Chapter One

Sewage Management

"I am not a gibbering moron!"

"Says who?"

"Says me. There is a way, you just don't see it."

The conversation burst out in the quiet of the Northern California home. While this particular conversation could apply to a wholly normal game of chess, it does not, and it applies to something completely other than normal.

Unfortunately for them.

Dairine Callahan, her gray eyes flashing with frustration, buried in her face in her hands and slumped back into the couch.

"Look, Ethan. You don't have to destroy the whole spell matrix, just repair it! See, if you alter this syllable here to change the way it siphons sewage, and then change this strand to do the same thing, it's fine!"

Her partner in wizardry and boyfriend, Ethan Halliday, begrudged the innocently sparkling spell matrix a closer look, then looked up at Dairine, who smirked at the sheepish look on his face.

"You see?" Dairine asked smugly, flicking a strand of auburn hair out of face and grinning wickedly at Ethan. "Here, gimme the matrix…"

Ethan tossed it to her, and she looked it over with a practiced eye, then nodded her satisfation.

"I'll be right back… gonna go set it up."

Ethan's blue eyes looked at her worriedly. "You gonna be all right?"

Dairine, halfway to the door, rolled her eyes. Kit never did this to Nita… even now that they were engaged. She sighed, then turned on her heel to look back at her boyfriend.

"Ethan, I'm a big girl now. This is my house you're sitting in… I have a job, I have two cars… I think I can handle it. Thanks, though," she added as an afterthought, her gray eyes sparkling mischievously.

She smiled coyly at him, then whirled out of the door and was gone.

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Dairine sighed as she slid into the driver's seat of her '84 GMC Suburban and slammed the door with a satisfying bang. She looked at herself in the driver's mirror, tucked a strand of her auburn hair behind one ear, and glared at her reflection, wholly unsatisfied with how she looked. Heaving a sigh, she contemplated the meaning of the word freckle as she strapped herself in, and started the engine.

Well, tried to, at least.

The huge diesel V8 turned over, let out a roar, then died. Dairine moaned and turned the key again, only for a repeat performance.

After six tries, she gave up and stomped over to her bright red '04 Tacoma, unlocked the doors, and slid in.

Moments later, the truck slid out of the driveway with a purr and nearly burned rubber down Twin Oaks Drive before hanging a left and vanishing from sight.

Lexington Reservoir was, to put nicely, a filthy mess. The explosion of a nearby sewage pump had, unsurprisingly, flooded the freshwater pond with various putrid chemicals, rendering the water completely radioactive and poisonous.

Dairine, knowing she was the only one besides Ethan for miles that was actually able to fix this problem, was stuck in traffic, singing along to Usher's Burn.

"…got somebody here but I want you-"

She spied the Alma Bridge Road exit behind a horribly placed pine tree and dived across two lanes onto it.

"-'cause the feeling ain't the same by myself callin' her your name…"

She slid her truck into a parking spot along the reservoir edge and shut it off. Dairine jumped out, clutching the matrix and still singing.

"…but you hate the thought of her being with someone else but you know that it's over…"

She winced as the fetid odor of the heavily polluted lake washed over her, and quickly pulled the matrix out of her pocket. It waved delicately in the breeze, where it could easily have been mistaken for a spiderweb, despite the fact that spiderwebs usually didn't sparkle a neon green.

Dairine scrutinized the spell matrix, her gray eyes flickering over the strings of syllables and functions, altering one or two of the function strands before placing it on the water.

She barked two short syllables, and the water began to froth and bubble as the spell took, beginning to filter all of the pollution and radiation out of the water and placing it… somewhere else. Dairine made a mental note to herself to ask Ethan about that when she got home, not wanting to start an intergalactic war between some alien planet and Earth over sewage.

There was a loud explosion of displaced air from directly beside her, and her older sister, Nita, was suddenly sitting on the ground to her left, looking rather peeved for some reason.

Wait for it… wait for it… Dairine thought.

"Hey, Runt… Kit and I had another fight…"

Ah. And this is new…why?

Out loud, she put on her best sympathetic face and said, "What was it about?"

Nita looked strangely at her younger sister. "What're you so happy about?" she asked curiously.

"I asked you first."

The look Nita gave to Dairine would have thrown daggers.

"We fought over the wedding date… again… now, what are you so happy about?"

"You know Ethan, right?"

"Yeah… so?"

"Well, I finally got to tell him off!"

Nita raised an eyebrow. She knew her little sister was slightly strange… but telling your boyfriend off and being happy about it…

Well, I suppose it kind of makes sense, Nita thought, but why would she tell him off in the first place?

Meanwhile, Dairine, oblivious, rambled on about a totally unrelated topic.

How did she get onto the topic of Ohio from her boyfriend…? Nita wondered before she was interrupted by the bang of a successful transit, and Kit stood before her, looking downcast.

Dairine turned her back on them, looking out toward the lake and maintaining a perfectly innocent expression as she slyly eavesdropped on their conversation.

"Look, Neets, I'm really sorry… for what I said… you're not a… well, you know… at all… I think you're one of the most wonderful people I've ever been blessed to meet… and… well, I love you…"

Here we go again, Dairine thought slowly. Wait for it… wait for it…

"Awww… Kit…"

Kit started to protest, but his feeble excuses were suddenly cut off. Dairine turned her slate gray eyes skywards, yawning. Incredibly soppy.

The reservoir water ceased its boiling, and, Dairine, satisfied with her work, carefully edged around Kit and Nita, keeping her back to them, and clambered into her pickup, slamming the door.

With the door closed, she burst out in unexplainable laughter, started the truck up, and continued chuckling even as AC/DC came on the radio halfway up the onramp to the 17.