Demon Hunter: The Breamstone Collective

An Urban Fantasy Harem Adventure

Michael Dalton

Copyright © 2021 Michael Dalton

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. References to real people, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously.

Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All characters depicted in this work of fiction are 18 years of age or older.

Edited by Kate Nascimento

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Cover illustration by Ksulolka

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Cover design by Hell Yes Design Studio

www.loreleiski.com

Follow Michael at michaeldaltonbooks.com and on Twitter at @MikeDaltonBooks.

Jimmy, Hayley, MJ, and Katarina have returned to school, but their lives have changed irrevocably with the discovery of Jimmy’s true identity as the dream child of the Breamstone Collective. Yet many questions remain unresolved.

The search for answers sends them deeper into Jimmy’s dream world and further into his past in an attempt to unravel the plots of the demons behind the collective. Purple-haired goth girl Morrigan may be the key – or she may lead them further into the darkness.

As the powers of Hell finally take notice of Jimmy’s existence, he finally discovers the chance to change everything, if he can only reach the solution in time.

The Breamstone Collective is the third novel in the Demon Hunter series and contains explicit adult scenes and themes of black magic and demonology.

◆◆◆

Author’s Note: I have taken a considerable amount of literary license in describing the contents of certain medieval works on demonology and magic. Deviations from the original texts are mostly intentional.

Chapter 1

The hostess in front of us was dressed in a pleated cheerleader skirt that began three inches below her navel and ended maybe an inch below her crotch. Over her chest was a sports bra that was more encouragement than true support. Her outfit was styled in Huntington College colors, but it was one the Huntington trustees would have sooner shaved their heads and taken vows of poverty than sanctioned for the school’s actual spirit squad.

But if it was helping pay her tuition, as seemed likely, I wasn’t going to complain.

“How many in your party?” she asked.

“We’re meeting someone, I don’t know if he’s here. Volach, party of five?”

She looked down at her seating chart. “Not here yet. I can go ahead and seat you, if you want.”

I nodded. Hayley, Katarina, and I followed her to a booth over in the corner. She passed out the menus and went back to her station.

“Do you like their outfits, Jimmy?” Katarina asked. “I could manifest one for you when we get back.”

Hayley snorted. “A succubus cheerleader sounds like a premise for a porn movie.”

“Rule 34. Someone has surely thought it up already,” I said.

“When are they supposed to be here?” Hayley asked.

I checked the gold Apple Watch her mother had given me for Christmas. We were a few minutes early, and Volach and Morax were always exactly on time.

“Six. Couple of minutes, maybe.”

Another cheerleader came around to take our drink orders. I got a beer, Katarina got her usual shot of vodka, as did Hayley, who had turned twenty-one a week ago. A couple of minutes later, Volach and Morax walked in.

Volach appeared to be a tall, well-built man in his late thirties wearing slacks and a crisply starched dress shirt. Under his arm was a thin leather portfolio. Morax was a big, bull-headed guy, appearing almost like a bull with a human head. Unlike Volach’s dark, chiseled features, every sharp edge on Morax’s body was rounded off with a layer of muscle. He wore a tight t-shirt over jeans. The hostess tried to flirt with them as she walked them over to our table, but they ignored her.

“Evening, people,” Volach said. “Sugar-tits, you’re looking as delicious ever. The boys down at the office really miss having you around, let me tell you.”

Katarina gave him a thin smile. “Sad for them.”

Both of them laughed. Volach looked at Hayley. “Your boyfriend has his own succubus, and she’s still not enough? Can’t imagine what the three of you must be up to.”

“I’m sure you’ve spent plenty of time imagining it, actually,” Hayley said.

They laughed loudly again. “Redheads,” Morax muttered.

The waitress came back to take their orders. As usual, they requested the most expensive booze on the menu, a thirty-year-old cognac, along with huge blood-rare steaks.

“Okay,” Volach said when she was gone, “down to business.” He took out his portfolio and laid it open on the table.

“As I told you,” Morax said, “Astaroth got all excited when he realized who you were, Amira’s grandkid or whatever. Somehow he hadn’t connected all the dots before you found that book.”

“So, since neither of us had a clue what got him all excited,” Volach said, “I pulled your full records with Accounting, and things started to get a little clearer. You might know this already, but that debt you’ve got was for a life-lock spell.”

“A what?” I asked. I had a pretty good idea, but I wanted to hear it from him.

“What it means is that your existence is basically locked away from certain people as long as you’re alive. They can't see you or hear you, no matter what they do. It doesn’t stop them from knowing who you are and things about you, but as far they’re concerned, you’re fucking invisible. As you might imagine, that’s not an easy thing to do. Amira, when she was still alive, arranged it with Astaroth. That was the root of that debt.”

“Four thousand souls for one spell?”

Volach snorted. “Ten thousand. She had a positive balance and blew it all to protect you.”

“Did the records say who it was supposed to protect him from?” Hayley asked.

“Strangely enough, no. That part of the record is redacted. The number of people who could excise something like that is not large, but it’s roughly the same number of people who could help cast the spell in the first place. So, you do the math.”

“Astaroth?” I asked.

Volach shrugged. “I’m not speculating, or suggesting a single thing. He’s my boss. But, again, you’re a bright kid. Not exactly rocket science there.”

“There was something he didn’t want anyone to know about,” Hayley said.

Volach just held up his hands. “To continue,” he said, “Astaroth would like you to investigate something, a thing that he is very keen to learn more about. And he’s also very keen that you do this discreetly, by which I mean he would very much prefer that no one else in the bureaucracy learn about this, either your investigation or whatever it is you find.”

“Which is what?”

“Caacrinolaas,” Morax said. “Specifically what he was doing up there and why.”

“But we delivered him to you,” Katarina said, incredulous. “You cannot get this information from him?”

Morax took a deep breath and exhaled. “No. Do you remember what we told you about him detonating some kind of magical virus inside his operations to cover his tracks? Well, he set up something very similar inside his own head, and when he returned to Hell, it wiped his memory.”

The waitress arrived with the food. Morax and Volach fell silent until she was gone.

“Trust me, Sugar-tits,” Volach said. “Everything that could have been done to induce him to remember has in fact been done, several times over. You know as well as I do what that would involve. It didn’t work. Whatever it was is gone.”

“So it’s something he really didn’t want you or anyone else to know about,” Hayley said.

“That is exactly the size of it, Red,” Volach said. “Which is why we need you to go look.”

I had been wondering about this one myself, but I wasn’t going to say it. “How much is Astaroth offering for this?” I asked.

“This one is a sliding scale, depending on what you’re able to uncover, but five hundred, minimum. The more information you can deliver, the bigger the payoff.”

I pondered a question I’d been bouncing around in my mind for a while. Asking it could draw attention I didn’t need. But I decided knowing the answer was more important.

“Have you asked Amira?”

Katarina gasped softly, and I felt Hayley’s hand on my thigh. Volach regarded me oddly for a moment or two.

“Do you think she would know anything about this?” Volach asked.

“This involves Zagan’s Rock. She lived there for quite a while. The people she shielded me from are there. It’s a small town. There’s jack shit going on there that could be of any interest to Hell beyond this.”

Volach and Morax looked at each other, then back at me.

“The answer is no,” Morax said. “Astaroth specifically instructed us not to involve her in this.”

“Why not?”

Volach laughed softly. “You haven’t been working for us that long, but you should understand by now that there are certain questions you don’t ask of your superiors in the bureaucracy. Those include asking for rationales for those sorts of instructions. Astaroth would not have told me if I had asked, and asking would not have gone over well. That’s all I’m going to say.”

Katarina put her hand on my arm.

“Okay,” I said finally.

Volach and Morax might not be able to tell me. But there was someone who could. Someone I was past due for a conversation with.

◆◆◆

It was a Wednesday night, and Hayley and I both had a lot of homework to do. So we went back to campus, kissed goodnight, and went to our respective residences. I had a heavier class-load this semester in addition to my TA responsibilities, so I settled in at the kitchen table when we got back. Katarina did my laundry and cleaned up around the apartment while I worked. I was just wrapping up some homework for Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics when a text came in. I looked at my demon phone and saw that it was MJ.

Hey

Hey dreamgirl

A smiley popped up.

Are you busy?

I’m always busy but what’s up

Just missing you guys

MJ went to UC Santo Domingo, which was across town about ten minutes away. We’d kept in touch since the adventures in Zagan’s Rock, but we hadn’t seen her since we all got back to school. We had a four-day weekend coming up, and the four of us were planning on spending it together.

Couple more days

Can’t wait

I miss you too but trying to give you some space

I know

I appreciate that

Don’t think I haven’t been thinking about things

I have

Like you said, you just tell me when you’re there

Getting there

Another smiley.

Just don’t want to take so much time you forget about me

Not happening

This might help

A moment later, a photo of her came up. She was lying on her stomach on her dorm bed in a shiny red thong and a tight workout top, her long brown-black hair in a ponytail. The photo was taken from behind so I had a perfect view of her taut, athletic butt. She was just looking over her shoulder at the camera, a half-smile on her face.

I love it

Roommate took it. Just got back from practice

Jealous of your roommate now

lmao

Just told her that

Have a good night. See you Friday

I saved the photo along with several similar ones she’d sent me and tried not to think too hard about what was going to happen this weekend.

◆◆◆

Because of the bond we shared, Katarina was very adept at sensing my moods. So when I finally closed up my laptop and packed things up for tomorrow, she emerged from the bedroom wearing a sweater and apparently nothing else. I realized a moment or two later that it was the Nordic sweater I’d gotten her for Christmas.

She came over and sat in my lap, straddling me. The sweater rode up a little as she settled down, and I saw that she was indeed naked under it.

“Nice sweater.”

“Do you remember it?”

“Of course.”

I loved to sit sometimes and just look at her. She was so effortlessly pretty and rarely did much of anything to enhance her appearance. That was mainly because I’d never asked her to go beyond the casual grad-student look she adopted as cover when I bound her.

The reason I hadn’t was precisely because she could look like anyone I wanted her to. This look was essentially who she’d been as a mortal girl, just six or eight years older. I liked knowing that. Anything else just felt fake.

So I would look over her face, her ashy little freckles and blond eyebrows, and the eyes like glacial ice. I would run my fingers through her pale blonde hair. And because I enjoyed doing it, she enjoyed letting me do it, and so she would just sit there smiling at me until I wanted more.

“Do you ever think,” she said after a while, “when you look at me like this, that you are stuck with me for all eternity?”

“‘Stuck’ isn’t the word I would use,” I said.

She smiled. “You are sweet.” She leaned forward and kissed me, then pulled back. “Do you remember when you gave this sweater to me?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Do you remember what you told me afterward? I am not bringing this up because I need anything more than what I have with you, only because of what you said. You made me curious, and I have now been curious for nearly a month.”

It took me a moment or two to remember what she was talking about. I’d promised her a different kind of gift, without telling her anything more than that.

I took a deep breath. This was something I’d been thinking about for a while, I just wasn’t sure I wanted to take this step. But maybe it was time to give it a try. I had no idea it would even work.

“Yeah, I remember. It’s less a thing to give you than a thing I want to do. But there’s something I would need you to do for me first.”

Her smile faded, and concern began leaking into her eyes. “Jimmy, you know there is nothing you could ask me to do that I would not do. So I am confused that you would phrase things that way.”

“It’s because I don’t know if you can do it.”

The concern grew. “What is it?”

“Can you sleep? I know you don’t need to, but can you do it, if you tried?”

She sighed. “You want me to dream with you.”

“If we can.”

“I am sorry, Jimmy. I cannot. I tried at times, in the early years, when I still wanted to be mortal again. Nothing worked, no matter how hard I tried. Sleep is a mortal thing. I have no need of it.”

I looked down. “Okay. That’s pretty much what I figured, which is why I didn’t bring this up.”

“Believe me when I say I would do it for you if I could.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s all right. Let’s go to bed, sleep or not.”

She smiled. “There is nothing else you would like me to do?”

I laughed. “Maybe in the morning. I’m exhausted, and I have Transport Processes first thing and then my Inorganic Chemistry lab section after lunch.”

I got ready for bed. When I was done brushing my teeth, Katarina was waiting under the covers in one of her little silk nightgowns. She cuddled up to me as I climbed in next to her.

“While you sleep, I will think of something complicated you can have me do in the morning.”

I laughed and hugged her.

But what I hadn’t explained and what Katarina hadn’t asked, was why I wanted her to dream with me. I knew I had a succubus, and I knew what that meant – what she was, and what she could and couldn’t do. None of that had stopped me from falling in love with her.

I was living with someone I was very deeply attracted to, someone who was entirely devoted to my happiness and enjoyment. I liked being around her, and her presence in my life was helping me in a lot of ways completely disconnected from the bedroom. Her knowledge of the spirit world and the infernal bureaucracy, not to mention her general knowledge of things from having a photographic memory of her twelve centuries of existence, was extremely useful.

And of course there was the amazing sex we were having. I knew she was very much attracted to me as well – not because I was anything that stunning to look at, but because of my power as a sorcerer, since succubi were attracted to power. So when a twelve-hundred-year-old sex demon tells you that you’re the best sex she’s ever had – because of our bond, which allowed me to do things to her no one else ever had – well, there’s just no way that doesn’t go to your head.

Given all that, it would have been surprising if I hadn’t fallen in love with her.

Even if she couldn’t love me in return.

She explained it in a way that was simultaneously understandable and absolutely heart-wrenching. Her ability to love had simply been torn out of her when she was made into a succubus. What was left was just a hole. My feelings for you are there, she’d said, but they flow into the hole and disappear, like water down a drain.

If there was a way to let her feel the things I felt for her, I wanted to give it to her.

I wasn’t prepared to attempt some enchantment over her in the real world, not yet. I had no idea how something like that might work, and I suspected there was a chance that doing it might break something in her nature as a succubus. I wasn’t about to attempt it until I understood a lot more about what I was doing.

But the dream world was different. It occurred to me the morning after pulling in Hayley when we were at her parents’ house, after what I’d been able to do to her in that dream. We’d done it a couple more times since then, and each time, she had me change things about her – bigger boobs, different hair, and so on. I’d been able to make her orgasm for hours on end – in dream time, anyway. I’d done things to Charlotte as well, not just with her body but making her bisexual so she could be with Hayley. If I could do things like that to them, could I do something similar to Katarina?

Specifically, could I patch that hole inside her, at least while we were dreaming?

That was what I wanted to find out. And I wasn’t ready to give up on her.

Chapter 2

“Okay, folks, that’s time. Let’s wrap it up. Bring your safety tests and lab inventory sheets up here on your way out.”

The sixteen undergrads in my section rose from their lab tables and filed past, dropping the first-week paperwork in a heap in front of me. Morrigan lingered for a minute or so as the other students left. Her hair was longer and a different shade of purple this semester – it was darker and more violet and now several inches past her shoulders. She had on shredded black jeans and a lacy red-and-black corset top. The corset was being asked to do an awful lot, given her chest, but it seemed to be holding up adequately for now.

“Questions?” I asked.

She smiled. I saw the interest in her pretty blue eyes, as I usually did. She seemed to have gained a couple of extra piercings in her left ear over break. She already had a ring through her left nostril and a stud in her tongue, and for most of last semester I’d been unable to stop imagining what else she might have.

“I was just wondering if you got up to anything interesting over break,” she said.

“Yeah, you could say that. Nothing I can really go into, though.”

I liked Morrigan and found her quite attractive, even as edgy as her looks were, but finally coming face-to-face with the Breamstone Collective and getting into a spell battle with their leader was not something I wanted to discuss outside my little coven.

“Aunt Celeste is all freaked out but won’t tell me why,” she said. “So I figured something might have happened.”

That got my interest. “When did that start?”

“Right after Christmas, I guess.”

I wondered what Celeste might have heard. She’d known my Grandma Amy, my mother Mary-Beth, and Deirdre, the woman who helped Grandma Amy bring me into the world. Celeste knew about the collective and had – at least at one point – been part of the Vermillion Cabal. But she also seemed determined to keep her niece away from all of it.

“When I told her I had you as a TA again,” Morrigan went on, “she begged me to switch.”

I laughed weakly. “Why didn’t you?”

She smiled, fidgeting nervously for a moment. “You’re the best TA I’ve ever had. The others, you know . . .”

Yeah, I knew. The graduate chemistry classes at Huntington were dominated by students from China, and the language issues were something the undergraduates often complained about, albeit quietly. But I knew her interest in me extended well beyond the language issues. She wasn’t trying to hide it and never had, but I was trying not to encourage her.

“Thanks,” I said.

“I just wish your section wasn’t so late in the afternoon.”

I got up and gathered my stuff. “Me too. I’ll see you in class on Monday.”

She gave me a little wave. “Bye.”

Hayley was waiting in the hallway when I emerged with Morrigan. But before I could say anything, Morrigan greeted her.

“Hey, you,” she said.

Hayley looked a little surprised to see her. “Hey, what’s up?”

Morrigan started to respond, but when Hayley stepped up and took my hand, Morrigan glanced at me, then back at Hayley. Something dawned in her eyes.

“Oh, wow. He’s the guy you’ve been dating?”

“Yeah,” Hayley said.

Morrigan laughed, looking at me. There was a weird mixture of disappointment and curiosity in her eyes. “Does she know about . . . ?”

But then she stopped. I wasn’t sure what to say in front of Hayley, because I wasn’t sure what their connection was. Finally Morrigan gave a little wiggle of her head. “Huh. Well, see you guys later, I guess.”

After she disappeared down the hall, Hayley rose up on her toes and kissed me.

“How do you know Morrigan?” I asked.

Hayley bit her lip for a moment. “Um, she was that girlfriend, freshman year. The one I told you about over Christmas. We were in the same dorm. We were still hooking up occasionally when I met you.”

Well, that was not the answer I had been expecting. But I suppose it explained that weird exchange.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Last time I ran into her, she wanted to hook up again, but I had to tell her I was taken.”

I tried to imagine it for a moment. It had never once occurred to me that they might know each other, and that fact put a wrinkle on things that was going to take me some time to process.

Hayley had come with me to Soul Journeys, the shop Celeste ran, on a shopping trip once, but Morrigan hadn’t been there that day. Morrigan flirted with me through all of Chem 320 last semester, but Hayley hadn’t been around any of that either.

“I wouldn’t have figured you were into goth girls,” I said finally.

But Hayley laughed. “Jimmy, I’m dating a sorcerer with his own succubus, and you’re surprised I would be into someone like Morrigan?”

All right, that did make some sense. “I guess not.”

Hayley held my hand as we walked out of the building. We’d finally come out of the closet about our relationship over break, so while she was taking Chem 245 in the same class as Morrigan, she wasn’t in my section this time.

“Thanks for coming over,” I said.

“I know you’ve had a really long day. I wanted to be a good girlfriend and walk you home.”

“Try a long week. Two lab sections the entire semester is going to be rough.”

“You managed it last semester,” she said.

“I hope so. I just didn’t realize Thermodynamics was going to be this much work.”

I took over a section in Dr. Paulson’s Biochem I class last semester because one of his TAs had to go back to China and hadn’t returned. And because there weren’t enough TAs to go around for the spring semester, Dr. Paulson asked if I could continue with it. I needed the money, so I said yes.

Okay, technically, I didn’t need the money in the sense of being unable to live without it. I had another income stream in the gold eagle coins I’d found a few months back, which I had a coin broker selling on consignment. But the frugality Grandma Amy drilled into me during my childhood refused to let me see that as a real change in my circumstances. Because I knew the coins would all be sold eventually, I was treating it as a one-time resource and directing it toward my biggest one-time debt – my student loans. That meant I still had month-to-month expenses to deal with, so a second lab section would help with my monthly finances.

“I’m sure you can do it,” Hayley said. “I have faith in you.” She leaned against my shoulder. “Did you have Morrigan in a section before? Seemed like she knew you pretty well.”

“Yeah, she was in Biochem 320 last fall. But there was something else. You know Celeste, the woman who runs Soul Journeys?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“She’s Morrigan’s aunt. Morrigan works there sometimes.”

Hayley stopped short on the sidewalk. “Wait, are you saying––”

“Yeah. Morrigan knows some things about me, the sorcery and other stuff. She’s met Katarina, and she knows what she is. Morrigan said she’s a witch too, though I have no idea if she can do much of anything.”

She couldn’t answer me right away. “You never mentioned that.”

“There was too much else going on, and after I met her there, Celeste told her to stay out of my business.”

Hayley’s eyes widened. “I mean, I knew Morrigan was into that kind of stuff,” she said. “She had this weird incense-and-candles setup in her dorm room, and she tried to talk me into doing a séance once. But I never realized that was where she worked. What exactly does she know?”

“Beyond Katarina, not a whole lot. At least that’s what I thought until just now. She told me Celeste was all upset about something that happened over break. You know Celeste was part of the Vermillion Cabal, which means she could have heard what happened from Deirdre.”

I saw the pain in Hayley’s eyes as I looked down at her. We still hadn’t much discussed what we’d discovered after Christmas, that her mother had some connection to the Breamstone Collective. That was mostly because we just didn’t know what the hell it was.

After Hayley discovered that letter from Charles, the collective’s leader, we searched for more evidence around their house. We found nothing else beyond years of similar letters and statements in Stephanie’s desk indicating she had some investments with them.

Did it end there? I wasn’t sure. Stephanie could – obviously – see and hear me, which meant she wasn’t a true member, at least not now. But I’d been through too much by this point to take something like that at face value.

We resumed walking back to my apartment.

“So it was Morrigan who was too kinky for you?” I asked.

Hayley sighed. “Yes. Basically, she was trying to convince me to be her dom, which is just something I don’t have it in me to do.”

“But you kept hooking up?”

She smiled at me. “The sex was good. Not as good as you and Katarina, but good enough.”

We got to my apartment about five minutes later. Because the Chem 245 lab section was 3:30 to 5:00, it was dark by the time we got there. A tangy, fishy aroma hit my nose as I opened the door, and I saw Katarina trying to get dinner started. She’d warned me after I bound her back in the beginning that cooking was not a skill succubi normally ever learned, but since becoming part of my life she’d made an effort to figure things out.

She would never be a gourmet cook, but she’d gotten to the point of basic competency. The only wrinkle was that she started with what little she knew, all of which was traditional Swedish cuisine. But since she enjoyed doing it for me, and I was no great cook myself, the situation was working. That, and she had a habit of cooking in nothing but a short little apron.

She was dressed normally tonight, though. She came over and kissed me, then Hayley.

“How was your lab section?” she asked.

“I have Morrigan again,” I said. “Turns out Hayley has known her all this time.”

“How?” Katarina asked.

“Ex-girlfriend, and occasional hookup before Jimmy,” Hayley said.

“I wonder if Celeste knows any of this?” Katarina asked. “She told Morrigan to stay away from us.”

I waved it off. “Pretty sure Morrigan can take care of herself. I just can’t decide if she’s a real witch or only acting like one.”

“I have seen pretend witches discover they actually had power when it mattered,” Katarina said. “So perhaps she is.”

I opened a beer and lay down on my couch. My Thursdays were looking to be brutal because I had my two-hour Transport Processes class in the morning and two lab sections in the afternoon. Charlotte hopped into my lap seeking attention, and I scratched her ears as she curled up and began to purr.

I closed my eyes and tried to clear this weird development with Morrigan out of my head. If Celeste had heard about the events in Zagan’s Rock, then things were happening. I’d been putting this off long enough, and I knew it. That was part of why I’d finally decided to go ahead with what we had planned this weekend. It was time.

“Are you staying for dinner, Hayley?” Katarina asked.

“Ugh, it smells really good, but no, I can’t. I already have a ton of homework to do, especially if we’re . . . doing this thing tomorrow night. Just going to make a quick sandwich down in the café and get to work.”

I knew by now not try to talk Hayley out of deferring her homework and studying, no matter how much I wanted her to stick around. She was on track for med school, and I wasn’t about to derail her. She seemed to sense what I was thinking and came over to lie down with me. I held her for a few minutes before she rose up and kissed me.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll make it up to you this weekend.”

I smiled at her. “I’m good. Go study. Got to maintain that 4.0.”

She kissed me again. “It’s going to be worse in med school.”

“I know. I’ll be doing my dissertation by then.”

She smiled. “Might have some different living arrangements, though.”

Hayley and I had only been together for four months, but we’d gotten awfully deep after everything that happened. The longer we were together, the more I felt like I needed to do whatever it took to keep her front-and-center in my life. Last weekend, we began gingerly dancing around the idea of her staying here this summer instead of going back home to San Sebastian. No decisions had been made, beyond agreeing we could defer any real decisions until later this spring.

“We’ll see,” I said.

She kissed me again, gave me a quick hug, said goodbye to Katarina, and went off to her homework. Katarina came over to sit with me with her little glass of Swedish vodka. All her clothes disappeared except for the apron. It had never occurred to me before she started cooking how erotic a simple apron could be.

“I can see what’s for dessert, but what’s for dinner?”

She smiled. “A fish stew. You will like it, I promise.”

I laughed and pulled her down to me. I’d eaten more fish since she started cooking for me than I had the previous five years.

“I feel like you’re channelling that wife you might have been for that boy who liked you.”

She poked me. “This is much better than anything we ate. Jimmy, honestly, what do you imagine life in that village was like? Compared to that, you live like a king.” She went to set up dinner while I admired her bare butt.

The stew was actually delicious, a sort of creamy vegetable mixture with chunks of whitefish and potato floating around in it. We gave Charlotte a few chunks of fish, which she happily ate. I had studying of my own to do, along with things to grade for my two lab sections, so Katarina let me work for a few hours while she cleaned up. I worked at the table, with Charlotte curled up next to me, then went back to the couch to do some reading.

When I was done with my reading, I wasn’t quite ready to go to bed. I knew what I needed to do, and we were going to attempt it this weekend. But I wasn’t really sure where to start.

Astaroth wanted us to investigate Caacrinolaas, but I was certain things were not going to end there. It had something to do with Zagan. At the time I’d reeled Caacrinolaas back, he was living in Zagan’s Rock in the very same tract neighborhood – Red Hawk Ranch – where Deirdre now lived.

It was simply inconceivable that he would have fled Brazil – Brazil! – to hide out in Zagan’s Rock unless he had an actual reason for being there. That reason was the key to the rest of it. I just needed to figure things out.

I went to my laptop and opened up my divination model. I’d continued tweaking it with help from Ahmed, my neighbor across the hall, who like me was in the first year of a PhD program, just in software engineering. He’d moved in with Kelly after Nathan died.

Since I couldn’t tell him what the model was actually for, I managed to convince him it was part of an offbeat idea I had for a predictive search algorithm. I’d been running innocuous queries about various things to test it, but I hadn’t run any kind of meaningful search since coming back from San Sebastian.

I wasn’t quite ready to start a search about Caacrinolaas. Something just didn’t feel right yet. I had one more thing to do before we left, something I’d been putting off for too long. But the time had come. I needed answers.

A text came in from Hayley.

Going to sleep. Exhausted. I love you

Love you too baby

Wish you were here

Me too. Looking for forward to this weekend

See you tomorrow

A bunch of heart emojis came in, but that was it.

After staring at my laptop screen for another five minutes, I finally closed the lid and got up. There would be time for running the model after tomorrow night.

I went to lie down in bed. I grabbed my phone and texted MJ.

What are you doing?

In bed falling asleep lol

Sorry was up studying

Got to thinking about you

It’s okay

Here you go

A selfie of her came in, but she was just lying in bed in a little cami top, gorgeous black-brown hair all over her pillow. It was less revealing than the last one, though her nipples were visible against the top.

Beautiful as always

Go to sleep Jimmy

See you tomorrow night

I undressed and lay down. Katarina came to bed in a lacy little red nightgown, looking like something out of a lingerie catalog.

I had three girls I loved in my life, and the only one with me right now was the one who couldn’t love me back.

But having her here was better than not having her. I cuddled up with her and went to sleep.

Chapter 3

Friday morning, I had the Chem 245 lecture with Dr. Vicenza. Hayley and Morrigan were both in this class, and after what had happened the previous afternoon, I was curious to see how they might interact. Morrigan arrived after Hayley and I split up for separate seats, but she sat halfway across the lecture hall and didn’t say anything to Hayley. But she did give me a smile and quick little wave.

I had my CE Thermodynamics lab right after that, so I didn’t have a chance talk to Hayley. But during the lab, a text came in from her.

You probably shouldn’t say anything here but I figured you’d want to see this

What?

Morrigan and I were texting during class.

A screenshot of her message app popped up. It was a conversation between her and Morrigan. Most of it was cut off, and she’d just snapped the last exchange.

Oh yeah I get it not trying to break you up

No way

I wouldn’t do that

Then what?

Just saying

If you guys ever get in the mood for a threesome

Let me know

No pressure

Just feels like it would totally rock

I stared at my phone as my ears buzzed. Another text came in from Hayley.

Like I said don’t say anything

I laughed to myself.

Okay

In the event her offer ever appeals I will let you know

Just wanted you to know since she’s in your section and all

lol got it

What did you tell her?

I said not to say anything young man

A winking emoji came in. That was all for now.

◆◆◆

I had my CE Thermo lecture at 1, but Hayley and I met for lunch.

“Remember what I said about not saying anything,” she said the moment she saw me.

“Got it.”

“We still have MJ to work into things here.”

I nodded. “Did you connect with her?” I asked.

“Yeah, she said she’d come over around five tonight. I figured we could just order a pizza or something, before we get started.”

Last weekend, after the talk about possibly moving in with me, Hayley and I also spent an hour or so discussing what she’d come to refer to as the “MJ issue.” That was where exactly MJ might fit into our little polyamorous coven. It was obvious we were both really attracted to her, and MJ had made it clear enough that she felt the same way. I wasn’t the only one she was sending pics to.

“Whatever happens tonight,” Hayley said, “I just don’t want you to have too many expectations.”

“I don’t, honestly. It sounded like she just wanted to be part of this, and hang out afterward.”

Hayley laughed softly. “Okay, if that’s the impression you’ve gotten.”

I looked at her. “Am I wrong about this again?”

She shook her head. “She and I have been discussing some things. It’s okay. Whatever happens, happens.”

“What things?”

She leaned over and nuzzled me. “Nothing you really need to worry about. It’s all good.”

After class, I went back to my building, stopping at the liquor store on the way back to pick up some beer and a bottle of Swedish vodka for Katarina. When I climbed the stairs to the third floor, I ran into Kelly and Ahmed coming out of their apartment with a twelve-pack of beer.

“Hey, guys.”

“Hey, man,” Kelly said. “What are you doing tonight? You should come watch the game with us.”

I wasn’t much of a sports fan, but tonight there was a basketball game between Huntington and our main rival, the University of Santo Domingo, another little private school across town. The Huntington-USD rivalry was one no one outside either school cared about (everyone else in town who cared about college sports rooted for UCSD, where MJ went), but it mattered to the students, at least the undergrads.

“Ah, maybe. I’ve got something to take care of first.”

“You should bring your harem,” Ahmed said, and he and Kelly laughed.

I’d been intentionally vague about what was going on with Hayley and Katarina. But they’d seen them coming and going enough times to start teasing me about it, not that they really knew anything. I suspected that if MJ started visiting regularly, it was going to get a lot worse.

I made myself laugh with them. “I will if I can.”

They went off downstairs, and I found my succubus cleaning up the apartment in preparation for tonight.

“Do you have everything you need, Jimmy?” she asked.

“Yeah, but I want to double-check, just in case.”

I set up the portable magic circle in the living room and cleared some space around it. I checked the circle itself, and it looked good – no cracks or breaks I could see. I tested the gas line and the burners, and everything worked.

This was a summoning, not a binding, so all I needed was the brazier with some charcoal, sulfur, and mandrake root, all of which I had from previous rituals. The last item was something with a strong connection to this demon. I knew from running a divination on my laptop that she’d been given a portfolio that included love and lust. There were a lot of directions I could go with that, but after bouncing around various ideas, I decided to use the letter she’d left.

It was an expression of love, one she’d written herself, and I didn’t really need it anymore.

It had taken me quite a while to work myself up to summoning Amira, the Duchess of Hell who used to be my grandmother. I couldn’t be sure what it would do, to her or to me, or to the situation with the Breamstone Collective. I finally decided to go ahead with it because it was clear that she had the answers I needed – things no one else knew.

Whether she would tell me anything of use, that was a different story.

She wasn’t Grandma Amy anymore. She was a demon. And I couldn’t be certain she still gave a damn about me. Katarina and I discussed it, but all she could tell me was that some demons retained elements of their mortal values and personality, and some did not.

Katarina had retained some of what she’d been, but it was by no means all of her mortal self. She didn’t have to tell me, because I’d dreamed about the girl she’d once been several times. I loved her, but she was no longer that innocent, carefree teenager who flirted with boys in her village when her mother wasn’t watching.

So I knew that Amira might be ready to help me, and she might also laugh in my face at the predicament she’d left me with.

I reviewed the ritual in Clavicula Salomonis, which I’d adapted for her. It was fairly simple, and I’d done this before.

Finally, I just lay down on my couch and closed my eyes to try to clear my head. Charlotte hopped into my lap and curled up with me.

◆◆◆

I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but I did anyway, because I was wiped out after the week I’d had. In short order, I found myself in my dream temple. I had continued expanding it, making the library and laboratory bigger as I learned about new things I could use. I hadn’t used the supercomputer room much, because I found that running the divination model put an awful lot of stress on my psyche for some reason. It worked, but I would wake up feeling exhausted and irritable.

I’d expanded Charlotte’s living area as well, giving her a neatly manicured garden outside her rooms as well as an even larger dressing area. She enjoyed dressing up for me, and so I’d continued imagining more clothes for her. I gave her a sitting room where she could look out on the garden and forest while she held Else, our dream child, as well as a more luxurious bathing and dressing area.

When I appeared, she came out of the bedroom in a long, lacy green gown that hugged all her curves. The neckline descended below her breasts, but this being a dream, it had all the support she needed. As she usually did, she looked like a medieval German princess.

“Hello, Master.”

I kissed her deeply and then hugged her. I loved Charlotte, just as I loved Hayley and Katarina, but it always felt much more intense here, the way dreams seemed to intensify so many other emotions.

I didn’t really need to do anything today, so I just held her.

“Let’s go lie down,” I said. “I just wanted to rest.”

“Of course, Master.”

We went to our giant bed in the bedroom. She cuddled up with me. I played with her long black hair as she looked up at me with those intense green eyes. I reflected for a moment that we were now duplicating the reality back in my apartment, her curled up on my lap as we slept.

“Were you ever in love?” I asked.

“I love you, Master.”

“I meant as a mortal.”

She smiled. “I know you did. And yes. There was a boy I loved when I was younger. He left me when I began my sorcery. He was afraid of me, of what I could do.”

“I’m sorry. I sometimes feel bad about your life being cut short.”

Her eyes got a bit sad. “Things were different then, Master. Especially for an unmarried woman. The reason I went to live in the forest was because it was not safe for me in the town I was born in.”

“Do you want to talk about it? You don’t have to.”

She smiled. “I have no secrets from you, my Master, nor do I wish any. What do you know of Germany in those years?”

“Uh, just that there was a lot of religious tension, I guess.”

“That is putting it mildly,” she said. “There were not just religious tensions, but political tensions as well. Some of the princes and minor rulers in the Empire were strong, others were not. Where they were weak, there were bandits and lawless knights who took advantage of the peasants. I was lucky never to have been raped by these men, but many other women were victimized. Our town was attacked twice when I was a child. And that was before I became a witch.”

“How did that happen? Becoming one, I mean.”

“An older woman I knew gradually brought me into it, teasing me with the prospect of gaining power, to be strong enough to defend myself. I found it attractive.”

“But you were caught eventually?” I asked.

“Yes. There were panics over witchcraft every few years, especially in the countryside where I lived. I had helped some of the people in my village, and they betrayed me. I was given a trial. I did not want to be tortured, so I confessed. Then I was hanged.”

I hugged her. “I’m sorry.”

“It was four hundred years ago, Master, and it brought me to you.” She hugged me back.

We had a lot to do that night, but I realized I wanted her now. I made her dress go away and rolled over against her. She laughed, pulling at me. I buried my face in her big breasts and sucked on her nipples until they were nice and stiff. Charlotte loved rough sex and being dominated, so when I’d had enough of her wonderful boobs, I gathered her hair in my hand and shoved her down to my giant dream cock. She swallowed me up, taking every inch down her throat. It was an impossible feat for a woman in the real world, but she had no trouble with it here. I moved her head up and down as she moaned through her nostrils.

With my free hand, I reached over and fucked her with two fingers. She was dripping wet already. I lay there enjoying the feel of her sucking on me and passing in and out of her throat as she continued moaning and whimpering around my cock.

I finally drew her up and rolled her on her stomach. I lifted her thick butt into the air and thrust into her in a single movement. She cried out as I hit bottom deep inside her. Then I made her come hard, feeling the spasms of her orgasm as her body shook before me. I began fucking her roughly, slapping my groin against her soft buttocks, making them shake and shiver. She fucked herself back at me, hands clawing at the bed under us as she continued shivering in ecstasy.

I wasn’t up for anything extended, so I flipped her over again, pushing up her legs to get every bit of myself into her. She pulled me forward on to her chest. I kissed her deeply, then lifted up to watch her breasts shaking under me as I pounded her body. I sent her into one more titanic orgasm as I exploded inside her, trying to make her come as hard as I could. She screamed in release, nails digging into my butt and body thrashing violently under me. I let the waves of pleasure wash over me as I pumped shot after shot of dream seed into her. Her spasming pussy milked out every drop.

Then I collapsed beside her, knowing I had only wound myself up for later. Sex in the dream world was a mental and emotional release for me, but not a physical one. I felt the orgasms, but for whatever reason, it didn’t do anything to my body as I slept.

For Charlotte, though . . .

She lay beside me, arms and legs spread wide, gasping raggedly for breath. I wondered if I had overdone it. I rolled against her, kissing her nose.

“Okay in there?”

“Master . . . why . . .”

“I like doing that to you.”

“I know you do,” she gasped. “But there are times I think my mind will break.” She laughed. “That was worth being hanged for.”

I laughed with her. “I should wake up.”

She rolled weakly into my arms and kissed me. “Thank you, Master.”

◆◆◆

I felt a hand on my arm. As my eyes opened, Katarina was sitting there looking at me. Charlotte woke as well, standing up and stretching her back. Then she turned to look at me with those beautiful green eyes, and I knew what she was thinking. As it was every time I was with her, the transition from sexy witch I’d just made love with to her cat form was very weird.

“You two were busy in there,” Katarina said, smiling. She could sense the emotions of my dreams through our bond, though not the details. But it wasn’t hard to sense what was going on with things like this.

“I just fell asleep, found myself with her. We were talking for a while.”

She leaned in and kissed me. “I so enjoy sharing the feel of it with you. She loves you very much.” She reached out and stroked Charlotte, who began purring loudly. Hayley and MJ had both met Charlotte in my dreams, and it pained me to think that Katarina likely never would.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Almost five. Hayley and MJ are on their way. I woke you up so you would be ready.”

MJ and Hayley showed up around five-fifteen. I hadn’t seen MJ in a couple of weeks, and even though we’d been texting a lot, I’d kind of forgotten how pretty she was in person. She had big brown eyes and thick black-brown hair, with a tight, athletic physique. She had on running tights and a UCSD sweatshirt, with a backpack over her shoulder, and I tried not to stare at her legs and butt.

She gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” she replied.

We’d never done anything but hug in the real world, but we’d spent about a month in a dream having a lot of really intense and athletic sex. I saw it in her eyes, and I knew she saw it in mine. The memories were just there.

I’d fallen in love with her in that dream. I had to, in order to protect her with the ward I cast on her. It still felt weird, loving someone I’d met only a month before in real time, someone I’d spent only a few awakened days with. But there it was. We’d been trying to talk it through over text the last few weeks. It seemed to be working, though she kept asking me to be patient.

MJ looked around at the magic circle and the other stuff I’d set up. “Are we really doing this?” she asked. “Summoning your abuela, whatever she is now?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s the only way to get the answers I need. I don’t know where else to look. I’m afraid any divination I run on the collective will get their attention, or precipitate something even worse. I just don’t know enough about what really happened, and only Amira can tell me.”

As I got set up, Katarina poured shots of vodka for everyone. “For good luck,” she said.

MJ looked a bit confused.

“Sip it, don’t down it,” Hayley said.

“It’s a Swedish thing,” I said.

“Oh.” MJ took a little sip with the rest of us.

I got the charcoal going in the brazier, and when the coals were hot enough, I fired up the burners. I tossed the sulfur and mandrake root on the coals, then set the letter on top. As it began to burn, I held up the staff and started the incantation.

Amira the loving, ruler of hearts and loins, I call to you

Amira the lustful, I summon you to appear

The smoke from the brazier began swirling around the magic circle.

By the power of Hell and all the spirits of the world, I call you to me

By the power of God and the spirits above, I command you to appear

The moment I finished the last line of the incantation, there was a low thump, and the smoke from the brazier coalesced into a form inside the circle.

Amira was here.

“Fuck,” MJ gasped.

“Holy shit,” I said.

“Hello, Jimmy,” Amira said. “Took you long enough.”

Chapter 4

It wasn’t Grandma Amy.

Which I knew. I hadn’t exactly expected her, but I hadn’t expected this either.

Amira stood in the center of the circle. And Amira was . . . really, really hot.

There was no other way to put it. I remembered what Volach told me about her – she’s young and hot again – but I guess I hadn’t quite processed what he meant.

I could still see my grandmother in her face, in her eyes. But she’d changed.

She looked no older than I did. She reminded me of Sabrina, the girl Katarina had been when she was still hunting mortal souls, though her appearance was very different. She had raven hair down to her butt and glittering blue eyes. She had a face from the cover of a fashion magazine, and a body right out of a swimwear catalog. She wore a slinky, shimmery black dress that hugged every curve and line, making her look more naked than if she were completely nude.

But there was a raw power about her that Katarina did not possess. Her sex appeal was like the radiance from an infrared space heater. Hot enough to burn. She looked young, but she felt very old.

Love and lust, all right.

“Did you miss me?” she asked.

“I . . . it’s been a rough few months, to be honest.”

“I left you everything you needed. You’ve done very well, Jimmy. Very well indeed. Astaroth is quite pleased with you, though he does not quite understand what you are.”

“You left a debt for me to pay off.”

She nodded. “That debt is the reason you still live. Do you have any idea what the collective would have done to you had I not taken you away? Charles would have taken your power somehow. He still seeks to.”

“What happened with all that? What am I, exactly?”

Amira sighed. “There are things I cannot tell you, Jimmy. To do so would attract attention to you. I can only point you toward them. You have learned much already.”

“I’m the dream child. From Mary-Beth’s dreams and her familiar. I’m a dream sorcerer.”

