“His name is Tarvish, and he’s nice enough—”
“As far as you know. Tomorrow, you need to figure out a way to get him out of your house, even if you can’t send him back where he belongs.”
“He belongs on a piece of paper on somebody’s table, with a bunch of dice scattered around.” The beginnings of a headache were creeping up on me. “Rowan’s working on it. She didn’t seem worried about leaving him here.” When I had arrived home, Tad and Caitlin had left, and my grandmother and Teran were still trying to come up with a solution. Killian had been talking to Tarvish, who had told story after story about his adventures with his group, most of which were straight out of the typical D&D crawl.
Killian relented. “All right, love. Let’s go to bed.”
We scooped up the cats and went upstairs, locking the door to my room. I woke up a couple times to pee, and noticed that Killian was awake, but he pretended to be asleep so I pretended not to notice. It dawned on me that he was standing guard over the house, and I decided to let him do what he wanted.
Morning arrived and nothing was out of sorts. Killian had dozed off at some point, and since it was Sunday, I decided to let him sleep. I quietly dressed and then slipped out of the room, followed by Xi and Klaus. As I was headed downstairs, Tarvish came out of the guest room and followed me down to the kitchen.
“Is your beau asleep?” he asked.
I smiled at the word beau. “Yes, he’s still sleeping.”
“He was keeping watch, wasn’t he? I wouldn’t blame him, with a demon you’ve never met before in the house.” He didn’t seem offended.
“Yeah. He was.” My gut told me Tarvish was okay, but I loved Killian and I understood his hesitation. “Listen, we have to figure out a way to send you back home.” I had no intention of telling him he was a created thought-form. Thought-forms weren’t self-aware in that manner, and I wasn’t sure what that would do to him. Oddly enough, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings or make him feel less than what he thought he was.
I rummaged in the cupboards for the waffle iron, then pulled out a griddle and set bacon to cooking. As I mixed the waffle batter, Tarvish offered to set the table. I didn’t want him handling my good china with those massive hands, so asked him instead to play with the cats until I got around to feeding them. I pointed out the feather toy and he began dangling it, sending Klaus into a flurry of pounces. Xi stayed in the kitchen with me. She leapt up onto the counter and stared at me until I set down the box of waffle mix and turned to her.
What is it, Xi? Is there something wrong?
She let out a purp and I got a flash of my magical studio, the storage cabinet in particular. I kept seeing a line of bottles, and a sense of urgency rushed over me. Xi couldn’t talk to me, not like a human, but she was clearly trying to tell me something. I set down the mix and headed for the reading nook, clambering down the stairs from there to the basement.
Once there, I opened the storage cabinet to stare at my supplies. There was the row of bottles, and as I looked at them, something tugged on the edges of my thoughts. I wasn’t sure what to think, but then I picked up one bottle—War water—and an instant nope clicked.
“Okay then, what about…Florida water?” I picked up that bottle and again, nope. I started going through the various waters—Ward, Protection, and Bewitching waters, Faerie and Thunder waters, Full and New Moon waters, and then finally, I came to the Disruption water that I had found on the rather gruesome remains that we had found hidden in my house. I picked up the bottle and a spark flickered.
“Okay, then. Disruption water.” I carried the bottle back upstairs to the kitchen where Xi was waiting. She wouldn’t be able to tell me exactly how to use it in this case, but maybe…
Esmara, are you there? I held my breath, hoping.
I’m here. What do you need?
Xi told me to get the Disruption water. I’m wondering what I might need to use it on. What all does Disruption water even do? While I was coming along with my studies with my grandmother and my aunt, we hadn’t covered more than the basics so far.
Think about the name. Disruption water disrupts things.
I stared at the bottle. Okay then, maybe this would disrupt the spell and send Tarvish home. I hurried into the dining room, where I found the demon looking through the coffee table book on national parks that I had set on the sideboard.
“I’m going to flick some water onto you. Please don’t be freaked out.” I held up the bottle, covering the name so he couldn’t see what it was.
“All right,” he said, looking confused.
I had attached an atomizer to each of my magical waters, so I held up the bottle and sprayed him with a fine mist. There was a momentary shift—he faded out for a second, then back in.
“Well, that didn’t do much. Do you feel any different?”
“A little jarred,” he said. “What is that?”
“Disruption water,” I admitted. “I was hoping it would disrupt your energy enough to send you back.”
“Will it disrupt the force field preventing me from leaving the house?” he asked.
I snapped my fingers. “Good idea! Maybe.”
I hurried to the door, with Tarvish following me. As I sprayed it around the door frame, the energy of the doorway began to snap—snap, crackle, and pop, like Rice Krispies. I turned to Tarvish and stepped back.
“Go ahead and try to leave now.”
Tarvish hesitated, then tried to step through the door again, and this time he ended up on the porch. “Yes! It works!”
“Yay!” I was so excited that I almost dropped the bottle. I quickly set it on the foyer table, and then joined him on the porch. “See if you can leave the porch.”
He headed down the stairs, then turned around, standing in the yard. “I’ll try to leave your yard here,” he said, heading for the street. A moment later, he was standing in the middle of the road, but quickly jumped back as a car sped past. Returning to the porch, he sat down on the porch steps. It was cloudy and looked like rain was due, but the porch steps were dry. “Well, that solves at least one problem.”
“Yes, it does, though you can’t walk home to where you belong.” I thought of trying to find the gamers’ addresses, to send Tarvish back to them. Imagine their surprise if he were to show up on their doorstep. That might teach them not to be stupid with their magic.
“Tell me the truth. How far away from my home am I? Do you even know?” An anxious expression clouded his eyes.
“I don’t know, Tarvish. I’m not sure how to explain this to you or—” I stopped as Rowan pulled into the driveway. As she got out of her car, I motioned for him to stand as she approached the steps.
“I see you’ve made progress,” she said.
I nodded. “We have, thanks to Xi. I sprayed Disruption water on the door and it allowed Tarvish to leave the house. He can also leave the yard.”
A satisfied look spread over Rowan’s face. “That makes sense. I was planning to try a similar spell, but now there’s no need. I do have some news, so let’s go inside.”
As we entered the house, Killian was standing there, bare-chested, wearing jeans and nothing else. His hair was tousled, falling to his shoulder blades, and he was looking so sleepy and snuggly that I wanted nothing more than to go ruffle his hair some more and run my hand over his chest.