“It’s here,” I said, nudging a flowerpot full of geraniums with my toe.

Liz and Diana exchanged a puzzled look. “Why would you put it there? It belongs with your gnome,” Diana said as if it were the most obvious fact in the world. “Everyone hides their key under their gnome.”

“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of hiding the key if everyone knows where it is?” I asked, feeling as if I were trapped in an Alice in Wonderland tea party.

“On the contrary,” Liz replied. “These gnomes are threshold guardians. Your gnome protects your key from those wishing you harm, but lets in friends who wish you well. We wanted to make sure that you were all right after what happened at the circle. A power surge like the one you experienced can have unexpected repercussions. Did you sleep all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said, blushing as I remembered the erotic dream I’d had last night. That’s all it was, though, a dream. “I’m just a little groggy.”

“That’s to be expected,” Diana said briskly as she came up onto the porch, extracted my spare key from beneath the flower pot and handed it to Liz to put under the gnome. I thought I detected a faint glow emanating from the ceramic figure when she righted him over the key.

“There,” Liz said. “You ought to name him, though, to seal the threshold spell.”

“I’d feel …” like an idiot, I almost said, but looking into Diana’s wide doe-like eyes I emended it to “unsure of what sort of name to give him.”

“Oh, any old name is fine. Does he remind you of anyone?”

I looked down at the little, bearded, red-capped man. “Well, he does look a little like my high school orchestra leader, Mr. Rukowski.” As I said the name, the glow around the gnome grew.

“He likes it. Mr. Rukowski it is. May we go inside, Mr. Rukowski?”

For a moment I worried that the ceramic figure might talk – in which case I would have to get rid of him. Ancient threshold guardian or not, a talking ceramic garden gnome was just plain creepy. But no speech issued forth from Mr. Rukowski’s mouth, only a warm glow that spread up the porch steps and into my front door, like a Welcome mat that had been spread out for my guests.

“Come on in,” I said. “Apparently you’re welcome.”

I tried to seat Liz and Diana in the parlor while I went to put on water for tea, but they followed me into the kitchen and sat down at the table. Liz folded her hands on top of the table and pressed her lips together. Diana rearranged the sugar bowl, salt and pepper shakers, and a Mason jar full of wilting wildflowers.

“What is it?” I asked, finally picking up on the women’s tension. “Is something wrong? Has the circle banished me? Is Ann okay? Has her hand gotten worse?”

“Ann’s fine,” Liz assured me. “And the circle … well there was some disagreement at first.” She pressed her lips together and I guessed that Moondance had probably given her a hard time about bringing me into the circle. “But we found a private tutor who we think will be perfect for you. One of our circle can personally vouch for him and I spent the night calling his references.” Liz placed unusual stress on the word calling. It took me another minute in my groggy state to realize why. Last year when Liz had hired Liam Doyle to take over a Creative Writing class she had relied on his internet profile and emailed references – all of which had been fabricated by my crafty incubus. Liz was trying to assure me that she wasn’t making the same mistake again.