Nina

Between the first class ten event back in August and the battle at the ballpark, there was sufficient evidence that the wizard was still in Houston. But they still could not find anything on long range sensors, which meant their only option was gathering information the old-fashioned way, on foot. With a population of over seven million covering more than 10,000 square miles, it was a daunting challenge that could take months. Now, two weeks in, Red and Nina, along with every free agent in the Wrecht Order, spent every moment combing the city for any clue.

“Where’s my Coke?” Red eyed the white Styrofoam cup Nina had handed him suspiciously.

“Just try it, it’s called a licuado.” Nina plopped into the passenger seat, setting the bag of tacos on the center console.

Red removed the lid and stared at the white milky substance before putting the drink into a cupholder. “But I asked for a Coke.”

Nina started digging through the bag. “Just try it, you big baby.” She pulled out a bundle of tacos in foil and handed them to Red.

When he unwrapped them, the aroma immediately made Nina’s mouth water. “My god, why didn’t I order the beef. I’m going to need a bite.” Before Red could protest, she snagged a taco out of his hand and bit the end of it before putting it back. Just as good as they smelled. “Mmm,” she continued while chewing. “That’s so good, I should have gotten one of those.”

Red’s mouth fell open. “What the hell?”

Okay. Maybe she had just crossed a line. “Don’t worry, I’ll give you a bite of mine.” She unwrapped her chicken fajita tacos and extended one towards him.

“That’s not the point, who said you could take a bite?” Red held the mauled taco in his hand like it had been infected with the plague.

“Relax, I don’t have cooties.”

Red put the taco down before taking a tentative sip of his drink.

Nina grinned. “Eh? Pretty good, right? It’s the cinnamon.”

Red took another sip. “It’s alright. I guess.”

He was lying. That shit was good. He just didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of being right.

He took another sip. “But I wanted a coke and two tacos. Unmolested. See, this is reason number three hundred and twelve of why I don’t work with a partner.”

What a crybaby. Nina wrapped her tacos up and put them down. “Fine, if you’re going to cry about it, I’ll get you a Coke and another taco.”

As she opened the door the car’s radio pinged with an alert. “There’s an irregular ESH anomaly moving slowly in the Armand Bayou waterway. You two are the closest, investigate immediately.”

Red shook his head. “This is why I leave my radio off." He picked at the bitten end of his taco. “You better not be sick.” He took a desperate bite before backing out of the parking lot.

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After a short drive they ended up at the Armand Bayou Nature Center, a large swampy forest on the edge of a waterway. After parking, they picked their way down through the forest thick with thorns and mosquitos. A recent thunderstorm had left the ground muddy.

Nina rubbed the scar on her hand. “Another herring?”

“Herrings don’t usually move, but I find it hard to believe there’s a wizard out for a swim in the river.”

“Alligator infested waters,” Nina added, pointing to a sign with a friendly alligator with large white teeth posted at the edge of the water. She squinted through her specs. Faint hints of ESH seeped up through the water. “Well, something’s out there, but with all that water, it’s hard to—” Another sharp sting pinched her neck which she countered with a swift smack of her hand. “Ugh, damn mosquitos.”

“Oh yeah, I just remembered. Check out this little trick I learned. Watch.” Red started to glow faintly green. A few seconds later there was a faint buzz as a mosquito burned up in a small pulse of green light. It was amazing.

Nina smacked another mosquito on her thigh. They had found her and told their friends. “You gotta show me how to do that.”

“It’s similar to a standard combat shield, but less—"

“What’s that?” Nina specs lit up a bright chromatic orange. A large mass breached the water. Whatever it was, it started to move towards them. “Do you see those bumps? What do you think it is?”

Red lowered his voice. “It’s an alligator.”

“Nooo, it’s too big to be…” Then she saw it, two large eyes several feet apart speeding towards them followed by a very long line of bumps barely sticking out of the water. As she tried envisioning how big it was, she realized its pace had quickened.

“Split up! Try to confuse it.” Red yelled, dashing down the shore of the river through the trees. Nina ran in the opposite direction, fighting her way through the thick underbrush. There was a splash of water followed by a loud hiss. Nina turned to see the front half of a mammoth alligator, over seven feet tall, halfway out of the water. It snapped at Red with a thunderous snap of jaws large enough to swallow him whole. Red dove sideways into the water narrowly avoiding the teeth.

Nina hit the alligator with a jolt of ESH tearing a hole in its side. Blood and a deer carcass spilled out of the wound. It ignored her attack. With another snap of its jaws, it caught Red who was now balled up in the fetal position. A violent whip of its tail slammed Nina against a tree. Her shoulder ached. She fought to catch her breath. She rolled onto her side writhing in pain. No, she had to get up. She started to stand, but the world spun around. She braced herself against the tree she had smashed into and finally stood.

