Page 21 of The Fantastic Fluke

He just kept waiting, and when I didn’t move, braced his front legs against the tub edge and leaned up to inspect the knob that turned on the water. Then looked back at me.

I checked to see if Gideon was behind me—he was not—and shrugged. “Sure, why not? Bathtime it is.”

Almost an hour later I sneaked out of the bathroom and into my bedroom, wearing nothing but a towel. I’d go sit in the living room with Gideon when I had put on some clothes.

I thought I still had some pajamas Beez bought me a few years earlier. They were covered with little blue flowers, some kind of joke or test or something because I’d said that wearing a floral print didn’t affect my masculinity. Maybe Gideon would find them funny, but at least I wouldn’t be wearing my usual pajamas—boxers and nothing else—in front of him. Next to him, with his enormous shoulders and giant, muscle-y muscles, I felt even more small and scrawny than usual. The guy had almost a foot and maybe eighty pounds on me.

Well, except that he didn’t have any pounds at all, what with being incorporeal. Bet he’d still look a thousand times better in nothing but boxers. Not that a man like him wore boxers. He probably went commando and fuck my life I was not going to think about that.

I untucked the towel and went to drop it on the floor when a throat cleared behind me. I almost dropped it anyway in shock, but just managed to cling to one corner and slapped the other hand—a little painfully—against my groin to hold the whole thing down. I spun around to find Gideon sitting against my headboard, with his feet up on my bed. My first instinct was to tell him to get his damn boots off my bed, but once again, incorporeal.

“Didn’t think you’d be too thrilled to do an accidental strip tease,” he said, casual as you please, that damned grin on his face. His gaze drifted down over my chest, to where my hand held the towel over my cock, and then back up. “Not that I mind.”

Was he for real?

Wait, no, was he? Weren’t cowboys supposed to be old-fashioned homophobes, like modern anti-magic zealots? Not that it mattered. Nope, not at all. “What the hell are you doing in here?”

The lazy grin didn’t lessen. “You asked me a question then wandered off. I didn’t figure you wanted extra company in the shower, so I waited till you were finished.”

At that point, I didn’t even remember what I’d asked him. Something about his ridiculous arcane porn mage claims, no doubt.

“Truth is I don’t know why it hasn’t come out. It’s never been an intentional secret. If anyone had asked back in the day, I’d have told them.” He gave a helpless little shrug, then looked down at his hands, clasped over his chest.

He said he’d died in the middle of the nineteenth century, which was about when the Aurora Aureum had been forming back east, so there hadn’t been a lot of magical infrastructure yet. It was reasonable that they simply hadn’t known Gideon and his special kind of magic.

But why hadn’t they learned about it in the meantime?

I tried to slide my boxers on before taking the towel off my junk, and Gideon had the good manners to not stare as I did so. I took a moment to go back into the bathroom and hang the towel up, then brought a dry one out with me and set it on the end of the bed. I looked over at still-damp foxy and pointed at it. “Till you’re dry, no sitting on the blanket.”

Foxy hopped up onto the towel, turned a few circles like a guard dog, and curled up there.

I decided screw the pajamas. Gideon had already seen everything, so what was I going to hide? It was just too bad I didn’t have anything more impressive to have shown him. I sat down next to him, back against the headboard and feet crossed at the ankle. “You said you have to keep coming back and training someone new. Maybe a lack of talent is the problem. I wonder if you’re just running out of people who have this ability. It’s dying out. Maybe that’s why you found me and not a real arcane mage.”

I stopped and sighed at myself. Why was I even buying into the existence of arcane magic? It wasn’t even a theory; it was pure fantasy. Still, I didn’t think Gideon was lying on purpose. He believed in what he was saying whether it was true or not.

He let out a sound almost like a growl. “I don’t know why you assholes keep failing to train apprentices. The last one I trained must have managed it, since it’s been a while since I was called up, but you seem to forget too damn often. I come back for a little while once every few decades. It’s enough to give me ideas about what’s going on, but not a lot of hard information. I’ve tried to figure it out, but every time I come back, I’m starting from the beginning. I’ve got to make nice with a new link, teach them everything about connecting to the power. Meanwhile I can’t go ask their predecessor, because if I’m awake, it means they’re dead.”

Well hell. Thatwasa huge barrier to him finding out anything. Plus even with as much control as he had, being able to sit down on objects, I doubt he could read books or use the internet. Heck, if he only came back every twenty years, he might barely know what the internet was.

Unthinkable, living without search engines.

I turned and looked at him. “We’ll have to look into it. I may not be able to become a magical arcane wizard, but I can help research people if you can remember their names.”

Gideon, far from looking frustrated with my stubbornness, smiled again. “Good. That’s smart. We’ll work on that while I train you. Maybe you can stop it from happening again.”

It was like my protests about arcane magic went right past him, not an ounce of annoyance showing in his face or words. I wasn’t sure whether it was frustrating or nice. There was no doubt he was listening to me; he was simply choosing not to engage on a subject where we were bound to disagree.

That was the first time it occurred to me that it would be a bad thing, the world losing a guy like him again.

Chapter Seven

Foxy was extra protective during the day Friday, and Gideon gave me lots of room. I supposed it didn’t matter to him how long I took to learn what he wanted to teach me. It wasn’t as though he had somewhere else to be.

I wasn’t sure if either of them had a clue why I was on edge, but both seemed to catch it and react with kindness.

It was a hell of a change from Dad, who kept right on as usual.

Friday was almost always a busy day in the shop; I couldn’t say why. I don’t think reading is a thing people make big weekend plans to do unless they’re me.

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