The Human Familiar (Familiar and the Mage Book 1)

by Honor Raconteur

  He kept his hand at the nape of my neck, stroking idly with his fingers, and I wanted to stretch into the contact like a cat and purr. “What are you going to tell your family?”

  If he knew my parents better, he wouldn’t ask that question. “The truth. The whole truth as we know it. They won’t react well at first, but my family is surprisingly adaptable and they do better with more information instead of less.”

  “Your call.” His mouth worked, choosing and discarding words before settling on, “How much do you want me to tell my family?”

  “The whole truth,” I repeated steadily. “Because I think it will do them good to know why you’re here with me instead of safely coddled up there with them.”

  I could tell that was the answer he wanted. “Good. I—good. It will make this easier if they have a clear-cut reason.”

  “That’s settled, then.” I studied him and found that for once, I couldn’t really tell what he thought. “How are you doing with this?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Ask me again tomorrow, after I’ve had a chance to sleep on it.”

  I felt the same way and nodded understanding. Strangely, talking about it put some of the knots in my stomach to rest, and I felt like I could breathe again. So much so that I picked up another rice cake and this time actually enjoyed it. “I’m going to sleep on this and then, if I have questions, I’ll ask them of Trammel before he leaves in the morning.”

  “Might as well catch the man while you can,” Bannen agreed. “I certainly would. I still have some reservations about all of this, I won’t lie, and there’s parts that make me really uncomfortable. But honestly, before Trammel hit us with this, we worked well together and handled life just fine. I feel like knowing all of this won’t really change much in the long run. We know your health is improving now that your magic has me to use. As long as it’s not going to accidentally destroy you, that’s all I need to know.”

  I really hoped that it was as simple as that.

  After sleeping on it, I only woke up with two questions. I would probably think of others, but I felt like the two I had really answered everything that I truly needed to know. So I dressed quickly, suddenly paranoid about missing Trammel. He had given no indication of when he planned on leaving, just sometime in the morning.

  I raced downstairs, only to stop abruptly with a hand still on the handrail. Trammel sat ensconced at one of the center tables, a spread of food in front of him. I recognized Bannen’s hand when I saw it. There was a display of little bowls and plates, all with a different dish in them, and Trammel happily picked from one or another, stuffing his mouth full.

  Recognizing Bannen’s strategy, I caught his eye and mouthed Thank you.

  He winked at me and retreated back into the kitchen.

  Seriously, what did I do to deserve him? Smiling to myself, I joined Trammel at the table. “Good morning, sir.”

  “Good morning.” He paused with a fork hovering over what looked to be a salad. “You are taking this in better than I thought you would.”

  “Answers are normally better than uncertainties,” was the only explanation I could give him without sounding insane. “I did have two questions for you.”

  Popping another bite into his mouth, he gestured for me to go ahead.

  “First, are you going to report all of this to the Council?”

  “Naturally. Our arrangement states that I give them a full, detailed report on everything I discover. This should be a relief to you, as it means that you are magically within your rights to keep that young man and will yank their proverbial leg to stand on.” A knowing look glimmered in his eyes. I think he liked yanking on the Council’s chain. “What is your other question?”

  “You said that my magic is naturally destructive. That even when it doesn’t intend to have a direct impact on me, it does, because that is its nature. You said also that it helps if I use my magic on a daily basis. I’m not quite sure I follow why?”

  “To put it simply, when you use your magic, you fulfill its purpose and at the same time, drain its power. With its instincts satisfied and low energy to draw upon, of course it won’t have as strong of an influence on you. It’s a mixed blessing, as it also doesn’t have as much power to rebuild your physical form, but it’s also not doing as much damage.”

  I believed I understood what he meant. “So my body will always be in a constant state of renewal and decay.”

  “My dear child, every human on earth is in that constant state of flux. The only difference between you and them is that you have magic actively trying to put you back together. In the long run, you’ll probably live a very long life span because your magic is struggling to keep you alive.”

