by Zoe Chant
The roar silenced in an instant, and after a moment, Rez cautiously picked it up again.
The creature inside had been subdued. Or perhaps it had escaped in that moment. The device was warm to the touch.
More careful now, Rez inspected the glass chamber. One of the panels slid to the side, and he carefully stepped inside. This was clearly a place of magic, the strong smells of flowers and spices almost overwhelming here. There were bottles of her spell ingredients standing on a shelf. There were knobs on the wall, and a metal serpent with a cylindrical face frozen in place above them.
Vesta did not offer to come into the sacred chamber with him, standing outside with her tail wagging.
Rez opened each bottle in turn, hoping for a clue in the scents, but each was filled with some kind of rich liquid, and he had no idea what combination would undo what she had cast. In the end he replaced the lids and left the chamber altogether, Vesta at his heels.
Would it be so bad to fail? he wondered as he went to the last door in the hallway.
He had been fighting for so long, so uselessly. The promise of peace in her warm eyes, in her warm skin, in her warm embrace...was it wrong of him to want that?
It was hard to think ill of Heather, his senses clouded by his need for her. It would be so easy, to give in and let her seduce him into her arms.
This last room was clearly a sleeping chamber. A wide bed was covered in decadent pillows and silky-looking sheets and light blankets. For a moment, Rez could do nothing but imagine laying Heather down on that bed, her beautiful skin dark against the pale sheets, her hair spread on the pillow beneath her. It took all of his self-discipline to turn away and wrestle himself back into control.
There were bookshelves all along the walls, and Rez drew his fingers along the spines, reading the titles.
It was a wide range of titles and topics, and he drew one down at random: “Tales of the Fae.”
Chapter 6
Heather had been so dazzled by her naked unicorn knight from another world that she had forgotten to take her key with her, so she stood outside her own apartment and knocked.
It took so long for Rez to answer the door that for a moment Heather had a moment of panic wondering if she actually had imagined the whole thing. She dreaded trying to track down Marcus to let her back in.
Then Rez was sweeping the door open and Vesta was prancing forward to greet her with whines and yips of joy.
Heather barely noticed her, staring at Rez.
She was pretty sure she wasn’t imagining him simply because her imagination had never been so generous with her. He was like a god, or a gladiator.
“I borrowed you some clothes,” she tried to say. It sounded more like, “Ahh baaaaaah waaaaaah…”
She settled for thrusting the pants and shirt she was holding at him, and bending to greet Vesta with a back scratch to cover her confusion. Bending over, unfortunately, put her at eye level with Rez’s considerable...attributes. At some point, he’d lost the afghan kilt.
She straightened so swiftly that she nearly fell over, and Rez steadied her with a hand on her arm that felt like an electric shock.
“These are curious garments,” Rez said, unfolding them.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Heather attempted. It was mostly stuttering and long vowels again. The sooner this man got dressed, the sooner she’d be able to manage words again.
He pulled on the sweatpants and t-shirt while she looked fixedly away. They mostly fit, to Heather’s relief. The sweats were a little snug and short, and the t-shirt was tight in the shoulders and otherwise loose. Instead of looking less sexy, Rez just looked tantalizing.
“I have discovered your library,” he said. “And I have perhaps uncovered some clues about where I am from.”
Heather looked at the book that he’d found, knotting her brows in curiosity. “That’s...fiction,” she cautioned him. Then she remembered that he’d been caught in a glass ornament, and was, allegedly, half unicorn, and nothing seemed too crazy.
“Does your world also have stories that have seeds of truth?” Rez asked.
Heather thought wryly about the news, and about fairy tales. “You could say that.”
“This book talks about a place of fae, beyond a veil, where a royal court of magic users rules. A world that lacks your strange technology. This...may describe my world. Though I swear on my honor that I have not and would not steal children.”
Heather looked at him and had a pang of sympathy for him that trumped her feelings of lust. He was all alone in a strange, alien world, looking for a purpose, a reason to be here, of all places.
Then she looked past him. “What did you do to my vacuum cleaner?” she demanded.
The closet door was open, the vacuum on its side in the hallway.
“I do not believe it came to harm,” Rez said. “But I may have released the creature from your workshop.”
“Creature in my…okay, you know what, it is too hot to think. Marcus left his toolbox, I’m going to change my clothes and see if I can fix the air conditioner myself, and you can tell me more about this magical world that you came from.”
Heather changed swiftly in the bathroom, picking her hair dryer up off the floor in confusion. She splashed herself with cool water, and slipped into a pair of shorts and a tank top.
Rez’s reaction to her was gratifying; his eyes on her were hot and full of desire. He set his teeth, like he was trying to be angry with her. “Is it seemly to dress thusly?” he inquired.
“This is far more normal than the green velvet,” Heather assured him. “You probably shouldn’t use me as a benchmark for modern fashion.” She wondered what he’d think when she dressed up for her Ren Faire job in a few days.
