Even though it wasn’t a late hour at all. It was still morning.
However, she supposed it might be midnight from the perspective of whatever was under the coat. Considering it could beabsolutely anything. A being from another dimension, or several beings from another dimension, or a number of talking owls stacked on top of each other.
She couldn’t be sure. And it seemed impolite to ask.
So instead she said, “No trouble at all. How can I help you?”
Because help felt like something she could offer. Something that she still had in her, no matter what Seth had taken away.I am still a whole witch, with a burgeoning desire to care for supernatural creatures, she told herself. And it was true. She felt it burning anew, the moment the creature answered.
“You very kindly left an offer when you borrowed my essence of dragon scale. And as I find myself with something of an issue, I felt it might be an appropriate time to take your good self up on it,” it said, and she grasped what the issue was before it had even finished speaking.
She heard it in her head, clearer than her witch sense had ever been before.They want a corporeal body that is visible to humans, she thought.Instead of having to employ this invisible-man act. And after she had she realized two things: what was under there wasn’t actually a physical being or beings. And the way to fix this was easy.
She would make them a shape to inhabit.
“Would you like to seem human, or like something else?” she asked, then watched as that scarf twitched into something like a smile.
“The former please,” they said.
So she stuffed down her heartbreak, and set to work.
She captured some smoke in a vial, and threw it into her biggest pot. Then added some plastic wrap to hold the form, and a little flour to give it body, and a few other ingredients that would make the shape easy to slip into and out of. And finally, she brought the concoction to a boil. A good, roiling boil, until the whole thing made a sound like someone popping bubblegum.
Done,she thought as she grabbed a jar to pour it into.
“At four in the afternoon exactly, open it up and drink,” she told the being, once she had sealed it up nice and tight. Then she handedit over. She watched it take what she had made in a gloved hand that wasn’t really there.
Before it ambled off her porch, in the direction of the woods.
But just as she was thinking,well, that was a good distraction—and that possibly she could distract herself with these sorts of good deeds forever—the creature turned. “Your wolf was right to speak so highly of you. I shall most certainly be recommending your services to the rest of the community,” it said.
And then somehow she was right back to square one.
SHE KIND OFthought by the next day she would be past square one. Especially when it became obvious that her last visitor had stayed true to his word. She had another visitor sometime in the afternoon—a troll named, inexplicably, Derek, who kept her busy with a potion for curing spontaneous nipple growth.
Only keeping herself busy didn’t seem to matter.
And not just because of what the non-corporeal being had said. Because of other things too, lots of things, weird things that shouldn’t have nagged at her, but did nonetheless. Like all of his soft expressions. And the super-sincere things he’d said. And how difficult it would have been for him to fake his kindnesses.
Because of course he must have faked them, if everything had been leading up to some final trap.But dear god, how?she found herself thinking, in her weakest moments. And even stranger: those moments didn’t feel weak. They felt convincing. Compelling. Sensible.
She just couldn’t fathom why. She was used to being skeptical and paranoid and anxious about everything Seth did. To always imagine another prank was coming, or wonder if now was the moment that cool indifference would return.
Because that was what usually made sense.
That was the version of events that had always won out in her mind.
But for some reason, that version was losing. Inexplicably, bizarrely, it was losing. Like he hadn’t left in the middle of the night.Like he couldn’t have left of his own accord. Like she’d never seen that text message. Or had seen it, but could somehow get around it.
Impossible, the old part of her brain said.
But for the first time, another part answered back.
You realize it’s entirely possible that they faked it, don’t you?
And of course she laughed. She told Pod, and he laughed too. Then the microwave and the TV joined in. The latter even played a funny bit fromFriends, looping the audience laugh track over and over. Which should have pretty much put an end to such thinking forever.
In fact it did, for a little while.
