For the next several days I lived out of the bedroom, applying salve, carefully taking pain pills as close as possible to sleeping to avoid dreams, and enjoying a bounty of delicious soup meals. Alan seemed not to mind taking care of me, though he did disappear between my asking for help into the basement. I could hear the tinkling of class, the sound of boiling liquid, and the occasional small explosion from time to time.

Bubbles had gotten over his initial over-excitement and settled into the foot of my bed. He got up to go outside, eat, and drink, but always came back to warm my feet. He seemed concerned about me and I often woke up to his cold nose pressing into my face as he checked on me in my sleep. I wondered if he was worried that I would slip into lucid dreaming, it seemed like he might be just smart enough to have figured it out. I would have never before used the word smart when referring to him, but he was proving to be deceptively intuitive.

The salve did seem to be working, even though he had grossly understated just how itchy it would be. I had to make sure to take my pain pills at least fifteen minutes prior to spreading the salve so that I could pass out before the irritation ramped up. If I miss-timed, I would suffer through what felt like a gradual increase from a light feather-tickle, to thousands of spiders trying to crawl out of my skin. I couldn’t deny that my scars seemed lighter after just a couple of days of use and my few remaining open wounds and blisters seemed to be much smaller.

The hospital therapist came by a week after release to check on my progress. She was surprised to see me as well as she did. It was unspoken, but I could tell that she expected to be an absolute mess of a person; I had expected to be as well. However, Juniper had seemed to soothe me into the belief that there truly was nothing I could have done, it probably also helped that I never intended to ever see that building again or anyone that lived there. It was hard not to believe a magical creature who had most likely forgotten more about the magical world than I could ever hope to learn,

A week and a half after arriving at Alan’s house, I finally felt physically strong enough to get out of bed on my own and prepare breakfast. I woke up early, peeled Bubbles off of my feet, and went to the kitchen. I had heard Alan up later than usual the night before, glass clanking regularly from the basement, so I didn’t expect him up any time soon. I was not surprised to see the fridge or cupboards mostly bare, there were some of the leftover ingredients from making the various soups I had been living off of and not much else. Luckily, he had eggs, which was probably as hard of a food I could handle anyway.

In the middle of scrambling the eggs, I was terrified by Alan opening the basement door. He winced as the morning sun hit his eyes and stumbled to sit at the kitchen table.

“What time is it?” he groggily asked.

“A little after seven, want some eggs?”

He groaned and nodded, laying his head on the table. “I have no idea how long I worked before I fell asleep on the couch down there. I feel like I maybe got a couple hours at most.”

“Working on something big?” I asked and handed him half of my eggs.

“Something like that, you can come along tonight when I go to test it if you’d like.” He shoveled the eggs into his mouth, not really bothering to chew. After cleaning his plate, he sighed happily at the sight of the already brewed pot of coffee that I had started, clapped me on the back, and poured us both a cup.

“Wait, tonight? Is this the zombie thing you told me about before?” I had kind of assumed that he was being dramatic, because werewolves maybe, but zombies? That was horror movie fantasy.

“Yeah, one of my cousins. It’s really sad, but also a great opportunity.” He paused a moment and swirled his coffee in his cup. “That makes me sound like some kind of monster, huh?”

“Only a little.”

“I really do feel bad about it, he was a cool guy, but…” he sighed, “since I did know him well, I have high hopes that this will work better than normal. So are you up to joining me?”

“Sure, but I’m going armed somehow, I’ve seen one too many zombie movies in my life, and this seems way too much like the start to one of those movies.”

“It’s not a bad idea, things have gotten a little out of hand before, sometimes old ladies seem to get up and are pissed that you disturbed them,” he said.

“Are you sure no one has seen you do this or that there isn’t some spiritual law you’re breaking? I mean, it seems like there should be some sort of punishment for desecrating some little old lady’s grave,” I warned.

Alan snorted and patted me on the shoulder. “Nothing has happened to me yet, so if I am, it’s not well enforced. Also, people tend to be afraid to hang around graveyards at night, I’ve never even come close to being caught. Don’t worry about it, everything will be fine.” He stood and stretched sleepily. “Now, I’m going to take a short nap, I have my potion brewing in the basement and it still has a good two hours left on it. If you wouldn’t mind, if you go to take a look, please don’t disturb it, it’s obvious which one it is. Your work space is mostly ready for you though.”

