His lips ghost over the back of my neck as he groans. “That didn’t stop you from fantasizing about me.”
My hand trembles and I splotch the sign with a heavy dot of white.
The toilet flushing brings me back to my senses.
“Later,” I say, shooing away his tail as I jab my paintbrush at his face.
Bastian backs away with a lewd smirk. “I’ll hold you to that.”
He disappears in an inky mist just as Renee opens the door. I try not to look flustered, but I think she can tell.
“Oh, that was a choice,” she says as she looks at my sign.
The white blotch is right over the spaceship I’d painted an hour before.
I clear my throat to buy time for my excuse. “I was trying to make a lens flare, or, whatever…”
“Uh huh,” she says with amusement as she takes her seat.
We paint in quiet for a while, heat creeping over my face with every second.
“So, any encounters with that warlock?” Renee finally asks.
“Just the one I told you about, but nothing since. Bastian thinks he’s still recovering and planning his next attempt.”
“And your progress?” she prods.
I pull down a deep breath and swish my paintbrush through the air like a magic wand. White curls off the brush in long swipes as I move, rippling like paint in water. I draw her a spaceship…sorta.
She snorts. “Wow, nice cock.”
“It’s a rocket,” I say indignantly.
I jab the brush in her direction and fling the illusionary paint at her. She yelps and covers her face with her arm, then looks at it with confusion when nothing hits her.
“Not real, remember?” I say, dipping my brush in the watery white again because by golly, I’m going to make that lens flare happen.
“Right, so weird,” she says. “But Bastian’s magic is real?”
I nod. “More or less.”
“Why do you think the warlock wants him?” she asks.
“He can create things, even heal people. They want to use him,” I say, circling the brush around the other blotch to make a lighter, more transparent blotch.
“Why didn’t the warlock just blow us up with magic and take him that day on the docks?”
I’d asked Bastian the same thing a few days after the front door incident. He was cagey and reluctant to share, but mostly I think it was from confusion and a lack of details. He doesn’t like to not be in the know.
“I think it has something to do with Oscar. The creep didn’t seem to like him,” I say, giving my buddy a little scritch behind the ears.
He’s balled up some of our drop cloth into a bed for himself, despite having many around the house. The sun glistens against his silky fur as he rolls to the side and shows his belly, an invitation for a few good scritches there. I oblige but stop at three for fear of going over.
“Dude justwalkedinto the lake,” Renee murmurs.
“I know,” I say, shaking my head. “I think he was trying to scare us, like,look what I can do.I don’t know. I’m worried about what he’ll try next, but Bastian tells me we’re very safe here.”
She sighs. “But that means you can’t leave. And plus, what if he comes after us to get at you?”
