Demon Hunter: Apotheosis

An Urban Fantasy Harem Adventure

Copyright 2022 by Michael Dalton. All rights reserved.

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 Lorelei Basaj

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

Jimmy’s spirit-daughter awakes, and Heaven and Hell are shaken to their foundations.

Having absorbed the deadly power of the fallen angel Tamiel, Else is a threat to angels and demons alike. To protect her, Jimmy must keep her existence a secret until she and his coven are strong enough to defend themselves.

The answer may lie in an ancient sword the coven is called upon to locate for the demoness Amira – a blade of great power with connections to succubus Katarina and Jimmy’s warrior girlfriend MJ, as well as the shadowy Breamstone Collective.

As the armies of Purgatory lay siege to his dream castle and efforts to protect Else spin out of control, Jimmy must make a final, fateful decision to a forge his own destiny at last.

Apotheosis is the fifth 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 originals are mostly intentional.

—

Chapter 1

￼

I LOOKED ACROSS the library to where Charlotte was sitting at a little table with Else. They were studying one of the many grimoires I’d created here, in what might have been the greatest magical library ever assembled. I’d been able to create it simply because this was the spirit world, and in here things happened because I wanted them to.

Sometimes, though, things happened whether or not I thought they were even possible.

“But Mother, why does invisibility require myrrh?” Else asked.

Charlotte glanced over at me. “You should ask your father. He knows more about these things than I do.”

Our daughter looked up at me. “Father?”

“Do you know how myrrh smells?” I asked. “That scent it gives off?”

“Yes,” Else said. “It smells like the soap in my bath. I like it.”

“That scent is created by compounds that are known as sesquiterpenes,” I said. “Lots of plants and insects use them to get attention from things. For plants, sometimes they want to drive away animals that might eat them. For insects, they may want to attract other insects, or drive away predators. I think with invisibility spells, the spirits use sesquiterpenes in the same way, to distract people from seeing the thing the spell is protecting.”

Else smiled. “Oh. I understand now. Thank you, Father.”

She looked back down at the spell book they were going through. I just sat there in my chair, watching Charlotte and Else study. Charlotte had gone through this with her mentor, an older witch when she was a mortal woman in Germany, and then with Morrigan during that months-long dream when I brought Morrigan into the coven. I’d learned magic on my own, and being self-taught, I wasn’t sure what to do with Else.

I definitely wasn’t sure what to do with my spirit-daughter.

By one measure, Else was about four months old. That was how long, in real-world time, it had been since Charlotte had presented her to me in a dream over Christmas break. By another measure, if you counted all the dreamtime that I’d been in the spirit world since then, she might be about two years. By yet another, since that day she’d suddenly come to awareness in my arms, she was perhaps a month old.

But she now looked about six years old. She had Charlotte’s black hair and my blue eyes. And mentally, well, it was hard to really say. Sometimes she acted her age, others she seemed nearly as old as I was.

She’d already aged six years in the month I’d been here, since I’d begun this dream after finding Tamiel’s lost power and taking Colleen into the coven.

I’d stayed simply because I had no idea what might happen when I finally dared to wake up.

Else had merged with Tamiel’s power of smiting, her ability to destroy any spirit, celestial, or demon. What Tamiel had been, my daughter was now. The power the spirits had meant for Hayley to take, Else had taken instead. All because I’d used a hair from her head in the treasure-finding spell that brought those powers to me. That had been the nexus the spirits needed to offer the power to Else, even though she was nothing but a dream child at the time.

That power was clearly doing things.

I had a bond with Else, much like my bond with Katarina. I could sense her feelings and emotions, the things she wanted. She was happy here for now, being with me and Charlotte. She loved both of us. She was happy learning magic and exploring the castle. But in the back of those feelings, I sensed a great hunger for more. In time, I knew we were going to run out of things to occupy her attention. What we would have to do then, well, I just didn’t know.

Eventually Charlotte and Else finished her lessons.

“It’s time for bed,” Charlotte said.

“All right,” Else said. “Yes. I am tired now.”

Else put the book back on the shelf. We walked her up to the nursery tower, where I’d expanded her original little room into something fit for a princess. I’d found it odd at first, that Else needed sleep here when the rest of us did not. I finally concluded that since this was the only existence she’d known, her body, such as it was, had adapted to it.

Charlotte helped Else undress and then tucked her into the little bed I’d made for her. We kissed her good night.