The Internet assured her that her air conditioner causing the fuse to blow was most likely caused by a short, and described several solutions that sounded like they were actually in her realm of expertise. Rez asked her the names of all the items in her apartment, and she absently answered him.
While she took the cover off of the unit, Rez told her about his shieldmates.
“Are you all unicorns?” Heather asked. A world of unicorn fairy hunks didn’t sound all bad.
“No, my brothers are a dragon and a gryphon and my sister is a firebird. Our teacher is Robin, a fable.”
“Sounds like a fun family reunion,” Heather quipped.
“I miss them,” Rez said solemnly. “We trained together our entire lives. In vain.”
Heather didn’t have an answer for that.
“What is it you are doing?” Rez asked, looking over her shoulder at the tangle of wires and circuit boards she had exposed.
“So, when this thing turns on, it trips the breaker, so it’s drawing more energy than it ought to be, because...okay, do you know what electricity is?”
“I do not,” Rez confessed.
He was kneeling very close to her, and even clothed, his presence made Heather think of a very different kind of electricity. “It’s...ah...an energy source,” she explained. “It comes from wires that are running in the walls that connect to a big central power plant.”
“Like magic,” Rez suggested.
“Well, it’s not,” Heather floundered. “It’s made using science, and it’s run to our houses and comes out from these outlets here.”
Rez started to put his finger towards the holes.
“No!” Heather warned him. “It’s dangerous. Too big an electric shock can kill you.”
“Like magic,” Rez repeated, but he pulled his hands back respectfully.
“So electricity has to follow a path, through these wires. If you disrupt the path, it just stops. And in this case, if you have a short—that’s a place a wire crosses where it shouldn’t—then you end up with surge of electricity that trips the breaker, and that breaks the path for the electricity.”
“Why have a breaker?” Rez asked, and he was so close to Heather that her own brain was shorting out a little.
“Because if too much energy runs through wires, they get really hot, and they can...cause fires.”
There were fires now, in the pit of Heather’s stomach, and lower, and Rez was leaning even closer.
“I must find a way to break your spell,” he said, and then he reached out and dragged a reluctant finger down the side of her face.
“My spell?” Heather whispered, the air conditioner entirely forgotten. “There’s no magic here. No magic but you.”
“There is,” Rez insisted. “I can feel it, just out of reach. And I can feel the allure you’ve cast on me.”
“I promise, I haven’t cast anything on you,” she insisted, the path of his finger wildly alive. “I wouldn’t know how.”
It would have taken the slightest lean forward to kiss him, barely even an effort, and Heather desperately wanted to. She wanted to slide her arms up around those beautiful shoulders, twine her fingers into his soft hair. She wanted his arms crushing her, and his mouth against hers.
And she thought that he might want her, too.
But there was crazy, and then there was kissing a hot stranger who came out of a magic glass ornament crazy.
She turned back to the air conditioner.
Chapter 7
When Rez expected her to demand the kiss he was ready to surrender to, she surprised him by drawing away.
“Oh look,” she breathed. “There’s the short.”
Rez could make no sense of what he was seeing, but the wires and circuit boards that she pointed out must have made sense to Heather.
“I’m lucky this thing didn’t burst into flames,” she muttered.
Rez retreated enough that she could manage to untangle the mess and carefully peel away the damaged plastic from the wires. Marcus’ toolbox had an assortment of specialized tools that she used to cut and strip the wires back to undamaged sheathing.
He watched her in confusion and awe. He had been ready to succumb to her wiles, and if he was any judge, she had wanted him as badly as he wanted her. But she had turned her face away, rather than accept his defeat.
Was it possible that she had not enchanted him? Could some greater force be at work?
She twisted the wires back into the nuts, while Rez gazed in wonder at the image frozen on her phone. “Is this a scrying tool?”
“It’s a phone,” Heather explained. “I mostly use it to text people and learn how to do things. That’s not magic. It’s YouTube.”
“It looks like a powerful teaching tool,” Rez said in awe. “But how does it use electricity without a...path to the place the electricity comes from?”
Heather opened her mouth to explain, then shrugged. “It’s complicated.” She sat back on her heels. “I think it’s done.” She put the casing back over the box and plugged it back in.
Nothing happened. She pushed various buttons in dismay, then exclaimed, “The fuse box!”
Vesta raced her to the kitchen and skidded around in circles while Heather opened the fuse box and reset the breaker.
The box grumbled to life, reluctantly started the fan blades and began to spew increasingly cold air.
Rez backed away from it in alarm. “Is it supposed to do that?”
Heather came to stand in front of it fearlessly. “That is exactly what it’s supposed to do,” she said in relief. Already, the air in the room was considerably more comfortable.
“Now there’s at least a chance of being able to sleep tonight,” she said in relief. She glanced at him. “I guess you’ll need a place to stay.”
Rez hated to ask her for anything, even as his suspicion that she was deliberately enticing him for nefarious purposes faded to nothing. “I do not wish to impose,” he said reluctantly.
Heather waved a careless hand. “I’ve got an air mattress, you can sleep out here on the floor. I promise not to peek. Not that I haven’t already...ah, never mind.”
