I fell asleep before the party was over, which meant I felt pretty darn safe.  When I woke up, I had a question in my head. I teased it out for a bit, trying to remember it in more exact terms.  It wasn’t something that was translating well, because it was kind of simple or somewhat sycophantic or both, and I didn’t like that. It was important, and not just to me, I thought.

I took a shower, brushed my teeth, and sighed a lot.

“Nen,” I addressed the room once I put myself together.  There were some snacks of low perishability (if that was the right term – things that didn’t have to be refrigerated) still on the table, but the place was clean, and some things had been moved “back” although I was beginning to suspect a little L-space near the bookshelves.  I felt a smile come up on my face as I mentally renamed the Spriggan sibs to “the bookelves,” for a moment.  They’d appreciate it and then complain, I figured.

Nen moved from where he had been sitting next to the television.  He looked up at me, making the expression of curiosity on his face akin to the question rather than asking it in words.

“What happened to, at times you might call me friend, but ‘it is a marriage of convenience’ and only guarding me as given?”

His expression left his face, as quickly as if it were dropped. “I am what I am,” he said.

“And that’s it? I let someone build a polyp kingdom in my home who was just an employee of the Seven King? Yes, I figured out a long time ago it was the King who made the request.”

“You would be wrong thrice.”  He shrugged, a deliberately human gesture.

“Nen,” Rayya chided.  She came out of the kitchen with a plate of sliced cheeses and crackers, which she handed to me. At least, the tone of voice was the kind of chiding that was two steps removed from a parent using your whole name, from what I could tell.  I took the plate of crackers, but waited a moment before eating it. As I said, this was important and it definitely made a difference whether or not I took breakfast as a gift, or ate something from fey hands in the first and second place.

She looked up at me. “He counts them three times. The first that it is a polyp kingdom; it is integrated and part of this world for now. As we gain in power and people make it their home, it will grow, but not in a cancerous method. We…” she glanced at him and began again.  “We respect some of your boundaries. We have entwined, which means its development is necessarily slow. It is a place of our power and still of this world, and it is something new that we hope meets your favor.  In second, that we were employees of the Seven King in our work for you.  We were paid for by another.  In third that he meant those words.”

I started to say something, but she raised a hand up to stop me.

Her hands moved in front of her, and she wrung at them, twisting them together awkwardly. “You have influenced us in our changes. We spent our year and a day learning you even as we warded off nuisances and threats.  We mean to make treaty with you.  The Seven King recognized us, and we hoped in our invitations you would see that you are meant to be treated as a power.  We made that statement without making it, we hoped.”

“I’m just dense?  That’s totally and always an option. Like, you know, failure.  Okay, I need to think more about this.” I frowned.  “So it’s safe to eat?” I asked, raising the plate.

She gave me a fleeting smile. “Maybe.”  The smile grew. “Yes.  It is safe to eat, as is all food I prepare for you, with few caveats.”

“Any here?”

“Cholesterol and carbohydrates,” Nen said.  He was still looking at me without any real expression to his face, something I always found disturbing.

“Well, I guess I’ll take those on,” I said, grinning.  “Consider me warned.”  I moved to sit on the couch.

Rayya tilted her head to the side. One thing I had noticed was that the fey and cats had a lot of signals in similar. I acknowledged it, while chomping on a piece of swiss.

“Why do you hold that sexual intimacy with a fey is somehow more disturbing that that with a witch?” she asked, as if commenting on traffic or the weather or something entirely mundane.

I coughed, and bits of cracker sprayed over my shirt. (A black tee with, “Trust Me: I Know Things” in white lettering.)

“Do I want to know where that question c– originated from?” I asked.

“There would be great advantages in coupling with the Seven King. At least one of the aspects encouraged it, and it would be consensual and only as binding as you determined.  You have not had congress of that nature since your abortive relationship prior to our full-time employ, if our information is correct. We can be discreet if you are shy.”

“You’re not making this any better.” I brushed the cracker off, sighing.  “I just have rules about getting involved with things that aren’t human?”

“Can you be friends with them?” she asked, lightly.

Ouch.

I cleared my throat. “I’m a bit of a jerk,” I said, explaining, if not quite apologizing.

“Is it safe to eat food you’ve prepared? After all, you’re human,” Nen said. I didn’t know if I was projecting any bitterness or if it was really there.

“Uh.” I sighed and put the plate down on the table where it was now to the side of the couch.  “As much as it pains me to say it, I think we might need to have a talk.”

I tried to listen to the many conversations, and ended up instead focusing on those few people who remained silent.  Nen.  Rayya.  The Seven King.  Even the musicians seemed annoyed or concerned; it was hard to tell. They weren’t even as … human as my roommates.

