Chapter 4: Chapter 2: Home Visit

And so a week and a half passed, each day turning out to be roughly the same as the one before. Lucas would go to work and school, come back to find Vithi playing games in the living room, and ask for her help with magic. And, every time, she would have him try a spell, see that it didn’t work, and say she didn’t know what was going on and to ask again later. From there he’d retreat to his room to do homework, come out to cook dinner for himself and a standoffish Vithi, and then go back to his room for the rest of the night.

And then, suddenly, a wrench was thrown in things. In all the excitement over the past week, Lucas had entirely forgotten that he had his monthly dinner with his aunt that day. It was both a way for her to make sure the house didn’t have any problems and a way for the two to stay in more regular contact. It was something Lucas was rather fond of, but it also happened to come at a rather inopportune time this month.

So, it was with apprehension that Lucas braced himself and approached Vithi. “H-hey, Vithi, we uh, need to talk.” He said nervously.

“Sure, give me a second.” She replied, taking a moment to pause her game before turning around. “What’s up?” She asked, smiling.

Well, so far it was going better than expected, so he soldiered on. “So, uh, my aunt Judy is coming over later today.” He chuckled nervously. “I…sorta forgot, what with all that’s been going on.”

“Understandable.” She said, and, contrary to his expectations, she looked like she was being sincere. There was no trace of the borderline hostility that she had been showing just the day before. “So, what are we going to do?”

Lucas paused. He wasn’t quite sure what to say now, he had been preparing for this to be a much bigger deal, and it was going so smoothly that it was throwing him off. “Um…I would just have you hole up in your room for a bit, but there’s no way Judy won’t notice that I’m not the only one living here, she’s too perceptive. So, I was hoping that we could introduce you to her, explain a bit of the situation. We could say you’re a friend who doesn’t have anywhere to go and is just staying with me until you get back on your feet.”

Vithi raised an eyebrow. “And she’ll just accept that you and a woman are living together all alone?”

Lucas blushed. “My family doesn’t really care about that kind of stuff. A-anyway, we’ll just have dinner, chat for a bit, and then she’ll head home. If you don’t want to bother then I can give some sort of excuse as to why you can’t see her, so–”

“No, I’ll be fine.” She said, cutting him off before he could begin rambling even more, “When will she be here?”

He took his phone out and checked it. “Um, thirty minutes. She just texted me, which is why I remembered in the first place.”

“Sounds good. Need any help getting things set up?” She offered.

“N-no.” He stuttered, taken aback. “I just have to make dinner. It’s nothing fancy, so having more than one person make it would be overkill. You can just go back to your game.” Something about the conversation was beginning to make him uncomfortable, so, he quickly retreated into the kitchen only faintly catching Vithi’s amused chuckle as the game was unpaused.

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When Judy got to her nephew’s house, an unfamiliar woman answered the door. She was probably just over five and a half feet tall, with fiery red hair that reached to her shoulders and a set of piercing golden eyes. She kept her hair up in a ponytail and was dressed in a t-shirt and shorts. “Ah, you must be Judy!” She said warmly, sticking out a hand. “My name’s Vithi, nice to meet you!”

Judy was instantly on guard. Lucas hadn’t told her anything about this strange woman, and here she was acting like nothing was out of the ordinary. There was no way Lucas had just randomly picked up some woman and brought her to their dinner, and Judy doubted she was one of Lucas’s friends; she hadn’t known that he was close enough friends with any women to bring them to an event like this, and she liked to think that she was fairly caught up on his friend group. “I suppose that’s me.” Judy said, tentatively taking the offered hand and shaking, scrutinizing Vithi’s face.

It was…completely unreadable. Oh, there was the look of warm hospitality, but Judy didn’t trust that. It was too perfect, too completely and utterly devoid of anything but said hospitality for her to trust it.

“Come on in!” Vithi said. Judy stepped inside and hung her coat on the coatrack, while Vithi poked her head into the kitchen. “Judy’s here!” She chirped.

