The shoebox she’d brought him home in sat empty beside a wrought-iron birdcage, the door of which was ajar. Until recently, that was a sight that would have filled Isaretta’s heart with dread, but now a fish tank occupied the shelf beside the birdcage, and she was certain her tiny companion would have a more difficult time escaping that. Still, she could not help but feel that the sight of the empty aquarium was somehow inevitable. She knelt, and looked inside. Hiding? He had played that trick before, attempting his escape when she had opened the lid to redouble her efforts to find him.
“Ardost.” She tapped on the glass. “If you don’t come out, you won’t be fed today.” Silence from the tank. “And if you’re out, and I find you’ve unplugged the fridge again, I swear I’ll step on you.” She tapped the glass again.
“You wouldn’t step on me,” answered a voice, much larger than its owner, who was no more than six inches tall, and still somewhere out of sight. Isaretta’s blood ran cold. He was out. Loose. Who knew how long he had been unsupervised in the apartment?
“I absolutely would,” she promised, peeking behind the television and finding nothing. “I’d grind you under my heel in a heartbeat.”
“That is a peculiar way to convince me to come out.” Isaretta grit her teeth, and left the living room for the kitchen, where mercifully the refrigerator remained plugged in, but innumerable other mischiefs might have been committed in her absence. While little more than a sprite, left to his own devices, Ardost was a menace. The stalwart enemy of plugs, cables, and anything small enough to be spirited away, she had invested in the fish tank after he had crawled into her computer and sabotaged it. He had unplugged the power supply without her noticing, the night before an important proposal was due. It had taken an embarrassingly long time to find the problem, and all the while he’d watched from behind the bars of the birdcage, and smiled without a word.
“You’ll not find me in there,” Ardost chirped, again from behind her.
“You know, I could have left you where I found you.”
“Could you? You might turn me out whenever it pleases you, and yet I remain.”
“Keep tempting me. See what comes.” She crept back into the living room, scanning the floor, crouching to look under the couch. He whistled. “Ardost, so help me…”
“Should I not admire fine things when I see them?”
“Can you not admire them quietly?”
“Not when they are so fine as you.”
“Flattery will get you flattened.” Isaretta checked under the desk, and still, saw no sign of Ardost or his meddling. Sometimes she’d find a long gold hair, or the imprints of tiny feet in the carpet, but this time he’d done well to cover his tracks. She sighed, tempted to just lie there on the floor and wait for him to get bored. “What do you get out of this, exactly?”
“You are aware that I live out my days in an aquarium, yes?”
“You have an iPhone. And we just got Netflix.”
“Boring.”
Isaretta sighed, sitting under the desk instead of lying there.
“So? What should we do?”
“This is fine.”
“I’m taking your phone.” She heard him move, then, above her. Behind the computer monitor. She’d been certain he wouldn’t be able to find a way onto the desk. Isaretta clambered out from under the desk, to find Ardost standing on it. He was too small to fit into a Ken doll’s clothes. She’d had to commission his entire wardrobe to keep him from scurrying about naked. He was every bit the charming doll when he was still and quiet; porcelain pale and platinum blond, with eyes that were visibly silver even at a distance. He’d bitten a guest, once, when they tried to touch him, but that was neither here nor there. What an odd-looking doll, they’d said. Perhaps he looked a little sharper than a ball-jointed doll. A little too gaunt. Too many hard edges. But that suited Isaretta just fine. He raised his little hands as soon as she stirred.
“Don’t handle me. I surrender.”
“Will you behave?” He laughed, then, silver eyes twinkling.
“Oh, all my sins have been committed, already.”
“And you wonder why I don’t let you out.” Ardost padded to the edge of the desk, and sat, letting his booted feet dangle over the side.
“I never do anything beyond repair.”
“Do you know how many of my glasses you’ve broken?” He waved a dismissive hand.
“Those were accidents.”
“Eight.”
“Accidents.” He peered at her, for a moment or two, while she stared back, unimpressed. “I could leave here, if you like.”
“Oh?” Isaretta pulled out the computer chair, and sat. She still had to bend a little to get a look at his face, which at the moment looked almost convincingly downcast. “And then what? Our neighbour lets their cat out at night. Fandango would eat you alive.”
“Well, it’s Fandango, or you step on me.” Isaretta let out a slow breath.
“I’m not going to step on you.” Ardost stood, careful of the edge, craning his neck to study her face.
“I would not be returned to the fish tank.” He wrung his hands, and she knew the display was a calculated one, and cursed herself for being moved to pity him. She held out her hand.
“Come here, you.” Ardost frowned, but stepped daintily onto her fingers. “Will you be good?”
“What if I poisoned Fandango?”
“Ardost!”
“I hid the mail key again,” he confessed at once, scuffing his foot on her palm. The remorse, she knew, was not likely genuine, but she appreciated the display. “And the plug for the bathtub. I also summoned the pizza man while you were out. He’ll be here by seven.”
“You ordered a pizza.”
“I may or may not have used your credit card to do it.”
“Anything else?”
“Not that I remember.” Isaretta was immediately certain that this was a lie, but she moved her hand near to her shoulder so that Ardost could climb up.
“You’re a nuisance,” she said, standing from her chair, carefully to avoid her passenger falling from his perch. She felt his small hands at work in her hair, hopefully only braiding. “So... What kind of pizza?”
