Fredericka and Gilbert arrived early to the party, since they had nothing better to do. I mean, they were so eager to attend the party that they showed up before the scheduled time just to watch everything come together. Yeah, let's go with that.

  Which was honestly a good thing because Gilbert proved incredibly useful to the preparations. I was going over the menu with Chef Demi, Tony was taking copious notes on the various menu items and recipes, and Purgy was playing chess with herself.

  Well, not with herself. Sin and Virtue had split and were playing chess against each other. Apparently, they didn't only split during moments of strong emotion. They could also do it on command.

  I made her promise to merge again for her meeting with Nigel. While I did warn him about her nature, I felt like easing him into it would yield far better results than having two different women immediately trying to date him simultaneously.

  Gilbert tapped me on the shoulder and said, "You are making a dreadful amount of food for a building that can only hold about a hundred people. How many people did you invite?"

  He had a point. The main floor of the bar was rather small. "Well, I was thinking people could use the lower floors too."

  "Do you not think it would be better if everyone was in the same room? Then everyone can mingle and socialize with everyone else. If you separate the party among multiple floors, a large portion of the people won't be able to talk to the other people on the separate floors," Gilbert said.

  "They can switch between floors, but I do see your point. It would be a lot easier if people didn't have to do that," I said. "We can't do that, though. Can we? What exactly are you suggesting?"

  "I could simply make the room larger," he said.

  "Tony's neighbors are close enough as it is. I don't know how much more room he has to expand the building," I said.

  "I am not suggesting expanding the building. Just the room," he said, steepling his fingers.

  I looked at him for a moment, thinking about what he said. Then it dawned on me. "Oh! You mean magically! Bigger on the inside like Little Big Town?"

  "Exactly," he said, smiling.

  "You can do that?" I asked, a little impressed.

  "Who do you think made Little Big Town work the way it does?" he said, looking deep into my eyes.

  "You? Wow! You're a lot more versed in magic than I thought," I said, raising my eyebrows.

  "I will take that as a compliment," he said, bowing slightly.

  "Good. It was intended as one," I said, bowing back.

  "Alright," Gilbert said, cracking his knuckles. "Let me get started. How many people does it need to hold?"

  "Like three hundred something people. I invited a ton of people from people who fought in the battle to office workers, but only a small amount of them are actually coming," I said.

  "Increase the capacity to five hundred people. Understood," Gilbert said.

  "That's not exactly what I said, but ok," I said.

  "A larger quantity of people will arrive than you anticipate. It always happens with celebrations like this. People bring their friends and people who said no change their minds," he said, drawing a circle on the ground in black chalk.

  "That's a fair point. Why don't you make it six hundred then?" I said.

  "Indeed," he said, drawing various symbols.

  Once he had surrounded the original circle with symbols, he drew a larger circle around it and drew more symbols around that one, and so on and so forth. Once he was done, most of the available ground space was taken up by chalk markings.

  Tony finally looked up from taking notes and talking to Chef Demi and noticed all the chalk markings on the floor. "Ok, I'm not going to freak out, because I'm sure this has a perfectly good explanation, but what are you doing to my floor?"

  "He's expanding the size of the room using magic," I said.

  "Oh, is that all?" he said sarcastically. "You didn't think to okay this with me first?"

  "I figured more space in your bar was more better for you and your business," I said.

  "It is, but at least ask a guy first before performing magic in his bar," he said, crossing his arms.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  "I'm sorry, Tony. Is it ok if we expand your bar to hold six hundred people?" I said.

  "Fine with me," he said.

  "Thank you," I said. "Ok Gilbert, you can go ahead."

  "I heard the man," Gilbert said. He pressed his hand against the ground among the symbols.

  A blinding flash of black light—I still didn't understand how that was possible—shot out of the circles. When the light subsided, the room was over six times its original size. The walls and floor had expanded outwards. Even the bar was longer now.

  Tony was scratching his chin. "Hmm. If you can do all that, do you think you could expand my kitchen? And the bathrooms? And the broom closet, I mean, my office?"

  Gilbert looked uncomfortable for a brief moment, and then it was gone. "I suppose I could. Why don't you guide me to these locations?"

  "Sure! Follow me!" Tony said, walking into the kitchen.

  Gilbert went behind the bar and followed Tony into the cramped kitchen space.

  I went to Office Despot and got a bunch of tables and chairs to create a dining space on one end of the bar. Then I went to Billiards and More, and got some pool tables and foosball tables and put them on the other end of the bar.

  They did, in fact, have more, but I didn't see how I could justify putting a dunk tank in a bar. I did, however, get the karaoke machine setup. Asking how I transported all this stuff in a matter of an hour is a good question, but the obvious answer is teleportation.

