Danny refused to take it.

"Take it," said Stone. "I shouldn't have gotten angry, you just seemed so flippant about it."

"I don't need it," said Danny.

"Don't be defiant, kid. You won't last long here in DC. Word's going to get out about a disappearing kid, and the Families are going to figure out it's a gatemage and come after you."

"I meant that I don't need the note," said Danny. "I already memorized it."

"Oh," said Stone.

"I'm sorry," said Danny. "I keep s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up without meaning to. I really don't mean to be flippant. Things just come out that way."

Stone nodded. "I forget that that's just how gatemages are. Never taking anything seriously, like it's all a big joke."

"But I do take things seriously."

"Story is that a lot of people already hated Loki before he closed the gates," said Stone. "Most gatemages have a hard time making any permanent friends, at least among the Westilians."

"Yeah, well, the tribe of Slapping Horticulturalists probably doesn't make a lot of friends, either."

"I kind of left a mark on your cheek," said Stone.

"How interesting," said Danny. "A bruise, maybe?"

"Maybe. But it isn't bleeding."

"You got to learn to put your weight behind it," said Danny.

"Flippant. See?"

"So slap me." Danny turned away and trudged up another half flight and stopped at the bathroom. This was turning out to be a really fine day. He'd probably get shot in one of the houses.

But he didn't. Eric came home, tired and out of sorts from his walk and bus ride. They watched television and had dinner and watched TV again, this time with Ced and Lana, who made fun of all the shows with equal fervor. Finally it was dark, and they walked down toward Rico's store. Danny showed Eric where to stand, and then he went through the gate to Tilden Street.

n.o.body was home at the house with the pool, which meant there might be motion detectors. Danny went in anyway, and simply gated his way from room to room so he never walked down the halls. He found a safe and reached through a minigate to pull out what was inside-some serious-looking jewelry and a bunch of cash and bearer bonds, along with birth certificates and other worthless personal papers and pictures. Danny held out what he wanted to keep and put the rest back inside. Then he gated out of the house instead of prowling around looking for fencible electronics.

Back on the street, Danny tucked the bearer bonds and cash into his clothes, then made a new gate into the house on Sedgwick with the three dormers on the roof and all the bikes in the yard. This house was full of sleeping people, except for the mother and father, who were watching a movie in their bedroom.

That was fine with Danny. He located two Xboxes and two Wiis. With each one he found, as soon as he unplugged it from the television, he made a minigate and pushed the item through to Eric. He waited until he could feel Eric tugging on it before he let go. He also pushed through all the game disks he could find. It would do the kids good to live without their brain candy for a while-at least that's what the Aunts always said when they explained why the Family only had one game system, an old Sega, and three games, and even then hardly anyone got permission to play them.

There were three laptops in that same house, two of them in kids' rooms and the other one in a briefcase. They went through minigates, too. In the garage, Danny looked at the Mercedes and the giant SUV and wondered if he could drive drive something that big through a gate. That'd be a wake-up call for Eric, if suddenly a Mercedes started backing through the gate. something that big through a gate. That'd be a wake-up call for Eric, if suddenly a Mercedes started backing through the gate.

But Danny knew they had no way to get cash out of a car-that was a whole different kind of operation, and he didn't want to meet the people who were in the stolen-car business. Besides, it probably wouldn't work-he had no idea how he'd do it. Maybe he'd he'd go through the gate, but the car would be too big so when he disappeared it would just keep going. Then again, without his foot on the accelerator, it would probably slow down and stop. Not for the first time, Danny wished anybody had let him learn how to operate a car. Or even the tractor they used for hauling stuff. go through the gate, but the car would be too big so when he disappeared it would just keep going. Then again, without his foot on the accelerator, it would probably slow down and stop. Not for the first time, Danny wished anybody had let him learn how to operate a car. Or even the tractor they used for hauling stuff.

Without going back to the street, Danny gated through the other houses he and Eric had decided probably had good stuff in them. One of them was a complete bust-as far as he could tell, the owners had bought way more house than they could afford, so apart from the living and dining rooms, the rest of the house barely had furniture. But the other four houses yielded jewelry, wallets, credit cards, laptops, iPads and Kindles, even a couple of really expensive-looking vases, though for all Danny knew they were Wal-Mart copies.

