Toil and Trouble and Bad Decisions [The Misadventures of Theodosius - Book III]

Chapter 3

IT WAS A BEAR. AGAIN.

Theo has requested that I leave the details of the encounter out of this story, so I won't tell you how loudly and how shrilly he screamed as he tried in vain to run the bear out of the cottage. Because Tansy had no physical form, she was unable to assist him with a broom or other weaponry, but don't worry—I won't tell you how Theo tried to threaten the bear using a kettle, or how spectacularly his effort failed.

Suffice it to say that, despite Theo's best efforts, he and Tansy ended the confrontation with a new roommate: a smelly, ill-tempered, omnivorous roommate who took up more room than he had a right to and did not do his fair share of the tidying-up.

We've all been there.

"Okay," Theo whispered as he stepped into the his workroom. "He's sleeping." As if to confirm this, an enormous, bone-shaking snore sounded from the other side of the door.

Elliott snorted. "Marvelous. I gave up Familiar Purgatory for this."

Tansy stroked the spiky ridge of Elliott's backbone. Now that she was inside and safe from the errant breezes, Tansy could move about on her own, and she was able to influence the world around her, just slightly. "There, now, Elliott. Don't complain. I'm so impressed with you. Last time I was here, you couldn't talk."

Elliott raised his shoulders and then his rump, his shoulders and then his rump, welcoming Tansy's touch. With a humble murr, he turned the vacant sockets of his skull toward her. "Something about being raised from the dead left me with a few more skills than I had when I was living."

"That reminds me. Theo, did I see what I think I saw in the dining room?"

Theo had been watching this gentle domestic scene with a swelling heart, grateful beyond measure for every second of it: the gentle rise and fall of Tansy's hand, the ethereal glow lighting her disheveled curls, and even Elliott's uncomplaining submission to her affection. Now, he narrowed his eyes and tilted his head in question. "Did you...ah...What...what do you think you saw?"

Turning from Elliott, Tansy put her hands on her hips and stared at Theo, raising her eyebrows expectantly. It was a look he had seen a few hundred times before when they had been living together; it was a look that said, Come now, Theodosius, you know this one. I'll wait.

He held up one finger, pleading for a moment to think. "Ah...It's a bit—"

"My mummified body in a glass casket!" Tansy cried.

Theo's finger wilted, his shoulders slumped. Panic burst into his mind, wide-eyed and frazzled. We should lie to her! it shouted.

We can't lie to her! She's my wife! And it was definitely her mummified body in that glass casket!

LIE! Panic insisted. LIE, THEO, OR YOU'RE A GONER! TELL HER IT WAS YOUR NEIGHBOR!

I live in the middle of—

YOUR AUNT!

I don't have any—

YOUR MISTRESS! YOUR GIRLFRIEND!

Okay, this is not going to...Listen here. If we just—

EVERY ANTHROPOMORPHIZED EMOTION TO HIMSELF! Panic shrieked, and bolted back through the door of Theo's mind, leaving him disconcertingly bereft of reactions to Tansy's discovery. Theo had never planned how this moment would go. He had kept Tansy's body in that glass casket because he had planned to resurrect her, and resurrections typically required a body. He had never expected Tansy to see the body from anywhere but inside of it. Actually, now that he considered it from outside the haze of plodding depression and fizzy occult study that had characterized his life after Tansy's demise, she probably would not have liked getting her old body back in its advanced state of decay.

Had he consulted us, Dear Reader, we could have told him that two books ago, but he didn't ask us, did he? He just kept his nose in his Necronomicon and dusted his creepy glass casket. Sorcerers. I swear.

"Theo," Tansy said, a warning note in her voice.

"I...ah...I, ah..."

"He was going to bring you back to life." Elliott, no longer the recipient of Tansy's loving caress, was perched on the edge of a low bookshelf by the door, watching his master's distress with no small measure of glee. "He expected the exercise to require a little bit more corpse than was needed in the end, so I think we've found ourselves with a surplus of moldering—"

"Elliott!" Theo raked his hands into his scruffy beard.

"Theeeooo..." Tansy moaned. She clasped her hands over her heart, stricken. "Oh, Theo, no. Oh, no."

"Ooo, idea." The skeletal cat rose and leapt down from the bookshelf with a rattle of his tiny little bones. "Boil her up like you did me. You can be the only squishy creature in the house. She's a bit crispier than I was—"

"Elliott," Theo hissed.

"Oh, Theo. Theo, no." Tansy looked faint.

"—but it will probably just take a bit longer to accomplish, that's all."

Theo was not and never had been much of a threatener. He was usually the one on the receiving end when threats were being exchanged, but he rose to the occasion admirably: "If you do not stop making this worse, I will send you straight back to Familiar Purgatory!"

A frosty silence descended. Elliott glowered. Tansy swooned. Theo drew a deep breath and regarded his wife, helpless and guilty in the face of her distress. "I didn't mean to upset you. Or frighten you. Or make you angry. Or make you sad. Or disgust you." He racked his brain for other emotions he might unwittingly have incurred in his beloved, just to cover his bases.

"Please don't boil me, Theo!" Tansy had covered her face with her hands. It sounded like she was crying. The sound of her grief tore Theo's heart into tiny little bits and flung the scraps into the air, whence they rained down like confetti in a Guilt Parade. "I don't want to be a skeleton."

"I won't. I won't, I swear." He rushed toward her and placed his hands gently on Tansy's wrists. Her body beneath his fingers was faint and insubstantial; had he applied any force at all, his hands would have slipped right through her. He touched her as lightly as he could, the press of his fingertips a suggestion rather than a grasp as he pulled her hands away from her face. She didn't resist. "I'm sorry, my love. This is scary, but we're together. We'll figure this out."

"I'll be trapped here forever." Tansy's voice was clotted with tears, and her faded eyes glimmered. "If I go outside, the wind will whisk me away. Oh, Theo, what are we going to do?"

"We're going to find a way to...ah...to give you form again. To give you a body again."

"I don't want to be a skeleton!"

"No, no. No, of course not! Not a skeleton."

Elliott sniffed, shifting on his perch. "Look at these beggars, choosing away." He flicked his bony tail.

Shooting Elliott a quelling look, Theo grasped Tansy's hands, trying hard not to squeeze his fingers right through her spectral flesh. "There must be another way. It took me twenty-five years to bring you back. I'll spend another fifty finding a way to restore you, no matter what it takes."

Tansy looked rattled, but hopeful. She squeezed Theo's hands, which he felt only dimly, and nodded. "Okay. I love you."

"If I may make a suggestion," said Elliott, "try to avoid deals with demonesses this go-'round, would you?"