I leaned across the table to hiss at Trowa. “Okay, why is he following you?” We had adjourned to the dining hall when Mistress Loquinn informed Wufei that he was tired and would be taking a nap. To my surprise, Farquahar trailed after us. He was currently in line discussing the relative merits of grits versus hash browns as breakfast starch with Jannell. The Wood Sprite seemed to have less of a problem with a demon in her serving line than she usually had with Wufei.
“I’m babysitting,” Trowa sighed. “He’s only second level; barely second, really, and the wards have totally damped his power. Q doesn’t want anyone messing with him. I know him from before, so I got the joy.”
“Great. Lucky you.” The demon shuffled our direction, nodding politely to people as he passed them. “He sure doesn’t look dangerous...”
“In the usual course of things, he wouldn’t be. He’s amoral, of course, but he’s not a bad demon.” He picked up a slice of apple. His ears were growing larger and furrier and his hands were rounding into the dinner plate-sized paws of his Were form. I hadn’t noticed Wufei’s changes, but then Mistress had him practically straitjacketed into a hospital gown, so it wouldn’t be so obvious.
Farquahar sat down across from us. We stared at him. He looked at me, then at Trowa, then down at his tray.
“Um... Should I sit somewhere else?”
“No, this is fine,” said Trowa easily. “We’re just wondering what you’re hiding.”
Farquahar dropped his fork. “Hiding?!” he squeaked. “Nothing! I have nothing to hide!” he protested nervously. “Why would you think I’m hiding anything, Lord Puma?”
Trowa rolled his eyes. “Farquahar, you’re a demon; you always have something to hide.”
“You know,” I joined the conversational game as a thought occurred to me; “I’m wondering how you ended up in Wyoming when you were parked in Fresno. I’ll bet that’s a very interesting story.” I smiled at him over my coffee. The demon blanched. Oh, yeah; must be *some* story, all right.
Trowa must have approved of my question because he set about elaborating.
“Duo’s right; I imagine that’s a very good tale.” He smirked and stirred his coffee. “You can begin now.”
“Ummm.....”
“Now, you don’t want to upset Duo, do you? You know how Heero gets when you upset his Chosen.” Farquahar paled even further. “And you remember how *Duo* gets when he’s upset, don’t you...?” Farquahar swallowed a mouthful of hot coffee and almost choked on it. “So, let’s start with the ‘opportunity’ you mentioned. Enlighten us, friend demon.”
Farquahar looked at me from the corners of his bulgy watering eyes. Maybe I should blow holes in the ground more often.
“Well.... um... I didn’t do anything wrong! Not exactly...” he began.
“Uh-huh,” said Trowa and I together.
Farquahar swallowed and looked down at his plate. “It was just a little thing, really...” Trowa and I glared at him and he continued with a little more alacrity. Guess he’d finally decided that either way, we were going to find out.
“So... I happened to see something on a demon blog about a Human who was looking for someone to do a job for him...”
I looked at Trowa, mouthing silently, “Demons have *blogs*?!” He nodded back.
“I know we’re not supposed to do stuff for Humans, but everybody does, now and then. And I could do it and get back to Fresno before I had to go to work, so I figured, why not? It wasn’t anything bad.”
“Your definition of ‘bad’ or my definition of ‘bad’?” asked Trowa.
“It wasn’t hurting anyone! You know I don’t do that kind of stuff. Mostly. This guy just wanted to find something; that’s not bad, is it?”
Trowa looked at him; he sighed and continued.
“So... I got the details and just... you know... showed up when he was ready...”
“Someone cast a demon circle and you jumped into it,” said Trowa idly.
“Ye~ah....”
“A Wizard?”
“Oh, no! Just some Human male. He had a book of ‘spells’; you know? One of those things that’s printed on a machine? He was muttering a bunch of junk and calling on his god to grant his prayers, and that’s when I... um... dropped in. He was kind of surprised.”
“I’ll bet,” muttered Trowa dryly.
On to Chapter one hundred