About A Match Made by the Council

by Kara Larson
24 pages / 10000 words
ISBN: 978-1-60370-533.2, 1-60370-533.3
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc

Playing a knight at Renaissance Faires makes a great disguise for Josh Korinthos, whose real job is fighting back the forces of the Unseelie Court for the Council. Being a knight doesn't pay like it used to, though, and Josh decides to help pad his bank account by getting a roommate.

His new roommate Kai is a magician and technophobe, whose hours are as weird as his own, but Josh doesn't have time to worry about Kai's eccentricities, or his roommate's disappearance when the council calls him in to rescue a lost Mage. What happens when his home and work worlds begin to collide?

Sample

Josh was going through a funk; there was nothing else to it. He was riding his horse in a rut, an endless circle, and he needed to find his way out. He had a great job that included lots of travel and the occasional need to lash out and kill something. He had a nice little house that he could almost afford -- in a "getting better" part of town. If he squinted with binoculars, he could almost see the ocean from the five-story office building down the street from his house. His grandmother always said that a change was as good as a vacation, or at least a new sexual position, but since the sex thing wasn't exactly happening now, he'd have to make do with the next best thing.

He'd get a roommate to help pay that mortgage he could almost afford.

How was a knight supposed to look for a roommate? "Seeking non-smoking person to share two bedroom, one bathroom house in South Bay. High-speed internet and washer/dryer included. Don't touch the swords." It wouldn't be an issue if either of Josh's jobs actually paid enough to keep the place by himself. But Faire gigs never paid much, and the Council was still in the Dark Ages when it came to compensation plans, much less having comprehensive medical and dental.

It was hard enough to be a knight, period, in the twenty-first century. His horse was stabled a few blocks from the house, in one of the last areas of South Bay still zoned for livestock. Swords counted as weapons in nearly every penal code that he'd ever studied, and God only knew how many concealed weapon citations he'd talked his way out of. At least great coats were in fashion again, even if he did look a little silly wandering around in one in the middle of high summer. And the emergency room would only take "Fell down the steps" so many times as an excuse for another set of broken ribs. The EMTs  knew him on a first name basis by now anyway.

But generations of his family had served the Council, working to do their part to keep the boundaries between the world of the Fey and the human world separate, and ensuring that the Unseelie Court of the Fey was kept in check. It didn't help that technology seemed to blur the boundaries a little more as each year passed. Maybe it was the greater usage of iron and other derivative metals that seemed to melt the carefully-wrought barriers. Or maybe it was the fact that nature was tired of keeping the two realms separate, whether or not the realms wanted it that way.

At least the Council had granted him a small leave to fill the vacant position in his house. He couldn't exactly run off to the north to prevent some river kelpie from slipping through in the middle of an appointment to show his house. And while he could very well turn the duty over to one of those roommate-finding services (the Council even probably controlled one or two, not that the close-lipped bastards would ever tell him), it didn't seem right. The last two roommates, Brian especially, had clearly been mistakes. Luckily for all parties involved, they both lasted about two months before suddenly deciding they had obligations elsewhere. At least he wasn't home all the time. Traveling on Council business and jousting at the different Faires kept him on the road a good portion of the time. It was still nice, though, to have a friendly face to meet him when he got home, someone he didn't mind sharing his living space with.

Someone he wouldn't necessarily fall for.