Chapter 4
Chapter Four
I admit I never thought I’d waste fifteen minutes of my life trying to get a house to stop sulking because I'd called it bad when it tried to “help” me scrub my back when I was in the shower.
“I’m not mad at you. I was just surprised.” I told the ceiling for the umpteenth time. “You did an amazing job today. You kicked a dragon’s ass. That's very impressive.”
The walls brightened slightly, but that was the only sign it heard me.
“Maybe try petting it again? It really liked that.” Baz suggested from where he was attempting to coax the coffee-table-centaur back into being just a table. It wasn't going well. The creature had decided it quite liked having legs and was currently doing tiny victory laps around the living room.
“I'm not petting the house.”
“You hexed it into consciousness. I think normal rules stopped applying yesterday.”
I could already tell this was going to be a nice-dad, mean-mom scenario, but he had a point. I approached the nearest wall and gave it an awkward pat. “Good house. Very good house.”
The purring resumed almost immediately. The sound resonating through the floorboards with enough force to make the butterflies—yes, much to my dismay, they were still everywhere—dance in the air.
“Great,” Gary said from his perch on the mantle. “Now it's going to expect belly rubs all the time.”
Before I could respond by asking if he was jealous, I started thinking about giving Baz belly rubs. And…his shirt disappeared.
We all stared. Baz looked down at his suddenly bare chest, then up at me. “Did you just…”
“I didn't mean to!” My hands flew up defensively, but that just made it worse. His pants started flickering between visible and transparent like a badly tuned TV.
“Tansy,” he said very calmly as he used both hands to cover his crotch, “is there any way to not do whatever you're doing?”
Gary snickered, “I bet there are easier ways to get his pants off. You might want to save your magic for the battle outside the bedroom.” He chortled as my cheeks started to burn. Thank the goddess I had enough melanin to hide my embarrassment.
“I'm not doing anything! I'm just standing here thinking about… Um.” I slammed my mouth shut, but it was too late. My brain was now stuck on last night's kiss, and now my magic was apparently trying to speed things along by removing pesky obstacles. Like clothes.
Gary made a sound like a disappointed teakettle. “Your sexual frustration is showing, darling. Literally.”
“Shut up!”
The butterflies chose that moment to form a helpful arrow pointing at Baz's abs. Because of course they did.
“Your magic's getting more specific,” Baz observed, still remarkably calm. He had the patience of a saint. “Yesterday, it was random chaos. Today it's…” He paused, searching for the right word.
“Horny?” Gary supplied helpfully. “I believe the word you're looking for is horny.”
I grabbed a throw pillow and hurled it at him. It transformed midair into a bouquet of bloodred roses that pelted him with petals.
“See?” Gary spluttered through the floral assault. “Even your violence is romantic!”
Baz's shirt finally solidified, though it was now inside-out and backward. He didn't bother fixing it. “Gary might have a point.”
“Please don't encourage him.”
“I mean about your magic being…directed.” He gestured at the butterflies, which had given up on the arrow and were now forming increasingly inappropriate shapes.
“My magic needs to mind its own damn business.”
The house creaked in what sounded like laughter.
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Let's focus. We have less than twenty hours before Illanya comes back. We need to…” Baz's shirt vanished again. “For fuck's sake,” I said as I threw my hands up in frustration.
Directed, my ass!
“Maybe we should address this first,” he suggested, gesturing at his persistent nakedness problem. “Before you accidentally hex everyone in town into a state of undress.”
“That's not… I wouldn't!” I paused. “Actually, that's exactly what would happen, isn't it?”
“Based on current evidence? Yes.”
Gary slithered closer, leaving his usual trail of slime behind him. Somehow, Gary looked more smug than usual.
Why was Baz so cool with all the snail trail goo my familiar was leaving in his house?
I wonder if it’d show up under a black light.
“You know what would fix this? If you two just…”
I immediately stopped wondering about snail trails and black lights in time to stop him and blurt out a “Don't you dare!”
“Had a nice cup of tea and discussed your feelings like adults,” he finished innocently.
Baz snorted. “That's not what you were about to say.”
“Prove it.”
A knock at the door, or rather, the door frame, interrupted what was about to become a very awkward argument. We all turned to find a woman standing in the opening, surveying the destruction with the kind of calm that suggested she'd seen worse.