“Oh, good! Dinner will be done in ten minutes, so why don’t you two chat until then? Sorry I didn’t explain, Judy, it’s been a crazy couple of weeks! I’ll explain over dinner, though!” Lucas called out.

Couple of weeks, not day or even couple of days? Something was definitely going on, and the more she heard the more worried she got.

Vithi walked up close to Judy, her face suddenly serious. “Hey, I know this is weird to ask of someone I just met, but can we talk, privately? It’s about Lucas. Well, kind of. At this point he’s caught up in it whether he likes it or not.”

“Explain.” Judy hissed, not bothering to conceal her hostility. Whoever this was had caught Lucas up in something dangerous, and she wasn’t about to take that lying down.

Vithi glanced back at the kitchen. “Not here.” She whispered. “Can we talk in the guest room?”

“Fine.” Judy said, allowing herself to be led into the guest room. Vithi entered in front of her, and once Judy shut the door it locked itself behind her. She whirled around to face the door, instantly regretting not getting something, anything to defend herself. Unfortunately, she doubted anything in the house or in her car would be of much use. She wasn’t expecting to just stumble across a supernatural entity here, not when she hadn’t touched the occult for years.

And she certainly didn’t expect it to be so corporeal. The most she’d ever encountered was a poltergeist, nothing actually physical. “What are you?” She asked warily.

The thing smirked. “You don’t seem too surprised. Lucas was convinced he had inhaled a noxious gas and was hallucinating.”

Lucas knew she wasn’t human? What had he gotten himself into? “My sister and I dabbled in the occult when we were younger. You see enough that you’d be a fool to think that the paranormal isn’t real. So, let me repeat myself – what are you?! This is my house, and I know how to eject spirits, so you better give me a good reason to let you stay.”

She didn’t have anything on hand to back that threat up, though. And the thing probably wasn’t a spirit that her methods could handle, given the fact that it was able to physically interact with the world, so the threat was basically empty. Still, it was important to maintain a façade of control.

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It shrugged. “Feel free to try, but I’m djinn, not a spirit. It won’t work. But rest assured, I have a very good reason.”

Judy’s heart sank. “He’s not thinking about making wishes, is he?”

“Already did. But, before you panic, I didn’t twist them at all. We made a contract; he sets me free with a wish, I don’t twist any of them.”

That would have been reassuring if Judy could trust anything she said. “Assuming this is all true, why even bother telling me? I’m of half a mind to kick you out of the house because of all this, and I see no upside for you.”

Vithi walked to the window, motioning Judy over. “Peek through. Don’t open the blinds, though.”

Judy complied, suspicious.

“You see that car with tinted windows?” Vithi asked.

“Yeah. What about it?”

“It showed up shortly after Lucas freed me. It hasn’t moved since, and I can detect traces of magic coming from it. I’m pretty sure they sensed the rather large amount of magic that was used when the wishes were made and came to investigate. And, unfortunately, they’re not good news. What you might call the magic police already know about me being here. Heck, the highest government office sent me here. That only leaves what you could call the magic terrorists.”

Judy gingerly removed herself from the blinds and wheeled on Vithi, hands on her hips. “So, why are you still putting my nephew in danger, then?!” She accused.

“Because even if I leave, he’ll probably get captured anyway because he made wishes. Right now, the only thing saving the both of us is the fact that they’re not sure exactly which house in the area the wishes were made in. It’s only a matter of time until the residual magic fades and they can pinpoint it, and if I try to leave now, they’ll get me almost immediately. I can’t drive a car, teleportation can be traced, and they’ll be able to track my magic “scent” once I’m out of this general area. I have a bit of a crazy plan that could get the both of us out of this, but I’ll need your help to pull it off.”

Judy crossed her arms. “Fine. I’m listening. Convince me.”

