Daddy Warlock by Jacqueline Diamond Page A

you say so.”
    The first time Al swung at an impossibly high ball and missed, Harry winced. The second time, when Al tried to hit a ball so far from the bat it was nearly to Mongolia, the other kids groaned.
    The pitcher was grinning. Staring into her cocky freckled face, Harry listened to her thoughts. I could fling anything at the little sucker, and he’d go for it.
    His hands got sweaty. It was the first time he’d heard anybody thinking. Was this more of the magic he and Chance had talked about?
    Mostly he was sweating because this girl was going to strike Al out. Harry hadn’t meant to let his team down.
    Why did he have to pick between what was fair to his friend and what would make the others happy?. And why did Al have to be such a lousy player?
    Again, Harry caught the drift of the pitcher’s thoughts. She was going to throw the next ball low. It’s cinchy! We win!
    It wouldn’t take much to correct the girl’s aim. Just a little concentrated attention on Harry’s part, a slight tweak upward—why, he could make it smack right into Al’s bat! Even a bunt would be enough to send Sammi to home plate.
    The pitcher began rotating her arm, and then, after an impossibly long time, the ball launched itself forward. For Harry, everything slowed as he poured his energy into that small orb, easing it upward, getting it in line with the bat.
    But he’d promised Chance not to use his powers where other people might see. He’d given his word!
    With a wrench, Harry tore his thoughts from the ball. Still in slow motion, watching in horror, he saw the thing wobble in midair and drop downward, passing beneath the flailing bat.
    From behind his glasses, Al stared in disbelief at the empty air. Everyone else was staring, too. The recess bell went off like an earthquake warning siren, so loud it made Harry jump.
    The other team cheered. Sammi’s face was a volcano about to explode. Other kids stalked by Al, not looking at him, and the boy began to cry.
    In trying to help, Harry had made things worse. Nobody could have hit that weird ball, the way it had jerked in midair, and it was his fault.
    Feeling miserable, he trudged over to put his arm around Al’s shoulders, the way he’d seen athletes do on TV. No one spoke to them as they walked to class, and Al didn’t stop crying until he’d used up all the tissues in his desk.
    Harry stared at his New Math book, with its little blobby shapes that he was supposed to sort and count until his teeth hurt from sheer boredom. The blobs looked like baseballs, every one of them jeering at him.
    He needed to have a serious talk with Chance.
    S ITTING BESIDE CHANCE at his desk, trying to ignore the inviting dance of late-afternoon sunlight through the treesoutside, Tara watched her employer zap a message into the computer. Around them, the airy home office hummed with the energy emanating from its owner.
    Every time she observed him at work, she became more impressed with Chance’s abilities. He was knowledgeable and thorough, checking and rechecking his facts.
    Right now, he was E-mailing a group of his more-risktaking clients to recommend purchase of stock in a genetic engineering firm. Such companies, he’d explained earlier, had been hot when they first came on the market, then sagged as they failed to produce major breakthroughs.
    Chance kept tabs on a variety of firms whose stock he considered undervalued. In this case, he’d been reading medical journals and summaries of seminars and conferences.
    He believed one particular company was on the verge of winning FDA approval to test an exciting new treatment for diabetes. It would be illegal to manipulate stocks on the basis of inside information, so everything Chance had learned was available to the general public. But hardly anyone had the expertise and determination—and perhaps the instincts—to do the right research.
    No wonder people called him a