If she had intended to seduce him, it was doubtful that she would offer him private space. Rez didn’t understand her motives, or her, or even the world he found himself in, but he was ready to accept that she was not malicious.
“I am grateful,” Rez said formally. “I will repay your generosity when I am able.”
“We can look for your shieldmates tomorrow,” Heather suggested. “Maybe they were trapped in ornaments, too. I can check our database at The Ornament Shoppe, and contact some of our ornament dealers. I’ll let Fred and Angie know what to look for, too. Are you hungry?”
Rez recognized that he was, beneath his consuming desire for her. “I confess that I am quite ravenous.”
“Me, too. I’ve got some leftover Chinese food and half a rotisserie chicken, if you don’t mind some odds and ends.”
They left the not-magic cold-making box and she showed him an also-not-magic box that turned cold food from her large cold-making container into steaming, hot food. “Does all of technology focus on changing the temperature of things?” Rez asked, carefully tasting his curious food.
“No,” Heather chuckled. “We also have a lot of technology invested in moving people and things from place to place, and in entertainment.”
She showed him pictures of cars and trains as they ate, and briefly turned on the television, which was like a portal or a scrying glass, but offered no actual interaction, only a selection of plays and loud opinions. “This requires more context than you have, I’m afraid.” She turned it off and Rez was grateful because it all seemed like a great deal to absorb and his head already felt uncomfortably full.
The food was strange, but nourishing and unobjectionable. Heather let him carry their dishes to the sink, and load them into another not-magic box that would clean them.
“This must all be really strange to you,” she said to him with sympathy as she unfolded a flexible, rubbery cloth and began to blow it up with a foot pump.
“Strange does not begin to cover it,” Rez admitted. “I am...grateful for your patience and your hospitality.”
“I’d probably be just as lost in your world,” Heather said gently.
“Is this…is this a good world?” Rez asked.
Heather stopped blowing up the air mattress and looked at him in consternation. “How do you judge something like that?” she asked. “I mean, this world has its flaws, and its problems, and its drunk jerks. But...it also has music that will heal your soul, and beautiful art, and unselfish people doing amazing things. It’s a complicated world. And...yeah, I think it’s a good world at the end of the day.”
Rez lowered his head. “That is...comforting,” he said quietly. “The world I left no longer had those things.”
“That’s terrible,” Heather murmured. She resumed the tedious act of filling the mattress with air, then disconnected the foot pump. “I hope you’re comfortable on this,” she said apologetically. “If you get hungry, you can have a snack from the fridge. Oh, and let me show you the bathroom.”
She demonstrated the shower, and the uncomfortable chair proved to be a clever, water-flushing waste receptacle. The sink hand-pumps and the shower serpent required no pumping whatsoever, just a gentle adjustment of the handle and clean, clear water in multiple temperatures poured out.
“Don’t waste it,” Heather cautioned. “I pay utilities here.”
She gave him a fresh towel and sheepishly picked up the towel that Vesta had claimed for her own.
Then she left him, closing the door behind her.
Rez could not resist trying again to scry in the unblemished mirror, and this time, he felt like the magic was tangible to his will for a few moments before skittering away. Perhaps time and patience would adjust him to the strange frequencies of this world.
He finished preparing himself for rest and came out to find that there were sheets and luxurious blankets spread out on his temporary bed, complete with thick pillows.
Vesta was already lying in the middle of it, wriggling joyously.
“Come on, sweetie,” Heather said.
For one brief moment
, Rez thought she meant him, then realized with a pang that she was referring to the little gray dog, who was pointedly ignoring her and wagging her tail slowly.
“Heather of Apartment 35…” Rez wasn’t sure how to continue when she turned her eyes to him. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome…” She was trembling, almost like her little dog did, and Rez realized that she was standing very close, her head tipped up to him. He could kiss her, he thought achingly. He could sweep her into his arms and lay her down on that bed and lose himself for a little while with her.
He could not blame that desire on her or on magic she claimed she didn’t have. It was entirely him, craving entirely her.
“Good night,” she said faintly, and she backed all the way down the hallway.
She was stepping sideways into her bed chamber before Vesta realized that she was being abandoned. She scrambled off the temporary bed and flew after her mistress.
Rez wished he could do the same.
Chapter 8
Heather didn’t sleep well, and woke frequently to wonder if she’d gone stark raving mad the day before. Fae knights trapped in glass ornaments seemed highly unlikely when she was alone in her bed at night with the door shut.
Heat hallucination?
Sheer desperation?
Too much reading before bed?
She’d been looking through her college mythology texts just a few weeks ago, thumbing through the color plates, wistfully wondering if knights in shining armor ever really existed as she looked for ideas for new Ren Fair garb.
Had she manifested her buried desires by accident, or would she wake up the next morning to find her apartment empty?
She thought over everything that Rez had said and done, and found that remembering what he looked like, how he smelled, how warm his skin was, was more than enough to keep her from further sleep.