An ear-piercing scream echoed through the quiet mountain cabin.

Adam opened his eyes and groaned. Beside him, he noticed Rafe was also awake as he rolled towards him. “What are we going to do about Georgie?”

“I’d vote we take him out back and shoot him. But we’d have to shoot Timothy as well.”

“That might be a bit extreme. He is, after all, my best friend. Well, except for you, of course, sweetness.”

Rafe smiled, which was what Adam was trying for. “Sure, try to make me forget that noise by sucking up. Not working. I’ve got to say, you were correct when you called it shrieking. I think my ears are bleeding.”

“Now who’s being a drama queen? It isn’t that bad, but I’m just as sick of it as you.”

It had been nine months since the battle with Dannecker. When Adam escaped back to Regaria, he brought his best friend Georgie with him, along with Simon, who had been captured by Dannecker, and Cooper, Adam’s cat. Georgie, it turned out, didn’t have magical abilities, so he couldn’t understand a word of what everyone was shouting when they first arrived. Luckily, Adam anticipated that and had a spell ready, and now Georgie spoke fluent Regarian. He still spoke English, though, as evidenced by some of the words being screamed from his bedroom at that very moment.

Simon, Rafe’s adopted uncle, was back at work in his rebuilt store in Oak Moss. With an early spring, and with the help of volunteers from Braden Firs, the town of Oak Moss had been almost completely rebuilt over the last four months. The construction had begun in the fall and slowed due to the cold conditions, but the townspeople pulled together and made it through. As the town was in the middle of a great forest, lumber was not an issue, nor was fieldstone. The buildings had been rebuilt in the same fantasy village look that Adam had admired on his first visit to the town—when he first came out of the tunnel and found himself in this alternate world.

Timothy, the miller’s apprentice at the sawmill, had been working a lot of hours. Most days he worked from sunrise to sunset, but that hadn’t kept him from finding time to pursue Adam’s friend, Georgie. Or for Georgie to pursue Timothy, as the case might be. The two had become inseparable. Unfortunately, that meant that Timothy was pretty much living at Adam and Rafe’s cabin with Georgie, since Timothy only had a small room at the mill and no home of his own.

“I’ll talk to him today,” Adam promised. “I’m thinking it’s time the two of them had a place of their own. Far, far, away from our cabin.” No sooner were the words out of his mouth than another shriek of pleasure rocked through the cabin.

“Well, for now, I can think of a way to cover their sounds.” Rafe began with a smile on his face.

“Guys, we need to talk.” Adam looked up at Georgie and Timothy as they walked into the kitchen, where Adam and Rafe had been having their breakfast.

“What did we do now?” Georgie asked, trying to look innocent.

“It might have involved shrieking,” Rafe said.

“I don’t shriek!” Georgie shrieked.

Adam just rolled his eyes. “Really? What do you call that?”

“I tend to be excitable, that’s all.”

“You do shriek,” Timothy said, glancing at his lover with a smirk.

“You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“I am, but you can get a little loud…especially when I hit that special spot.”

“OoooKay,” Adam interrupted, “too much information. Let’s talk about what we can do to make sure that Rafe and I get our sleep—to say nothing about poor Billy. The kid is going to be traumatized about sex. When he gets old enough to have it, he’s going to think it must be really painful, the way you two carry on.”

“The two of you have been together for what, five months now?” Rafe asked.

“Well, four and a half, it took me a couple weeks to catch his attention,” Georgie replied.

“You had my attention the first time I saw you, but I didn’t think you would be into a roughneck, burly, sawmill apprentice like me. You were so refined looking.” Timothy looked at Georgie with such adoration.

“Well, of course I was. I was used to a different sort of world. We had this thing called fashion.”

“Here in Regaria, your fashion would look kind of silly, don’t you think?” Adam asked.

“Yes, that’s true. The clothing here is so basic and boring. But I still try to put my own stamp on it.”

“So that explains that silly looking scarf you’re wearing?” Adam giggled out loud at the look of shock on Georgie’s face.

“You never did have any fashion sense,” Georgie replied.

“Guys… Back to the real subject,” Rafe interjected. “We have an idea how we could alleviate the noise issue. What would you think about moving into your own place?”

“There aren’t any available houses in town. We’ve talked about it, but the priority was on rebuilding the village, not on our desire for our own place,” Timothy replied, then looked at Georgie and continued. “Maybe now is the time to do it?”

“I’m happy with that, but wherever we live has to have indoor plumbing,” Georgie quickly added. He had been as appalled as Adam to discover that in this land, indoor plumbing was a rarity, and cold showers were the norm. Barbarism defined, in his opinion. Until he’d come to this world with Adam, his idea of roughing it was a fifty-foot motorhome, complete with every luxury available—including a hair dryer.