Yes, I’m sure Byron wants to haunt your pickup truck.
I had to admit I wanted more than sex. I wished he could sleep beside me. Hold me, maybe. Strong arms folding around me in the darkness.
“You’ve had a hard time sleeping here, haven’t you?” Byron said.
“Ehh.” I hated to admit insomnia or suggest I might be afraid to sleep in big old houses.
“Should I keep watch? When I was a child, I used to feel better when my father read me stories. I could read to you.”
“I’m not a little kid.”
He vanished, and came back very shortly with one of the battered old paperbacks. “One morning, James Bond was called into the office of his boss, M, head of the British Secret Service,” he said, pitching his voice into an even more seductive and soothingly low tone. He glanced at me.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I guess you can read me a bedtime story, although I know you’re not just being nice. You want me in your dream bed.”
“Who said anything about a bed?” he replied, crossing his arms on the table, his skin even more warm and golden by candlelight.
I finished my tea and settled onto my air mattress. It was heavenly to shut my eyes and drift off to the sound of that sexy voice wrapping around me like a blanket. The only tragedy was that sleep came all too fast and heavily, but he would be waiting for me there…
I was jarred away by the sound of the flash and crack of a spell.
Shooting out of bed, I fumbled for my wand under the pillow. As I came awake I realized I could definitely hear footsteps going up the stairs.
“Byron?” I asked nervously.
I sensed the presence of some thick spell cloud, invisible to the naked eye but pricking at my witches’ intuition.
“Dévolier…” I was barely whispering the spell to unveil the fabric of the spell to me. A flimsy ward spell flashed across my eyes, like a spiderweb draped over the rooms. Someone had cast this spell so that ghosts couldn’t get in. It wouldn’t last long, but it meant I was on my own with an intruder. Byron had been pushed out of the house. This was intentional.
Oh shit. Who could this be? And I’m all alone out here. My heart was jackhammering now, and I also had to pee because I sucked down that tea before bed.
I slid a chisel and the hammer from my tool belt and stuck them in the deep pockets of my pajama pants while keeping my wand at the ready. The intruder had reached the second floor. I could hear their footsteps moving through the rooms and the creak of old doors as they peered in one room and then the next.
Were they looking for the Thing?
I started creeping up the stairs. I was halfway up before I questioned the wisdom of what I was doing. Maybe I should just let them have it.
It was hard to judge without knowing what the mystery object was. If it was a Pandora’s Box, so to speak, maybe I was supposed to keep it from being opened. Or maybe it would save me a lot of trouble if I never had to worry about it again.
But the idea of anyone stealing something out of my house right from under my nose was too infuriating to let stand.
I was moving very slowly to keep from making noise, and I could hear the person moving around, hesitating. They were probably casting a searching spell. They didn’t know where to find the Thing, so at least I had this much time.
Then, I heard the sound of the heavy floorboard being dragged up out of its slot.
I reached the landing and held my wand out into the bedroom. “Put it down, motherfucker!” I shouted in my best low, intimidating voice.
Suddenly I heard them move more quickly. They were moving to the window.
“You aren’t escaping with my shit!” I dashed forward and shot a bolt of energy at the intruder, but I pumped it up with some illusion that made a sound like a very loud sizzle and looked like their clothes had melted and their skin was burned.
Witches aren’t taught very powerful attacks, so I had to improvise a little and use some placebo affect. If a spell sounded loud and a wound looked nasty, most people freaked out before they even noticed they weren’t actually in pain.
The intruder was a tall, muscular man dressed in head to toe black with a sock hat and a mask like a ninja. The sandy hair poking out of the cap was my only clue as to who it could be—so it wasn’t Graham, Jake, or Jasper. They all had darker hair.
He was trying to push open the old window, but it was stuck, and as long as he was holding the bundle, he only had one free hand. He banged on the frame with his palm to try and loosen it. No luck. He tried to shoot a few deterrent zaps at me but I threw up a defense. It was a feeble defense but I hoped he didn’t try too hard to breach it. He couldn’t focus on escaping out of a two hundred year old window and fighting me at the same time.
I blasted him again, socking him in the stomach. That one had more real power. I was gathering my focus.
“Put. It. Down. Then get out of my house,” I said. “I’m not playing around. I’ll burn your damn balls off.”
“Sleep!” he said.
“Dissiper!” I countered. The spell scattered without hitting me full on, but I was already sleepy, so I started feeling some brain fog.
“Sleep!” he said again, seizing on my weakness.
“Forget all you know of this house!” I countered again, suppressing a yawn, but I fought it off and pulled out the chisel, rushing
