“Liam, I remember your mother—god rest her soul—and loved her like she was my own,” Jameson said with complete seriousness almost two hours later. “But even she would agree with me: you are one lucky son-of-a-bitch!”
“Oh shut it,” I growled at him with as much annoyance as I could muster while Kassandra giggled from her nest of blankets behind me.
“And us girls insist that we are the lucky ones,” Kassandra said, taking a sip from her steaming mug of hot chocolate while her eyes danced with mischief.
“Seriously,” Jameson insisted, rubbing his face before taking another drink of water from the mason-jar that he was using for a glass.
I’d switched him off the beer after he finished the sixth bottle and started getting rowdy. My friend could hold his alcohol, but we’d been drinking for hours at this point and he’d need to get home eventually.
“Very seriously,” Kassandra asserted primly. “I know I’ve said it before, but without Liam to look after us, I doubt Rieka and I would have made it as far as we have. I guarantee that something unfortunate would have befallen us before now.”
“You’d have figured something out,” I replied, using the long fork I had to flip the steaks that were sizzling in the cast-iron pan I had over the fire before stirring the quartered potatoes frying next to them.
“Maybe,” Kassandra sighed. “But, then again, maybe not. It’s hard to read into the past and pointless to play the ‘what-if’ game. Better to appreciate the present.”
“And Liam has a lot to appreciate!” Jameson laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. “Inter-dimensional man of mystery, complete with a bevy of beautiful women to join him in his adventures.”
“It’s more that I join them in their adventures,” I countered, taking a pinch of salt from the little stone bowl I’d made for the spice and sprinkling it over the still-sizzling steaks. “You know, considering how you reacted when you first saw Kass, I’m surprised you are taking this so well, Jameson.”
“Oh, Kass and I are getting along like a house on fire,” Jameson snickered. “Mostly because we share a hobby: making you blush.”
“She’s better at it than you are,” I said without hesitation and heard a pleased little hmph from my Nugget.
“I imagine she is,” Jameson replied without hesitation. “As she’s got a lot more material to work with than I do. You always did blush easier for the ladies as well.”
“We’ve been breaking him of that,” Kassandra said proudly. “Means a greater challenge, but a greater reward in the end.”
“In your end,” I grumbled under my breath, eliciting a laugh from the pair as well.
“Really though, I guess it’s just… it makes an odd kind of sense?” Jameson said at last, heaving a sigh. “All the secretiveness, and the sudden changes of pace. The Liam I knew a year ago was so downtrodden and exhausted from work that it was nearly pulling teeth to get you to come out to the bar and flirt with Gloria or her sisters. Now, though? Speaking of Gloria…”
Jameson paused and I glanced back over my shoulder to check on him.
My skinny friend was rubbing his chin thoughtfully while staring past me into the fire. He sat there for another ten seconds before picking up where he left off like he’d not even stopped speaking.
“I think you should tell Gloria about all this,” Jameson gestured toward me and then Kassandra with a wave of his mason-jar. “Just don’t rush it. Maybe ease in a bit more before you throw the gorgeous scaled lass over there at her. She’s a feisty one and might just take a swing before she thinks.”
“Gloria is the one working for him, right?” Kassandra asked innocently, even though I know she knew who Gloria was from my stories. When Jameson nodded, she continued. “I don’t think there’ll be a problem. She sounds like a smart woman to me, since she convinced Liam here to help her out with a job.”
“She didn’t convince me,” I interjected defensively. “She just mentioned that she had the skills and I realized she could help me. I had to convince her that I wasn’t lying through my teeth about the opportunity.”
“And you went gallivanting off to find a way to help her,” Kassandra replied with no heat or malice to her words.
Glancing back, I met her eyes and saw the loving smile on her face as she watched me work.
“Yeah, well maybe,” I said, not really able to argue with her summation. “I saw a friend in need that I could help out, and she could help me in return.”
“And that’s where his change is showing,” Jameson said triumphantly. “My boy here used to give the shirt off his back to anyone who asked and even looked cold. Got taken advantage of far too often, in my humble opinion. Some would say he was doing the whole ‘white knight’ thing, but I think it was just him trying to make up for lost time. Maybe find more people he could trust.”
“He did in us,” Kassandra replied warmly and I felt it when the tip of her tail slipped around my ankle to give my socked foot a gentle squeeze. “Us girls will look after him and make sure that he doesn’t let someone else take advantage of him.”
“Good,” Jameson replied, his tone turning serious. “My boy has earned support and some unconditional love.”
“I appreciate the offer, Jameson, but I don’t swing that way,” I shot back at him, wanting to push off the sappiness some.
I know I used to be a pushover, I thought, flipping the steaks over once more. But that’s changed. It’s part of the past to leave behind.
Rather than leaving the silence to hang or wait for Jameson to fire back with a retort, I decided to turn the conversation somewhere useful.
“I agree about telling Gloria, but how the hell do I bring something like this up?” I asked, setting the pan aside and going to grab the plates from the kitchen counter.
“Well, I wouldn’t just invite her out here to your remote cabin in the woods,” Jameson drawled. “I have to say, that movie ruined the chance of that phrase sounding romantic.”
