Ritual Magic

side of the house, too. It’s not finished, but it’s closer to being done than this one.” He popped to his feet. “Come on. If the cement truck shows up, we’ll hear it.”
    Maybe it wasn’t too much after all, Julia thought as she followed the boy. Or else it was too much of the wrong thing. If you had to worry about your enemies blowing up your garage . . . “Will we be able to see the cement truck if it does come?”
    “We’ll hear it, anyway. But Rocky didn’t think the truck was gonna make it today.”
    Rocky was the foreman, who’d gone into the house with a couple of his men to eat lunch when they found out there was a problem with the cement truck. Watching them pour the cement was supposedly the reason Mr. Turner had chased them outside. She bet, though, that if they tried to go in, he’d make them leave again. He was working on his computer, which looked a lot like Toby’s computer, but he was reading stuff on it instead of playing stuff on it.
    She sighed. “I guess grown-ups are all the same about some things. Like wanting kids to go away when they’re busy.”
    “Dad didn’t want us to go away. He wanted us to stop playing computer games. He thinks too much gaming isn’t good for me. That’s usually okay because I usually have plenty of other stuff to do, but since we moved here . . .” He shrugged and kicked a small rock. It skittered several feet.
    “You don’t like it here?”
    Toby shrugged. “It’s okay. It’s just that there’s more to do at Nokolai Clanhome and lots of kids to do it with. Maybe they’d let you go to Clanhome with me tomorrow. Do you like to fish or rock climb?”
    “I don’t know. I’ve never done either one.”
    “Not ever?”
    “My father doesn’t like fishing.” He probably wouldn’t have taken her and her sisters even if he went fishing every week, but she didn’t want to say that. Not when Toby had the coolest father ever . . . even if he had chased them outside after lunch. “I don’t know if I could do rock climbing. I used to be pretty strong for a girl, but I don’t know how strong this body is.” They rounded the corner of the house. “I don’t see a tunnel,” she said, frowning.
    Toby grinned. “They did a good job, huh? It’s camouflaged. That’s why I’m not supposed to play on this side of the house, in case I forget what to look for and accidentally fall in.”
    “Are we going to get in trouble for being here?”
    “We’re not playing, are we? And you ought to know about it so you don’t accidentally fall in.”
    “And that
is what you plan to tell your father if he finds out.”
    “I’ll tell him anyway. I don’t lie to him . . . well, I can’t, because he’d smell it if I tried. But I don’t hide stuff from him, either.” He paused. “Usually.”
    Was he pulling her leg about Mr. Turner smelling a lie? She looked at him suspiciously, but decided it might gratify him too much if she asked. He was okay, for a boy. But he did think he was pretty special. “So where’s the tunnel?”
    He showed her. It was well hidden, all right. They’d put plywood on top and put sod over the plywood, so all you really saw was a kind of bump that ran out to a small grove of trees. They ambled along in that direction.
    “This tunnel is a bigger secret than the other one,” Toby said. “See, if someone’s tracking what we do here they’ll spot the other one and think they know what we’re up to. So you can’t tell anyone about it. No one at all.”
    “Okay.” It was a really tricky way to do things, which she had to admire, but it made her stomach feel tight to think they might need this much trickery. “It looks like it’s been here all along. The grass and weeds look like they grew up all by themselves.”
    “They used magic to help with that.”
    “Did Mr. Seaborne do the magic?”
    “No, he’s not that good with plants, because of him being so good with Fire. Grandmother did most of it, but she taught Cynna how so Cynna could do it, too.”
    She looked at him, astonished. “Grandmother? You mean the old lady who . . .” Julia had to think for a minute to recall the relationship. “Mr. Yu’s mother?”
    “I guess you don’t know about her anymore.” His brow wrinkled. “I’m not sure if I should tell you, but . . . well, she’s got what you might call a really special Gift, but it’s a big secret. She knows some spells, too, and one of them makes things grow.”
    Julia