  After setting everything up and redecorating the bar, I went over the menu with Chef Demi to tell him what he could and couldn't make spicy. Chicken wings, yes. Thai food, yes. Cupcakes, no.

  I also discussed the differences between demon and human palates, and explained that umami, sweet, and savory were the best ways to go to satisfy human diners, rather than spicy, spicier, and spiciest for demon ones. Chef Demi and I came to a compromise and created a demon menu and an "everyone else" menu.

  Once we had finished hashing that out and Gilbert had finished making Tony's broom closet office large enough to properly contain a human being, I figured we were nearly ready to start the party.

  Chef Demi went into the kitchen to begin preparing the food and Tony started making a huge batch of Devil's Donut shots—something taught to him by the archangel Raphael—to start the party off with a toast. Now, we just had to wait for people to show up.

  And don't worry, Tony wasn't making the shots for free out of the goodness of his heart. I put a $10,000 deposit down on the party to have it be an open bar, and I anticipated having to pay a little extra at the end with the way some of my employees drank and the sheer volume of people coming.

  As the first few people trickled in, I greeted them at the door, but pretty quickly I couldn't do that because a flood of people began streaming through the front doors.

  Fredericka came up to me and said, "Who are all these people? I'm scared. Will they pet me and feed me carrots? I'm freaking out. I think I need to drink the juice out of that one plant that makes me feel calm."

  "That's a lot of things to respond to," I said, rubbing my temples. "They are all people I know from my work and personal life. You'll be alright. If you want, you can stay by me if that'll make you feel better."

  "I doubt any of them has carrots on them, but if someone wants to pet you and feed you, I will give them carrots. And while I don't condone drinking to make yourself feel better, I won't admonish it. Especially not to a barely tamed unicorn who is speaking to me through magic."

  I started petting and stroking her mane, realizing she probably needed it to calm down.

  "That's nice. Thank you, master," she said.

  "You can just call me Dave," I said.

  "Thank you, master Dave," she said.

  "I uh, I'll accept that," I said, giving up. I stopped stroking her mane. "Hold on one second. I want to check something."

  "Yes yes, master Dave," she said. "I will wait right here. Here is where I will wait."

  "Uh, thanks," I said, walking over to the bar. I grabbed a bottle of rum from behind the bar.

  "Hey! You can't do that! This is my bar!" Tony barked.

  "I'm sorry! It's important! I think," I said.

  "Come back here, Dave! I'm not done talking!" Tony said.

  "Bye!" I said, disappearing back into the crowd.

  When I got back to Fredericka, I removed the cap and held it up to her nose. "Does that plant smell anything like this?"

  "Oh, yes! How did you get so much of its juice into a container? I usually have to chew on the leaves," she said. She licked the bottle with her huge horse tongue. "The hole is too small! No fair!"

  "Hold on, I'll get you a glass," I said, running back to the bar.

  "I will wait for your return in the place I am currently standing," Fredericka said.

  I grabbed a lowball glass from behind the bar and got yelled at by Tony again, but his words were indecipherable. It just sounded like a bunch of vowels stringed together. Not to take responsibility or punishment for my actions, I disappeared into the crowd again.

  When I got back to Fredericka, I poured some rum into the glass and held it up so she could lick the liquid out. She licked enthusiastically. "Thank you, master Dave! This is going to help me a lot with my anxiety!"

  I didn't know how much to give her and since alcohol usually takes at least a minute or two to really hit you, I just kept pouring rum and feeding it to her. I mean, she was at least five times my weight. The average horse weighs somewhere around 950 lbs, but she was the equivalent of an alpha dire unicorn. She was significantly larger than not only your average horse, but also your average dire unicorn.

  I ended up giving her the entire bottle of rum, but don't worry, it wasn't one of the big bottles, which were known as "handles," because they often were manufactured with handles. It was a skinny bottle, known as a "fifth," because they contain a fifth of a gallon of liquid.

  After a few minutes of stroking her mane, Fredericka said, "I feel gooder than I've ever felt before. I've never had so much plant juice before. I think I'm gonna take a nap."

  She lowered herself to the floor and fell asleep almost instantly. I could tell because her breathing was translated into snoring noises by my domination jewel.

  "Ok, I'll let you sleep. Normally, I'd be worried you'd get trampled by all the people, but you're taller than everyone even while sitting down, so that shouldn't be a problem," I said.

  I walked back to the bar to apologize to Tony, but he was taking shots with Lilith. At first I was worried she was trying to pull her wiles on him, but I thought about it for longer than a second and said to myself, "There's no way that would ever happen. Tony is way too professional for that."

  And yes, I still think Tony is too professional for that despite seeing him drinking with a customer. You can drink with a customer and still be professional. I don't care what the National Restaurant Association guidelines say.