If that wasn't enough to set Eric up for a while, then too bad. The small, easy pickings from half a dozen houses was all the burglary Danny intended to do. In his life.

Unless he actually needed needed to, for survival. For food. He wasn't going to rule anything out, but he certainly wasn't going to go into burglary as a career. It would be too pathetic, for the first surviving gatemage in who knew how many years to use his power to make a living by stealing stuff from drowthers. to, for survival. For food. He wasn't going to rule anything out, but he certainly wasn't going to go into burglary as a career. It would be too pathetic, for the first surviving gatemage in who knew how many years to use his power to make a living by stealing stuff from drowthers.

Danny first gated to the place on Tilden Street, just to see if any alarms had gone off or any cops had shown up. n.o.body. The street was absolutely quiet. In the morning there'd be a lot of consternation and complaining, but for tonight, everybody was going to get their sleep.

Danny went through the gate to the garden, where Eric was sitting surrounded by a stack of laptops and rows of other electronics. He was shivering a little. The two vases were lying in the gra.s.s. "I think those vases are either c.r.a.p or brilliant," said Eric.

"Or something in between," said Danny. "But I'm betting on c.r.a.p. Want to break them to keep warm?"

"No," said Eric. "Because hey, here they are, what if they're worth something after all? You didn't do anything stupid like writing IOUs and signing your name, did you?"

"That's an excellent idea," said Danny. He stepped back through the gate, waited for a count of five, and then returned to Eric. Now Eric was standing, and when he saw Danny he visibly sagged with relief. "What kind of moron are you?"

"The fun-loving kind," said Danny. "I'm not an idiot, of course I didn't sign my name to IOUs."

"Good."

"I signed yours."

"Yeah, right. So the way I see it, it'll take us a few trips to get this all into the store."

"I, uh, spied on them a little bit this afternoon," said Danny. "The clerk isn't going to let us in."

"What kind of all-night corner store turns away customers?" said Eric.

"Customers carrying a bunch of laptops aren't the normal clientele."

"So how do we get in there?"

"I'm thinking we start out by me pushing these all through a gate into Rico's office."

"Rico? You're on a first-name basis with him now?"

"That's what the clerk called him."

"When you were spying."

"The clerk saw me. Just my face. He probably thinks he was hallucinating."

"So maybe when we come in he'll run out screaming," said Eric.

"No," said Danny, "I don't think I should make this stuff magically appear. Last thing we want is for Rico to know how we do it."

"So what? He can't catch you."

"But he can catch you, you," said Danny, "and hold you hostage to get me to burgle every house in Washington, and then probably kill you anyway when I'm done."

"Oh," said Eric. "Yeah, you're right, you shouldn't show them stuff popping out of thin air. Though I've got to tell you, there's no way you can know how cool it looks on the other end, when you hand the stuff through to me. Like the night air is giving birth to high-price electronics and jewelry and I'm the doctor there to catch them."

Danny was still focused on the transportation problem. "What if I pop them into an aisle of the store, out of sight from the checkout desk?"

"Then we can show him where they are, and he won't have to know how we got them there," said Eric. "That works."

Danny made a minigate at floor level and slid the laptops through all at once. They were heavy when you stacked them up, but he did it smoothly and the stack didn't tip over. Then he made a series of other gates, sliding everything through in bunches until he imagined they were all lined up in the aisle.

Since they weren't hearing any tumult from the sidewalk in front of the store, there probably hadn't been a customer inside watching the stuff appear. Either that, or the poor sap fainted. Anyway, it was all inside except for the jewelry, which Eric had wrapped up in his shirt, which he was now carrying like a parcel.

"Cold now?" asked Danny.

"Jewelry makes me warm," said Eric.

They walked around to the front of the store and came in the door.

The clerk saw them and got a weird look on his face. "Get lost," he said softly. "You don't want to see him."

"We need the money," said Eric, "and he needs the stuff to sell."

"You don't know him," said the clerk softly. "He thinks you're small-time trash and he's going to send you to the hospital."

Eric set the shirt-wrapped parcel on the counter and opened it.

