The first thing Vithi noticed when she woke up was that she was in a bed. She sat bolt upright and checked her sentry spell. She breathed a sigh of relief. Everything seemed to be unharmed, save a couple of bumps from when she hit the floor. She looked around; she was in a small bedroom, neatly furnished and clean save for a dresser next to the bed. Upon the dresser lay a small plate wrapped in tinfoil with a note on top. “Vithi,” it read “I thought you might be hungry when you woke up, so here’s some food. I’m probably out at work right now, but please stay here until I get back. I would like to talk to you again. I have more food in the fridge, and you’re more than welcome to use the TV again – Lucas.”

Vithi thought about this for a moment, then reached for the plate. Unwrapping the tinfoil, she found a couple of potatoes, a fork, knife, and packets of salt. She quickly cast a spell to detect poisons or drugs in the food, and once satisfied, heated it up with magic. She made her way out of the room with the plate and stumbled around a bit before finding the kitchen. She opened the fridge and grabbed a small container of butter.

She looked around at the kitchen as she did. It was larger than she had expected, and seemed well stocked with appliances, most of which looked fairly unused. Fading sunlight shone through a window over the sink, which currently contained a small pile of dishes. In the middle of the kitchen was an island, surrounded by chairs. She sat down on one of these, buttered her potatoes, and started to think.

Alright, so where do I go from here? I probably don’t want to get entangled in the magical community, so the best bet would be to go lie low somewhere for a while. She paused in her thoughts and looked out the window. It’s getting late. But I swear it was night when I passed out. I must have been unconscious for quite a while. She checked her sentry spell again. 19 hours. So, it’s late out, and I’m not sure where to go. She looked down at her potatoes hungrily and began to eat. Well, he was right about that. I’m starving. Perhaps I’ll see what he wants to talk to me about. Tunem did say to give him a chance, and he treated me well for a master, even if he is uneducated. What could it hurt?

---

As Lucas entered the house, he was greeted by the sounds of the TV. Good, she hasn’t left. He walked into the living room, set his backpack down, and sat on one of the couches. Vithi was seated on the armchair closest to the TV, playing the same open-world game she had been playing the night before. “Vithi?” Lucas ventured.

“What?” Vithi’s eyes didn’t waver from the screen as she replied.

“What are you planning to do now?”

“Don’t know. Wander around, see the world? Does it matter?”

“Well, uh, I was thinking that it might be a little difficult for you now that your magic is gone.”

Vithi paused the game at this and turned to face him. “What?”

“Well, the book, it, uh, it said that you would lose all your magic if you were freed.”

Vithi’s gaze narrowed. “Oh, right. What does that have to do with anything?”

Lucas looked at his hands, twiddling his thumbs a little. “Well, if you want to travel, you’d need papers, and identity, that sort of a thing. As far as the law is concerned, you don’t exist, right?”

Vithi paused. “Tunem could have set me up with something.”

“Did he?”

“No. What’s it to you anyway?”

“Well, I was thinking, it’d be hard for you to get anywhere without money, hard for you to get money without a job, and hard for you to get a job without papers. Perhaps you could stay here until you could find a way out, contact Tunem or something?”

“No!” She shook her head vigorously.

Lucas’ shoulders sagged a little. “I understand, you’re a free djinn, I can’t keep you here if you don’t want to stay.”

Vithi stopped for a second. “I wasn’t saying no to staying here, I was saying no to contacting Tunem.”

Lucas frowned. “Why not?”

“He’s a mage and a Protectorate member.”

“So?”

“So, mages like to bind djinn. How do you think I got in the lamp in the first place? What’s worse, Protectorate members like to keep magical beings under wraps. It’d be like walking right back into imprisonment.”

“So, you’ll stay?”

“Until I can work something out. Don’t expect me to be a housekeeper for you, though. I’m still my own person.”

Lucas let out a sigh of relief. “That’s good. There was one other thing I wanted to talk to you about.”

Vithi motioned to the TV. “Make it quick, I’m in the middle of a boss fight.”

“Well, the languages wish worked great, but I can’t seem to use magic.”

“Do you know HOW?” Vithi snickered.

“Well, no, but…”

Vithi rolled her eyes. “Look kid, you made a wish. You can use magic. Should even be fairly easy for you. If a teach you a simple spell, will you leave me alone?”