“You are the most powerful dream sorcerer who ever lived, Jimmy. You are, already. Your potential is enormous, which is why you must be very careful with this.”

“This has something to do with Zagan, doesn’t it? Him being trapped in that rock.”

“Yes. I can say no more, so do not ask. Those are the things that will attract attention, and I do not mean from Astaroth. I mean from above him. All the way above him.”

I lost my breath for a moment. That had always been there, in the background, but with everything else going on, I hadn’t really thought it through.

I definitely didn’t want that attention.

“You are strong,” she went on. “But you are not strong enough to face him should he take an interest in you. That is what we must avoid.”

“Why did you take him?” MJ asked.

Amira laughed softly. “This may be difficult for you three ladies to believe, given what you’ve experienced with Jimmy, but I loved him. Five hundred years I lived, never having children, never thinking I wanted them. Until Mary-Beth died, and he came into my care.” She held up her hands. “What can I say? It happened. I knew what the rest of the collective had planned for him, and I wanted him to have a chance at a life.”

“So you broke with them?” Hayley asked. “And made some kind of deal to protect him?”

“Yes. It was expensive, and here we are, but there was no other choice.” Amira looked back to me. “You have the strength to fight the collective now, and the strength to do what is necessary to pay off your debt. When that is done, you will be free.”

“But Astaroth wants me to do something for him,” I said. “And I’m pretty sure it has to do with––”

She held up her hand and hissed. “Do not say that name again. As I told you, I cannot tell you anything more about this. You know where you need to go, what you need to examine. You are close.”

“What about Caacrinolaas?” I asked. “Can you tell me anything about him?”

“Yes, and yes, he is tied up with this. I can say that you should examine his connection first. The answers start there.”

“Where is he now, by the way?” Katarina asked.

Amira smiled. “Well, he is too talented to demote to the pool of souls, but he also caused a great deal of inconvenience and expense to the organization. He was a very bad dog. So let us say he is expiating his sins as he continues his work.”

“How?” Hayley asked.

“Have you worked in an office, Hayley?” Amira asked. “Keeping records and such?”

“Yes.”

“Imagine doing it while you were immersed up to your arms in boiling shit. Shit filled with large maggots that are constantly chewing on your genitals. That’s only one part of it, but that should give you the general idea.”

Hayley looked a bit sick but said nothing.

“Is that all I need to do?” I asked.

“No,” Amira replied. “You cannot do this alone. You have started building your coven, and this group is a start, but you need more. You have bound a demon to serve you, and you have a very strong familiar. You have a female with strength of the mind” – she glanced at Hayley – “and one with the strength of the body” – now at MJ – “but you need one with strength in the art. You must find another sorcerer.”

“Who?” I asked.

“That is not for me to say,” she replied. “You must find her on your own. And Jimmy, the time for dawdling over this has passed. You have done well to protect yourself and your women, but that merely bought you time that, to be frank, you have begun to waste. You are known to too many people now, in Hell and on Earth. Things are beginning to happen, and you must act before it is too late.”

“I thought things in Hell moved really slowly,” Hayley said.

“They do,” Amira said. “Most of the time. But this is also something that has been building for centuries.”

I tried to think of anything else I could ask her. Given what she’d declared off-limits, I was drawing a blank.

“Can I call on you again? If we need more help?”

“Yes. Not too often, but yes. Too frequent absences will be noted.”

I looked around at the girls. None of them had anything else to say.

“Okay,” I said. “I guess that’s it.”

“Jimmy, may I ask a favor?” Amira asked.

“What?”

“Can you lower the circle? You don’t really need to confine me. I would just like to say goodbye properly.”

I heard Hayley gasp softly. I looked at Katarina. She shrugged.

I wasn’t sure about this. But I didn’t feel any threat from her. Everything she’d done up to now was to my benefit. Fighting the nervousness in my gut, I reached down and turned off the gas.

Amira stepped forward, smiling. The heat from her was the same.

“Wait––” MJ said.

“What?” I said.

She was staring at Amira. “You said you loved him. Past tense.”

That had escaped my notice. But it was too late now. Amira closed the distance between us. She took my shirt between her fingers.

“Demons are not capable of love, my dear. That is not to say I do not have strong feelings for my Jimmy.” She slipped her arms around my neck and pressed herself against me. “Those feelings, though, might seem unhealthy to some.”

I felt a wave of arousal flowing through me. I felt the heat of her lush body against mine. She purred, kissing my neck and nipping at my earlobe. I heard Hayley whimpering behind me, but I couldn’t pull myself away from her.

“I’m not really your grandmother, Jimmy,” Amira whispered into my ear. “Please don’t forget that. Our bond is not one of blood, but of power. I know the things you have done to Katarina . . . and I am very jealous. Very . . . jealous.”

She kissed me on the cheek and withdrew, smiling wickedly up at me.

“You may dismiss me now.”

I took a deep breath, raised the staff, and sent her away. She disappeared with a pop.

The three of them came over. Hayley took my hand, but then they all leaned against me.

“I’m okay,” I said. “I’m okay. It was just a bit of a shock.”

“What did she say to you?” MJ asked.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Jimmy?” Hayley asked.

I shook my head. “Not now.”

There was a loud knock on the door, and all of us jumped in surprise. Hayley recovered first.

“I think the pizza is here.”

◆◆◆

We ate quietly. It was hard to know what to say after that. I wanted to put a lot of it out of my mind. I hadn’t expected to bring Grandma Amy back, but I definitely hadn’t expected to summon some kind of über-succubus.

When the pizza was gone, Hayley stood up. “We should to go down to the spa before it gets too cold.”

We’d talked about hanging out around the pool.

“Did you bring a suit?” she asked MJ.

MJ nodded. “Yeah, in my bag.” She went into the bathroom to change.

Hayley and I went into the bedroom. I pulled on some swim trunks while she got into her yellow bikini.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked.

“Let’s talk about it later, okay? I’m not trying to push you away, that was just . . . really weird.”

She came over and hugged me. “I understand. It’s fine. Just tell me when.”

When we came out, Katarina had manifested a shiny black thong bikini similar to the ones she usually wore.

“Do you like this?” she asked.

“It’s great.” Though to be honest, given her body, anything would look good.

Then MJ came out of the bathroom in a white bikini that seemed very familiar. I realized a moment later that it was basically the one she’d worn during our dream. She noticed me looking.

“Is that . . . ?” I asked softly.

She didn’t get it for a moment, then gasped slightly. “Oh. Yeah.”

Hayley and Katarina hadn’t seemed to notice the exchange. We went downstairs. Katarina brought her vodka. The spa was empty for once, but someone had been using it, so the water was still warm. The girls all tied up their hair, and we settled in.

I tried to put Amira out of my mind and enjoy the fact that I had three pretty hot girls hanging out with me tonight. A year ago, I would have traded an awful lot to be where I was right now.

MJ sat next to me and gave me a quick side hug, pressing her head against mine. “That had to be really hard. I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks.”

“She’s changed,” Katarina said, “and not just her appearance. Even in the best of cases, mortals lose some of their humanity when they become demons. I think she must have lost quite a bit.”

I took a deep breath. “I’m not so sure, though. She served Hell for almost five hundred years. She served them willingly, and she did an awful lot for them. She was part of the collective and helped them build that house around the rock. She wasn’t a nun.”

“But you’ve always acted like she was a great grandmother,” Hayley said.

“She raised me, and I know she cared about me. I think what she said was right, she just made some connection with me after Mary-Beth died. But I’ve been thinking about this. She was the one who created me, guys. She and Deirdre cast that spell that pulled me out of the dream world into Mary-Beth. And she guided me pretty damn directly into being a sorcerer. Studying Latin and chemistry. Telling me all these stories. She held on as long as she could, even though she knew she was dying after she stopped working for Hell. I think she was trying to hold out until I completed my PhD before telling me the truth about everything. She just ran out of time.”

“Jimmy, we’ve barely talked about this,” Katarina said, “but you know I met her once. I’m certain of it now.”

Hayley and MJ gasped. “What?” Hayley asked.

“The photos of her that Jimmy has. The first time I saw them, I recognized her. I met her in Hungary in 1816. She was working for Astaroth. It was not long after Zagan was deposed and disappeared. I was with Volach. He brought me along to a meeting. They needed me to corrupt someone who was causing her trouble.”

“Zagan,” I said. “This all reaches back to him.”

MJ sighed. “I’ve always known there was something wrong with that fucking town. Things just . . . happen. Weird things. Bad things.”

“Like what?” Hayley asked.

“It’s hard to explain,” MJ said. “I know things like this happen to other kids, car crashes, suicides, getting shot by the cops. But it was worse in Zagan’s Rock, somehow. If there was a car crash, everyone died. People didn’t survive suicide attempts. It’s like . . . you never pulled out of bad patches in your life. When things went bad for people, they stayed bad and got worse. There was just bad luck everywhere. I think it’s why my mother is so superstitious. Unless you stayed on top of your good luck, it just left.” She took a deep breath. “And the difference since I left for college has been startling. Again, it’s hard to explain how weird it is. Just seeing people sad and down, then getting better. Having accidents but moving on. That stuff doesn’t happen back home.”

“Wow,” Hayley said.

“Not like life in San Sebastian.”

I saw the hurt in Hayley’s eyes, and MJ realized too after a second.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

Hayley shook her head. “It’s okay. I know what you mean. And you’re right, really.”

We were quiet for a few moments. I felt MJ take my hand under the water. She smiled at me quickly. Sitting with her in the water like this reminded me of our dream, and I sensed she was thinking the same thing.

But there was something else I wanted to talk about.

“She said we need to find another sorcerer,” I said.

I saw Hayley pursing her lips. Then she looked at Katarina. “You said once there are no coincidences with the spirit world.”

“That may be a bit of an exaggeration,” Katarina replied, “but things usually happen for a reason, especially around powerful sorcerers like Jimmy.”

Hayley looked at MJ. “You and I have talked a lot about this, how we just stopped at your mom’s fruit stand for lunch. We were driving in circles for an hour and only stopped there because we were hungry, yet you already had all these connections to what we were doing. Your mom’s superstitions, and your uncle living in Henry Langdon’s house, and him somehow being the person who saw Amalia taking Jimmy that night. As crazy as it all was, everything just fell together for the four of us.”

“Right. Right,” MJ said. She squeezed my hand. “And I can feel it, too.”

Hayley looked back at Katarina. “And I’ve started wondering just how much of a coincidence it was that I met Jimmy. What would have happened if I hadn’t been here that night? I almost didn’t come over with my friend Shelly. I was tired and I kind of needed to study, but she talked me into it. You know what she said? She said, ’You might finally meet a guy you’re actually attracted to.’”

Katarina looked at me. “I was hunting that night,” she said. “Jimmy, you were lonely and sad about your grandmother, and wanting very much to connect with someone. I sensed it. Had Hayley not been there, I would have focused on you. And I think it might have worked. You were not yet suspicious enough of me.”

I thought back to that night. I’d only just started reading Grandma Amy’s books. I sensed something weird about Sabrina, but she was right. The whole reason I’d hooked up with Hayley, despite my reservations about being her TA, was because I was lonely and depressed. Had a girl like Sabrina come on to me in the midst of that . . .

“You would have taken my soul,” I said.

Katarina nodded. “I am not certain it would have worked now, or what it would have set in motion, but I would have tried.”

“But I was here,” Hayley said, “and I did meet a guy I liked, and Jimmy and I hooked up instead, and all of this stuff happened.”

“You’re getting at something,” MJ said.

“Yeah,” Hayley said. “Because I think I know who this sorcerer we need to find is.”

Then I saw it.

“Jimmy, it’s Morrigan,” Hayley said. “It has to be.”

“Morrigan?” MJ asked.

Hayley explained quickly. “What are the odds, Jimmy?” she asked. “My ex-girlfriend, who is also the niece of someone who was in the collective? Who apparently has some skill at this stuff, and who is clearly interested in you already? And you met her only because that other TA just all of a sudden has to go back to China? It’s too much.”

“She would complete the coven,” Katarina said.

“We . . . I have to talk to her first,” I said. “Celeste doesn’t serve Hell. Morrigan is into Wicca, or so she said. That isn’t the same as all this stuff I’ve been doing.”

“It is not as different as you make it sound,” Katarina said.

I wasn’t at all sure about the idea, but I sensed that Hayley was probably right. The look in her eyes told me we needed to talk about this, but only to work out where our heads were going to be.

We soaked in the spa for a while, trying to find some lighter things to talk about. Between the vodka and everything that had happened, I began to get water-logged after half an hour or so.

Hayley finally rose from the water. I saw a look pass between her and MJ. “You guys want to go upstairs?” she asked.

MJ stood up. “Yeah.”

We got out and dried off, and went up to the apartment. After what I’d done with Amira, I’d kind of forgotten what else we had planned for tonight, but now it all came rushing up to me. Was this really happening?

When we were inside and Hayley and MJ turned to me, my stomach got light and I just thought, oh shit.

Katarina went around behind me as the other two girls linked hands and closed with me. Hayley took one hand and MJ took the other.

“MJ and I have been talking more than I let on,” Hayley said. “And it’s pretty clear to us where this is going.”

“You’re both good with it?” I asked.

“Yes,” Hayley said. “You and I have talked about this. Our relationship has been unorthodox from the beginning. I would never do this with, I don’t know, two random girls, but something is clearly pushing the four of us together.”

MJ leaned against me, squeezing my hand. “I want this . . . just as long as you understand I’ve only been with one other guy. And being with a guy and two other girls isn’t something I ever imagined doing.”

“We will make it work, MJ,” Katarina said.

Hayley led us to the bedroom. The bikinis hit the floor quickly, and we settled into bed. MJ wound up between me and Hayley, while Katarina lay on the other side of me. At first, it was just too much. Even though I had been with Hayley and Katarina quite a few times, adding MJ to the mix just made for too many things to pay attention to.

But I got over my nervousness quickly. Hayley and I kissed and played with MJ while Katarina curled around and took me in her mouth. I knew I would have to draw on her strength through our bond to get through this tonight.

I was already familiar with MJ’s body from our dream, yet it still felt new. She was just so taut and athletic all over. Hayley and I kissed our way down, enjoying her firm little breasts for a while, then finally meeting at the little stud through her clit hood. Unlike Katarina and Hayley, MJ was completely bare.

Katarina stopped pleasuring me and crawled up beside MJ. They began kissing as Hayley and I continued licking and sucking MJ together while playing with each other. Then Katarina climbed up above MJ, throwing a knee over her head. MJ pulled Katarina down and began licking up at her.

After a few minutes of this, MJ was moaning and groping at us. Hayley eased me away from her. She took me in her mouth briefly, getting me good and hard, and then pushed me behind her.

Getting the message, I stood up and entered Hayley from behind as she knelt in front of MJ, wrapping her arms around MJ’s thighs and burying her face between them. Now I had a clear view of my three women pleasuring each other.

I just enjoyed the feel of Hayley around me and her tight little butt against my groin as I watched her with MJ, and Katarina eagerly riding MJ’s mouth. She had one hand on the wall and one hand on her breasts, moaning and rocking her hips. I looked down the chain – blonde, brunette, redhead – and almost laughed at myself. How had this happened to me?

Katarina came first, shivering and shaking over MJ. It seemed to set MJ off as well, and she convulsed in front of Hayley, reaching down to Hayley’s head and gripping her hair in her hand. Her abs stood out and her thighs went up over Hayley’s back as she peaked.

Hayley wasn’t quite there, but she pulled away from me, climbing up on top of MJ to kiss her. Katarina turned around and lay back down beside them, head toward me. Then Hayley rolled to the other side of MJ, reaching down to finger her.

“Your turn,” she said to me, smiling. I climbed onto the bed and crawled above MJ, who looked up at me in anticipation. We’d done it so many times in that dream, this felt different. She took me in her arms as Hayley guided me in. I felt her stretching out around me and groaned. She was really tight, and it felt really good.

MJ felt it too, sucking in a breath. “This is only the third time I’ve had straight sex.”

“Really?”

“That one guy I told you about?” she said, her voice a little uneven, “I was sixteen and still trying to convince myself I might really be straight. Nothing since then.”

I kissed her. “It’s all good. You’re okay?”

“Yeah. And yeah, I got a shot a while back. Figured I could tell where this was going.”

I laughed with her, then began to move inside her. She was very wet and felt wonderful, still quivering in the aftermath of what Hayley had done. Beside us, Katarina moved around and joined Hayley, taking over where I left off. Hayley groped at my hand as Katarina began to lick her.

MJ pulled me closer, fingers digging into my back. I knew what she liked from that dream, and it seemed to work here as well. We kissed deeply, tongues working as our hips pumped against each other. I stood it as long as I could. I didn’t want to finish this soon, so I rolled us over.

Beside us, Katarina had pushed Hayley up to the edge. Hayley’s hand clamped down on mine. MJ and I both looked over to watch as she came, whimpering as her legs shook against Katarina’s head. MJ laughed, and I could see in her eyes that she wanted a turn with my redheaded girlfriend too.

When Hayley came down, MJ tried to move over me, leaning forward and lifting up and down awkwardly.

“I’m not really sure what to do here,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Katarina rose from between Hayley’s thighs and came around behind her. “Let me show you. It is not difficult.”

She embraced MJ from behind and began guiding her movements, getting her to thrust herself forward and back. MJ got into a rhythm, moaning softly. “Okay, yeah. That’s it. I get it now.”

Katarina stayed where she was, playing with MJ’s breasts and kissing her. Hayley rolled against me and set her head on my chest to watch. I looked up at MJ’s taut, athletic body above me, watching her muscles flexing and relaxing as she moved. MJ ran her fingers through her long black-brown hair over and over as she rode me. She looked so fucking delicious that it was all I could do to hold myself off, but I wanted her to come first.

Finally, with a flurry of thrusts and a loud whimper, I felt her contracting around me as she reached her release. She threw herself forward onto my chest, covering my face with her hair. I put my arms around her tightly, and she shivered against me in the aftermath.

“Fuck,” she gasped.

I kissed her. She rolled to the side, pulling me with her. “Go for it,” she sighed.

I let loose the brakes and began thrusting steadily into her. She felt so goddamned good. She bit at my ear. “Should I moan in Spanish?” she whispered as she dug her fingers into my butt. “I know Anglo guys like that.”

I laughed. But she began whispering into my ear.

“Cógeme con tu verga grande, Jimmy, cógeme. Está muy chingón, me la estoy pasando a toda madre. Cógeme, Jimmy.”

Yeah, that kind of did it. After maybe thirty seconds of this, I was spurting deeply inside her as she held me tightly. When I came back to Earth and looked down at her, there was a vulnerable look in her beautiful brown eyes that I’d never seen before. I nuzzled her face for a few moments, then we laughed together, kissing several times. I rolled off, lying between her and Hayley. Both of them cuddled under my arms.

With my connection to Katarina, I was still hard and ready, and she knew it. She climbed onto my hips and settled down.

“You just came,” MJ said to me.

“Things are different with Jimmy,” Hayley said. “Thanks to Katarina.”

“What, you can just go and go?”

“Pretty much,” Hayley said. “There are three of us here, don’t complain.”

MJ laughed, hugging herself against my chest. I lay there as Katarina rode me, pinching and milking herself around me and trying to pull me along with her. I reached up to play with her wonderful breasts, and she crushed my hands against her.

Hayley and MJ just watched. I kissed them both in turn. MJ resumed whispering filth into my ear. The only word I caught was panocha.

“What does that mean?” I gasped.

She laughed again. “I was asking you how her pussy feels.”

“It feels good. So did yours.”

She kissed me. “So did your verga grande.”

Katarina began working me more eagerly as she closed in on her release. I just held her hips, enjoying the wonderful milking sensations around me. Finally as she clamped down and shook above me, I thrust up as hard as I could, and came with her. MJ and Hayley held me, kissing my neck. Katarina fell forward and joined us.

When she’d caught her breath, the three of them slid down to my waist and began taking turns kissing and sucking on me. Katarina was at the end of the bed, but Hayley and MJ reversed themselves so I could play with them. The feel of three tongues and three sets of lips going all over and around me was unreal, and it was all I could do to just lay there and take it.

They spent about five minutes amusing themselves with my dick and laughing to each other. Then Hayley climbed up.

“My turn.”

She rode me as Katarina and MJ came together beside me. MJ was lying with her head down at the end of the bed, and Katarina climbed above her. Soon they were licking each other eagerly as Hayley bounced on my dick. I let her chase her own release and just played with her nipples the way I knew she liked. I watched Katarina beside me with her face down between MJ’s thighs, flicking that little stud back and forth with her tongue.

Hayley came first, then MJ, then Katarina. I rolled Hayley over, and she wrapped her legs around my waist, pulling them up so I could get everything into her. She nipped affectionately at my ear.

“I don't know any dirty words in Scots,” she said.

I laughed. “It’s okay.”

“I just love your dick, Jimmy.” I felt her trying to squeeze me. It wasn’t anything like what Katarina could do, but it still felt good. I finished inside her after another minute.

Drawing on Katarina’s energy, I went another round with all three of them. I had Katarina do to MJ what she’d done to Hayley that first night we were together, delivering all twelve hundred years of her experience into one massive orgasm that almost knocked her out. I finished the last time inside MJ as she and Hayley pleasured each other. Then we lay together in a big heap laughing at what we’d just done.

Chapter 5

Katarina left the bed to MJ, me, and Hayley, since there wasn’t really room for four and she didn’t sleep. Waking up between the two of them the next morning was really nice. They were still asleep, so I got up and went out to the kitchen. Katarina was there with coffee and cuddled with me briefly.

“I came in to watch you sleep for a while,” she said. “You all looked so happy together.”

“I’m going to need to get a bigger bed.”

She laughed softly against my chest. “Go sit down. I will bring you breakfast.”

I went to sit on the couch and started looking through my phone. But I was sitting there only a minute or so before Hayley emerged in one of my Huntington College t-shirts and nothing else. She was short enough that it just barely covered things.

She straddled my waist and sat down.

“Good morning,” I said. I reached under the t-shirt to play with her for a little bit.

She leaned forward and kissed me. “Yes, it is.” Then she leaned back, staring at me with those big hazel eyes. “I’ve decided that if you’re still game, I want to get a place together this summer. Maybe here, maybe somewhere else a little nicer.” She smiled. “I heard what you said about a bigger bed.”

I laughed a little. “You’re sure, baby? Really sure?”

She nodded. “Yes, I am. It may take some effort to convince my folks, but I know they’ll go along with it eventually. You know they like you. You made a big impression on my mom, and that’s not easy. You know what she said to me the other day?”

“What?” I asked.

“‘I think Jimmy has long-term potential.’”

I laughed softly. “I hope you agree.”

She kissed me again. “Absolutely. You’re not getting rid of me.”

“Okay.”

MJ appeared from the bedroom in her sweatshirt, pulling the tangles out of her hair. She saw us and came over. I put an arm around her as she sat down, and she cuddled against me. Charlotte hopped into my lap and flopped down between Hayley’s thighs. MJ reached over to pet her.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” she said, smiling. She stretched up and kissed me. “Last night was really great. Better than the dream, actually.”

“Yeah, it was.”

She and Hayley pushed their fingers together and linked hands.

“Does this seem at all weird?” MJ asked. “Waking up with three other people you had sex with last night?”

“You’ll get used to it,” Hayley said.

Katarina came over with coffee for everyone, then sat down on the other side of me.

“It feels really nice, actually,” MJ said. “Even if my mother would drop dead if she knew everything.”

“My mom kind of knows,” Hayley said. “Not everything, everything, but she knows about me, Jimmy and Katarina being together. There’s room for you.”

MJ laughed in disbelief. “That has to be weird.”

Hayley laughed with her. “Sometimes yes, sometimes no.”

◆◆◆

MJ, Hayley, and I took a shower together – it was bit tight in my little bathroom but fun – and then got dressed. As MJ was drying her hair, Hayley sat me back down on the couch.

“Jimmy, I know a lot has happened in the last twenty-four hours, but I keep thinking about what Amira said, about us being out of time.”

I nodded. “She’s right. I’ve just been wanting to focus on school and on you, but I guess I can’t put this off forever.”

“That means we need to find this other sorcerer she mentioned.”

“Morrigan,” I said.

She nodded. “Morrigan.”

I took a deep breath and exhaled. “You’re okay with this? I’m not doing anything unless you’re a hundred percent okay with it. I don’t care what else is going on. I mean that.”

She climbed back into my lap and looked at me, putting her hands on my shoulders. “Listen. Last night was awesome and amazing beyond anything I’ve ever done before, and I want to do it again. But you know what? I kept thinking what it would have been like to have her there too. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

That lifted my eyebrows. “Really?”

“Jimmy, you know that MJ and I are mostly gay. You wouldn’t know it about Morrigan, but she’s the same. It sounds maybe a little silly to put it like this, but I’ve kind of always thought of myself as 75/25. Mostly girls, but being attracted to guys here and there. And it occurred to me that having three girls and one guy in my life kind of fits perfectly when you think about it.”

I exhaled slowly. “That is one way to put it, I guess.”

She pursed her lips and closed her eyes. “Also, the sex with Morrigan was really good. We had our issues, but that wasn’t one of them.”

“So?”

“We should reach out to her. Like, today.”

“What do we tell her?” I asked.

“Everything? She needs to know.”

I thought about it for a few long moments. I was still unsure about what Hayley was envisioning here, but she was right – we had to act.

“Okay.”

MJ came out of the bedroom, and she could tell right away that something was up. She sat down with us. Hayley and I explained. I wasn’t that surprised that MJ just shrugged.

“Jimmy, I heard what Amira said. You do what you have to do.” She kissed me. “You were complicated when I met you. This is just more of the same. I’m good. There’s enough of you to go around.”

Hayley texted Morrigan, who agreed rather quickly to meet us on campus. Morrigan wanted specifics, but Hayley just told her we wanted to “talk about something.” I decided to have MJ come with us because I wanted to introduce them, but I had Katarina stay behind because I didn’t want Morrigan to feel we were ganging up on her.

◆◆◆

It was a nice enough day, so I figured a spot on the big open lawn in the center of school would be safe enough without putting any pressure on Morrigan. This was the oldest section of campus, where the first buildings went up near the end of the nineteenth century.

Back then, Santo Domingo was still a backwater town trying to capitalize on a new railroad connection to the rest of the state and the country. The city fathers at the time convinced the Methodist church to start a new center of higher learning south of downtown, which – thanks to a generous donation from the railroad magnate who financed said connection – would soon be named Huntington College. There were four red brick buildings around the lawn: the administration offices, the library, the school chapel, and the student union. The lawn sloped down toward the middle, where there was a large fountain in a web of intersecting walkways.

Almost none of it was anything remarkable, and except for one element, it could have been dropped into a hundred other little schools without attracting any notice. That one element was the fountain. According to school lore, it was designed by Rutherford Huntington’s wife just before she was shut up in an insane asylum. From a distance, it looked like a neoclassical arrangement of cherubs offering up a set of books to the library. But when you got closer, you realized that there was something just a little off about the cherubs, which had bat wings instead of feathers, and eyes that were strangely dark and empty.

The books, meanwhile, had titles in some language that no one had ever been able to decipher. The longstanding consensus was that either Mrs. Huntington or the sculptor had created a made-up alphabet for them. As a result, a traditional prank played on incoming freshmen at Huntington was telling them the sculpture contained a secret code. Early every fall semester, you could find younger students around the fountain studying the titles on the books and taking notes.

When we got to the center of campus, Morrigan was waiting in a corner of the lawn in a black plaid skirt, ripped-up nylons, and a short black top that exposed most of her bra. I got the impression she’d dressed up a bit for this.

She smiled as we came up, but I could tell from the fidgeting of her hands that she was nervous.

“Hey, guys.”

Hayley gave her a quick hug. “Hey.”

I introduced MJ. It was pretty clear Morrigan didn’t know what was going on, but she didn’t press the issue.

The four of us sat down. Charlotte flopped onto the grass next to me.

“So, what’s up?” she asked.

“Hayley and I have been talking about some things,” I said.

“Jimmy knows about us dating,” Hayley said to her, “and I know what he’s been doing with the sorcery.”

“Including that blonde girl?” Morrigan asked. “The succubus?”

“Katarina, yeah,” she said. “And MJ. We’re all part of the same coven with Jimmy.”

“A coven?” she asked, eyes widening. “Seriously?”

“We’ve done a lot of stuff together,” I said. “Some pretty heavy things. And I know you’re into this too.”

Morrigan nodded quickly. “I am. I am. Definitely.”

“But the thing is, I’ve never quite been sure where you’re at with it. You know this is real, I can tell that. But can you actually do anything? Real magic?”

Then she cringed. She didn’t answer me for a second or two, glancing at Hayley and MJ and then back to me.

“No,” she said softly.

My eyebrows went up “No?”

She shook her head slowly, recoiling a bit from us. “No. I’ve tried. Aunt Celeste has tried to teach me. She says I’m doing things right, but nothing happens.”

“Really?” Hayley said. “I mean you acted like––”

“That was before. There’s some things Celeste has shown me since. I thought I was doing stuff back then, and I wasn’t.”

My heart sank. “You can’t do anything? Because I mean, Celeste can. She was part of something a long time ago that we’re mixed up with. It was some heavy black magic. There’s this thing about the bloodlines you need to do this stuff, and if Celeste has it, you ought to too.”

But Morrigan just bit her lip and shook her head again. Hayley, MJ, and I looked at each other. This had seemed so clear, yet we were wrong.

“Fuck,” Morrigan said, looking down at the grass. “Fuck! You were going to invite me into your coven, weren’t you?” She slammed her fist into the ground a couple of times.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Hayley put her hand on Morrigan’s shoulder.

“And this coven, it’s more than just magic, isn’t it?” Morrigan asked. “You guys are all . . .”

“Yeah,” Hayley said quietly.

“Yeah,” MJ said.

Morrigan punched the ground again. “Fuck!”

I could see the tears starting to streak her makeup. Then she leaned back, wiping her face and trying to pull herself together.

“If I could actually do something, you’d let me in?” she asked.

“There’s something important we need to do,” I said. “We need someone else. There were things that made us think you were the one. I’m not sure what we got wrong.”

Morrigan closed her eyes. “You don’t know how long I’ve been wanting you to ask me about this, about magic. Seriously, you do not. Ever since you walked into the store that day. You should hear Aunt Celeste talk about you. She’s fucking scared of you, she thinks you’re so powerful. That’s all I wanted, to see what you were doing, and learn, and do magic with you.”

She let out a ragged breath.

“Fuck. I have been waiting so long for this, and . . . and . . .” She leaned forward into her hands and started to cry again, fighting the tears.

I put a hand on her shoulder. Then something occurred to me.

“Maybe you’re doing it wrong.”

She sat up and her eyes shot open. “What?”

“I don’t know. Maybe what Celeste is teaching you isn’t what you’re looking for.”

Her hand clamped onto my arm. “Maybe you could teach me. I’ll do anything, I swear. Anything.”

Then MJ gasped softly, grabbing my other arm. “Jimmy, I think I see it. I think I know what you need to do.”

“What?” I asked.

“Sleep with her.”

Morrigan’s eyes bulged, and MJ groaned at her.

“Not like that. Fucking shit.” MJ looked back at me. “I mean dream with her. Like you did with me. Maybe the answers are there.”

Morrigan looked back and forth between the three of us. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m a dream sorcerer,” I said. “I can do things with my dreams, including pulling people into them. We’ve solved a lot of mysteries that way. I think MJ may be right.”

Her eyes had gone a big as dinner plates. “What do I do?”

I looked around us, at the three of them. It was a Saturday morning and the quad was largely empty. This could work. “I guess . . . we can just lie down here and take a nap. But there’s something else you should be aware of. Charlotte is going to be there.”

She looked over beside me. “Your cat?”

“My familiar. She’s not the same in there. You’ll see.”

“Okay.”

We found an inclined spot that was comfortable enough and stretched out on the grass. All of them laid their heads across my lap, Morrigan on one side, Hayley and MJ on the other. I took their hands in mine.

“Are you going to be there too?” Morrigan asked them.

The other two girls looked up at me.

“Maybe,” I said. “One thing at time.”

We’d been up late with the foursome, and it had taken a lot out of me. It didn’t take long for me to doze off.

◆◆◆

I did it differently this time.

When I arrived in the dream temple, I sensed my connection with Morrigan almost immediately. It was thin, but it was there. I’d been around her long enough.

But I didn’t pull her in right away. Charlotte came up to me. “This is going be interesting.”

“Yeah. And I have a feeling it may take a while. I need your help with it, because I think you understand this better than I do.”

“Of course, Master. I am yours.”

Somehow, I knew the dream temple was the wrong place to do it. Instead, I drew on Morrigan, reaching through the connection. I saw what she expected, and I can’t say I was surprised.

I conjured up a huge, dark Gothic fortress on top of a mountain, like the home of the evil enchantress in a Disney movie. I put us in the main hall, making it a towering room with long stained-glass windows depicting all sorts of evil and perversions – the same kind of thing I’d seen in the Breamstone house, when I was dreaming. I filled it with plush dark velvet furniture and oriental rugs. I hung swords and shields and dragon heads on the walls and vast wrought-iron chandeliers from the ceiling. I made a huge fireplace – big enough to roast an ox – with a raging fire in it. I put a long double staircase at one end, leading upward. I made it nighttime, with a storm outside, the lightning and thunder crashing around us.

Then I turned to Charlotte. She was already a witch, but her original outfit – what she’d actually worn when she was still alive, wasn’t going to work here, nor was the pleasant yellow silk dress she had on now. So I gave her a long black dress with long draping sleeves and a corseted waist, and topped it off with some appropriate enchantress jewelry and blood-red lipstick. She already had the black hair and magical green eyes. I topped her off with an emerald tiara just because I could.

She laughed. “I love it, Master.”

I dressed myself in a dark Victorian-era suit with a purple-red shirt under it, pulling my staff into the dream. Then I drew in Hayley. She was lost and confused for a few moments until I went to her.

“We’re here, baby. We’re here for Morrigan.”

She flickered briefly as she usually did. Then her focus returned, and she looked around. “Wow.”

I dressed her in something similar to Charlotte, except in blood red, with a ruby headpiece. Then I expanded her boobs like she always asked me to do in our dreams. She laughed, turning a circle and looking down at herself.

MJ was next. She’d been with me long enough in that dream on the beach that she came to lucidity almost immediately.

She laughed as she saw the castle and the other girls. “Shit. This is awesome.”

“What do you want to wear?” I asked.

“Not a dress. Something bad-ass.”

So instead of a dress, I put her in a sexy, Gothic-style suit of armor that resembled metal lingerie – ornate metal plates on her breasts, shoulders and arms, a chain-mail thong, and black stockings on her legs under the armor on her knees and calves. The first thing I thought up didn’t strike me as dark and Gothic enough, so I covered the armor in black inlay and gold filigree and gave it a lot of extra points and sharp edges.

MJ grinned at me, clearly loving it. “I need a sword.”

So I gave her a slim blade that was almost as long as she was. She swung it around a few times and then leaned onto it. Only then did she notice what I’d done to Hayley and made a face of disbelief.

“Your tits,” she gasped.

“It’s a dream,” Hayley replied, laughing.

MJ looked at me. She didn’t have to ask. I filled out her armor another two cup sizes. She groped herself briefly and laughed again.

“Are you ready?” I asked them.

“Yes, Master,” Charlotte said.

“Yeah,” Hayley said. “But I hope you realize that Morrigan is going to completely freak when she sees all this.”

I faced the doors into the room at the far end. “Stand on either side of me.” They did.

Then I pulled Morrigan into the dream, reaching into her mind to create an ideal goth outfit for her. What I got was a lacy black minidress dripping with frills and chains and buckles, with long lacy sleeves. She wore black stockings and a garter belt, six different silver necklaces, and a long frilly black cloak. Her skin was bone white, and her hair was purple like spilled wine. Black lipstick and heavy purple eyeshadow completed the look.

I had her come in through the huge double doors. She looked up in awe, gasping softly when she saw us. She walked slowly forward.

“I’m here,” she said, but I knew she was not lucid yet. “You called for me. What are we doing?”

“I called you here, Morrigan. We’re dreaming. Don’t wake up, just stay here.”

She flickered but stayed. Her jaw dropped slowly. “Oh . . . my God. How are you doing this?”

“It’s what I do.” I turned to my familiar. “This is Charlotte.”

“Hello, Morrigan.”

Morrigan gaped, swallowing hard. “You’re the witch? His familiar?”

“Yes.”

“You’re beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

She looked at Hayley and MJ. “You guys are really here? You’re dreaming too?”

“Yeah,” Hayley said. “Jimmy and I have done this a lot.”

“I spent a month with him like this once,” MJ said.

Morrigan looked around. “What is this place?”

“A castle. I made it for you. I thought it would be easier to hold you here.”

“You . . . made all this?”

I could tell she was moving in and out of lucidity, still not sure whether this was real or not.

“I can make anything happen here, in this dream. But we’re here to see what you can do.” I looked at Charlotte. Being my familiar, she knew what I knew, and so she knew what I needed here.

“Tell me how you do things, Morrigan,” she said. “Tell me what happens.”

Morrigan struggled to describe her attempts at spellcasting, the various things she’d tried with Celeste. Charlotte asked her a few questions about the components and rituals she was using. I understood what she was asking but not quite why.

Then Charlotte laughed softly. “Oh, my dear. The answer is so painfully obvious. You have the bloodline. You have power and much potential. I sense it in you. You even have some skill.”

“Then what’s wrong?” Morrigan asked, face filled with anguish. “Why doesn’t it work?”

Charlotte smiled. “Because you are trying to serve the light, when in your heart you yearn to serve the darkness. The spirits you call upon refuse to answer because they know where your true loyalties lie.” She shook her head sympathetically. “Look at you! You dress to mimic the thing I was, the thing I was hanged for, as if witchcraft were nothing but garter belts and black eyeliner! It is not.”

“You were hanged?”

“I was a witch, Morrigan. I served the darkness in a time this was punishable by death. I went to Hell, and I am here serving Jimmy because of it.”

“I want to serve him,” Morrigan gasped. “I want to serve the darkness too.”

“You must commit to that. Wholly, without reservation.”

Morrigan shuddered. She looked at Hayley. “And you . . . ?”

“No. I’m not a witch,” Hayley replied. “I help Jimmy in other ways.”

“Me neither,” MJ said, glancing down at her armor. “If you couldn’t tell from all this.”

“They have other talents,” I said. “That’s why we need you.”

“But you’re all part of his coven?” she asked. “The succubus too?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Is she here?”

“Succubi don’t sleep, so she can’t dream like this,” I replied.

“Oh. But . . . like you said, it’s not just magic?”

“We serve Jimmy in many ways, Morrigan,” Charlotte said. “However he desires.”

“That’s what I want,” she said instantly.

“In here, at least,” Hayley said, fighting a smile. “In the waking world, it’s not quite so crazy.”

Morrigan’s eyes went wide as she absorbed what Hayley had just said. “Wait. You guys . . . can have sex in here?”

“Shit, you have no idea,” MJ said, laughing. “No idea.”

Charlotte laughed with her.

Morrigan gulped. “And if I can actually do things, I can join your coven?”

I took a deep breath. “That’s the thing, though. I want you to understand what we’re facing here. It’s not just having fun with magic. I’m caught up in something very dark, something involving a power struggle in Hell and some very bad people on Earth, people who have already tried to hurt us. There’s a deposed King of Hell trapped in a rock, and somehow or another I’m connected to him.”

Morrigan stared at me, eyes wide. I went on.

“There’s more. The reason I can do these things, in this dream, is because of where I came from. I was born here, in the dream world, and my mother died bringing me into the waking world. There are still things around it that I’m learning about myself. And because of how I was born, I owe Hell about three thousand souls that I still have to pay off. I’m paying them by doing things like tracking down rogue demons and other things they lost. That’s what you would be doing, Morrigan. Serving Hell beside me.”

“But I would be doing magic? I would have powers like Charlotte?”

“Yes,” Charlotte said.

“The point is that I don’t have a choice about this,” I said. “You do.”

“I choose to serve you,” she said. “This is exactly what I wanted. All of it.”

“Come on, then.” I turned toward the staircase. The four of them followed me. I recreated my library and laboratory from the dream temple, expanding them and making them appropriately creepy and Gothic, and placing them just off of the hall. I led them in.

Morrigan gasped as she looked around. Charlotte went to her side.

“Let me show you a few things,” she said. Charlotte gathered the components for a very simple spell, one that would simply produce some colored flames in a brazier. She explained to Morrigan what she needed to do.

“But will it work here?” Morrigan asked. “If it’s in a dream? This isn’t real.”

“In this place, it will be,” Charlotte replied. “That is how powerful a dream sorcerer Jimmy is. The spirits will answer, if you call to them.”

Morrigan glanced at me, eyes filled with concern and hope.

“But Morrigan, you must forget what Celeste taught you,” Charlotte said. “Forget everything. Forget what she told you to reach for. Give in to your true feelings. Your darkest impulses, down in the depths of your mind.”

“My—”

“You know very well what I mean, Morrigan. The dark things that birth all your fantasies. The urges that make you want to dress like this and present yourself to the world the way you do. You must reach out through them. Only then will you find your powers.”

“But how?” she asked.

“Celeste told you to resist these feelings?” Charlotte asked.

“Yes.”

“That is exactly what you must not do. Stop fighting them. Let them flow through you. Embrace them like you’re making love to them. Let them call to the dark spirits that stand ready to serve you.”

I watched Morrigan struggling with herself. In this place, I could see the turmoil inside her, see her fighting against all the things Celeste taught her. But Charlotte’s words hit home. She knew what my familiar was telling her.

After a minute or two, I felt a dam break. She committed herself to the darkness. Morrigan gathered herself up, began the incarnation, and cast the components toward the brazier. The dark spirits answered her, flowing in through me. The flames were not strong, but they came. A little corona of red, blue, and green fire rose in the brazier. Morrigan let out a sob of relief, and Charlotte laughed in glee.

“Yes!” Charlotte cried. “That is it. You have it!”

They tried it again, and the flames were stronger the second time. Charlotte showed her another spell, and Morrigan managed it just as well. Hayley laughed and hugged her. The internal conflict was gone. Morrigan had shed the restraints that Celeste no doubt worked for years to instill in her niece, wanting her to serve the light.

But she wasn’t meant to. She belonged to the darkness and always had. Hayley’s instincts had been right. Morrigan was the one we needed in our coven.

Yet there was still a problem.

Her skills were weak. She needed time to practice them. Her connection with the dark spirits was not strong, and her struggles with Celeste were going to handicap her.

We didn’t have that time. At least, we didn’t have it in the real world.

I didn’t like it, but I knew what I had to do.

Chapter 6

I temporarily sent Hayley and MJ out of lucidity and back to their own dream worlds. Then I pulled Morrigan and Charlotte up to another part of the castle that I created on the fly, a smaller sitting room up toward the top of one of the towers.

