"Ready?" I asked.
"Ready," Maggie said fiercely. She settled a pair of steampunk aviator goggles over her eyes. "Wait, hold on." She straightened her gold Wonder Woman cape so it fell neatly around her neck. "Okay, ready now."
"T-minus three," I counted down. "Two… two and three quarters, two and a half—"
"Dad—"
"One!"
She yelped giddily as I picked her up and pitched her off the back porch at Murph's place, for what was probably the hundredth time, into the heap of leaves near the steps. I had spent the entire afternoon raking beneath the oak trees in the backyard, the pile was massive, about the size of my old Volkswagen. I definitely didn't steal a few bags from the neighbor's curb to add to it.
Maggie disappeared entirely in a puff of yellow, orange and red.
"Mission success," I declared solemnly. "She belongs to the leaf people, now."
The heap rustled as the girl giggled.
"I'm gonna miss that kid," said Karrin, who was supervising from the adirondack chair on the porch. We both turned at the sound of tires in the driveway. "That'll be dinner."
"You grab it, I'll send in Search and Rescue." I whistled for Mouse, who came bounding across the yard. "Incoming!"
The big dog hit the far side of the leaf pile with enough mass and force to knock almost all of the leaves back into the air. Maggie sat in the still-green grass, laughing delightedly as she threw her arms around the dog's neck.
"I'm not helping you clean that up," Murphy grumbled, but she smiled as she stood.
I winked at Maggie and held a finger to my lips, and waited until Karrin had gone around the corner to collect the pizza. Then I stretched a hand out toward the leaves and whispered, "Ventas servitas."
For a moment, it was a nice little tornado of leaves, about thirty feet high, very pretty in the Chicago sunset. I hadn't put enough oomph into the spell to carry them very far and unfortunately, most of them landed on what I could only assume was Murphy's car, judging from the distant "Dammit!"
Her new car. She had spent the entire morning polishing the little running horse emblem on the grill, and looking at herself in the rearview mirror while we cruised around town—
"We should probably hide," Maggie suggested sagely, trying not to grin. Mouse thumped his tail in agreement.
"Nah," I said. "It'll be alright—"
"Harry! The top was down!"
"Yep, time to hide."
Next: Tea.