“Good night, Mother,” she said. “Good night, Father.”

“Good night, my little mouse,” Charlotte said. “I love you.”

“Good night, sweetheart,” I said.

I dimmed the lights, and Charlotte and I went to our bedroom. Charlotte shifted her clothes to one of the long, lacy black nightgowns I liked on her. I poured myself a glass of cognac from the table in the corner. Drinking here wasn’t like drinking in the real world, but I still found it a means of relaxation.

Charlotte came over to me, and I took her in my arms. We just held each other for a few long moments.

When I was here with Charlotte, especially when it was just the two of us, I felt a love for her that was hard to put into words. I knew it was partly the influence of this place, the way everything felt so much more intense in a dream than it did in the waking world. And she was my familiar, which meant we had a unique bond unlike anything I had with the other girls.

But even so, this was different than it had been. The knowledge that we’d made Else, that – however this had happened – we had a child together, deepened things to a degree I had never felt before.

“She’s progressing so fast with this,” Charlotte said.

“I know.”

I looked down at her, running my fingers through her obsidian-black hair and looking into her emerald-green eyes.

“Jimmy?” For a long time, she’d addressed me as “Master” here, but we’d agreed she had to stop doing it around Else.

“What?”

“There is something I need to tell you. I have been holding this back since Else awoke, because I was unsure how you would take it. But you deserve to know.”

“What is it?”

Her eyes grew wet. “Please do not be angry with me. Please. I beg you.”

I kissed her. “Not happening. Tell me.”

She took a deep breath. “I told you how Else simply appeared in my cottage all those months ago. You remember that?”

“Of course.” I’d entered a dream over Christmas to see her, and found her holding Else at the entrance to that little hut she’d once occupied.

“That is true,” she said. “What I did not tell you is what came before that.”

I hugged her, enjoying – as I always did – the feel of her soft, lush body against me. She was at the other end of the spectrum from MJ, who was so taut and defined. Charlotte was firm curves everywhere, big breasts, hourglass waist, plump butt and thighs.

“Just tell me,” I said.

“Jimmy, when I fully appreciated what sort of master you would be to me, as your familiar,” Charlotte said, “I was overcome with so much love and emotion. You care for me so deeply. You wanted to know me and understand my mortal life. You gave me so much pleasure when you did not need to, when I was happy to simply please you, expecting nothing in return. I am not exaggerating when I say I was completely overwhelmed. I had expected nothing like this. So many sorcerers treat their familiars like servants, even slaves.”

“I love you,” I said. “I just do. I don’t care what other sorcerers do with their familiars.”

“It is that unconditional love that did this, Jimmy.”

I sighed against her. “Go on.”

“One morning after you left me, when I returned with you to the mortal world and you were studying at the table in your old apartment, I sat there watching you, loving you so intensely. You scratched my ears and looked at me, and I knew you were thinking about how we had just made love. It was too much. I had to come back here, to my cottage. I lay on my bed smelling the scent of you. I wanted you there with me, and I thought about what it might have been like if I had known you as a mortal. I thought of the husband you might have been, the children we might have had. I lay there for a long time thinking of these things.” She sighed. “Then I suddenly felt something beside me. I looked down, and Else was there.”

I took a deep breath. “Wow.”

“I made her, Jimmy. I know it. I made her dreaming of the child I might have borne you as a mortal woman. Such dreams have power, especially here.”

I hugged her tightly. “You didn’t do this other thing. What she’s become.”

Charlotte began to sob against my chest. “But I love her so much. I am afraid of this thing she is, what she can do, but I love her just the same. She is our daughter.”

“She loves you, too. You can feel that, can’t you?”

“Yes. Not the way you feel things, but yes, of course.”

“I’m going to do whatever I can to protect her.”

I thought for a moment how strange that sounded, given what Else could do. But she didn’t understand her own power yet. And until she did, she was vulnerable. There were others who would do whatever they could to destroy her, if they learned what she was. That was why I had stayed here, concentrating the entire time on keeping her hidden. I’d laid wards upon wards around her, around her rooms, around the entire castle.

The first time I cast a ward on her, I’d been worried about whether I had enough of a connection to her. That had been the very day she awoke in my arms, when Charlotte and I were still grappling with what she was. But I looked down at her, at those big blue eyes filled with very un-childlike intelligence and understanding. And I just thought, I made you. However I did it, I made you with Charlotte. And that turned out to be enough to make the wards work.