Charlotte, as my familiar, understood what I was doing, but Morrigan gasped at the transition, glancing around in confusion. “What?”

“We need to talk,” I said. “And I’m guessing you have questions that you weren’t comfortable asking me in front of the others.”

I turned to a sideboard along one side of the room, where I created a decanter of wine. I poured glasses for the three of us and handed them to Charlotte and Morrigan. Lightning flashed and a peal of thunder boomed outside, rumbling through the room.

“Where are Hayley and MJ?” Morrigan asked.

“They’re still asleep. We’re still all in the quad, sleeping on the grass together. Time passes differently in this world. After everything I’ve done, I think it passes only in the way I need it to. So we have all the time we need.”

She glanced at Charlotte, then back at me.

“Charlotte is my familiar,” I said. “She knows what I know, and feels what I feel. So there’s no point in keeping her away from this.”

“Ask your questions, Morrigan,” Charlotte said. “I know you have them.”

Morrigan took a deep breath and exhaled. “This coven is some kind of . . . harem, I guess? You’re having sex with Hayley, and Katarina, and MJ? I would be part of that?”

“Yes. I’m pretty sure you’ll like MJ. And you’ve met Katarina. She’s a succubus, which means she’s completely flexible.”

“She’s so fucking hot.”

“Yes.”

“I had no idea you were dating Hayley,” she said. “You never mentioned a girlfriend. I was trying so hard to get your attention. I thought maybe you didn’t like the goth stuff, or my hair.”

“It was because of Hayley, and my being your TA. It wasn’t because I don’t find you attractive. I do. I like you, Morrigan. I think we could be good together. So when Hayley told me you guys had been hooking up, well . . .”

Hope spread across her face, and she smiled at me. “That turned you on?”

“Yeah, it did. But Hayley also told me what you were into. She told me why you guys broke up. What you wanted from her.”

Morrigan’s eyes widened. “She did?”

“Yes. And I can’t say I was terribly surprised.” I walked up and brushed my fingers through her deep purple hair. In here, it was like strands of amethyst, not dye. I made it longer, down to her lower back. She sighed, leaning against my hand.

“What is it you really want, Morrigan? I don’t know for sure what’s ahead of us, but I’m fairly certain I need you to be totally committed to me. I need to be able to trust you. I need to know I can depend on you, and your skills. We need to bond in here. I did the same thing with MJ, in a dream like this.”

Morrigan looked up, gasping for breath. But she couldn’t answer me. I wasn’t sure what to say now, but Charlotte was.

“Morrigan, what do you think this world is?” she said. “You’ve seen what Jimmy can do here. In my existence in this place, he is as close to a god as I can possibly imagine. He is my master, body and soul. Everything I am here, everything I experience, is because of him. Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” Morrigan gasped. She leaned against me, shaking.

“I’m afraid we have to stay here for a while,” I said. “You need to develop your skills. That’s going to take time that we don’t have in the real world. When we all wake up, we have to start on this, right away.”

“How long?” she asked.

“I stayed in this dream world for a month with MJ. I think this may take longer. I need you to become a sorceress here, Morrigan. We don’t have time for it when we wake up.”

She dropped unsteadily to her knees, looking up at me. “If you’ll be my master, like you are for Charlotte, I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll do anything, I mean it. Whatever you want to do to me in here, you can.”

I could read her needs and emotions here, as easily as reading a book. So I understood what she wanted. I waved my hand, making her dress and cloak go away, leaving her in the insubstantial lingerie under it, a bra that barely held up her big breasts, a tiny little black thong, and the strappy little garter belt over it. I called a slim leather collar to my hand and gently buckled it around her neck.

“All right, then. You’re mine now, Morrigan,” I said.

“Yes, Master,” she replied.

◆◆◆

We had a lot to do. Charlotte and Morrigan worked together in the laboratory, studying the texts that Celeste kept away from Morrigan, learning the spells I needed her to know. We worked together in another room that I created in the castle, a big broad space with wooden targets to practice her spells on.

It wasn’t a simple thing. Morrigan had potential, but she did not have my innate talents. She didn’t have my natural connection to the spirit world, and she couldn’t do things the way I could. It took practice and study, a great deal of trial and error with me and Charlotte.

We worked hard. She got better at it, little by little. We made progress as she grew in confidence.

Of course, there was another dimension to our time in the castle. I’d long since given Charlotte the ability to choose her own clothes when she needed to, and she continued dressing in the same sort of witchy dresses that I’d given her that first night. I did nothing of the sort with Morrigan. Instead, I dressed her in the skimpiest, sluttiest goth-girl outfits I could come up with, things that were all lace and frills and fishnets and buckles without covering anything of substance. She never complained.

I stretched out our first period of study as far as I could, but I knew what Morrigan needed and expected here. I wouldn’t have pushed things so far, except that I could see into Morrigan’s mind and I knew that this was basically her biggest fantasy, bar none – serving as a sex slave to an all-powerful warlock master in a world like this one.

I needed her to bond to me, which meant I needed to give that fantasy to her, give it to her as hard as I possibly could.

When I felt like the time had come, I called her and Charlotte down to – we were in a castle, after all – the dungeon. I made it a real dungeon, one filled with barred cells and racks and iron maidens and all sorts of torture implements, and everything you would expect to find in a medieval castle. I even scattered a few skeletons around.

I led Charlotte and Morrigan to the center of it, then I waved my hand and made Morrigan’s clothes, what little she had on, go away. Chains shot out from the walls to her wrists and ankles, drawing her up to a spread-eagle position in the air. She let out a little cry, then began whimpering in fear. I knew by now I’d been right about her having a few more piercings. She had a belly stud and a clit hood piercing like MJ’s, except hers was a little gold ring.

I reached out and gently flicked the ring with the tip of my finger. “I can do anything I want to you in here, Morrigan. Like you said, except there are really no limits in this place.”

“I know, Master.”

“There’s nothing at all you can do about it. I can keep you here as long as I want. Think how long we’ve been here already.”

“It feels like a week.”

“So we might want to decide on a safe word before we go any further.”

“Fuck safe words,” she gasped. “Do it all. Do everything! It’s a fucking dream. I want it!”

Huh. Part of me wasn’t surprised, but still. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, Master.”

I looked at Charlotte. In here, I didn’t need to tell her anything. She knew. She went to the array of torture devices and picked up a long leather whip. She swished it through the air a few times, and then swung it hard across Morrigan’s ass.

Morrigan cried out, sobbing in pain. Charlotte continued.

I conjured up a vibrator on a metal post and made it rise up between Morrigan’s thighs until it was completely inside her. She gasped and shook in the chains. I wanted more, realizing that I needed more help here. I kind of needed another Charlotte.

Could I get one? Well, of course. In here, I was a god.

I duplicated Charlotte, making a second one in front of Morrigan. The two of them were confused for a moment, looking at me.

“Master?” they both said.

It was actually one Charlotte in two bodies. So of course she was a bit disoriented at first. But then she understood. The one behind Morrigan resumed lashing her with the whip. The one in front kneeled down and began licking her. I made that Charlotte’s tongue vibrate for good measure, and then made the vibrator start pumping in and out of her.

Morrigan cried out again, thrashing around in the chains.

I watched her arousal rise and rise, but I kept careful control of it. When she got close, I slowed it down, looking into her. I let her get right up to the edge. I let her get a millimeter – a nanometer – short of orgasm, then froze her there. She sobbed in frustration, flailing around in her restraints.

I sat in a chair and watched them for a very long time, what seemed like hours, as the two Charlottes whipped and licked her, and Morrigan begged over and over for release, stuck right on the very edge but unable to go over. Finally, I floated myself up into the air until I was right next to her face.

“Morrigan, in here, I could make you come so hard it would feel like your soul was splitting in two. Ask Charlotte.”

Morrigan whimpered, gasping for breath.

“It’s true, Morrigan,” the Charlottes said. “Master has given me the sort of pleasure that would kill me in the real world.”

“Please,” she gasped. “May I come, Master?”

“Remember what I said about staying here for a month with MJ. Would you like to stay like this for a month?”

She sobbed loudly. Unfortunately for poor Morrigan, I’d been all through her head by now. I knew that orgasm denial was one of her biggest kinks, and that in fact it had been the thing that broke her and Hayley up. I’d been with Hayley long enough now to know that doing something like that to someone she cared about would never work for her.

I smiled down at Morrigan.

“No,” I said. “No orgasms for you until you’re done with your studies. None at all.”

And as she began to wail in despair, fully understanding now what awaited her in this place, I waved my hand and drew the three of us back up to the library. Morrigan, dressed again, lost her balance and fell to the floor.

Charlotte put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get back to work.”

◆◆◆

We went back and forth like that for a long time, Charlotte and Morrigan studying together, and Charlotte and me tormenting her in the dungeon in all the ways I could think of, never letting her come. I created a vast bedroom at the top of the castle, with an enormous four-poster canopied bed. I made Morrigan stand at the end of the bed and watch as I fucked Charlotte with my giant dream cock, edging herself as I gave Charlotte all the pleasure I was denying her. She meekly obeyed, never once complaining.

Morrigan reached a sort of equilibrium fairly quickly, knowing what she needed to do and fully embracing her submission to the two of us. But it wasn’t all torment. After our sessions in the dungeon, I always cuddled with her on a soft couch or the bed, just holding her and playing with her hair. She would lie quietly against me, radiating contentment. For all the pain and humiliation and orgasm denial, she was happy. I knew that she was living out the sort of fantasy she could never achieve in the real world, and she was in no way ready for it to end.

With this sort of motivation, she made rapid progress. She had skill and power, just as Charlotte said.

When I felt she was ready, I took her into my staff, introducing her to Sídhe, Enya, Sinann, and Ceridwen, the elemental spirits that served me. They swirled around her, greeting her and touching her and laughing in their glee at serving me. Morrigan laughed as well.

“You’re going to need to call your own at some point,” I said, “and enchant your own staff.”

“I can’t imagine it,” she said. “How do I do it?”

“I’ll show you, when we awaken.”

She leaned against me. “When, Master?”

“I hope soon.”

But it took a long time. Charlotte urged me over and over to be patient, explaining how she had taken years to get to this point, years of study with that old woman in her village. I began to feel increasingly disconnected from the real world, even though I knew it would all come back when I woke up.

I thought about Hayley and MJ sleeping beside us. I missed them. I wanted to pull Hayley back to me, but I didn’t know how she would react to this. I remembered how she reacted to finding out about my dream with MJ.

I’d never done this with her, staying asleep for weeks on end. And I sensed that might bother her.

Finally, one night, weeks and weeks after I sent her back to her own dreams, I pulled her back to me. I dressed her in that same red gown. She was disoriented for a few moments, but then seemed to recognize the castle.

“What happened?” she asked.

“It’s been a while, baby, I’m sorry. We’ve had to work with Morrigan.” I explained about my need to develop her skills and the lack of time we had in the real world.

“How long have you been here?” she finally asked.

“Weeks. Longer than MJ. I’m sorry. We had no choice.”

I saw the pain in her eyes. I went over and embraced her. She leaned against me, returning the hug.

“I understand,” she said. “But I want this someday too. As long as this. Longer, even. Some world we can be together in, just you and me. For years, if you can do it.”

“I think so. And I will. I promise.”

“We’re still asleep in the quad?” she asked. “I can feel the time now, like I’ve been here for a month or more.”

“Yes. Do you want to stay?”

After a moment or two, she pushed herself out of my arms. She looked up at me. “Have you slept with Morrigan in here?”

“No. Actually. She needed something else.” I explained what we’d been doing to her, me and Charlotte.

Hayley bit her lip. “I can see it. Yeah, that’s her thing, actually.” She sighed. “I’ll stay for a little while.”

We went to see Charlotte and Morrigan in the library. Hayley and Charlotte came together in a hug.

“It’s good to see you again,” Charlotte said.

Morrigan looked at Hayley awkwardly, but Hayley went over and hugged her for a while.

“You don’t need to say anything,” Hayley said when she let Morrigan go.

“Are we still all asleep, Master?” Morrigan asked.

“Yes,” I said.

The four of us ate dinner. Afterwards, I took Hayley up to the bedroom, and we lay down together.

“I feel like you’ve been enjoying this dream way too much,” she said, looking up at the bed around us. “Morrigan really hasn’t been in here?”

I explained what I’d been doing to her with Charlotte.

“Oh. Of course.” She looked over at me. “Morrigan was calling you ‘Master’ like Charlotte does.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re her dom now? That was what I couldn’t give her.”

“Yes.”

I pulled her into my arms. But she stopped me.

“If we do it here,” she said, “I’m going to wake up to a big mess in my underwear. And we’re still lying there on the grass. I don’t want to be orgasming out in the open like that.”

I laughed. “Okay.”

“Also, in real time, it was just last night that you had me, Katarina, and MJ at once. That ought to be enough.”

So we just rested together for a while.

◆◆◆

In the end, it took months. Hayley came and went every week or so to stay connected, but she refused to stay there, saying she wanted her own dream. I brought MJ back as well; she’d been through this herself and understood. But unlike Hayley, MJ rapidly grew to enjoy the castle and fantasy world and her warrior-woman persona, and wanted to be with us. After a few visits, she asked if she could stay there until we were done.

So MJ and I had our own time together while Morrigan worked with Charlotte. We built out the castle with ever-more elaborate rooms and embellishments. Among other things, I created an area where she could have some fun practicing with her sword. After a bit of experimentation, I was able to create a room that was essentially a simple computer game where dream monsters would spawn for her to fight. I initially programmed it to avoid hurting her, until she complained that it was unrealistic. So I changed the settings so the monsters could do some damage to her, up to a point. After that, she was happy.

I finally merged the dream temple with the castle, bringing in the elements I’d built before and changing their look and feel. I brought Else, our dream child over too, building a nursery-tower in one wing where Charlotte could be with her when I didn’t need her.

But unlike Hayley, MJ didn’t care about the effects of having sex in the dream world. So for the rest of the dream, I made love to her and Charlotte together while Morrigan watched us, edging and edging but never finishing.

One day, Charlotte came to me. “It’s time, Master. I can teach her nothing else. I don’t know if she’s ready for everything, but I know we’ve taken her as far as we can here.”

I nodded. I felt the same way.

I took Morrigan up to the top of the castle. I pulled her into my lap. I hadn’t had much experience with domination and all her kinks before the dream started, but after looking through all her fantasies, I’d gotten to really enjoy it. She served me in a different way from Katarina and Charlotte. As cruel as it seemed at times, this was exactly what she wanted.

I’d continued dressing her like a goth slave girl. She wore a lacy little black dress that concealed nothing, an open-front bra that was barely enough to hold up her big breasts, and a matching strappy garter belt. Since collaring her that first night, I had never let her wear panties. I fondled the smooth flesh between her legs. She was dripping wet like she always was.

I put her over my knee and lifted the back of her dress to expose her butt. Then I smacked it until it was red.

“I’m spanking you for being a good girl and working so hard.”

“Thank you, Master.”

“Charlotte thinks we’re done here, and I agree. It’s time to go back.”

She looked up, eyes filled with hope and fulfillment. I let her climb onto my lap and hug me. I held her tightly.

“I love you so much, Master.”

“I love you too, baby girl. But we have a lot to do now.”

“I know.”

“I can’t give you the orgasm you’ve earned here, not now. We’re still sleeping on the grass in the middle of campus. Imagine how your body would react.”

She laughed against me.

“But you’ll get it,” I promised. “I’ll come to you tonight.”

Morrigan hugged me even tighter. “I can’t wait.”

I fixed everything about her current state in my mind, knowing I would need to recreate it in our next dream, when I finally let her orgasm. She’d definitely earned it.

“Okay. It’s time to wake up, baby.”

◆◆◆

It was weird. Physically, it didn’t feel like I’d been asleep even an hour. Mentally, though, waking up was hugely disorienting as all my waking memories flooded back into my head after being gone so long. One by one, the girls sat up, looking around in dazed wonderment. Even Charlotte looked a bit confused.

I hugged Hayley and MJ. MJ pulled Charlotte into her lap and rubbed her head. I could see in MJ’s eyes what she was thinking – all the times I’d had the two of them together in that dream.

Then I looked over at Morrigan. Her jaw was vibrating.

“Did . . . did all that actually happen?”

“What do you feel?” I asked.

She looked down at herself, flexing her fingers. I could tell she was trying to repeat what she’d learned from Charlotte, reaching out to the dark spirits. Then she gasped, eyes going wide. “I can do it,” she said softly. “I remember.”

I hugged her, and after a moment, she squeezed me tightly. She hugged herself against my neck, and I felt hot tears against my skin. She turned her head toward my ear.

“Are you . . . still my master?” she whispered. “Please say yes.”

“Yeah, baby, if that’s what you want.”

She nodded against me. “I want it.”

I hugged her for a few more seconds. Then we got up.

We had things to do.

Chapter 7

On the walk back to my apartment, MJ took my hand, and we fell back a bit from Morrigan and Hayley.

“It feels like I’ve known you for years now instead of a month,” she said.

“Yeah.” It did.

“But Jimmy, all those things we did and said to each other in these dreams, they’re real.” She squeezed my hand tightly. “I knew I was there. We were together. Does it really matter that it was a dream? It felt real.”

“You’re asking the wrong person here,” I said.

She laughed and leaned against me. “You know how I told you, when you left Zagan’s Rock, that I could get to where you were, it would just take me some time?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, we’ve had the time now. So I’m there. It’s crazy, but I am. I wasn’t this morning. Even after last night.”

“Last night didn’t get you there?” I asked.

“Last night got me mostly there. There was a moment last night when I knew I would get there.”

I looked down at her. “When was the moment?”

A flash of embarrassment shot through her eyes. She glanced around us quickly and lowered her voice. “Um, it was right after you came the first time, when you were still on top of me. For some reason, I got all scared for a second, thinking, ‘What did I get myself into here?’ But then you started nuzzling my face and kissing me, and it made me feel really safe, and the feeling went away. That was when I knew.”

“I think I saw it.”

She smiled. “Yeah, you did. That was the was moment.” She stopped, looking up at me. “I love you. There, I said it. It makes no sense, but I do.”

I kissed her quickly. “I love you too. But you knew that.”

We resumed walking.

“I did,” she said. “I could feel it, in that dream. I feel it with all of us now, you and me and Hayley, and even Morrigan. And I just met her an hour ago.”

“From one perspective.”

“Right. From another, six months ago.” She squeezed my hand again and lowered her voice. “And Jimmy, shit, what we did to her in that dream, making her watch us fuck so many times––” She closed her eyes for a moment. “And I liked it. I got off on it, seeing her standing there fingering herself. It feels awful now, but I did.”

“I know you did. But did she seem like she didn’t want it?”

“No, I get it. I do. I could feel her too. It just felt like I was living in a movie. That fucking castle. Can we go back there some time?”

“It’s there now. It won’t go away. That’s how my dreams are.”

“Okay.” She looked down at herself. “Going to miss those tits you gave me too.”

I laughed. She stretched up and kissed me quickly. Ahead of us, Hayley and Morrigan had been talking, but now Hayley stopped and waited for us to catch up.

“You should talk to her,” she said quietly to MJ.

MJ gave my hand a quick squeeze and joined Morrigan. Hayley fell in beside me.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She took the hand MJ had just dropped. But she didn’t look at me right away.

“Coming out of that was really disorienting,” she said, “especially knowing it was so much more time for them.”

“I’m sorry, look, I’ll—”

But she cut me off. “Jimmy, you should know by now that I’m not high-maintenance. That fiery redhead stuff is not me. I understand, I do. I know that this coven can’t work if we’re all just friends. It has to be tighter than that. And I know this was the only way to do it in the time we’ve got.”

“Okay.”

Hayley exhaled slowly. “I just expect you to remember that promise you made me. And remember it without my having to remind you.”

“I will,” I said.

She looked up at me. “Then we’re good. Really.”

“Thanks.”

I squeezed her hand, and she squeezed it back.

“What’s your sense of Morrigan?” I asked.

Up ahead of us, she and MJ were talking and occasionally laughing.

“She and I already had a thing, you know that,” Hayley said. “I’m glad you can give her what I couldn’t. Just, understand that she really wants it to continue. We were talking about that. She’s stressing about whether you want to keep it up.”

“I can. I will.”

“I care about Morrigan,” she said. “That was never the issue. It was just that there was no way we could make it work with the two of us, what she needed from me. In our coven, though, it could. I can feel it. But I want to be sure you understand what you did to her in that dream. You took all her biggest fantasies and cranked them up to eleven. Twenty, even.”

“I know.”

She glanced over at me. “So, please be ready for it. I can tell she’s in a vulnerable spot right now.”

“I know.”

“And there’s something else you need to know. When we were together, she’d never been with a guy. Just other girls. I don’t know what she’s done in that respect since then, but I don’t get the impression it’s been much.”

I nodded. “Like MJ. I get it.”

When we got back to my apartment, Katarina was waiting for us. She came up briefly and leaned against my chest.

“I sensed a great many strange things in that dream, Jimmy,” she said. “You felt distant from me, more distant than you should have been.”

There was a tension to our bond that grew the further apart we were. Neither of us liked it, which was part of the reason Katarina had been coming to campus with me every day.

I explained everything to her. Her eyes widened a bit, and she looked at the other girls. “I understand now. Your connections to Jimmy have all changed and deepened. I feel them through my bond with him.”

“You can tell when he’s dreaming?” Morrigan asked.

“Yes,” Katarina replied. “Through the bond. I do not share the dream, but I feel the things he feels. He loves all of you now.”

The three of them exchanged looks.

Then Katarina went to Morrigan and hugged her. “I am glad you chose to join us.”

“Thanks.” Morrigan looked Katarina up and down. “You’re a succubus.”

“Yes.”

“You look completely human. I mean, I can sense something about you, because I know, but you don’t look like one.”

Katarina smiled a little. “What do you think succubi look like?”

Morrigan looked a little embarrassed. “Well . . . I mean, you don’t have horns and a tail. Is that wrong? You’re not like that.”

A pair of little horns sprouted from Katarina’s forehead, and a dark, pointed tail snaked out from her lower back. Her canine teeth grew longer and more pointed.

I had never asked her to do this, because I knew the truth. Hayley, who had known Katarina for months and understood what she was, let out a shocked gasp.

Morrigan threw her hands over her mouth, eyes going wide. “Is that your true form?”

Katarina laughed. “I do not have one, Morrigan, not in the way you are thinking. I can take any human form I desire.” The horns and tail disappeared. “This form is what Jimmy prefers, because it is closest to who I was as a mortal.”

“What were you as a mortal?” she asked.

“Pretty much what you see there,” I said, “except she was fifteen when she died. So, you understand why I have her like this.”

Morrigan got it after a moment. “Oh. Yeah, for sure.”

I took Hayley's and Morrigan’s hands. Katarina, knowing what I was doing, took Morrigan’s and MJ’s hands. MJ and Hayley linked up, and as we did so, Charlotte ran over into the center of the circle.

“All right,” I said. “We’re set, then. There are some things I want to do this weekend. We’re going up to Zagan’s Rock, and with luck, we can learn what we need and maybe resolve this. But the five of us—”

I was interrupted by Charlotte. “Miaoow.”

“Okay, six of us, sorry.”

But Charlotte wasn’t done. “Miaoow.” She rose up against me and pawed my leg. “Miaooooow.”

“What?” I asked. I couldn’t quite read what she wanted. She let out another loud meow and then went over to Morrigan, rubbing against her legs.

“Miaooooow.”

Then I got it.

“Jimmy—” Katarina said.

“A familiar,” I said to Morrigan. “You need a familiar.”

Her eyes went wide. “That would make seven.”

That hadn’t occurred to me. “It would.” I didn’t know how much difference that would make, but we needed all the help we could get.

“How do we do it?” she asked. “Is there some spell? Charlotte didn’t tell me much about familiars.”

I laughed. “Not exactly.”

We called Morax. I introduced Morrigan. She was a bit flustered at talking to a demon, but the conversation took only a minute. He promised that he had the perfect familiar for her, one who would fit seamlessly into my coven.

“But just so you understand, kid,” he said to me, “since she’s in your crew, this is on your account. Usual discount, but that’s how it’s going to work going forward. Anything she does is on you.”

“Got it.” I was actually glad to hear this because I didn’t like the idea of Morrigan racking up a soul debt because of her connection to me.

“Her familiar is on its way,” he said. “Looks like you might need to track it down, but it’s not far.”

“Track it down?” Morrigan asked. But Morax had already hung up. She looked at me.

“Sometimes familiars come to their masters,” Katarina said, “sometimes they must be found. Do you feel anything?”

“I . . .” Then she gasped softly. “Yeah. It’s—it’s a little ways, but I feel her.”

We went down to Hayley’s SUV, which she’d brought over last night for our trip to Zagan’s Rock. Morrigan pointed Hayley onto McKinley, then down a few blocks. When we’d gone about half a mile, she suddenly pointed to the left.

“There—oh, shit!”

It was the pet store where I shopped for Charlotte.

MJ laughed. “Oh, you’re fucking kidding me. Are we going to have to buy it?”

Morrigan exhaled loudly. “Her. It’s a her. But she’s in there.”

Hayley pulled into a parking spot, and we got out. Morrigan led the way. We walked in the entrance and stopped. Morrigan looked around, eyes coming to rest on the reptile section. She walked over to the displays of snakes and lizards, and stopped in front of one of them.

“Echidna,” she said, pointing at a ball python. “Her name is Echidna.”

The snake – Echidna – coiled out of her little den and up against the glass, trying to climb out. She wasn’t like pythons I’d seen before, though. Instead of the typical brown-and-black, her pattern was bright yellow and brown-black, almost like a leopard.

“I guess we’re buying her, then,” I said. I went and found a sales associate, who took Echidna out of her enclosure and handed her carefully to Morrigan. She immediately coiled herself around Morrigan’s arm and rubbed her head against Morrigan’s hand. She was still a little one, maybe two feet long.

The sales associate laughed. “I guess it likes you. They’re usually kind of shy.”

I waited what seemed like an appropriate time before telling the guy we would take her. He started running through what we would need, but Morrigan stopped him.

“I’ve had snakes before. I know what to do.”

“You’ve had snakes?” I asked.

“A couple.”

“That would explain it,” I said.

She was a fancy “morph” and more expensive than typical ball pythons, but since it was going on my demonic credit card, I figured it didn’t matter. We got checked out in about ten minutes.

When we got into the car, Charlotte and Echidna seemed to greet each other, rubbing their heads together as Charlotte purred loudly. It seemed they would get along fine.

Morrigan continued playing with Echidna all the way back to the apartment, just staring at her in wonder.

“She knows me,” she said. “I just feel it . . . she has things to tell me.”

“She’s not just a snake.”

“I can tell that. But it seems like she’s waiting for something.”

I knew what it was, because I’d gone through the same thing with Charlotte. “You’re going to want to take a nap on the drive up,” I said. “You’ll see.”

◆◆◆

I’d already packed up everything I thought we might need, from my laptop and portable magic circle to my grimoires and the leftover nitric acid from the spells I cast up in Zagan’s Rock. But Morrigan wasn’t packed for a weekend trip, so she had to go back to her dorm to get some things. While we were waiting, a text came into my phone from her.

Master?

I reminded myself what Hayley had said earlier, and what I’d promised Morrigan when she woke up. She was part of my coven now. I had never done anything like this before, but I’d agreed to it, and I knew why she wanted this. I understood it, and understood her needs. And I’d enjoyed it in the dream. I loved her now. We were doing it.

Yes?

Are there rules about my clothes?

I’ll dress like you dressed me in the dream if that’s what you like

Or whatever just tell me

I’d been dressing Katarina for four months and had come to really like doing it. And as I thought about it, I decided this could be fun too. I’d enjoyed what I’d done with Morrigan in the dream.

Nothing you’ll get arrested for but yes

Same kind of things? Slutty dresses and skirts?

You do like the goth stuff?

Yes to all of that

Stockings and no panties? Just like I was the whole time?

Yeah but I like those ripped-up jeans you have too

Thongs or whatever fine with that kind of stuff

Okay. I may need to do some shopping tho

I can cover it

That got me a bunch of heart emojis.

Your so awesome master ily

Hayley told me what you guys talked about

Just so we’re clear nothing has changed from the dream

You’re still mine baby girl

More hearts came in.

Thank you master

She was packed up and ready to go about fifteen minutes later. Hayley swung by campus and picked her up. In addition to a backpack with some clothes, she had a little black cotton bag over her shoulder, but it didn’t look like a purse. She saw me looking at it.

“My spell stuff. Some of it will actually work, now that I know what I’m doing.”

She opened it up to show me. Inside were a bunch of little baggies and plastic jars of herbs and random powders.

Before we left, I cast a protective ward over her like I’d done with the other girls. When I did it, she reacted much as Hayley and MJ had, eyes going wide.

“I felt you . . .”

I just went over and hugged her. She hugged me back tightly.

Then we hit the road for Zagan’s Rock.

Chapter 8

The trip up the coast took about three hours. Because I knew what Morrigan was going to do and I needed to run my model, I sat in the back with her and Katarina, while MJ sat up front with Hayley. Charlotte sat at my feet. She and Echidna kept staring at each other.

“I just need to sleep?” Morrigan asked.

“I can’t guarantee it,” I said, “but you may have a dream like you did with me. But you’ll be in control. Charlotte told me, back when I first got her, that masters and familiars have this special dream space. Kind of like our dream earlier.”

“Could you come with me?” she asked softly.

“I don’t know if I can get in there. I suspect I can at some point, but the two of you need to connect first.”

So she leaned against me and tried to sleep. I wasn’t sure she’d be able to since we’d woken from that epic dream maybe an hour ago, but she finally dozed off after about twenty minutes. Echidna uncoiled from her arm and curled into a ball in her lap.

Meanwhile, I got out my laptop and tried to figure out what we were going to do.

I focused for a few minutes, just relaxing and trying to open my mind to the spirit world. Caacrinolaas and what he was doing in Zagan’s Rock. His connection to Astaroth and Amira. Zagan and Breamstone. Then I hit run.

While I waited, I tried to sense what Morrigan might be dreaming. I was a little surprised to realize that I could feel something, though it was vague. But she was in there with Echidna – I sensed something from the snake as well.

I didn’t try to press it further, though. She would tell me what she needed to.

The model results popped up about five minutes later.

DOLLAR

BLACK

ZAGAN

ADRIANA

SHOP

DREAM

LOVE

TROUT

IS

ALL

ERITREA

FLECK

STONE

YOU

NEED

FOOTBALL

JIMMY

SPLURGE

ROCK

BREAM

COYOTE

STOCKING

ROSE

MOUNTAINEER

I frowned. This . . . didn't appear to be much. Of course Jimmy was there. Zagan, Rock, Bream, and Stone, too. It seemed to be telling me things I already knew. We were on our way to Zagan’s Rock, and I knew the collective was mixed up in this. So I took my usual approach of running it five times and seeing what repeated.

While I was working, Morrigan began moaning softly in her sleep and shifting against me. Echidna seemed to be writhing in her lap as well. No mystery what was going on, I supposed.

“Jimmy,” Katarina said. “I can sense her dream, through you. It is more vague, but it’s there.”

“What do you sense?”

“She’s happy. She’s with Echidna.”

“That’s pretty clear.”

When the model had run five times, I sorted out the terms that appeared in every run. Then I pulled out my name and the usual suspects. That left:

BLACK

DREAM

ADRIANA

SHOP

LOVE

IS

ALL

YOU

NEED

FOOTBALL

ROSE

Football? I thought. And something else leapt out at me: Love is all you need? What the fuck? I didn’t want to ask if the Beatles were somehow mixed up in this. Pulling those out left:

BLACK

ADRIANA

SHOP

DREAM

ROSE

Dream, okay. I would need to do some dreaming. No surprise there. But who was Adriana? The name seemed familiar. I’d heard it somewhere before since all this stuff started, but I couldn’t place it. Was it even a person?

Morrigan woke up next to me with a little jerk. Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked around, somewhat disoriented. Her gaze finally fell on me.

“Whoa,” she said.

I looked down, seeing Echidna stretching out of her ball and coiling around Morrigan’s arm again. She looked down, stroking the python’s head.

“It worked?” I asked.

Her breath whistled through her nose a few times. “Oh, yeah.”

“Tell me.”

“Um. I met her. And we . . .”

I laughed softly. “I know.”

I reached under her little black plaid skirt, up past her stockings. We’d never actually been together in the waking world, but we were so far beyond that fact by now after everything we’d done in the dream that feeling her up like this felt completely natural.

And she let me, opening her thighs to allow me in. Whether she had panties on that morning, they were gone now. I explored her bare flesh for a few moments and the ring in her clit hood. She was wet, really wet. It was strange how familiar she felt given that I’d never done this before.

Morrigan sighed, putting her hand on my wrist.

“Describe her,” I said.

“She was Egyptian. Long black hair and green eyes. She’s so pretty. But Jimmy, this is the thing. She’s been a familiar before. She was Charlotte’s familiar, when she was a witch.”

I gaped at her. “What? You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“What the hell?” MJ asked. “How?”

But it occurred to me after a moment that this wasn’t an accident at all. Morax had sent both of them. This had to be what he meant about Echidna fitting in seamlessly. I couldn’t wait to see what Charlotte had to say about this, though clearly she knew who Echidna was, based on their reactions to each other.

“Morax did it,” I said. “He gave me Charlotte.”

MJ nodded, understanding now.

Morrigan looked down at her snake. “She knows a lot, and said she could teach me.”

“Good.”

I slipped the tip of my finger inside her. I felt a tremor around me.

“I didn’t come with her,” she whispered into my ear. “I didn’t think I had permission. She understood. She said I had to serve you the way she would serve me.”

“Tonight, baby. Tonight you get it all.”

She just squeezed my hand and nuzzled against me. I kept my finger inside her for a while, edging her ever so slowly.

◆◆◆

We arrived in Zagan’s Rock around two. I still hadn’t decided what the model results meant.

“I was thinking,” Hayley said, “maybe we could start at the city library. There could be stuff in the archives about the collective. Or about Caacrinolaas.”

“Would there be stuff in the newspaper about demons?” MJ asked.

“When Jimmy summoned him, he would have disappeared from here, right?” Hayley asked. “Maybe there was news about it.”

“Could be,” I said. I told them about the model results. “I don’t know where else to start right now.”

“The library is down the block from the collective building,” Katarina said. “So we must be careful.”

Hayley drove us downtown, deliberately taking a roundabout route to avoid the collective. The library was a bland two-story building in a parking lot. I looked back down the street toward the collective office, studying it for a moment with my ring. The wards I’d taken down were back up. From this distance, I couldn’t tell if they were the same or something different.

As we got out of Hayley's SUV, my eye caught something in the strip shopping center next door. It looked like a little boutique, the displays in front showcasing a variety of dark clothes. What caught my eye, though, was the name: The Black Rose.

I froze, staring in disbelief. We’d ended up here simply by going to the library. “Guys?”

Hayley and the rest of them stopped ahead of me, turning around.

“I think we need to go check that place out.”

“Why?” Hayley asked.

I explained about the model.

“Shit,” MJ said.

Morrigan’s eyes went wide. Hayley and Katarina, though, were used to it by now. We turned from the library and walked across the parking lot toward the shop. When we got closer, I saw that it was clearly a boutique that catered to the goth crowd.

“Uhhh,” Morrigan said.

“As if we needed more confirmation,” I said.

“For what?” she asked.

“You.”

It was a little small-town strip-mall clothing store, but whoever ran it had done their best to identify and serve their market. The place was full of black dresses and skirts of every conceivable sort, tops and corsets, fishnets and chains, buckles, boots, hats and jewelry. The men’s section was smaller but well stocked. It had everything I’d imagined for Morrigan in that dream and more.

She gasped a little as we walked in, glancing around at everything. “Oh wow, this is awesome.”

Toward the back, there was a small section of occult books and supplies, though I couldn’t tell whether it was for show or genuine.

That was, however, until I saw the woman behind the register. She looked to be in her late thirties with long dark brown hair. She was beautiful, busty, and wore a long, lacy black dress that flattered every bit of her impressive body. She smiled at us.

“Hello. Can I help you find anything?” she asked. She had an accent I couldn’t quite place – not European, though she looked Spanish.

Morrigan looked around as if she’d died and gone to . . . well, somewhere happy.

“You wanted to shop,” I said softly. “Go for it. Just remember what I said about not getting arrested.”

She smiled quickly. “Thanks.” Then she went for the dress racks.

I went over to the woman. MJ and Hayley came with me. Katarina hung back, pretending to shop with Morrigan. Charlotte had followed us in, and the woman either hadn’t noticed her or didn’t seem to care.

“My, uh, my friend just wanted to look around,” I said.

“Of course,” the woman replied. “Just let me know if you need anything.” Then she looked at MJ curiously for a few moments. “I’m sorry. Are you MJ Hernandez?”

I glanced at MJ, who oddly enough didn’t seem that surprised at this.

“Yeah. Have we met?”

“Oh, no. It was the football. When you were playing for the high school, my . . . my boyfriend at the time was a huge fan. We went to all the school games. You were so amazing to watch.”

I looked at MJ in mild disbelief. I knew a little bit about her soccer career here, but I hadn’t realized it extended to this degree.

“Thanks,” MJ said.

“You are playing for UCSD now?” the woman asked.

MJ had on her blue-and-gold UCSD running tights and athletic jacket. “That’s right.” She finally noticed the look on my face and pursed her lips. “You never exactly asked, Jimmy.”

I hadn’t. We’d talked about her playing at UCSD, but not high school. All I really knew came from that conversation with her great uncle when we came up here over break.

“Did you know the school won the state girls’ title when she played?” the woman asked. “She set the school record for goals that season.”

“Goals and assists,” MJ said quietly.

“Oh, yes, I am sorry.”

MJ said something to her in Spanish, but the woman shook her head. “No, I am Brazilian. I do not speak much Spanish at all.”

Brazil.

All of a sudden it came together in my head. I knew who this was: the woman Caacrinolaas fell in love with and kidnapped.

“Is your name Adriana?” I asked.

She looked at me strangely. “Yes. Do we know each other?”

I struggled with how to approach this. MJ and Hayley both stared at me.

“How long have you been living in Zagan’s Rock?” I asked.

“About three years.”

“This boyfriend you mentioned. You came here with him?”

“Yes,” she said.

“But you said he’s not around anymore?”

Adriana’s eyes darkened. “Why do you ask?”

“I . . . I might have known him. That is . . . I know what he was.”

She stared at me hard for several moments. Then she went to the front of the store and flipped over the Closed sign.

“Who are you people? What do you want?”

“We’re trying to investigate some things around what he was doing here.”

Adriana didn’t answer me right away. “What do you know?” she asked.

“He was a demon.”

“Go on,” she snapped at me.

“He made you fall in love with him and took you out of Brazil, and brought you here.”

“And?”

“He’s gone now.”

She leaned forward into her hand, rubbing her forehead.

“Are you still in love with him?” MJ asked.

Adriana looked up. “No. It was not love. It was an obsession he put into my head. For two years, it was as if I was in a car someone else was driving. Then one night, he simply disappeared, and I was free. But I don’t know where he is now, I am sorry.”

“That’s all right. I do.”

“You do?” she asked. "Where?”

“Back in Hell. And not in a good place.”

“How do you know that?” she gasped.

I glanced at the girls, then back to her. “Because I was the one who sent him there. I summoned him away from you, bound him, and handed him back over.”

Adriana’s eyes went wide. “You are the one who freed me?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“When was this?”

“It . . . it would have been last October. Kind of late at night. And judging from how he reacted, I guess you two were, uh, kind of busy.”

She gasped softly. Then a moment later, she walked quickly over to me and put her arms around my neck, hugging me tightly. I was startled for a moment, but tried to return the hug. The girls circled around us. Morrigan was holding a bunch of dresses in her arms.

Adriana held me for ten or fifteen seconds before relaxing. Then she withdrew, holding my arms.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“My name is Jimmy. I’m a sorcerer. These are my girlfriends.”

She hugged me again. “Thank you.”

“You stayed here?” MJ asked.

“Somehow he got me a green card, so I could open this shop. I miss my home, but with him gone, I have a much better life here than I did in Brazil.”

I took a deep breath. “Do you have some time to talk?”

Chapter 9

Adriana found some chairs so we could all sit down. Then she explained about Caacrinolaas.

Adriana was a bruxa, a witch and practitioner of Brazilian voodoo, though not an especially powerful one. She’d had a comfortable if not terribly happy life in a town outside São Paulo. She and her husband fought constantly, and Adriana had reached the point where she was worried he might kill her during one of his rages. One night, she called out to the spirits for help, and Caacrinolaas answered. He appeared before her, offering to take her away from her husband and out of Brazil. She instantly found herself in love with him. Caacrinolaas sent her husband out that night in his car and over a nearby cliff into a quarry.

He took Adriana to California, and in short order he had installed them in a tract house in Red Hawk Ranch in Zagan’s Rock. From what she told us, it was apparent to me that Caacrinolaas – who was going by the name Gaylord Lobo, a garbling of his real name – truly did love her, at least as much as a demon possibly could. If you got past the fact that he compelled her to love him, he treated her well – certainly much better than her husband had. To help keep her happy, he set her up in the Black Rose selling goth clothes to the local kids.

Why Zagan’s Rock? Adriana wasn’t sure, but Caacrinolaas was definitely up to something. I asked if she was familiar with the collective, writing the name down so we wouldn’t have to say it aloud.

“Yes, I know this name,” she said. “They are just down the street. He went in that building sometimes.”

“Doing what?”

“I do not know exactly, but it had to do with a house out at the edge of town, a house that belongs to them.”

MJ, Hayley, Katarina, and I exchanged a look.

“Is this the house at the end of Granada Road?” I asked. “A big stone house out in the middle of a field?”

“That is it. We went there a number of times.”

“He took you there?” Hayley asked.

“Yes,” Adriana replied. “The house is mostly empty, except for the basement. There is a very large rock there, under the house. It must have been there when the house was built over it. Gaylord was obsessed with it. He would make me wait while he sat there studying it, sometimes for hours. He did not tell me what he was doing. I was madly in love with him and did not question his behavior.”

None of us said anything. We all knew what was in that rock.

“Does the phrase ‘Love is all you need’ mean anything to you,” I asked, “besides the song?”

Adriana looked startled. “Yes. He kept saying that over and over as he stared at the rock. That love was the answer. I would tell him I loved him, and he would say it wasn’t working.”

“What wasn’t?” Hayley asked.

“He did not say.”

“You did not, in fact, love him though,” Katarina said. “Did you? You were just compelled to think and behave as if you did.”

Adriana’s face contorted in anger. “Yes. That is exactly right.”

“So if it was a spell that required love as a component,” Morrigan said, “then it wouldn’t have worked.”

