“You were outside?” he asked, as Tarvish entered the house.
“Xi helped me figure out how to break the force field.” I motioned toward the kitchen. “I’m making waffles and—oh! The bacon!”
“I caught it before it burned. Never leave a griddle of bacon alone,” Killian said, waggling his finger at me. “I’ll go grab a shirt and meet you in the kitchen.”
I rushed into the kitchen to see that the bacon was definitely crisped—thank gods Killian had found it before it caught fire. I finished mixing the batter for the waffles and plugged in the waffle iron.
Rowan set the table, glancing at Tarvish. “You hungry?”
“Yes, please,” Tarvish said.
Killian returned, this time with a T-shirt on and his hair gathered back in a ponytail. “So, tell me what’s been happening. You managed to get Tarvish through the door?” He seemed far happier than the night before.
“We did. I used Disruption water, thanks to a nudge from Xi, and it broke whatever spell was keeping Tarvish inside. He was even able to walk into the street.” I poured batter into the double-sided waffle iron and set it to cooking. Meanwhile, I popped the bacon in the warming oven. Rowan set the maple syrup and butter on the table as I pulled out the eggs. “How does everybody want their eggs?”
“Scrambled,” Rowan said.
“That’s fine with me,” Killian said.
Tarvish frowned. “You cook them?”
I stifled a laugh. “Yes, we eat our eggs cooked.”
“I’m willing to give it a try,” he said.
I brought out a large skillet and poured some of the bacon drippings into it. Meanwhile, Killian fired up the espresso machine and began to pull shots.
When breakfast was ready, we gathered around the dining room table—Tarvish was too big for us to all sit comfortably in the kitchen nook—and I opened the curtains that covered the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the front porch. It occurred to me that I should ask Jim Lark to install sliding glass doors into the dining room. I could have him switch out the windows for those, though it would cost me a pretty penny extra.
As we dove into breakfast, I turned to Rowan. “What brings you here this morning?”
She worried her lip. “I don’t like bringing down the mood, but I have been doing some research on…” Pausing, she glanced at Tarvish. “How are you at taking bad news?”
“I’ve almost died a number of times and once, the cleric didn’t think he was going to be able to cast a heal spell on me, so I thought I was facing my maker. I remained calm and collected. Funtime demons are like that,” he said. “The one thing that sets me off is when I smell orc blood or when someone is clobbering the hell out of one of my fellow adventurers.”
“Right,” Rowan said. “Okay then. Well, Tarvish, have you ever heard of a thought-form?”
He thought for a moment, then asked, “Is that like when a high-level illusionist casts a ‘conjure monsters’ spell and the other party thinks they’re facing a group of creatures that aren’t there?”
“Yes, well…something like that. But here, in our world, it means that you focus enough energy on a thought to bring it to life. For example, if you were to imagine a rare bird that no one has ever seen, and you focus on this bird and you cast a spell to give it life…and then boom, one day it actually appears.” Rowan glanced at me.
Tarvish set down the piece of bacon he was holding. “Okay, I understand that.”
I took up the story. I had a feeling it might sit better coming from me.
“Well…some witches in our world, they love to play a game called Dungeons & Dragons. It’s a role-playing game where they assume the characters of adventurers and go wandering around an imaginary dungeon—it’s all done around a table with dice and maps and sometimes miniature figurines. Apparently, they decided to create what’s called an NPC—a non-player character to help them in their quests.” I paused.
Tarvish was staring at me, and I began to see a glimmer of understanding on his face. “They…created me?”
“Yes,” Rowan said. “I’m sorry we have to break it to you this way, but they created an NPC called a Funtime demon, and one of them decided to imbue that character with magic. Before you appeared here, January was downloading their dungeon program off a computer—we’ll explain what that means later—and she downloaded their dungeon. There was a problem with the computer cord, and when it malfunctioned, it appears that you sort of…showed up here.”
“Can you send me back through the computer? I’ve heard my party talk about such things.”
Rowan slowly shook her head. “No, Tarvish. If we send you back home, you’ll cease to exist. You’ll vanish.”
“Oh, hell,” I whispered. “He won’t go back to an alternate universe?”
Rowan shook her head. “No, I’m afraid not. If he leaves our world, Tarvish will…die.”
Chapter Ten
Even Killian looked askance. “Are you serious? He’ll die?”
Rowan nodded. “He’ll cease to exist, and that might as well be the same thing.” She turned to Tarvish. “You have a big decision to make. I’m not willing to ship you back against your will, not when it means you’ll die. You haven’t done anything to warrant such action. So it’s up to you. You can stay here in our world and learn to adapt to our ways, or…” She hesitated. I seldom saw my grandmother lack for words, but this was one of those times.
“Can’t we send him to whatever realm demons live in?” Killian asked. “Where he might be more comfortable?”
“Stop talking about Tarvish like he’s not even here,” I said, frowning at him. I turned to Rowan. “But that is a good question. Is there a way to send him to a realm where he might be more at home?”
Rowan glanced at Tarvish, looking resigned. “The fact is, you’re the only one of your kind. Funtime demons don’t exist, except in the realm of this particular game. If we were to send you to the realm of fire, or the astral realm, I doubt you’d last very long.”
“Crap, I hadn’t thought of that,” Killian said.
“The truth is,” Rowan turned to include Killian and me, “Tarvish is no more demonic than your cats. He detests evil—orcs are a literary evil—and he loves kittens and crossword puzzles. He stands up for his friends in the game, and has their back. You could say the same about any one of us—except for the puzzles. I don’t like them.”
Everything she said hit me like a sledgehammer. Tarvish wasn’t a demon. He’d been given that name, but there was no way in hell—pun intended—that he was demonic. Or devilish. I had read nothing off his energy that was threatening. The wards hadn’t gone off. And he had been a cordial gentleman during the entire time he had been here.
“She’s right,” I said. “Tarvish, you aren’t a demon, regardless of what you might think. If we did send you over to one of those realms, you’d be somebody’s lunch or slave within hours. While you can fight, well…I’ve met real demons and they don’t just go clobbering orcs. They’re out to cause as much chaos and destruction as possible.”