Lucas nodded. Vithi sighed. “Now, it’s not actually required for you to speak or move your hands to use magic, but it helps you focus. I’m gonna show you how to summon a flame in your hand, I’m…pretty sure that’s a simple spell for humans. Just hold out your hand and repeat after me.” She said and chanted a short phrase.

Lucas held out his hand, screwed up his face in concentration, and spoke the phrase.

Vithi was surprised by a couple of things. First, his pronunciation was better than hers. She quickly chided herself for that, recalling the wish he made. Of course it would give him proficiency in the common language of magic. The second was that nothing happened. She could tell that he was really trying, and by all rights the flame should have appeared, but it didn’t. She frowned. “That shouldn’t be happening. I’ll look into it later if I’m feeling bored. Now, will you leave me be? I did technically teach you the spell.”

Lucas sighed, but withdrew. Vithi simply returned to her game.

---

Vithi walked down the hallways of her lamp, deep in thought. It had been a couple of weeks since she had started staying with Lucas. It had been a good time for her; she spent most of her time in front of the TV playing games, of course, and wasn’t really expected to do anything else. She saw the occasional annoyed look from him when he thought she wasn’t looking, which she, oddly enough, felt guilty about. Why should she be feeling guilty? She’d been in forced servitude for a few thousand years! Is it too much to ask to let her relax a little? She shook her head, putting those thoughts away for another time. No, she was here for a different reason. For some reason Lucas still couldn’t use magic. It was driving her up the wall, although she wouldn’t say so to his face. Why hadn’t the wish worked? She hadn’t twisted the wish at all, and with his language wish he should have been able to pick up something like this no sweat. She was headed towards the storage section of her lamp, where she kept her extra alchemical supplies, books, and various other things that she didn’t need clogging up her living area all the time. As she walked past the alchemical section, something caught her eye. It was a gooey ball of some sort, pulsing and writhing with a sort of light. She frowned, mentally looking through her experiments

She had taken to dabbling in alchemy during her time while “serving” Tunem. She had made a couple of things like this, most notably a small shrub that oozed slime that looked similar to what the thing was covered with, but she’s sure this wasn’t of her making. She reached to grab it but found herself stopped by a barrier of some sort. What in the world? She raced off to a pile of nearby books and pulled out one of the tomes on divination she had borrowed from Tunem. She thumbed through the pages and stopped on a page detailing an identification spell. While, as a djinn, she had next to no natural aptitude for divination magic, Tunem’s instructions were very specific, and she eventually was able to work a passable spell out of it.

The magic of the barrier was from a djinn, that’s for sure. She paused and poked a little at it. Yes, it’s djinn magic, and incredibly powerful djinn magic at that. Wait, this can’t be right. The spell was telling he that the barrier was from her magic. She shifted the identification spell a little, focusing more on other aspects of the barrier. The space in front of her shimmered under the spell as she looked for weak points. There were no weak points; the barrier was impenetrable, as far as she could tell. The space in front of her shimmered again, seemingly forming words. “For Lucas” she read. For Lucas? Why would I have an unknown artifact in my lamp, surrounded by a barrier of my making, set aside for Lucas? This has got to be from his wishes, but why?

---

The next day, Vithi woke up with a plan. She was going to get started working things out, and that would require spying on Lucas. She wouldn’t be doing it physically; she doubted that would help much. She had a far more effective solution. She got out of her bed, rubbing her eyes. She had taken Lucas’ guest room to keep up her magic-less facade, and she did have to admit it was nice to sleep outside of the lamp every once in a while. She stretched a little and got down to business. The first thing to do was create a double – it wouldn’t do for Lucas to suspect something was off. Luckily, self-modification was a particular strong point for djinn, and she quickly had a copy of herself awaiting orders. It would take over for her when she wasn’t there, acting like she would in any given situation. It would become less realistic the further away she got from it, but that wouldn’t be an issue. She only needed it to be realistic when Lucas was around.

That brought her to her second spell; she would, in a sense, possess Lucas. She’d act as a sort of passenger, seeing what he saw, feeling what he felt, even reading his thoughts. Most mages would spot such an intrusion fairly easily, but Lucas wasn’t really a mage. She’d be stuck in there for the rest of the day, but it’d be worth it if she could finally figure out what was going wrong with his magic. She completed the spell, but it wouldn’t activate. She looked through the spell, and it seemed to be saying there wasn’t a valid target. She frowned; she was sure she had set it to find Lucas, but it just kept insisting there was no target. Guess I’ll have to aim manually. She made a couple of minor modifications, and soon she had the spell working. It should activate whenever the front door opened, allowing her to assume a gaseous form and slip into Lucas’ mind unawares when he came in. She succeeded in activating the spell and went to go pass the time while she waited for Lucas to return.

