I shrugged at Nen. “I’ve got work. Work work, but not like, work work,” I said, realizing belatedly that it was ridiculous to try and make the differentiation.  “Like, a magical job, not a standard 9-to-5 kind of thing.”

He just watched me with those eyes of his that occasionally contained more of a luminous nature than expected. “With whom?” he asked gently.

I cursed.  Fifteen minutes on the phone and I didn’t get a name. “Um, a friend… maybe… of Rohana’s?” I answered. “Anyway, she’ll be wearing a blue vest and jeans and will order a chocolate milk with whipped cream.”

“So a date,” he said.

“Um?” I’m pretty sure my eyes narrowed at him. “I’m helping her out with what’s probably a sigil that didn’t discharge correctly.  Not having coffee with a stranger off the internet, or whatever kids do these days.”

“You’re having coffee with a stranger from a phone call,” Rayya said, resting against the arm of the futon. “The difference may be too subtle for my brother to discern.”

“Well, neither of us are having coffee, if that helps,” I said, letting my tone be so sardonic it could be a polished example of chalcedony.

“No,” Nen said, brightly. “We’ll be circumspect.”

“We? Both of you?” I asked.

“Rayya has a feeling.” Nen shrugged. Sometimes I thought there was some kind of difference to their shrugs, but it was subtle enough that I guess I didn’t catch it. I don’t know that they always mean the same thing with a shrug that I might, but it filled in the other silences of their body language so that I just took it for mortar.

“A feeling,” I said. “Can I know more about this feeling? Does Rayya often have feelings? Do these feelings mean anything or should I just not hurt them?”

Rayya gave me a very human look of being done with my querulous nature.

I took the hint. “Well, I should at least freshen up. You guys do…whatever it is you do.”

Neither of them moved as I went past them into my sanctuary, I mean, my bedroom.  I could see that Nen had returned my trade paperback of the first volume of Rat Queens.  He at least used the right piles – Rayya was more likely to straighten a pile and reorganize everything.

“Which shirt, which shirt…” I decided to pick at random as otherwise it really was too much like preparing for a date. Which it wasn’t. You can meet a random woman (she self-identified) without it being a date. This was work-related. Business, not pleasure, literally.

Yeah, I shaved and put on extra deodorant.  No harm in that.  Probably time for a haircut, too.  I looked at my reflection in the mirror for a brief glance, then put the tiniest bit of product in my hair. Purely professional.  I would have put on a suit if that was the kind of job I was being hired for… and I didn’t know that there was any money in this. Most of the magical economy was favor-based, and I didn’t grow up in Bartertown.

“Hey Master & Blaster, you two ready?” I called out.

“Do you refer to my brother and I?” Rayya asked, appearing in the doorway of my room. She had chosen to replace her white hijab with one that was almost identical if you were not as much a keen observer as myself. This one was made of a finer material, looking softer.  I looked carefully and guessed she’d done her weaving of glamour from my very soft bathrobe. (You should always have a soft bathrobe. It’s the difference in winter between the necessity of a shower versus the indulgence.  Plus, it isn’t like having to immediately wear pants.)

“You’re more Chip & Dale,” I decided.

“If so, my brother is the one with the red nose.”

“Dale, I think,” I said.  “Which, out of context, makes me think of the Riders of Rohan.”

“Your synapses are powered by pop culture memes and the occasional nerdy reference,” she said, solemnly.  I looked at her after drying my face in the blue towel that was a staple in my bathroom.  “And what are little spriggans made of?” I asked. “Sugar and knives and everything spice?”

She looked at me with suspicion and then the sudden expression one makes when all the blood drains from their face.  She took a step back.

“What did I say?” I asked, concerned.

She shook her head and then turned, disappearing. Not just going around the corner, but pulling the whole eerie folding-into-space disappearing. The kind cats do, naturally, before you find them on the couch licking themselves.

“Nen?” I asked, maybe sounding a little plaintive.

There was no response.  I turned out the light and left the bathroom, looking around the living room. “Nen?  Rayya? Did I say one of those words that chases you guys off like church bells?”

It was quiet.  It was empty.

It was twenty minutes to the coffee shop, and I didn’t have time to spare.  I picked up my keys from the little octopus cup and looked around again. Nothing.  “Guys?”  Nothing.  “I’m leaving.”

Nothing.

Rayya wasn’t the only one with feelings. I felt very weird, very vulnerable. I checked to make sure I was wearing pants about three times.  I checked my pockets for my wallet twice, and I even checked to make sure I wasn’t wearing glasses. I found my keys in my hand at least once.

The coffee shop was one of those generic ones that would open up in your linen closet if you gave them a good rate. It was pretty busy for what I would have thought pretty late at night, but I guess the caffeine keeps people awake.

I ordered my special drink.  It was pink and foamy.  My rabies-in-a-plastic-cup was sweet, though, and they decorated the giant ‘E’ I had them write on my cup.

