Page 17 of The Nowhere Witch

“That’s how things work here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Places don’t open up for years sometimes. As soon as one is available, you take it.”

“Oh, okay, then. Good work! How many coins do I owe you?” I asked, heading to the bathroom to get myself together.

“You’ll never believe it!” he yelled after me.

It was small, but not more so than my Salem place had been. It had a wood stove in the center, which probably warmed the whole place nicely.

I was just about to tell Zab how much I loved the place when a dust bunny shot out from behind the stove and dashed across the room before disappearing. Then reappeared, dashed to another corner, and disappeared again.

Zab groaned beside me. “He should’ve told me there was a dust bunny.”

“It’s just a dust bunny. I’m sure I can get it to leave. The place is amazing, and I can’t believe how cheap it is. You said five coin a month? That sounds ridiculous.”

Zab was shaking his head and groaning again. “That’s not a regular dust bunny. That’s an Elusive Rare Dust Bunny. They used to only exist in Rest to torment people after they swept and vacuumed their house. Someone brought one back through a puddle, and they’ve become an invasive species. In Rest, they never show themselves, but here they don’t stay invisible all the time. They don’t have to with no known natural predators.”

“Wait, they have predators in Rest?”

“Of course they do. Humans.”

“But what about here?”

“Oh no, you can’t chase out the Elusive Rare Dust Bunny. It was done once, and very bad things happened afterward to the chaser.”

I had to live with a dust bunny? I looked about the place with a new eye. There was a thick coating of dust everywhere. I’d figured a good cleaning would take care of it, but what if it had just been cleaned? Oh no. This was bad. This was really bad.

“How long is the lease?”

“Uh, um…” He covered his mouth with his hand, shooting little glances my way before he’d look back over the place.

Oh yeah, I could totally believe the price now. It was all making sense.

“How long, Zab? What did you sign me up for?”

“Just, you know, the standard term. Nothing seemed crazy about it at the time. I thought you’d just lucked out.”

And that was his first mistake. I didn’t have good luck. Hadn’t he figured that out yet? How long did you need to know me before that became apparent?

“What’s the standard term?” I asked.

“Like…one hundred and twenty moon cycles?”

He took a step away from me. It was becoming a trend, it seemed.

“What… Wait, you don’t mean… Is a moon cycle equal to a month?” What else could it be? Maybe a day? It was possible.

He shrugged.

“It’s a month? I’m signed up for a decade with an Elusive Rare Dust Bunny?”

He inched toward the door. “You know, I’ve heard stories of people bribing them out. It could happen.”

He was trying to help me. He was one of the best people I’d ever met. I needed to remember all these things before I killed him.

“Tippi? Are you okay? You know, you could always just stay with me. You don’t have to move.” He took a few more steps toward the door.

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