I thought about that.  Roommates.  Roommates who had decided to invade my space, kind of literally, and create some kind of pocket kingdom in my house.  I was displeased about this.  Maybe I was getting soft in my old age about closing all the open doors, but just because my place was now slightly bigger on the inside, I wasn’t… it didn’t feel like a violation.  I don’t know what the difference was.  It didn’t feel that weird. It felt a lot like home.

If you thought about it, and I had on and off, maybe part of it was because I’d been partially raised by these books. I spent years visiting my friends and recalling their adventures. I had instincts I’d developed and moral quandaries I had navigated from maps of ridiculous situations into which only someone like myself could stumble.  I could find my way around the Kathseide in the dark, bargain with Puppeteers, survive the Badlands of Hark (maybe), but finishing college seemed ridiculous at this point, and buying a car was a burden I was still delaying.

I made a note to myself to write a fabulously funny fantasy novel about buying a car so I could feel better about it.  Then I made a note to myself about the hazards of thinking I could become a writer.  The notes to myself were beginning to pile up when someone asked me a question and I was pushed out of my introspection.

“Um, no,” I said.  “My current kind of quest is to find a demon and send it back to where it belongs.  Get behind me and all that.”

“Drama much?” the Questor’s wife teased. “Seriously, though, you should ask the Questor. That’s what he does.”

“Yeah, and I don’t want to just be another person using him,” I said. “I guess I feel pretty strongly about taking advantage of something he really can’t control.  It’s like… I don’t know… kissing a succubus. It’s not their motive: it’s their being, and they deserve consent, too.”

“True enough, but if I asked you to close this little door I knew about, how would you feel?” she asked.

“Like I should go do it as a favor to a friend,” I said, automatically.  “It’s different when it’s you asking the favor, though. How would you feel?”

She chuckled, and there was still an aspect of teasing to it.  “Maybe like I was keeping you out of trouble.  Why aren’t there any witches here?” she asked.

That was not a question I was expecting. “I’m sure there’s some kind of adage about spoiling the brew, or too many broomsticks a la that apprentice’s folly, but I really don’t know.  Maybe they didn’t want to invite any of my ex-girlfriends?” I frowned.  “You know, they can’t all be witches.”

“Why not?” she tee-hee’d.  I mean, I’d read the phrase in text, but I had never expected to hear it in real life.

I found myself grinning despite the plaintiveness of the situation.   “Tee hee indeed,” I said, loftily.  “I don’t want to seem racist.  Or bigoted on any spectrum. I definitely am, of course; I know how I like ’em.  The phrasing of which makes me totally sexist, too.  But I’m not sure what the equivalent is for witches. It’s not like I seek them out.  I just keep finding that all the women I know for more than a couple minutes are, shall we say, ‘magically-inclined’?  It’s got to be a curse.”

“Or a blessing, thank you very much,” she said, mock-affronted.

“Or a blessing,” I gave in quickly.

She grinned again.

Ed and Zach were looking this way, so I waved them over.  “You know Ed?” I asked while they made their way past the table where all sorts of chocolates and fruits were being displayed.

“I know Zach,” she said. “Ed you’ve mentioned a few times.”

I nodded, as Zach bowed his head and grabbed her hands.  “Misko! I was just talking to Ed about the Questor.  Misko, this is Ed, Ed, Misko,” he said, letting go.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Ed said, and they shook.

“Hmmm,” I heard myself say.

“Hmmm?” the Questor’s wife asked.

“Sorry, thinking. Is Misko a good use-name?”  I had actually been thinking about clasping hands, and the role it played versus shaking them.

“Is your name really Erysichthon?” she asked me, teasingly.

“That doesn’t roll off the tongue,” I noted, impressed. “`Eegaiarasan’ was the best off-the-cuff guess I think I’ve heard. Wrong country of origin, but what a name, eh?  I also liked ‘Eiel’ for the meaning.”

“I’m not familiar with it?” she said, curious.

“`Born to inspire fright,’ I believe,” I reported.

Ed snorted. “You’re more a ‘Born to be Mild,’ type, E.”

Zach shrugged. “The calmest person may just be expressing the eye of a storm somewhere else.  Except he and I,” he glanced at me with a grin, “would probably argue that that suggests a doorway needed to be closed.”

I nodded, having to agree. “Of course, if they could channel a storm, I’d be totally curious as to what kind of creature they were, and what rules applied.  Know of any?” After all, if I could ask anyone, the people I’d ask were kind of in the room.

“Is talking shop verboten at one of these?” Ed asked.

“Your kind,” I said with a firm tone. “You start talking shop and I have sympathetic itches.”

“Sympathetic?” he asked. “Itches for me? How nice.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Nah, he means First Law sympathetic. You talk about bugs and someone conjures them,” Zach teased, catching Misko’s glance.

“Nuh-uh,” she said. “The only bugs I like are the ones that get rid of ickier ones, and we don’t need a herd of tarantulas.”

“Herd?” I asked.

“Clutter.  Or cluster, but I like the first more,” said Ed, and well, he was the one who should know.