---

After what seemed like forever, Vithi felt herself begin to change. She activated her clone, which had been sitting beside her, and raced invisibly towards Lucas. The first thing she noticed upon possession was that he was hungry. Really hungry, in fact. She frowned inwardly and began to look through his memories for the cause. It would seem that he had given away the money he had set aside for his lunch. Her frown deepened as she looked at the people who took it – they seemed quite well-off, and from her limited perusal of his interactions with them, they asked for money not because they really needed it, but because they knew he would give it.

Stranger than this was the fact that Lucas knew this. She’d have to look into it later, though; he was approaching Vithi’s clone. Like most days, he asked for help with magic, and Vithi’s clone responded with Vithi’s customary “One try, make it quick.” Vithi could feel his displeasure, and what was worse, she empathized. It was hard not to when she felt everything he felt, but it was strange knowing that she was the cause. Still, he nodded, and began to concentrate. She could feel him trying, really trying as he chanted. And yet, nothing happened. She didn’t feel the surge of magic that should be coming, didn’t feel…anything. She probed deeper, looked into where magic would normally be stored when not in use, and found herself at a wall of sorts. It seemed…familiar, in a way she couldn’t really explain. She probed it a little, and it actually yielded. She had a moment of hope, but it was quickly squashed as she ran into another wall.

It felt like the whole reservoir of magic had been completely filled in with the wall. There was no magic. She withdrew, baffled, and heard her double speak. “Nothing, again. Now, are you gonna make dinner? I’m hungry.” Lucas just nodded and went to the kitchen. He was hurt by her uncaring attitude and fed up with her unhelpfulness. He couldn’t understand why she was being so rude – he was sure he hadn’t slighted her. Still, he cooked the dinner, and Vithi was more than a little surprised that he gave her the bigger part. He was ravenous, but he told himself that she always devoured everything he gave her, no matter how much, so she probably didn’t eat much during the day, maybe didn’t even know how to make food without magic. He ate in his room, working on homework as he did. Then, he got up, tidied up the house, and went to bed for the night, leaving Vithi to think.

---

---

Lucas looked nervously at Vithi. He really didn’t want to have this conversation, but he couldn’t just leave it be. “Vithi, we need to talk.”

“Sure. Give me a sec.” Vithi paused the game she was playing, and turned around to face him, a faint smile on her face. “What’s up?”

Lucas smiled a little. So far so good… “So, today my aunt Judy is coming over. I rent this place from her, and as part of the deal she insists she come over every month and make sure everything’s going OK. We’ll have dinner, chat a little, then she’ll be on her way. Problem is, I’ll likely have to introduce you to her. She’ll probably be able to tell someone else is living here and make me talk about it.”

“I’m fine with that.”

Lucas frowned. “Alright. I’m going to go make dinner, let me know when Judy gets here.”

---

Vithi heard the doorbell ring. Well, this is it. She answered the door, revealing a middle-aged woman. She was short and skinny, dressed in a t-shirt and jeans. She had a jovial face, topped with dark brown hair which reached down her back. “You must be Judy!”

The woman paused. “That’s my name. Who are you?”

“I’m Vithi, come on in, Lucas is making dinner.” Vithi walked through the front room and poked her head into the kitchen. “Judy’s here.”

“Alright, I’ve got about ten minutes of cooking left. Will you chat with her while I finish?”

“Sure.”

Lucas frowned, but went back to making dinner. Vithi made her way into the family room, where Judy was sitting in an armchair. “Judy, will you come with me?”

Judy leaned forward in her chair, looking at Vithi intently. “Not quite yet. Why are you here?”

Vithi just nodded. “I’ll tell you in a bit.” She glanced over to the kitchen and lowered her voice. “I need to talk with you. Privately.”

Judy kept a careful look on her face. “I’ll bite.” She rose from her chair, and walked over to Vithi, who lead them into the guest room. “I see someone’s been living here. You?”

Vithi nodded, shut the door, and locked it. “Before we begin, I’m going to warn you up front that when we finish, I’ll require a promise from you.”

“What kind of promise?”

“A serious one.” Vithi snapped her fingers, a ball of fire appearing above her hand. Judy gasped, watching the flame as it danced in the air. “A magical one, in fact. Nothing either of us say here is to be shared with anyone else without the permission of both of us. Should you not choose to accept this, you will lose memory of the conversation, thinking only it had to do with some requests for hygiene. Understand?”