"Holy s.h.i.t," said the clerk. He reached under the counter and apparently he pressed a b.u.t.ton, because out came Rico from the back room, carrying the aluminum bat.

"I thought I told you little a.s.sholes what would happen if you came back," said Rico.

"Maybe you oughta look at the stuff," said clerk. "They're not a joke, Rico."

Rico glared at Danny and Eric, then stepped between them and looked down at the shirt-load of jewelry on the counter. "Fakes," he said.

"How odd that they'd keep their fakes in a safe," said Danny.

"People do that," said Rico. "I'll give you fifty bucks for it."

Eric reached out and started refolding the shirt over the jewelry.

The bat came down lightly across his arms. The blow was only just hard enough to make Eric cry out and s.n.a.t.c.h his arms back. "A hundred bucks," said Rico. "If you don't like that, then I pay nothing plus two broken heads."

"So what you're saying," said Danny, "is that you don't want to see the rest of the stuff."

"That isn't all?" said the clerk, impressed.

"Shut up, Jose," said Rico.

"Ah, Jose," said Danny. "Nice to know your name."

"What else do you have?" asked Rico.

"Nothing, for a fence who offers a hundred bucks for fifty thousand dollars worth of jewelry."

"Maybe five thousand street, not fifty, which means five hundred from me to you," said Rico. "And yeah, okay, I low-balled you a little because I told you little a.s.sholes not to come back here and you came anyway."

"We thought you were a serious businessman," said Danny. "But now you've hurt my friend."

"Let's just get out of here," said Eric. He looked like he was about to cry. He was hugging his own arms like a girl who was afraid of getting hit in the chest with a baseball.

"I don't think so," said Rico. "I think your friend is staying here while you bring in the rest of the stuff."

"Oh, it's already in here," said Danny. "We sort of pre-delivered."

"Where?" demanded Jose. "I didn't see you guys bring anything in here but that stuff."

"At the back of the store," said Danny. "You were kind of napping."

Rico glared at Jose.

"I was not, not," said Jose. "I wasn't even reading or watching television, I was sitting here watching the d.a.m.n door."

"Come on back and see for yourself," said Danny. He led the way down an aisle. When they rounded the corner, there were the laptops and the game consoles. Only now did Danny realize that some of the console cords and cables seemed to be cut-they disappeared in thin air. Apparently in the dark outside, Danny hadn't realized that some of the cords didn't make it all the way through the minigates. He reached down and pulled the offending consoles away from the gate and the cords slid fully into view.

"That's a lot of electronics," said Rico.

"Good laptops," said Danny. "Top of the line."

"Bulls.h.i.t," said Rico. "They're all used. Most I can pay for any of them is a couple hundred. Maybe twenty-five bucks for each console."

Eric grumbled at that. "You s.h.i.ttin' me, man? You can get a lot more than that."

"Give him a break here," said Danny. "He's got to make his profit and overhead. He's got to pay Jose's salary. And what if some of it doesn't find a buyer? We don't know what condition these things are in, they might not run at all."

"Smart boy," said Rico.

Eric didn't like it, but Danny held up a hand to silence him. "Come on, George, that's more than we were hoping for from our first haul. He likes our stuff, finds out he can sell it for a good price, he'll start raising our percentage."

"You got that," said Rico.

And Danny was pleased that Eric hadn't blinked when Danny called him George. No reason to give Rico their real names. Danny's didn't matter so much, but Eric could be hunted down if this guy didn't like how the deal worked out.

"Come on into my office and I'll give you the payout," said Rico. "Jose, bring the parcel from the counter."

"Right, boss," said Jose, and he walked back down the aisle to the front.

"And lock the door!" Rico called after him. "Can't believe I let you show me this stuff with the door unlocked."

Then he suddenly had Danny slammed up against the display shelves with his shirt up around his ears, and he was frisking him. "Can't have a wire in here," he said. "Can't have you entrapping me into a crime I would never have committed otherwise."

"We got no wires," said Eric. "Get your hands off the kid, you perv."

"It's okay, George," said Danny. "He's got to be sure we're not plants." Then Danny laughed at his own words, conjuring up an image of him and Eric sprouting out of the ground, with Stone sprinkling them from a watering can.

"Something funny?" asked Rico.