I could only hope they were strong enough.

￼

Charlotte and I made love, then I let her rest from a long day of working with Else. I went up to the top of my dream castle, knowing by now that what I had made here extended well beyond the dream world. I walked out onto the platform, looking around at the vast gothic fortress I’d created. MJ and I had spent months building this place while Charlotte was trying to turn Morrigan into a sorcerer.

The platform was in the center of all the towers, with a great magic circle fifty feet across. It was night, just because I wanted it to be for Else’s sake, and the moon was bright and full. It was bright enough that I could see below us, all around the mountain I’d created the castle on when I’d expanded it even further during that years-long dream with Hayley.

Far below me in one direction was the sea and the little beach I made for MJ’s vacation dream. In the other direction was the devastated landscape Hayley and I had destroyed with our stone army.

What was out there? How had we been able to create a landscape stretching for miles out there that still endured? If that was the spirit world and not a dream, how had I been able to create anything like that?

I called my staff to my hand and launched myself into the air, rocketing up and out. I could move as fast as I wanted to here, and I reached the final battle – the one I’d cut short by waking Hayley up – in a few moments. The stone creatures were still there where we’d left them, frozen and inanimate, the spirits that gave them a semblance of life driven out and gone. They stood in a line along the border to the kingdom beyond, the one we’d been preparing to fight.

That kingdom was still there too, even though I’d given it no more than a few moments’ thought when we began the battle, letting Hayley’s imagination take control.

Yet there was something there, beyond what I thought we’d created.

It was not a shapeless fog. There was a dark, rolling landscape of fields and farms, villages, small towers. I sensed . . . I didn’t want to call them people. They weren’t people, not like me or the girls, or even Charlotte and Echidna. But there were consciousnesses out there.

Not spirits.

Souls.

There were souls out there. But how?

A sudden thought chilled my gut as I floated in the sky above it all. Was this Hell? After all, Lucifer had come here, as had Eligos.

How would I even know? For all the consorting with demons I’d been doing the past year, I’d never actually been to Hell. Not that I wanted to go, mind you. I was trying hard not to.

But that idea didn’t seem to fit. What I saw didn’t appear particularly pleasant. It seemed pretty gray and depressing, to be honest. But it also looked nothing like any incarnation of Hell I’d ever seen or envisioned. It certainly wasn’t Heaven – that seemed impossible – but this was no flaming hellscape of torture and misery either.

I thought about the tapestries I’d seen in that dream of the Breamstone Collective house, that thing that had been my grandmother Amalia’s dream temple. She’d been serving Hell for centuries by then and surely knew what the condemned souls were experiencing. Those tapestries depicted scenes very different from what I saw below me – souls being torn apart, devoured, raped, and roasted in lakes of fire. This was just a dank, dreary, sad expanse of mundane suffering. The people down there certainly weren’t happy, but they weren’t being tormented for their sins either.

I thought about exploring this place, but I held back. Whatever this was, I had far more important things to concern myself with now. There was someone I needed to talk to, a conversation I’d been putting off for the last month.

And I’d delayed this long enough.

I returned to the castle, descending to the library. I reached out to Colleen.

I sensed her sleeping beside me, between me and Katarina. She’d come up to our condo that night, wanting to sleep with the rest of us after that confrontation with Lucifer. Hayley, MJ, and Morrigan were on the other side.

With a gentle tug, I pulled her to me. She appeared in front of the fireplace, instantly lucid the way Katarina always was. She’d adapted her style of dress in this place to the gothic aesthetic, and though she looked nothing like Morrigan, she’d let go of her librarian outfits. She wore a knee-length black skirt, slit up the side to expose her stockings, and a loose black silk blouse. It was a nice contrast to her shoulder-length blonde hair and deep blue eyes.

But she sensed right away that something was different.

“Jimmy?” Then she looked at me in mild alarm. “What’s wrong? This . . . it seems like it’s been weeks since I last saw you.”

“In a sense, it has,” I said.

Her eyes widened, and her face went pale. “Oh no,” she gasped.

“You can feel it?”

“Yes,” she said quietly.

“That your power escaped the confinement I put it in?”

“What . . . what happened? Where did it go?”

“Can you sense it nearby?” I asked.

