The ad was simple: Wanted: Magic Shoppe housekeeper/ summer position/ light duties/must be good with animals. Not the worst help wanted post I'd ever spotted on Next Neighbor, even with what was missing between the lines- or line, along with an email address for submitting a reply and a decent salary offer.

I'm not a magician myself, but my roommate last year was studying pre-magic and she talked my ear off some nights with the juicier tidbits behind the Arts. She wouldn't share any really potent spells or potions with me, but she did teach me an incantation or two for personal protection. Even on a campus where the girls could have either the magical power to turn you into a frog or warrior skills to fillet you, there was still the danger of assault from boys with sub-human morals. So, she equipped me with enough spells to ward off danger. And I was cocky enough with my ability to use those spells that I declared: "I might even try picking up a summer job as a sorcerer's office temp."

I said that to Drusilla over herbal tea one night (Celestial Seasonings Sleepy Time, not one of her class mixtures).

"You'd need more training than I can give you to qualify for the temp agencies," my roomie warned. "Even the Minion Maids services have stronger standards for self-protection against the Dark Arts employers. And don't even think about answering ads directly posted by a wizard. If someone can't get help through the temps, he's either super evil or just an incompetent mange that can't get good help."

Easy for her to dispense; Drusilla had a summer gig lined up at her uncle's apothecary. Me, I waited too late to send out applications for summer work, and was three weeks into the break with noprospects in sight. Rent was due on my summer apartment in Asheville and savings were dwindling. So seeing that ad- and the salary offered- made me throw caution to the wind and send a query to the shop keeper's email.

Almost too soon, a sudden tapping came at my bedroom window. I looked up and was startled to see a pigeon sitting on the sill, tapping impatiently at the pane with its beak. Odd as that was, it was the conical black hat covered in gold stars on its head that was more surprising. The sight was so flustering, when I slid the window open I almost failed to react to the sound of its talking to me. Well, of course it talked; it was obviously a wizard's familiar.

"Sorry," I apologized to the bird. "I couldn't hear you through the glass."

"I said, you the Luddite lookin' ta work fer Dauntless?" the pigeon quipped.

"Who?"

"Jeez? Dauntless, wizard extra hoity-toity and high-falootin'. Owns the "Spells, Bells, and Dragon's Tails" store on Patton Avenue. Look, if'n ya know anytin' about magic, you gotta've heard about Dauntless!"

"Um, sssssorry," I muttered lamely. "I just know a few basic incantations my pre-maj roommate taught me and---" And the bird turned around on the sill, muttering something nasty and blue I'm sure, and jumped off the edge and started flying away.

"--- And my family raises griffins!" I shouted after it. The bird did a double-take in midair and returned to the window sill. I continued quickly: "Also sheep, hogs, a few mini-wargs, but a sizable herd of gryphons. Your wizard's ad said I'd need to be good with animals?"

"Griffins, huh?" the feathery messenger asked. "Impressive. I always thought dem things looked scary as hell."

"Please," I laughed back. "Griffins are as docile as llamas; don't let the eagle beaks andlion's claws fool you. You're only in danger of being stepped on, especially if they try to give you a 'group hug'"

The bird cocked its head up at me, which caused the conical hat to tilt over and almost fall off. I reached out to tilt it back on top of its head and adjusted the elastic band under its neck.

"Thanks, doll. This thing's a pain in the tail, but I gotta wear it when on official duty. All right, I think it's worth the boss's time ta give you a look see. I'll tell 'im ta send a car, you be out front in a few minutes ta meet it."

And with that the pigeon jumped straight up off the sill and popped out of sight in a flash. I wasn't expecting to get an interview so soon, so I grabbed a (kinda) clean blouse and light jacket, fluffed my hair, snatched up keys and raced out of my apartment and down the stairs to the building's front door. I had only just reached said door when I heard a quick tooting of a car's horn outside. I inhaled a calming breath, chanted one of Drusilla's protection spells, and went outside.

I half expected a horse drawn coach or at least a long sedan. What I saw was a Nissan compact, not even a newer model. I tried peering through the windshield to see who was driving; it took a few second to realize there wasn't anyone. I started to walk over to the passenger side door, but then the driver side swung open by itself. Cautiously I approached the open door, and then a tinny voice greeted me:

"Good afternoon, Ms. Dangerfield," it said, and I realized the voice was coming out of the car's speakers. "Please take the driver's seat.The car is quite capable of steering itself back to my place, but I think you'll be more comfortable if you are behind the wheel instead of sitting next to an empty seat."

I slid into the seat, waited a second to see if the door would close automatically then did it myself. As I reached around for the seat belt to fasten, the wizard continued to comment remotely:

"While I and magicians like myself are familiar with cars under autonomous spells, I've learned that civilians like you can be unnerved by these driverless experiences."