The alligator and Red were…gone. Only the wake of the monster remained. It trailed out to the center of the waterway.

“Red!” She yelled, firing multiple blasts at her best guess as to the monster’s position. “Red!” She screamed again. How could the infamous Red be taken out by an ESH fueled alligator? This can’t be happening.

Her chest started to thump. What should she do? Could she swim with her throbbing arm? There really wasn't much of a choice; she had to. She took a deep breath to steady herself and started to wade into the water. She wasn’t leaving her partner behind.

When she was chest deep Red’s head popped up in the dead center of the river. “Red! Are you okay?” she yelled.

Red waved back and started slowly swim back to shore.

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She exhaled a sigh of relief. Of course that crusty old bastard would be fine.

As he sloshed his way out of the water, he held a long metal staff with intricate carvings. He dropped it on the ground and fell down next to it, panting.

Nina sighed, “I thought you were a goner.”

“I was able to…” He panted some more. “The bug zapper field saved my ass. When it bit down on me. I don’t think it liked it. So, it just swallowed me whole. But it is also probably why he came after me.” He extracted a deer hoof that had managed to wedge itself into his jacket.

“Yeah, it didn’t come after us until you put that on, but what’s with the staff?”

“That was wedged inside it…and thanks for the exit by the way.” He picked it up and looked at it. “This thing is hot with ESH, and that’s probably why that alligator grew so large.”

Red had taken on the disgusting odor of the half-digested contents of the alligator and its aroma had found her. She flipped her specs back on. “The frequency is an exact match of our wizard.”

Nina pulled out her phone.

“You calling it in?”

“Uh yeah, that and to get a ride. You smell like shit.”

Adelfried

As the summer continued to grind on, life in the Harper house adjusted to a new more cautious normal. Jim and Adelfried came to an understanding on a shield. It would only surround the basement and would stun anyone or anything but a family member from entering. This led to an unfortunate incident of Kyle getting stunned when he was not supposed to be there, which naturally lead to Kae getting grounded again.

Adelfried’s frustration continued as he struggled to find the right quartz and mix of power to create a wormhole home. A short temporary wormhole was his going theory of what brought him here, because a parallel universe just seemed too far-fetched.

He was close to controlling distance and direction to within a few feet with the portal potions he was working with now, but they were not as precise as he would like. It had to be precise. He’d only get one shot at this because if he got it wrong who knows where he’d go. This led him to start conducting a wider variety of experiments. He started to mix electricity in with his experiments but had to be careful. He had blown several breakers, shorted out the breaker box, fried the air conditioner twice and melted the wiring in half the house. Jim had threatened him several times, but he had paid for all of his damage with more gold and silver. And his secret basement had kept them safe and hidden.

The biggest problem looming that he had not solved yet was without the magical draw of someone like Evan in his world, how would he make his way home. He could take one of his potions and crash it into the Root and hope for the best. He knew he would end up somewhere else far from here, but he had little confidence it would be his world. There was just so much he didn’t know and had no way of figuring it out. He was losing what little hope he had left.

Jim

“Can you believe Kae’s starting her senior year tomorrow?” Ying stood in the doorway of Jim’s mancave while he leaned back in his recliner. He had the baseball game on while reading the Sunday newspaper.

“Don’t remind me, that means my classes are starting, too.” He didn’t bother looking up from his paper.

“Come on, aren’t you a little bit sad Kae is about to be a senior? And Evan is starting high school? We are going to be empty nesters before you know it.”

“Not unless we get that crazy magician out of here.”

“Come on, not sad at all?”

Jim tried to keep the frustration out of his voice. “Do you know, this is the first time all summer I’ve sat down with the Sunday paper? This is only the second baseball game I’ve watched in its entirety. Sweetie, things have been so crazy this summer with classes, and I swear, if Adelfried breaks one more thing I am going take the Root and smash his head in. So no, I haven’t had the chance to catch my breath to be sad.”

“Have you noticed how much of a grump Adelfried has been lately?” Ying said, coming over and touching Jim on the shoulder. This was her official warning that she wasn’t happy with the lack of eye contact.

Jim put his paper down and let out a little sigh. “Yeah, I am sure he misses his family.”

“Well yeah, but he doesn’t even say hi in the hallway, rarely comes out for food, and barely answers you when you ask him a question. I mean, I think someone should talk to him.”

Not his problem, but he had to make sure to keep it that way. “Uh…ask Evan, he spends all his time with him.” Jim slowly started to lift the newspaper back to its original position.

