"Of all the stupid things you could have done..." I muttered. "Why did you have to choose not bringing a map along as the one to do today?"
Evi glanced over at me from the driver's side of the car, a slightly angry look in her eyes. There was a scowl planted across her face, one that I recognized not because I'd seen it often, but because it was pretty much the same scowl that I always wore on my own face. "What was that, Daddy dearest?" she asked me tightly.
"Why didn't you bring a map?" I asked, this time a little louder. Her scowl deepened, a dark cloud of anger passing across her usually bright and smiling face. I ignored it, and continued my thought, knowing that there was no way she could get angry enough to summon up enough power to hurt me. "You said yourself that you weren't familiar with the area, and you won't let me drive, even though I told you that I've been there before. So why the hell did you decide not to bring a map along on the stupid trip!?"
"Are you implying that I'm lost?" she growled. I could feel the temperature rising in the car as her anger grew enough to start making her lose control of her magic.
"Why would I need to imply it?" I asked. "I know you're lost. You've been lost since you got off the last freeway. So why don't you just pull over, admit it, and let me drive?"
One thing I'd noticed a long time ago was that, unlike myself, Evi tended to revert to less complicated forms of communication when she got angry enough. Mostly, if she started losing control of her magic enough for it to affect the world around her, she didn't talk very intelligently any more. One syllable words were the norm for an angry Evi, and never complete sentences. And that usually meant that she was about to blow.
So, a hissed, "My car!" was not a very good sign. Not that I cared, but I had the feeling that she would in about ten minutes, when the car was vaporized with the blast of energy that she was about to let out. Unfortunately, for her, there wasn't really any way I could stop her from doing just that. All I could do was smirk, put up a shield, and watch the fireworks as she let out all of the energy that had been steadily building up around her ever since I first mentioned the fact that we might be lost.
When the light cleared and I could see again, I was floating in the air about a foot or so above the ground, not having wanted to touch down when the car was gone, and Evi was sitting on the pavement, blinking confusedly. When she realized that her car was completely gone, she glared at me. I just shrugged.
"This is your fault," I said. "I'm not the one who vaporized the car."
"But you're the one who started it!" she exclaimed.
"How?" I asked. "You're the one who got us lost. If you'd just let me drive, we wouldn't be in this mess."
"Shut up," she growled.
I just continued to smirk, knowing that I was right, and floated up there as she levered herself up. I told her so, but then, she had entered that rebellious stage long ago, when she first hit adolescence, and unlike most children, she had never grown out of it. I had no problem with the situation, really, even though we were going to have to get the rest of the way under our own power. But then, I didn't have to walk either.
And I had to admit, I loved it when I turned out to be right.