Vithi reached into a pocked and pulled out a small metallic sphere. “Think of this thing sort of like a gas can filled with my magic. This,” She said, pointing to a button on one side, “will slowly start to lay a trail using the magic. It’ll be faint at first, but once I send a bit of my magic through the trail it’ll light up like a beacon, hopefully looking like I had run through the area using magic. I’ve got a way to very temporarily mask my magical trail, and Lucas doesn’t leave enough of one to be noticeable, so that should allow us to get away and lose them completely. Following so far?”

Judy nodded. “Let me guess, you want me to lay this trail?”

“You got it.” Vithi pulled out a map that appeared to have been pulled from the internet and printed off. “I’ve outlined the trail here. I’m going to teleport the two of us to the place marked start, and hopefully they’ll follow it all the way through. The “can” has enough in it to last for about six hours of constant emission, so it’ll be a lengthy process, but it might be the only thing that will stop both Lucas and I from being enslaved or worse.”

Judy took the sphere, taking a while to examine it. She couldn’t…feel anything untoward from it, so it wasn’t outright harmful. “I’ll have to take this home and look at it, but if I determine you’re telling the truth, I’ll help. But I have two conditions,” Judy said, looking Vithi directly in the eyes, “first, I get to pick the route. I know this area better than you and can probably waste more of their time, provided you don’t need it to start or end anywhere in particular. Second, I need you to promise me you’ll protect Lucas. Even if he’s a burden, you can’t leave him behind. I have your trail here, if I find out that you left him out to dry, I will hunt you down and do everything in my power to make your life miserable.”

Vithi visibly sagged in relief. “I’m really hoping to start it in that park, kind of banking on it, actually. I’m hoping to lose them in the brush. But, other than that you’re free to make it go wherever. And I won’t leave Lucas behind, he’s the crux of my plan. For some reason I can’t fathom, he’s got no trace of magic in him whatsoever, it’s like looking at a rock. I’m hoping to be able to use that to throw my pursuers off completely, since they’re going to be tracking my magic signature, not actual physical tracking.

“That being said, due to some…extenuating circumstances, he thinks I don’t have magic right now and doesn’t know about all this. I don’t want him to start worrying and doing something stupid before the time comes, so when I feel like the time is right, I’ll give him a warning, and we’ll leave soon after.”

Judy thought about that for a moment, then sighed. “Yeah, he probably would do something stupid. I won’t tell him.”

“Thanks. I was originally going to have him do all this, so your cooperation will make this whole thing run smoother. Before we head back, though, and I realize this is a huge swerve in the conversation, but I’ve been wondering. How does Lucas afford this place? Given he’s paying for college, is working at minimum wage, and doesn’t share this place with anyone, I doubt he’s got enough excess income to be able to pay for this.”

Judy sighed again. “Long story short, he doesn’t. I’m renting this place to him at way below its normal value. I wanted to let him stay for free, but he wouldn’t accept that, so this was our compromise.”

“I figured it’d be something like that. Mind if I ask why? It seems a little much to be giving a nephew.”

Judy frowned. “If you’re staying here, I suppose you deserve to know. Back around the time he was born, I was married, and expecting. Then, my husband and I got into a car crash. I was…the only one that made it out. Having lost my kid and my husband in one day, I was crushed. I ended up selling the contract on our apartment and moved in with Lucas’ parents. He was about a month old then, and I started to look after him while his parents worked.

“And doing that really pulled me out of my slump. Slowly over time, I began to be less and less depressed, and loved him more and more, to the point where he became like a son to me. Eventually, I worked up the courage to start using the life insurance money that had been rotting away in the bank. I invested in property, and while it was hard, I ended up pretty successful. This house is just one of the many I rent out, and even if the kid didn’t mean to do it, he deserves it for how much he’s helped me. Yeah, he does technically pay me rent, but I’m secretly saving that up for if he ever really needs it.”

She shrugged. “But that’s enough of that. Let’s go see if Lucas is finished, I’m starving. After dinner we can hash things out more, alright?”