The wooden sign over their door proudly read "Elkwood and Carracas, Consulting Magicians" in tasteful script, followed by the traditional seven-pointed star. Matthew felt the word “magicians” was good advertising, appealing to the imagination of the public masses, no matter how much James despised the unscientific quality of the word and its myriad of connotations. Since James wasn’t the one actually in need of the customers said advertising was intended to draw in through their shop door, however, Matthew felt his opinion in this matter held priority. When he’d pointed this out, James had looked at him, looked at the layout plans for their new joint-business’s sign the woodcarver had just delivered earlier that day, checked the bill, then finally shrugged with a resigned expression.

“When our friendly neighborhood fundamentalists try to burn the place down because they think we’re witches, don’t expect me to exert myself saving your record collection.”

That had been four years ago. During that time, they’d had a few cross-wielding well-meaning church mothers and pastors and youth groups come around to their intricately but tastefully carved front door and scold, harangue, speak at them earnestly with all of the fresh-scrubbed pinkness of good acne soap, et cetera et cetera, but nobody had set fire to the shop yet. Or at least nobody who hadn’t already been inside the shop at the time— James won that dubious distinction three months in after one of his experiments exploded in the basement laboratory. Thankfully, the thaumic dampeners layered into the walls did their job superbly and contained the explosive force of the exponential thaumic decompression; the same could not be said of the walls themselves regarding the more ordinary qualities of the explosion, which meant that Matthew had come running into the back hallway leading to the basement stairs and skidded to a stop just before falling through the six foot-wide hole newly blown through the floor, which would have been a highly unfortunately landing as it would have been directly onto James, who had been standing beneath said hole and staring up at it with that thoughtful “huh, I didn’t expect that to happen” look on his face he tended to get after things blew up on him, or sometimes failed to blow up at all.

“Gah— are you all right? What the heck did you DO?” James ignored Matthew’s demands to track a bit of charred flooring/ceiling with his eyes as it swung precariously from a bare splinter of tile and wood, before giving up the ghost completely and falling through the smoky, dusty air to land on the remains of the fume hood below with a clatter and a clang. Then he shrugged, pulling off his dust-covered safety glasses and lifting his gaze back up to meet Matthew’s incredulous one.

“To tell you the truth, I’m not quite sure. I -thought- I was testing a possible safe, inexpensive synthesis pathway that would result in an artificial alternative to lodestone vitae which wouldn’t cause exactly what just happened here, but obviously I was mistaken, because this is by no means my definition of either ‘safe’ or ‘inexpensive.’”

“No kidding. So it wasn’t just your standard fireball gone awry? Heck of a mistake, Jimmy boy,” Matthew grumbled. He nudged the edge of the char at his feet, then jumped back quickly as the blackened area crumbled away and followed the previous piece of floor tile and wood onto the pile below in a drift of gritty black particles. “You’re okay, right?”

“Hm? Oh yes, I’m perfectly fine. A little startled, but whole in body and in mind.” He showed one of his rare, quicksilver flashes of smile as Matthew opened his mouth. “And don’t bother disputing the latter, Matthew, please, we have enough work to do here as it is.”

Then his eyes lit up before Matthew could switch topics and start disputing -that- particular statement, specifically the plural pronoun, and then he’d spun on his heel and was rummaging frantically along an intact but dusty counter and its rather windblown and in some cases shattered contents. Most likely for his lab notebook. He turned the thing up after a moment with a triumphant “ah ha!,” dusting it off and flipping through the pages. It was the kind of “ah ha!” that translated into “I think I know what happened here and I’m damn well determined to replicate it somehow in the name of science and blowing my fool head off,” or at least that’s what Matthew told himself it -really- meant, given James’s penchant for such activities.

“It’s things like that which make me think you don’t have your butt totally and comfortably perched on your rocker,” Matthew told him matter-of-factly— or rather, he told James’s back matter-of-factly. He didn’t think James even heard him. And of course, that was when the sprinkler system finally caught up to events and chose to kick in with a vengeance; down below, he heard James yelp in dismay which was then followed by a clattering noise, while he himself gave the sprinkler armature directly overhead a dour look as it plastered his bangs to his face in auburn locks. “Great timing. That fire inspector cheated us.”

A little later, standing on the sidewalk in front of their shop and watching their landlord yell at the fire marshal, he turned to James. “Really, Jimmy boy.”

James shrugged, his now slightly damp lab notebook tucked securely under one arm. “We were planning to replace the flooring anyway.”