  That statement eased a fear that I hadn’t dared to think much less say. I’d harbored a suspicion that my lifespan would be shortened by my magic. “You think so?”

  “I would lay very good odds. Assuming you don’t do something and kill yourself off first. I don’t mean to say that your magic will be able to revive you no matter what injuries you sustain. Remember, it’s doing all it can just to offset the damage it’s doing to you. Anything more to that will increase the debt.”

  Strangely, I wasn’t worried about that. “That’s what Bannen is here for, to keep me safe.”

  “I’m strangely jealous that you get a human familiar,” Trammel said to himself as much as to me, looking at the spread of food around him. “He’s a good cook, mine can’t even pick up a—ow! Owowowowow, quit, you blood-thirsty little spitfire!”

  From the folds of his collar appeared a small wind sprite, by the look of it, and she had vicious hold of his ear, pulling with all her might, a petulant scowl etched into what should have been an ethereally beautiful face. She was all light blue in skin tone, long white hair, a delicate pair of wings bigger than she was. She must be incredibly shy, as Trammel had been with us for nearly four days and this was the first time I’d seen her.

  After he was appropriately punished, the familiar darted up to the rafters, scolding him in a high voice with words I couldn’t understand. The tone said enough, though.

  “Her familiar is supportive, you’re naggy,” Trammel informed her crossly, rubbing at his abused ear. “I swear I did something villainous in a previous life to deserve you.”

  That got another round of verbal abuse, which Trammel ignored with the ease of long practice. “At any rate, I’ve left a copy of my research notes and conclusions with your master. He’s pouring over it this morning, but I’m sure you can make your own copy to study. I might stop by from time to time, study your strange magic again, but for now I have enough to make a report with.”

  That was good enough for me. “Thank you for the consideration, sir. I wasn’t quite sure what to think when I first learned you were coming, but now I’m heartily glad that you did.”

  “Nobody likes to see me come, and everyone is glad to see me go,” he joked, not at all offended by this. “If you do have further questions, or if something else interesting happens, send a message to me through the Council. I’m very curious how your magic will develop.”

  Perhaps to the surprise of both of us, I meant it when I promised, “I will.”

  The next several days passed strangely to say the least. Rena oscillated between truly studying her magic to ignoring it completely. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to accept what was happening or repress it. I did know that the oscillation between those two attitudes proved extreme enough to give me mental whiplash.

  This wasn’t a struggle that I could help her with. I could listen, I could be supportive, but she had to come to terms with this herself. I basically puttered around the guildhall, trained, cooked, and kept a sharp lookout for assassins. None showed, which was good, as Rena remained so mentally scrambled she did not have the mindset for a fight.

  It helped, a little, when she sat down and talked to her family about all of this. It strangely helped even more when she explained it to my family. My parents’ attitude chan
ged with this knowledge. They went from prickly to accepting (although grudgingly so) that I was, indeed, exactly where I was supposed to be. I think what settled it for them was that I was a mage’s partner. That brought honor to the family name, and while they didn’t like the fact that I lived so far away, they were pleased about my new vocation. I had a feeling they were bragging. A lot.

  Nothing was ‘fine,’ not by a long stretch, but the mind could only focus on a problem with no actual solution before it let go of it and focused on other things. It was perhaps because of this that I felt I could sleep in this morning.

  Up until Rena landed on my bed and started jostling me. “Bannen.”

  “Jpespohjwserk,” I grumbled.

  “That’s either a word in your native language—which I don’t speak, by the way—or you’re not awake yet, and I need you to be awake.”

  I cracked open one eye and tried to focus enough to glare at her. “Go ’way, Rena.”

  “Look, I know you stayed up late last night playing that game with Mazey and Lance and them, but I really need you up. Like, now.”

  Actually, I’d stayed up until this morning, technically; we’d seen the light of pre-dawn before finally calling it quits and going to bed. I blamed the evil inventor of the card game. It proved ridiculously addictive. “Not moving,” I managed as articulately as possible.

