This world and these characters still belong to Disney. Although Wizards of the Coast seems to own a piece of Drake. I need to buy those Magic cards.

This chapter is characterization-heavy, because I like wandering around in fictional peoples' heads.

"What was the use of this box originally?" Abigail watched as Drake tipped the pickle jars into a table-sized glass tank.

"I had a Burmese python up till about two months ago," he said wistfully. "Big snake. Named him Monty—guess you wouldn't get that joke. He got loose and tried to eat my housekeeper, and…well, I liked the old reptile, but it was him or her, and no one else does the sheets quite right. Donated him to a zoo near Boston."

"You seem inordinately fond of dangerous animals." She smirked, thinking of Inky. "I suppose you have an elephant stashed in the attic, as well. Should we feed them?"

"No elephants, no. Guess we better give them some water, at least." He put the lid on the tank and peered in at the pile of insects. A couple of them were creeping along the branch that had been the previous occupant's sleeping perch, but most were sullen and still. "I'll get something from the kitchen. Don't let 'em out."

"I'm not an idiot." She sat on the floor and placed her palm against the glass.

He left the room, jogging down the staircase to the main floor and the kitchen. Abigail watched the movements in the tank closely, but the butterflies made no sign of being anything other than ordinary insects. She wondered unhappily if they had made a mistake. Spitefully, she said, "I wish he still had the python. You would make a delightful meal for it, I'm sure."

Wings twitched and fluttered. One of the butterflies lifted off the branch and battered against the tank's fine mesh lid. Abigail felt a ringing in her ears. When the voice responded, it was something she felt inside her head, rather than heard with her ears. The inflection was sharp and a little nasal, but there was a depth and resonance to the soundless tone.

We have made a meal out of the likes of you, little girl. What do you want?

She caught her breath, flinching back from contact with the glass. Laughter echoed through her brain.

"DRAKE!" she shouted.

What do you want what do you want you want you want you want? The butterflies rose and fluttered lethargically, cackling.

She covered her ears for a moment, unsettled, then rallied, scowling. "Revenge."

Ahhhh. The fluttering grew more organized, a slow spiraling tornado in the center of the tank. What will you give?

Drake burst through the door with a dishtowel in one hand. "Abby? What the hell happened?"

"They're talking," she said, staring into the tank with narrowed eyes.

Pathetic. A girl-child and a painted man. This is what your line comes to? You have no bargain for us.

This time, Drake flinched when the insects spoke, clearly able to sense the mental transmission. "Who's 'us'?" He asked sharply, coming up to stand behind Abigail, as if for their mutual support. "Is Sun-Lok in there?"

We hear you. What do you offer?

"How about you behave yourselves or I'll stick you all in the freezer?" The Morganian folded his arms.

You are a poor negotiator.

Abigail watched the insects flutter. They kept colliding, smashing together as if expecting to pass through one another—or to meld into something larger. Each time, they fell back. "You're stuck," she said abruptly. "You can't shape-change any more."

Drake glanced at her, then crouched to peer into the tank better. "You're right. And he called us pathetic. At least we still have opposable thumbs."

The butterflies emitted a low growl, and Drake shot backwards across the room, crashing into a bookshelf. The human body was no longer viable. We reabsorbed it. However, our mind and powers are still intact.

Abigail didn't move as Drake rolled over and moaned, rubbing his head. He looked a little stunned, but as she saw no blood, she returned her attention to the tank. "We could assist you in regaining a human form. Our talismans were taken by the same man who allowed you to be injured by Blake and the Prime Merlinian."

Horvath. The word was spoken slowly and speculatively.

"Horvath," she confirmed. "He is leaching off our magic. If you assist us in regaining it, we will find a way to restore you."

There was a moment of silence, and she added as an afterthought, "Mr. Stone is also quite wealthy. Arrangements can be made."

Perhaps. Yes. It seems we may be able to assist one another.

Drake sat up slowly. His ego was more bruised than his body, but several books and knickknacks had fallen off the shelf around him, and it took him a moment to extricate himself. He eyed the butterflies balefully. "That hurt."

Our apologies. There was a slyness to the tone that made it sound utterly insincere.

"Do you require water or food?" Abigail asked them.

They began to alight on the branch in a row. Salted water. Sweet fruit.

"Good." She stood and moved to help Drake up. "We'll attend to it."

Without fully turning her back on the tank, she guided her fellow Morganian from the room. He grumbled a little and closed the door behind them. They went downstairs in silence, but once they entered the kitchen, he pulled away and looked down at her. "You trust those things?"

"Not a whit," she smirked, and went for the fridge. "But you and I are not in a position to argue with them. We cannot be certain what they're vulnerable to."

"A flyswatter?" he suggested, sliding into a seat. "Be a love and get me an ice pack? My head hurts like a motherf—a lot."

