”
    Kit sighed. It sometimes seemed that the contents of whole planets could be accurately described as “in Carmela’s bedroom somewhere.” “Where, exactly?”
    “I don’t know. I’ll look later; I’m busy right now. What’s the matter with it?”
    “I need to make it safe.”
    “From what?”
    Kit rolled his eyes. “Not from,” he said, “for. As in, safe for being on the same planet with.”
    “Oh, come on, Kit. There haven’t been any problems since we figured out where the safety switch was.”
    There haven’t been any problems, Kit thought, his eyes nearly crossing with frustration. Repairing the tile and the plastering in the bathroom had been a week’s work, at a time when he had much better things to do—and his pop had insisted Kit do it the “old-fashioned way,” meaning by hand and not by wizardry. “There was nearly a problem,” Kit said, “when you thought you had it set for ‘hot curler’ and it was set for ‘low disintegrate.’”
    “I got that sorted out,” Carmela said. “You always have to harp on the small stuff! I thought that wasn’t good for a wizard.”
    I will not kill her, Kit thought. It would speed up entropy. But only a little… He let out a long breath. “Just find it for me in the next day or so, okay?” he said. “You can still use it on your hair, but I want to make sure that nobody else, like one of your friends when they’re over, can find it accidentally, go off with it, and blow up their bathrooms. Or more valuable real estate, like the insides of their heads.”
    An odd look grew on Carmela’s face. “Like the inside of my head isn’t valuable?”
    Kit gave her a dry look. His sister opened her mouth. “Left yourself open for that one,” Kit said. “And another thing. These alien chat rooms you’ve been using… ”
    “You’re just jealous because I’m getting good at the Speech,” Carmela said, producing a pouting expression resembling that of a cranky supermodel.
    Kit rolled his eyes. “ I am not jealous. I just think you should be careful about who you talk to!” he said. “It’s like any other kind of online chat. What they show you and what they sound like may not have anything to do with who or what they really are.”
    “I know that!”
    “I don’t think you know how much you don’t know that! I don’t want you thinking you’re having harmless clothes-and-hair-and-pop-star talk with some alien girloid, and then have Earth get invaded because it turns out you were actually talking to some twelve-legged methane-breathing centipede prince who’s decided to turn up with a battle fleet and demand your hand in marriage!”
    Carmela’s face wrinkled up. “Euuuuuu,” she said. “Centipedes. You just said the unmagic word.”
    Kit kept his face straight. His sister was not wild about bugs of any kind, and he knew it. “So don’t give people in alien chat rooms your real name or address or anything, okay?” he said.
    “Okay,” Carmela said with a long-suffering sigh. Then she looked curious. “What is Earth’s address, by the way?”
    “I’m not telling you,” Kit said.
    “You don’t trust me!”
    “No. And, anyway, it’s complicated, and you don’t have the technical vocabulary to say it.”
    “Yet,” Carmela said. “I don’t think it’s going to take me that long. And once I’m really good at the Speech, maybe I should