“Unless you are into horror movies,” I replied with a shrug. “But your point is made, Jameson. I can’t treat Gloria like I would you. She’s a classy lady, unlike your uncultured self.”
“I resemble that remark!” Jameson laughed in replied, the banter triggering a bout of giggles in Kassandra as well.
“You two are ridiculous,” Kassandra said amidst her giggling. “It’s simple enough, tell her that you want her to meet your mysterious lady friends and then let us handle it. Maybe have us waiting when she arrives rather than summoning us in front of her? Or have Rieka here for that, since she could just throw a hat on and tuck her tail under a blanket to let your friend get used to her first.”
Jameson smirked and began coughing into his fist, the loud sounds intermixed with the word ‘furry’ said in a stage whisper.
“I’m going to tell the princess that you said that,” I countered, glaring at Jameson.
“Oh, don’t do that! I’d hate to offend a lady,” Jameson countered, suddenly repentant.
“But you are fine offending me?” I fired back, already knowing how Jameson would respond, but doing it to make Kassandra laugh.
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“Well, you aren’t a lady? Are you?” Jameson replied right on cue, eyebrows waggling roguishly.
“I can personally vouch for the fact he is not,” Kassandra answered with a hearty laugh of her own, accepting the plate of steak and potatoes from me with a smile.
Without thinking about it, I used Manipulate Element to summon a tray table out of the ground for her to set it on.
“You’ve done that a few times now, and it still kinda freaks me out,” Jameson muttered, staring at the flowing stone with wide eyes.
“Sorry?” I said, half in earnest and half questioningly. “I’m not meaning to make you uncomfortable, Jameson. I just… I’ve been hiding it from you for so long that I feel bad pretending—”
“No, don’t feel bad at all!” Jameson insisted with a shake of his head. “You are some kind of extra-dimensional bodyguard of repute now, and I am proud of you, man. It’s just… freaky to see stone move like Silly Putty. Would that make it serious putty?”
The seriousness with which Jameson delivered the last question made me smirk as I corrected him.
“No, the real ‘Serious Putty’ is C-4, Jameson.”
The joke brought a smile to my friend's face and he accepted the next plate from me, not flinching as I shaped a tray table for him.
“I will say, it’s wicked convenient,” Jameson muttered, setting the plate and his jar-glass onto it.
“You think this is useful, imagine camping with this kind of power. I can make shelters, soften the ground, or build houses like this one,” I said, pointing toward the ceiling with my fork before grabbing the last plate and plunking down next to Kassandra.
The dwarf lamia wasted no time in wrapping her tail around me, with the thin tip thrusting up under my shirt along my back to steal more of my warmth. I would have jumped at the sudden chill, but I was used to it at this point. It was the equivalent of a girlfriend putting her cold feet on your back, and I’d grown immune.
“Imagine the sort of work you could do in construction with this,” Jameson said before popping a steaming hunk of potato in his mouth.
Huffing around the hot morsel, he mumbled something else, but I didn’t catch it.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Kassandra said primly, delicately slicing off a piece of steak and popping it into her mouth.
“Really?” I asked her. “You are the one who is going to throw that line around?”
Kassandra chewed neatly and swallowed before answering, her nose rising in the air.
“I am uniquely qualified to have an opinion on that matter,” she said with a sniff, but was unable to hide the amused twinkle in her eye.
“I’m sure you are, lass,” Jameson chuckled. “What I was saying was that you’d be a miracle worker for a lot of folk in construction. Can you mend cracks in concrete?”
“Yeah,” I said with a shrug. “And before you start, I considered it. Charging to go in and fix things like foundations, mending driveways, or patching walls. The problem was that I couldn’t think of a way to do it on the sly. All it would take is someone with a concealed security camera and my secret would get out.”
“And you definitely don’t want that,” Jameson said gravely. I nodded in agreement.
“No, it would lead to a whole lot of uncomfortable questions that I really don’t want to answer,” I said, cutting into my own steak and revealing the pink, medium-rare interior with a smile. “For now, it’s enough to be able to make things easier for the girls while we travel and handle my own home.”
“ ‘It’s enough’ he says,” Jameson grumbled. “Pulling a house out of his arse like it was a party trick…”
“That’s not the only thing I can pull out of the ground,” I said with a smirk. “Where do you think I’ve been getting the gold and silver for my jewelry business?”
Jameson almost dropped his fork at that and had to scramble to recapture it before the utensil hit the ground. Once he recovered, Jameson glared at me and stabbed a potato like it had offended him.
“You are telling me, you can just pull precious metals out of the dirt with your mind and you aren’t buying yourself a mansion with a hundred bedrooms?” Jameson demanded, huffing in irritation.
“I don’t want to end up in jail, Jameson,” I replied with a frown, forking up a bite of my steak. Before I actually bit into it, I continued. “I can get the gold, the challenge is in selling it and not ending up a target for the IRS. I can’t just walk into a bank with a ten pound ingot of gold and say ‘hey, I want to deposit this!’ ”
“Which just proves how silly your world is,” Kassandra said, tapping her lips with a bit of potato and smirking. “I suppose it just makes sense given how silly you are, love.”
