Chapter 1
Reg had started her day early. In fact, she’d actually fed Starlight, finished her morning coffee, and cleaned the bathroom before noon. It was shaping up to be a pretty productive day.
She sat down on the couch with the Theodex, a gaming device that had belonged to Theodore, her homunculus, before he had been a casualty of Reg’s shattering of the enchanted mirror known as Bob.
Not exactly a casualty, because according to the magical practitioners that were Reg’s friends and acquaintances, he hadn’t been alive in the first place. Just a spell that had drawn its energy from the mirror. And because his intelligence still lived on in an avatar in one of the games on the Theodex. Once she’d accepted the Theodex’s Terms and Conditions, Reg could enter Theodore’s virtual world with her avatar and interact with him there, as well as in the game’s private chat area.
So Theodore wasn’t exactly gone. But she still couldn’t touch him or see more than the rudimentary expression on his face. They couldn’t sit down and eat a bag of marshmallows together as they had in real life.
Bob, the mirror’s intelligence, also lived on in the Theodex, in the general chat that Reg saw every time she turned the Theodex on. Bob’s fury at Reg for destroying his mirror had not abated. He still made threats and nasty comments to her whenever she turned the Theodex on. And even while she was offline.
But she didn’t pay Bob any attention. It was easy enough to just skip past that screen and jump into Theodore’s game before she’d had a chance to process any of Bob’s words.
There was a light knock on the door. Reg glanced out the living room window to see that it was Sarah, the old witch who had rented Reg the guest cottage and who mothered Reg far too much with gifts of food, tidying and maintaining the house, and referring new clients, who she wrote into the appointment book that lived on Reg’s kitchen island.
“Come in!” Reg called out to her.
Sarah let herself in, which she would have done even if Reg hadn’t called out. Privacy could be a problem, but Reg admitted to herself that the invasion of her space was far outweighed by the fact that all her needs were provided for and she was able to live independently, without having to do all the cooking and cleaning she should have had to.
“Good afternoon, Reg,” Sarah greeted her pleasantly, her round, wrinkled face creased with a smile. Her gray hair framed her face, and with her pleasantly plump body and the old lady dresses she often wore, she looked like someone’s grandmother. And she probably was, several times over. Reg knew that Sarah had been married at least once. She looked to be in her sixties but claimed to be centuries old.
“It’s still morning,” Reg protested, and turned on the game. The time in the corner of the LED screen told her that it was, in fact, two minutes past noon. “Oh, well. It was.”
Sarah smiled. “Time flies by,” she observed. “Like the seeds of a dandelion floating on the breeze.”
“Well, that’s very… poetic,” Reg observed. Sarah wasn’t usually so flowery, but Reg had wondered lately whether she was seeing someone new romantically, and this seemed to clinch it.
Sarah laughed and glided into Reg’s kitchen to have a look at the appointment book and check the contents of the fridge. Reg had just cleaned it out, so it wasn’t stuffed to the gills with food as it often was. That would probably convince Sarah that Reg was going to starve and the fridge needed to be restocked immediately.
“You’re looking well today,” Sarah observed. “And it did not escape my attention how ‘early’ you were up this morning. You must be feeling better.”
Reg shrugged. Life was certainly much better when she didn’t have to worry about fulfilling a quest, a hormonal dragon, or the break-up between her mentor, Davyn, and her archenemy, Julian Sabat.
Well, one of her archenemies. In truth, Julian was no longer intent on destroying Reg. But he had been an adversary since they had been in the same foster home together as children, vying for the attention and approval of the Newburgs.
“Yeah, I’m doing pretty good,” she admitted. “It’s kind of nice to be able to go to sleep without worrying about… all of the troubles lately. Just… live my life normally.”
However normal it could be for a psychic who was also blessed with a number of unusual gifts, discovered upon her move to Black Sands, where she had planned a new con job offering her services as a fortune-teller. No one had been more shocked than Reg to discover that she actually was a psychic and that the magical world thrived in Black Sands, with a very high percentage of the population being witches, warlocks, or other magical practitioners.
This had explained the imaginary friends she’d had as a child and the voices that she heard in her head. Not psychosis, but a gift.
