Deep Wizardry-wiz 2 by Diane Duane Page B

knew; and the guilt settled quietly into place inside her, where not all the sea water in the world would wash it out.
    She found Kit far down the beach, standing on the end of the jetty with a rippling, near-invisible glitter clutched in one hand: the whalesark. “You’re late,” he said, scowling, as Nita climbed the jetty. “S’reee’s waiting—“ Then the scowl fell off his face when he saw her expression. “You okay?”
    “Yeah. But my mom’s getting suspicious. And we have to be back by dark or it’ll get worse.”
    Kit said something under his breath in Spanish.
    “Ay!” Nita said back, a precise imitation of what either of Kit’s folks would have said if they’d heard him. He laughed.
    “It’s okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
    “We’d better leave our suits here,” Kit said. Nita agreed, turning her back and starting to peel out of hers. Kit made his way down the rocks and into the water as she put her bathing suit under the rock with his. Then she started down the other side of the jetty.
    Nita found that the whale-body came much more easily to her than it had the day before. She towed Kit out into deeper water, where he wrapped the whalesark around him and made his own change; his too came more quickly and with less struggle, though the shock of displaced water, like an undersea explosion, was no less. S’reee came to meet them then, and they greeted her and followed her off eastward, passing Shinnecock Inlet.
    “Some answers to Aroooon’s Calling have already come back,” she said. “Kit, it looks like we may not need you to sing after all. But I would hope you’d attend the Song anyway.”
    “I wouldn’t miss it,” he sang cheerfully. “Somebody has to be around to keep Neets from screwing up, after all...”
    Nita made a humpback’s snort of indignation. But she also wondered about the nervousness in S’reee’s song. “Where’s Hotshot this morning?”
    “Out calling the rest of his people for patrol around the Gates. Besides, I’m not sure he’s ... well, suited for what we’re doing today...”
    “S’reee,” Kit said, picking up the tremor in her song, “what’s the problem? It’s just another wizard we’re going to see—“
    “Oh, no,” she said. “The Pale One’s no wizard. He’ll be singing one of the Twelve, all right—but the only one who has no magic.”
    “Then what’s the problem? Even a shark is no match for three wizards—“
    “Kit,” S’reee said, “that’s easy for you to say. You’re a sperm, and it’s true enough that the average shark’s no threat to one of your kind. But this is no average shark we’re going to see. This shark would be a good candidate to really be the Pale Slayer, the original Master-Shark, instead of just playing him. And there are some kinds of strength that even wizardry has trouble matching.” Her song grew quieter. “We’re getting close. If you have any plans to stay living for a while more, watch what you say when the Pale One starts talking. And for the Sea’s sake, if you’re upset about anything, don’t show it!”
    They swam on toward Montauk Point, the long spit of land that was the southeastern tip of Long Island. The bottom began to change from the yellow, fairly smooth sand of the South Shore, littered with fish havens and abandoned oyster beds and deep undergrowth, to a bottom of darker shades dun, brown, almost black—rocky and badly broken, scattered with old wrecks. The sea around them grew noisy, changing from the usual soft background hiss of quiet water to a rushing, liquid roar that grew in intensity until Nita couldn’t hear herself think, let alone sing. Seeing in the water was difficult. The surface was whitecapped, the middle waters were murky with dissolved air, and the hazy sunlight diffused in the sea until everything seemed to glow a pallid gray white, with no shadows anywhere.
    “Mind your swimming,” S’reee said, again in that subdued voice. “The rocks are sharp