“I’m silly because you girls drive me crazy,” I shot back with a smirk, leaning forward to steal a kiss from her.
Kassandra accepted the kiss with a happy hum, only to squeal in protest when I stole the bite of potato off her fork on my way back. I suffered a brief punch to the shoulder in retribution, but Kassandra’s little fist didn’t do any lasting damage.
“I still can’t get over how useful that magic would be to have in my line of work, not even considering how you could just magic gold up. I’m sure we could find a way to liquidate it,” Jameson murmured, rubbing his chin with the back of his fork.
“Only because Liam is weird,” Kassandra interjected with a sigh, stealing a bit of steak off my plate with a triumphant grin. “In my world, the only way to find mana is in naturally occurring alloys with metal. Almost all of which is used as currency. So magic has a literal monetary cost there.”
“And Liam is different how?” Jameson asked, leaning around me so that he could ask her directly.
“Liam has a mana pool of his own,” Kassandra explained, growling cutely while keeping the bite of steak away from my attempts to reclaim it. “He just has the ability to store it inside himself. He’s been trying to teach us girls how to do it, but it hasn’t worked yet. So while he can do all this for essentially free, he’s so far the only one who can do it on my world.”
“So you have an exploit for cash?” Jameson asked, looking at me with squinty eyes.
“No, because I can’t just make the alloyed metal,” I countered, giving up on the steak and letting Kassandra pop the morsel into her mouth. “There’s a power that would let me, but it saps my pool. Right now, I’m more focused on saving up for other powers that are more directly useful.”
“Hmm… Well, I suppose that is good. I’d hate for you to end up in a ‘pay to win’ situation where you can just produce money all willy-nilly. That kind of thing could ruin an economy if you aren’t careful.”
“And you were just saying I should dump a ridiculous amount of gold into the market somehow,” I replied with a frown.
“A man can dream, can’t he? It’d be wonderful to be able to just retire from my day-to-day work and do whatever I wanted,” Jameson said wistfully.
“Can’t really argue with that,” I replied with a shrug. “I’m doing what I can to move the precious metals into the jewelry, which isn’t as obvious as the raw metals. I need to look into what’s needed to officially open a mine, too. If I can output the raw metals, then that’ll be easier but I also need to invest the money I do have properly. What I’ve been doing has been using the power to pan for metal flakes or pull them out of the electronics in the trash.”
“Which does have a limit to how much is available,” Jameson agreed with a thoughtful look. “But if you can trace it back to the lode it came from… That does make sense. Well, let me know if you suddenly become rich and want to let a brother retire.”
“I’ll let you know,” I replied with a roll of my eyes. “By the way, thanks for not freaking out. Kass is a bit much to take in, but I love her.”
My little mischief-maker puffed up with pride at my proclamation and leaned over to press a kiss to my cheek.
“I’ll admit, the whole… snake thing threw me off. But Kass is a sweetheart, and she puts up with you. Some good and some bad, makes a good balance,” Jameson teased, lurching away from my retaliatory elbow with a laugh.
“Oh shut up, asshole,” I shot back before we all dissolved into laughter.
“I’ll admit, I was a bit nervous at first,” Kassandra said a few minutes later, nibbling on a hunk of potato lightly while watching the fire crackle away. “But I knew Liam wouldn’t take the risk if he didn’t trust you, and I really wanted to meet another human.”
“Well, I am something of an anomaly myself,” Jameson said with a wiggle of his eyebrows. “But being careful is smart. There are a whole lot of idiots here that wouldn’t take it as well. Makes me proud to know that Liam trusts me with this kind of knowledge of a loved one.”
“If I didn’t trust you, you wouldn’t even know about my house,” I replied with a shrug. “Now comes the harder part, though. I want to show Kass around, but, well…” I gestured to Kassandra’s serpentine coils which were idly squeezing my middle.
“Oh that’s easy,” Jameson said with a snort. “Just tuck her into a wheelchair and wrap a blanket nice and tight. You’ll still get odd looks, but only because people are assholes and stare at the disabled. As long as she doesn’t fall out or have to walk about, then you can take her around, show her the mall and everything. Maybe even take her on a real date out here.”
“Wheelchair?” Kassandra asked, tilting her head in curiosity while sucking on her fork.
I thought for a moment before explaining to her the general idea.
“Imagine a recliner with wagon wheels attached to the back legs and smaller ones out front. They are for people who cannot or should not walk to sit in and an assistant can push them along in it to get places.”
“Oh, that sounds nice!” Kassandra exclaimed with a grin. “Are they expensive?”
“Nope,” I replied, wrapping an arm around her to pull her against my side in a hug. “I’ll see about getting one for you, because that works really well. Thanks, Jameson.”
“Happy to help. I can only imagine how much mischief our little friend is going to get into with a set of wheels, too,” Jameson said with a laugh, locking eyes with Kassandra and trading winks with her.
“Yeah, I knew introducing you two would be trouble,” I said, blowing out a sigh as they both laughed.
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