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Ariel scoops up Fluffster and hugs him to her chest. “Bailey is going to stay with us for a bit. Isn’t that awesome?”
The chinchilla looks at me unblinkingly, his eyes too intelligent for a rodent. Are you going to be helping out with rent? he asks mentally.
“Dude.” Felix rolls his eyes. “If you must know, thanks to Bailey, Ariel and I are going to be ‘handsomely rewarded’ soon.”
Fluffster demands to know why, so I bring him up to speed.
If I know Felix, he’s not going to ask for money, Fluffster says mentally when the story is over. This household could go completely bankrupt, and he wouldn’t bat an eye.
“I’ll get money, don’t worry.” Ariel rubs the fluffy, frugal creature against her cheek.
“And I plan to ask for something that can totally be monetized,” Felix says. “I want to start a VR game company on Gomorrah.”
“Wait, don’t tell us.” Ariel lowers Fluffster to the floor. “You’re going to build the Matrix.”
“The Matrix was a prison,” Felix says defensively. “I want to build a fully immersive VR game environment that people would want to visit voluntarily and stay in for months on end.”
“Potato, potahto.” Ariel saunters over to a linen closet and pulls out a set of sheets and towels. “Both are simulated worlds with lots of action and adventure.” She glances at me. “Come, let’s get you settled in.”
She leads me into an empty room with a bed, table, and bookshelves filled with paper books. Stripping the current sheets from the bed, she replaces them with the new ones and hangs the towels on the back of the chair.
I scan the books. They’re all about magic—the performance art, that is, not powers. Makes sense. This is Princess Peach’s room—or was—and she’s really into this stuff.
“Is it okay that I’ll be using her bed?” I ask Ariel, nodding at a nearby picture of Princess Peach herself.
“Oh, yeah,” Ariel says. “She’s on Atlantis, a world where time flows much faster than here. My math isn’t so good, but I think in the time we’ve had this conversation, she’s experienced a whole day of honeymoon bliss.”
“So, if you know where she is, could we—”
“No. If Valerian were to go there with the intention of asking her for a favor, she’d see him coming and not be around when he arrives. And that’s the best case. If he’s not lucky, Valerian would catch her—which is when her hubby would kill him in the most spectacular manner. He really wants them to have this time to themselves and specifically warned against interruptions.”
Right then. No help from Princess Peach or her “hubby.” Not that either of them could help with the biggest problem of all— Collywobbles, who doesn’t even exist in the waking world.
Unless he does. What does anyone really know about a god of nightmares?
“You hungry?” Ariel asks.
I reply in the affirmative, and she drags me to the kitchen before I can clarify my dietary hesitations.
I needn’t have worried. Grinning like a maniac, Felix puts a large bunch of bananas into a salad bowl and places it ceremoniously in front of me.
He and Ariel get what he calls “his special,” and the domovoi a bowl of oats with nuts. The cat receives a can of food that says “Fancy Feast” on it and has a picture of a feline very similar to her—but I think that’s just weird marketing and not proof that cats are cannibalistic.
Is it true all you eat is bananas, like a monkey? Fluffster mentally asks me when I peel my first one.
“When on Earth, yes,” I say with my mouth full. “It’s the food I trust the most.” And not very much at that, but I don’t add that bit; Felix is already having too much fun at my expense.
I can live on oats and hay, Fluffster says. Which, like bananas, is inexpensive. He looks meaningfully at Felix, Ariel, and the cat.
Felix nearly chokes with mirth. “Don’t worry,” he says when he catches his breath. “If finances get tough, Ariel and I promise to live on bananas as well.”
“And don’t forget oats,” Ariel says.
The cat gives everyone a look that seems to say, “If you don’t get me my special food, I’ll feast on your not-very-fancy eyeballs instead.”
They tease me more with each banana I peel, and when I finish the whole bunch, Felix gets up, goes over to a cupboard, and takes out a couple of familiar packets.
I narrow my eyes at him. “You have manna?”
“Got a taste for it when we stayed on Gomorrah, so I smuggled in a bunch,” Felix says. “It’s all yours. I just wanted Ariel to see the banana eating at least once.”
“Evil,” I mutter, reaching for a packet.
“Genius,” Ariel says, grinning.
Glaring at her, I dig into the heavenly food as they finish their boring, unsanitary Earth dishes.