She nodded. “I can. It’s here. But it’s—”

“Been taken, yeah. Something none of us could have anticipated. I don’t know that this is necessarily bad, but it’s not good, and it’s something we have to deal with.”

“I don’t recognize this.”

I nodded. “Come on.”

I led her to the nursery tower. She hadn’t been up here before. When we walked into Else’s room, Colleen gasped and took my hand. We walked slowly up to my spirit-daughter’s bed.

“Is this Else?”

Else looked nothing like the baby she’d been when Colleen had last seen her, but her resemblance to Charlotte was very strong, so it was an easy guess.

“Yes. The power has done things to her. She’s growing very rapidly.”

“How did this happen?”

I shook my head. “We’re not sure. I think the spirits somehow contacted her and offered her the power. They said something to me that night, when it was all over. I thought they meant Hayley.”

“They offered her a chance at life,” Colleen whispered.

“Yeah. To be something more than that wisp of emotion and imagination she was. How that negotiation went, I have no idea. Else has no memory of it. We’ve asked. She only remembers the moment she awoke in my arms.”

I squeezed Colleen’s hand and popped us back down to the library.

Colleen turned away from me, facing the fireplace and putting her hands on her head. She slowly pushed her fingers through her hair.

“Has she done anything with it?” she asked.

Colleen still looked like that hot librarian I’d met while researching in the mission archives at the Huntington library. But she was actually a fallen angel who had once been among the most powerful of celestials, possessing the ability to destroy any spirit or demon.

She had lost that power in a battle with Lucifer six thousand years ago, when he stripped it from her and sealed it away in the spirit world. We found it, and I used my power of improvement to make it stronger. When Colleen – then Tamiel – had possessed it, her power was useless against celestials.

The improvement meant Else had the ability to destroy almost anything.

“No,” I said. “We’ve kept her here. Charlotte is teaching her sorcery to keep her attention occupied. She has a real aptitude for it, but she hasn’t shown any understanding of what she can do.”

“She’s going to change, Jimmy.”

“I know. That’s why we’re trying to bond with her as closely as we can.”

“I’ll be honest,” she said. “I only know what I was. I don’t know what she’s going to be, except that she’s going to grow into something very powerful. Very powerful and dangerous. She has the primary ability that was bestowed on me before I was cast out.”

“I want to say she’s a child, but to be honest I don’t really know what she is now. She’s growing. At this rate, she may be an adult in a few more weeks.”

Colleen shook her head. “And then what?

“What were you, exactly?” I asked. “I know you were an angel, but I’m not quite clear what that means. I’ve only met demons.”

“I’m still what I was, in most ways,” she replied. “Fallen angels are still angels, just ones who’ve had their connection to the celestial bureaucracy severed. So I don’t know how much of my celestial nature is in Else now. She has parts of you and Charlotte, after all.”

“So she becomes some angel-human-spirit-child hybrid.”

“Somewhat like you, I suppose,” Colleen said.

“Right. But if she manifests your celestial nature somehow, what does that mean? Is she going to become like you? If you’re anything like the demons I’ve met, I know what I’m looking at isn’t quite the real you.”

She nodded. “What you see here is just the form I assumed for this most recent mortal life. And understand that I’m here, in this place right now, as the thing I am. This isn’t like pulling the girls in from their dreams. I’m physically here. That’s why I couldn’t come here until you lifted that curse from me.”

“But Katarina has to be asleep.”

“She was mortal, Jimmy. It’s not the same thing.”

I looked at her. “Do you have a true form? Katarina doesn’t, but I know the major demons do.”

“Yes, and I don’t know if I should show you. I was an archangel, Jimmy. It’s not what I am now, but exposure to the full force of my true form back then was enough to destroy the average mortal. You’re not an ordinary mortal, though.”

“No.”

“And in here, at the center of your power, I think you should be fine.”

“Okay.”

She smiled. “Just brace yourself.”

Colleen seemed to gather herself up for a moment. And then she changed.

She was still Colleen, in the most basic sense. I still recognized her face. She was still blonde. But she blossomed into something far beyond that, more stunningly beautiful than Katarina yet glowing with internal power and energy. Her eyes blazed with a sapphire intensity that was almost blinding. Her hair became a long, flowing cascade that moved around her even though the air in the library was still. Her dark clothes shifted into a lacy gray robe that I recognized from the vision of her battle with Lucifer. Her body shifted as well, into sculpted perfection that even Katarina and Amira fell short of.