Judy nodded, eyes still on the flame.

“Good.” The flame disappeared, and Judy relaxed. “I am a djinn. My lamp was given to Lucas, and with a wish, he freed me. He currently is under the impression that I have no magic and is letting me stay with him because he believes I have nowhere else to go.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Good question. One reason is that I wanted someone else to talk to. I want someone who knows what’s going on and can give some advice. Lucas is nice, but perhaps a bit too nice. He won’t give anything to me straight.”

Judy nodded. “He’s like that.”

“The second is that I was curious.”

Judy tilted her head. “What about?”

“How he affords this house. I know he rents it from you, but I seriously doubt he makes enough money to pay rent for a house like this.”

“He doesn’t. I rent this place to him extremely cheaply.”

“Why?”

Judy sighed. “You mind if I tell a bit of a story?”

Vithi nodded distractedly and moved over to the window. “Alright.”

“Almost 20 years ago, I was in an accident. My husband of two years and my infant son died in it. Lucas’ family let me stay with them for a few years, and in that time, I grew to view Lucas as a kind of son. I had invested my life support, and once I was making enough money from my investments, I moved out, started renting out houses. This is one of them. I would let Lucas stay here for free, but he’s not the kind of person to take charity like that.”

“Why not?” Vithi closed the curtains and turned to face Judy.

“He’s got a bit of an obsession. Loves to give without regard to his own needs.”

Vithi frowned. “Any particular reason?”

Judy shook her head. “Not that we can tell. We suspect it’s a form of OCD or something, but he refuses to go get checked out. Just says he’s fine. So, we try to do other things to help him out.”

“That would certainly explain some things.”

Judy laughed. “I’m sure it would. Anything else?”

Vithi paused and looked at the window. “I guess the real reason I came to talk to you is that I need a favor.”

Judy raised an eyebrow. “Why not ask Lucas? You know he’d do it.”

“He would, but it has to do with my magic, and I don’t want him knowing I still have it just yet.”

“Well, what do you want?”

Vithi strode over to a nightstand near the bed, opening a drawer. From the drawer she took a silvery sphere of sorts.

“What’s that?” Judy asked

“Think of it like a gas can, but with magic.” Vithi said, glancing at the window. “I’m being watched by someone, and I’m guessing they came here to investigate the large amount of magic released when I was freed. If they find me, they’re liable to put me in a lamp again. So, I made this.” She turned the ball over, revealing a button on the side. “When you press this button, the device will start leaking magic. The magic will stay inert until I light the metaphorical match, at which point it’ll light up, and hopefully draw the attention of anyone with magical talent nearby. I was hoping you could lay this as a contingency of sorts.” Vithi pulled a sheet of paper from the drawer, handing it to Judy. “This paper has a map with indications of where I would like the magic leaked. I can’t leave without exposing myself, so I was hoping you could do it.”

Judy looked at the paper thoughtfully. “Why?”

“I want it as a decoy of sorts if I have to run away, let it buy me and Lucas some time to get away.”

Judy frowned. “Why does he need to be involved?”

Vithi sighed. “Like it or not, he’s caught up in this mess now. Has been from the moment he decided to shelter me. The people watching me have almost certainly reasoned that he has some sort of connection to me and will target him if I up and vanish. This means the safest thing for him is to have me take him with me when I run.”

Judy didn’t speak for a minute, staring down at the map. “So, you’re telling me that this’ll be safest not just for you, but for Lucas as well?

Vithi nodded.

“In that case, you mind if I make a couple of…alterations to this route?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“I was thinking of expanding the scope of it. How long of a trail do you think it can lay?”

“About 100 miles, not taking into account elevation changes.”

“In that case, I think I’ll take them on a bit of a goose chase. I want them as far away as possible.”

Vithi let out a sigh of relief. “Then you’ll agree to the promise as well?”

“On the condition that, if you do have to run, you will do everything in your power to protect Lucas. No leaving him behind.”

Vithi paused. “Agreed.” There was a spark of magic, and the deal was sealed.

“If I do end up having to run away, do I have your permission to tell Lucas? It’ll be a little awkward having to skirt around any of what you did while we’re fleeing, and I’m sure he’ll have questions.”

 “Of course. Now, I’m sure Lucas has finished making dinner. Let’s eat!”