UnFamiliar

Chapter 4

The dormitory I'd stayed in for the past two years looked like I'd been the only one living in it. Besides my bed, desk, and wardrobe, the room looked sterile. The other boys' stuff sat on top of their beds in neat piles of bags or suit cases or whatever. Everything else void of personal items.

I glanced at Val, wondering what he thought of my space. I had pictures of band members tacked up on the wall behind my unmade bed. My shoes that were supposed to stay under my bed were scattered across the floor on the side of it, mixed with a few shirts that hadn't made it into the laundry basket. The doors on my wardrobe were open wide, and nothing in it was hung up. I didn't even want to think about how my desk was stacked precariously with anything I didn't use on a daily basis because I typically did my homework on my bed.

I'd spent the last week or so avoiding packing any of it up. I didn't want to get my hopes up. I'd known the chances of me summoning a familiar were next to nothing. Now I had a familiar, one that didn't plan on sticking around. I wasn't sure how I felt about that.

Val was scowling and the second he realized he had my attention he said, "You told me we could work on breaking this magic of yours after we ate. This will not help us."

"It'll only be a few minutes. Besides if we don't find a counter-spell today, then wouldn't you rather spend time researching than in detention?" That's what I'd been threatened with. If I didn't have my stuff out of here by the time the new third years came, I would have a month's detention at the start of the new term.

Val cocked his head. "What is detention?"

"A waste of perfectly good research time," I said while heading to my wardrobe. I grabbed the laundry basket next to it and began shoving the clean clothes in with the dirty.

Val sighed. "What the hell are you doing?"

I didn't stop. "Packing."

"Aren't you a witch?" Val sat down gingerly on the edge of my unmade bed.

I jerked my head around to look at him, and laughed harshly. Something about the question snapped what little patience I had left. Today had not gone my way. It hadn't even gone the crappy way I'd been expecting it to go.  

As I marched up to him, Val's eyes tracked my movement. I got close, close enough that I was practically standing between his wide spread legs. I almost leaned in, wondering if he'd lean away, but satisfied myself with the fact that in this position he was looking up at me and I was looking down at him.

I smirked for just a moment. This all powerful demon was stuck with me; some small part of me was satisfied that I couldn't be at all impressive. "I am the witch with the least potential in this entire school, possibly on this entire continent. If I were to try to pack something with magic, the attempt would probably blow up in my face and would take hours to prepare. Some of us, dearest demon prince, don't have things handed to us with a snap of our fingers."

Val tilted his head to the side. "So, you're saying a different witch could do something like that?"

I threw my hands up. He wasn't going to take my bait. I answered, "probably," and spun on my heel to go back to my haphazard packing job.

Val caught my wrist though and spun me back to face him. He had this look on his face that I couldn't quite place. His lips were squeezed together, his eyes sort of squinted. After a very award beat, I tried to pull my wrist out of his grasp, but he held on.

Finally, he said, "I could try."

"What?" I was still focused on trying to break his grip.

"I'm not sure what's going on with my power, but I could see if it will cooperate long enough to pack your things."

I stopped tugging. That...would be highly convenient. "Would you?"

He smirked up at me and with his free hand snapped his fingers. The effect was immediate, all of my things down to the last pen on my desk disappeared and so did Val. Like he was smirking up at me one second, his hand still around my wrist and the next he was nowhere to be seen.

I blinked, trying to get whatever illusion this was to disappear. Then noticed that the clothes I'd been wearing were gone as well. I swore and turned to my wardrobe which of course was empty. I swore again and grabbed a sheet off the bed next to my now stripped one to tie around my waist. This wasn't the first-time magic had gone awry around me and it wouldn't be the last.

The real question here was whether Val meant to strip me of all my belongings and run away or if this was some kind of accident.

Val had said earlier that it seemed we couldn't go very far, at least magically, without one another. That when he tried to only send himself to hell or me back that we both came along. I didn't think he'd been lying at the time; he'd looked too pissed off at it.

In that case, it wasn't likely Val had gone far. Maybe it was some sort of invisibility spell? I waved my hand around above the bed where Val had been seconds earlier. I touched nothing but air.

I huffed. "Val, this isn't funny. If you can hear me come out right this instant."

There was a popping noise, like the sound of pressure being released in your ears. Val appeared, standing on my bed and frowning down at me, though the second he focused on me his expression changed.

"Is there a reason you're wearing a sheet?" He asked, sounding only mildly curious, but the way his eyes were sizing me up gave him away. Whether it was because he'd never seen a human naked before or if he was curious about me specifically I couldn't say, but his eyes roamed up and down until I was extremely uncomfortable. 

I swept my hands out indicating the pristinely clean room that had been full of my stuff seconds before. "My clothes disappeared with the rest of it."

Val's checks seemed to go a little pink, which I wasn't aware could happen. Demons being able to blush wasn't exactly in our textbooks.

"I'll...um...fix that for you," he said before snapping his fingers again.

Just like that I was dressed again. I let out a sigh of relief. "So...care to tell me what went wrong?"

Val sat down on the bed, and avoided making eye contact with me as he said, "I, uh, may have worded my command wrong."

"What does that mean?"

"Well," he said slowly finally looking at my eyes and not anywhere else, "you can't tell anyone these details, okay?"

I raised my eyebrows. "Okay?"

Val nodded, but it seemed more to himself than to me. "My power works by me giving it clear commands in my head and then snapping my fingers."

"What did you tell it to do?"

Val pursed his lips. "To put everything that belongs to you in a pocket dimension that you could summon things from."

"Okay..." I said giving myself time to formulate the question I most wanted answered, "then why did you disappear?"

Val looked down. "Apparently, as your familiar, I belong to you."

I snorted.

He looked up at me. "This isn't good news Ambrose. It means my power recognizes the bond you've created between us."

I shrug. "We already knew that, didn't we? It was your power that dragged me to hell with you."

"I...I didn't think so. I'd thought it was your spell dragging us along with each other, but...maybe you're right? Maybe it was my power's acknowledgement of the spell..." Val looked a little lost and something in me didn't want him to be.

"Anyways, the dimension worked right?" I said, trying to pull him back into the present, "So, we can go to the new room and summon it all? After that we can go to the library and find the counter spell. The sooner we get that the sooner we never have to see each other again."

"Right," something hardened in Val's eyes, "Let's go do that."