She was tall, with wild red curls and eyes that seemed to see too much. Power radiated from her like heat from a forge.
“You must be Tansy,” she said, stepping carefully over the threshold. The house immediately tried to trip her, but she sidestepped without looking down. “I'm Zelda. Baz called me about your…situation.”
“He did?”
She nodded while looking around, taking in the butterflies, the rainbow furniture, and Baz's still-persistent wardrobe malfunction. “I see the reports may have been a tad understated.”
“Reports?”
“The whole town felt your magical explosion yesterday. We've been taking bets on what caused it.” She pulled out a small notebook. “Current leading theory is 'sex accident.' Was it a sex accident?”
“No!” I said at the same time Baz said, “Not yet.”
We stared at each other. The butterflies formed a heart. The house purred louder.
Zelda made a note. “Interesting. Your magic’s showing signs of…” She paused, squinting at me. “Oh. Oh my. That's a mate bond trying to form. And you're fighting it?”
“There's a curse,” I explained.
“And that curse will try to kill him,” she finished. “This is fascinating. I've never seen chaos magic this powerful trying to override a dragon curse while simultaneously attempting to force a mate bond. You're like a magical tornado having an argument with itself.”
“That's…actually eerily accurate.”
She smiled. “I've seen damn near everything. Well, almost everything. This is new.” She gestured at the coffee-table-centaur, which had come over to investigate and was now nuzzling her leg. “Is this supposed to exist?”
“Nothing I create is supposed to exist,” I admitted. “It just does.”
“Brilliant.” She looked genuinely delighted. “You're a walking impossibility. No wonder your mate bond’s forming so aggressively. Magic often seeks its opposite for balance. And Baz here is about as steady as they come.”
“I'm right here,” Baz pointed out.
“Yes, dear, and you're shirtless. We all noticed. You can put it away now. I’m taken, big boy.” She winked, then turned her attention back to me. “Now, about this dragon problem. Illanya, was it?”
“You know her?”
“I know of her. She's given you twenty-four hours, right?”
“Less than twenty now.”
“Hmm, we'll need the whole town. Dragons respect shows of force. If she sees you have a community backing you—”
“She'll burn everyone. Everything. I can't ask people to…” My voice petered off into nothing.
“You're not asking. We're volunteering.” She looked up from her notes. “This is Assjacket. We protect our own.”
“I've been here for a week!”
“And in that week, you've brought more excitement than we've had in years. Mrs. Henderson's chickens turned into tiny dinosaurs yesterday thanks to your magical overflow. They're adorable. She's keeping them.”
“I, what?”
“Your magic doesn't just affect things near you,” Zelda explained. “It ripples out. The whole town's been getting…interesting since you arrived. In a good way. Except for the dragons. It’s like you’re a magnet or something.” She chuckled.
“I guess I have dragons on the brain for some silly reason.” I laughed along with her until I realized something. “Wait, I've been accidentally hexing an entire town?”
“More like…blessing it with uncertainty.” She smiled.
“You're the best thing to happen to us in weeks, months, even. So,” Zelda continued, “here's what we're going to do. First, we need to stabilize your magic. Second, we need to prepare the town for dragon battle. And third…” She looked between Baz and me.
“You two need to figure out what you're doing about that mate bond before it completes itself without your permission.”
“It can do that?”
“Oh yes. Chaos magic doesn't ask permission. It just does what it thinks is best.” She gestured at Baz, whose persistent nakedness problem had ramped up a bit. “Case in point.”
Baz was now completely naked. He was now sitting down in a chair with a pillow over his junk. He shrugged, apparently either completely disaffected or he’d just given up on maintaining any semblance of dignity.
“Fine,” I said. “How do we stabilize my magic?”
Zelda grinned, and something about that expression made me very, very nervous. “Easy. We're going to teach you to aim.”
* * *
Zelda's idea of teaching me to aim involved dragging us all to the town diner in the middle of the night, which seemed a bit counterintuitive to keeping people safe from my magical disasters.
“Shouldn't we practice somewhere more…isolated?” I asked as she pushed open the door to a diner.
“Your magic deserves an audience,” she said cheerfully. “But better to practice where people can dodge.”