She raised an eyebrow, but opened the freezer and dug through the contents. "One does not have to trust someone to find him useful. That they have the power of a sorcerer is obvious. They can run location spells and find Horvath, and they can face him with magic. We need them. Him."

"That's the other thing, though. We have only their word that Sun-Lok's mind is still in there. Could be we're only dealing with what's left of the demon. I don't like that thought."

"Maybe." She put a handful of ice cubes in a dishtowel and tied it off. "But demons may also be outwitted." Coming over to him, she applied the ice to the back of his head, smirking. "Better let me do the witting."

He winced and groaned. "Don't kick a man when he's down, girl."

"The best time to kick someone is when they are unable to retaliate," she countered, but she was fairly gentle as she adjusted the ice pack against his head, and gave him an almost soothing pat on the shoulder.

He grunted and took over holding onto the towel, allowing her to return to what she had been doing before. "So, what's the plan, then?"

She got milk out of the refrigerator and poured herself a glass, then found a couple oranges in his crisper drawer. "Mm. The location ritual is the chief thing. If Horvath has left the area, we want to know how far he has gotten."

"I don't have a lot of ritual gear. I save most of my flash for the stage."

"I find that hard to believe," she sliced the fruit into quarters.

"Nice." He rolled his eyes. "I know a couple stores, though. I can at least get the herbs and graveyard dust-type stuff." He sighed. "And it might be a good idea for us to pick up some news reports. If the zombie wizard apocalypse might still happen, I want to know."

"That…sounds sensible." She agreed, and sipped her milk.

"One last shopping trip, then." He glanced at the clock. "Better wait until tomorrow, though. It's dinnertime. Pizza or Chinese?"

She looked at him blankly a moment. "…perhaps you should decide."

Upstairs, the glass at one corner of the tank grew slowly wispy and thin, until it was mere translucent strands barely holding any kind of shape. Two of the yellow butterflies passed through it and flitted around the room, inspecting furniture and shelves. On the wall there were framed posters of Drake in mid-performance, a couple Qabbalistic charts, and a small black and white photograph of Alistair Crowley in an absurd-looking hat. On the shelves there were antique novels, classic literary works that had never been cracked open, and a large photobook of London. Knickknacks were expensive but mundane; porcelain, gold, a little black jade.

The butterflies moved on to the next room, a home gym, then down the stairs and past the office to Drake's bedroom. The twisted strips of sheet he had woken tied in still lay on the floor. The insects scanned the bed and the expansive walk-in closet, then crept into the nightstand. There were several pill bottles. Some looked neglected, but the three still in use were marked as antidepressants, anti-anxiety, and sleep aids. Here, too, was his Encantus, shrunk down to pocket size. The two butterflies spent a long time running their antennae over the sleek silvery cover before withdrawing from the room altogether and returning to their fellows.

Once they were back in the tank, the glass re-solidified as if nothing had happened.

Abigail had liked the pizza. It was decadent, thick with melted cheese and piled with meats and vegetables, but after such a long day she felt a little indulgence was permissible. Drake had plied her with chocolate-marshmallow ice cream for dessert, and laughed when she ate it so fast she got a headache. After a big meal, she was mellow enough to let him have his fun.

He had a guestroom with an attached bath, and after a surreptitious raid on his bookshelves, she was ready to settle in for the night. He left her to her own devices, with the bags of clothing they had bought for her earlier. There were nightshirts and slippers. She was a little perplexed by the pink unicorn pattern on the former, but the material was soft and comfortable, and before long she was sprawled on the bed with a copy of The Scarlet Letter.

She had neither read nor slept in a bed in over three hundred years. The memories of her time in the Grimhold were dim, like fading dreams. There were voices, and she had fancied at times she saw the faces of the dead she had wronged. Once she had heard her former mistress screaming spells, and this was how she knew she had been killed. Balthazar Blake seemed the most likely culprit, but she had no way of knowing for certain. In any case, Felicia would have given as good as she got.

In the Grimhold there had been no movement, no light, and no solid sense of time. Three centuries alone in a cell would have placed intolerable strain on a human being's psyche, but the doll's morphic field had an effect like twilight anesthesia. In some sense, Abigail felt as though she had been released the moment she was imprisoned, and the world had tilted on its axes around her. This was almost too much to bear in and of itself. She turned a page, realized she hadn't really read the previous one, and flipped back.

Hester Prynne stood on the block before the disapproval of the whole town, and refused to name her accomplice in adultery. Abigail shifted uncomfortably at the description. There was no threat of torture or death to the stoic heroine, but the heat of the words seemed to go straight to the reader's chest, as if a letter had been burned there as well as placed on the bodice of Hester's dress.