I thanked him and he sleepily dragged his feet to his room, Bubbles waking up long enough to trot after him, happy to have an excuse to sleep in longer. I cleaned up the small mess I had made and went down to the basement, I was very curious about the setup he had put together down there.

The basement was a large, unfinished room with the various household necessities like the water heater clustered into the far back corner. Alan had hung white holiday lights along the ceiling, following the floor joists, they gave just enough light to be workable, but still allow for that sense of mystery and seclusion. It looked like he had divided the space pretty much in half, with the right half looking very much like his space. He had a large work table covered in all sorts of beakers, measuring cups, burners, and flasks. The wall over the table had several rows of wooden shelves installed and filled with hundreds of small glass bottles containing different ingredients. After skimming over the labels of just the ones in the front, I was certain he probably had more food items on the shelves than he had in his own kitchen. There were also some weirder ingredients such as hair from various types of animals, dyes, and crafting materials. I wasn’t sure that given the same set of ingredients and the skills, that I could find a logical use for the ingestion of anything made with rubber cement or origami paper.

On one of the burners, a light violet potion was bubbling lazily in a flask. It looked to be very thin, but highly pigmented. Without disturbing it, I leaned over to try to get a sniff of what might be in it. The smell evoked memories of college parties, the scent of fried food and alcohol, not the awful smell by the end of the night. It really seemed to capture something about the college experience, I wondered if Alan’s cousin fell in that age group.

The left side of the room looked like it was more designed for me with the entire wall lined with book cases. Upon closer inspection, the books contained looked to be the very ones I had put into storage, arranged neatly in order by the author. I had never seen them in an orderly, organized space. I had no idea how he had managed to get them, I had assumed that since I had failed to pay the rental fee while I was in the hospital that they had been pawned or donated.

Along with the books, I had a small secretary’s desk with several different pens, notebooks, and small crystals. I also had a large glass display case nestled against the back wall next to the water heater that held multiple types of crystals, dried herbs, and other preserved organic material. I had no idea what the purpose of any of it was, but somehow I knew that it was a good starting kit for a summoner.

Impressed by Alan’s set up, I briefly considered getting started on some reading about my abilities, but ultimately the fear still firmly planted in the pit of my stomach prevented me from lingering in the room. The last thing I needed was starting again unsupervised and destroying Alan’s house. That seemed to be about the extent of my luck.

I indulged in a long bath, something I had started picking up as a habit once I realized my new phone was great for reading or watching dumb internet videos wherever I wanted. The water was getting cold by the time I was growing tired of watching people fall off houses due to their own stupidity. Before I could hit the button to turn the screen off, a text from Daniel popped up.

“Did you actually die?” he wrote.

“What? No, I’m out of the hospital,” I replied.

“Thanks for telling me, I went to see you and they said you were no longer there. I figured you died, so I picked up nurses for the couple hours I scheduled for you. Where are you now?”

I hesitated to tell him, I knew what his reaction was going to be. I set down the phone and took my time drying off and getting dressed. I briefly considered extending it until after lunch, but I was going to have to bite the bullet and take his teasing eventually.

“Alan offered me a place to live, I took him up on it.”

The phone was silent for a few minutes, I had a small bit of hope that he wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it.

“I knew it.”

I didn’t feel like I needed to reply anymore, it’s not like my reply was going to change anything he was about to say.

“Do you think he’s prettier than me? Is that why you’ve changed your focus to him? I don’t know how to feel about this.”

I knew in that moment the best way to jab back at him.

“Yes, he is prettier than you.”

Even though Daniel had no romantic interest in me at all, he still wanted to be the most handsome person anyone knew. He drew a lot of self-worth from what people thought of him, it would needle at him that I would think anyone else looked better than him.

“I’ll win you back.”

I didn’t know how serious he was about that, but most likely he would get lazy and move on to other things either way. I was beginning to see how it might be wise to keep him at a farther length from me. While I deeply appreciated his friendship while I was at my darkest and I fully believed that his snarky comments were meant in good fun, I needed a break from it. He would likely never be able to understand magic or what it would mean for me.

A little over an hour later, I received another text from him.

