Wizard's Holiday, New Millennium Edition by Diane Duane

“That’s it,” he said.
    “I don’t know,” his mama said. “I keep getting the idea I’ve forgotten something—”
    “Tell me later, Mama,” Kit said, pulling up the “shade” of the pup-tent access interface and stowing its rod in his backpack. “I’ll call you. And then I can come back for whatever it is.”
    Ponch, who had been lying on his back between Carmela and the TV, now got up, shook himself, and stood there with his tongue hanging out. Is it time?
    “Yes, it is,” Kit said. “Mama… ”
    He went over to her and hugged her hard. Nita was astonished to see Kit’s fairly hard-boiled mom actually getting teary, and fighting to manage it.
    “Tell Pop I’ll call him tonight,” Kit said.
    “I will, sweetie.”
    Carmela looked up at Kit and just waved at him. “Bring me stuff,” she said.
    “If I remember,” Kit said, very offhandedly. Nita controlled her smile; she’d already seen the shopping list Carmela had given him.
    “Come on,” Kit said to her. With Ponch bouncing around them, he and Nita went out the back door and headed into Kit’s backyard, making their way to the cover of the sassafras woods out in the back. To anyone who might have been watching, they vanished among the leaves. And then, a few seconds later, with just the slightest pop! of displaced air, they vanished much more thoroughly.
     
    ***
     
    Nita and Kit and Ponch arrived at the spot in Grand Central Terminal that they normally used when making a transit at peak times—a dark and quiet place away from the Main Concourse proper but still inside the terminal, near one of the northernmost of the westward-pointing tracks. The platform between tracks eleven and thirteen was a spot where wheeled wire freight baskets and the occasional locked mail container were left for later pickup. There was rarely anyone there in the middle of the day, and the area was only dimly lit by the red eyes of infrared spots, while hidden security cameras passed pictures of what the spots showed them to the train master’s office.
    No security camera, of course, can do anything about a wizard who is both invisible and shielded against infrared leakage. Nita and Kit popped out of nowhere into the dark, being careful to minimize the air displacement when they did—there was no point in appearing invisibly while also making a noise like a gunshot.
    Carefully, Nita and Kit made their way toward where the train gates opened onto the Main Concourse, and then down to where platform thirty-three joined the main strip of platforms on the upper level. It was still hard to be careful enough, though.
    “Ow!”
    “Sorry, I didn’t see you.”
    Nita had to snicker softly at that. “It’s mutual. There’s the door—”
    “Yeah. Are we away from the cameras now?”
    “Wait a sec… Yeah, no new ones since we were here last. Let’s lose these.”
    They both stepped into the shadows, dumped the spells that cloaked them, and flicked back into visibility. Kit slipped out of his backpack, brushed himself down, and put the backpack over one shoulder again.
    “Itchy?” Nita said.
    “Yeah, being invisible does that to me… It didn’t used to.” He glanced down at Ponch. “I think I’m catching it from somebody.”
    It’s not my fault, Ponch said, sounding virtuous. Maybe you‘re just starting to feel your skin for a change.
    Kit rolled his eyes. “Come on,” he said.
    They went out through the gate for the platform between tracks fifteen and sixteen and paused just past it, looking up and down the length of the Main Concourse. It was a bright day; the scattered light of the sunbeams striking through the great south windows washed through the dusty early-afternoon air and lit up the turquoise of the painted sky high above them, washing out its stars. As they walked across the Concourse, good smells came drifting down from the steak restaurant at one end of the Concourse terrace. “Whaddaya think,” Kit said. “Food hall?”
    Nita gave him a