"Diane Duane - Young Wizard's 07 - Wizard's Holiday" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)

street was empty, and no one looking out the window of any nearby house was
close enough to notice that the rain wasn’t getting the young girl wet. Even if
someone had noticed, probably nothing would have come of it; human beings
generally don’t recognize wizardry even when it’s being done right under their noses.
Nita Callahan jogged up her driveway, unlocked the back door of her house,
and plunged through it into the warmth of the kitchen. The back door blew back and
slammed against the stairwell wall behind her in a sudden gust of wind, but she
didn’t care. She pushed the door shut again, then struggled briefly to get her
backpack off, flinging it onto the kitchen counter.
“Freedom!” she said to no one in particular as she pulled off her jacket and
tossed it through the kitchen door onto the back of one of the dining room chairs.
“Freedom! Free at last!” And she actually did a small impromptu dance in the
middle of the kitchen at the sheer pleasure of the concept of two weeks off from
school... though the dancing lasted only until her stomach suddenly growled.
“Freedom and food,” Nita said then, and opened the refrigerator and stuck
her head into it to see what was there to eat.
There was precious little. Half a quart of milk and half a stick of butter; some
small, unidentifiable pieces of cheese bundled up in plastic wrap, at least a couple of
them turning green or blue because of the presence of other life-forms; way back in
a corner, a plastic-bagged head of lettuce that had seen better days, probably several
weeks ago; and a last slice of frozen pizza that someone, probably her sister,
Dairine, had left in the fridge on a plate without wrapping it, and which was now
desiccated enough to curl up at the edges.
“Make that freedom and starvation,” Nita said under her breath, and shut the
refrigerator door. It was the end of the week, and in her family, shopping was
something that happened after her dad got home on Fridays. Nita went over to the
bread box on the counter, thinking that at least she could make a sandwich—but
inside the bread box was only a crumpled-up bread wrapper, which, she saw when
she opened it, contained one rather stale slice of bread between two heel pieces.
“I hate those,” Nita muttered, wrapping up the bread again. She opened a
cupboard over the counter, pulled down a peanut butter jar, and saw that the jar had
been scraped almost clear inside. She rummaged around among various nondescript
 canned goods, but there was no soup or ravioli or any of the faster foods she
favored—just beans and other canned vegetables, things that would need a lot of
work to make them edible.
Nita glanced at the clock. It was at least half an hour before the time her dad
usually shut his florist’s shop on Fridays and came home to pick up whoever
wanted to go along to help do the shopping. “I will die of hunger before then,” Nita
said to herself. “Die horribly.”
Then she glanced at the refrigerator again. Aha, Nita thought. She went to the
wall by the doorway into the dining room and picked up the receiver of the kitchen
phone.
She dialed. The phone at the other end rang, and after a couple of rings
someone picked up. “Rodriguez residence...”
Behind the voice was a noise that sounded rather like a jackhammer, if
jackhammers could sing. “Kit? How’d you beat me home?”
“My last-period study hall was optional today... I was finished with my
homework so I went home early. What’s up?”
“I was going to ask you that,” Nita said, raising her voice over the racket. “Is
your dad redoing the kitchen or something?”