What would her life have been like if she’d been raised by people who had understood her special gifts? Reg had a hard time imagining what that would have looked like. It would certainly have been different from the series of foster homes she’d had.
“Well, I’m certainly glad to see that you are feeling more like yourself,” Sarah observed with a satisfied smile.
She even walked over to where Starlight was curled up in the sunny window and scratched behind the ears of the tuxedo cat with mismatched green and blue eyes and a splash of white in the third eye position on his forehead.
Starlight lifted his head and looked at Sarah. She didn’t even like cats. But she was a soft touch when he wanted a treat.
However, he was too warm and cozy on the windowsill to beg for treats, so he just gave a little meow and put his head down again.
Chapter 2
Reg waited until Sarah was gone again before turning on the Theodex. She didn’t really want anyone to know that she was still in communication with Bob and Theodore. They all thought the two entities had been permanently banished by the destruction of the mirror, and Reg hadn’t seen the need to tell anyone they still existed on the internet and that she could access them through the gaming device. She’d gotten enough grief when she had rescued Theodore the homunculus from where he had been abandoned in the forest. Everyone had told her that a homunculus ceased to exist after the death of its creator, so no one had understood how Theodore could continue to exist after Sma Firea had poisoned herself.
They had all advised Reg against having anything to do with something she could not understand, and an entity that had been bound in servitude to another master. Well, there were a lot of things that Reg didn’t understand about life in Black Sands and the magical world, and she still had to live there and function in society.
And she had liked Theodore.
She skipped quickly past the main chat screen, where Bob ranted at her, and into Theodore’s game.
He’d been spending a lot of time lately at the virtual pub with the avatars who had been his company on his latest quest. Reg had expected them to do a lot of adventuring, but it seemed like they spent most of their time just visiting and recounting the adventures they had been through already, which Reg thought was pretty boring. But then, she had been glad to get back to her life after her last quest, too.
Theodore was there at the bar, looking roughly like he had in his previous incarnation—like a child of nine or so, with dark hair, flat black eyes, and a Spider-Man t-shirt. Theodore loved Spider-Man, despite Bob trying to talk him into liking one of the supervillains better.
Reg, Theodore’s text appeared in the game chat box, How are you?
I’m good. How about you?
I am good too.
Any plans for more quests? Reg asked him.
We still need to complete the last one.
Reg frowned. I thought the last one was to acquire the grimoire. And we’ve done that.
Acquiring the grimoire was only the first step, Theodore told her.
Reg felt a chill. She didn’t know why. The grimoire was safe where it was. And neither Bob nor Theodore had any access to it. Theodore might have plans for what he was going to do with the grimoire, maybe some directive that Sma had given him before she had died, but without a physical form, Theodore was not able to carry it out.
Have you seen any new Spider-Man movies? Reg asked him to distract him from any complaints or instructions about the grimoire. She wasn’t going to do Theodore’s bidding. He might have thought she was, because she had found the grimoire when he had been questing for it, but Reg was her own person, and if anything, Theodore was her servant, not the other way around.
Not that she saw him as her servant. She had taken care of him when he had still been a homunculus. Sometimes she had given him jobs to do or had used him to read books and answer questions for her, but she had not treated him as a servant. He had been more like a child in her care. One who happened to be very knowledgeable and good at answering questions.
But also unpredictable and not always trustworthy.
Theodore went off into a long spiel about all of the Spider-Man movies. Reg didn’t know how many of them there were and how many Theodore had actually seen. But he knew all of the trivia about who had acted in them and other esoteric details that Reg didn’t care about at all. She just wanted him to focus on something other than the grimoire.
Reg’s phone rang in the pocket of her colorful peasant skirt. She sent Theodore a goodbye wave emoji and turned off the Theodex. Retrieving the phone from her pocket, she saw that it was Davyn.
“Hey,” Reg greeted after swiping the screen. “How are you doing?”
There was a slight hesitation before Davyn answered. Maybe he was trying to figure out how to put his feelings into words. Or perhaps he was composing a lie to cover himself.
“Things are going pretty well,” he told her, skirting the issue of any actual feelings. “How about with you? Things have slowed down to give you a chance to recover?”
