After my disastrous first quest, El took an active interest in my activities. The next evening, she showed up at my door with an agenda and a refusal to take no for an answer. Lily was not invited on this trip, a fact that the jinn did not seem to mind, other than a request for more shawarma. Over the next hour, I was introduced to the hidden-world denizens of my neighborhood. It seemed that I had, unknowingly, moved into one of the hubs of the supernatural community. While it was not necessarily better, most supernaturals liked to live and work together for convenience. The services and skills they might require—from full-body hair grooming for minotaurs to the specialized diet of dryads—made sense to keep localized.
Before each encounter, El would squeeze my triceps and growl a warning to behave myself, and in just about half the cases, I’d remember not to put my foot in my mouth. The other half generally had me alternating between squeals of geeky fanboyishness and minor eeps of terror, even wide-eyed fear in a few cases.
“Do you think you can hold it together for this next meeting?” El hissed at me as we walked up a staircase.
“It’d help if you told me what I was meeting beforehand,” I said.
“Har! You almost ran away when I told you we were about to meet Leda.”
“She was a medusa!” I said, my voice rising in protest.
“And the best hairdresser in the city. You nearly cost me my next appointment,” El snapped and shook her head. “What? You think if she turned people to stone all the time no one would notice? Leda’s kept her secret for years, but she won’t if a certain someone keeps shouting about it.”
“Sorry. Sorry.” I lowered my voice. “You’ve got to give me a break here. Meeting creatures from myth is kind of out my comfort zone.”
“Well, get better. This is your life now,” El said as we finally reached the floor. I had to pause for a second to catch my breath before El led us to the correct doorway. Thinking better of it, El added, “Shane’s a dwarf.”
“Oh…” I relaxed at that. I could deal with dwarves. I mean, vertically-challenged individuals weren’t exactly unusual. When the door swung open, I had a smile on my face, all ready to be polite. “GIMLI!”
Oops. But seriously, beyond the fact that Shane was lacking both his armor, axe, and helmet, he could have passed for the famous dwarf. At least as portrayed in the movies—dark-red hair and braided beard of the same color with deep-set eyes and a thoroughly unamused look on his face.
“Shane, this is Henry. He’s a newcomer to our world. I’ve been showing him around a bit,” El said after she finished extracting her elbow from my ribs.
“Hi. Sorry about that,” I said. “It’s just, you know, you look like—”
The glare that was shot at me shut me up. Shane nodded gravely to El before glowering at me as he spoke. “I don’t have time for this. Charlie’s gone missing again. I was just about to go looking for him.”
“You need to keep your windows closed,” El said. At my confused look, she added, “Charlie’s Shane’s cat.”
“Oh.” I paused and then realized a way I could make it up to them. “Hey. I can help. If you’ve got some fur, I could probably locate him for you.”
El hastily added, “He’s a new wizard.”
“M… wizard.” I nodded and surreptitiously rubbed my ribs. Damn, the pixie had sharp elbows.
“A new wizard,” Shane said guardedly before he shut the door in our faces.
The pair of us traded looks while, within, we could hear loud movement. Just as I was about to knock again, the door flew open and Shane held his hand out. The hairball he dropped into my hand made me wrinkle my nose in disgust.
“This work?”
“Should…” I called upon the knowledge of the Link spell. A few hand gestures later, the hairball glowed, a line of red appearing before my eyes.
Link Cast
Synchronicity 63%
“Well?” Shane said, and I blinked.
“This way.” I turned to take the staircase down. The line led diagonally downward, showing the shortest route from me to the cat, I presumed. Which of course didn’t take into account minor things like floors, walls, and gravity. As I walked, tendrils of red would flash for a second from the hairball before dying. Each new tendril, each second that I held the original connection, drained my mana as I focused on keeping the spell tuned to Charlie.
We walked down the stairs and around the corner, though an alleyway, and out a side street to another alleyway. I barely paid attention to my surroundings other than ensuring there were no metallic death machines barreling down the road when I crossed. By the time we made it across the street, a slow-growing headache had begun to form as my mana depleted at an astonishing rate. Just as I was about to release the spell, I heard a cry of happiness behind me.
“Charlie! There you are, you horrid beast!” Shane shoved me aside as he ran forward. Charlie, rather than a feisty tomcat with a patch for an eye, was instead an elegant Persian who proceeded to snuggle into Shane’s beard, almost disappearing in the dwarf’s arms. “Thank you. Charlie always does this, but ever since those damn weres moved in down the street, I don’t dare let him run around outside. Never know when they’d get hungry!”
“Do werewolves eat cats?” I asked, and Shane looked me straight in the eye and nodded.
“Aye. And don’t let them tell you otherwise! Why, Mrs. Brindle down my hall lost her Angie just a week after those weres moved in.”
El made a face as Shane continued to speak, one that was lost to him as he snuggled his cat. “Well, we should get a move on. I need to show Henry around a bit more.”
“Of course, of course. I should get Charlie back in.” As Shane neared me, he looked up and said, “There a way to contact you, Wizard? If I need Charlie found again, I mean.”
“You can call me for now,” El interjected before I could say anything. Shane just nodded, accepting this piece of knowledge with equanimity. Only when he was gone did I turn to El and raise an eyebrow. “You’re not ready to let them know where you live,” she explained. “For one thing, you need some wards on your home.”
“Haven’t learned that yet,” I said, and El snorted.
“I would hope not. It takes years for an enchanter to gain sufficient knowledge to ward a building properly. Now, come on. Let’s get this over with.”
I followed along after the diminutive pixie, a half smile on my face as I contemplated the dwarf and his cat. It might not have been much, but using my magic for something other than killing rats or practice had actually made me feel good. Useful.
***
“El, why are we doing this?” I asked the pixie hours later. We were splitting a bowl of nachos for supper.
“Because I’m hungry,” said El as she waved a nacho laden with jalapenos and cheese.
“No, not supper. The meet and greet.” I nodded my head toward where our server, a long, thin praying mantis-like humanoid, took orders from a pair of frat boys. I had to smile internally as they goaded one another to hit on their server when she left. Unfocusing my eyes a little, I could understand why—the tall, leggy blonde glamour was quite the looker.
“Safety,” El said and waved her hand around. “We need to get you introduced and your story straight. Until you learn to control your aura, you’re glowing like a Christmas tree with all the arcane energy you’re giving off. Anyone with the sight—or who has an enchantment to let them see, which is most everyone—can tell you’re a new… wizard.”
“Oh.” I sat back and thought about it. If she was right and I did look like a floodlight, then there wasn’t a way for me to hide my magic. Since I wasn’t apprenticed, I couldn’t be introduced as a mage, so I had to be a wizard, a new one at that—which set up my story and let others dismiss me. “Thanks.”
“De nada.” El waved my thanks away.
“Why are you helping me, El?” I asked. “After the first time—”
“Oh, Henry,” El said quietly. “I didn’t want you to be part of this world. But since you seem bent on joining us, I might as well make sure you survive it. At least for a little while.”
The last few words were said softly, so softly I didn’t think El meant for me to hear them. I still didn’t understand her wariness, and Lily’s. So far, everyone we’d met had been nice and civil. Well, other than the orcs, but muggers were muggers. You didn’t expect them to be nice. Still… “Thank you.”
El flashed me a smile before she turned back to her beer and nachos.