“Oof. That was a loooong day,” said Oscar, sighing wearily, as though he’d spent the day digging ditches in the hot sun instead of snoozing on his silk pillow fifty minutes out of every hour. He perched on the kitchen counter, his snout still covered in orange cracker crumbs. “This ten-to-six business is wearing me out. . . .”
“Is that right?” I said, filling my old copper kettle with water and setting it on the burner. “Napping all day tuckers you out, does it?”
“That’s a ruse,” Oscar said solemnly. “I’m actually fully alert, ready to spring into action. You think it’s that easy?”
I smiled. “Probably not. So tell me: What does a hardworking gobgoyle such as yourself need to revive?”
“A little mac ’n’ cheese couldn’t hurt.”
Oscar remained in pig form only when we were in public. In the privacy of our home, he shifted into his natural self: a cross between a goblin and a gargoyle. It’s hard to imagine quite how such a pairing came together, but as with many things in the supernatural world, it was best not to ask too many questions. Oscar’s hide was gray-green and scaly; he had large hands and taloned feet, big batlike ears, and a longish snout. At full height he didn’t quite reach my waist.
Oscar called himself my familiar and addressed me as “mistress,” but at this point in our relationship he was more like my sidekick. A garrulous, ravenous sidekick who was wise in the ways of the magic folk.
“Mac ’n’ cheese? What a surprise,” I said with a smile, and began to gather the ingredients for Oscar’s favorite meal. Luckily, I had replenished my cheese supply last weekend at the farmers’ market. Oscar adored cheese. And carbs. Mostly in combination. “Oscar, will you start the pasta cooking?”
“Yes, mistress.” He took the large soup pot from the shelf near the stove and went over to the sink to fill it.
“Oscar, do you know what Tristan Dupree was talking about?”
“Don’t like that guy,” Oscar said, placing the pot on the old Wedgewood stove and lighting the burner.
“So you know him?”
Silence. He stared at me with his wide bottle green eyes, doing his best to look innocent. This was another way in which Oscar wasn’t a typical familiar: He only occasionally told me what I wanted to know, or did what I asked him to do. And he was stubborn as all get-out. By now I knew better than to waste my breath trying to get him to tell me something he wasn’t ready to reveal.
“All righty, then,” I said. “Let’s come at this from a different angle: Do you know what Tristan might be looking for? What’s a ‘beeeuuugh,’ or whatever it was he called it?”
He shrugged one bony shoulder. “Beats me. I forgot my Old English. It’s been years since anybody talked that way.” Oscar was something of a linguistic chameleon. He spoke numerous spirit languages, when speaking English favored a lot of teen slang, and now had a tendency to mimic my Texas twang. Or maybe he was making fun of me; it was hard to tell.
“Just how old are you?”
He looked at me askance. “You’re not supposed to ask things like that! Sheesh.”
It was humbling to be taught social niceties by a gobgoyle.
I sneezed.
“Gesundheit. You know what you oughta do for that cold? Find a topaz the color of the sea. Take a boat out to the middle of the bay and—”
“It’s not a cold.”
“Whatever you say.” Oscar shrugged. “How much longer until the mac ’n’ cheese is ready?”
“Soon as the pasta’s done, little guy,” I said, finishing the cheese sauce. “I don’t have time to bake it in the oven like I usually do, so cheese sauce and macaroni mixed together in the pot will have to do. I need to take care of a few things.”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Oscar said magnanimously. “Whatcha gotta do that’s so important?”
“I want to take a quick look through my old suitcase, and then I have to go see Aidan.”
“Master Aidan? Why?” Oscar’s huge eyes got impossibly wide.
“He’s not your master anymore, remember?”
“Listen.” He tried to smile, which came across as a grimace, then chuckled, which sounded like a rusty saw. “No need to talk with Maaaiiiister Aidan, no need at all. I know a little Middle English—how about this?”
He launched himself off the counter, landed lightly on the kitchen floor, and began reciting a poem, complete with sweeping gestures of his surprisingly graceful oversized hands:
WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth—
“Stop that Oscar! Stop it at once!” I said, alarmed. “Is that . . . are you casting a spell?”
He blinked, one arm still held aloft, frozen in a dramatic pose. “What are you talkin’ about? You know my kind don’t cast spells.”
“Then . . . what are you doing?”
“Duh.” He rolled his eyes.
“Duh what?” I said, impatient now.
“I’m reciting the prelude from The Canterbury Tales.” Oscar’s tone suggested this was the most obvious thing in the world. When I didn’t react, he added, “Hello, Geoffrey Chaucer? Ring a bell?”
“Um . . . sort of,” I mumbled.
“I know you didn’t finish high school, mistress, but you did go for a couple of years, right? I thought they made kids memorize and recite that in English class.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I was sort of . . . absent. A lot. So, okay, I’m not up to