“Yeah, for the moment,” Reg agreed. “I’m glad for the recovery time.”
“Got any clients tonight?”
“Yes, a few. Some readings and a seance.”
“New clients or old?”
“Mostly old. One new one.” She paused, wondering why he was interested in her activities or her clients. But probably, he was just being friendly and making small talk. That wasn’t why he had called her. “How about you? You’re back at work and… everything?”
“Yes. I guess I’ve settled into the old routine. Or a new one. It’s a little strange… with Ember and Julian being gone.”
Reg felt a stab of pain at the mention of Ember. She didn’t know how dragon mothers felt when their children separated and went their own way, but she was certainly feeling blue about not having the dragon she had helped to raise around lately.
He was in Drakuntsee now, safe from any harm from humans. She had been worried about him as he had grown larger and more active, worried that people would not tolerate a dragon close to Black Sands or the outlying properties. People were concerned about their safety or the safety of their children and animals.
And just as importantly, Ember had found a companion, or at least a love interest, in Heartaflame, the siren in dragon form that protected the waters around Drakuntsee. She didn’t exactly know how relationships between seawyrms and firedrakes worked, but they seemed compatible, and Reg was happy that Ember was happy.
At least, she tried to be.
“Things must seem really quiet over there,” she guessed.
Davyn sighed. “Yes, sort of. Though Ember was not usually here looking for attention. I would see him when he was around, at the beginning or end of the day, but he didn’t usually come by during the day, and I am usually at work.”
“And Julian?”
“Yes,” Davyn admitted. “It’s been an adjustment to get used to him not being here anymore. I’ve lived most of my life by myself, so it’s not a big deal not to have a partner here, but I had gotten used to Julian being around.”
“Sorry that everything fell apart like that.”
The mirror had caused a lot of problems that hadn’t been present before Julian had purchased it. Or maybe there had been other problems already, and it just hadn’t been obvious. Maybe the presence of Bob had made things worse, rather than causing issues that hadn’t been there before. Reg’s destruction of the mirror, which had begun with Davyn’s call for help, had created a rift that Reg didn’t think would ever be fixed. Reg was glad he was gone, but not glad that Davyn had been hurt during the process.
“Are you… have you seen any more of Bailey?” she asked tentatively. That had looked like a promising beginning. And Davyn already knew him from way back, so they didn’t need to have a long getting-to-know-you phase.
“Well, yes. We have seen a bit more of each other. I’m trying to take it slow. I don’t want this to be a rebound relationship that just gets thrown away after a fling. I’m not looking for a casual relationship.”
“He seemed like a good guy. He likes dragons, after all. That says something for him.”
“And dragons and firecasters have always had certain similarities.”
Reg smiled. “Well, I hope it works out.” She scratched the back of her head. “And… Julian…? You don’t think he’ll be back? He’s not harassing you or anything?”
“He’s finally got all of his stuff out of the house, though there is still more stuff in the barn that he needs to clear out. At least that isn’t in my living space, and he can come and get it whenever he is around. But he isn’t spending much time in this corner of the country, which is a good thing. Give us both some space to recover.”
“Has he recovered? His health, I mean? He was in pretty bad shape after the mirror.”
“It will be a process. Last time I saw Julian, he was still pretty rough. But he’s on the mend. It will probably take a few months before he is back to where he was before.”
“But you think he’ll have a full recovery?”
“Yes. I don’t think there’s any permanent damage.” Davyn paused. “I hope not.”
“He already had damage before he started using the mirror. Brains don’t always bounce back.”
“I can’t let that be my concern. Julian and I are over, and he’ll manage his life how he wants to.”
“Sorry, yeah. I didn’t mean to say that you had to take care of Julian or monitor him or something. I know that’s not going to happen.”
Davyn cleared his throat. “No. And he hasn’t been on your case? I was a little worried about how angry he was with you after the mirror. I wondered whether he would be able to let it go and leave you alone, or whether he would… misbehave.”
Reg blew out her breath. “No, he hasn’t been in contact. I was worried too, but he hasn’t shown up here and isn’t harassing me with phone calls or messages. I haven’t heard anything. That’s why I wondered whether he is okay.”
“As far as I know, he’s back to work and everything is fine.”
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