“Serious talk: was that whole fire thing to do with the crazy magic stuff?”

I really didn’t know how to answer. He wasn’t going to understand and I definitely didn’t think he needed to hear the whole story, not that he would believe it either way. I started writing several different answers and explanations, but after fifteen minutes of writing and erasing, Daniel sent another message.

“Okay, you’ve been typing forever, I guess that’s my answer. Look, I’m an asshole, I know it, you know it, but please listen when I tell you that you need to stop getting mixed up in it, obviously it’s dangerous.”

“Now you care, is it because I won’t give you any more excuses to go chase nurses?” I replied. I admit it, it had really grated on me how he couldn’t even pretend to be a concerned friend in any normal way. I thought he cared, but maybe was just a little too self-absorbed to be able to show it.

“Ouch. Look, people died. You almost did too.”

I closed the texting app and turned the phone off. I was uninterested in hearing anything beyond that. Perhaps if Daniel had taken a bit more interest in figuring out what had been going on, he wouldn’t have mentioned something that hurtful.

Angry, I went to the kitchen to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Alan was awake and heating up the leftover coffee, he saw the look on my face and took a step back to give me easy access to the cupboard. He looked like he wanted to ask what was wrong, but instead turned his attention to putting the right amount of milk into his coffee.

After taking my first bite of sandwich, I felt calm enough to talk. “No one will ever understand or know how to cope with magic, will they?”

“Only others who have ability with it, so not many other humans. We’re probably easily one in a million, you had no idea how excited I was that you had potential in the same city.”

I grunted and took another big bite. It was like I was trying to feed some sort of emotion I couldn’t put my finger on. It felt like something between isolation and loneliness, it was similar to how I felt before meeting Daniel, when I truly didn’t speak to anyone outside of my parents.

“This about Daniel?”

“Yes,” I said with a huff, “He was the only person there for me, as bad as he was at it, for a while. Now he can’t even understand this situation. Maybe I’m being too hard on him, not like he’ll ever really get the whole magic thing. He seemed to kind of when I showed him the picture, but he might just rationalize that to something eventually.”

“He probably already has,” Alan said carefully.

“He’s just… I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it or what to say.” I finished my sandwich and wiped the crumbs from the table.

“I felt the same about Jayme,” Alan sighed, “he was a great friend, but he would never have been able to understand the things I was going through and experiencing. I think that’s one of the worst parts about being human. So many of us are magically stupid, that those who do have talent, are so incredibly isolated.” I nodded, though I didn’t think I really had an idea of the true extent of the isolation. “It’s lonely and difficult knowing that someone you care about can never experience it with you.” He went quiet, but his face betrayed that he had more to say.

“I think I’m still very much magically, and socially, stupid, but I might understand,” I offered.

Alan looked me over, seeming to weigh some kind of risk to reward, before sighing and throwing up his hands. “What’s the worst that can happen from telling you this? Jayme and I were more than just friends, we were in a relationship.” He went very quiet, avoiding my eyes.

“I’m even more sorry to hear that knowing what happened.”

“Thank you for not making a big deal out of that, sometimes you can never be too careful these days.” He cleared his throat. “Continuing on, this is a horrible thing to think, but sometimes I think about how things might have turned out with him not being magically receptive and feel that maybe it was for the best.” He grimaced. “That feels dreadful to say out loud.”

I nodded and patted his hand reassuringly. “It’s understandable though.”

“Is it? I don’t know, but a part of me is soothed knowing he at least died at a point in our relationship where the magic thing was new and it hadn’t had much of a chance to drive a wedge between us, so I mostly have good memories. I feel like I would never want to have those negative memories of him, it was already starting to happen, he thought I was slowly going crazy, but he hadn’t given up on me yet. Maybe another month or so longer he would have wanted to move on, I don’t know.” He went quiet again, seemingly lost in memories. “I guess that’s my point, while we want things desperately different between us and others, it is going to be extremely difficult, if possible at all, to salvage those relationships. I have yet to meet any human with magic abilities that was able to have a relationship, romantic or otherwise, with other humans.”

“What about your grandpa?” I offered, obviously Alan wouldn’t have existed otherwise.

“He found magic after having children, grandma actually left him not too far into his journey, tried to have him committed to an institution as well. It seemed to gut him, I’ll have to show you the rest of his journal soon.”

