He was so much less self-assured…" Dairine rolled her eyes. She made her way around the table and out, heading through the kitchen after Roshaun. Squeak, bang! went the screen door. "Sker'ret, my boy," said Nita's dad as he came in from the living room, now dressed in jeans and a polo shirt for work, "your mastery of the art of irony becomes more comprehensive every day." It was hard to be sure how she could tell that an alien with no face was smiling, but Nita could tell. "You going now, Daddy?" she said. "I want to get some bookkeeping done before I open the shop. See you, sweetie." Once again, the screen door banged shut. "Something going on with Dairine and Roshaun?" Kit said after a moment. Nita shook her head. "At first I thought it might just be a crush," she said. "But now I'm starting to wonder…" Nita speared the last pieces of waffle, and a thought hit her. "Hey, did Filif hear that he needs to be here?" The wizards around the table looked at one another. "He went out as you were coming in, didn't he?" Nita nodded. "He's probably out back," she said. "I'll check." She got up and put her plate in the kitchen sink; and with Kit in tow, and Ponch following him, she went out through the side door, down the brick steps to the driveway. The morning was a little hazy, but the sun was warm on their faces. The view up and down the driveway would have seemed clear enough to any nonwizardly person who happened to pass by, but Nita's vision, well trained in perceiving active spelling by now, could see a tremor of power all around the edges of their property, a selective-visibility field that would hide the presence or actions of anything nonhuman. Inside it, across the driveway, the leaves on the big lilac bushes were out at last, and the flower-spikes were growing fast. Nita was glad to see them, though they also made her sad. The winter and the earliest part of the spring seemed to have lasted forever, some ways: Any sign of things being made new was welcome.