“Wouldn’t he know that?” Hayley said.

“It’s possible he deluded himself into believing Adriana really did love him,” I said.

“Demons can behave as foolishly as mortals,” Katarina said. “Trust me on that one."

“So what was he doing?” MJ asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I think we may need to pay Deirdre another visit.”

Adriana looked at me strangely. “You know Deirdre?” she asked.

I blinked. “Yes. You do?”

She gaped at me. “She is my next-door neighbor. She is involved with this?”

As the jaws dropped around us, I let out a sigh. “It’s a long story.”

◆◆◆

Morrigan tried on a bunch of outfits for me, trying to mimic what she’d worn in the dream as best she could. Adriana helped her with it, easily hitting the slutty-goth-slave-girl sweet spot I wanted without going too far. Whatever else you might have said about her, she knew her clothes, rejecting and swapping out several things she deemed as insufficiently suited to Morrigan’s top-heavy figure. (“No, no, you have the bosom for this but not the bum. Let me get another one.”) The stuff she came up with was definitely better. Hayley and Katarina got into it as well.

While they went through the clothes, I talked with MJ.

“I should have asked more about your soccer career, I’m sorry.”

She rubbed my shoulder. “It’s okay. Not like we haven’t talked about eight million other things. I know you’re not into sports, Jimmy. That’s not why I’m with you.”

“You were really that big a deal here?”

She shrugged. “It’s a small town, so I stood out. I was recruited by some of the big private high schools down south, but most of my family is here, so I didn’t want to leave. We played in the lower divisions.”

“She said you set the school records for goals?”

“It sounds like more than it is. The girls’ team at my high school was never that good until I came along.” She smiled. “But Jimmy, I got a scholarship to UCSD. I’m sure you’re not aware of this, but they’re one of the top women’s programs in the country. We won the national title four years ago and made the semis last year. It’s why I don’t get a lot of playing time right now. Three of the girls on the squad have time with the women’s national team.”

Morrigan ended up with a bunch of lacy dresses, skirts, and corset tops, along with several different sets of black lingerie and an armload of random accessories. Adriana loudly and repeatedly refused to accept any payment for it even though Morrigan had picked out at least seven hundred dollars’ worth of stuff. She only relented when I explained that I could bill it all to Hell. Then she insisted Morrigan take a few more outfits along with two pairs of long lace-up boots. I got one thing for myself, that I knew I would need tonight.

“Thanks for all the clothes,” Morrigan said.

Adriana hugged her. “You are a beautiful girl. I hope you enjoy all of it.” Then she gave me a long, tight hug as we were packing up.

“Thank you,” she said. “I was living in a nightmare for two years because of him.”

“I’m glad I was able to help.”

She kissed me on the cheek and hugged me again. “You are one of those sorcerers who collects women around him? They are your coven?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are you staying here?”

“Just a motel.”

Adriana firmly shook her head. “No, impossible. You must stay with me. I have the room. I insist, especially if you are confronting Deirdre about this. I wish to be there.”

I looked around at the girls. None of them objected.

“We were about ready to head over to the motel, but okay, I appreciate it.”

“Then I will close up early. This is easily a full day’s worth of sales. It is fine.”

◆◆◆

We followed Adriana back to Red Hawk Ranch and soon pulled into the now-familiar neighborhood where Deirdre lived. The front door and walkway of Deirdre’s house appeared to have been rebuilt, no doubt because of the damage I’d done to it in fighting with Charles. The last thing I did when we fled the house was send Ceridwen, my earth spirit, to bind him into the stone and mortar of her front porch.

The wards I had taken down, like the wards on the Breamstone Collective office, were back up. But there was no sign that Deirdre was home at the moment. We parked in Adriana’s driveway. As we got out, she finally seemed to take note of Charlotte and Echidna.

“These animals, they are your familiars?” she asked.

“Right.”

“All right. Come in.”

Adriana’s house was a typical upper-middle-class tract house like Deirdre’s, with the sort of cookie-cutter floorplan I’d seen too many times before. There was a bedroom downstairs off the den, and three more upstairs. It was very nice but seemed way too much for one person, or even two.

“It’s just you?” I asked.

“Gaylord wanted children,” she said. The look in her eyes told me to let it go at that. “I will make up the master bedroom for you. I haven’t slept in there since he disappeared. It’s big enough for four.” She glanced at Katarina. “I know she doesn’t sleep.”

I hadn’t identified Katarina for her, but there were witches we’d run into who recognized my succubus on sight. I had my doubts that four of us could manage in a single bed, even a king, but I figured we could work something out.

◆◆◆

“My head is spinning,” MJ said as we sat in Adriana’s den.

We were trying to digest what we’d learned while Adriana was in the kitchen making something to eat.

“How is all of this so interconnected?” MJ asked. “All of us?”

“I’ll be honest with you,” I said, “I’m starting to wonder less about coincidences and more about how much of this is intentional.”

“Intentional?” Hayley asked. “By whom?”

“Let’s start at the beginning. Katarina, you said you met my grandmother after Zagan was deposed.”

“Yes,” she said.

“But that was two hundred years ago, long before the collective was formed.” I got up and dug Liber Officiorum Spirituum out of my bag. I flipped thorough it until I found Zagan. “Zagan’s portfolio included turning water into wine, a fool into a wise man, and base metals into gold. Basically, turning chicken shit into chicken salad. Astaroth took over some, but not all of that. He can find treasure but not create it out of nothing.”

“That’s how your divining rod works,” Hayley said.

“But making money is better than just finding it,” MJ said. “That’s basic finance. Your business has to keep creating income, not just pull it in from somewhere else.”

Morrigan gave her a funny look.

“I’m majoring in business,” MJ said. “I’m not just a jock.”

“Sorry,” Morrigan said.

MJ shook her head. “Don’t worry about it."

“Anyway,” I said. “Imagine you’re a group of sorcerers who have been working for Astaroth for a while. He’s helped you find wealth but not make it. Then one day, you either find or stumble across this rock that Zagan is confined in. Who knows how it ended up in this sleepy little farming town. But somehow or another, you figure out a way to call upon it, to do more than just find stuff. Even though he’s trapped in that rock, there’s enough residual power to allow you to understand how to create that new wealth. So you come up with the idea of starting a business that buys undervalued assets and turns them into things that are worth a lot more.”

“Your grandmother started this,” Katarina said.

“She did. She and Charles’s father were the ones who started the collective and built that house over the rock. Why they did it seems pretty clear to me. They were using Zagan. The question in my mind is what caused the split.”

Adriana came into the room and set down a tray of egg-sized things that were shaped like Hersey’s kisses but looked like fried dumplings. She sat down between Morrigan and Hayley.

“Coxinha,” she said. “They have chicken and cream cheese inside.”

Everyone took one and took a bite. They were delicious, and we all thanked her. Adriana just sat there and smiled.

“Amira said she loved you, Jimmy,” Hayley said. “You said yourself you believe that.”

“I do. I think.”

“‘Love is all you need,’” Adriana said.

“For what, though?” Morrigan asked. “What difference would it make to Zagan, trapped in that rock?”

“Caacrinolaas made you love him and brought you here,” Hayley said. “Then he spent all that time staring at the rock.”

“Did it seem like he cared about money?” MJ asked Adriana.

She shook her head. “He had plenty. He paid for this house in cash. It is how I have been able to stay here. He gave me money for the shop. It is enough to support me now, but I could never have started it on my own.”

“Deirdre and Henry Langdon broke with the collective around the time I was born, give or take,” I said.

“But not for the same reasons,” Hayley said, “if you believe that manifesto. It sounds like he grew disillusioned with them for some reason. Deirdre only left after your grandmother ran off with you.”

“Could they have wanted to free Zagan?” Adriana asked. “Any of them?”

“That seems like a possibility,” I said. “I’m just struggling for a reason why. Once he’s free, they lose the ability to siphon off his power. You have to assume that Zagan and Astaroth immediately start fighting over his seat as a King of Hell. Astaroth is not going to be well-disposed to anyone who lets him loose, and it’s a crapshoot whether Zagan gives a damn about whoever freed him. Where’s the benefit in doing it?”

“But, what if,” Morrigan began, “and I’ve been part of this for less than a day – in one sense, I guess – so I don’t pretend to understand much of it, but what if, in freeing him, you were able to take his power away from him? So you gained his ability to turn chicken shit into chicken salad?”

None of us said anything for several long moments.

“If you could make a foolish man wise,” Katarina said, “could you make a woman who was only enchanted to love you, truly love you?”

“If you could have all his power,” MJ said, “instead of just siphoning a little bit of it off to make money for other people, wouldn’t you want that?”

“But where do you fit into this, Jimmy?” Hayley. “That’s what I don’t see.”

“Maybe Amira thought he had a way to take Zagan’s power,” MJ replied.

“But I don’t have anything like the power of a King of Hell,” I said. “I’m a dream sorcerer, a pretty strong one, but still a dream . . .”

My voice trailed off. I suddenly remembered something, the results from the model run. I got up and found my laptop in my bag and opened it up. I found the original list of words that had come up in all five runs.

BLACK

DREAM

ZAGAN

ADRIANA

SHOP

LOVE

IS

ALL

STONE

YOU

NEED

FOOTBALL

JIMMY

ROCK

BREAM

ROSE

If you pulled out all the stuff we figured out today, it came to this.

DREAM

LOVE

IS

ALL

YOU

NEED

JIMMY

“Holy . . . shit,” I said.

The rest of them clustered around me. Adriana was the first one to find her voice.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

But the rest of us knew. What we’d been through together. Dream love was what had pulled MJ and Morrigan into my coven. What I’d experienced with all of them. All of them except—

Katarina.

And when I looked over at her, I knew she was thinking the same thing. One by one, Hayley, MJ, and Morrigan followed my gaze and looked at her.

“But I cannot dream,” she said. “I cannot even sleep. I have not slept in twelve hundred years.”

I tried to explain what we’d done to Adriana. She listened quietly for a minute or two.

“I think we are perhaps back where we started,” she finally said.

Hayley’s eyes widened. “What?”

“If dream love is all Jimmy needs, what does he need it for? Freeing Zagan? Taking his power? Or something else? We should not assume anything, anything at all here.”

I looked around at the girls.

“She kind of has a point,” MJ said.

I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth. “I think I need to lie down.”

◆◆◆

Adriana led us upstairs to the master bedroom. When we walked in, I did a double take. The bed was fucking enormous. I’d never seen anything like it – it looked as big as two queens put together, but longer. It was as big as the bed I’d made in my dream world.

“Gaylord wanted children, as I said,” Adriana said. “And he wanted them to sleep with us. So he got this bed. I think he said he ordered it from Alaska.”

“Alaska?” I asked.

But Hayley let out a brief laugh, covering her mouth. The rest of us looked at her.

“No,” she said. “It’s—it’s an Alaska king. My folks looked at getting one. They’re not from Alaska, they’re just called that because they’re so big. They have to be custom-made, and so do the sheets and everything else. My dad finally decided it wasn’t worth the expense.”

Now I understood why Adriana thought we could all sleep up here. The bed was easily big enough for four adults.

“Wow,” MJ said.

“Yeah,” Morrigan said.

“You can all rest,” Adriana said. “I will watch for Deirdre.”

We lay down together. Even with the five of us, it was comfortable and roomy. The girls cuddled up with me, Hayley and MJ on one side, Morrigan and Katarina on the other. The bed was so big that we didn’t need to lie in a line. Instead, Hayley and Katarina laid their heads on my shoulders, while MJ and Morrigan put their heads on my stomach, so we were spread like five fingers on a hand. Charlotte curled up between my legs. Echidna remained where she’d been around Morrigan’s arm.

I sighed. This was a lot better than my queen back at the apartment.

“How much did you say these cost?” I asked Hayley after a few minutes.

“The one my folks were looking at was going to cost $20,000 with everything,” she said. “But you know my mom has really expensive taste. I think there have to be less expensive ones. They’re not built like regular mattresses, with the wood and springs and everything. I think it’s all memory foam.”

“This would not fit in your apartment, Jimmy,” Katarina said.

“I mean, we might get some place bigger.”

“What?” Morrigan asked.

Hayley explained how we’d been talking about moving in together this summer.

“This is pretty nice, actually,” MJ said. She intertwined her fingers with Morrigan, and Hayley and Katarina did the same a moment later.

“Yeah, it is,” I said.

“We’re definitely getting one,” Hayley said.

So we just rested together for a while.

Chapter 10

I wasn’t tired enough to sleep after the dream that morning, but was all so cozy and cuddly that I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to disturb this thing I’d somehow fallen into, having four pretty awesome girls all wanting to be together with me, and wanting and enjoying each other’s presence in my life. I might have been indentured to Hell at the moment, but the side benefits were real.

Then I slowly realized something that, somehow, hadn’t occurred to me.

We were up here trying to figure out what Caacrinolaas had been doing. And I was currently in Caacrinolaas’s house – lying in his fucking bed – just spacing out and enjoying my good fortune.

I sat up suddenly. The girls all moaned in protest, trying to pull me back.

“Jimmy,” Hayley mumbled. “Where are you going?”

I looked from blonde to brunette to redhead to purple and almost laid back down.

“Look, tonight we’ll—we’ll tear up this bed and bring Morrigan into it all. She’s earned some things.” She shot me a smile of anticipation. “But have you forgotten that we’re in Caacrinolaas’s house? There could well be some important clues here, and we haven’t even looked.”

Hayley and MJ sat up.

“He’s right,” MJ said.

Hayley nodded. Katarina and Morrigan sat up as well. I went downstairs and found Adriana in the kitchen starting dinner.

“Did Caa—Gaylord have an office? Records of things he was doing?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

Adriana led us to the bedroom on the first floor, which looked out on the backyard. There was a desk with a computer and a couple of chairs.

“The computer does not work,” Adriana said, “if you were thinking of looking through it. When he disappeared, it just died.”

Hayley and I took a look at the computer. When I started it up, there was an immediate error saying there was no operating system.

“I bet the hard drive is fried,” she said. “What Morax said, about the virus in his head, it might have hit this too.”

I wanted to be sure, so I spent about ten minutes using my laptop to make a recovery tool with a flash drive I found in the desk. Meanwhile, MJ and Morrigan searched the desk and the rest of the office.

When I got the recovery drive set up, I found that Hayley was right – the hard drive was not just corrupted. It was completely blank.

“Shit.”

“That’s not exactly easy to do,” Hayley said.

“No.”

“We’re not finding much either,” MJ said. “Just a lot of old bills and random paperwork. None of it looks like anything.”

Morrigan stood in the center of the office with a funny look on her face.

“What?” I asked.

“There’s something here, though,” she replied.

“What do you mean?” MJ asked.

“I can’t explain it,” Morrigan replied. “I just feel it. Ever since I connected with Echidna, it’s like I’ve had this sixth sense. I can feel enchantments. Like on Jimmy’s ring, or his staff, or even what Caacrinolaas did to Adriana. It’s still there, like an echo.”

“And you feel something here?” I asked.

“Yes. I can’t tell what or where it is, but there’s something in this office, something strong.”

Hayley looked at me. “Jimmy, wasn’t there something in Caacrinolaas’s entry about invisibility?”

“Yes,” Katarina said. “That is one of his powers, or it used to be.”

I went to the grimoires. They were right. It was listed as secondary to incitement of love and murder, but he was supposed to be able to make men invisible.

“So whatever is in here could be hidden,” Hayley said.

I focused my ring – which gave me powers similar to Morrigan’s familiar sense – and I realized I could feel it too. But I couldn’t see the enchantment anywhere.

Another ten minutes of crawling around and feeling every corner of the office produced nothing. Morrigan continued to insist something was here.

“Maybe we have to have to lift the enchantment first,” she said finally.

The question was how. I didn’t want to create a cloud of nitric acid inside Adriana’s house, like I’d used to dispel the other wards. But this wasn’t a ward, exactly. So maybe I needed something else.

There was a spell in Clavicula Salomonis for becoming invisible. But it involved creating a wax replica of yourself, then hanging it by a hair in a small closet while wreathing it in incense and reciting the incantation. Liber Incantationum had one as well, but involved summoning a group of demons with a lot of herbs and perfumes, demons who would then give you an invisibility cloak. Morrigan – who had been trained by Charlotte – was familiar with both of these. Frustrated, I went online and randomly reviewed a few Wicca sites for ideas. The rituals and components were all over the place. But after reading the fourth or fifth surely bogus spell, something occurred to me. I flipped back to the spells in my grimoires, then back to the spell recipes.

Every single one of them used myrrh as a component.

Myrrh was an aromatic gum resin. I went to the online chemistry database I’d been using for my spell research and found the entry for myrrh. The distinctive odor was caused by a family of compounds known as furano-sesquiterpenes, a type of hydrocarbon.

Caacrinolaas was not a sorcerer and would not have cast his enchantment in the same way a sorcerer would cast these spells. But he was doing the same magic, and something told the end result would be nearly the same.

I sat there for a minute or two wondering how I might break these furano-sesquiterpenes down the way I’d broken down the other wards, when the rather obvious fact occurred to me that – like all terpenes – they were highly flammable. I couldn’t light Adriana’s office on fire, but I didn’t need to do that. I just needed to burn off the essence of myrrh. I needed a highly controlled source of ignition, but I had one: Enya – the fire spirit in my staff.

I explained to Adriana what I wanted to do. She was, naturally, not too enthusiastic about the idea.

“You can control this thing?” she asked.

“Yes. I used these spirits when I fought with the collective in Deirdre’s house.”

“I have seen him with it,” Katarina said.

“Show me,” Adriana said. “Outside.”

We went into her backyard, and I called Enya forth, sending a little flame dancing around the patio. After a minute of this, Adriana nodded.

“All right. But let me get the fire extinguisher from my kitchen first.”

MJ and Hayley cleared out all the flammable material we could, mainly the books and papers we’d uncovered from the desk and some clothes and other random items in the closet. Then I stood back with my staff and called Enya out again.

Very carefully, I moved her around the office, around the desk, along the walls, in and out of the closet. For a minute or two, nothing happened.

Then Morrigan gasped softly. “I think—”

And just then, as I moved Enya along the baseboard in one corner of the office, there was a little wisp of flame around her. It was so quick, I would have missed it had I not been watching closely. And Morrigan let out an excited noise.

“That was it! It’s gone.”

But there was still nothing there. The carpet looked exactly the same. Hayley and MJ went over to the corner and knelt down. Hayley pulled at the carpet, and the corner peeled back.

“It wasn’t like this before,” she said. “I was looking for anything that might be under the carpet.”

“It wasn’t just invisible,” I said. “It must have clouded your perception too.”

“Look!” she exclaimed.

Under the carpet was a wooden board set into the concrete of the floor slab. A rectangular hole about two feet across had been chiseled out and covered with the wood. Hayley pulled up the board. Underneath was a wooden chest just about the same size as the hole. She and MJ lifted it out.

Adriana gasped. “Gaylord did this? He smashed a hole in our house?”

The chest was ancient, wooden, and brass-bound. The wood was dark with age and wear, and the metal bindings were covered in a green patina. Hayley in her excitement tried to open it before I could stop her, but nothing happened – it was locked.

“I don’t suppose Gaylord left behind any weird old keys?” I asked.

“No,” Adriana said, “not that I know of.”

The chest, despite its age, was solid. There was definitely something inside, possibly a lot of somethings. When I shook it gently, it almost sounded like it was full of gravel.

I had a spell that opened locks. I’d used it to get into the Breamstone Collective offices. All it required was my staff and an iron key, which I’d brought with us. Except when I cast it, nothing happened. Something in the chest was resisting it, which didn’t really surprise me.

“I feel something,” Morrigan said. “There’s an enchantment on it.”

When I looked closely at the lock, I saw it, inside the keyhole. It seemed confined to the lock mechanism. We could probably break the chest open somehow, but I was leery of doing it when we didn’t know what was inside or what the enchantment did. We searched the office again, finding no keys.

“Let me try something else,” I said.

I woke up my laptop and started the divination model. I focused my mind completely on the chest. What was inside and how did we open it? I hit run, and waited for a few minutes. While it was running, I explained to Adriana and Morrigan what I was doing.

When the results popped up, my jaw dropped.

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

DEIRDRE

Adriana gasped. Morrigan put her hand on my shoulder.

“Has that ever happened before?” MJ asked.

“No. Something must be screwed up. Hold on.”

Because of how it worked – modeling a random flow of particles, each one of which represented a word – it shouldn’t have ever produced a list like this. The results had occasionally included duplicated words, which I assumed was an effect of the spirits influencing the particle flow to emphasize something. But these results would have meant the spirits had influenced the model to send the same particle across the end point twenty-four times before any of the other particles reached it. That should not have happened.

I looked through the code for a few minutes, trying to see if there was anything  that would cause the model to glitch out if Deirdre was one of the results. I found nothing. But I’d been working on this thing for months, improving and debugging it with Ahmed’s help – Ahmed was very good at this stuff – and the code was awfully clean by this point.

“It kind of makes sense, Jimmy,” Hayley said.

“Your model has never been wrong,” Katarina said. “It has been right in some very impressive ways, even when the results did not make sense at first.”

“Has it ever been this direct?” Morrigan asked.

“No,” I said. “I just don’t know what that means.”

“Maybe we’re getting closer to the answers,” Hayley said.

I sighed. “We were looking at Deirdre already. So I guess this just makes it crystal clear.”

“She is still not home yet,” Adriana said.

“Couldn’t we just bust the chest open?” MJ asked.

“The spirits would appear to disagree there,” I said.

“Yeah,” Morrigan said. “Pretty obvious, I think.”

◆◆◆

We ate dinner, a black bean stew with pork and beef served over rice.

“This is delicious,” Hayley said.

“It is called feijoada,” Adriana said. “We eat it very often in Brazil. It works best in the slow cooker, so I make it once or twice a month and freeze it. A whole pot is too much for one person.”

When dinner was over, there was still no sign of Deirdre. Her house was dark, and her car was not there.

“Could she have left town?” MJ asked.

“I saw her this morning when I left to open the shop,” Adriana said. “She was working in her garden.”

I sighed. “Are you guys up for another burglary?” I looked around the group, and though I saw concern, no one said anything. “We could probably get in. I can take down those wards, and that unlock spell ought to work on her house. We just don’t know what we’re looking for.”

“If it’s enchanted, I could find it,” Morrigan said.

“Someone would need to watch for Deirdre,” MJ said.

Charlotte let out a loud miaow. I nodded.

“I will stand with her,” Adriana said. “I know what Deirdre’s car looks like.”

“I should go with them,” Katarina said. “If something happens, I can take a different form to distract her.”

I got the nitric acid, masks and safety glasses, and the box of rubber gloves out of the car. Adriana gave me a bucket to use. We went around the back of her house and climbed over the fence into Deirdre’s backyard. I called up the nitric acid mist, and as before, it dissolved the wards in seconds. Clearly Deirdre hadn’t figured out what I’d done the last time.

The unlock spell quickly opened her back door. She didn’t have a security system, no doubt trusting her wards to take care of that.

In we went. I could see in the dark thanks to my connection to Charlotte. MJ, Hayley, and Morrigan looked around with a pair of flashlights Adriana had given them. Echidna was coiled around Morrigan’s shoulder now, head weaving in the air as Morrigan walked through the house.

I checked on Charlotte several times through our connection. She sat on Adriana’s front lawn, but there was nothing out there. A car drove by at one point, but Adriana immediately whispered to her, “That’s not her.”

“Anything?” I asked Morrigan. I’d been looking around the house with my ring but hadn’t seen any enchantments.

“Maybe,” she said. “I can tell a lot has happened in this house.”

“No kidding,” MJ muttered.

When we walked into one of the spare bedrooms, I heard Morrigan draw a little breath.

“There’s something here.”

“Where?” I asked.

She turned to the closet. “Up there.”

There were no wards I could see. I nodded to MJ, who opened the sliding door. I watched carefully, but nothing happened. Morrigan stepped forward, looking up to the shelf along the top. I leaned in with her.

“I think—there.” She pointed to an old, faded shoebox shoved all the way in the back. I reached for it and slid it out from under the multiple boxes on top of it. It was light. There were no shoes inside this thing. I opened it up. Inside were several sheets of tissue paper, left over from whatever shoes had originally been packed up in it, but under the paper was an old key. It glowed with a very strong enchantment, one I couldn’t immediately make sense of.

I took the key out and put the shoebox back. Then I pulled Morrigan to me and kissed her forehead. “Not bad.”

She hugged me quickly. “Thanks, Master.”

We closed up the closet and left the house quickly, locking up behind us. When we climbed back over the fence, Adriana came to the back door and let us in.

I held up the key. She gasped. “You are very good at this,” she said.

“Morrigan found it.”

“It has an enchantment on it,” Morrigan said.

We reconvened in the office. I set the chest on the desk and slid the key into the lock. It fit perfectly, and the lock clicked open when I turned it.

I opened the lid.

“What the hell?” Hayley gasped.

“Are those rocks?” MJ asked.

Turned out I’d been right about the gravel. The chest was full of strangely shaped pieces of stone, dozens of them. But when I picked a couple of them up, I realized they weren’t random rocks. They were carved into various complex shapes, angles, and curves, and branched little things that looked like little sticks or pieces of coral. A couple them were T-shaped; several others resembled the symbol for pi. Something about them seemed very familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. All of them were roughly triangular in cross-section, with flat backs that came to points on the other sides.

None of them radiated any magic.

“That is not what I was expecting,” Adriana said.

“Me neither,” I replied. “But these are clearly intended for something.”

Katarina came into the office with Charlotte. “I think Deirdre has returned.”

All of them looked at me.

“I don’t know if I’m ready to confront her yet,” I said, “not after what we learned tonight. There’s more going on here than we realized. Maybe she’ll tell us, but then what? We know she still has connections to the collective.”

“She’ll know the wards are down sooner or later,” Morrigan said.

“But she can’t know we’re here, and it’s hard to see her realizing that key is gone,” Hayley said. “At least not for a while.”

We watched Deirdre’s house for a little while, but nothing seemed to happen. I sent Charlotte out to look through her windows, but she did nothing besides work at her computer for about twenty minutes. Then she went to bed to read.

It was getting late, and it had been a pretty long day. I decided we would be better off starting fresh in the morning.

Chapter 11

But there were still a couple of things I knew I needed to do tonight. I talked briefly to Hayley about what I wanted, and she went off to set them up in the bedroom.

Before I went to bed, I went to find Adriana. She was down in the kitchen, having changed out of her clothes and into a short black silk robe. She looked awfully good, and when she turned toward me, I knew she knew I’d noticed.

“We’re going to figure this thing out with Deirdre,” I said. “I just can’t guarantee what we’re going to find. I’ve gotten several nasty surprises with this stuff before.”

She walked up to me, stopping just a bit closer than might be socially appropriate.

“I am grateful for what you have done for me so far, Jimmy. I would rather know the truth. Whatever you find cannot be more difficult than what I have gone through already.”

She had a point. “Okay. I’ll see you in the morning,” I said.

Adriana leaned in and gave me a lingering kiss on the cheek. I felt the warmth of her breasts against my chest.

“Go to your women. They need you.” She smiled. “Were I a few years younger, or perhaps less tired, I might ask to join you.”

Then she laughed at the look on my face.

“I know what sort of man you are, Jimmy. You are a sorcerer who has bound his own succubus, yet somehow she is not enough for you. I see how they look at you, Morrigan especially. Hayley asked to borrow a scarf from me, and I suspect I know what it is for.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay.”

She continued smiling up at me. “Since Gaylord disappeared, since you freed me, the men of this town do not quite seem to know what to do with me, but I think you would. I think your talents cannot end with sorcery . . . and I am very curious to know more.” Then I felt her pinch my butt, and I jumped. She laughed. “But not tonight. Good night, Jimmy.”

“Good night.”

I watched Adriana go upstairs. If she had anything on under that robe, I couldn’t tell.

◆◆◆

I found Morrigan waiting nervously outside the master bedroom. The door was shut as I’d instructed. She held the scarf Hayley had borrowed from Adriana.

I took her in my arms and kissed her. “Tonight you get your rewards. Here, and in the dream world.”

She gasped softly. “Thank you, Master.”

“Just tell me something. Hayley told me that when you guys were together, you’d never been with a guy, only girls.”

“I haven’t.”

“Still?”

“I’m bi. I am, I promise, I just haven’t met a lot of guys I’ve been attracted to, and none I wanted to do it with. Nobody anything like you. You turn me on so much.”

“So you’re good?”

She nodded against my shoulder. “I want this so bad. You have no idea.”

“Do I need a condom, or are you okay?”

“I’m okay. I went on the pill months ago.” She laughed softly. “I wanted to be prepared if I ever got your attention.”

I opened the door and led her inside. In the center of that huge bed were Hayley, MJ, and Katarina. They were all nude, and they lay with their heads together, Katarina in the middle and MJ and Hayley angled to either side. A pillow lay above Hayley’s and MJ’s heads. Morrigan’s jaw dropped as she looked at them.

I undressed her slowly from behind, pulling off her top and then unzipping her skirt and letting it fall down. I unhooked her bra and let that fall to the floor as well. She stood there in nothing but her stockings and garter belt. I took those off as well.

I drew the little black collar I’d gotten from Adriana’s shop earlier that day from my pocket. Her eyes went wide as I buckled it around her neck.

“You had one in the dream, but you need one here too.”

She didn’t answer me, just nodding rapidly.

Then I took the scarf from her and tied it over her eyes. “I want you to focus on what they’re doing to you. That’s all.”

She began to tremble slightly. “Yes, Master.”

I walked around in front of her, caressing her big breasts. She wasn’t quite as firm and high as I’d made Charlotte, but she was still very nice. She had puffy nipples like Katarina’s, and I played with them briefly, listening to her ragged breathing.

I’d thought from feeling her in the car earlier that she was completely bare, but I hadn’t felt up high enough. In fact, she had a short strip of purple hair above her labia that she’d obviously dyed to match the hair on her head. It hadn’t been there in the dream because I’d controlled her appearance so closely.

I brushed my finger against it. “I love this. Keep doing it.” She nodded.

I reversed my finger and felt up between her legs. She was dripping wet. I slipped a finger between her lips, finding her little clit and playing with the ring around it. She shivered. I stepped back again.

“Grab your knees, baby girl.”

She did, bending forward at the waist and sticking her butt out. I went around behind her and spanked her until the skin on her ass was red. She took it all and didn’t move.

“Kneel.”

She did, mouth falling open. She knew what I wanted.

I undressed and slid my half-hard cock into Morrigan’s mouth. She closed her lips around me and began to suck. She didn’t quite seem to know what to do, but she had the right idea. I felt the stud in her tongue moving against me.

When I was completely hard, I pulled her to her feet and guided her to the bed, getting her to crawl up above Katarina. She realized quickly what I wanted and knelt over Katarina’s head. Katarina pulled her down and began to lick, just as MJ and Hayley each took a breast in their mouths. Morrigan whimpered as she understood what was happening and leaned forward to rest her head on the pillow.

I crawled around in front of her. I caressed her face a few times.

“Katarina is very, very good at this. Better, I am sure, than anyone you’ve ever been with. But she’s going to hold you off until I’m ready.”

“Yes, Master,” she gasped.

I wanted to savor all this, all of my women, so I intended to take my time.

I went around in front of MJ. I kissed her taut little breasts and then slid down to take her bare pussy in my mouth. She was ready for me, already wet. Though I would never be anywhere near Katarina’s skill level, I had learned quite a bit from her in sharing Hayley. I flicked MJ’s piercing back and forth over her clit. Then I began sucking and massaging her with the tip of my tongue. Before long, she was rolling her hips at my face, thighs twitching against my head. Her hand came down and pulled me closer. I kept up the same rhythm, and in a minute or so, her abdomen began to quiver and her stomach muscles stood out as she came with a soft whimper around Morrigan’s boob.

I climbed above her and slid myself in, savoring the heat and tightness. She groped for my hand, squeezing it, but didn’t let up with Morrigan. I’d been thinking about this all day, and I knew the first time wasn’t going to last long. Fortunately, MJ was still wound up, and moved with me as I ground my cock against her clit. She shivered into a second orgasm just as I lost it inside of her, spurting as deeply in as I could get. She squeezed my hand again, and I savored the look in her big brown eyes.

When my orgasm subsided, I withdrew and went around to Hayley. I found her very wet. I took a moment to nuzzle the little patch of orange-red hair above her clit and then dove in. By now, I knew exactly what she liked, and it didn’t take long before she was groping at my hair and squeezing my head with her thighs. I slipped a finger into her like she liked me to do sometimes and began massaging her from inside. Less than a minute of this had her hips bouncing at my face as she shook in release.

As with MJ, I gave her only a moment to catch her breath before climbing up and entering her. She lifted her legs to let me get completely inside, and then I just rocked myself against her over and over until I felt her contracting around me as she came again, fingers digging into my waist.

In front of me, Morrigan was lost in the multiple sensations coursing through her, whimpering and moaning into the pillow in front of her. I could tell by now that Katarina was getting her closer and closer, but taking it very slow as I’d instructed. A few more thrusts, and I finished inside Hayley.

I withdrew and went to my succubus. She was ready and waiting, opening her legs for me as I crawled up. She kept her focus on Morrigan, but I knew what she liked as well. I just sucked on her clit as I rolled my tongue against it. I held her close, wrapping my arms around her thighs. I enjoyed making her feel good even though her emotions about it might be handicapped. In a few minutes, I felt the little twitches and quivers in her abdomen that always preceded her orgasms. I looked up, seeing her tongue gently teasing Morrigan, but her fingers were digging into Morrigan’s butt. A few moments later, she shivered under me as her thighs drummed against my head.

I drew on our connection to get myself hard again, and entered her slowly. Even as she continued pleasuring Morrigan, I felt her pinching and squeezing me. Morrigan’s rosy butt was right in front of my face now, and I leaned down to kiss it.

“How are you feeling, baby?” I asked.

She could only whimper at first. “I’m good, Master,” she managed.

I focused on Katarina, enjoying the wonderful sensations around my cock. I fucked her with long, straight strokes, giving her every inch to work on. She did. Even so, she knew what I was trying to do to her and worked with me, lifting her hips to meet every thrust. This was the third time for me, and I had to pound her again and again. I exploded inside her a few minutes later, just as she contracted around me as she came.

I fell back to catch my breath, looking up between Morrigan’s thighs. Katarina was now just teasing her with the tip of her tongue, a flick here, a stroke there, moving the ring back and forth. I could tell from the quivering of Morrigan’s stomach that she was right on the edge. She sobbed in frustration at what Katarina was doing to her, and how MJ and Hayley were still pleasuring her nipples.

I kept myself hard and climbed up above Katarina.

“You’re not allowed to come yet, baby.”

“Yes, Master,” she moaned.

Katarina extended her tongue, guiding me into my purple-haired slave girl. Morrigan gasped as I slowly filled her up, as she took a cock inside her for the first time. She was so wet I could barely feel anything, but even so she was as tight as MJ. I bottomed out gently against her butt, then stopped. I felt her flesh quivering around me.

I waited for a few seconds and then I took her hair in my hand and began thrusting into her.

“Now, Katarina.”

Katarina finally pushed her over the edge. I felt her tongue fluttering rapidly against the underside of my cock where I was pumping into Morrigan.

Morrigan screamed her release into the pillow, shaking and shuddering around me as I pounded her butt. Her hands twisted in the sheets, balling them up around her fists. Katarina’s tongue buzzed against us, drawing her orgasm out as far she could. I had to hold tightly onto Morrigan’s hips as her body convulsed over and over.

Finally she fell forward onto the bed in front of us, pulling away from the other girls, gasping and shaking and sobbing at what we’d done to her.

I rolled her gently on her back and entered her again, leaning down to kiss her. She put her arms weakly around my neck and tried to kiss me back.

“I love you, Master.”

Hayley, MJ, and Katarina crawled up to lay beside us. She was too weak to do anything more, so I just enjoyed her body for a few minutes before coming one last time inside her. She hugged me tightly as she felt it.

“This hasn’t been the day I expected to get when I woke up this morning,” she said.

I kissed her a few times. “I know. And we’re not done. But it’s time to sleep now.”

Morrigan’s eyes went wide. “What are you going to do?”

“You’ll see, baby girl.”

The five of us cuddled up together in that big, wonderful bed and fell into a warm, sated slumber.

◆◆◆

I appeared in the castle. Charlotte was there, in one of her witchy black dresses.

“Hello, Master.”

“You know what we’re doing here,” I said.

“Of course. I have been looking forward to it.”

We descended to the dungeon. Ever since emerging from that epic dream that morning, I’d been thinking about how to bring Morrigan’s endless frustration to its conclusion. In the months we’d been here, I looked all through her fantasies and kinks, and so I knew that, in addition to everything else we’d done, she also had a bit of a fetish for tentacle hentai. So I’d decided to roll with it and have some fun.

I pulled Morrigan into the dream, putting her back into one of her fantasy slave-girl outfits. Then I restored all the long months of tension and orgasm denial. The shock was enough to bring her to lucidity. She gasped aloud, shaking and almost losing her balance.

“We’re here, baby.”

She fell to her knees. “Yes, Master,” she gasped again.

To my surprise, I realized that I’d pulled Echidna in with her. She wasn’t what I expected. She was a slim, beautiful girl no older than Morrigan, olive-skinned, long black hair, and serpentine green eyes. She and Charlotte came together in a warm hug, holding each other for about ten seconds. I let them have their moment.

“I missed you so much,” Charlotte said.

“I as well,” Echidna said. “I am so glad we are together again.”

They finally separated. Echidna dropped to her knees beside Morrigan.

“Hello, Master,” she said, looking up at me. A smile creased her lips. “I serve Morrigan, and I served Charlotte. As they serve, I serve you as well.”

I nodded and turned back to my slave girl. “Morrigan, there are darker realms than Hell, and your need has called out to them. There is only one thing that can give you the release you crave.”

Her eyes went wide. I waved my hand. Behind her, a broad black circle of energy spiraled open. Something odd tickled the back of my mind, as if a new source of power was answering my call, but I ignored it to focus on Morrigan.

She turned to look and immediately started whimpering in fear. And that was before the huge mass of gleaming black tentacles emerged.

She let out a little scream as they lunged for her, grabbing her arms and legs and lifting her into the air. They pulled her taut into a spread-eagle position, then tore her clothes from her body.

“Master!”

I knew, because I could see right into her head, that she was both terrified and thrilled at this, unable to believe what was happening.

The tentacles wrapped themselves around her. Mouth-tentacles closed around her nipples and clit and began to suck. Dick tentacles penetrated her ass and pussy. I made them throb and vibrate and pump in and out of her. A dozen other tentacles writhed all over her body, squeezing her boobs and her butt and probing her mouth.

I gave her a few moments to appreciate all of it. Then I broke the dam and let her come.

She let out a scream of ecstasy that should have cracked the foundations of the castle. I let her release reach its peak, and then I locked her there.

Time had no meaning in this place, so who cares how long I kept her like that as she thrashed around in the grip of the black tentacles? When I grew bored with holding her pleasure at one peak, I made it roll over her like waves at the beach, orgasms crashing against her body over and over again. I made it rise and fall like a sine wave. I sent the orgasms through her like a machine gun, each one hitting her before the previous one had ended.

Echidna waited patiently, sitting on her feet and watching. Charlotte sat with her, holding her hand.

I kept it up until Morrigan was begging me to stop. I kept it up until she cried out that she was dying and couldn’t take any more of it. I kept it up until she was sobbing that she hated orgasms and never wanted to come again.

That was when I released her.

The tentacles withdrew from her body and laid her tenderly in my arms, limp as a sack of cooked spaghetti. I carried her up to the bedroom at the top of the castle. Charlotte and I lay down with her, just holding her between us. Echidna lay down behind me, cuddling against my back.

It was a long time before Morrigan’s head was clear enough to speak.

“Thank you, Master,” she said weakly.

“You earned it.”

She hugged me. “How did you think of the tentacles?”

“In here, you have no secrets from me, baby girl. I know what’s in your head.”

She nuzzled against me. “That’s good. I like it.”

Chapter 12

When I woke up the next morning, Katarina was gone. I was between Hayley and Morrigan on one side and MJ on the other. They’d migrated around that huge mattress during the night, and it took little effort to climb out without waking them.

I went downstairs to the kitchen, where I found Adriana and Katarina sitting at the table talking.

“Good morning,” I said.

Adriana – wearing that same little black silk robe – got up and motioned for me to sit. She poured me some coffee, regarding me with a sly smile on her face. I wondered what they had been talking about, but I supposed I could ask Katarina later.

“You found the bed suitable?” she asked as she set my coffee down.

Yeah, there was nothing under that robe. I tried not to stare.

“Yeah, thanks, it’s great. I hope we didn’t keep you up.”

She waved her hand. “I would never eavesdrop on my guests.”

I nodded, leaning over to kiss Katarina as Adriana sat back down. “Of course not.”

“Even when the noises I was not listening to made me reconsider my decision to sleep alone.”

Katarina laughed. Adriana had laid out some fruit and bread for breakfast, and I made myself a small plate.

“So what are we doing today?” Adriana asked.

“I want to talk to Deirdre before she goes anywhere. But there’s something else I want to do, once everyone else is up.”

I’d been thinking about this while I was falling asleep last night. I needed to talk to Amira again. One by one, the girls came downstairs wearing random bits of clothing, mine and theirs. Hayley came down first, giving me a quick kiss before she got her coffee. MJ came next, greeting everyone as she ran her fingers through her long, luscious, black-brown hair – something I was never going to get tired of watching her do. She came over and nuzzled me quickly. She wore nothing but the t-shirt I’d had on yesterday, and she let me caress her tight little butt for a moment or two before laughing softly and pulling away. She rubbed Hayley’s shoulder as she sat down.

Morrigan, wearing a sweatshirt of mine that she must have dug out of my bag and Echidna around her neck, was the last to get up, which was understandable. She sat in my lap and hugged me tightly before getting her coffee. When she sat down in her chair, Hayley reached over to squeeze her hand. They exchanged a look that made me feel really good. I was happy having Morrigan in my coven . . . but Hayley needed to be happy with it too.

“You said there was something you wanted to talk to everyone about, Jimmy?” Katarina said.

“Yeah. I want to summon Amira again. I have some questions she needs to answer.”

“Who is Amira?” Adriana asked.

We’d explained a lot of things to her, but I realized at that moment that we had never gotten into the precise details of my origin. The table went silent as the girls waited for my response.

I wasn’t entirely sure about this, but Adriana was a witch and understood a lot of things that someone else would not have. So I spent a few minutes explaining it to her. Her eyes got wide as I got into the core of the story.

“Nossa!” she exclaimed. “Your grandmother is a demon?”

“Yes,” I said. “And she’s mixed up in all this.”

“And it is how you are able to control their dreams?”

“Yep,” Hayley said.