“Well, are you going to do something about it?”

Damn. He needed to master Kae’s ability to get out of things. Time for a redirect. “Me? Why don’t you handle it with your normal delicate touch.” Jim said with a smirk safely hidden behind the paper. Ying’s hand crashed down in the middle of the newspaper revealing his grin to her in its full sarcastic glory.

Ying shook her fist. “You’re about to get a delicate punch in the face.”

“Okay, I’ll talk to him before you make him angry, and he turns you into a duck or something.” Jim again lifted the paper to resume where he was. “I wonder if he takes requests.”

“You are so close to getting hit,” Ying said laughing. “Have you noticed since the baseball game Kae and him have been hanging out a lot too? I brought him a grilled cheese sandwich the other day trying to cheer him up. She was in there with him…”

“Proposed dike to protect Galveston Bay is close to receiving funding.” Jim read. That was close to where they lived. That might help with the property values. “The proposal is to be voted on—”

“What do you think?” Ying said from behind the paper.

“I don’t know, honey.” Jim muttered instinctively. What the hell had she said? Of course, she really wanted to talk about something on his first real day to himself.

Adelfried knocked on the open door and poked his head in. “Apologies, am I disturbing?”

Great. What did he break now? “Not as long as you didn’t short anything out.” Jim tried to find his place in the article.

“No, no electrical experiments today, but I do think it is time to go and see this wizard expert, Chad, at Nathaniel’s dance club. I think this Sahir might be my only hope now of finding my way home.”

Jim flopped the paper down. His afternoon of the newspaper and a baseball game just wasn’t going to happen. “But you still have different rocks to try, and you said yourself you are making progress.”

Adelfried looked down, pausing as if thinking of his words carefully. “Yes. I am but I know now that it could be years before I can accurately figure it out. I am so far away from being able to do this. Plus…I just…I just want to see my Minna and Leyna. I need guidance. And if someone in this world has that knowledge, I need it.” His voice started to crack at the end.

Ying clapped her hands together excitedly. “This is perfect, Jim and I could use a break and what better place to have a date than at some magical club, right?”

Jim’s neck tensed. This wasn’t a good development. “Now hold on, first we don’t know if it’s safe. And secondly, if we do go, I don’t think we both need to go. You should stay here, just in case.”

Ying’s head spun around so fast Jim swore he heard the air move. “So, you think you and Adelfried are going to go and have a guy’s night out at some enchanted nightclub? Without me?”

Okay, he had to be smart. This was dangerous ground. He had to calm her down. “Whoa slow your roll, it’s not like we are going out to pick up chicks.”

Ying’s excitement was turning ugly. “Well, why don’t you bring Evan too while you are at it and just make it a regular guy’s night out?”

Adelfried nodded his head in agreement. “That is wise, he could absorb the magic and keep us hidden.”

The conversation was turning into a shit show. Jim let out a loud purposeful sigh. “No, he stays, that is not up for debate.”

“You think?” Ying said, raising her voice. “So what time are we leaving?”

“We?” Jim replied, confused.

“Yes, we. If you think I am missing my first chance at a date night ever since you started school, think again.”

There had to be a way to stop this. “But it’s not a date night.”

Ying gave him an icy stare. “It is now.”

Jim stopped to consider an angle that could convince her. Maybe taking a page out of Kae’s playbook was the right move. “Do you think it is wise considering tomorrow is their first day back to school?”

“It’s fine, they’re in high school now. Kae can take Evan to school if we’re hung over.” She grinned.

It was too late, he lost. He rubbed his temples. But better to get all his worries and concerns off his chest. “Okay, I’ll just say it. I don’t think this is a good idea. We are walking in blind and what if they’re just waiting for us at the club or something? What if someone comes to the house while we’re gone?”

Ying’s face remained stone. She wasn’t buying. “Yeah, and we could die in a car accident on the way there, too! No one is coming here. They would have already. Besides, we’ll be at a dance club with other magicky people, so we’ll probably blend right in.”

Jim raised his hand defiantly. “Fine. But for the record, I think this is a bad idea, one of us should stay.”

Adelfried raised his hand cautiously venturing into the heated conversation. “If it helps, I will strengthen the basement shield before we leave, then they will have a safe place to go. Just as an extra precaution.”

Ying pointed at Adelfried and served Jim her biggest smile. “See?”

Jim sighed. “Do I have to dance?”

“Unless you want me dancing with the local Gandalf, then yes.”

“Fine by me,” Jim muttered under his breath.

Ying snapped, “What?”

“I said, what time do we leave?”