"I should get used to it," I chatted to the air as I buckled my seat belt. "Once Google and Tesla perfect their computerized drone cars, us 'civvies' will enjoy the same benefits as you sorcerer types."

"Will you really?" the voice asked, sounding amused. Suddenly, the view outside the windshield went from the lot of my apartment building to a curb-side parking space in front of a brick store front. "How soon do you think Tesla can do THAT?"

I clamped my hand over my mouth, keeping my stomach contents inside, but just barely. "Oh my dear, I am SO sorry!" the voice exclaimed.

The front door of the shop opened, and a middle-aged man in a light blue lab coat came rushing out. The door of the car swung open at a wave of one hand; waving the other produced a small glass with a fizzing drink in it. This glass was offered to me as the man peered in anxiously. I took the glass, sipped cautiously, and then drank it down fully as the liquid immediately started to calm my stomach.

"My fault, I'm so sorry," the man in blue apologized. "I've done so many transports in my life I forgot the first few can make you air sick."

Iburped, long and loud. I ducked my head in horror, then looked up to see he was amused instead of grossed out. He took the glass back and offered a gentlemanly hand to help me out of the car.

"That's a good potion," I commented. "Tastes like one my roommate would make me after a night out drinking. She never did tell me what nasty ingredients it was made from."

"It's Alka-Seltzer with lemon," he explained with a laugh. "And now you know a trade secret. Sorry for that little teleportation, but I wanted to test you on how you'd react around magic. You passed, by the way, even if your stomach had second thoughts. Come on inside the 'castle' and we can do a real interview."

I paused to take in the store in front of us. Not a "castle" by any means, not even a standalone store. Like most of the buildings along Patton Avenue in downtown Asheville, "Spells, Bells?" etc. was on the ground floor of a three-story brick early 1900's-style building. Similar buildings with stores on the first building and offices above were found on every other block. This one was not even one of the better kept up buildings, either. Wizard Dauntless might have some good sorcerer tricks, but this place still spoke of a less that successful career. He saw how I looked at his place and started to explain.

"No, I don't live in a stone tower or a thatched cottage in the deep woods." He kept a supportive hand on my elbow as he led me to the glass front door and pulled it open. "But don't think it means I'm a second or third rate practitioner. This store has a unique layout best suited for my studies, including an extra-large 'basement' for my biggest, um,'subject'."

I could hear the quotes around the word "subject" and knew it probably referred to the reason he was seeking someone outside standard cleaning help. But I liked the man himself; he seemed more an absent minded professor than dark and mystical, so I continued to be intrigued by what I would find in his store/ magical laboratory.

The small front room of the store had a scattered assortment of display shelves and tables with a pretty standard array of magical/ new age-y paraphernalia for sale. I had heard Drucilla mention this store as one of her favorites for getting Craft supplies, as well as seeing bulletin board notices in different hallways of the campus's buildings announcing workshops or psychic reader's services (aimed at muggles like myself) being held here. The mixed aroma of different herbs, incenses, and candles was pleasantly intoxicating.

"Hey ya, toots," came a cheerful greeting from up high. I looked to the top of a book case to see the pigeon messenger, now zans his pointed hat. I looked down at the store clerk sitting behind the register; a diminutive orc with a wide smile and twinkling eyes that peaked from under her bright green shawl.

"This one smells delightful, she does yes," the cheerful creature stated, looking at Dauntless. "That smell I recognize; one never can wash griffin spit off enough, one can't," she cackled at me. I stopped walking at that, bringing the back of my hand up to sniff self-consciously. Griffins are delightful creatures, but they do like to lick you affectionately and that saliva can stay with you. But I thought my granny's homemade lavender and ginger soaps had totally masked that tell-tale odor.

"Only an orc would have a nose that could smell that," Dauntless chided the clerk. "Don't make the child so self-conscious, Gwenifred!"And with that the wizard brushed aside the beaded curtain next to the counter, revealing a closed door. He opened it and ushered me into what turned out to be his living quarters in back of the shop.

The living room inside was bright and modestly furnished; three walls had shelves filled with arcane-looking books and magical tchotchkes. The kitchen could be seen through an arch in one wall; to my surprise, it did not also double as his potion mixing room but had a few plates and utensils stacked in the sink. The typical bachelor mess. Dauntless conceded that most of my duties would be very mundane house cleaning. He confessed that the only room in the house that he himself kept clean was his potions room, set up in the smaller of the two bedrooms. A wise habit for every wizard to have, he explained, as a chaotic conjuring room could create disastrous results.

