Codespell by Kelly McCullough

waiting for me on the balcony of Raven House. Time does not run evenly from DecLocus to DecLocus, so I stepped from late night into late morning with the shift. The tropical sun beat heavily upon my shoulders, and I handed Melchior to Haemun so I could strip off my leather jacket.

    “Is Cerice here?” I asked.

    Haemun shook his head. I wasn’t surprised really. At the moment the only practical way to reach Raven House was via faerie ring, and Cerice had never used one on her own. Still, I’d had hopes. Haemun and I exchanged burdens as Melchior feebly began stirring.

    “Can I get you anything?” asked Haemun.

    “How about a virgin strawberry daiquiri?” I’d had enough of alcohol for a while. “Oh, and some shorts and a fresh shirt?”

    “Certainly, sir. Might I also suggest some batteries for Melchior?”

    “Good idea. Thanks.”

    In the old days, Melchior had drawn most of his power from the omnipresent mweb itself, power the mweb servers channeled from the Primal Chaos, the driver of all magic. That was before the problem with Necessity and the tearing of the net. Now, as often as not, we spent time in DecLoci that had no mweb connection, and Melchior had to find alternate supplies. He preferred the chemical energy found in food but processed it much more slowly than the stuff from a direct electrical source. His movements were becoming firmer, more deliberate, so I carried him into the open porch that backed the balcony.

    “What happened?” he whispered, as I set him on a chair near the fountain.

    “Dairn crashed you.” I flopped down across from him. “Pretty solidly, too.”

    “How in Hades’ name did he manage that?”

    “The same way he canceled that spell you tried to nail him with right before Tisiphone showed up.” I whistled a little bit of binary nonsense and waggled my fingers. “Some kind of high-powered programming voodoo.”

    “That’s crazy talk,” said Melchior, though he didn’t sound like he doubted me. “The last time we ran into Dairn, he didn’t even own a real computer, just poor little Kira. Where the hell did he learn those kinds of leet skillz? And how’d he do it so quickly?”

    “Poor little Kira?” I lifted my eyebrows.

    Kira was a webpixie/PDA and tough as Dionysus’s liver. She might only stand six inches tall, but she carried around six tons of attitude. Melchior had a soft spot for her.

    He blushed but was saved from responding by the arrival of Haemun with a tray holding my drink, a couple of AA batteries, and a variety of snacks. In his free hand he held a pair of board shorts and a matching aloha shirt. They were technically in my colors—black penguins on black surf-boards riding big waves in an emerald sea—but the sheer ugliness of the set looked more like something that might have come out of his closet. Of course, he didn’t wear pants . . . and they were clean and dry, and I wasn’t. So I didn’t complain.

    Mel tucked the AAs into his cheeks while I pulled off my filthy party gear and changed. For a little while after that we said nothing. I just sipped my drink, and Mel did the same with his direct current.

    Finally, he removed the batteries and set them on the tray. “What happened after I checked out?”

    I told him about the faerie ring, and he whistled in appreciation. “Nice trick, very nice.”

    I grinned. “That sounds an awful lot like praise, Mel. Are you sure you’re not feverish?”

    “Don’t let it go to your head. It’s never been your competence I’ve worried about. It’s your sanity and your sense of self-preservation. That and your near-suicidal need to make jokes at the worst possible time. I may have to excuse that one from here on out though; with Thalia as your grandmother it’s probably in your blood. Stupid, but in your blood.”

    “Ah, there’s the Melchior I’m used to. But you’re right. It was a nice trick. Even I thought so. I guess it proves that anything that doesn’t kill you