“Good thing I’ve gotten really good at being alone.” I said.

“I’m not,” he said with a short laugh, “but you adapt and figure it out. Bubbles helped.”

“Must have sucked to push me away when you first found me, good thing our main abilities don’t overlap too much.”

“Yeah, I thought that it wasn’t worth the risk to your ability to learn you craft just to satisfy my need for someone to talk to that understood. I mean there are magical beings out there that I have contact with, but they don’t get what it’s like to be human and have the same kind of emotions. Magic seems to make emotions less important, at least to every other being I’ve meet so far.”

“Juniper seemed mostly okay.”

“She is sometimes, but she can’t replace a human. While he is a great listener, she lacks true empathy. I value her friendship immensely, but I will never be anything but a silly human to her. She’s here because humanity is so magically inept that it amuses and fascinates her, not that she truly enjoys our company. Don’t get me wrong, she means well enough, she’s just something so vastly different from us with enormous differences in our worlds, that we can’t have the same connection.”

“Well, funny that all of this came out because I was pissed at Daniel,” I softly laughed.

“Right, I started this as advice, I’m really bad at this. Long story short: don’t expect much to be able to stay the same between you and him.”

“He thought I was crazy before with the werewolf stuff, there’s little hope now.”

He shrugged with an apologetic look on his face. “As far as I know, you’re right.” He looked at the time on his watch. “Looks like I should get back to work testing the potion, did you want to try your hand at some research for your summoning? It would be a nice, slow way to ease you back into it.”

I agreed and followed him to the basement, Bubbles bounding behind us and taking a seat expectantly in front of Alan’s works station.

“He knows he gets to test whatever my new potion is. Strangely he seems to like most of what I make, no matter how awful it tastes or if it makes him sick.”

Alan removed the potion from the flame, stuck the end of a small mental rod into the liquid, then offered the tiny amount picked up to Bubbles. He lapped it up thankfully, burped loudly, then began to zoom across the room, running back and forth several times before running up the stairs. We heard him thundering across the house, running in circles at times.

“I’ll take that as a good sign,” Alan said and began to carefully transfer the contents of the flask to a small metal bottle. “Usually the potions that end up working better make him like this, I think it’s the effect of putting energy back into the body.”

“It seemed very effective,” I commented as Bubbles started to add loud, yippy barking to this sprinting.

“It is, but the problem comes in with trying to get their personality and humanity back,” he explained, turning the bottle over in this hands. “It seems very easy to bring some kind of life back to a dead body, but very hard to bring the essence of what made them the person they were. I have a theory about why it’s difficult, it’s complicated, but essentially, much like your summoning, there’s so many things out there that would like a conduit to our world that if something even vaguely fits my concoction, they’ll fight to transfer instead. I have high hopes for tonight, I was close enough to him to feel confident that this potion should embody who he was.”

“This seems so surreal,” I said motioning to everything around me, “you’re talking about bringing people back from the dead, I have half a magic dungeon, and I’m mostly certain that I’m not insane for believing all of this. I’m not sure how to really take it all in.” I looked around the room, admiring the set up Alan had created for me. “You even managed to get my books, how did you even know where to look?”

“That was Juniper really, she is good friends with all the pawn shop owners around the city. People own more antique magical items and books than they know and tend to sell them because they seem creepy or useless. Your books were going to be auctioned off, but she had first dibs on the lot. They let me have the whole thing for $200.”

“I owe you, I don’t know how I would have reacted knowing that they were gone for good,” I said, running my hands over the spines of the books next to me. “I know that many of them probably are no help at all, but I love having a library.”

“You don’t owe me anything, if anything this is my version of a plea to not have you sue me, technically I did get you mixed up with all of this,” he said with a soft laugh. “You actually have some gems in there, I’m a bit jealous that you managed to find some of them.”

I picked up a book that caught my eye, the cover seemed to be worn, dirty, and unattractive, but I felt compelled to pick it up amongst all the other options. Pulling it out, I read the title, “Magical Creatures and their Temperaments by Ezekiel Flumment.”

“That’s one of those gems I mentioned, it was written by someone we’re fairly certain was a magician who was skilled in traveling between different planes of existence,” he explained, “at least it seems that way by how accurate his depictions are. Don’t let some of them scare you, he ran into some nasty stuff, but use it as a guide of what to avoid.”

