“Her loss,” Nate said. “Can you orient on the dialect I speak?”
“Sure can, numbskull.”
Nate ignored that. He went to the closet and donned day clothing. He turned around and saw Tag dressed identically. Good enough. “Now we’ll take a walk in the mall, where you can pick up on the local scene. Don’t do anything without my advice.”
“Got it, pinhead.”
They took the elevator to the basement floor. Tag was much intrigued. “A moving room!”
They walked to the nearby mall. “Moving steps!”
“That’s called an escalator. See, folk ride up and down on them. We’ll do the same. No flying or conjuring, okay?” Nate paused.
“Why are we waiting?”
“See those young women on the escalator? I am mentally undressing them. It’s a common male pastime.”
“Ah.”
The women screamed. Their clothing had disappeared.
“I said mentally, not physically!” Nate said. “Quick, clothe them again, before they make a worse scene.”
“What good is mentally?” Tag grumped. “It’s their bare behinds that count.” But clothing reappeared on the women.
Yet somehow the women were not satisfied. “That’s my outfit!” one screamed at another.
“Well, you got mine!”
“I may have put them back on the wrong women,” Tag said.
“Let it be!” Nate said before the ifrit could magic the clothing further. “We’d better make ourselves scarce.”
They turned, only to be confronted by another young woman, a pretty one. “Not so fast, you two,” she said. “I saw that, and heard you talking. Did you use stage magic?”
“Of course,” Tag said, before Nate could stop him.
“Really? How did you do it?”
“Like this.”
The woman’s clothing disappeared. She was quite well formed, and obviously it was all natural. But unlike the others, she did not scream. “That’s not stage magic. That’s real!”
“No, it’s fake,” Nate said desperately. “All pretend.”
“Fake?” she asked Tag.
“Of course not. My magic is always real.”
“Show me something else.”
“Don’t do it!” Nate said. But again he was too late. The woman was already sailing up into the air, still naked. Now many heads turned.
“Look at that!” a child cried. “Bare boobs!”
The men in the area oriented. “More than that,” one said, licking his lips.
“Get her down here, safely, clothed,” Nate rasped. “Fast!”
The woman reappeared before them, clothed. “Amazing,” she said.
“Take us back to my apartment,” Nate said, trying desperately to stop making a scene.
Then they were back in his apartment. Tag, Nate, and the woman. “Uh-oh,” Nate muttered. He had not meant for the woman to be included.
“This is wonderful,” the woman said. “You really can do magic!”
“It’s all illusion,” Nate said.
“Nonsense. My hobby is paranormal investigation. Ninety-nine percent are fakes, but I know a real one when I see it. When it undresses me, and flies me high in the air, and conjures me to another place.” She faced Tag. “Sir, you have phenomenal talent.”
“Thank you, damsel,” the ifrit said modestly. “Shall we now have a wild orgy of sex?”
“No!” Nate cried.
“He’s right, this time,” the woman said. “This is not the time. We hardly know each other. I am Lotus Long.”
“Nate Boxer,” Nate said. “And this is Tag Ifrit.”
“How do you do, Tag?” Lotus said, proffering her hand.
“Well, I’m a magical creature,” Tag said. “It comes naturally to me.”
“She meant to shake hands,” Nate said quickly. “Like this.” He proffered his hand, and Lotus took it.
“Ah.” Tag shook hands with them both.
“How did you catch on to what we were doing?” Nate asked Lotus. “In fact, why were you there? It seems like sheer coincidence.”
“Not at all. I am one of the one percent. That is, I’m a real paranormal. My premonition is infallible. I knew that something significant would occur at that time and place, so I made sure to be there. Now I have a marvelous opportunity to investigate.”
“Investigate me,” Tag said, his chest swelling.
“She means your paranormal aspect,” Nate said, staving off a spot siege of jealousy.
“That, too,” the ifrit agreed reluctantly.
“You really are magical?” Lotus asked.
“I’m an ifrit. All ifrits are magical.”
“How is it there’s been no newsflash about this before?”
“I was sealed in this mattress,” Tag explained. “Until Nate removed the tag and released me. Now I’m learning about his world. It’s intriguing.”
“I would imagine so,” Lotus said. “How long were you in the mattress?”
Nate had given up trying to hide the nature of the ifrit. There was bound to be a globe-splattering splash. Where would it end?
“Three thousand years,” Tag said almost proudly. It seemed that he liked having the attention of a pretty girl, as what male didn’t.
“That’s amazing!” Lotus said warmly. “It must have been maddening to be trapped without being able to participate in world events.”
“You have no idea. All I knew of the world was what I could hear from inside the mattress, and that was mostly snoring. Except when a couple was making love. Then the bouncing could get horrendous, especially because I knew what caused it. Hard to sleep through that. If I could’ve gotten out, I’d have showed them some real action. Speaking of which—”
“All in good time,” Lotus said smoothly. Nate realized that she could handle the situation. She was playing the ifrit, using his desire to get her onto the mattress to evoke more information about his nature and history. Nate could only wish that she had reason to play him, Nate, similarly. “I want to learn all about you, so I can write a book documenting a real live paranormal manifestation and become famous.”
Tag’s eyes squinted cannily. “You are using me.”
“Well, yes, technically. This is potentially the story of the millennium, and it’s all mine, mine!”
“Then you should let me use you in return. This is only fair.”
Lotus considered. “I suppose you do have a case. Very well, I’ll give you a minute to court me. Then we’ll return to business.”
“But his idea of courtship is akin to a cave man dragging a wench into his cave by the hair,” Nate protested.
Both turned to him. “So?” they said almost together.
Nate shut up.
“You have ox eyes, a giraffe’s neck, breasts like ripe melons, lips like fat red worms, hair like a camel’s tail, legs like those of an ostrich, a wasp’s waist, a butt like that of a baboon in heat, feet like—”
“You do have a certain way with words,” Lotus said, smiling. “But not quite right for today’s women, complimentary as they may be.”
“How not?” Tag asked, perplexed.
“Suppose I returned the favor, per a current joke, saying your ears are like flowers, cauliflowers. Your eyes are like pools, cesspools. Your lips are like petals, bicycle pedals—bit of a verbal slurring there. Your teeth are like stars, they come out at night. Your nose is a Roman nose, it’s roamin’ all over your face.”
The ifrit nodded, impressed. “You’re a fair hand at courtship yourself, damsel. But what is a bicycle?”
“Um, you do need to get a better acquaintance with today’s scene. You probably don’t know about cars, planes, computers, TV—”
“He knows about TV,” Nate said. “He saw, uh, girls there.”