Abigail didn't truly believe in hell, but she knew well the ramifications of her own mischief, and she wondered if, afterlife or no, she was now, somehow, damned. Over twenty dead, some by the noose, some dead of sickness or melancholy in the prison. And Giles Cory had been crushed under more stones than she could count, bitter with the accusation and execution of the wife he loved.

'More weight' were the last words he uttered, and she had heard those words in person, concealed by magic nearby. She had also heard the death-rattle, and felt as if it was her own hands that had forced the last breath from his chest.

What letter should she be given? W for witch? M for murderess? Neither seemed adequate. She had awoken the devil in her own neighbors, stood back, and watched the show.

She closed the book and set it on the stand by the bed, then leaned back against the pillows. Outside, she could hear the thrum and rattle of traffic far below. It was both disruptive with its foreignness and soothing with its rhythm. The city was full of life; ruthless, reckless, callous life that broke boundaries and trod on the toes of those around it without a second thought. Here, the rich were still coddled and the poor were still fodder for the machine that ground them into dust.

She had for some time believed in the essential absurdity of the world. Believed that if there ever was a God, He had long since abandoned men to their own backbiting. Believed that fairness and justice were pretty but empty ideals, never to be found in reality. But, oh, part of her still wished for some sign that there was meaning somewhere, and every time she looked around, that part of her was disappointed.

That part of her was disappointed in herself, as well.

She folded her hands across her chest and closed her eyes. Bitter or not, this life was all she had, and she was not ready to lose it. There was a fight coming, and the odds were not in her favor. Proper sleep might improve them a little. She did not pray as her body slowly relaxed into oblivion, but she thought about her mistress, and she thought about the Lady Morgana. They were strong. If she could have just a little of their strength, she might yet prevail.

Before long, she had fallen into deep dreams.

Drake fired up his state-of-the-art laptop on the kitchen table. By his elbow was a beer, but it was unopened as of yet. He was still debating. Most British émigrés found American beer to be woefully inadequate, but Drake had surprisingly undiscriminating taste for a multimillionaire performer. As long as it wasn't 'lite', he'd drink it, and he kept a variety of flavors on hand for company.

Still, it wouldn't do to relax too much. He had two strange sorcerers in his apartment. That one was only fifteen and without her talisman meant little. Abigail struck him as the kind of girl who was perfectly capable of smothering him with a pillow in his sleep, if she so chose and he allowed it to happen. And Sun-Lok was a completely unknown quantity.

He checked his email to find spam, a tacky e-card from a colleague, and a frantic missive from his insurance agent, whose calls he had been avoiding.

Drake, it read, I know it's your schtick, and I've pushed through the big cats, the scorpions, the alligators, and the cobra for you. Also the boiling cauldron, the live electric chair, and the garbage compactor.

Drake grinned. He had thought the electric chair was particularly clever.

But I just don't see how we can cover you for the metal annealing stunt. It's a huge liability just getting a machine like that outside a factory. It would almost be easier to get a nuclear reactor. If you can give us some kind of idea as to how you plan to make this work, maybe. Or I could try to push through a small pottery kiln?

I wish you'd go back to making buses disappear.

Yrs,

Jeffrey

Drake rubbed the back of his neck. It was all a moot point at the moment, anyway, and he was aware he sometimes got carried away in his quest for a bigger and better trick. Still, he thought his idea of stepping into a metal annealer and coming out five minutes later completely covered in gold was pretty awesome. A pottery kiln wouldn't cut it.

He wrote back, Jeff! Sorry, on vacation atm but we can discuss in a week or so. Buses are passé. Did seven at once in London twelve years ago. Do you really think we could get a nuclear reactor? Will ask my publicist.

A magician never reveals his secrets. (:

Love,

Drake

He checked his Facebook page next. His PR team had put up some photos of him at a Valentine's party, dressed in red satin and white-gold brocade. The girl on his arm was trying to steal his champagne. He remembered the taste of her glittery lipstick, but had forgotten her name already.

Maybe Abby was right. A new girl for every day of the week had been fun up till now, but he was turning thirty-two this year. Settling down was out of the question, but developing a sense of moderation might not be. A couple steady lady friends, or even a regular date, might be a nice change.

This was all assuming he lived, of course. He felt fine at the moment, which belied Abigail's dire predictions, but it had been less than 48 hours since his ring had been stolen. He rubbed his bare hand. There was a shallow groove in the skin where the ring normally lay, and it ached, as if there were a bone-deep bruise hidden there. He wondered if Abigail felt the loss of her pentacle as keenly.

If he got his power back, he could go on as he had left off. The girl, however, was in a different position. No family, no home, and only a rudimentary understanding of the modern world. Uneasily, he wondered if she expected to stay with him. Financially he could manage that, but it would raise a host of social questions and the paperwork would be hell.

Suddenly, he felt vastly more attached to bachelorhood. He cracked open the beer bottle and began to run a Google search for nude pictures of female celebrities.