  “You look like a sad dog right now, by the way, you know that, right? You look like you are either going to cry or bite someone.”

  I leaned toward biting someone. The someone sitting on my bed and bouncing me up and down was a handy target, I could go for that one.

  If she was spending this much energy trying to get me up, I had a feeling that a) it was important enough to roust me forcibly out of bed, and b) the fastest way to get back to bed was to give her whatever it was she wanted. I groaned, growled, huffed, and rolled over enough to put my feet against the floor.

  Since I showed progress, she left with a satisfied smile and an order, “We leave in ten minutes!” as she skipped out the door.

  Ten minutes? I would barely be able to wake up enough to find clothes and actually put them on in ten minutes. Blearily rubbing at my eyes, I stumbled around the room, getting ready. Mostly through willpower (and this feeling that Rena would be ruthless about getting me to move), I managed to get down to the kitchen with two minutes to spare. I fumbled my way through finding a cup, pouring tea from the kettle, and dumping half the sugar container in. It was gagging sweet, just the way I liked it, but more importantly I needed sugar if I were to function right now. At all.

  Rena danced impatiently near the front door, anxious for me to go. Feeling like a badly handled puppet, I tried to jog. It came out more of a high paced shuffle, but I called it progress. “Rena, if this isn’t an emergency—”

  “Master Vonda called,” she explained, already moving, pulling me along with her when she felt I was slacking. “Something happened this morning, I didn’t get details, but now Lori, Emily, Steph, Pilot, and Dax are all stuck together.”

  My sleep deprived brain turned that over. “That does sound troublesome.”

  “For whatever reason, the general consensus is that my magic would be best suited to undo…whatever it was that was done.”

  “I’m all for you going to a friend’s rescue, but Rena, you remember that we potentially have assassins after us? I’m not exactly awake enough to be fighting fit at the moment, shouldn’t we bring someone along with us?”

  “It’s been almost two weeks and no one’s tried anything,” she pointed out reasonably, not at all worried. “I think that we’d have been attacked by now if someone was still after you. Us.”

  Well, maybe she had a point. Maybe Trammel’s report to the Council put it all to rest and we wouldn’t have to worry about people popping out of the shadows. I still tried to jab my brain into motion enough that I was aware of our surroundings and potential trouble, as we traveled to Vonda’s place.

  Vonda was one of the rare mages that didn’t belong to some guild or grand company. She had her own little house, a two-story that sat sandwiched between a mercantile store and an accounting office. Rena went straight up the stairs, crossed the porch, and pushed through the front door without even knocking. “Master Vonda!”

  “Back room!” Vonda called back.

  We went down the narrow hallway to the last room on the left and the sight inside surprised me so much that I stumbled to a halt right in the doorway.

  Somehow—I died to know how—Steph, Lori, Emily, Dax, and Pilot all had gotten stuck together with this dense, greenish grey goop. Also mixed in, strangely enough, was a very alarmed pigeon, a mailbox, a shoe, and what looked to be a door in the back. Steph was completely out, her chin resting on her chest, eyes closed.

  “Is Steph hurt?” Rena demanded, heading straight for them.

  “Not really, we hit her head as we were trying to get through the door,” Emily answered. “She’s just unconscious.”

  “Don’t touch us!” Lori warned in the same breath.

  I caught Rena by the waist, halting her forward momentum. Their situation was so hilarious that I bit my bottom lip to keep from laughing. “Please, please tell me there’s a good story on this one.”

  “I’m not sure how good of a story it is,” Lori answered, making a face, “but we were on our way to get breakfast from that little bakery on 5th Street, and Steph was working a spell to get all of the dog hair off of her, and just as we rounded the corner, there was another apprentice that had a sticky spell he was working on, and the spells blended somehow.”

  “And then everything got stuck to us,” Emily grumped.

