“Hey, gang,” Isaac greeted the rest of the gamers. “Sorry I'm a bit late, Mom had a couple of thing she needed me to do.” He shed his coat, turned around, and smiled. “Good to see you back, Sara. Your parents changed their minds?”

Sara shook her head, and looked down. “I'm staying here for right now,” she said quietly. “After exams are done, I'll see about getting a job and either getting my own place or at least pulling my own weight here. But for the moment, the guys are taking good care of me.” She flashed Mark, next to her, a quick smile, and he returned it; Chris traded glances with Val, who had noticed the same thing. The relationship between the two of them defied easy definition, but nothing seemed to be shaking it in the least; actually, everything that happened only seemed to make them more comfortable together.

“'Course they are, they know you're worth it. That’s rough, though. You doing okay?”

“Sort of. They’re upset. My mom thinks I’m completely brainwashed. My dad is sort of shocked that I was willing to go this far and is at least considering whether maybe it just matters a lot to me. I think eventually we can work it out, but it’s going to take some time.”

“I hope so. That’s not a comfortable situation to be in. You and Will surviving exams, Dana?”

Dana made a face. “Yeah, but I may throttle him. I know he doesn't deserve it, it's not his fault how much homework he's getting, but it's occasionally tempting. You?”

“Still alive.” Isaac deposited his backpack on the table and unzipped it.

Christian completely lost the thread of the conversation, watching something ooze out of the backpack and drop onto the table that bore a strong resemblance to an eight-inch-long, silver-grey version of one of those flat ray fish with the wing-like fins. It lay there for a second, then began to flutter, and drifted lazily upwards until it was hovering a foot off the table. He scanned the rest of the gamers; all were oblivious, except Eric, who was gazing at it curiously.

What on earth is that thing? And what's it doing here? That Isaac had brought it deliberately was distinctly unlikely, for any number of reasons. That it had been planted on Isaac was a possibility. That it had just burrowed into his backpack for reasons of its own was another. But at least it didn't look like much of a threat. It just hung there, the colour shifting slowly from grey towards a rather pleasant blue, ripples of motion passing along its body. He shot a look at Eric, who shrugged slightly and spread a hand to indicate his own lack of answers.

As long as it did nothing threatening, it could probably be safely ignored, until he could deal with it without Dana and Isaac watching.

“Just about ready to get started, folks?”

“Two seconds to grab a drink, and I will be,” Isaac said cheerfully, heading for the buffet stand.

Christian had cancelled last week's game due to the family visit, and Sara had missed the one before, so it took a little more catching up than usual to be sure they were all up to speed. The floating ray was a bit distracting, drifting a little towards the far end of the table and the gap there.

“Um, okay, you camped for the night on the plateau below the pass. It hasn't snowed lately, and the pass seems to be clear. What are you doing?”

“Going through the pass, of course,” Val said. “That's why we came all the way up here in the first place.” In the general chorus of affirmatives that followed, Chris didn't think it was obvious that Eric didn't reply—too distracted watching the ray—and neither did Mark—too distracted watching Eric and Christian.

He was going to have to maintain some kind of illusion of normality, until he could figure out what to do. With so many rumours already current, he had no intention of straining Isaac and Dana's friendship by exposing them to odd occurrences in his house, and there was no point in worrying Val or Sara. Or Mark, for that matter, but that was a lost cause, and he had his doubts how long it would be before Sara, Val, or both caught on.

“Through the pass, right. It's pretty high up and pretty steep, although the switchback trail itself is reasonably easy to follow. Each of you, what are you doing? Who's leading the pack mule?”

Sara nudged Mark, and whispered something to him; he shook his head, whispered back, and made a visible effort to get involved in the discussion.

The ray floated off the end of the table, and disappeared from view. In the privacy of his own head, Christian cursed. He couldn't watch it, if it was going wandering.

Whoa, jumping to conclusions, and getting a bit paranoid. It hasn't done anything threatening, I can't start looking for ways to kill something that might be harmless. It isn't automatically dangerous, just because it's here. It could easily be lost or something.

He did his best to put it out of his mind and concentrate on the game. He had a couple of monsters waiting in the pass, in a carefully-constructed trap; the thin air and exertion would slow the less physical members of the party, and if the fighters weren't careful, the party could easily be separated, something the monsters were hoping for. He couldn't run this with his attention divided. Eric followed his lead, and Mark must have taken the lack of further peculiar behaviour as a sign that whatever it was had gone.

It was Sara who noticed that Eric's mage and Dana's cleric were being left behind the rest; Christian made a mental note to give her extra experience points for it. Eric began an elaborate speech of gratitude, but barely three sentences into it, his entire body jerked, and he choked and went into a major coughing fit.

“Eric?” Christian said questioningly. “You okay?”

Eric nodded mutely, and finally caught his breath. “I must need more practice breathing,” he said lightly. “Sorry about that. Sara, please, just take it as read that I spent like ten minutes telling you how grateful I am, okay?”

Sara nodded. “Meanwhile, everyone else is leaving us even farther behind,” she pointed out. “I am not going to yell, knowing Chris I'll start an avalanche. I'm going to run after the others, and grab... who's tail now?”

“That'd be Mark,” Chris said.

“Grab Mark and point out to him what's going on, and then hustle it back to hear the rest of Eric's speech.”