“Chocolate milk. No ice, but, um, whipped cream please?”

The only thing that could have made the night better was a visit from a Dragon.  I opened the door, expecting Peredur on my doorstep.

There was nothing but a few dried leaves scraping across the concrete in the wind. I sniffed, checking for the faint woodsmoke smell that I associated with him. Nothing. I narrowed my eyes and squinted, as if I could see things unseen.  After a moment, I closed the door.

Nen chuckled.

“I thought it was requisite, narratively,” I explained with a shrug.

“We would know if His Majesty decided to pay you a visit,” Rayya pat my arm in a way more sympathetic than condescending.

“His Majesty?” I asked.  “I don’t recall you naming him that before.  Has there been some kind of update I didn’t get notified of? Peredur two point oh? Patch notes?” I asked, spinning my desk chair to attend to my roommates.  “Do I have to reboot the reality now or will it do it when I’m in the middle of something?”

Neither answered, but that at least I expected.

I swung back around to the computer. I had done a few Google Alerts that came up with interesting information that led me down the rabbit hole of the internet for a while.  When I came up for sanity, I made myself some tea and stared at the television for a minute or two.  I read the closed captioning for a bit, and tried to figure out exactly what was chirping, then realized it was my phone.

It was a local number. “Yeah?” I asked. I know, you’re not supposed to pick up the phone for people you don’t know.

“I’m sorry, is this… um, Doctor …E?” it was a woman’s voice.  You know, it’s still better than Windy Frostymist, or Cherry Bloodsucker, or… I don’t know. I’m not good with a lot of “magickal choice names.” Heck, I don’t even know if that’s what it’s called.

But I digress. “Yeah,” I responded in a different tone of voice that hopefully encouraged the woman to elaborate. Okay, I was presuming it was a woman. My bad for gendering based on stereotypes.

“I got your number from Rohana. She said you could help me.”

It wasn’t like I advertised in the Yellow Pages.  After all, I just threw them into the recycle bin when they were forced upon me.  No online presence, no web pages, just one twitter account, and even that was mostly irregular updates of little consequence.  So word of mouth was important. I just didn’t expect Rohana to make recommendations.

“Maybe,” I said. After all, I could cook a decent omelette, but if she was looking for that, I’m not the one you would call. Didn’t want to raise her hopes up without being sure as to what it was. “What do you need done?”

“I… I’m a sigilist. She said you would understand.”

I was really tempted to make a really geeky gaming reference about the City of Sigil and Planescape, but I managed to resist. Unless, of course, Rohana had expected me to do it. I tried to guess if she was waiting to be resigned, or what, but it’s hard to read silence, especially over a cellphone.

“You utilize magic through symbols and/or runes, embuing them with will and power,” I said.

“Yes,” she sounded relieved. Rohana had probably warned her about the Torment she could have gone through. “I do minor charms as well, but mostly personal sigils.  Healing, protection from entropy, that kind of stuff.  Nothing big.  Except…”

Ah, there it was. The magic of ‘except’ or ‘but’ or all those other words that nullify the sentence before them. “Except?” I prompted.

“My sister… she’s got this guy who has been stalking her, so I thought I’d do a… look, could we meet somewhere? A coffee shop or some place? I’d feel better if you could see what I mean.”

“You could take a picture?” I suggested. I mean, we were talking with the technology.

“Doesn’t show up in total. I already tried. Public place and all that. I’m not a mask–mass murderer.”

I wondered at the slip.  I decided a “masc. murderer” was kind of the more male version of a “femme fatale.”  But I had bodyguards who had to worry about that, right? I was perfectly safe. I didn’t say it aloud – even if I didn’t believe in jinxes, it was just asking for it, and when you ask the universe might just answer.

“Good. Neither am I.” Despite being alternately reviled and lauded for having killed a dragon, it was the insects of the world that mostly needed to fear my murderous nature. “Where are you at?”

We spent a couple of minutes triangulating a good place to meet, arranging for secret codewords, and then agreed to be there in about an hour.

Nen looked up expectantly from where he sprawled on the couch.  He had gotten a lot better about the spines of my paperbacks after a little talk I had had with him.

Sometimes you’d think my life would make for a good sitcom. If I were any more interested in men, we could call it “Two and a Half Fairies.” I decided against suggesting it.  A lot of times my life with them was…normal. We did chores. We ate. We hung out and binge-watched Netflix together.

It was the little things.  The things you didn’t expect.  How weird silences would meet what seemed to be reasonable questions.  The strangeness of…well, they never looked in the laundry and found only one sock.

So, yes, that’s a real first world problem, but from the perspective of the first world, it’s really strange. How do you even interact with someone who does not have the essential understanding of a world where washers and dryers took single socks in sacrifice?  It completely resets your world view. What do you really have in common with them? What else do you take for granted for which they share no correspondence?  It really made some things odd.

On the other hand, I always got a pair of socks back when they did the laundry, so maybe I shouldn’t complain.