“Yeah,” MJ said.

Morrigan just nodded, glancing at me quickly.

Adriana stared at me, breathing hard, as if she’d never seen me before. “Deus do céu. I knew you were a powerful sorcerer, but this . . .”

“And we have to unravel all of it,” I said.

She let out a long breath. “Then let us summon her.”

◆◆◆

We did it in her garage. After some unsuccessful dicking around with the gas connection, I finally had to hook the magic circle up to the propane tank in Adriana’s grill. But it worked. She had the other components I needed, except for the item with a strong connection to Amira.

I’d burned the letter she left. So what else would work? After a moment or two of thought, I had an idea. I asked Adriana for a pair of fingernail clippers. If Amira didn’t have a strong connection to me, I wasn’t sure what it would be. I clipped a couple of fingernail parings into the brazier and fired everything up.

When I finished the incantation, Amira appeared in the center of the circle with a pop. As with the first time, I was briefly taken aback by the intensity of her beauty and sexuality.

“Hello, Jimmy.” She looked around. “Your coven is growing. I am impressed.”

I heard Adriana mutter something that sounded like piranha, but I wasn’t sure why she would call my ex-grandmother a fish.

“You told us to investigate Caacrinolaas. We have. This is his house, and this is the woman he charmed. We’ve learned some things, but I’m not sure what it all means.”

“What have you learned?”

“Deirdre is mixed up in this. She had some connection to Caacrinolaas that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

There was a flash of surprise in her eyes that anyone other than her own grandson would have missed.

“Yes,” she said. “And you should investigate it.”

“You don’t know what it is? You knew Deirdre. The two of you made me.”

“We were in hiding, Jimmy. For many years. The debt you carry made that possible.”

It took me a few moments to realize she was deflecting me.

“Why would she have anything to do with a demon like Caacrinolaas?” I asked.

She seemed to struggle with herself briefly. “She must have wanted something from him.”

I scoffed. “That’s obvious. But what? You knew her. What would it be?”

“There . . . may be things she still desires from Hell.”

“She left the collective,” I said. “She isn’t serving Hell anymore. She had a ward on her house that prevented Katarina from even entering it.”

“That is true. But that does not preclude the possibility that she regrets her decision. The path to power she pretends to walk now is much longer and more arduous. She may be growing tired of it.”

I pondered that for a few seconds. I thought about the things I knew about Deirdre, what she’d done with Amalia, and what she was doing now. What did she want?

“Why did Astaroth depose Zagan?” I asked. “What did he want from him? You were there.”

Amira shuddered for a moment, then forced a smile onto her face. “That has nothing to do with this.”

“You have to answer the question,” I said. “That’s how this works.”

She fought me for a few moments, but the answer came out. “He wanted Zagan’s power.”

“Which one?”

“Jimmy,” she moaned. “You do not know what you are doing.”

“Answer me.”

She fought me again, fought me with all her strength, but for whatever reason, I prevailed, and she spoke.

“His—power—to—improve—things.” Every word seemed like it had been drawn out by a pair of pliers. Then she let out a scream of rage. “By all the fires of Hell, Jimmy! You are taking risks you do not realize!”

“That’s it for now. You can go.”

“Jimmy—”

But I dismissed her, and she was gone.

It was a while before any of us said anything. I felt one of the girls take my hand, and I looked over to see that it was Katarina. She leaned against me, nuzzling my neck. I knew why. I had just won a battle of wills with a Duchess of Hell, and there were certain things that overt displays of sorcerous power did to succubi. She was trying to hide her arousal, but I felt it anyway. I squeezed her hand and returned the nuzzle.

“Let’s go talk to Deirdre,” I said.

◆◆◆

The master bedroom had a big walk-in shower. It was a bit crowded for five people, but with all of us working together to get washed up, we managed. Being the only dude in the house, I was ready well before the others.

I was in the kitchen with a fresh cup of coffee when Hayley came down, hair still slightly damp.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.” She smiled and came over, leaning against me.

I put my arms around her and hugged her. “We don’t bullshit each other,” I said. “That’s how it’s been from the night we met, right? We try to keep everything straight.”

“Absent your not mentioning all the demons immediately, yes. Why?”

“You’re okay with all this? The five of us?”

She laughed softly against my chest. “I love that you keep asking me, Jimmy, but you don’t need to keep asking me. I’m right here. Does it look like I’m not okay?”

“I just need to check in.”

“Morrigan and I didn’t break up because we weren’t in love. We were. We broke up because she needed something from me that I just couldn’t give her. I told her she needed to find someone else who could.”

“Right,” I said. “You explained all that.”

“But we never stopped caring about each other. That’s why we kept hooking up.” She looked up at me. “I love you. Do you know what I came down here to tell you?”

“What?”

“It’s how happy I am knowing you can give Morrigan this thing I can’t. She can work out all her submissive stuff with you, and I can be with her without having to worry about it anymore.” She rose up on her toes and kissed me.

“Okay. I’ll quit stressing about it,” I said.

“I love that you care. But we’re all adults, and we’ve chosen to be with you. It’s good.”

When everyone else was dressed, the six of us, Adriana included, went over to Deirdre’s house. There wasn’t much to say beforehand – she would either talk to us or she wouldn’t.

Her front door had been replaced, since I’d blown it off the hinges in that fight with Charles. When it opened, the look on her face made it clear we were the last people she wanted to see on a Sunday morning. But it was also clear she was very surprised to see Adriana with us.

“You have things to answer for, Deirdre,” Adriana said.

“We’re here to talk, not fight,” I said. “I would prefer not to do any more damage to your house.”

“Did you take down my wards again?” she finally asked.

“Yes.”

“What do you want?” Her eyes fell on Morrigan. “And who is she?”

“Part of my coven,” I said.

“What were you doing with Gaylord?” Adriana asked. “I know you were helping him with something.”

Deirdre groaned and stepped back, motioning us inside. “I am only doing this in the interest of ensuring you never come back here. Make it quick.”

We followed her into her den.

“Gaylord,” I said. “I know you know what he was.”

“A very confused demon,” she replied. “Confused and, frankly, rather foolish to boot.”

“This has to do with Zagan, doesn’t it?”

“Doesn’t everything in this town?” she asked.

I glanced at MJ, who rolled her eyes.

“He wanted to use Zagan’s power to make Adriana love him, really and truly, not just be charmed?” I asked.

“If you know all this already, why are you here?”

“That is truly what he was doing?” Adriana asked, eyes flaring. “And you helped him with it?”

Deirdre shook her head. “Not in any meaningful sense. Jimmy, what I told you when you were here last is true. Since Amalia vanished, no one has been able to harness the power of the rock. Caacrinolaas and I recognized each other for what we were when he arrived here. He could smell the taint of my former service to Hell on me, and he asked for my help. Because he insisted he had a way to reach Zagan, I listened to him, because I was concerned about what he might do.”

“And what was it?” I asked.

“He had something that was apparently left over from the original binding,” she replied. “He thought he could use it to awaken Zagan.”

“Which was what?”

“An old chest. What was in it, I don’t know. We weren’t able to open it. There was a very strong enchantment on it.”

I tried not to react as I pondered what to do with this answer. I prayed that none of the others said anything about it.

“Why was he so obsessed with love?” Adriana asked. “He seemed to think it was the key to everything.”

“Again, I don’t know,” Deirdre replied.

“What was he was doing with the collective?” Hayley asked. “Did you put them together?”

“No. He already knew they were here, and what they are. How, I am not sure, but he knew Amalia used to be part of it. He met with them, but as far as I know, it went nowhere. They couldn’t help him either.”

“He knew Amalia?” I asked.

“Yes. But she knew a lot of demons. You know that very well.”

“‘Love is all you need.’ But demons aren’t capable of love,” Katarina said. “Why does that matter?”

Deirdre shrugged. “If I knew, I would tell you, if for no other reason than to get you to stop bothering me.”

There was only one thing I left I could think of to ask her. “You couldn’t open that chest even though you have the key?”

For the first time, Deirdre looked surprised. She blinked. “What?”

“You had the key to that chest.”

She struggled with herself for a few moments. “What are you talking about? I had nothing.”

I stared at her. I could see no sign that she was lying. Nor could I see any enchantment on her.

“Why do you think I would have the key?” she asked. “Caacrinolaas brought that chest from who knows where. I had never seen it before. We worked on it for days, but we weren’t able to do a thing with it. The enchantment resisted everything we did.”

I looked around at the girls and Adriana. They were trying to hide it, but I could see the bafflement in their eyes.

The only way to push this further would be to tell her we’d broken into her house.

“I think we’re done here,” I said.

Chapter 13

“How could she have that key and not know what it was?” Hayley asked when we were back in Adriana’s house.

“How would she have it in the first place?” Morrigan asked.

“Coincidences on top of coincidences,” I said. “Caacrinolaas comes all the way here with that chest and moves in next door to the woman with the key, but neither of them ever realizes it.”

“She said the chest was something from the original binding,” Adriana said. Her eyes swelled. “Let me see those stones again.”

We went to get the chest. I opened it up again. Adriana carefully dumped out all the stones and began picking through them and arranging them on her kitchen counter. As she set them in a long line, Hayley suddenly gasped and grabbed my arm.

“Jimmy—”

I saw it too. They were Hebrew letters. Or rather, mirror images of them.

“It’s the inscription on Zagan’s rock,” Adriana said. “In reverse.”

Hayley picked one up. “Are these what they carved out of it? Whoever it was?”

I got out my phone, and after scrolling back a month, I found the photo I’d taken that first day. Once you saw it, it was obvious.

I went to get my laptop and looked up the inscription, which Deirdre had explained to us back in December was the forty-two-letter name of God, from Sefer Raziel HaMalakh, the original Hebrew version of one of my grimoires, Liber Razielis Archangeli.

Adriana was right. It took us about five minutes, but eventually we arranged all the stones into an exact mirror image of the inscription.

“What does this mean?” MJ finally asked.

“If we put these back in, will that free Zagan?” Hayley asked.

“It cannot be that simple,” Adriana said.

I picked up the key again and stared at it. The enchantment was strong, stronger than the one on Amalia’s staff, which was how Morrigan had found it so easily.

Something began tickling the back of my mind. A memory. But not my memory. A memory I’d dreamed of.

“This is the key,” I said. The rest of them looked at me strangely, and MJ laughed. “No—I don’t mean it like that. This is the key to something else. Not just that chest.”

“Then what?” Morrigan asked.

“Zagan. We need to go to the house.”

◆◆◆

“Amalia had this key,” I said.

We were driving down Granada Road toward the house. Adriana was following in her car.

“That was how she was able to call on Zagan’s power. No one else could do it because they didn’t have the key.”

“But Deirdre had it,” MJ said.

“She must not have ever realized what it was,” I said. “All I can imagine is that Amalia left it behind by accident. You remember that story MJ’s great uncle told us, how she fled with me in a big commotion. I’ll bet she left before she was ready to do it, whatever the hell happened that night. So Deirdre finds the key eventually, but doesn’t put two and two together. She probably knew it was something important, but not what, so she finally stuck it in the back of her closet.”

“And Amalia had it because she must have helped Astaroth bind Zagan,” Katarina said.

“All that time?” Morrigan asked.

“Two centuries is not long, as Hell measures things,” Katarina replied.

“But why would the key let you do it?” Hayley asked. “That’s what I can’t figure out. Why would Astaroth want something like that to even exist?”

“You are assuming he did,” Katarina said.

“I’m not assuming anything,” Hayley shot back. “But he bound Zagan in that rock, right? Wouldn’t he know what would happen?”

“Hayley, Astaroth could not have performed the actual binding spell. That word is inimical to demons, as should be obvious. He cannot know it, nor can any demon. Only a mortal could have done this, albeit with Astaroth’s assistance.”

All of us saw it at once.

“Amalia,” I said. “She helped him do it, but she left a backdoor in the binding to let her exploit it.”

“That seems like an awfully big risk,” Morrigan said.

“Which could explain why she waited three centuries before trying to use it,” Hayley said.

“Centuries during which Astaroth was focused on taking over Zagan’s seat as a King of Hell,” I said. “And having done so, was no longer so concerned about Zagan himself, or the binding spell.”

“Astaroth has indeed been very busy since that time,” Katarina said.

“That reminds me,” Hayley said. “Don’t you need to check in with Volach and Morax? They think we’re up here investigating Caacrinolaas.”

“Shit,” I said. She was right.

“What are you going to tell them?”

“The truth. Just not all of it. Caacrinolaas ended up not managing to do much of anything here. We don’t need to tell them we know why, or what this means.”

“Please be very careful, Jimmy,” Katarina said. “Major demons like Volach can smell lies.”

Hayley pulled up in front of the house. It seemed as deserted as the last time we were here. Adriana pulled up behind us and got out.

The house was set back from the road about fifty yards. Unlike other architecture in the area, it was built from river stone and mortar, but without the Craftsman-style accents that you usually saw with it. Instead, it was much blockier and more medieval. It was two stories with a slate roof, but wider than it was tall. The field around it was fallow and untended, with no sign of either cultivation or livestock.

There was a rusty steel gate between a pair of low pillars made from the same river rock. The gravel driveway from the road was eroded and thick with weeds, though there were signs people had been here recently. The weeds were knocked down as if a car had driven over them and back out not long ago.

“Give me a few minutes,” I said. “I need to make a phone call.”

I took out my demon phone and stepped over to one of the pillars on the side of the gate. I dialed Volach’s number. He answered immediately.

“Hey, kid.”

“I think I found what you were looking for,” I said.

“Caacrinolaas?” he asked.

“He was up here trying to find a way to make that woman he kidnapped truly love him. We talked to her about it. It didn’t work. He worked with a sorceress here, but they weren’t able to figure out anything. I talked to her, too. She seemed to think it was a complete waste of time.”

“That’s it?”

“As far as we were able to tell, they accomplished nothing. He was still dicking around with it up until the day I pulled him back. I found no sign that he really did anything here besides pretending to be some suburban dad in his McMansion.”

Volach let out a sigh of relief. “That’s good to hear, kid. Boss will be pleased, and you know what that means.”

“A bonus? More souls off my balance?”

He laughed. “Something like that. I’ll be in touch.” He hung up.

I exhaled slowly and looked over at Katarina. She nodded quickly. She could tell whenever I was lying, because of our bond.

“Hopefully that gets them off our butt for the time being,” I said.

“That was another demon?” Adriana asked.

“The one I’m answering to at the moment.” I looked over at the house. “How much of this do you remember?

“Enough,” she replied. “Much of it is a blur, but I remember the basement.”

We climbed over the gate and walked up the driveway. There had once been some kind landscaping here, but it hadn’t been tended in years. The hardier stuff was wild and overgrown. The rest was now dead, and only the skeletons of a few low bushes remained.

The front door was dusty and weathered. I tried it, but it was securely locked as it had been the last time. We walked around the house to the wrought-iron gate that led into the back yard. The stone arch over the gate was engraved with the Hebrew inscription for the twenty-two-letter name of God.

The garden was still dead and untended. I paused for a moment at the fountain, looking down at the plaque marking the spot where my mother’s ashes were interred. Hayley hugged my arm, and I felt MJ pressing against my back, setting her head against my shoulder.

“What is that?” Morrigan asked.

“That’s Jimmy’s mom,” MJ said after a moment or two.

We went up to the porch. The window we’d used to get in the first time was still unlocked. One by one, we climbed through.

As soon as I was inside the house, I felt a throbbing from the key in my pocket. I did my best to ignore it. We went to the kitchen and then down the stairs to the basement. It was as empty as it had been the last time, save for the rock.

Only a portion of it was exposed; at least half of it was still underground. The exposed section was about six feet high and maybe eight or ten feet across.

An elliptical section of the rock about two feet by three feet had been worked flat. Carved across the top half of the ellipse was the Hebrew legend that matched up to the stones in the chest.

אדגיתץ קרעשטן נגדיכש בטרצתג חקדטנע יגלפזק שקוצית

In the center of the ellipse was the word ZAGAN surrounded by four of the bream, as well as symbols of power and binding.

“This is it,” Adriana said.

“Yep,” I said.

“What do you feel, Jimmy?” Hayley asked.

I reached into my pocket and took the key in my hand. Then I closed my eyes and tried to focus.

◆◆◆

I was dreaming.

In the back of my mind, I knew this was impossible. I wasn’t asleep. I was awake in the basement of the Breamstone Collective house. But still – there it was.

This was a dream.

I was standing in a field, the same field the house would one day be built on, but the land was wild and undeveloped. Chaparral and sage scrub, studded here and there with coastal oak trees, covered the fields that would one day be fallow farmland. The ground was pockmarked with the burrows of ground squirrels. Half a mile away, I saw a herd of pronghorn antelope.

Somehow I knew it was 1776.

We had travelled north from the new Spanish mission at San Sebastian. Our group comprised a beautiful woman with long black hair, a tall, thin man with his blond hair in a ponytail, a handsome, heavily built man with dark hair, two men in brown robes I knew to be Franciscan monks, and another man with a rapier at his belt. Several horses and a pair of mules stood off to the side.

We stood around a dark, variegated rock that seemed out of place here. It bore little resemblance to the granite and shale of the surrounding area.

“This is it,” Amalia said. “Nothing else will hold him long enough.”

“There’s a diamond in there?” Volach asked.

“Yes. So the spirits tell me, anyway. This is the place most likely to keep him confined while we work to exploit his absence.”

“There are a lot of other fucking diamonds in the world.”

“There are no others large enough to hold him, in places remote and unusual enough that no one will ever look for them, in areas we can reach without dying on the way,” Amalia said. “You are welcome to attempt it yourself if you disagree with me.”

“You’re certain this will work?” Astaroth asked.

“Are you certain you can assume his seat?” she replied.

The blond man nodded. “Fair enough.”

“Why do you allow her to speak to you so disrespectfully, my lord?” the man with the rapier asked.

Astaroth turned slowly toward him. “Because she is useful to me. You, on the other hand . . .”

“We have done nothing but what you asked of us, lord!” one of the monks said.

Volach took a step toward the monk, flexing his fists. “No one gave you permission to speak.”

“My lord,” the monk whined.

“Volach,” Astaroth said. “The point is made.”

“Shall we begin?” Amalia asked, “or do the five of you plan to continue pulling your cocks?”

Astaroth nodded. “Begin.”

Amalia lifted her staff. Enya and Ceridwen came forth, forming a slim but intensely glowing blade. Slowly and carefully, she began carving into the rock. First she removed a flat section near the top, creating a smooth face for the inscription. When that was done, she carved out the forty-two letters, each one falling to the ground in a single piece. Astaroth and Volach recoiled, averting their eyes as the inscription neared completion.

When it was done, she carved the four bream around it.

“The diamond,” she said.

Astaroth drew a clear stone about the size of a grape from his waistcoat. He handed it to Amalia. She laid it on top of the stone and then began setting up the incantation.

One of the monks took the brazier from his mule and handed it to his brother. The other set it up and loaded the charcoal into it. Amalia pointed the staff at the brazier, sending Enya through the charcoal to ignite it. While the monk poked and blew on the fire to keep it going, Amalia collected the components for the spell.

Zagan was already bound in the diamond – tricked into it by Astaroth – but he would not stay there forever, or even that much longer. This one wasn’t large or perfect enough. Something more permanent was needed.

When the charcoal was finally glowing, Amalia tossed the sulfur, mandrake root, eagle feathers, powdered horn, and dried blood onto the coals. Then she began the incantation. For a brief moment, the ghost of a vast winged bull emerged from the diamond, but it was immediately caught in the smoke from the brazier. There was a distant, enraged bellowing as it was pulled back down. The smoke spiraled into the rock like a tornado spinning in reverse. As the last of the smoke disappeared, the diamond shattered. Five pieces of stone flaked out of the rock, leaving behind the word ZAGAN.

Amalia let out a gasp. “It’s done.”

Astaroth stepped forward and laid his hand on the rock. He closed his eyes for a moment, then smiled. “Well done, Amalia.”

“He’s really in there?” Volach asked.

“Indeed.”

Volach set his hand next to Astaroth’s and chuckled. “Have fun in there, asshole.”

Astaroth turned to the man with the rapier. “It will be up to you to guard to this place, to ensure this rock remains untouched and unmolested. Do whatever you must to ensure the land falls to those who can continue your charge. I will be watching. Serve me well in this, and you will be rewarded. Fail me . . .”

“Yes, of course, my lord,” he said, nodding respectfully.

Amalia knelt down and began gathering up the little stone letters that she had carved out of the rock.

“What are you doing?” Astaroth asked.

“These must be preserved. They cannot be left here, or foolish people could release him without meaning to.”

“So fucking destroy them,” Volach said.

“Idiot,” Amalia replied. “That would weaken the enchantment significantly.”

Astaroth nodded to her. “Then that is the charge I lay upon you, Amalia. Guard those things well.”

“Oh, believe me, I intend to.”

◆◆◆

The dream shifted. It was nearly a year later, and Amalia had returned home to Hungary. She was in her house in Buda, sitting in her workshop, the same place she had created the staff. Before her was the pile of stone letters, a shiny wooden-and-brass chest, and an ornate brass key. She carefully laid out the letters, double-checking to be sure every single one was present. They were. Then she placed them into the chest and closed the lid.

She set the key beside the chest and stepped back. On the floor was her brazier, the coals already hot. She cast another handful of sulfur, mandrake root, eagle feathers, powdered horn, and dried blood on the coals, but this time added powdered ruby and asafetida.

She lifted the staff and began the incantation. The smoke swirled through the air, flowing around the chest, to the key, then into the lock, binding the key to the stones and the chest, and through them, to Zagan. The lock on the chest clicked shut, and the last of the smoke settled into the key. She picked it up, examining it closely.

The enchantment had worked. But now was not the time. So she would wait.

She kept the key. But she eventually lost track of the chest. It mattered little now, despite what she’d told Astaroth; the chest was of no use without the key. No force could open it otherwise. The key had the power.

In time, she returned to California. The area around the rock was settled now, but still rural, undeveloped ranch land. Astaroth had risen to Zagan’s seat, and his attention moved on. Amalia gathered a few followers, telling them lies about how she came to be there. She and Charles’ father formed the collective. They built the house over Zagan and the stone.

But the Amalia of 1943 was not the Amalia of 1776. She hatched her scheme to take Zagan’s power too late to think everything through adequately. When she finally attempted to use the key, she discovered that it had limitations she hadn’t expected. She could draw on Zagan’s essence to enhance her own spells, but his powers were constrained. She could take things that were already worth something and make them worth a bit more, but the full measure of his abilities – dross into gold, idiocy into wisdom – was beyond her.

She worked with the key for years, trying one thing, then another. The solution seemed to lie in her dreams. She built a dream temple that exactly matched the house, only enhanced. She could see Zagan, could see the power she craved, but she simply could not draw it out. Her powers in the dream world were just not strong enough. Something was missing.

Amalia was stymied.

Stymied, that was, until Mary-Beth walked into her office one day and announced that she wanted to birth a dream child.

◆◆◆

I was in my dream castle, down in the depths of the mountain underneath, below even the dungeon, in a huge, dark circular room. In the center of the room was a broad sunken area twenty feet deep. I stood right at the edge, looking down.

Before me was a bull the size of an elephant with the wings of an eagle. It roared and kicked and thrashed around against the chains binding its front legs to the floor. Its hide was scratched and torn, and its wings were battered and broken. The flesh of its forelegs under the manacles holding it down was torn apart down to the bone, but still it fought against the restraints.

The bull looked up at me in rage. It fought to get free, as it had been trying in vain to do for the past two hundred and fifty years. Its red eyes blazed with an evil intelligence, and they glared at me balefully. It knew me, and hated me with a passion that surpassed the fires of Hell.

I knew what I was looking at. This was Zagan.

I saw how Amalia had constructed the restraints. It was brilliant, in a way. No demon could ever break those chains. It required something they just weren’t capable of.

Yet for all his rage, Zagan was weak. The restraints hobbled more than his movements. His powers were constrained, and the manacles continually sucked them away from him, channeling them into the castle around us.

I could draw on them and use them as Amalia had. But I sensed that if I pulled hard enough, I could actually pull his power out of him altogether and into me. I was certain it would come, if I could draw on it with enough strength.

It was possible.

But I would need help.

◆◆◆

Someone was shaking me.

“Jimmy?” Hayley asked.

I blinked. Like that, the dream was over. If it had even been a dream.

“What?” I asked.

“You were completely spacing out. What was going on?”

I looked around at the five of them. They all stared at me.

“How long?” I asked.

“Like ten or fifteen seconds,” MJ said. “You had a really weird look on your face.”

I looked down at the key.

“I think I know what we need to do.”

Chapter 14

I didn’t feel comfortable saying anything around the rock. We went back upstairs to the living room. I waited until the dust cleared after we sat down.

“I need to start at the beginning. That rock is a kimberlite.”

“Wait, are you talking about the source rock for diamonds?” Hayley asked.

“Right,” I said. “I don’t pretend to know a lot about this. I only took one course in earth science. But the geology of California is weird, because of all the seismic activity. There are a lot of things left over from stuff that isn’t there anymore, that’s eroded completely and washed out to sea. Kimberlites are a type of volcano, sort of, and California has had a lot of vulcanism. But there aren’t any diamond mines because whatever kimberlites might have been here are all eroded away. You can still find diamonds in placer mines, but the kimberlite is gone. For all I know, that rock down there is the last piece of kimberlite left in the entire state. Who knows how it got here? But there’s a diamond crystal inside it. A big one. A perfectly shaped octahedron the size of a ping-pong ball. Zagan is confined inside it.”

“Like you confined Gaylord?” Adriana asked.

“Exactly. But Zagan was a lot more powerful than Gaylord. So they needed something about as big as it gets. The spirits guided Amalia here, and it makes some sense. Only a geologist standing next to that thing would recognize it for what it is. For anyone else, it’s just a big ugly rock with some weird carvings on it. This land has been used for nothing but ranching since the Spaniards settled it. The rock is too big to bother moving even if you wanted a farm here, and Amalia bought the land in the 1940s, so it’s been locked away ever since then. There was no real risk of Zagan getting loose.”

“So she came all the way to Alta California from—wherever she was back then?” MJ asked. “There was no one here but the Chumash Indians.”

“Hungary,” I said. “She lived in Hungary at the time. And I don’t know. It was right after the mission was founded down in San Sebastian. She was with some Spaniards, a couple of monks and this other guy who looked like a soldier, and they came up from the mission. She must have sailed over here from Europe with their help. They seemed to know what Astaroth was. Maybe some Spanish official got her here.”

Then I explained what Amalia had done in enchanting the rock, the key, and the chest. “The only way to get in there is through the dream world, because Zagan is basically trapped inside a dream while he’s in the diamond.”

“Sounds like more of a nightmare, to be honest,” MJ said.

“Well, he is a demon,” Morrigan said.

Hayley rubbed her forehead. “And Amalia designed the confinement in a way that would allow her to exploit him?”

“Right. She just wasn’t a powerful enough dream sorcerer.”

“But you are?” Katarina said.

I took a deep breath. “I think so. Yes. I can see a way to do it.”

“Take his power?” Morrigan asked.

I watched four faces going pale around me. Only Katarina seemed unsurprised.

“Jimmy, you are going to live a long time,” she said. “You are known to many people, as Amira said. You are very strong, but you are not all-powerful. You must increase your power.”

I knew what she was thinking about. She wasn’t thinking about next week. She was thinking about the centuries the two of us would have together. It made me a little dizzy every time she did this, because it reminded me that we were stuck together for all eternity. I loved her, but still.

Hayley looked at Katarina. “You really think he should do it?”

“I do,” she replied. “Because I do not trust Amira.”

“Me neither,” MJ said.

“Nor I,” Adriana agreed.

I looked at her. “Did I hear you call her a piranha?”

Adriana laughed softly. “Yes, but as I used it, it means bitch, more or less. Not the fish.”

I looked back at Hayley.

“Would it change you?” she asked. “Make you more . . . I don’t know, demonic?”

“I don’t really know. But I’m already bound to a demon.”

Hayley glanced at Katarina, then down at the floor. I looked at Morrigan.

“Master . . .” she said.

“Just give me your opinion. Not that you’ll support whatever I do.”

She smiled quickly. “I agree with Katarina, actually. I want us all to be safe.”

“You would be taking this power he has to improve things?” Hayley asked. “Chicken shit into chicken salad, and all that?”

“Right. I could feel it in there.”

“What would that let you do, exactly?”

I shrugged. “I’m sure there are limitations and consequences for a lot of it. But until I do it, there’s no real way to know.”

She took a deep breath and sighed. “Okay. Katarina is right. You should do it.”

“How will you do this thing?” Adriana asked.

“You’re all going to help me.”

I waited until the gasps and exclamations of surprise subsided.

“When I was in there, I could tell that I need help to do it,” I said. “I need my coven. I need you there supporting me. Like Caacrinolaas said, ‘Love is all you need.’ That’s what I need in there. That’s what made Amalia’s binding so brilliant. Demons aren’t capable of love, so no demon could ever break it.”

They looked around at each other.

“Another dream?” MJ asked.

“Yes.”

“So who?” Hayley asked.

“You, MJ, and Morrigan. Just like before. Katarina can’t dream, so she can’t come with us, obviously. It should be enough.”

“Now?” MJ asked.

“Do you see a reason to wait?”

She shook her head. “No.”

I could get in on my own now. But they had to be asleep. So they all found comfortable spots to rest, and I waited for them to drop off.

When they were all out, after ten or fifteen minutes, I shifted back to the castle and pulled the girls in. We were back in the main hall. The girls were dressed in the same outfits they’d worn in that dream, Hayley in red, MJ in her armor, and Morrigan in her goth-slave clothes. Charlotte was there, and Echidna stood with her, dressed much like Morrigan. She and Charlotte greeted each other and embraced quickly.

“Let’s go,” I said.

We descended to the dungeon. The spiral staircase that led down to it now descended further. Two hundred feet into the mountain, it emerged in the great round room. Zagan’s bellows echoed up the staircase.

I let them take it all in for a few moments. Zagan continued to rage, and he seemed even angrier at the sight of my coven.

“So that’s Zagan,” MJ said.

“Are we inside the diamond?” Morrigan asked.

“In a sense, perhaps. I think this is just how your mind is making sense of it all.”

Zagan let out a bellow that reverberated through the entire room.

I reached out and took Hayley and Morrigan’s hands. They linked hands with MJ, Charlotte, and Echidna.

I closed my eyes.

In this dream world, I was nearly a god. I controlled everything. I could bend space and time as it suited me. But I was connecting with Zagan. I needed to pull him into this world as well. Right now, he was up against the edge.

I reached out. I took ahold of him. His bellows of anger were suddenly tinged with fear, growing shorter and more high-pitched.

I felt the power. I could see what it was inside him, how it formed the core of what he was. If I took it, he would be reduced greatly in stature, no better than a Knight or Earl of Hell at best. And he felt it too, struggling and thrashing against me. His rage shifted to pure terror.

I drew on the girls, on the love we shared. Through Hayley and Charlotte, through MJ and Morrigan and even Echidna, who loved me because Morrigan did.

Love was the key.

I was stronger than Zagan. The bull shrieked like a steer being led to slaughter in full view of the ones that had gone before it.

He fought me.

It was like reeling in a fish. I pulled. He drew closer. I pulled again. He screeched in pain and terror.

But slowly, I realized that something was wrong.

As I pulled, I felt my grip on him growing more tenuous. The connection between us was thinning, growing taut. If I pulled too hard, it would break, and I didn’t know what might happen if it did.

Something was missing. Whatever I was trying to do here was not working.

I drew on the girls again. Love is all you need. I had their love. I loved them. They were here, with me, helping me. Why wasn’t it working? It should have worked – I could feel that.

All of them, Echidna included, loved me. I loved them. The ones I loved were here.

The ones I loved.

Oh, shit.

I saw it.

With a groan, I let go of Zagan. He seemed stunned, momentarily falling to the floor of the room and ceasing his bellows.

The girls turned to me, looks of confusion on their faces.

“Jimmy?” MJ asked.

“What’s wrong?” Hayley asked.

I let out a long, frustrated sigh.

“We need Katarina.”

◆◆◆

When we were back in the house, and I explained what had happened, Katarina just sat there quietly and listened. After a few moments, her head fell, and she looked down at her hands.

She took a deep breath and sighed. “I did not ask you to love me, Jimmy.”

“I know. It just happened.”

She wiped quickly at her face. I realized I’d never seen her cry before. It hadn’t occurred to me that she was capable of it.

“And now I have failed you,” she said quietly. “Even though I have never done anything but what you asked of me.”

I went to her and took her in my arms. She leaned against me and cried against my shoulder.

“I didn’t realize you could cry.”

“Neither did I. But the hole they tore in my heart is being overwhelmed by what I feel right now.”

She let out a little sob against me. All I could do was hold her until it stopped.

“So what do we do now?” Adriana finally asked.

Katarina still lay across my lap as I played with her hair. Hayley sat with us, holding her hand.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t.”

“Could we ask Amira?” MJ asked. “I mean, I really don’t want to summon her again so soon, but what else can we do?”

“You truly cannot sleep?” Adriana asked Katarina.

“No,” my succubus simply said.

“What if—” Hayley began. But then she gasped, eyes going wide as she looked past us to the window that faced the driveway. “Someone’s here!” she hissed.

We all spun around toward the window. A big white SUV – it looked like an Escalade or Navigator – had just come in through the gate. The girls jumped to their feet and started going for the window to the back garden, but they froze when they realized I wasn’t moving.

“Jimmy?” MJ said.

“It has to be the collective,” I said. “We faced them down once before.” I looked at Morrigan. “Get next to me, and get ready.”

She scurried over, standing a step behind me. Hayley came over next to her.

“I have an idea,” I said. “Katarina, can you shift your form to look like me?”

I’d never asked her to look like a man. But a second later, there was another Jimmy where she had been standing, holding a staff just like mine. I ignored the soft gasps of surprise from MJ and Hayley.

“Good. I want you to repeat whatever I say as if you’re me. The rest of you ignore me. Pretend she’s me. Play along with it, whatever I say.”

They all nodded rapidly. I stepped over to the side of the room, and Charlotte went over to Katarina. I worried just a bit that they might recognize Katarina for what she was, as many sorcerers could do, but I was confident the wards I’d cast over them to block the collective would prevent it.

The SUV pulled up in front of the house. Several people got out. I looked for Charles, but he wasn’t there. Instead, two women in their fifties got out, along with a younger man. I recognized the women – they were the same ones who had come with Charles that day. The man looked to be in his twenties and carried some kind of tablet in a leather case. One of the women opened the door, and they entered the house. They noticed us standing in the living room immediately and started in surprise.

“Who are you?” one of the women asked.

“I know we haven’t been formally introduced,” I said, “but you know who I am. I’m Jimmy Kaplan.”

Katarina repeated after me, mimicking my voice flawlessly. The two women gasped, and the man fell back a few steps.

“How?” the woman asked.

“I decided it was time to stop running from you people. I took down the ward that’s been protecting me all this time because I want to talk to you.”

They glanced around at Adriana and the girls. There was no sign they suspected Katarina’s ruse.

“When we realized someone had been coming out here,” the woman said, “we installed a camera over the entryway over there. I had no idea it would be you.”

I glanced up, seeing a little webcam on the wall that I hadn’t noticed. It seemed to be wired to something outside, likely a solar panel, because the power in the house was still off.

“Who are they?” the second woman asked.

“My coven. You’ve met Hayley and MJ already. I think MJ kicked you in the head last time.”

She glared briefly at MJ, remembering.

“How did you get in?” the man asked.

“There are no wards or locks you can put in place to stop me,” I said. “I assumed you knew that already. By the way, where’s Charles?”

The women’s faces darkened.

“He’s in a rehab hospital right now,” the first one said. “You broke his back blasting him through Deirdre’s door.”

That took my mood down a notch or two. “He and the rest of you attacked the girls.”

“Where is that succubus?” the second one asked.

I froze for a moment, just long enough for Morrigan to speak up. “That’s me.”

Katarina didn’t react. I saw the tension in the eyes of the others. Morrigan was wearing a bunch of stuff she’d gotten yesterday, a sheer lacy dress that exposed most of her bra but was just fluffy and frilly enough around the waist to make it unclear whether she was wearing underwear along with her stockings and garter belt. With her purple lipstick and heavy eyeliner, it was a succubus sort of outfit, and the three members of the collective appeared to accept it.

The women looked back at Katarina.

“What do you want?” the first one asked.

“It’s more that I have something you want,” I said. “Namely, Zagan. I’ve been coming here to see if what Amalia left me was enough to continue her work. I confirmed it today. Whatever it is you think you want to keep doing here, you need me.”

The two women were silent for a few moments.

“Why the change of heart?” the first one asked.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“I’m Jessica. This is Claire.”

I was intrigued that she didn’t introduce the man, but he didn’t seem surprised.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I said. “My grandmother left behind a big share of your business when she disappeared. I’ve been through your records, and I know what the collective is worth now. That share should have fallen to me as her heir. I want it.”

Jessica’s eye widened. “That was more than twenty years ago.”

“I’m no lawyer, but I’m pretty sure you can’t just erase her name from the bank statements, or whatever you’ve got, just because you don’t know where she is.”

Jessica looked at Claire, then back at Katarina. “Can you give us a moment?”

“Yeah.”

They stepped back into the entryway. And because they couldn’t see or hear me, I went with them.

“She still has a ten-percent share, even after all this time,” Claire hissed. “That’s more than anyone except Charles.”

“She’s still on the books, Claire,” Jessica replied. “Charles never wanted to declare her share abandoned because he didn't want the publicity. If he’s her legal heir, there’s nothing we can do. You know he got into the records in December, and I’m sure he made copies of everything. It’s too late to make this go away.”

“Goddamn Charles and his fucking back,” Claire said. “We could have done something.”

Jessica let out a frustrated noise. “If he’s telling the truth, this changes everything. You were here when Amalia was running things. You know what she could do. We could be returning a hundred percent a year instead of ten.”

“All right. But I want proof.”

They stepped back into the living room, facing Katarina again.

“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” Jessica asked. “We’ve spent twenty-plus years trying to reach Zagan, and nothing has worked.”

“I’m the dream child,” I just said. “But I’m happy to take you to meet Zagan, if you would like.”

Their faces paled. But Jessica glared at Katarina. “How?”

“I’ll need you to take a quick nap. It only works if you’re asleep.”

Jessica and Claire exchanged a look. I wasn’t sure if they would actually go for this, but then Jessica nodded after a moment. “All right. But we’re doing it here, and they’re going to watch.”

“Fine.”

She stretched out on one of the couches. Claire and the younger man stood on one side of the room, while Adriana and the girls stood on the other. Katarina sat down and pretended to go to sleep.

◆◆◆

Since I no longer needed to sleep to do this, it was a matter of waiting until Jessica dozed off. As soon as she did, I shifted into the dream world. Finding her took a bit of effort, since we’d just met, but she was near enough and connected enough to me through the collective, that I eventually located her and yanked her into the castle. I dressed myself in the same suit I’d worn in Morrigan’s dream, and just to make sure that Jessica got the point, I put her in a long red-and-black dress that made her look like some evil version of Cinderella.

She appeared in the main hall, where I waited at the top of the staircase. She was not yet lucid.

“You’re the one we’ve been searching for! I will bring you to Charles!”

“Jessica, you’re in my dream. Just stop it. Don’t wake up, but relax.”

She flickered as the girls often did, but I held her there. As she gained lucidity, she looked at around the vast room in horror, then down at herself. I sensed her trying to change her appearance but stopped her easily.

“Oh, no,” she gasped.

I stepped slowly down the staircase toward her, loudly tapping my staff on each step as I went.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Jessica, but I could. I can keep you here as long as I want. I could do things to you that you can’t begin to imagine. I could make you like them. It was brave of you to come in here with me. Rather foolish, but brave.”

I was trying to frighten her, and it worked. She stumbled backward, eyes going wide.

“Tell me about the collective’s finances. I know my grandmother had a ten-percent share of everything. And keep in mind, I know if you lie to me here. How much is it all worth now?”

She shivered for a moment or two. “Something over eight billion dollars, give or take. I haven’t looked at the books lately. Amalia invested in a lot of prime properties around the Central Coast that have done very well.”

I could control my reactions in here, but holy fuck. Amalia’s share was worth about $800 million.

“All real estate?” I asked.

“Mostly. It’s a REIT. We have to maintain at least seventy-five percent for tax reasons.”

“And Amalia is still on the books, right? It’s just a matter of my making a claim as her heir?”

“Yes,” she said. “The way she had it set up, her dividends were reinvested to maintain her share when we bought new properties. Otherwise her share of the collective would have been much more diluted by now. Charles just swept it all under the rug when she disappeared. But keep in mind we’re not publicly traded. The shares aren’t as liquid as something on the stock market.”

“You have a bunch of other investors outside the core group, right? People who have no idea what you really are.”

“Yes, that’s how a REIT usually works. You sell new equity to finance new holdings. But it’s not all that many. Charles has always narrowly marketed the collective to a few wealthy people in the area, doctors and lawyers and such. He doesn’t like too much publicity.”

“Who is in charge now, with him in the hospital? Is it you?”

“Yes. There’s a board, but it’s captive within the collective, and they’ll do what I tell them to.”

I pondered whether to ask my next question. But then I remembered that I could wipe the information from her mind.

“Does the name Stephanie Mulcahey mean anything to you?”

“I . . . no. Who is she?”

“One of those doctors?”

She struggled for a moment. “Wait . . . are you talking about Deirdre’s college roommate? She’s a shareholder?”

“She lives in San Sebastian?”

“Yes. What about her?”

Rather than answer – I couldn’t deal with this revelation right now – I wiped the memory away.

“All right,” I said. “Come meet Zagan.”

She followed me nervously through the castle and down the stairs to the dungeon, then down again to Zagan’s room.

“This . . . incredible place . . . is your dream temple?” she asked as we left the dungeon.

“Oh, this is only a small part of it. Do you have one?”

“It’s a cottage. I go there to read.”

I laughed. “Nice.”

Zagan’s bellowing rose up the stairs as we descended into the mountain. Eventually we reached the round room. She stepped up near the edge to watch him as he raged and thrashed around.

“How is he here?” she asked after a few moments. “In your dream temple? How did you do this?”

I looked over at her slowly. “I’m not here to answer your questions, Jessica. Perhaps I should toss you down there with him. I think he’d enjoy spending a little time with you.”

She gasped, recoiling in horror. “No. Please.”

“Are you convinced now?”

“Yes. Please let me out of here.”

“Okay.”

So I let her wake up.

◆◆◆

She jerked awake with a gasp. Her eyes roamed over the room until they fell on Katarina.

“As I said, are you convinced?” I asked.

She struggled to her feet, staggering away from us. “Yes.”