He prattled on a few minutes about the hours he would need me to work; afternoons to just before dusk most days, once I'd had a couple of days to catch up from where the last housekeeper had left off. I cleared my throat at that, and asked why the last housekeeper had left.

Dauntless paused there, in the hallway between the bedrooms, taking time to gather his answer.

"The last girl I had wasn't my usual housekeeper; the woman who is had to leave for the summer to help a niece with her new baby. I had trouble finding someone properly qualified for a wizard's household because of the subject of my current studies; it seemed beyond the comfort zone of the usual temp agency associates I interviewed. So, I placed the ad in Next? The girl I first found was like you, a college student witha background working with animals. Difference was she was a biology major, and just wasn't? prepared to work with the specimen I acquired last year."

"And you think I am 'prepared'?" I asked, skeptically. "Just what is this 'specimen' and how am I supposed to 'work' with it?"

"Oh, pretty much like any big farm animal, if you're used to mythicals like your gryphons," he answered jovially. "Feed and water it, muck out its stable, sing to it occasionally- it likes Bowie, of all things-"

We had gone through the other archway in the walls of the living room, down a hall with two doors leading to the bedrooms and one for the bath. The wizard went up to the wall at the end of the hallway; that wall was bare and uninteresting. What was interesting was how, when he pressed a hand against one side of it, the wall sprang out. Ah, the stereotypical hidden door leading to secret passageways!

Dauntless swung this "door" fully open, revealing another door with a handle. Turning that handle and opening this second door, I saw a small room that I realized was an elevator.

"You installed a secret elevator to an underground lair?" I asked, almost laughing in surprise. "How mad scientist of you!"

"No, it was already a feature when I bought the place, the reason I bought it actually," He stepped aside and motioned me in the elevator. "The original owner of the house ran a speak easy during Prohibition and had his bar set up in a natural cavern below the building. This elevator was put in for the patrons."

Once we were both inside the tiny car, he closed the door and locked the handle before pressing the "down" button. We lurched as the car descended and the wizard continued his story.

"The last owner ofthe shop had a meth lab set up in the old bar. His operation was busted with the help of the Alchemical Apothecary Society- they have a bad enough rep with the public misunderstanding their arts without scum like these meth dealers running about. For their help, the Feds quietly transferred the deed of the building to the Society and the Society sold it to me when they heard of my need for special accommodations- And here we are!"

Listening to Dauntless, I had not noticed just how long-and deep- the elevator ride had taken. As he opened the basement level door of the elevator, he first reached out into the dark and flipped a switch on the wall next to the elevator door. Red overhead lights lit a corridor extending away from the elevator that ended at an archway. A black void filled the space beyond.

"Now, be quiet at first, until he gets used to you." the wizard instructed in a whisper, pressing me gently forward with a hand at the small of my back. The wizard reached over to the corridor wall and flipped another switch; ahead, somewhere in the darkness, there came the electric hum of lights coming alive.

"The cavern uses sodium lights- it will take a minute or so for them to warm up. It'll take that long for him to wake up, too." We continued to walk toward that great open space ahead, just now starting to be revealed in the growing artificial light. "We'll go as far as the end of the hallway, then just stop and take him in. Try not to make any noise, be calm, and above all be RESPECTFUL."

I was listening, but also beginning to tune him out in spite of myself. We were now at the end of the corridor,with the vast cavern beyond coming into focus as the sodium lights above slowly came alive and illuminated the space. Fifty yards away, against the far wall of the cavern, I could see a creature?

I could see a dragon! A black, vast, calamitous bulk of diabolical dragon! The only bright color about him was the huge stainless steel collar circling his neck, with a matching chain trailing over his shoulder that was probably attacked to the wall behind him. The hideous monster stirred, snorted, came slowly awake; its grotesquely huge mouth opened for a saber-filled yawn and it raised its head to face us, and---

I recognized the horrible beast! I spun and faced Dauntless.

"That is GOLDARA!" I screamed. "Do you know what that monster is? What that monster has done?"

"Ms. Dangerfield, Melissa, please!" the wizard hissed in a vain attempt to keep things at a whisper. "Don't anger him!"

"Anger him? ME, anger HIM?" I spun around at the now awakened calamity. "YOU! You attacked my town when I was a girl! You killed my cousin and half her family!" I charged at the dragon, thinking it was helpless on its chain, grief-mad in my need to vent my rage against the monster. "You murdering bastard! You worthless, pea-brained, scum-sucking piece of sorry sh-"

I really should have learned just how long that chain around the dragon's neck was before charging him.