  I looked at Rena, wondering what she saw, only to find that her eyes were crossed. “That bad, huh.”

  “This is going to take me a minute,” she admitted. “How—I mean, the spell elements shouldn’t even try to combine like that, why by the deities…”

  At that moment Steph woke up and looked down at herself, around, taking it all in. “This,” she announced, “might be the weirdest place I’ve ever woken up.”

  “What, stuck in a sticky spell with me, Lori, and a panicked pigeon?” Emily cracked. “Nothing weird about that.”

  “At least, not compared to some of the places we’ve woken up,” Lori allowed, a manic grin on her face. “Have you forgotten Ravenswood?”

  “I’d repressed Ravenswood,” Steph shuddered.

  “Of course you can,” Emily bemoaned, “you got to keep your pants.”

  Before I could beg for the story on that line, Vonda stepped in. “Now, ladies, let’s remember we’re in mixed company.”

  No, let’s forget that, I really wanted to hear what happened. I caught Steph’s eye and mouthed, Tell me later, to which she gave me a wink.

  “Rena?” Vonda prompted. “Can you undo this?”

  “I think,” Rena said uncertainly, “that I’ll have to undo one spell, then another. At least, the elements that haven’t blended together. Trying to tackle them both is too complicated; the incantation will be very confusing.”

  “Whatever you need, girl,” Emily encouraged, “just get us free.”

  Rena set to work, falling into that intense focus where she blocked out the rest of the world. It was just as well, as the three girls got bored and Emily started singing one of those songs that doesn’t have an end but just loops back into itself. Steph and Lori, equally bored, happily joined in with Steph, sometimes trying to kick one of them and accusing them of ‘skipping a verse.’

  Not sure if I felt awake enough for this early morning show, I gratefully took the cup of hot tea Vonda offered me and guzzled it. I would admit that it was worth it, though. This would be quite the story to laugh about later.

  It took Rena some time, but she managed to untangle everyone. I caught the pigeon, setting it free out the back door. The poor thing immediately flew off with the strongest flap of wings it could. I didn’t blame it one iota. Pilot the dog shook himself free and then prom
ptly went outside to roll around in the grass. I doubted he was actually sticky, but I wasn’t going to begrudge him the urge. Dax the marmoset had more sense and went for the bird bath in the backyard, splashing around in it.

  The girls certainly felt the need for a bath, as they did nothing more than hug Rena thanks before rushing for the back bathing room. Vonda was the one that actually paid us for the rescue, plus a tip for breakfast, which I appreciated.

  We left the building, Rena smiling, me yawning. I watched her and for once didn’t see any sign of the emotional upheaval she’d been wrestling with for the past four days. She finally seemed at some sort of peace with herself and her magic. I was glad for it, as when she was on edge, so was I. I still didn’t really know how I felt about her magic, as my emotions seemed to zing all over the board, but I knew if I just gave it more time, I’d settle as well. At least Rena hadn’t fallen into a depression about this whole thing. That had been my main worry.

  If Rena realized my thoughts, she didn’t give it away. “Breakfast?” she asked me, a bounce in her step.

  “I like food,” I agreed seriously, trying to judge from her expression what today was going to be like. “Ah, I take it you have a job in mind for today?”

  “I do, but it’ll be quick, no more than an hour or so. Then you can go back and nap.”

  I felt reasonably sure I could stay awake another hour. “I’m holding you to that. What do you want for breakfast?”

  Rena seriously pondered this for a full minute. “Watermelon,” she decided. “Or maybe an apple crust pie. Or both.”

  This was the joy of asking a woman what she wanted to eat. Amused despite myself, I said, “Well, why don’t you get the apple crust pie from the bakery, we’ll pick up a watermelon or three to share with the guild.”

  “It’ll get sticky if we try to get more than a half,” she responded, frowning.

  I did not follow this statement at all. “Why would it get sticky? Watermelons are solid until you bust them open.”