Her reaction unnerved Claire, who fell back with her. “What was it?” Claire asked. “Jessica, what did you see?”

“He’s the one. There’s no doubt.”

“What was it? Did you see Zagan?” Claire asked.

“Yes. And—and—so much more. I’ll tell you. When we’re out of here.”

“I’ll come by your offices tomorrow morning,” I said, “and we can discuss things further. How is ten?”

Jessica glanced at Claire, who seemed deeply disturbed by Jessica’s behavior.

“Yes. Ten is fine. We’ll be there.”

She grabbed Claire, and the three of them fled the house. I watched the SUV pull out with a spray of dust and gravel behind it and begin driving away rapidly.

“Jimmy?” Hayley asked quietly.

“I’m not getting in bed with them. But we’ve bought some time, and learned a few things. Let’s get back to the house.”

Chapter 15

We had only just driven up to Adriana’s house when my demon phone rang. It was Volach.

“Hey, kid, I checked in with Astaroth, he’s happy we tied up this loose end.”

“Me too.”

“Can you meet for lunch? Got some things to discuss.”

I pondered whether I wanted to do this, but saying no would look suspicious. “Where?”

“There’s a sports bar by the highway, place called Bazookas. You know it?”

I did. It was a chain restaurant much like the cheerleader place back at school. Volach and Morax certainly had a pattern.

“There’ll be five or six of us,” I said.

“No problem. See you at noon.”

Adriana needed to go put in a few hours at the Black Rose, so I just went over with my coven. The servers at this place wore cutoff jean shorts and bubblegum-pink string bikini tops, but otherwise it was the same as the other restaurants Volach always picked.

The server gave me a lingering look after taking in Katarina, Hayley, Morrigan, and MJ, no doubt wondering who I was to have these four girls around me. But she didn’t say anything beyond handing out the menus.

“I thought about applying to work at that cheerleader place last semester,” Morrigan said. “The outfits just look really uncomfortable.”

“I guess you get used to it,” Hayley said.

“Yes. I have worked as an exotic dancer myself,” Katarina said. “It is good work, even if you are not a succubus.”

The rest of us looked at her.

“You never told me that,” I said.

She shrugged. “I would guess that about a third of the women working in topless bars are succubi,” she said.

“That kind of makes sense,” MJ said.

A minute or so later, I saw Volach and Morax coming in the entrance to the restaurant. They walked up to the booth.

“So this must be the new witch,” Volach said, looking at Morrigan. “Nice.”

She waved at them quickly. “Hi. Thanks for Echidna.”

Morax nodded as they sat down. “It was her or Bon Scott.”

Morrigan’s eyebrows went up. “I could have had Bon Scott?”

MJ shook her head in confusion. “Wait, Bon Scott, the—”

“I play guitar,” Morrigan said. “I’m not that good, but I could see it.”

“Yeah, he was interested,” Morax said, “I just figured this one would be more use to you.”

One of the bikini-clad waitresses came around to get our order. When she was gone, Volach turned to me.

“Okay, so, easy job, I guess,” he said. “Five hundred, like we agreed.”

I checked the app on my demon phone that tracked my account with them. My balance was down to 2571. Still a lot, but about half what it had been when this all started. I was making progress.

“One thing Astaroth wanted me to clear up, though,” Volach went on. “Did you happen to find out why Caacrinolaas came here, to this little jerkwater town? What exactly was he doing?”

I tried not to betray my reaction. I couldn’t lie to him, not sitting here in front of him. I would have to tell him what little I could.

“Yeah. He found something here. A rock with some strange inscriptions on it. He seemed to think it could help him. But like I said, as far as I could tell, he accomplished nothing. Whatever he was trying to do didn’t work.”

His eyes darkened. He glanced at Morax quickly.

“Where is this rock?” he asked.

“Just out on the edge of town.”

“Did you, perhaps, go to examine it?”

“There’s a house built over it, but it’s abandoned. No one has lived there in years.”

An eyebrow went up. “A house?”

“Yeah.”

He and Morax looked at each other again.

“Do you think you could take us there?” he asked.

◆◆◆

When we were done eating, we got back into Hayley’s SUV. Volach and Morax followed in their long black BMW sedan.

“What’s going to happen if they find out what we were doing with Zagan?” I asked Katarina.

“I do not know,” she said. “Things move slowly in Hell, but Zagan disappeared long enough ago that almost no one talks about him anymore. There have been power struggles in the past, and the demons who lost were not mourned. Things moved on, mostly. And Astaroth has established himself. He is in favor. Zagan would not be, because he was defeated. Weakness is not admired in demons, as you may imagine.”

“Okay. Good, I guess.”

Hayley spoke up. “You said ‘things moved on, mostly.’ What did you mean?”

“When Zagan was deposed,” Katarina replied, “a number of the dukes under him lost power and influence as Astaroth moved up. One in particular still burns with resentment over this. If Zagan were released, he would seek to exploit it against Astaroth.”

“But we’re not trying to release him,” Morrigan said. “Jimmy, you said doing this would weaken him a lot.”

“It would,” I said.

Katarina nodded. “Yes. Definitely.”

“Who is this other Duke?” Hayley asked.

“Eligos,” Katarina replied. “He aids generals and soldiers in wars, and is favored by Beelzebub. He expected to take Zagan’s seat, and losing it to Astaroth has grated on him.”

“Doesn’t sound like someone we want as an enemy,” MJ said.

We got to the house about ten minutes later and pulled off the road. I turned to Morrigan.

“Can you, discreetly, cloak that camera they put in there while I’m unlocking the door, so the collective doesn’t know we’re back here?”

She looked into her spell bag and picked through a few things. “Yes. I have what I need.” She extracted three or four pinches of stuff and held them in her fist.

I parked in the front driveway. Volach rolled in behind us as I got out with my staff. He stepped up slowly, looking over the house.

“Interesting,” he said.

“Like I said, it’s abandoned.”

“This place has been here a long time from the looks of it,” Morax said.

“I think so.”

I held up my staff to unlock the front door. I hadn’t bothered before because we hadn’t needed to, but I didn’t want to lead Volach and Morax through the back garden. There were too many clues there.

As I did it, Morrigan stepped around behind us. Volach and Morax didn’t seem to notice what she was doing. Once the door was unlocked, I glanced at her. She nodded quickly.

I led them down to the basement, stepping aside to let them approach the rock. I watched the look on Volach’s face. He seemed concerned but not especially worried. He walked up and rested his hand on the rock.

“Doesn’t seem to have changed at all,” Morax said.

“Nope. Still sleeping like a baby.”

“It’s Zagan?” Katarina asked. “This is where he’s been all this time?”

“That would be the size of it, Sugar-tits,” Volach said. “So naturally, the boss was a bit concerned to hear that Caacrinolaas was up here nosing around.” He looked at me. “But you’re sure he didn’t do anything?”

“We talked to the woman,” I replied. “She said they came here several times. He would just sit here and stare at the rock talking to himself.”

“Okay. The question in my mind now, though, is who built this fucking house, and why?”

“I know that much,” I said. “A group called the Breamstone Collective.” At this point, I was less concerned about speaking the name aloud than not letting Volach think I was holding out on them. It was hard to see how much more attention I could draw now. “A bunch of sorcerers masquerading as financial advisors.”

Morax looked at Volach. “Financial advisors.”

Volach nodded. “Let’s reconvene back outside, people.”

When we got back out to the driveway, he stepped away from us.

“I need to make a call.” He pulled out his demon phone and walked about twenty yards away. He was on it about five minutes before returning. “The boss would like you to investigate these Breamstone people. Find out what the fuck was going on here and what the hell they were doing.”

I nodded slowly. “I can do that,” I said.

Funny how things kept falling together here.

◆◆◆

Adriana was still at the Black Rose when we got back to the house, and the five of us sat around her den.

There wasn’t much to do now, since what Volach wanted us to find out I already knew. The question was what we did with the collective when we went to meet with them tomorrow.

Morrigan pointed out an immediate challenge. “Katarina can’t get in there unless the ward comes down, right?”

“No. And I would rather not have to do that again. They’ll know it was me.”

I pondered things for a few moments.

“I wonder if there’s a way to shield her from it somehow, so that it doesn’t affect her. Some way to penetrate it without taking it down.”

Morrigan shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re the expert at recreating this stuff.”

“We need to do some research. And it may take some time.”

“Do you need to go to the castle?” Hayley asked.

“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”

She nodded. “Okay. Go.”

We all went upstairs and laid down in the bed. MJ wanted to go in with us, but Hayley wanted to stay awake in case Adriana came back. So I cuddled up with the MJ and Morrigan while Katarina and Hayley rested on either side of us.

“In and out, guys, please,” Hayley said. “No more months-long dreams.”

I laughed. “I promise.”

◆◆◆

We emerged in the main hall. Charlotte and Echidna were there waiting. Charlotte was in another one of her witchy black dresses – I sensed that she had come to enjoy playing to Morrigan’s preconceptions – while Echidna wore a goth outfit similar to Morrigan’s. Morrigan transitioned to a considerably more revealing outfit, while MJ was in her armor with her sword over her back.

“I just love this place,” MJ said.

“What are you planning to do?” I asked.

She drew the sword, smiling at me. “Practice.”

MJ went down to her dream game. I sent Charlotte, Morrigan, and Echidna into the library to do some reading about personal charms and protective spells. Then I went to my lab.

In driving past the office the other day, I saw with my ring that they hadn’t changed what they’d used before. The wards were based on a specific sort of incense. The ward blocking entry by opposing sorcerers and demons used holly wood, dried holly berries, sulfur, and cayenne pepper. I was able to see it in the strands of enchantment swirling around the building.

The nitric acid mist I’d developed broke down the sulfur and the capsaicin in the cayenne pepper, causing the wards to dissolve. But I couldn’t exactly cover Katarina in nitric acid. So what could I use to resist them?

There were a lot of ways I could react with the sulfur, but too many of them created obvious, unpleasant odors. And I didn’t really need to remove it, just shield her from it. I went back and forth with a whole range of reactions, not just with the sulfur the capsaicin as well, before I began to feel that I was coming at this from the wrong direction.

I don’t know how long I sat there scribbling out page after page of notes before I noticed Echidna standing nearby.

“Master.”

I leaned back in my chair. “Anything?”

“We are still reading, as you instructed.”

She came over and knelt down next to me. I reminded myself of how familiars in the dream world tended to absorb the inclinations of their masters. In this case, I suspected she was getting it from two directions, and I could see in her green eyes what she expected from me. She was easily as pretty as the other girls, with a figure like Hayley’s. Her firm little breasts poked out against the short black satin dress she wore.

“So what’s your story?” I asked. “Morrigan said you’re from Egypt. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Charlotte about you.”

“Yes. I was a slave.” She smiled in that sly way she had. “A real one. I was born to slaves. My master was a wizard. He bought me as a young girl to share his bed, which I did. But he was kind to me, and when I showed aptitude for magic, he taught me many things.”

“When was this?”

“By your reckoning, the eleventh century, during the rule of the Fatimids. We lived in Cairo, but there was unrest there, as the Caliphate began to collapse. So my master decided to move north to Jerusalem. That was just before the First Crusade.”

I was familiar enough with that history not to ask any more. “And you were sent to serve Charlotte after that?”

“Yes. I was with her for only a few years, but they were very pleasant ones. It is strange. It seems as if we were only just parted, but at the same time I know it has been centuries. I am glad to be with her again, and glad to see that she is happy. I am glad to know you will live for much longer. She told me you were like my first master and have been very kind and loving with her.”

Charlotte and Morrigan appeared in the doorway and came over. I motioned for Echidna to get to her feet.

“Any ideas?” I asked Charlotte.

“There are many types of charms and protective ointments,” she said. “But protection against a protection spell is something I had not considered before.”

“I can see what you’re trying to do here,” Morrigan said, “I’ve just been struggling with a way to do it.”

“Me too.”

MJ came through the door. She was covered in blood – splashes and spatters from her face down to her legs – and she had her greatsword over her shoulder.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She grinned at me. “Most of it isn’t mine.”

I saw she had a few wounds on her legs and arms, so I healed them as I’d been doing after these sessions.

“You must be a great warrior,” Echidna said.

MJ laughed. “I do okay. How about you guys?”

“We’re still kind of stuck,” I said.

“I’m going to go take a bath,” MJ said, “. . . if anyone is interested.”

The other three girls looked at me. The castle had a big bathing area that I’d created with MJ’s help. We didn’t exactly need one, since this was a dream, but it had been fun to build. I’d used it with MJ and Charlotte during Morrigan’s dream.

Maybe a break would help me come up with something. The bathing area was up next to the bedroom. MJ and I had taken Morrigan’s goth obsessions and run with them, coming up with something the size of a small swimming pool that looked like the interior of a dark steampunk chemical plant. It was all black marble and granite, brass and rusty wrought-iron fixtures, with gas-fired chandeliers hanging from the ceilings. Black granite gargoyles and other monster statuary decorated the walls.

Since there were no utility bills here, it was always hot and ready. The girls disrobed and got in. MJ sank into the water, then rose out, pushing her hair back over her head to rinse off the blood.

“I love this place so much,” Morrigan said. “You should build something like this in the real world.”

I was content to soak and watch my women bathe each other, enjoying the contrast between their bodies. Charlotte was the thickest, and Morrigan was like her from the waist up. She was trimmer around the butt, though nothing like MJ’s lean, taut body – albeit with her dream tits, which resembled Katarina’s in here. Echidna was the slimmest, slimmer even than Hayley, though she had nice little breasts that came to dark points. She’d mimicked Morrigan’s grooming, giving herself a little dark strip of hair above her labia.

Eventually they turned to me, and I had four sets of hands soaping me up from head to toe. Naturally I got hard rather quickly. MJ and Charlotte massaged me up and down as Morrigan and Echidna pressed themselves against my back.

Morrigan bit at my ear. “Master?”

“What?”

“May I give you Echidna? She wants you so badly.”

I wanted her too, and I sensed that this would strengthen the coven. Morrigan led her to the edge of the bath and laid her on her back on the floor, legs still in the water. She knelt between Echidna’s thighs and began licking and sucking on her. MJ and Charlotte rinsed me off and lowered themselves to my cock. They sucked on me together as Morrigan pleasured Echidna. Echidna’s big green eyes were locked on to me, filled with lust and desire.

Morrigan withdrew. I gently extracted myself from Charlotte’s mouth and went to Echidna, pulling her back into the water. She wrapped her legs around my waist as I drew her down onto my erection.

She sighed as I moved into her, hugging me tightly.

“Master.”

She felt really good, and she had some of Katarina’s internal talents. Clearly she’d been more than an apprentice for that wizard. We floated together in the water as Charlotte, Morrigan, and MJ pressed themselves against us, hands stroking and pleasuring. I kissed Echidna deeply, then leaned her back so I could suck on her dark little nipples.

Everything was so slick and smooth, inside and out. She was wet as a river even without the water around us.

Then a discordant thought hit my brain. Slick. This felt so good because of the aqueous film that was created over our skin. Even what I felt inside Echidna was the result of a chemical film.

That was the answer. I was so surprised at myself that I almost lost my focus on her.

“Master?” Charlotte asked.

“I just had an idea. Sorry.”

I refocused myself on the girls. I held Echidna’s waist and moved her up and down, watching her reactions. I amplified them, pushing her toward orgasm. She whimpered, fingers digging into my back and trying to squeeze me tightly as she bounced on my cock. When she reached her edge, I held her back a few moments, letting it build and intensify. Echidna cried out. Then I shoved it forward, making her come hard around me and locking her at her peak. Her little body shook and shivered against me as I pounded myself into her over and over.

Then I felt MJ’s hand behind me, reaching in to finger my ass as Echidna’s contractions continued. She laughed in my ear. That was enough for me. I erupted into Morrigan’s familiar as she continued orgasming. MJ kept fingering me until I was done, and the sensations made me dizzy.

Yeah, Morax was right. Bon Scott would not have worked here.

I let Echidna come down and withdrew from her. I kissed and hugged my women, then eased them away.

“I know what we need to do.”

◆◆◆

We needed some kind of lotion to rub over Katarina that would allow her to slip through the ward unharmed. She could change her appearance to conceal it. I just had to come up with a good formula.

Rather than looking for things that reacted with the sulfur, I needed something that would repel it and the capsaicin. The problem here was that sulfur was one of the most reactive of the elements. That reactivity was an element of the ward. But sulfur was insoluble in water, and it didn’t react with dilute non-oxidizing acids. Some of the latter – like hydrochloric acid – were not going to work here, but one of them – phosphoric acid – could. Dilute phosphoric acid was a common food additive and largely harmless in low concentrations. Capsaicin was soluble, but very poorly, and the phosphoric acid would neutralize whatever came into contact with the film.

And a little bit of research in my computer lab revealed – I’d known this but hadn’t thought about it – that phosphoric acid was a common ingredient in lots of cosmetics and skin care products. It was hard to imagine the solution was this simple, but it looked like it would work. I ran it by my three witches, and they couldn’t see any problems with the idea.

So we tested it. I found a lotion online that listed phosphoric acid as an ingredient and created it in our dream. We rubbed it all over MJ – getting a bit distracted in the process – and Morrigan duplicated the ward the collective was using. MJ was able to get through it easily, without disturbing the enchantment. The film over her skin allowed her to just slip through the strands of spirit bound together with the sulfur and capsaicin. I sensed that the protection the film provided would not last long, as things started to evaporate, so we would need to do it immediately before going in there. But with Adriana’s shop right across the street, that would be easy.

“This is amazing,” Morrigan said. “I can’t believe you came up with this.”

MJ grinned at us, standing there naked and glistening from all the lotion on her skin. “So who gets to rub this stuff all over Katarina?”

Chapter 16

Adriana got home about six. We helped her make dinner, and as we ate, we explained everything that had happened that day and what we’d decided to do about it.

“You could take Zagan’s power if you could bring Katarina into your dream?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But that’s the starting point. And she can’t sleep.”

Katarina hadn’t cried about it again, but she was clearly still upset about this turn of events.

“There are no spells or potions that could help you sleep?” Adriana asked.

My succubus shook her head. “I tried them. When I was first made. Losing the need or ability to sleep was very strange at first, and I wanted it back. Nothing worked.”

Adriana’s face hardened. “I will think on this. There must be a solution somehow.”

Katarina just looked down. She didn’t say it, but I suspected Adriana wasn’t the first witch who had tried to help her.

“What do you plan to do with the collective tomorrow?” Adriana asked.

“To be honest, I haven’t really decided,” I said. “Other than that brief confrontation back in December, I haven’t talked to them directly. I want to understand what they’re doing and what’s been going on. I suspect things have changed significantly since my grandmother left. They’re not what they once were.”

“Jimmy?” Hayley asked.

“What?”

“You told them you wanted her share. Did you mean it?”

“I was trying to get their attention,” I said. “It’s a motivation they’ll understand. I have no idea if they’ll release it. It’s an awful lot of money.”

“They told you how much? I mean, this doesn’t matter to me at all, you know that, but I know you could use the money.”

I looked at her. “Baby, it’s roughly $800 million. I can’t even get my mind around what that would mean. It would turn my life completely upside down.”

None of them said a thing for about five or ten seconds.

“It’s your money,” MJ finally said. “It was your abuela’s. That means it’s rightfully yours. Believe me, I know what you’re saying. You told me how you had nothing growing up, and trust me, I get that, my parents didn’t have shit either. I’m the first one in my family to go to a real college, and I can’t imagine what that much money would do to my life. But they shouldn’t get to keep it.”

I sighed. “How exactly does a REIT work? She said they’re not publicly traded.”

MJ took a deep breath and exhaled. “They’re an investment vehicle, kind of like a mutual fund. The income passes through to the shareholders, instead of being taxed like corporate income. There are rules to qualify for it, but basically they have to make at least 75% of their money from real estate. The income, and it’s usually rental income, is paid like a dividend. Some of them are publicly traded like corporations, others are private. It sounds like this is a private REIT. That may make it harder to sell your shares, if you wanted to do that. The other option is just sitting back and taking the dividends. With that big a share, the income has to be a lot.”

“Even if I could just sell it,” I said, “it’s hard to feel like it would improve my life when I still owe Hell all those souls. I wonder sometimes if they’re going to let me move on even if I pay it off.” I looked at Katarina. “I mean, I can’t exactly switch teams now, can I?”

She managed a small smile after a moment or two. “No. Like I said that first night, we are stuck with each other.”

MJ reached over and squeezed my hand. “I’m glad I’m on your team, Jimmy. Whatever you decide.”

Hayley took my other hand. Morrigan, lacking a hand to take, just came over, got into my lap, and hugged me.

“We’re going to figure this out, guys,” I said.

I offered to do the dishes, but the girls all shooed me out of the kitchen and into the den to rest. I lay down on Adriana’s couch and watched Charlotte and Echidna playing on the floor. Echidna had her lower half wrapped around Charlotte’s chest, and they were rolling around nuzzling each other’s faces.

Adriana came over and sat with me, having me rest my head on her lap. She began gently running her fingers through my hair.

“I don’t think I have ever seen a cat and a snake playing together,” she said.

“Me neither.” To be honest, it almost looked like they were trying to make out.

“I have never had a familiar,” she said.

“It’s been really good,” I said. “Charlotte has been an enormous help to me.”

“You love her.”

“I do. As a pet, and who she is in our dreams.”

“What is she like? Describe her.”

I laughed softly. “Ah . . . imagine a German girl with your build and hair, just with green eyes.”

Adriana laughed with me. “That is what you like? Do not think I have not noticed Morrigan and Katarina.”

“I like Hayley and MJ too. And Echidna is tiny.”

“You like variety, then.”

“Yeah.”

She lowered her voice, still playing with my hair. “Jimmy, I will be frank. You have your coven, and I do not wish to disrupt it. And I am too far from Santo Domingo to join it, even if you asked. I have a life and a business here.”

“I know. I appreciate all the help you’ve given us this weekend.”

She looked away from me across the room. “You freed me from a nightmare I am still struggling to deal with, and I am very grateful for it. I am just saying, Jimmy . . . if you should decide to visit my dreams . . . tonight or any other night . . . I would not turn you away.”

I smiled up at her. “Okay.”

“I will say no more. It is up to you.”

◆◆◆

When the kitchen was cleaned up and Adriana had retired to her room, I pulled Hayley aside.

“I need to talk to you about something, and you’re not going to like this.”

Her eyes swelled. “What?”

I took her out to the back patio, sitting down and pulling her into my lap. She leaned against my chest.

“You’re kind of scaring me here, Jimmy.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” I said. “But you need to know this. When I had Jessica in that dream, I asked her about your mom.”

“And?”

I sighed. “Baby, do you remember over Christmas, how she mentioned that her college roommate lived up here?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who she was talking about?”

“Not really. I haven’t met a lot of her college friends. Like one or two.”

I gritted my teeth. “It’s Deirdre.”

I felt her go rigid in my arms.

“That’s impossible,” she whispered a moment later.

“It’s what Jessica told me,” I said. “I asked if she knew your mom. She didn’t at first, until I mentioned that she’s a doctor. Then she said, ‘Are you talking about Deirdre’s college roommate?’ She knew where your folks live. She knew your mom is a shareholder.”

She breathed heavily against my chest. “What does this even mean? Deirdre helped create you. And she was my mom’s roommate?”

“It would explain how she ended up investing in the collective.”

Hayley was quiet for a moment. “You were born in 1997.”

“Right,” I said.

“She would have been a resident,” she said. “They’d just gotten married. They had no money back then. She’s told me this story so many times. They lived in this shitty little apartment right near the hospital because all they did was work and pay off their student loans. You wouldn’t know this because you’ve only known her when she was rich, but trust me, my mother is very careful with her money. It’s a Scottish thing.”

She saw the look in my eyes.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You’re thinking of our house, but you weren’t there when she was negotiating with the contractors and her decorator. Trust me, if there’s someone who can draw blood from a stone, it’s my mom.”

“Okay.”

“So why would they have had anything to do with the collective at a time when they had no money to invest in something like that?”

“I don’t know. But based on what she said that night, they’re still in touch.”

“That doesn’t mean my mom had anything to do with Deirdre’s stuff.”

“No. I’ve just been thinking about what you said the other night in the spa, about all these coincidences and crazy connections. It’s gotten so far beyond anything that could have happened by accident.”

She squeezed my hand tightly. “Something wants us to be together.”

“That seems like a reasonable assumption.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, baby. I don’t know.”

She pressed herself against me. “I love you. I do. I want to be with you. And I hate thinking that something has forced this to happen, like it’s not a choice I made. It is, I swear.”

I hugged her back. “We’re together because we want to be. Whatever happened before that, nothing else matters now.”

◆◆◆

The next morning, we swung by a nearby drugstore to get a bottle of the lotion we needed and then headed over to the Black Rose. When we got there, Katarina made her clothes go away and shifted into my form.

“This is going to be really weird,” Hayley said, looking over my naked doppelgänger.

“I’m good,” MJ said, laughing softly.

They rubbed the lotion all over her, head to toe. Then she dressed in the clothes I’d brought, since I was concerned that manifesting clothes would affect the protection.

I intended to go in first, because I wanted to get in there before the meeting started. I suspected they would get together early to prepare, and I wanted to listen. Morrigan stayed behind with Adriana, since they thought she was Katarina and entering the building would tip them off that something was wrong.

I walked up the street to the Breamstone Collective offices. When I got to the door, I paused, examining the ward. Last time, I’d sensed that it would have resisted me. But now that I had been invited, it did nothing.

There was a receptionist at a desk just inside the door. She didn’t appear to notice me standing there. So I pushed the door open just enough to get inside. The receptionist looked up, confused, as the door opened and closed. I slipped past her as she got up to check the door, looking around. But after a moment, she shook her head in confusion and went back to her desk.

I walked around the building. The offices were laid out in a sort of ring, the offices and cubicles circling a center section that housed all their files. I didn’t see any conference rooms, but I hadn’t been up to the second floor that night we broke in. A stairway in the center led up. When I climbed the stairs, I immediately saw a glass-walled conference room that overlooked the street. Jessica, Claire, and two men were inside talking. Fortunately, the door to the room was partway open. I slipped in.

“—trust him, Jessica,” Claire was saying. “I really don’t.”

“Do we have a choice?” Jessica asked.

“I won’t offer an opinion on the paranormal elements,” one of the men said, “I’ll just remind you, again, that our returns have been sub-par for years. We haven’t been able to offer anything people can’t get elsewhere. That really needs to change.”

“Especially with Charles out of commission,” Jessica said.

“We’re really just going to let him in and give him Amalia’s shares?” Claire asked.

“I don’t know that we have a choice here,” the other man said. “We could fight it, but if he decides to litigate the issue, I don’t think the outcome is really in doubt, and it will draw attention we don’t need, as well as significant expense.”

Out the window, I saw Katarina, MJ, and Hayley approaching the building. I watched with my ring as the lotion let Katarina pass through the wards. They flowed around her effortlessly. A few moments later, the phone in the conference room buzzed.

Jessica hit a button to turn on the speakerphone. “Yes?”

“Jimmy Kaplan is here,” the receptionist said.

“Thanks. Show him up.”

The receptionist appeared with the girls a few moments later. She shut the door behind them as Katarina, Hayley, and MJ sat down. I couldn’t pull out a chair to sit at the table, but there was a chair against the wall in the corner, so I sat there.

“Thank you for coming,” Jessica said. “You know Claire. These are my partners Phillip and Wayne.”

“Are all of you sorcerers?” I asked. Katarina repeated after me.

“Only the two of us,” Jessica said. “Phillip is our in-house counsel. Wayne is our chief analyst.” She turned to Phillip. “We may as well get the legalities out of the way first.”

Phillip straightened the papers in front of him and looked at Katarina. “All right. I’m not going to go into exhaustive detail about this, because much of it is not relevant here. There are essentially two parts to the collective, the REIT itself, and the LLC that manages it in exchange for a fee. Your grandmother formed the predecessor to the current LLC with Mr. Halvor, senior, that’s Charles Halvor’s father, in 1944. The LLC’s holdings were converted to a REIT in the 1960s after the tax laws changed, and the LLC continued as the management firm. The way things were structured at first, they shared equal ownership, fifty-fifty. That changed as they brought in new investors. That’s typical for a REIT.”

“I know,” I said.

“After your grandmother disappeared in 2001, the other LLC partners voted to remove her from it. The incorporation agreement allowed for this, and you’re welcome to review it. As far as the REIT, your grandmother had things set up so that most of her dividends were reinvested. Again, that’s not unusual, especially given how well the trust performed during those years. After she left, however, our returns were substantially lower, and it was necessary to expand the trust with several new offerings. That’s why her share is smaller than it once was. However, shortly before she disappeared, she changed the paperwork on her account to name you as her sole beneficiary.”

“I’m on the trust already?” I asked after a moment.

“Now that she’s passed away, yes. Has her estate passed through probate?”

“There was no probate. She had no assets, that I was aware of anyway. I just filed this form with the county. They processed it back in November. Back then, I didn’t know about any of this.”

“All right. I expected as much. In any case, this passes outside of probate, kind of like a joint bank account. Normally, I would want to see a death certificate, but Jessica decided that would not be necessary.”

“We know she’s dead,” Jessica said. “That’s not really the issue here.”

“So what does all that mean?” I asked.

“It means,” Phillip said, “that Ms. Takacs’s shares in the REIT have passed to you. We haven’t been able to do much of anything about it until now, because of the ward that was on you. In any case, this is all the paperwork for your shares.” He slid a small stack of documents across the table. “There are a few things there we need your signature on, but once that’s taken care of, you’re a shareholder, with all that implies.”

“How much?” I asked.

They looked at Wayne.

He shifted in his seat toward Katarina. “Understand that shares in the Breamstone REIT are not publicly traded,” he said, “so it’s a bit difficult to give you an exact number for what they might be worth if offered for sale. This is based purely on the current book value.”

He slid a sheet of paper over to Katarina. I stood up and went behind her so I could read it. There were a lot of numbers, but the one at the bottom was enough to get the point across.

$807,670,000

I heard MJ and Hayley gasp softly. Katarina remained impassive.

“What do you want from me?” I finally asked.

Jessica glanced at Claire and took a deep breath. “Our hope is that you could step into your grandmother’s shoes in assisting our decision-making. It was a fruitful relationship for all concerned, and we would like to restore it.”

“Very fruitful,” Claire said.

“That number has the potential to grow substantially,” Wayne said. “There are a number of opportunities the REIT has to expand, assuming we have the right intelligence. Even achieving half the returns your grandmother managed would dramatically improve our position, as well as attracting new investors.”

I wanted to ask them why they thought I would need more than that, but I knew it was a question they wouldn’t understand.

“But you need my connection to Zagan to do it,” I said.

“Correct,” Claire said.

“I can’t speak to what this would cost in terms of souls or whatever is involved,” Wayne said, “but I can assure you what we could achieve in dollar terms should be worth it.”

Something occurred to me at that moment.

Souls.

I pulled out my demon phone and opened up the Soul Trader app. The benchmark price right now was around $235,000. I owed Hell 2571 souls, and if I gave Volach something useful about the collective, I might get that down another five hundred. The value of my share in the collective was a lot more than what 2071 souls would cost. I could use it to buy my way out from under that debt.

“Can I have a day or two to think about this?” I finally said.

The four of them looked around each other.

“Of course,” Jessica said. “You know how to reach us.”

Chapter 17

“Are you sure about this?” Hayley asked.

“The math does work out,” MJ said. “To a kind of creepy degree. I mean, it’s almost exactly what you owe them.”

“Wait,” I said, “I thought there would be some left over? A lot more.”

We were back at Adriana’s, sitting together on the big bed. Hayley was holding my head in her lap while Morrigan laid against my stomach. MJ was next to her, playing with the calculator app on her phone. Katarina was on the other side with her head on my chest. Charlotte had curled up between my legs.

“Did you forget the estate taxes?” MJ asked.

I had. Estate taxes were not a thing I had ever needed to think about, after all. “Yeah, okay.”

“That’s going to take about forty percent,” she said. “So sixty percent of the eight hundred or whatever, divided by the benchmark, gets you almost exactly what you owe Hell.”

“Huh,” Morrigan said.

“Just hope the benchmark doesn’t go up,” MJ said.

I lay there staring at the ceiling. “We had them fooled today,” I said. “All the wards are still in place. So if we decide to take the money and run, they can’t do anything about it.”

“What about Zagan?” Katarina asked.

“I can’t give them what they want anyway,” I replied. “That’s kind of the roadblock there.”

“You could just walk away from all of it, once you get the money,” Morrigan said.

MJ turned toward her. “Except we’d be leaving all this stuff in place,” she said. “Zagan would still be here corrupting the town. If we weakened him as much as Katarina said, would that go away?”

“Most likely,” Katarina said. “At the very least, the effects would be greatly reduced. It is how these things usually work.”

MJ looked at me. She didn’t say anything more, but after what she’d told us that night about growing up here, she didn’t need to.

“Having a power like that could be good,” Hayley said. “You wouldn’t have to use it for evil like the collective was doing, or Astaroth would have.”

“That’s assuming it doesn’t change him somehow,” Morrigan said.

There was a time not so long ago that I could just have walked away from all of this. But now that I knew Zagan was there, with his powers right there for the taking, for anyone who had the key, that time had passed. If I did nothing here, the key could fall into someone else’s hands at some point. Astaroth’s. The collective. Amira, even.

And if I was being perfectly honest with myself, I wanted this. I didn’t have four – six, really – awesome girls around me because I had male-model looks or scintillating conversation skills. It was my power as a sorcerer. They’d all been pretty frank about that to varying degrees, about the things I could do for them, and to them.

I didn’t really care about the money. I couldn’t get my mind around having half a billion dollars. I’d spent my entire life up to this point scraping and clawing to get where I was, to the point of finally having a good future once I was done with school. The money would dissolve all of that, all the work I’d done to get here. It would be as if nothing I’d done mattered at all.

I’d inherited both the money and the soul debt from Grandma Amy. If they neutralized each other, well, fine. Six months ago, I didn’t know about either one.

The power to improve things, though, that could be useful, useful in ways that would not completely upend my life. I was certain it would have limitations I would have to deal with and be careful about. Things would be better, without being completely different.

If I could do this, I had to do it. And I would deal with the consequences when the time came.

“Jimmy?” Hayley asked.

I looked up at her. “What?”

“I was thinking. If you can get into the dream world now without being asleep, do you think you could you pull Katarina in there while she’s still awake?”

I looked over at Katarina. She didn’t look optimistic. But it was an idea.

I closed my eyes and focused myself. I entered the dream world, and soon found the connection to Katarina. I pulled on it like I’d pulled the other girls.

As I’d expected, it didn’t work. No amount of tugging budged it a millimeter. Finally, I pulled back to the real world.

“Nope,” I said, as I opened my eyes.

“Did you feel anything?” Hayley asked Katarina.

“Just the tension on our bond.”

I reached over and squeezed her hand. We were quiet for a bit.

“I have an idea,” Morrigan said a minute later. “Something Charlotte told me about binding demons during our first dream. Doesn’t she have to do what you tell her to?”

I sat up a bit. “What do you mean?”

Morrigan was right, in one sense. I never actually ordered Katarina to do anything, because she happily obeyed me just being asked, but the magic of the bond meant that I could tell her to do something, and she would be compelled to do it.

“Even if she can’t sleep on her own, could you make her sleep?” she asked. “With your bond, I mean.”

I looked at Katarina. “Could that work?”

Her eyes widened. “I don’t know,” she replied. “You’ve never told me to do something like that.”

“Try it,” Hayley said.

I sat up straight. I took a slow breath and looked down at my succubus. It couldn’t possibly be this simple, could it?

“Okay. Katarina, go to sleep.”

There was a brief pause. And then her eyes just closed. The other four of us stared down at her for a moment or two. Had she just blinked? But her eyes stayed shut.

“Fucking shit,” MJ said. “It worked.”

Hayley leaned over and hugged Morrigan. “That was brilliant!”

I shook Katarina gently. But I could feel it, through our bond, something I’d never felt before but recognized easily. Katarina was, incredibly, really and truly asleep for the first time in more than a thousand years.

“She’s really out?” MJ asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “she is.”

“So now what?”

“I’m not entirely sure. Just because she’s asleep doesn’t mean she can dream. It’s possible she’s just mimicking sleep because I ordered her to, like Adriana was mimicking being in love with Caacrinolaas.”

Hayley pulled me back down onto her lap. “Try it and see.”

I cuddled up with Katarina. MJ and Morrigan lay with us. In a moment, I returned to the dream castle. Charlotte was there.

“Hello, Master.”

“I really have no idea if this will work. We’re beyond anything I understand at this point.”

“I know. Please take care,” she said.

“It will either work or it won’t.”

“Will you do it here?”

“No. I need to go somewhere else.”

She kissed me quickly. “Good luck.”

I left the castle and returned to that densely forested inlet where I’d dreamed of Katarina’s village. I didn’t know if what I envisioned here had ever existed, if I’d simply pulled some memories of hers into my own dreams.

I didn’t try to recreate the village. I knew it was long gone, and I dreamed of its destruction that day the raiders attacked, the day Katarina had died.

I stood at the edge of the water and reached out. Finding Katarina was effortless. Our bond was so strong that it took nothing but a thought to reach her.

I tugged on the bond as I’d done before. But it felt different. The first time I’d tried it, I might as well have been trying to pull an oak tree from the ground.

This time, though, I felt some give. Not much, but it was there.

Drawing the other girls into my dream had been easy, and I wondered – given our much stronger connection – if Katarina might be even easier. But she wasn’t. It felt like pulling on a car that had been parked in the mud for years. It might move, but it was stuck deeply. So I pulled harder. At first nothing happened. Then I felt her beginning to break loose from whatever was holding her back.

And then, I had her at last. She was here.

I didn’t let her see me right away. I wanted her to get her bearings at first, and I couldn’t tell whether or not she was lucid. Her presence was just too different from the girls. She looked around the inlet in wonder, almost as if she was remembering what dreams were even like.

As the shock began to ebb, the realization that I’d managed something I had assumed was impossible, I finally remembered my original motivation for doing this, why I wanted to dream with her.

Dream love is all you need, Jimmy

I looked into her. And I saw the hole.

It was, literally, a hole. A gap. An empty void in Katarina’s psyche where her capacity to love had been cut out. I saw, just as she’d described to me, her feelings flowing into it. The feelings she had for me, about being unable to love me, and those she had as she stood here in my dream, wondering where I was.

I tried at first to close the hole, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t pull the edges together – they just slipped through my grasp and sprang back. This wasn’t something I could heal like this.

After several tries, I concluded it wasn’t going to happen. So I tried something else. I just covered the hole, like a finger in a dike. Immediately, all those feelings began pooling around the block I created, collecting and deepening rapidly. It wasn’t permanent, but it would last as long as I kept the block in place.

Only then did I let her see me.

“Katarina.”

She spun toward me. She started to say something, then her jaw dropped a little. “Jimmy?”

“This is the dream.”

“I know.” Her eyes widened as she looked at me. “What are you doing?”

“Can you feel it?”

She gasped for breath a few times, then began walking toward me. The walk turned into a run, and she threw herself into my arms. I just held her tightly.

“What are you doing?” she sobbed.

“I plugged the hole.”

Her arms tightened around my neck. “How?”

“In here, I can do almost anything.”

She rocked against me for a few seconds, then pulled back to kiss me fiercely. I kissed her back. When she broke the kiss, she pressed her face against mine.

“This was your present for me? What you meant that night at Christmas?”

“Yes.”

She laughed through her tears. “This is so much more than a sweater.”

I laughed with her.

She finally looked up at me, taking a deep breath. “I want to say it now. Can I say it?”

“Yes.”

“Jimmy, I love you so much. That you have the power to do this only makes me love you more. This is a thing that should not be possible.”

She meant it now. It was real.

“It will only last until you wake up.”

“I know. But I will remember this.”

She kissed me again. Then we held each other for a long time. Finally she pulled back to look around.

“Is this what you dreamed?” she asked. “Of my life?”

“Yes. Is this the place, or did my mind just make something up?”

She took an uneven breath. “This is the place. There, over there below the cliff, that is where I died. Where we are standing, this was where the fishing boats came ashore. That hill is where I played at being a woman with Gevald.”

“Is it still there? In Sweden, I mean?”

“I have no idea. I never returned. It would have been too painful.”

I nodded. That made sense. Finally she pulled back and took my hand. We walked along the rocky beach for a while.

“I feel dizzy,” she said a few minutes later. “These are feelings I have not had for a thousand years.”

“Should I let you wake up? I’m concerned about keeping you here too long. It wasn’t easy to get you here.”

“No. I feel . . . good. It is just that all these feelings I have for you, that were lost through the hole, are filling me up now. I do not know what to do with all of them.”

I created a lounge-bed, big enough for the two of us, over on the grass above the beach. I led her to it, and we lay down together.

“This feels the same as when we are making love,” she said after a while. “Like we are one. I feel nothing pulling on our bond, no stress on it at all.”

“Me neither.”

“I want to stay here. I don’t want to wake up. I know what will happen when I do.”

I hugged her. “I’m not sure it’s safe, to stay too long. I don’t know what this could be doing to you.”

“You kept the others in your dream for months, even though it was not even an hour in the real world.”

“You’re not human. You need to tell me if anything starts to feel wrong. We can come back, now that we know this works.”

She pulled herself closer to me. “I will.”

I’m not sure how long we lay there just holding each other. It might have been an hour or a year. Eventually Katarina sat up and put her chin on my chest.

“My head is still spinning. But I would like to meet Charlotte, as the others have.”

“Sure. Let’s go.”

We got up. With a thought, we were back in the main hall of the castle.

Katarina gasped, looking around in wonder. “This is the place you made?”

“Yep.”

“I am amazed. I had no idea it was this extensive.”

Charlotte came down the stairs, smiling. She came up and hugged us. Katarina hugged her back.

“I am so happy to meet you here at last,” Charlotte said.

Katarina laughed. They looked at each other, holding hands.

“You are more beautiful than I had imagined,” Katarina said. “Jimmy did not do you justice.”

“How are you feeling? This must be very strange for you.”

“It is. Strange but wonderful.”

“You feel well?” Charlotte asked. “I would never have imagined this could be possible.”

“I do.” Katarina looked at me. “Jimmy’s powers never cease to amaze me.”

They laughed again, I pulled them into a group hug. Charlotte nuzzled my neck.

“I think we should get back,” I said. “We know this works. Let’s not overdo it the first time.”

Katarina hugged me tightly, then nodded. “Yes.”

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I will be what I am, Jimmy. Knowing that I can love you here is enough.”

“Okay. You can wake up.”

◆◆◆

I emerged from the dream. Beside me, Katarina’s eyes fluttered open. She sat up slowly with a distant look in her eyes, then reached up and wiped her cheek quickly. The rest of them looked at us, wide-eyed.