Roaring, moving faster than a griffin one-twentieth its size could have moved, the monster crossed the distance between us and stood over me. It opened its jaws and brought them down over me- one quick grab, grotesque tongue wrapping around me and sending me down the monster's gullet without so much as a single chew. I barely had time to quickly bring Drusilla's strongest protection spell to mind before that mindwent as black as the space I was now in.

Aaaaand, suddenly, I was slammed back down against the stone floor, sputtering and gagging in the pool of fluid that had also been deposited with me. My ears were ringing with a new roar, one of piteous pain that was receding back to the far wall. I wiped my eyes clear enough to see the wizard standing between me and the monster, his hand raised overhead with a long silver wand pointed in the dragon's direction. Its glowing red tip and the creature's whimpering spoke of the energy bolt Dauntless must have unleashed on the huge lizard. Then I forgot about them both as my stomach decided to contribute to the horrid soup I was laying in.

I managed to come to all fours, heaving breaths in between heaving my guts. After a minute of this, a large towel appeared floating before me. Snatching it, I plopped back on my butt and with the towel did my best to wipe the liquid crap off my face and head. When I finally looked back up, Dauntless was standing in front of me with arms crossed; the wand held up in mute threat.

"Yes, that is the mighty and murderous Goldara the Dragon," the wizard chastised. "Last of the Dragons of Malgor, the only dragons that refused to make peace with and live beside humanity. Goldara the Mighty, Murderous, and Egotistical. He understands English perfectly, among a dozen other languages, and knows what your insults meant. He fears me and respects me only because I know the right spells to hurt and bind him; but any other human needs to be willing to kiss his scaly butt if they want to live. As long as he is a subject of my study and you arean employee in my house, then he is neither an object of revenge nor an overgrown lab rat that you can turn your back on! You're lucky to be sitting in his last lunch on the outside instead of inside his stomach!"

And with that he gestured at the pool of dragon vomit I sat in; I focused for the first time on the remains of what looked like a flank of beef, a couple of hogs, and?

"That's not what's left of my housekeeper predecessor, is it?" I asked meekly, pointing at what looked like a pile of clothing and unidentifiable visceral.

"No, just a load of cleaning towels and an industrial sized bucket of KFC. The last girl was carrying both in her arms when he jumped out at her as one of his pranks and gulped everything out of her arms. She quit after that incident, just two days ago?." Dauntless paused and waited for me to have a quick debate with my stomach about contributing any remaining contents to the mess on the floor.

"I give you credit, you took whatever spells you learned from that pre-maj friend of yours and put some latent talent of your own behind them. That protective bubble you put around yourself not only kept you alive, it also disagreed with Goldara enough to make him throw you back up. You've got the job!"

And with that, he gave a grand gesture with his wand and conjured up an array of tubs, water-filled buckets, some shovels and an assortment of mops.

"Clean this mess up, use the fire hose on the wall to wash it all into that running stream back over to the right there. It joins an underground river and will be where you flush all the droppings the dragon leaves. You'll find a showerroom behind that door over to the left; there'll some new clothes for you in there. Don't take too long, he'll be stunned for an hour or two so you'll need to be back on the other side of the yellow line before he recovers?"

And he pointed at a wide yellow stripe painted on the floor; I looked to see that it was part of a semi-circle that took up half of the cavern space, which I realized (now!) marked the reach of the dragon's chain.

"II WAS going to warn you about this line, before your charge? I'll help you feed him tonight, but then he'll be your responsibility after that." Dauntless walked around the pool of gore judiciously and took up a position in the opening to the corridor. "By the way, you get a bonus for enduring today's 'interview'. And while you're here this summer I'll give you some more training in protection and '101' spells, enough to meet the requirements for working through a real agency. Though I suggest you consider a career as a Magical Aide instead of just maid service, I sense you have some potential here.

"I'll use a transport spell for myself and leave you the elevator. Turn off the overhead lights when you leave."

And so began my summer job, or I should say internship. Dauntless did improve my basic magical skills and talked to my coarse counsellor at Western Carolina about switching my major. I even learned to get along with the monster- it was easy to do once Dauntless finally confessed to me that at the end of his studies, he planned to turn the beast over to the Benevolent Brotherhood of Dragons for a speedy execution for his crimes. The creature didn't know about his fate, so just thought of meas a loyal and obedient servant.

So, I cleaned upstairs; dished out carcasses transported to the cavern for the monster's meals; hosed him down and washed away his manure? and learned to sing David Bowie tunes. The creature loved cuts from the Ziggy Stardust album. I even went as far as to offer a whole steer to the dragon the last time I fed him, as a parting gift. Just didn't mention the ten pounds of Ex-lax I stuffed into the steer's stomach?

I did cast a self-cleaning spell Dauntless had taught me as I left, so his returning house woman wouldn't get mad. Wanted to keep good references.

End