He took a sip, nodding appreciatively, at the taste.

Poison [Plime Fruit Liqueur] has inflicted [Alcohol] on you.

You have resisted [Alcohol].

[Alcohol] does not take effect.

You have gained an instance of [Resistant].

Jason sighed.

“No?” Jory asked.

“No. Tastes good, though.”

“That’s not what booze is for,” Jory said, pouring himself something amber from the second bottle. “You look kind of tired. I thought feeding on the sick freshened you up. Which is still creepy, by the way.”

“I’m not tired,” Jason said. “Or creepy. Weary, maybe. That woman had cancer, and I just took it away like it was never there.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Of course it is. But back where I come from we don’t have essences. Or alchemy, for that matter, although we have something similar, I guess. We just call it pharmacology.”

“You don’t talk about where you’re from, much,” Jory said. “I remember you said there wasn’t a lot of magic. No monsters, right?”

“Never even heard of a monster surge until I came here.”

“That’d be nice,” Jory said. “Like most things, the poor take the brunt of a monster surge. What happens when people get sick in your homeland?”

“We have medicine,” Jason said, “but without magic it has limits. Recovery can take a long time, and a lot of the options are bad. Take cancer, for example. Now I can just suck it out of people, but back home it isn’t that easy. They slice people open, try and cut it out of them. Poison them and hope the cancer dies before they do.”

“That sounds barbaric.”

“We don’t have better options. I think about what I could do with the power I have now. All the people I could help.”

“Are you going back?”

“If I can,” Jason said. “Home is very far away, and I have no idea how to get there.”

“How did you get here? You said something about a magical accident?”

“A summoning spell went awry. It reached into my magically desolate home and plucked me right out of it. That’s how I met Rufus, Gary and Farrah. I got dumped right into the middle of their mess.”

“Have you tried the goddess of knowledge?” Jory asked. “If anyone knows the way home, she does. There’s no guarantee she’ll tell you, but anyone can go to her temple and ask questions.”

“I don’t know,” Jason said. “I’m not really the religious type.”

“Even if there might be a way home?” Jory asked. “What will it cost you to try?”

“That’s the sort of question someone asks right before they bury you in debt.”

Jory laughed. “That’s fair. But give it some thought.”

“I will,” Jason said. “Thanks.”

* * *

“I can’t believe you hid it from me,” Belinda said.

“It’s not a big deal,” Sophie said. “I had gloves on.”