I opened the book to a random page to reveal a rather nasty looking tentacle-ladened creature, it seemed something too horrible to even imagine. I held up the book to show him the picture.

“Like that, please try to avoid summoning that.” He begged.

“I certainly will,” I promised with a shudder, “I guess I need to read up on all the things not to interact with.”

I settled into the chair at the desk and turned to the first page of the book. Alan set to work writing in his journal and scanning his shelves for ingredients for his next concoction. The gentle bubbling of the liquids and the tinkling of glass on glass provided a nice background for my reading.

The book started out with an introduction by the author claiming to have either met each creature and studied them first hand or be based on reliable first-hand accounts. That seemed reassuring that at least people survived seeing some pretty horrifying looking creatures. I was, of course, compelled right after finishing the introduction to skim through and find the section on sprites. It was easy to find as the section on them was fairly long with many different kinds.

I had, obviously, encountered a fire sprite. According to the author, it was known to have an inflated sense of importance of the magical world and often found themselves in trouble with other magical creatures because of it. The smarter ones tend to live in insolation away from others looking for ways to enter other realms with lesser magical creatures to prove their power. They feed off inexperience as they get a sense of accomplishment and pride from tricking beings more powerful then themselves. Finally, they are known to try to hang around the same being for a while to continue to exploit them and prove their own power.

The explanation certainly sounded correct for what I had experienced. I really didn’t like the idea that it would try to latch onto me for a while though, I was going to have to find a way to get rid of it. I skimmed the rest of the section and found at the very end that it contained suggestions for getting rid of them. It suggested gathering power, using known weaknesses for each type, and confronting it directly. The text noted that when directly confronted, sprites often give up, particularly if the initial display of power appears to be larger than their own.

The idea of confronting it worried me. For one, its display of power to me was to nearly kill me and set the whole building on fire in an instant. Secondly, if my skill lay in summoning, that meant I’d have to find a bigger, scarier being. I didn’t even know if or when I’d have the skill necessary to do that. It might take me years to be able to control something more powerful, but that would mean potentially living for years under the threat of Thusilia.

It was important information, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I closed the book after marking the page and began to ponder where to go from there. My uncertainty must have shown on my face, because Alan cleared his throat to get my attention.

“Write out your thoughts in your journal, it helps you think and organize your thoughts.”

I nodded and pulled out my notebook from the desk along with the pen. I wrote the gist of what I had learned from the book along with my concerns about how to get rid of her. I found that I was more easily able to see that my only real path was going to have to be researching something that was just a little more powerful than a sprite, but also more on the friendly side. I assumed there had to be powerful, friendly beings since Juniper had seemed to be helpful and pleasant. I didn’t know where to start, so it was likely to be a long process, but worth it in the end if it managed to free me from the threat of her managing a repeat performance. I skimmed the rest of the book carefully, looking for a picture that seemed to portray an air of friendliness, unfortunately there seemed to be a scant few.

By the time I looked back up from the book and my journal, Alan was packing up vials and flask into a messenger bag along with a length of rope, a knife, and an assorted bag of crystals and metals.

“You almost at a good stopping point?” he asked. I nodded in response and stretched in my chair. “Good, we should probably get going, I walk to the graveyard because a car just seems to draw too much attention. It’s not far, but it can be a little scary once you know what can actually go bump in the night. I’m sure you’re starting to learn all about that.” He motioned to the book on my desk.

I shivered at the thought of meeting some of the beings depicted face-to-face. While it was emphasized that the beings in the book were found on other planes of existence, it was not encouraging to know that Alan had legitimate worries.

I didn’t know what to bring, so I grabbed my journal and a pen and added it to his bag. I considered grabbing some crystals as well, but other than the shard of amethyst in my pocket, I had no idea what good any of the others were. I was in Alan’s more experienced hands if something went wrong.

Bubbles seemed to have calmed a bit, but was still more than willing to go on a walk with us. He even brought Alan his leash without any sort of command, it was the smartest thing I had seen him do yet. He pulled us outside fearlessly, seeming to know where exactly to go. I could only assume and he and Alan had been on numerous late night walks to the graveyard, it was just a routine for him.