“You knew it was going to be this.” He handed it to her, still in its tiny, tiny velvet box. Actually, with the box, it was almost bigger than a toy car he owned. But not quite.
“I knew it would be something like this.” Patricia put the ring into the pocket of her robe, where it barely made a lump. “Or the spell wouldn’t have worked.”
“Why couldn’t it just be something like, I have to stand on one foot for an hour? Why does it have to be my most valued possession, and the linchpin of my courting strategy? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Do you want to come in and have some toaster waffles?” Patricia stepped back and held the door open. “I can’t talk about this out here, in the open.”
The toaster waffles failed to materialize, but instead she had locally made organic Pop-Tarts, which were probably better. They sat on the gray lumpy sofa, where Deedee and the other roommate had been watching Jersey Shore every other time Laurence had been there. Patricia kept glancing over toward the hallway for any signs they were stirring or listening in to this conversation.
“So I might have mentioned there are two kinds of magic.” Patricia handed Laurence a blueberry pastry and a mug of English Breakfast.
“Good and bad, I’m guessing,” said Laurence, not quite having his mouth full. Patricia’s bathrobe was splayed out on the sofa next to him, and he wondered if he could grab the ring while she wasn’t looking. But then he remembered the part about someone getting pulled back into the nightmare dimension.
“No, though that’s a common misconception. There’s Healer magic and Trickster magic. Back in the day, many people believed Healer magic was good and Trickster magic was evil—but Healers can be judgmental control freaks, and Tricksters can be super-compassionate and basically save your life.”
“Like last night,” Laurence said.
Patricia nodded. “The Healer and Trickster schools formed over hundreds of years, out of lots of local traditions from all over the world. And there was a time, in the 1830s, when the two groups went to war. The world could have been torn apart. But there was this woman named Hortense Walker, who realized that the two types of magic worked better if you could combine them. You could do amazing things if you mastered both Trickster and Healer magic, way more than you could do with either type alone. Plus you were less likely to go over the edge into becoming a control freak or a lying jerkface.”
Laurence was already jumping ahead to the implications. “So if you want to accomplish something major using magic, you need to trick someone, or heal them. So you’re helpless without a patsy, or a sick person?”
“I wouldn’t say helpless. I spent years training to use these skills in lots of different situations. I can use Trickster magic to transform myself, even with nobody around. And if someone attacked me, I could ‘heal’ them so hard they’d feel it for a week.”
“Thanks for explaining.” Laurence ate the last corner of his blueberry pouch and then washed it down with the rest of the tea. He had a hundred more questions, but he wasn’t equipped to hear any more answers right now. He sank deeper into the broken upholstery of the couch. He would never, ever be able to pull his butt out of this sofa, he was just going to get dragged in deeper until he was swallowed, as if by a Venus Asstrap.
Every quadrant of Laurence’s soul was yelling for him to get the hell out of there before he lost more than his grandmother’s ring and his freedom of speech. But then he thought about the other promise he’d made the night before. The one he made of his own free will.
“I said I wouldn’t ever run away again,” Laurence said. “And I won’t.”
“Good.” Patricia let out a breath that sounded like she’d held it for ages. “More tea?”
“Sure.” Laurence found a marginally more comfortable arrangement on the couch, and Patricia handed him a fresh hot mug. They drank tea together in silence until Patricia’s roommates woke up and started giving Laurence the hairy eyeball.
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