Finally Hayley spoke. “Did it work?”

“Yes,” Katarina said softly.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

But I could see the answer in her eyes, and the pain.

“The same as I always have,” she said. “As I awoke, I felt everything draining out of me. I started to cry, but then there was nothing. I have the memories. But yes, it is gone now. I am sorry.”

“What’s gone?” MJ asked. “What do you mean?”

Katarina took a deep breath. “Jimmy made it possible for me to love him in the dream. He plugged the hole.”

The other three of them gasped loudly. Hayley’s hand flew over her mouth.

“We need more than just having Katarina there to take on Zagan,” I said.

There was a pause, and then the three of them jumped over and around me to hug Katarina, who didn’t seem to know how to feel. I let them. There wasn’t much more to say.

“But this means it would all work now,” Morrigan said. “Right?”

I nodded. “I’m almost certain this is what was missing yesterday.”

“Should we try it again?”

“We have to do it at the house,” I said.

“Then let’s go,” Hayley said.

Chapter 18

I dropped the signed documents for the REIT off at the collective, telling them I still needed to think about a few things. Then we waited until Adriana got home.

I wanted to wait until well after dark since everyone needed to be asleep, and I wasn’t sure exactly what was going happen when I took Zagan’s power – assuming I was able to. Adriana came with us; she would remain awake. I brought the key, and the chest as well just in case.

We rearranged the living room so the girls could all lie down. From this point forward, I no longer cared whether the collective knew we were getting in here. I was a part-owner of the house now, after all.

When we were all set up, I sat down in the middle of them. “This may be simple, and it may not. If things start to go sideways, I’ll pull you all out.”

They all nodded.

I looked at Katarina. “Okay, go to sleep.”

She did. The rest of them closed their eyes and tried to get comfortable. One by one, they dropped off.

“What are you worried about?” Adriana asked quietly.

“It’s not taking Zagan’s power. It’s what happens afterward. Just stay alert. I’m pretty sure I can come out and talk to you briefly without screwing things up.”

I entered the dream world. I arrived in the main hall, where Charlotte was waiting. She said nothing. I pulled the girls in, Katarina, Hayley, Morrigan, and MJ in her armor. Echidna came in beside Morrigan. Then I plugged up Katarina’s emotional hole again. She gasped, struggling with herself briefly, before stepping over to hug me.

I held her for a few moments before she turned to Hayley. They embraced, laughing.

“This is very strange,” Katarina said.

“I can see the difference,” Hayley said. “I can see it in your eyes.”

“You can see the love I feel now?” she asked.

“Yes. Yes, I can.”

Katarina hugged the others as well, then turned back to me. “I am ready.”

We descended to the dungeon, then to Zagan’s confinement. His bellows of rage rumbled up the stairwell. Finally, we emerged at the bottom and entered the broad circular room. He was there, thrashing against his chains, bucking and leaping around, roaring in anger.

I raised the black bog oak staff in one hand and took Hayley’s hand with the other as the rest of them linked hands with her, feeling the emotions flowing through all seven of us. Love was the key to his chains, and I had it now.

I reached into him once more. He felt the difference this time, and screeched in terror, flailing around trying to break free and escape. His cries sounded like a cat with its tail caught in a doorframe.

But I had him. I was strong enough this time. My coven was complete. I reached into them and through them, drawing out the love we all shared and latching onto his core power. I drew it out as he shrieked in agony. I pulled it out of him like fingernail being torn free. I felt the strands of spirit that tied it to him stretching and tearing.

It resisted me. He resisted me. I pulled harder. The root of it was apparent now, growing taut where it reached back to the center of his being. Zagan shrieked again, flailing like a fish caught on a hook instead of a massive bull chained to the floor.

With one mighty tug, I tore it from him.

Zagan let out a final anguished screech – a sound so full of despair and defeat that it chilled me to my core.

But I had it. I had his power. And I drew it into me.

◆◆◆

“Where did you get your walking stick, Grandma?”

Grandma Amy looked down at me from her chair in front of the TV. Fox News was on. She stopped cursing at the screen and answered me.

“The wood is from Scotland. But I made it myself.”

“Why is it so black?” I asked. “I’ve never seen black trees like this.”

“It’s a very special type of wood. It was buried underground for thousands of years in a place called a bog. The chemicals in the bog turned it black.”

“What’s a bog?”

“It’s like a swamp. A man found it one day when it was still a branch and took it home. He sold it to the man I bought it from, and I made the stick from it.”

Seven-year-old Jimmy ran his fingers up and down the carvings on the staff. “It’s so cool. I like all the designs on it.”

“Those are symbols of power.”

“Like electricity?” I asked.

“Something like that. One day when I don’t need it anymore, it will be yours.”

“Wow.”

“You’ll need it for the things that are coming. One day you’ll meet the girl whose ancestor found that stick in the bog. You’ll need her to do something very important.”

I looked up. “What is it?”

“You’ll know what it is when the time comes.”

I pondered that a moment or two. “Oh. So who is this girl?”

“If I told you her name, it would disturb things.”

“Is she nice?”

“Yes. And the two of you will fall in love. Meeting her will save your life.”

◆◆◆

I floated in a realm of air and light. Some distance away drifted the stunned, reeling form of a giant bull with eagle’s wings. It twitched and shuddered. As I watched, its form shrank, shifting slowly. The wings withered, their feathers turning to dust. Its horns lengthened, becoming thinner and branched. Its massive bull-like form gradually turned to an emaciated deer-antlered goat about the size of a pony, with hands like an old man.

I sensed that it was once known as Zagan, but would be called Sergal from this point forward.

I felt different as well.

Something new was inside me. As I looked at the unconscious goat, I saw its weakness and shortcomings. I could fix them, though I had no desire to.

Gradually that conversation with Grandma Amy came back to me. Why had I remembered it at that exact moment?

Very slowly, I remembered what happened before I came to be here.

But where was here?

I looked around. The form of the lighted realm became apparent. Sergal and I floated in an octahedral space about a hundred feet across. Outside was darkness.

By willing it, I was able to drift up to one of the triangular panes that marked the edge of the space. It was glasslike but not glass. It was harder and colder. There were large triangular indentations across the pane, oriented in the opposite direction.

It came to me that this was diamond, because it had no qualities I could improve.

I was inside a diamond.

I was inside the diamond that confined Zagan. And now I was trapped as well.

I needed to get out. But how?

I floated around for some indeterminate period, examining the interior surfaces of the diamond. I could feel that there was a way out, but the exit had to be opened from the other side.

There was a key to the exit.

It was not the key, the one I held in the waking world, but it was one I possessed. As I floated here, examining the enchantment that trapped us inside the diamond, I sensed that the key I held led to the key to the exit, the thing that would let me out.

I remembered something Amalia had said in that dream of Zagan’s binding. These must be preserved. They cannot be left here, or foolish people could release him without meaning to.

The letters. The Hebrew letters in the chest. They were the key. But I could do nothing with them from in here. I needed someone out there to restore them.

The girls were all asleep. But Adriana could do it.

I tried to reach out to her, but the walls of diamond blocked me. My connection to the dream world was severed in here. I raged at my confinement. I couldn’t have come this far only to be trapped here. Would I be stuck in this place for a timeless eternity, never able to wake?

I could still sense my body, sitting motionless on the couch. Could I do anything with it? I couldn’t wake up. I could feel myself there, hand clutching the key to the chest. So close, yet so far.

Something then occurred to me. If I was trapped in here, why could I sense my body? Sense it, but nothing else? There was clearly some connection. But why? Zagan had no connection outside the rock, no way to influence anything except through the person who possessed the key.

And then I saw it.

It was the key. My body held the key, so I could reach my body. Just as Amalia had reached Zagan and drawn on his power all that time.

Adriana needed the key. And I could see only one way to get it to her.

I reached into my body, struggling with all my might to open my hand. It was like pushing open the doors to the Mines of Moria. But slowly they moved. It seemed to take hours.

I felt the key fall from my hand, and the connection abruptly cut off. I was thrust roughly back into the diamond.

I watched. I waited. I wondered if Adriana had even noticed me drop it. I began to despair, to wonder what the girls were doing on the other side, if they were still in the castle, frozen in place, or if they had begun to wake up.

Someone picked up the key.

I knew in an instant that it was Adriana. I reached out to her. But she was still awake. I couldn’t do anything unless she tried to contact me, and she had no idea what was going on.

Through the key, I could feel her. I could see what she was. I could see all her strengths and weaknesses. And the first thing I saw was—

Damn.

Maybe I might pay a visit to her dreams after all, if I could ever get out of here. Because if I was reading her correctly, she was awfully good in bed. She wasn’t Katarina, but for a mortal woman, it was impressive.

No wonder Caacrinolaas had been so obsessed with her.

But she wasn’t the greatest witch. She was actually better at sex than sorcery, and she was a really shitty dream sorcerer.

I could improve that.

I poured everything I could into her through the key. I couldn’t make her the greatest dream sorcerer who ever lived – that was me, after all – the power didn’t work like that. I couldn’t make a lead coin into the goldest coin that ever existed. I could only make it into gold. So I could only make her good at dream sorcery.

Just good enough to yank her in here.

All at once, she appeared on the other side of the diamond wall, facing me.

“Jimmy!” she gasped. Her eyes were as big as dinner plates.

“I need your help.”

“What—what is going on?”

“I pulled you in here. I’ll explain later. But I’m trapped. I need you to open the chest, and go down to the rock in the basement. Take all the letters and put them back in the rock. That will destroy the enchantment and let me out.”

“Won’t it release Zagan?” she asked.

“He’s not Zagan anymore. I took his power. That’s why I’m trapped here.”

“All right. I will do it.”

“I’ll come to your dreams when this is all over.”

Adriana laughed. “You may get more than you expected from that, Jimmy.”

Then she disappeared.

And I waited.

After some long, vague period of time, I began to feel the enchantment weakening. I knew it would take her a while to fit all the letters into the places they’d once been, where Amalia had cut them out. But she was doing it. I could feel each one, feel the incremental weakening of the forces that held me in here.

I heard a moan behind me.

I turned. Zagan – Sergal, now – was stirring. He kicked and jerked as he seemed to awaken. His red eyes opened, and he fixed me with an evil glare. But he kept his distance. He feared me.

The enchantment continued to weaken. Adriana was doing it. Letter by letter, it was falling.

There were only a few left. Then perhaps three. Then one.

And the realm of light and air fell away. The panes around us shattered and fell in a shower of glittering shards.

Like that, I was back in the castle, standing with the girls at the edge of Zagan’s enclosure. All of them cried out.

“Jimmy!” Hayley shrieked. “Where did you go?”

“What happened?” Morrigan cried.

Katarina and Charlotte threw themselves against me.

“Uh, guys?” MJ said.

I looked past them. And I saw that we were not alone.

Sergal was there, on the floor, his restraints shattered. Beside him stood a dark knight on a skeletal horse, holding a long lance. With him were a dozen forms that looked like hairless red apes.

Katarina gripped my arm. “Jimmy! That is Eligos! Freeing Zagan must have drawn him here!”

I wanted to reassure them that we were in my dream world, where I was a god, but I sensed suddenly that was not entirely true. We were still somehow merged with Zagan’s original confinement, in some strange nether land.

MJ stepped up beside me, drawing her sword. “Can we take them?”

Morrigan came up on the other side. I felt her gathering her energy. “Yes,” she said.

I looked at the girls and began to understand what this was. It was different, somehow, from all the other dreams. Connecting with Zagan had brought us to a kind of middle ground where Eligos could enter. I was still strong here, but I was not all-powerful.

I looked into the girls. I saw that they were dangerously overconfident from their previous experiences with me.

But I had Zagan’s power now. I could do more. And I saw their strengths and weaknesses just as I had seen them in Adriana. MJ had decent combat instincts from her taekwondo, but she was not truly skilled with a sword. She’d been playing with it here.

I fixed that.

Morrigan was already a skilled sorcerer, as were Charlotte and Echidna. I couldn’t improve them. Katarina was . . . Katarina. I couldn’t sort out what I could change in her just yet.

That left Hayley.

She was smart. I couldn’t make her any smarter. I couldn’t even make a dumb person half as smart as she was. But that wasn’t going to be of much use right now. As I looked into her, I began to realize the limitations of this power. I could not make someone a paragon of everything – a genius, an Olympic athlete, a deadly warrior, and a concert pianist all in one. There were patterns I had to work with, seeds I had to germinate and grow. And Hayley was—

One day you’ll meet the girl whose ancestor found that stick in the bog.

I remembered that dream, the dream about the staff and the peat cutter who found it. I’d sensed something about him, not just that I had a connection with him, but that he had something else. He had the bloodline. The bloodline for sorcery.

A bloodline that ran right through Hayley.

It was funny this had never occurred to me, when you stopped and thought about it. Because it really hadn’t taken a whole lot to convince her I was a sorcerer, even though it should have, given her background. She’d listened patiently to the evidence and accepted it, moving on as if I hadn’t turned her world upside down. She’d actually kind of embraced it, when you stepped back and considered things.

I’d never asked myself why.

I didn’t know if I really had the right to do this, but there was no time to ask permission. I took that nascent talent neither of us had ever suspected and blew into it like a balloon. It swelled and filled her mind with everything it had taken Morrigan months to learn.

She let out a yelp, eyes going wide. “I know magic! What the fu—”

“Baby, I’m sorry, we need you. Let’s talk about this later.”

In the few moments it took me to work through all of this, Eligos, Sergal, and the ape demons had charged forward, springing out of the central enclosure. They formed into a line facing us. MJ stepped up, swinging her sword. I looked at Katarina.

“Can you change into something—”

I didn’t need to finish the sentence. She understood. My beautiful succubus swelled and shifted into a form resembling one of her Viking ancestors, a six-foot-five wall of muscle wearing a chain-mail shirt and holding a long-handled axe. I looked inward to see if I could improve her, only to realize she had gained the necessary skills along with the form.

Morrigan, Hayley, Charlotte, Echidna, and I spread out as MJ and Katarina took up positions in front of us.

“What do we do?” Morrigan asked. “I don’t know any combat spells yet!”

“You need a focus object. That will have to be me. I need to draw on all of you. Just focus on me.”

Hayley spoke up in a panicked tone. “But how—oh shit! How do I know all this?”

I raised the staff as I felt the four of them backing me up. I suspected fire was not the best idea here. Instead, I called forth Sídhe and Sinann and sent a torrent of ice crystals between MJ and Katarina. They struck three of the ape demons, tearing them to shreds and driving them backward.

Eligos and Sergal charged forward at the same time. MJ stepped up, swinging the greatsword over her head and down at Sergal as he leveled his horns at her. A momentary flash of fear chilled my gut, but she gracefully sidestepped his charge and brought her sword down onto his neck. There was a shriek of rage and pain as the blade bit deep, and black blood spurted forth.

Sergal stumbled, struggling away from her before she could bring the sword down again. He sprang over the edge back into the enclosure.

Beside her, Katarina faced Eligos’s charge. She swatted the lance away with her axe, then swung it back around at the skeletal horse’s forelegs, shattering both of them. The horse made no sound, only collapsing forward onto the ground. Eligos fell from the saddle, rolling between them.

The red ape demons were right behind Eligos. Eight or nine were still left. I called out Sídhe again, forming a wall of air to shield MJ and Katarina. The apes crashed into it, raging and snarling at us. I drew on the girls behind me and shoved them back as hard as I could.

MJ and Katarina faced Eligos as he rose to his feet. He was easily seven feet tall, with a body that seemed far too thin to support the dark, battered armor he wore. He drew out a long mace and pointed it in my direction. His voice hissed at me like the sizzling of flesh against a branding iron.

“You have taken something you have no right to, mortal.”

Behind him, the skeletal horse struggled to rise to its feet despite missing its forelegs.

“Come and take it back if you have a problem with it,” I said.

He hissed at me again. “You hide behind your women rather than face me.”

MJ leveled her sword at him. “Yeah, that’s not a problem for us, fuckhead. You want it, come and get it.”

He turned toward her, raising his mace. Katarina lunged forward, striking down with her axe, but Eligos spun, deflecting her blow. MJ tried to take advantage, swinging under his arm, but he turned himself again, and her sword glanced off his armor.

Behind them, the apes were getting to their feet. I drew on the girls again and called forth Ceridwen to join Sídhe. The two of them swirled together, forming a vortex of lightning that blasted out in a great branching arc. The apes screamed in pain as the energy coursed through all of them.

Eligos struck at MJ, but she was too agile and darted away, spinning around with her sword and striking hard at his knees. He had turned to block Katarina’s axe and didn’t see her. MJ’s blow knocked him forward, and I saw black blood spray from under his armor. Katarina struck again, and this time her axe bit into his back.

He roared in rage, springing up and away from them, back over the bodies of the apes that still twitched and shook with the lightning I’d hit them with.

But he was weakened. He extended his mace toward me again.

“This is not over!”

I sent Ceridwen and Sídhe out again in a single great bolt of lightning. It struck the end of Eligos’s mace, exploding it in a shower of sparks and knocking him backward.

Then I felt everything shift. We were fully back in my dream world, in the dungeon of the castle. The strange circular room was gone. Eligos and Sergal were either dead – unlikely, I knew – or they had abandoned the middle ground and left.

The girls all turned to me. Katarina became Katarina again.

“Did you do it?” Morrigan asked. “You took Zagan’s power?”

“Yes,” I said. “And Zagan is gone. The enchantment is broken. That goat-thing MJ fought was his new form. He’s much, much weaker than he was before.”

The six of them came to me in a big embrace. I kissed every one of them.

MJ grinned at me. “So I guess Zagan’s Rock needs a new name now.”

Chapter 19

“So now what?” Hayley asked.

We were back in Adriana’s house, sitting around her den. It was late, but none of us felt like sleeping.

“I need time to work through this in my head,” I said. “This power is not quite what I thought it was.” I explained what I’d learned about needing a seed to germinate. “I have to start with something. Chicken shit to chicken salad, like I said before.”

“But I knew nothing at all about sorcery,” Hayley said. “Now I know all kinds of stuff.”

“You must have the bloodline, Hayley,” Katarina said. “Whether we knew it or not.”

I told her about the dreams, and the conversation I’d had with Grandma Amy when I was a little kid. Hayley’s eyes widened.

“That’s crazy,” she said.

“It’s like we said. Something wants us to be together, babe,” I said. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s there.”

“That’s so freaky,” Morrigan said. “How could she know what would happen?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“I’m still not quite getting the improving stuff,” Morrigan said. “It has to start bad? You couldn’t, I don’t know, make MJ a better soccer player?”

“No. If she was a bad soccer player, I could probably turn her into something like what she is. But from where she is now, I can’t improve it further.”

“But you could make her into a bad-ass warrior woman?”

They all laughed. MJ had woken up a different person physically. She’d always been lean and athletic, but it was mostly from the core down. Turning her into an expert swordsman had noticeably bulked up her arms and shoulders. She looked like an internet fitness model now.

“So . . . if you could do all that to MJ . . . ” Hayley said slowly, “. . . could you give me bigger boobs?”

I groaned. “Are we back to this again? Baby, I love you the way you are.”

She just lowered her red eyebrows and stared at me.

“Really?” I asked.

“I’m not saying I want to be Morrigan, or Charlotte, I just . . .”

It was a bit of a struggle, because I really did like her the way she was. Not seeing it as a weakness made it difficult. I had to reach into her and see it from her perspective. And she really was bothered by her little boobs.

So I gave her a bit more, from a small B to a small C, but still firm and perky enough not to need a bra. She gasped softly as she looked down at herself. She put her hands on her chest and squeezed a couple of times.

“Okay. I guess that works.”

“Um,” Morrigan said.

I looked at her. “What?”

She laughed nervously. “I definitely don’t want to be bigger, but . . . what you did to Charlotte. Could you do that for me too?”

I saw it. Yeah, okay. It took only a moment to firm her up. She gasped just as Hayley did and groped herself. She looked up at me, grinning. “Thank you, Master.”

Then the rest of them looked at MJ. But she recoiled a bit and held up her hands.

“Nah, I’m good. Do what you want in the dream, but out here, boobs and soccer don’t really mix.”

They all laughed.

“Can you improve yourself at all?” Morrigan asked.

“No.” I’d tried, and nothing happened. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“But what about Katarina?” Hayley asked.

I knew we were done talking about boobs. I looked at my succubus. “Do you want me to try?”

She understood what I meant. She just looked at the floor and nodded. “If you can. Having felt it in the dream now . . .”

It wasn’t an improvement, per se, though. She was what she was, and no succubi were capable of love. They were all equal in that respect.

I had to look at her in comparison to the others, to what we’d experienced in the two dreams together. To what she wanted, just as I’d seen what Hayley wanted a moment ago.

“It's going to change what you are,” I said. “I can’t predict what the outcome might be.”

“I do not care,” she said.

I hadn’t been able to close up the hole in the dreams because it was too tied up with the thing Katarina was. With this new power, though, I could change that thing. So I did.

Nothing seemed to happen immediately. Then she looked up at me, biting her lip.

I could immediately see what it had done to her. She would never be able to take another soul. I’d broken that ability. Being able to feel love made it impossible.

Katarina got up and came to me, sitting in my lap and sliding her arms around my neck. We held each other tightly, rocking back and forth.

“Did it work?” Hayley asked softly.

Katarina nodded against my neck. The other girls all exchanged a glance and came to us. I held them all in a big group hug as they began to laugh together. Then Katarina got up and hugged each of them in turn.

“I’m ready to go to bed now,” I said finally.

◆◆◆

We said goodbye to Adriana in the morning, promising to stay in touch, and drove home.

“Adriana gets her dream after I get mine,” Hayley said as we passed through San Sebastian.

“Definitely,” I said. “Did you have anything particular in mind?”

“Actually, yeah. I did.”

“What?” I looked over at her.

“We can do anything?” she asked. “I mean, I know that, but could I be someone other than my real-world self? Like, a different me?”

“I’m not sure I understand. You’d pretend to be someone else?”

“No. I mean, if we did the kind of stuff we’ve been doing, except I didn’t know I was dreaming? So I thought it was all really happening?”

“You wouldn’t want to know?” I asked. “I guess I wouldn’t have to make you lucid.”

“I’d want you tell me at the end. But yeah, that’s the idea.”

“What is it you have in mind?”

She took a deep breath. “Don’t laugh. Morrigan isn’t the only one with involved fantasies.”

Morrigan laughed, but I bit my tongue. “I won’t.”

“I want it to be in the castle, but not like you made me before, all witchy and scary. I want to be this helpless girl who shows up on the doorstep, and then you teach me magic.”

“See, this right here is why we broke up,” Morrigan said, laughing again. “We both want to be subs to some scary wizard guy.”

Hayley made a frustrated noise. “No, I don’t mean it like that.”

“Are you thinking something like Beauty and the Beast?” I asked.

“Kind of–sort of. Except I don’t redeem you, more the other way around.”

“I corrupt you?” I asked.

“Right.”

“I stand by what I said,” Morrigan said. “You have submissive inclinations, and you need to embrace them.”

I nodded, still trying not to laugh at them. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“That sounds a lot better than my dream,” MJ said. “All we did was lie on the beach.”

Now I laughed. “Come up with something like that, and let’s talk after this one.”

◆◆◆

When we got back home, Hayley had to go study. MJ had to get back to school too. Then I walked Morrigan back to her dorm. Her roommate was there, so we held each other for a little while at her door.

“I love you, Master,” she said softly.

“What are you going to tell Celeste?”

“I’ll think of something. I belong to you now.” She kissed me. “Thanks for the new and improved boobs.”

I laughed. “No problem. Looking forward to them.”

“Are there rules for me, when I’m sleeping over here?” she asked. The look in her eyes would have told me what she meant, even had I not already rummaged through all her fantasies in our dreams.

“Yes, baby. Nothing on your own now. I just want you to edge for twenty minutes every night.”

She smiled. “Only twenty?”

“At least. More if you want to.”

She kissed me again. “Okay. I will.”

Katarina and I walked back to my apartment with Charlotte. She held my hand the whole way.

“I need to call Volach,” I said. “Just to wrap this up.”

“He may know about Zagan,” she said. “And Eligos.”

“What’s done is done.”

I called him and told him what I knew about the collective. He didn’t ask about Zagan. Maybe the news hadn’t spread. He told me I’d earned another five hundred souls. I checked the Soul Trader app after I hung up, and my balance was indeed down to 2071.

Then I had to find a financial advisor to deal with my shares in the collective. I really had no idea what I was doing, but Santo Domingo was big enough that I had a range of options to choose from. After a few false starts, I connected with a firm on the west side of town. It took some back and forth to convince them I was on the level, but eventually my story about an unexpected inheritance got their attention.

The woman I spoke to explained that, as I’d fully expected, unloading nearly half a billion dollars’ worth of shares in a private REIT was no simple task, but they could handle it. It would all depend on finding a buyer, since the shares were not traded on any market. There would be commissions and taxes to deal with, but there was enough room for it. I sent them all my paperwork and the client agreement.

After I got off the phone, I lay down to think about Hayley’s dream. I was a little intrigued to see how what she wanted would work. What I’d done with MJ hadn’t changed who she was. I would need to give this some thought.

I had my own studying and grading to get caught up on, and wasn’t until after dinner until I was ready to call it a night. I had a group text with Hayley, Katarina, and MJ, but we hadn’t added Morrigan to it yet – things had just happened too fast in the real world. I took care of that now.

Good night to all my hot little witches ily

Morrigan responded first.

Good night master ily2

And a few moments later:

Look what you did to me

A pic came in with her top and bra pulled up, exposing her new boobs, and goddamn, she looked really good. Like Charlotte’s, but outside the dream world they looked even better.

MJ: lmao how are those real?

Morrigan: It’s magic lol

A few moments later, a shirtless pic of Hayley popped up, though from the neck down. She looked like a slightly smaller Katarina, and I had to admit that, while part of me missed what she’d been, they looked awesome.

Hayley: I think I can live with these

Morrigan: Those are fucking perfect!!!!!!

Like they should be in the entry for perfect boobs on wikipedia

You look great baby

Katarina, who had been lying on the couch while I was working, joined in.

I do not disagree and I have seen more breasts than any of you ever will

MJ: lmfao

Hayley: I still want those giant dream tits Jimmy

Whatever you say

MJ: Dying over here

Morrigan: No you don’t trust me

About thirty seconds later, a pic came in from MJ. She was in front of her dorm room mirror in just a thong, flexing all her new muscles for the camera, and holy shit.

MJ: should I get an OnlyFans or not?

Morrigan sent three gasping emojis. Hayley send a couple of jaw-drop emojis.

I’m coming over there now

Hayley: Me too

Morrigan: Pick me up?

MJ: lol my roommate just asked wtf I was doing and have I been working out

Go to bed people ily2

◆◆◆

Katarina came to me slowly when we went to bed. I just held her as we stood there. This was the first time we were going to be together since I’d given her back the ability to feel love.

“I am afraid,” she said.

“Of what?”

“I feel like my heart will burst when I am with you now.”

I kissed her forehead. “I think what you’re feeling is normal. It’s just that you’ve never felt it before. You never felt it as a mortal.”

“I know. It is so overwhelming. I think of feeling like this for all eternity, and I cannot imagine it.”

“Better than feeling nothing for all that time.”

She looked up at me, eyes wet. I kissed her, and she melted against me. I took it slow, letting her little nightgown fall off and then slipping out of my clothes. We lay down together, and for a while we just touched and caressed as we looked into each other’s eyes.

Then I pulled her above me so I could suck on her perfect nipples. She moaned softly, leaning against the wall. I felt between her legs, finding her as wet as she’d ever been this soon. I just played with her gently, and she let me, not trying to move anything forward. A few minutes of it had her shivering in release above me.

When it passed, she settled back onto my chest, kissing me deeply. She kissed her way down my body, and soon my cock had disappeared down her throat. I lay there and let her work, feeling her moving slowly up and down, all the way out, then all the way in. She knew just what I liked by this point and gave it to me.

I held her head, running my fingers through her long hair. When I tried to pull her up, she shook her head, not letting go. So I let her continue, enjoying the wonderful feel of her lips and tongue over me. One hand teased my balls as she sucked, the other came up to stroke my nipples.

As I grew closer, she rose and concentrated on the last couple of inches, bobbing and sucking steadily, tongue fluttering around. She gradually slowed down, drawing it out until I was right on the edge and she was barely moving. Then she stopped altogether, except for her tongue, which was very slowly tracing a circle around me inside her mouth. For a minute or two, she did nothing more, teasing me ever so gently. I gripped her hands tightly, and I felt her smiling around me.

She rose off very slowly and kissed the head. I moaned.

“This feel so different now,” she whispered. “Making you feel good.”

“How?” I managed.

“It makes my heart warm. I did not realize it was so cold before.”

“Okay,” I gasped.

She laughed softly. “What do you want?”

“Finish up, please.”

She sucked on a finger for a few moments and then took me back into her mouth with excruciating slowness. Then she held me there again. I felt the finger probing into my ass. Then all at once, she began sucking and bobbing eagerly while pumping the tip of her finger into me. I groaned, groping at her head, and exploded into her mouth. My orgasm was so intense that my head swam. Katarina kept sucking and fluttering and fingering me all through it until I couldn’t take any more and buried myself in her throat.

I felt her swallow around me, but she kept sucking until it was all over and I’d caught my breath. Then she rose up and lay on my chest.

“I love you, Jimmy.”

I hugged her. We didn’t get to sleep for quite a while.

◆◆◆

But demonic love and special abilities or not, I had to get back to school. I might have had half a billion dollars now, but none of it was in cash and I had serious debts to pay off. So technically my net worth was the same.

I quickly learned not to focus too intently on the other kids around school, because the power kept picking up on all the things I could improve, and I knew madness that way lay.

Katarina continued coming to campus with me, and Morrigan joined our usual meetings for lunch. After all the insane shit that had happened the past weekend, it was a luxury just to behave like college students again.

“How have you managed with Echidna?” I asked Morrigan a few days later while we were eating.

She shrugged. “She sleeps with me. My roommate doesn’t care. She doesn’t seem to need an enclosure like the other snakes I’ve had.”

“Charlotte is the same way,” I said. “She looks like a cat but doesn’t really have the same needs.”

Charlotte meowed in agreement. The look in her eyes told me what needs she was thinking of at that moment.

“Have you fed her?” Hayley asked Morrigan.

“No. She asked me to let her out of the dorm last night, and she went and caught a mouse somewhere. I went out and got her afterward.”

“You can just tell what she wants?” Hayley asked.

“Pretty much.”

“You’ll understand if you get a familiar,” I said.

Hayley’s face got a little pale. I knew she was still adjusting to the idea of being a witch.

“Should I? I mean, I never had a pet. My mom didn’t want them, you know that. I wouldn’t know what to do with an animal. My roommate is allergic to a bunch of stuff.”

“Only when you’re ready,” I said.

“I feel like I should wait.”

Hayley had to get to class, and so did I. I hugged them all as we split up.

“I’ll come over tonight,” Hayley said.

“See you in lab later,” Morrigan said. This was the first lab section since she’d joined my coven, and we’d discussed how we had to keep things low-key. She was accordingly dressed more sedately today, just ripped-up black jeans and a lace-up leather corset she’d gotten from Adriana. But she still had her little collar on, and I knew she hadn’t taken it off since that night in Zagan’s Rock.

Katarina walked me to Dr. Paulson’s Biochem II lecture. At the building, we just leaned together as she pressed her forehead against my chin.

“I’m really liking not feeling alone anymore,” I said.

“This is all very strange for me,” she replied. “I feel so much more tension when we are apart now, yet I would not trade it for anything.” She rose up and kissed me. “I love you, Jimmy.”

I kissed her back and went to class. When I got to the Chem 245 lab later that afternoon, Morrigan was there waiting in the hallway.

“This will be pretty weird,” she said quietly as I unlocked the door and let her in.

“I’ve been your TA for months now,” I said. “I think you can deal with it.”

She glanced behind us, checking to see if anyone was looking, then pecked me on the cheek. “I like having you as my master more.”

“Just don’t get me fired.”

She laughed softly and went to her seat. The other students filed in over the next few minutes. A little after three-thirty, I got them all started. The assignment today was a magnetic susceptibility experiment, which involved using an instrument known as an Evans balance to determine the number of unpaired electrons in a transition metal complex. I had to spend about ten minutes showing them all how to use it without breaking anything – Evans balances were really expensive – but once that was underway, I went up front to focus on my own stuff while they worked.

About half an hour into the lab, my phone rang. I almost silenced it until I realized the number was the investment firm I’d contacted about the collective shares.

“Got to take this outside, guys, be right back.”

Only Morrigan really paid attention as I left.

I answered when I was out in the hall. “Hey.”

The woman I’d talked to was on the other end. “Jimmy, it’s Rachel Hayes from Kleinmann Phillips. Is this a good time?”

“Good as any, I guess,” I said.

“I wanted to let you know that we already have serious interest in your REIT shares from one of the big mutual funds we’ve worked with in the past. There’s some due diligence the managers want to do first, but if it passes muster, they want all of it.”

“Everything?”

“Yes. I expected it to take longer than this, as I said the other day, but your timing turned out to be really good. They’re looking for a hedge against some of their other holdings, and the properties in your REIT are a good fit. I reviewed their portfolio myself, and I think it would be a great move for them. Central Coast real estate has been showing good stable growth for years, and they’re looking to offset against some energy assets.”

I had to take a moment to calm my nerves. “You remember what we talked about, about the floor I have to clear here?” I’d explained to her that I had another big debt to pay off in addition to the estate taxes, and falling short would be problematic. The last thing I wanted was to sell the whole thing and still not have enough to clear my soul debt.

“Yes, absolutely,” she said. “We quoted a preliminary figure above that. They didn’t balk. We’ll make it work, or keep looking.”

“Okay, great.”

She spent a few minutes explaining how the sale, if it went through, would work. I expected the transaction would take weeks or more, but in fact she assured me it could be closed in a single day. The big investors moved more money than that around on a regular basis. I had been concerned that the collective might have gotten dodgy about the paperwork and registrations for the REIT, but it turned out that Charles had been very careful about keeping things on the level. So that would ease the transfer and due diligence.

◆◆◆

Morrigan lingered in the hallway waiting for me after class, and we walked out of the building together, though casually.

“I was wondering,” she said as we reached the sidewalk outside and Charlotte fell in alongside us. “Could you use your power to change my hair?”

“Change it how?”

“Make it naturally purple? Like it was in the dream.”

I tried to consider if that would count as an improvement, or if it was even possible. When I read her, the result was nebulous. I’d never actually seen her natural hair color.

“What is it normally?” I asked.

“This totally boring brown. Not like MJ’s at all. Hers is so rich and beautiful, mine is like, just flat and nothing. You’d hate it.”

I could feel what she meant now – MJ did have great hair, and I felt Morrigan’s envy of it – but I still wasn’t quite sure what to do. This wasn’t a skill to improve or an adjustment to beauty standards I understood.

“Maybe. I’m just having trouble getting a fix on it. But I’ll try.”

She smiled and bounced excitedly on her feet, an action that made her new boobs almost pop out of her corset. “That would be so awesome if you could, Master. I’d be so happy.”

“I’m sure I can come up with something.”

Morrigan gave me a quick hug, then withdrew, glancing around us. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Nobody’s paying attention.”

She looked around us again, but then reached down to pick up Charlotte and carry her with us. Charlotte didn’t object.

On the way across McKinley Boulevard, we passed a homeless woman pushing a shopping cart and muttering to herself. When she saw us, she looked up at me.

“They’re coming,” she said.

I didn’t answer her or even acknowledge it much, but her voice sent a brief chill down my spine. The lack of response she got from us seemed to disturb her.

“They’re coming!” she yelled again.

“Who is coming?” Morrigan asked.

“The ones,” the woman replied, eyes flaring. “They’re coming for me. They’ll come for you too!”

I took Morrigan's arm and kept going. The woman continued muttering imprecations at us.

When we'd crossed over to my building, I looked over at her.

“Can you tell me something? Apart from that thing around your neck and anything else.”

She bit her lip for a second. “Sure. What?”

“Are you happy? I know this isn’t exactly the situation you must have had in mind all this time I’ve been your TA.”

She gasped softly, putting her fingers over her mouth quickly, then began to laugh. Then she looked down at Charlotte and hugged her.

“Jimmy . . . Master . . . this is exactly the situation I was hoping for.”

I stopped short on the sidewalk. “It is?”

Morrigan shook her head, laughing. “Learning magic from you and being your sub was the exact fucking thing I was fantasizing about all these months. That was why I was so upset when you finally asked me about what I’d done, and I had to say it was nothing.”

I nodded, understanding. “I was telling you that you could have had everything you wanted, except you weren’t worthy.”

“Exactly. For a moment, I was seriously ready to go back to my dorm room and—and—”

I cut her off. “Right.”

“Yeah. Except, we’ve gone so far beyond the things I fantasized about. I never imagined we’d be able to do all the stuff we’ve done. And, I never thought this would happen too, but having Hayley back in my life fucking rules. Breaking up with her sucked. I mean, I totally understood why she called it quits, but it hurt. You have no idea. Getting her and you, plus MJ and Katarina, and even Echidna and Charlotte—” She laughed again. “Every day now is like my biggest fantasy come to life.”

I laughed and hugged her. “Okay. That’s good to know.”

Morrigan hugged me back tightly. “I love you, Master. So fucking much.”

Chapter 20

Morrigan, Hayley, and I lounged around the apartment while Katarina made dinner.

“I’ve been thinking about your dream,” I said to Hayley, grinning.

“And?”

“I can see it, definitely. I have some ideas. But I think for this, we can’t plan on any particular night,” I said. “I feel like I need to slide into your dreams without warning you, or it could make you lucid or even wake you up as soon as it started. So we need to wait until you’re not expecting me.”

“Hmph. Okay.”

“How long are you going to do it?” Morrigan asked.

“As long as it takes,” Hayley said.

I laughed.

My phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, but demon phones never got robocalls – something to do with an arrangement with the spammers who made most of them – so I answered it.

“Hey.”

There was silence for a moment. Then a woman’s voice spoke up. “Hello?”

“This is Jimmy,” I said.

“Hello?” she said again.

Suddenly I recognized the voice and realized what was going on. It was Jessica, and thanks to the ward, she couldn’t hear me. I jumped up, put the phone on speaker and handed it to Katarina. “It’s Jessica. Pretend to be me.”

She took it. “This is Jimmy,” she said in my voice.

“Oh, Jimmy, this is Jessica with the Breamstone Collective, I thought I’d gotten the wrong number.”

“No, I dropped my phone for a second, what’s up?” Katarina repeated after me.

“I was just wondering if you’d had a chance to consider our arrangement. There are a number of things we could use your help with.”

Rachel, my financial advisor, had explained to me that the collective wouldn’t know I had sold my shares until the deal went through, after which it would be too late for them to do anything. So I just needed to put them off a little longer.

“It’s possible,” I replied. “Was there anything specific you had in mind?”

“Yes, in fact, there is. I can send you a list, if that would help.”

“It would.”

“All right, I’ll do that,” she said. “I’ll pull something together tonight and email it. Would that work?”

“Yes. Was there anything else?”

“No. I’m just very glad to hear you’re willing to work with us.”

“All right. Good night.”

I went back to the couch. Morrigan laid her head across my lap, and I began running my fingers through her hair. I loved the purple, and I wanted to find a way to do this.

She looked up at me, smiling. “Any ideas?”

“About?” Hayley asked. She came over and sat at the other end, putting Morrigan’s feet on her lap. Morrigan explained.

Hayley’s face wrinkled up. “Could you even do that?” she asked me.

“I’m not sure. It’s weird. The more I think about this power, the less I seem to be able to do with it. That night in that dream, I didn’t think about improving you and MJ, giving you all those skills, I just did it. But afterward, with your boobs, it got harder. It has to feel like an improvement. I couldn’t do yours right away, because I really did like how you were. Connecting to you, and feeling your side of it, enabled me to do it.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “But Morrigan was easy?”

I nodded. “Yeah. She wanted it, and so did I. But here’s the thing, I don’t know how I do this stuff, and I’m beginning to think it’s because I don’t know enough about biology and genetics, so my mind doesn’t try to break it down. I can just want it to happen, and it does.”

I looked down at Morrigan, resting my hand on her purple locks.

“But with your hair, I can see the chemicals in the dye, and the pigments in your natural hair, and I know why it looks the way it does. So I start looking for ways to change the chemistry, and it’s hard. It’s why I haven’t been able to make anything into gold yet, even though I know I should be able to. I know exactly what would be involved at an atomic level, how if I was changing, say, a piece of iron into gold, I would have to add fifty-three protons to every nucleus, and that’s not a simple thing.”

“But expanding my boobs is?” Hayley asked.

I shrugged. Morrigan took my hand and started moving it again. “So, maybe just relax and keep playing with my hair,” she said.

I tried. I knew, just because of all the chemistry I’d taken and being able to read Morrigan, that the purple in her hair dye was caused by a compound known as 2,4-diaminoanisole. Her natural hair color, on the other hand, was the result of a pigment called eumelanin, though it had been bleached out – more technically, oxidized by the hydrogen peroxide in the hair dye to break down the chemical bonds that absorbed in certain wavelengths to create the brown color.

I didn’t see how I could alter her hair follicles to produce 2,4-diaminoanisole, which was a moderately toxic substance you definitely didn’t want flowing around inside your body. So that was out.

But I knew there were purple compounds in nature. So I pulled out my phone and did a little research. Most purple in the natural world was either created by optical effects, as with bird feathers, or involved even more toxic chemicals. But after a few minutes, I realized there might be a possibility, and a very old one.

Purple dyes in the ancient world were made from a type of sea snail, which produced a chemical that turned purple when exposed to sunlight. The pigment itself – known as Tyrian purple – was the organobromide 6,6′-dibromoindigo, an organic compound of carbon and bromine. It occurred naturally in marine life, though not mammals, and it was non-toxic.

Knowing this, I saw a path forward. I could make Morrigan’s hair follicles produce this compound – even though I didn’t quite understand how I could do it – and as long as her body had a source of organobromine to draw on, it would work. A bit more research turned up a simple solution. The red algae used to make limu kohu, the seaweed condiment used in poke, contained a variety of organobromine compounds. So as long as she ate some of that occasionally, it should work.

I looked down at her. “Are you really sure you want to do this? I’m not one hundred percent sure what it will look like. And I honestly don’t know if I’d be able to undo it.”

Morrigan grinned. “Absolutely. Go for it.”

So I focused myself, connected with her, and made the change, not just to her follicles but to her hair all the way down. And as I watched in amazement, it turned from its pretty but obviously dyed violet to a deep, shimmering purple. It looked entirely natural – like a bird’s feathers – and went from reddish purple at the roots to blue-violet at the ends. I knew from my research into Tyrian purple that the shift was the result of the pigment changing in hue the longer it was exposed to sunlight. And just because I wanted to, I made her hair a lot longer, as long as MJ’s.

