damn boots off my bed, but once again, incorporeal.
“Didn’t think you’d be too thrilled to do an accidental strip tease,” he said, casual as you please, that damned grin on his face. His gaze drifted down over my chest, to where my hand held the towel over my cock, and then back up. “Not that I mind.”
Was he for real?
Wait, no, was he? Weren’t cowboys supposed to be old-fashioned homophobes, like modern anti-magic zealots? Not that it mattered. Nope, not at all. “What the hell are you doing in here?”
The lazy grin didn’t lessen. “You asked me a question then wandered off. I didn’t figure you wanted extra company in the shower, so I waited till you were finished.”
At that point, I didn’t even remember what I’d asked him. Something about his ridiculous arcane porn mage claims, no doubt.
“Truth is I don’t know why it hasn’t come out. It’s never been an intentional secret. If anyone had asked back in the day, I’d have told them.” He gave a helpless little shrug, then looked down at his hands, clasped over his chest.
He said he’d died in the middle of the nineteenth century, which was about when the Aurora Aureum had been forming back east, so there hadn’t been a lot of magical infrastructure yet. It was reasonable that they simply hadn’t known Gideon and his special kind of magic.
But why hadn’t they learned about it in the meantime?
I tried to slide my boxers on before taking the towel off my junk, and Gideon had the good manners to not stare as I did so. I took a moment to go back into the bathroom and hang the towel up, then brought a dry one out with me and set it on the end of the bed. I looked over at still-damp foxy and pointed at it. “Till you’re dry, no sitting on the blanket.”
Foxy hopped up onto the towel, turned a few circles like a guard dog, and curled up there.
I decided screw the pajamas. Gideon had already seen everything, so what was I going to hide? It was just too bad I didn’t have anything more impressive to have shown him. I sat down next to him, back against the headboard and feet crossed at the ankle. “You said you have to keep coming back and training someone new. Maybe a lack of talent is the problem. I wonder if you’re just running out of people who have this ability. It’s dying out. Maybe that’s why you found me and not a real arcane mage.”
I stopped and sighed at myself. Why was I even buying into the existence of arcane magic? It wasn’t even a theory; it was pure fantasy. Still, I didn’t think Gideon was lying on purpose. He believed in what he was saying whether it was true or not.
He let out a sound almost like a growl. “I don’t know why you assholes keep failing to train apprentices. The last one I trained must have managed it, since it’s been a while since I was called up, but you seem to forget too damn often. I come back for a little while once every few decades. It’s enough to give me ideas about what’s going on, but not a lot of hard information. I’ve tried to figure it out, but every time I come back, I’m starting from the beginning. I’ve got to make nice with a new link, teach them everything about connecting to the power. Meanwhile I can’t go ask their predecessor, because if I’m awake, it means they’re dead.”
Well hell. That was a huge barrier to him finding out anything. Plus even with as much control as he had, being able to sit down on objects, I doubt he could read books or use the internet. Heck, if he only came back every twenty years, he might barely know what the internet was.
Unthinkable, living without search engines.
I turned and looked at him. “We’ll have to look into it. I may not be able to become a magical arcane wizard, but I can help research people if you can remember their names.”
Gideon, far from looking frustrated with my stubbornness, smiled again. “Good. That’s smart. We’ll work on that while I train you. Maybe you can stop it from happening again.”
It was like my protests about arcane magic went right past him, not an ounce of annoyance showing in his face or words. I wasn’t sure whether it was frustrating or nice. There was no