Chris thought Eric made one sharp motion under the table, then the blond picked up the nearest of the large rulebooks, glanced down and to one side, and deliberately let go. No one else was watching, all too involved in figuring out who was in front of whom by how much and how quickly they could pass the word to halt, but the noise made everyone start and glance in Eric's direction.

He spread his hands, and gave them a disarming grin before leaning down to pick up the book. “Sorry again. Must be having a clumsy night.” He scrawled a note on a piece of paper, and slid it over to Christian.

More than 1. 1 got personal, 1 behind you same time. 1 less now.

Christian added, Oh shit at the bottom, and passed it back. Eric read it and nodded agreement.

They were multiplying? But it hadn't been very long, how could it be breeding so quickly? Irrelevant question; he encountered radically different life forms all the time. Were they any danger to the people in this room, or to Sid, or to the various elementals and liminals in the house? That was what mattered.

One flitted up onto the table; Christian would have taken it for the original one. It wafted lazily for a moment, then wrapped itself around Sara's mug of hot chocolate, enveloping it completely. Eric winced, and looked expectantly at Chris, who sifted rapidly through options. He didn't dare let Sara touch it, not without knowing more.

He dug through piles of paper, and made sure he gave the mug a telekinetic nudge just about the time his elbow was in that vicinity. The mug went off the edge of the table, and clanged against the hardwood floor—the domovikha was going to be annoyed with him, but it was better than the alternative.

“Oops, sorry, Sara. Stay there, I'll clean it up.”

“I shouldn't have left it so close to the edge, I thought I had it far enough away that it wouldn't get hit... I can do that,” she protested.

“It'll only take me a second. You go make yourself more chocolate, since this one's all over the floor.” He'd long ago started making sure there were paper towels and a rag on the buffet during games, for the inevitable occasional spills.

“It's okay,” Sara said. “I don't need to right now. Maybe later.”

The ray was gone when he reached for the cup, but the handle was broken; it figured. He'd have to decide later whether it was worth fixing. He wiped it up hastily, sat up, and swallowed hard. From here, he could see probably a dozen of the rays, bobbing around on the air currents casually, under and around the table. Even as he watched, one of them slowly stretched and thinned in the middle, and each half reformed into a smaller version of the parent, growing rapidly.

He took a deep breath, stood up, and tossed the paper towels in the small garbage pail near the buffet.

“Think you and Eric between you can try to leave the house standing until after the game?” Dana asked dryly.

“We'll do our best,” Eric promised.

Mark regarded Christian through narrowed eyes, his expression making it abundantly clear that he knew something was afoot, but he said nothing.

From Christian's angle, Sid simply materialized vertically out of thin air, leaping enthusiastically after a ray that was hovering five feet off the floor at the far end of the room. He dragged it down with him, and seconds later, was making another wild jump for a new toy to play with. Eric leaned back, so he could get a clearer view, and scribbled another note to Christian.

They dissolve into dust when he kills them.

At least that would make cleaning up easier.

“Your cat is insane,” Dana said, watching Sid lunge up onto a chair and from there do a really spectacular leap for a ray that was floating higher than the rest. “There's nothing there.”

“Nothing we can see,” Isaac joked. “Hey, Chris, you're seriously psychic, is there anything there?”

“Cats have way better senses than mere humans, psychic or not,” Christian said. “Could be he sees something.”

Val and Sara traded glances; Val frowned, looking from Eric to Christian and back again, and Sara's expression turned thoughtful. Mark gritted his teeth visibly, hands curling into fists so tightly his knuckles went white.

A ray floated up to around the shoulder-level of the seated players, very close to Mark, and drifting closer yet. Instinct screamed a warning; not quite in his chair again yet, Christian lunged for it, at virtually the same instant Eric bolted to his feet with the same intent. The blond stumbled, trying to change direction in mid-motion to keep from interfering with Christian, and fell, missing his chair altogether and landing on his rear on the floor with a muffled, “Ow.” Christian grabbed the ray from the air less than a foot in front of Mark's face, slid back into his seat, smacked it onto the table, and slapped the binder full of notes on top of it.

Then he tried to look innocent, as various pairs of eyes oriented on him, in anything from disbelief to suspicion. “What?”

“Yes, thanks, I'm fine,” Eric muttered, getting up and sitting gingerly on his chair.

“What the hell are you two on?” Isaac asked.

“High spirits and good company?” Eric offered.

Sid hopped onto the table and flung himself on another ray that had ventured up into sight and was bobbing in Dana's direction. He brought it down, and pawed happily at it until it melted away into glittery silver and blue dust, not noticeably hampered by Dana's squawk of outrage as she yanked her character notes out of harm's way.

“That cat is nuts!”

Christian carefully did not look upwards, and seconds later, one of the bulbs in the light fixture over the table blew.

“Well, that sucks,” Dana said.

The other bulb made a little popping noise, and also went dark.

“Damn,” Christian said. “Changing them is a bit of a pain, I think it'd be easier to play in a different room for tonight.”

“The sitting room across the hall's big enough,” Isaac said, with a shrug.

“No, I think the den behind that would be more comfortable.”

Sara glanced at him, and her eyes widened, brows rising in a question.

“Den sounds good,” Eric said promptly. “I get part of the couch. Maybe I can avoid falling off it.”