Hayley gasped loudly, sitting up straight and putting both hands over her mouth.

“What?” Morrigan asked. “Did it work?”

Hayley nodded, eyes wide. Morrigan sat up and looked at her hair.

“Oh, my God,” Hayley said. “Morrigan, your eyebrows are purple.”

Morrigan jumped up and ran to the bathroom to look in the mirror. Hayley ran after her. Katarina smiled at me from the kitchen as the two of them began shrieking in excitement over Morrigan’s hair.

“Oh, fuck, I love it!” Morrigan yelled. “Look at this!” She squealed in delight as Hayley laughed loudly with her.

“Jimmy, this is amazing!” Hayley called to me. “What did you do?”

Katarina came over to me as they continued laughing and screaming. “You do not think it will attract attention?”

“Of course it will,” I said, “but I’m sure people will just ask where she got it done, or assume it’s a wig.”

Morrigan finally came running out of the bathroom after a minute and threw herself at me, hugging me tightly. “This is so fucking awesome. I love you so much.”

I pushed her back a little to look at her. It really did look great, and the whole red-purple-to-violet effect even brought out the color in her tattoos. Somehow her eyebrows were displaying the same color shift as the rest of it.

“If it changed your eyebrows, it must have changed everything,” I said.

She laughed. “I didn’t look.”

She unbuttoned her jeans and pushed down her thong far enough to check. Sure enough, her landing strip had turned the same deep purple.

“Do you like it?” she asked.

“Yeah, I love it.” Then I explained about the limu.

“That’s it? I just eat some of that, and it will stay like this?”

“Yep.”

She gave me a big kiss. “Right after dinner, I’m going to show you just how much I love this.”

◆◆◆

Katarina was still working through her Swedish recipes, and finally produced some kind of casserole that looked like meatloaf topped with burnt cabbage.

“Kålpudding,” she said. “Cabbage casserole.”

I – along with Hayley and Morrigan – was bit hesitant, but not wanting to hurt her feelings, I tried it. It was actually pretty good. The cabbage wasn’t burnt, just caramelized, and it was really fairly close to traditional meatloaf, just more flavorful.

“I like it,” Morrigan said.

“It’s good,” Hayley said. “But one of these days, I’m getting you guys to try haggis. It isn’t anything like what you think. It’s really just a big sausage.”

“I like big sausages,” Morrigan said, looking at me. A moment later, Hayley and Katarina burst out laughing.

Yeah, I was really liking the new Katarina.

I insisted on doing the dishes, and when I was done, I realized the girls had all disappeared into the bedroom. I dried my hands and went in there. They were lying in a row waiting for me, all three of them naked – blonde, redhead, and purple. I missed MJ and wanted her there too, but she had a big midterm tomorrow and needed to study. I knew there would be other times, with her and the others. I didn’t need to be with all four of them every night. This was good, and something told me it was going to work fine.

I lay down in the center of them and pulled Hayley above me so Katarina and Morrigan could cuddle against us from either side. For a few minutes we all just kissed and stroked and fondled each other. I was lost in a pile of female flesh and never wanted to be anywhere else.

After a little while, they slid up and smothered me with their breasts, laughing to each other as I sucked on random nipples. Morrigan’s new and improved boobs almost made her look like a cartoon character. It was hard to imagine DD-cup boobs passing the pencil test, but hers did easily. Hayley’s new ones were wonderful, and even if I missed what she’d been just a little, I wasn’t complaining. She had the same perfect shape to her now that Katarina did, though she was a bit smaller. Katarina filled up my hands just a little too much; Hayley fell a bit short. But variety was good. MJ’s hard little tits were enough balance.

Hayley sat back and reversed herself against my waist, reaching for my cock. Katarina went with her. I pulled Morrigan over to me and kissed her.

“Have you been a good girl, baby?” I whispered. I’d been sending her videos to edge to, all of them random girls getting off in various ways.

“Yes, Master. I did just what you told me to.”

“Then come up and get your reward.”

She smiled and kissed me again. I pulled her up above my head as she leaned against the wall. I looked up at the little strip of red-purple-violet hair above her clit. It was amazing how natural it looked, even as unusual as the colors were. I flicked her clit ring with my tongue a few times as Hayley and Katarina began making out with my erection in the middle.

Morrigan was very wet, and I took it slow, just teasing her and lapping up her fluids. I’d been paying attention to what Katarina did with Hayley for several months now, even asking her for advice, and I felt like my oral skills had improved considerably. And judging from Morrigan’s reactions, she seemed to agree.

I reached for Katarina and Hayley beside me, and fingered them gently as they kissed and licked and sucked me and each other. I sucked Morrigan’s clit into my mouth and rolled my tongue against it in a steady rhythm. She moaned and rolled her hips over my head. I knew she was already close from all the edging, so I slowed down, teasing her even more. She shivered, groping at my hair. She let out a little whimper.

“Master . . .”

I moved her clit ring around gently with the tip of my tongue. And when I felt like I’d teased her enough, I pulled her down and began licking her steadily. Her hips and thighs started to shake, but I held on tightly. She cried out softly as she went over the edge into orgasm, and I drew it out as long as I could. Finally, it got to be too much for her, and she jerked herself away from me, shivering and twitching, then fell onto my chest.

I held her for a few moments, moving my face around through all her gorgeous purple hair. In sliding down, she’d interrupted Hayley and Katarina. I felt one of them lifting me up and feeding me into Morrigan, who moaned and backed down over me. I sighed. She felt so damn good, so hot and tight and wet.

Hayley pulled her back until Morrigan was seated on top of me. Then she climbed up to my head to take Morrigan’s place. I lost track of things a bit after that as Morrigan rode me with Katarina’s help and I licked up at Hayley. Morrigan came again, and Katarina took her place. She went after me, pinching and massaging and sucking at me until I finally exploded into her just as Hayley reached her release above me.

Katarina lowered herself onto my chest as Hayley fell to the side. Morrigan came up on the other side, and I hugged all three of them.

Katarina kissed me. “I love you, Jimmy.”

“I love you too, all of you.”

When I caught my breath, I had them all kneel at the end of the bed. I just went back and forth with them from behind, enjoying all three wonderful butts and pussies. Katarina came first, then Hayley, then Morrigan, and I finally finished in Hayley. Then I took a break to watch as the girls focused on each other for a little while. It was a bit weird watching Hayley and Morrigan together, because it was clear they knew each other really well. Katarina got me hard again with her mouth as I watched them, and then I took Morrigan from behind again as she and Hayley pleasured each other. Hayley urged us on, licking around my cock as I pumped into my purple-haired witch.

Katarina wanted to be part of it, and came up behind me to lick my balls. That was enough for me. When Morrigan shivered into orgasm a minute later, I came deep inside her with a groan. Katarina and Hayley came together as I withdrew, cleaning up Morrigan behind me.

Then we went to sleep together in a warm, cozy ball.

◆◆◆

For a few more days, I was able to just settle in and focus on school. MJ came back over on Saturday night, and the five of us spent the weekend hanging out as Hayley and Morrigan practiced their magic together. Morrigan’s new hair definitely got some stares, but paired with her goth look, no one seemed to think too much about it.

Tuesday night, Hayley and Morrigan stayed late working on their chemistry homework with me – I tried to stay objective, but it was hard – then spent the night. When I woke up on Wednesday, I found Katarina making breakfast in cheeky panties and a short little Huntington t-shirt.

She handed me a cup of coffee with a peck on the cheek. I slid my hand up her shirt and fondled a pert breast as she did.

“How are you doing?” I asked.

She smiled in a way I’d never seen her do before I fixed her.

“I wish I could explain how it feels to be able to keep these feelings I have for you, to treasure them, instead of feeling them drain away inside me.”

I hugged her. She pressed herself against me, nuzzling her head against my shoulder. “You once asked what I did at night,” she went on, “when you were asleep. So many nights, I would lie there in your arms fighting with myself, trying so hard to hold on to what I felt. It never worked. It was like water, like I said, and it just slipped through my grasp. It left me so empty I could not even cry over it.”

“I’m sorry. But eternity is looking a lot better now.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Just a few things to wrap up, and we’re good.”

“I am glad.”

I had my Transport Processes class at eight, so I left before Hayley and Morrigan even woke up. I had the Chem 245 lecture right after that, and did my best not to pay attention to them during class. But I had a break afterward, and I was sitting on the grass outside the Chemistry building with Charlotte when my phone rang. It was Rachel.

“Hey.”

“Hey, Jimmy, I have great news. The mutual fund made us an offer for your shares that’s above your floor, and my recommendation is that you take it. We went back and forth with them a bit, and I’m confident this is as high as they’ll go.”

“How much?”

She told me. Then she worked out what it meant with the commissions, fees, and the estate taxes I still had to pay. As she talked, I checked the benchmark price in the Soul Trader app and plugged it into the bottom line. I would have enough left to pay off my student loans and still be pretty comfortable. This was going to work.

“The only tricky part is that they want an answer by one,” she said. "Are you ready to do this?”

“Yeah, let’s do it.”

“Okay, great. There are a few forms I need you to sign, but we can do it electronically. I’ll send you the link in a few minutes.”

“When will I get the money?”

“If all goes well, this afternoon.”

I exhaled. “Hard to believe.”

She laughed. “Things have changed an awful lot. It’s just pushing around a lot of electrons now.”

The link for the approval documents came in a minute later. I signed them.

When I came out of my CE Thermo lecture at two, the deal had closed and the money was in my account with the brokerage. I sat down on a bench and just stared at the numbers on my phone. When the shock wore off, I went into the Soul Trader app. I had linked it to the brokerage account a few days ago.

I’d never actually used the app to trade souls. I’d only checked my personal balance and the benchmark price. I tapped the Trade button at the bottom, then Buy when a menu popped up. A new screen appeared asking me to enter a number. I tapped in 2071.

The app told me I would be paying $492,692,971. That would still leave me with around seven hundred thousand dollars.

MJ was right. The degree to which this had all worked out was positively creepy.

Still, here was the way forward. I confirmed the purchase. A spinning icon appeared for a few seconds, then a confirmation screen came up. When I dismissed it, I was back at the main screen.

My balance was now zero.

I exhaled slowly and stared up at the sky for a few minutes.

Chapter 21

Was it all over?

Maybe. Life had changed, but this cloud over my head was gone. I had to tell someone. I finally texted Katarina.

It’s done. I’m paid off

She almost always responded immediately, but for some reason, I didn’t get an answer for a couple of minutes. Then her text popped up.

You need to come home Jimmy

That . . . was not the response I was expecting.

Why? What’s up?

Please just come home

You’ll see when you get here

Are you okay?

I’m fine

It’s not about me

Please just come home

I could tell I wasn’t getting an explanation from her. So I went.

When I crossed McKinley and approached my apartment building, there was a long black car sitting in the parking lot. As I walked past, I recognized it as a Maybach, but it was longer than the few I’d ever seen, almost like it had been stretched into a limo. The wheels and chrome were accented in red gold, but the windows were blacked out, so I couldn’t see inside.

I climbed quickly up to my apartment, not liking the feel of this. When I got to the third floor, I saw several things. The door to my apartment was open, and a tall, thin man with severe features and short blonde hair was standing outside. He wore a sleek gray suit with a pale purple tie. He looked toward me as I approached.

Katarina stood in the doorway, just inside. When she saw me, she tried to smile.

“James,” the man said. “I came calling, but apparently there is a ward on your home that prevents my entry.”

“And you are?” I asked. He looked vaguely familiar somehow, but I couldn’t place his face.

“Jimmy,” Katarina said, “this is Astaroth.”

Oh.

Now I knew why he looked familiar. I’d seen him in that dream. I regained my composure after a moment and looked at Katarina. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

She nodded. “I am fine.”

“Don’t worry, this has nothing to do with her,” Astaroth said. “Nothing at all. Once you bound her and paid for her, she was no longer our responsibility. And it seems you’ve made some modifications to her that destroy any usefulness she has to us anyway.”

“That’s good. Is that your car down there?” I asked.

Astaroth gave me a thin smile. “No. But there’s someone down there you need to come speak with.”

“Who?”

“You’ll see.”

I looked at Katarina again. I sensed nervousness in her but not fear. So I took a deep breath. “Okay.”

Astaroth turned toward the stairs. I followed him.

“Where are Volach and Morax?” I asked. “Just curious.”

The very sound of their names seemed to pain him.

“You won’t be dealing with those clowns again. I am . . . displeased with them for allowing this to happen right under their noses.”

“This?”

“You. Everything about you.”

When we reached the car, a man in a black suit got out of the driver’s side and came around to open the rear door for us.

“You first,” Astaroth said.

I got in. I immediately saw two things. Amira was inside, sitting in the rear-facing seats toward the front. Another man sat in the back seat opposite her. Amira motioned for me to sit beside her.

“Jimmy,” she said. The look on her face seemed tightly controlled.

Astaroth got in beside the other man, and the driver shut the door. This man wore a dark, expensive-looking suit. The collar of his shirt was open; he had no tie on. Ruby cufflinks glittered at his wrists. His dark hair was neatly trimmed, but his most striking feature was his eyes. They seemed almost red-brown, and they fixed me with a gaze that chilled me like nothing I’d ever experienced before.

As the car pulled away from the building, and I finally noticed the deference in Amira’s and Astaroth’s manners, I realized who this had to be.

“Mr. Kaplan,” the man said, “you are a bright boy, so I am going to ask you a simple question.” His voice was smooth and cultured but not especially deep. “If someone decides to sell his soul to us, do you think we would allow him to simply purchase it back? For money?”

I considered my answer carefully. “No. I suppose not.”

“Yet you were able to purchase more than two thousand souls less than an hour ago,” he said, examining his fingernails. “Why do you think that was?”

“I don’t know. I just did it.”

“Only senior members of the infernal bureaucracy are authorized to buy and sell souls on the open market. That transaction would not have gone through otherwise.”

I shifted in my seat. “What does that mean? I’m mortal.”

“Yes. You most certainly are.” He paused, looking at me and tapping his finger against his chin. “But I wonder. In all this effort to learn about your mother and the circumstances of your birth, did it ever occur to you to wonder who your father was?”

“I . . . It was Mary-Beth’s familiar.”

“No, Jimmy,” Amira said. “Not exactly. They created the spirit child you were in her dream. But bringing you into the real world required something else. A different sort of input, to combine with the piece of Mary-Beth’s soul she gave up to give you life. I didn’t realize this until well after it happened, after you were born.”

It actually took several long moments before the truth dawned on me.

Zagan.

“Yes,” Lucifer said. “He sees it now.”

“There was no other way you could have taken Zagan’s powers,” Astaroth said. “It would have destroyed any other mortal.”

I’d killed my mother being born. And now with my father I’d . . .

“Is he dead?” I asked.

“No,” Lucifer said. “But he’s nothing now, a lackey, a minion at best. You took out everything that made him what he was. You might even be able to convince him to serve you, though I see no reason to bother. He would be of little use to you.”

“Don’t waste any emotion on him,” Amira said. “He certainly never expended any on you.”

It was several long moments before I could say anything. Grandma Amy had given me photos of my “mother” – I knew now they were actually photos of Deirdre – but I’d never had any photos of a father. She’d never mentioned one, and I realized that in all this time, I’d never asked or really thought much about it. The photos focused my attention. Which was probably her intent.

But I’d met Zagan now. I remembered his reaction to me when I appeared in that space where he’d been confined. There was no sense of recognition, of any sort of bond at all. Nothing but fear, hatred, and contempt – for anything and everything.

“How could you know that?” I asked Amira.

She rubbed my arm affectionately. “Because of my connection to him all those years, through the key and being the one who bound him, I could sense when his attention was on me or near me. It was never on you, except to the extent he raged at what we’d done to him in creating you. We took a piece of him to do it, against his will. I suppose it would be useful to think of him as an unwilling sperm donor, at best.”

I nodded. It made sense. Mary-Beth was human, and I wished I could have known her. But Zagan was a demon, and I knew enough about them by now to know what that meant. If Katarina – who’d been bound to me and served me and wanted to be with me – was still unable to love me until I fixed her, it was hard to see what Zagan could possibly have felt for me.

“He’s still a demon, though?” I asked.

“Barely,” Astaroth said. “He no longer has any portfolio, and he lost the demons under his command long ago. Eligos has taken him under his control, as I understand it.”

“Do I need to worry about him?” I asked.

Lucifer chuckled. “Well, he’s certainly very upset with you. You should see him now. He looks a bit like a beer can someone tossed onto the freeway.”

“He’s going to be licking his wounds for quite a while,” Astaroth said. “Though in Hell, it never hurts to look over one’s shoulder from time to time.” He stared pointedly at Amira.

“Is she in trouble?” I asked.

Lucifer smiled. “Had her little plot around you failed, oh yes indeed, she would be. But I can forgive a great deal when schemes come successfully to fruition.”

“We’ll talk about this later, Jimmy,” she said.

“You, on the other hand,” Lucifer went on, “are something else. A thing that has never existed, a thing that should not exist. A mortal with the powers of a King of Hell. And I am not at all clear what to do with you.”

I sighed. “So.”

“So. I have always endeavored to be pragmatic about things. It’s how I have remained at the head of this organization for so long. And when I look at you, once my astonishment has faded, I see someone who could be very useful to us. Very useful indeed.”

“I paid off my debt. I’m not working for you people anymore.”

Lucifer laughed to himself. “Are you imagining there are others you might offer your services to? Do you imagine they would even take your calls, given what you are?” He chuckled again, clearly amused.

“What if I just want to get on with my life?” I asked.

I felt Amira’s hand on my thigh. “Like I told you a few days ago, Jimmy, you’re known to too many people now. Including them,” she said, flicking her eyes upward. “Rest assured, they don’t see you as a potential ally, not after what you’ve done. They see you as a real threat, to be honest.”

I looked over at her in shock. “What did I do?”

All of them laughed softly.

“You’ve been working for us for months,” Astaroth said, rolling his eyes.

“And Katarina,” Amira said.

“And the little matter of this afternoon’s transaction,” Lucifer said. “Do you think the celestial bureaucracy approves of the buying and selling of souls? Thousands of them?”

“But . . .” My voice trailed off. I didn’t know what to say.

“Here is an excellent teaching moment,” Lucifer said. “All those situational arguments you’re marshaling in your head right now about your motivations and intentions, well, that’s the province of what we do. They, on the other hand, tend to be rather rigid about things. You’re welcome to plead your case with them, but I think you know it won’t get very far.”

Amira squeezed my thigh. “Jimmy, you were never going to be anything other than what you are, given where you came from and how you were made. The sooner you accept that, the happier you’ll be.”

“Indeed,” Lucifer said. “Destiny, and all that.”

I leaned back in my seat and stared out the moonroof above us. I couldn’t say anything for a while. It all seemed so maddeningly unfair . . . and yet, they had a point.

I had embraced so much of it. No one made me take Zagan’s power. No one forced me to draw Morrigan away from Celeste to serve the darkness. Sure, Amira had suggested it, but no more than that. And certainly no one had forced me to bind Katarina. I had come up with that entirely on my own.

I’d done it all just because I could, and because of what it gave me. I liked having all these powers. I enjoyed what they had given me, with the girls and otherwise. There was no point in disputing that.

I didn’t want to give up any of it, either. Could I give up my coven now, if that’s what it would take to get myself in good graces with the other team?

If I was being honest with myself, and I had to be, the answer was absolutely not. They were worth it. Katarina, Hayley, MJ, Morrigan, Charlotte, and Echidna. I loved them and I wanted them around me, no matter what else it involved, in my life or theirs.

And that was really the bottom line here.

“What would this involve?” I finally asked.

“Not a great change in your circumstances,” Lucifer said, “except you will be building a positive balance now. You will have a chance to build your greatness.”

I looked at Astaroth. “What’s going to happen to Volach and Morax?”

“Hmm?” Lucifer asked. “Why do you care?”

“They were always pretty straight with me. They didn’t do this.”

“You outwitted them,” Astaroth said, “and while I suppose that is no great feat, their job was keeping an eye on you.”

“I’ll only do this if I can keep working with them.”

The three of them looked at each other. Lucifer began laughing in disbelief as he looked at Astaroth.

“You’re more powerful than they are now, Jimmy,” Amira said.

“I don’t care. I’ll be honest, I’ve kind of gotten to like them.”

“I don’t agree to this,” Astaroth said.

“I can take over Jimmy’s case,” Amira said. “And I can take on those two if necessary. This was my doing, after all.”

Lucifer snorted in amusement and looked back to Astaroth. “Well?”

Astaroth waved it away and looked out the window. “All right. Fine.”

Somehow, the conversation reached this point just as the limo pulled back into the parking lot of my building. The driver came around and opened the door.

Amira squeezed my hand. “I’ll be in touch, Jimmy.” There was an enticing glint in her eye that I recognized and didn’t entirely like.

But I nodded and got out.

Chapter 22

I didn’t go crazy with the money, but I had things to do.

I paid off my student loans. I traded in my battered fifteen-year-old compact for a new electric sedan. I moved out of my apartment into a much nicer condo in a high-rise on the other side of campus. I found a unit with a big walk-in shower and enough room for an Alaskan king, and Hayley helped me order the bed.

Hayley then spoke to her parents about moving in with me and Katarina. The conversation was fairly brief. It began with “Are you really sure, honey?”, quickly segued into a discussion of how it might actually be better for her to share a place with a couple of quiet graduate students instead of being in the dorms, and ended with Stephanie sending us a bunch of decorating ideas for the rest of the furniture.

The girls and I went shopping, and I replaced all my dollar-store kitchen implements, towels, and bedding. What was left – still mid-six-figures – I told Rachel to set up in something appropriate for my situation. She promised to get right on it.

The afternoon the bed arrived and we got it all set up, the five of us stood together on the bedroom balcony enjoying the sunset across campus. I played with Morrigan’s amazing purple hair, watching how it shone in the sunlight, almost as if the mollusk pigment had some fluorescent quality to it.

“You did a great job, Master,” she said.

“Yeah, I did. Kind of amazed myself, to be honest.”

She grinned at me. “People stop me to ask about it, like, all day long.”

“That would drive me bananas,” MJ said.

“What have you been telling them?” I asked.

“Just that I have an amazing hair stylist,” Morrigan said. “Which, I kind of do.”

“You don’t mind the attention?”

Hayley laughed. “She loves it.”

Morrigan laughed against my chest and hugged me.

“This place is really nice, Jimmy,” MJ said.

“It is.”

“But if my family finds out I have a rich Anglo boyfriend, I’m never going to hear the end of it.”

I laughed. “I’m not rich, unless you’re counting the four of you.”

She nuzzled against me on the other side of Morrigan.

As I enjoyed the warmth of her against me, I remembered something, a thing I’d completely forgotten about until I moved and had to go through all my stuff. MJ hadn’t been there when I found it.

“Hey,” I said to her. “I have something for you. I think you’ll like this.”

MJ looked up, a little surprised. “For me?”

“Yeah. I don’t know what this is, exactly, but maybe you do.”

“Jimmy?” Hayley asked, looking at me curiously.

I went over to the pile of junk in the corner of my bedroom, the stuff I hadn’t finished putting away yet. The long wooden case I was looking for was under a few other boxes.

When I picked it up, Hayley went, “Oh. That thing.”

“Yeah.”

I laid the box on the bed and opened it. The rapier we found that day in the park in San Sebastian was still inside. I’d done nothing with it since then, since I had no idea what it was or why the divining stick had led me to it.

“We found this in San Sebastian that last afternoon we saw you in Zagan’s Rock,” I said to MJ. “On the way back, the divining stick just activated and led me to it.”

MJ’s eyes went wide. She reached down and slowly lifted it out of the box, then held it straight up in front of her.

“It’s a Spanish rapier,” she said. “Whoever carried it knew what they were doing. It’s not a show piece. This has been used.”

“You can tell all that?” Morrigan asked.

MJ nodded. “I just . . . know this stuff now.”

She swept it through the air a few times with an impressive poise and elegance.

“But when we found it,” Hayley said, “you didn’t know anything.”

“Yeah. So why do you think the stick led you to it?” MJ asked.

“I have no idea,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure you’re meant to have it. I was thinking of you when the stick activated.”

The four of them looked at me.

MJ smiled. “I won’t ask what you were thinking,” she said. “But it was probably the same thing I was thinking when you drove off that day.”

I laughed. “Yeah.”

“It has an enchantment on it,” Morrigan said suddenly.

I wasn’t wearing my ring, and I hadn’t been wearing it when we found it. “Really?”

“Yeah. I can feel it. I’m not sure what it is.”

I found my ring and put it on, and then concentrated on the rapier. She was right. There was something on it, and I couldn’t quite make sense of it either.

“Well?” MJ asked.

“I think it’s dormant, whatever it is,” I said finally. “Like it’s waiting for something.”

MJ set the rapier back in the case and looked at the lid, running her fingers over the blackened silver plate on top.

“Do you have any silver polish?” she asked.

“Ah, not exactly,” I said, “but you can do the same thing with aluminum foil and baking soda. The aluminum will react with the sulfur in the tarnish.”

Fortunately, I had both. We took the lid into the kitchen. I made a slurry of baking soda and hot water, and then spread it over the plate. Then I pressed a piece of aluminum foil over it.

“It may take a minute or two.”

I lifted the foil after a minute. There was still some tarnish in spots, but the plate was now mostly bright. I wiped the lid with a sponge to clean off the baking soda and aluminum sulfide particles the reaction had created.

The inscription was now clear. We all looked down at it.

Juan José Pérez Hernández

MJ gripped my hand. I heard Hayley gasp beside me. MJ put her hand on the counter to steady herself.

“Do you think—” I started. But MJ cut me off.

“I don’t know for sure if this is the same guy,” she gasped, “but there was a Spanish explorer by that name. He explored up and down the West Coast in the mid-1770s, all the way up to Canada. He died in 1775 on his second voyage, on the way back to New Spain. He was buried at sea along the California coast.”

“You know all of that?” Morrigan asked.

MJ swallowed roughly. “Some of my family think he was one of our ancestors.”

None of us could say anything for several moments.

“What is going on here?” Hayley finally asked.

I pulled MJ to me and hugged her. She leaned against my chest for a while.

We looked up Juan José Pérez Hernández online, but there was nothing that would explain how his rapier might have ended up in San Sebastian. The mission wasn’t established until 1776, about six months after his death. MJ finally asked me to let it go, that it was too much for her to deal with right now.

We ate dinner and sat out on the balcony for a while drinking beer and talking. MJ and Morrigan spent the night, and after we exhausted each other breaking in the new bed, we went to sleep in a big pile together. Even Katarina stayed, and I had her go to sleep with us.

Because tonight I finally wanted to give Hayley her dream.

◆◆◆

Changing the girls physically in the dreams had been easy. Changing who they were mentally was a different story. I figured it was possible – I’d certainly had plenty of dreams in which I was essentially someone else – but I wasn’t entirely sure how to build such a thing for her.

I understood what she wanted. I could see into her head, and I could envision the lost peasant girl she wanted to be. But it occurred to me that duplicating it precisely stood a good chance of triggering her memories in the dream and pulling her into lucidity. She wanted to think it was a dream. So that meant I had to come up with something a bit different.

The question was how. I wasn’t really sure what the answer was, so I decided to just pull her in slowly, trying to pay much more attention to exactly what was happening as her psyche entered my dream world. As I did it, I began to see how I had been cloaking their dream selves in the physical and emotional elements I was familiar with, or just letting them define it.

This time, I tried something different. I cloaked her in the thing I envisioned this girl as. Not a peasant but the daughter of a merchant traveling through the countryside beneath my castle. Nicely, though not richly, dressed. I gave her the big boobs she liked and made her hair longer.

The combination was still Hayley, just with some twists.

And it worked. But I had to freeze her halfway in to finish the rest of it. I created a dark, spooky forest. She was riding with her father in a caravan. It was still raining like it always was, and I made the road they were on rough and muddy. Then I started up the dream.

One of their wagons got stuck. As they got out to try to free it, a group of bandits appeared and attacked them. Hayley fled screaming into the forest. Her new persona held together and merged with her. She ran through the woods, slipping a few times on the ground as several of the bandits chased her. Eventually she reached the path that led up to the castle. She looked around in terror. I tried not to push things too hard, but she was driving this part.

She ran up the path, up the mountain. The bandits continued chasing her, in that dream motif where you’re fleeing and fleeing and never seem to escape. Finally she reached the castle and looked up in awe. Lightning struck the mountain, and there was a crash of thunder. The bandits came up behind her, but slowed down, looking at the castle in fear.

Hayley pounded on the main doors. “Help! Help me! Someone please!”

I made the doors swing open slowly. She gasped, looking in, then looked behind her. The bandits were still there. I called down the lightning on them, blasting them to bits. Hayley let out a shriek of fright and stumbled into the castle. The doors shut slowly behind her.

She stepped forward into the main hall, looking around in fear and wonderment. Part of her recognized this, but I twisted her recognition into a dream memory of knowing that a dark sorcerer lived high in these mountains. Her dream-self realized she had unknowingly stumbled into his castle.

“Hello? Is anyone here?”

I appeared in a swirl of mist at the top of the double stairs. I made myself look a bit older, but not old. Hayley gasped.

I came slowly down the stairs toward her. She remained frozen in place.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I—I was with my father. Our caravan was attacked. The bandits chased me up here.”

“I’ve taken care of them all,” I said. “Your father is unharmed.”

“You’re . . . you’re the sorcerer.”

“Yes.”

She turned and looked at the doors behind her, then back at me. I continued walking slowly toward her until I was right in front of her.

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Hayley.”

Her pretty green dress was soaked from the rain, and her red hair hung in strings around her. I waved my hand and made her dry. She gasped, stepping back and looking at herself.

“You should stay. It’s still raining out there. The storm will last for a while.”

“My father . . .”

“I have aided him, and you. I have done you a service, and I require a service in return.”

Her eyes widened. “What do you want?”

“Merely for you to stay here for a time. I get so few visitors. I will send word to your father that you are safe and unharmed.”

She let out a little whimper, but I knew this was exactly how she'd envisioned things. She didn’t argue with me.

“For how long?” she asked.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“How well you fit in here. Come. Warm yourself by the fire.”

I led her over to the fireplace and sat down. I waved my hand again, calling up a tray with dinner for her, a thick beef stew. She hesitated for a moment or two, then sat down and began to eat.

We talked as she explained the background I already knew. She settled into the situation in a way no girl would have done in the real world, but that made sense in a dream. She was not lucid, and I sensed no risk that she would be. So it was working.

“What do you do here?” she asked.

“There are a great many mysteries in the spirit world. I am here to study them and learn things. For example, I know a great deal about you already.”

She gasped. “What?”

“You are not as afraid as you are trying to appear, or think you should be. You are intrigued by this. By me.”

She was motionless for a moment before nodding nervously. “I’ve always wondered what was up here, what you were doing.”

“Perhaps I will show you. For now, you should rest.”

I took her up to one of the towers, creating a bedroom for her that was all dark silks and velvet and lace, though much less goth than Morrigan would have liked – just creepy and spooky.

“There are clothes for you there.” I waved my hand toward a large armoire, which opened to display a selection of dresses. Her eyes went wide.

I went behind her, brushing her hair back from her face as she looked over the bedroom. I leaned in over her shoulder and rested a hand on her waist.

“You will stay here with me,” I said into her ear. “There are things I can teach you, if you like. Perhaps you have skills you are unaware of. The spirits are telling me very interesting things about you.”

She sighed, leaning back against me gently. “What things?”

“Let us say, I think it was no accident you arrived here tonight. That is all. Sleep now.”

◆◆◆

For a few days, I had her serve me around the castle while I studied in the library or my lab. I hadn’t been making all that up. Something odd was going on here – I sensed the spirit world taking an interest in this dream in a way I hadn’t seen before, even with Morrigan. What it meant, I didn’t know.

One afternoon, as the storm continued raging around the mountain, Hayley brought me a tray of tea in the library.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You could conjure this up yourself, couldn’t you?” she asked.

“It pleases me to have you bring it to me.”

She nodded. “What are you reading?”

“Can you read, Hayley? Can you read Latin?”

“Yes.”

I turned around the book I was reading, which was Clavicula Salomonis. I pointed to one passage. “Tell me what that says. Translate as you read.”

She looked where I was pointing and began to read. “But know, O my Son,” she read, “that from the time that thou shalt have the good fortune to be familiar with such kinds of spirits, and that thou shalt be able by means of what I have taught thee to make them submit unto thine orders, they will be happy to give thee, and to make thee partaker in that which they uselessly possess, provided that thine object and end shall be to make a good use thereof.”

“Very good.”

She smiled quickly. “Does it mean that if you ask the spirits for something, they will bring it?”

“If you ask them in the correct way. But they only listen to certain people, those with the right bloodlines.”

“Would they listen to me?” she asked.

“Perhaps. Would you like to find out?”

Her eyes swelled. “Yes.”

“Very well. I will give you some things to read, then we will practice.”

I gave her a selection of books from the library, most of which she was already familiar with from the waking world, and I helped her study. Though I maintained the script we’d established, it was impossible to suppress the feelings we had for each other in real life.

In her mind, I saw her explaining her rapidly burgeoning attraction to me. I was so different from the men she’d known in her home village. She was captivated by my power and eager to learn more.

She would sigh and tremble when I was next to her. I would lean close, breathing against her neck as I pretended to explain something she was reading. Her bosom would heave in the bodice of her dress as I looked down. It was both strange and familiar, almost like falling in love with her all over again.

One night, as we ate dinner several weeks after she’d joined me, she asked when I would teach her to speak to the spirits.

“I think tonight,” I said. “If you feel ready.”

“I do.”

“There are risks,” I said. “When you call to the spirits, you can never be sure what answer you may get.”

“But you will be there with me?”

“Of course.”

She smiled. “Then I'm ready.”

We went up to the top of the castle. We didn’t actually need to be anywhere, but it made for more drama. I created a platform at the very top, in the middle of all the towers, open to the night sky. In the center was a great magic circle fifty feet across. The storm was blowing, the rain tearing across our faces.

“Does it ever stop raining?” she asked.

“The spirits are what drives the storm. They are strong here.”

I put my arms around her waist and leaned against her.

“Close your eyes and open your mind. Open yourself to your feelings. Listen. The spirits are here. They see you. Call to them with your heart.”

Waking Hayley already knew how to do this, because of what I’d done to improve her. This Hayley did not, but real Hayley had never actually learned anything either – I’d shoved all the knowledge into her head at once that night.

I felt her struggling with it, but the dark spirits were here in this dream, and they were listening. They could see her bloodline. And they answered.

I felt them flowing in through me, into her. She cried out, throwing her arms wide, leaning back against me.

“Do you feel it?”

“Yes!” she cried.

“Control them. Control the storm.”

She fought against the sensations for a moment, and then all at once, the storm clouds began swirling around us. Lighting crashed through the sky, turning the castle around us bright as day.

Hayley was doing this. Not me. She was doing this, in my dream. And the spirits answering her were unfamiliar to me. They were something beyond the infernal bureaucracy – something darker and more primal.

Hayley screamed in ecstasy, calling down the lightning again. I held her tightly as her body shook.

“I feel it!”

I lowered her arms, reining her in before this went too far. I wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened, and I didn’t want her to overdo it.

She twisted around as the rain began to fall again, putting her arms around me and kissing me fiercely. I kissed her back, and then I reached down and lifted her up, carrying her off the roof.

She moaned with need against my neck as we descended the stairs to my bedroom. I set her on the end of the huge bed and pulled her dress from her body. She’d been dressing like the proper daughter of a Scottish merchant, and under the dress she wore silk stockings tied at the sides with ribbons. I left them on as she fell back on the bed, otherwise naked.

I disrobed and climbed above her. Her eyes fixed onto my erection, then rose to my face. I watched her big breasts rolling on her chest as she gasped for breath against her arousal and anticipation.

“Wait—”

“What?” I asked.

“You’ve never even told me your name.”

“My name is James.”

“James, I—I think I love you.”

I lowered myself and kissed her. Hayley slid her arms around me and pulled me closer. The head of my cock settled between her legs. She was wet and ready, and as many times as we had done this, it felt different. I entered her slowly, and she gasped into my mouth as her hymen split before me – because of course she was a virgin in this dream.

“Oh—”

“Give it a moment,” I said.

Her fingers dug into my back, and her thighs rose up around my waist. She knew what to do, even if her dream-self thought this was her first time. I moved slowly, just enjoying the feel of her around me.

Slowly I sensed something else. The dark spirits – the really dark ones – had come down here with us. They were part of this, in her and in me. Hayley gnawed at my neck, urging me forward into her. I ground myself against her over and over, watching her arousal grow. I was in control of it, and I just focused on her. She began to whimper into my ear, moaning my name. I kissed her again.

“You’re mine,” I said.

“Yes.”

“You belong to me.”

“Yes,” she gasped again.

I sped up my thrusts, bringing her up to the edge, but holding her there until her nails were digging into my back hard enough to hurt. Then I pushed her over, and she clamped down onto me with a sob of pleasure.

“James!”

I made her come again, and again, making the orgasms roll over her as she shuddered under me and bit at my neck. I pounded her little body, watching her breasts shake and quiver on her chest. When at last I couldn’t take any more of it, I stabbed myself deeply into her and came for all I was worth.

I kept her in my bed for hours, using her over and over until I’d reduced her to a quivering heap of flesh. Then I held her against me for a long time.

One day you’ll meet the girl whose ancestor found that stick in the bog. You’ll need her to do something very important.

Something wanted Hayley and me together. There was a reason. I felt it now as deeply as I ever had. I’d assumed it had to with Zagan. I was no longer so sure about that.

I wanted to make her lucid. I wanted to wake her up and talk about this. But I’d promised her much more than the few weeks we’d been here. I owed her at least as much as I’d given Morrigan and MJ.

So we stayed.

◆◆◆

I taught her everything she already knew, except this time she learned it well enough to understand it. The dark spirits obeyed her. There was nothing I needed to do to bring them into this dream. She called them, and they answered.

In time, she no longer felt like my apprentice. In time, she felt like my partner.

One night, a year or more after she’d joined me, we went up to the top of the castle and made love in the center of the circle, in the midst of the storm. Every orgasm called down a torrent of lightning, the spirits swirling around us in a tornado of dark energy. When we were both sated, Hayley rose up from my chest. I watched the rain running over her breasts as she looked around the mountains, toward the lands below.

I reached up to caress her, all the plump flesh overfilling my hands, thumbing her wet nipples. Had she ever been small-breasted? I could hardly imagine it now. She pressed my hands against her.

“My love, we are meant for so much more than this,” she said.

I smiled up at her. “What more do you desire?”

“I feel your power. You could have so much more. Why have you hidden yourself away from the world here?”

“What would you have me do?” I asked.

“Take what you deserve.”

Then I thought about something else Amira told me: You were never going to be anything other than what you are, given where you came from and how you were made. The sooner you accept that, the happier you’ll be.

This was still a dream. I knew that, even if she didn’t. So maybe we should ride this out and see where it went.

I eased her away from me and stood up. She stood beside me, naked body glistening in the rain. I raised my arms into the air, calling the darkest of the dark spirits forth. I looked down at the mountainside, at the rocky cliffs and slopes of loose granite below. The spirits answered me, and I sent them into the rocks. Slowly they shifted form, growing limbs, arms, legs, and some semblance of heads. First dozens, then hundreds of stony creatures, some humanoid, some beast-like, some just random abominations. In a few minutes, there were thousands of them.

Hayley took my hand. She clothed herself in a long blood-red gown; I donned in a dark suit and tailcoat. Then we rose into the air. Our vast stone army followed us down the mountain.

I had never thought much at all about what might be below me in this dream world. Not so long ago, it had extended little beyond Charlotte’s cottage, and then my comparatively modest dream temple.

I remembered the bandits at the start of this dream. So I created a bandit kingdom below us, a loose confederation of nomads who raided the lands around them. Rather than try to control them, I let them loose, allowing the dream to guide itself.

The stone army marched into the fields below the mountain and toward the nearest settlement. The storm followed. Panic ensued as the nomads scrambled to defend themselves. Waves of horsemen rode out to meet our army. The two sides crashed together, but the bandits’ weapons could do nothing against the stone creatures. Their swords shattered and their arrows glanced off. The stone army threw them back with fists and claws, knocking the bandits from their horses and crushing their bodies beneath their stone feet.

The storm raged around the battle, turning the field into a morass of mud. The stone creatures slogged through it, but the bandits’ horses were slowed and began to stumble. Those bandits who still could started to turn and flee. The battle quickly turned into a rout, and the rout into a slaughter. The screams of the dying horses and half-crushed nomads wafted over the field, only to be swept away by the wind.

We marched on to the next bandit encampment. The survivors of the first battle had fled before us and joined the others. This time, the bandits held back. Somehow – then again, it was a dream – they had found several catapults that were arrayed around the encampment. They let fly as we approached. The stone creatures merely caught the catapult stones and hurled them back. A few nomads rode out, firing arrows, but these too merely glanced off the stone. The nomads began to flee again.

But they’d waited too long. The stone warriors marched over their camp, crushing everything beneath their feet. As groups of bandits scattered across the field, Hayley flew out away from me. She raised her arms and called down the lightning on the fleeing bandits.

We destroyed the next settlement, and the next. Before long, the bandit kingdom no longer existed, the few surviving bandits having fled in terror before our army.

When we reached the edge of the next kingdom, I hesitated long enough to let Hayley define it. Another human kingdom, but settled and stable. They had come out in defense of their lands –an enormous force of armored knights and soldiers waited for us.

Hayley flew at the head of our army, at the front of the storm, face ablaze with power. The spirits swirled around her, awaiting her command. She raised her arms. I saw the lightning beginning to gather above her again.

No.

I’d had enough of this.

I flew up behind her, taking her in my grasp. She misunderstood me at first, turning to kiss me. I saw the fire in her eyes, the battle-lust. I didn’t recognize this Hayley anymore.

“Baby, this is a dream. I need you to be lucid now. This is our dream.”

She flickered briefly. The dark spirits, the most primal of them that drove the storm around us, raged at me in anger. Then awareness came into Hayley’s eyes.

“Jimmy.”

“I’m here.”

She looked down, and around us. “What—what happened? Who am I?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I did this?” she asked.

“We did.”

“But I—” she gasped.

“I let it happen.”

The fire vanished from her eyes. Her face screwed up in despair. She began to cry.

“I want to wake up now,” she sobbed. “I want to wake up. Please.”

“Okay. Wake up, baby.”

◆◆◆

I lurched awake between her and Katarina. My succubus was still asleep. Hayley’s eyes fluttered open. She looked at me.

I saw the pain.

“Shit.”

◆◆◆

The story continues in Demon Hunter 4: Bloodline

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