He rolled his eyes at her. "If you weren't asleep on your feet, you wouldn't need warning." "Kit—" She dropped it for the time being and said to the dolphin, 'What's S'reee? And why's it going to be late? What's the matter?""She," the dolphin said. "S'reee's a wizard. The Hunters are after her and she can't do anything, she's hurt too badly. My pod and another one are with ne r, but they can't hold them off for long. She's beached, and the tide's coming in—"Kit and Nita shot each other shocked looks. Another wizard in the area— a nd out in the ocean in the middle of the night? "What hunters?" Kit said, and "Your pod?" Nita said at the same moment.The dolphin was coming about and heading along the shoreline, westward to ward Quogue. "The Hunters," it said in a series of annoyed squeaks and176SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL WIZARDwhistles. "The ones with teeth, who else? What kind of wizards are they turning out these days, anyway?"Nita said nothing to this. She was too busy staring ahead of them at a long dark bumpy whale shape lying on a sandbar, a shape slicked with moonlight along its upper contours and silhouetted against the dull silver of the sea. It was the look of the water that particularly troubled Nita. Shapes leaped and twisted in it, shapes with two different kinds of fins. "Kit!""Neets," Kit said, not sounding happy, "there really aren't sharks here, the guy from the Coast Guard said so last week—""Tell them!" the dolphin said angrily. It hurtled through the water toward the sandbar around which the fighting continued, silent for all its viciousness. The only sound came from the dark shape that lay partly on the bar, partly off it—a piteous, wailing whistle almost too high to hear.
