How Lovely Are Thy Branches: A Young Wizards Christmas Read Online Free

new equipment he worked with compared with the beautiful, reliable old printing presses of old. Kit had told Nita often enough that her dad had complained just as hard and as constantly about the old printing presses, way back when, but this didn’t seem to be a good time to remind anybody of that. “My head is aching, even my ears are aching, and the aspirin hasn’t kicked in yet, so if we could, you know, let this wait half an hour…”
    “But all you have to do right now is say ‘yes’ and then it’ll be quiet!”
    The newspaper behind which Juan Rodriguez was presently concealing himself rustled in a very brisk way. “Let’s try it the other way around, shall we? Let’s try having the quiet now , and then maybe the ‘yes’ will happen later!”
    “Okay, right on time, that was the appeal to reason,” Kit said in Nita’s ear. They were lurking in the kitchen, pretending to be getting something to eat while listening to the conversation through the pass-through window between the kitchen and the living room. ”Let’s see if she’s buying it.”
    “Seriously, pop-pop, it won’t be a big deal! I’m going to take care of all the food and drinks myself, and I’ll clean the house, before and after—”
    “Uh oh,” Kit said, very low. “Reverting to what she used to call him when she was eight. Helpless baby daughter and responsible cleaner of the house? Not a good match.”
    “That we’re having this discussion right now tells me that it’s a big deal already,” Kit’s pop said. “And that I should be wondering just why you’re leaning on this so hard. And whether I should go off the whole idea right now, so as not to indulge your instant gratification issues.”
    “But daaaaaaa ddy—”
    Kit rolled his eyes at Nita. “Nope, logic’s the only thing that could have saved her there…”
    The newspaper being held up between Juan and his middle daughter dropped just long enough for her, and the two in the kitchen, to get a glimpse of eyes that were rather dangerously narrowed. “ Answer hazy,” Kit’s pop said, rather pointedly, “ask again later.” And he went back behind the newspaper again.
    Carmela picked herself silently up off the floor and swanned off toward the back of the house and the stairs to her bedroom in a manner that just narrowly avoided being a flounce.
    Nita and Kit turned their attention back toward the sandwiches that they were theoretically constructing. Nita hadn’t actually gotten much further than the bread. “How’s this going, you think?” she said, very low.
    “Hard to tell,” Kit murmured, opening a cupboard and pretending to rummage around in it. “Sometimes she gets a lot of mileage out of the ‘I’m your favorite daughter’ thing. Some days, nothing at all. Especially when he starts thinking about her and Helena being in college.”
    “Tuition,” Nita said, and groaned under her breath.
    “Student loans,” Kit said. “It’s a good thing she’s just going to SUNY. But this still looks like a ‘nothing at all’ day.”
    “Don’t think I don’t hear you two lurking in there!” Kit’s pop said.
    “Not lurking, pop,” Kit said. “Nita’s getting a sandwich. She didn’t have time to eat anything at the Crossings.”
    “Because we were busy meeting with the friends who’re going to come!” Carmela said, swinging back into the living room and flopping down onto the nearby couch, where she lay staring at the ceiling in a vaguely hopeless way.
    “Who you want to have come,” her pop said, “and who you really should thought about not wanting to disappoint before you issued an invitation that you don’t know if you’re going to be allowed to fulfill!” He turned a page, and the paper rustled quite hard.
    “Uh oh, the getting-permission-first thing,” Kit murmured.
    “Yeah,” Nita murmured back, “I hit her with that. Didn’t count for much at the time. She was too buzzed.”
    “If she’s smart, she won’t push