She wasn’t just the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on. She was beautiful beyond anything I’d even imagined – far beyond what any mortal woman could ever achieve.

It was all I could do to stand there and gape at her.

She smiled and reached out to me, gently stroking my cheek. The mere contact with the incredible sight before me sent a shiver down my spine and a throb through my groin. She held her hand there a moment and then shifted back to what she’d been.

“Shit,” I gasped as I regained control of myself.

Colleen closed with me, leaning against my chest. “I’m sorry. You asked.”

“I did.”

Mortal-appearing Colleen was still hot, and knowing what was inside her now gave her looks an edge that I hadn’t quite felt before.

“I can let you have it in little doses,” she said, “until you get used to it.”

“I don’t know if I could ever get used to that.”

She laughed softly. “Whatever you want. It’s all for you now, Jimmy. I owe you a debt I can never repay.”

I put my arms around her and held her for a few moments.

“Is Else going to be like that?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Jimmy. I truly don’t know.”

Chapter 2

￼

TIME PASSED differently in the spirit world. Within the castle, I had complete control of the passage of time. I knew I could stay here as long as I needed to and wake up the next morning as if nothing had happened.

But what did I need to do here?

I knew I needed to discuss Else with the rest of my coven, but talking wasn’t going to accomplish much. And after a month, I still wasn’t sure what to tell them, or how they would react.

Colleen stayed with me, and we sat together with Charlotte until Else awoke. After some indeterminate period, my spirit-daughter appeared in the doorway to the library. She wore a little lacy black-and-purple dress that made her look like a miniature Charlotte.

No one had dressed her. She’d been dressing herself. She would look in the armoire in her room, and the dresses she wanted would be there. I hadn’t created them – she seemed to have done it on her own, though I couldn’t feel her doing it.

Else looked older than she had the previous day, as she did every time I saw her. She came over and sat in my lap. She had a little pin in her hair, a skull on a purple ribbon. She’d been wearing it every day, no matter what outfit she had on.

“Hello, Father.”

I kissed her and brushed her black hair back from her face. It wasn’t anywhere near as long as Charlotte’s but it was the same glorious obsidian black my familiar had. The skull in her little pin was made of bone, not ivory or plastic. There were dark crystals in its eye-sockets that looked like black diamonds.

“I want you to meet a friend of mine.” I looked over at my fallen angel. “This is Colleen.”

“Hello, Else,” Colleen said.

“Why are you hiding yourself?” Else asked her.

Colleen and I exchanged a look.

“What do you mean?” Colleen asked.

“Your true form is so pretty,” Else said.

There was a quiet pause.

“You can see it?” Colleen asked.

“Yes.”

Colleen took a slow breath and leaned back against the couch beside me. “It’s a bit much for most people to take.”

“I like it,” Else said.

“Thank you. I like your hairpin,” Colleen said. “Where did you get it?”

“It was in my dresser.” She looked up at me.

I’d asked her this myself, but she hadn’t been able to explain it.

“Do you like it, Father?”

“Yes, I like it,” I said. “It’s very pretty.” It was, in a way, assuming “goth baby” was something you could get your head around. It suited her, if nothing else.

Else looked back at Colleen. “I didn’t mean to take it,” she said.

Colleen managed a smile. “Take what? Do you mean the pin?”

Else appeared to struggle for a moment. “It—it’s the pin now. I don’t know what to call it. But it used to be yours.”

Colleen’s eyes widened. She looked at me. I glanced at Charlotte, whose face had gone white.

“Yes, it did,” Colleen finally replied. “But I don’t need it anymore.”

“I don’t think I can give it back,” Else said. “I am sorry. It wants to stay with me.”

“Did someone give it to you, little mouse?” Charlotte asked.

“I found it in my dresser.”

“How do you know it wants to stay with you?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I just do.”

She hopped down from my lap and went over to Charlotte.

“I want to keep working.”

Charlotte stood up and took her hand. “All right. Let’s go to the lab. We can practice what you learned yesterday.”

After they left, Colleen leaned against me and sighed. She pulled my arm around onto her stomach and threaded her fingers through mine. I hugged her. We didn’t say anything for a few moments.

“Before Lucifer split me from it, I would manifest it as a golden necklace.”

It took me a moment or two to realize what she was telling me.

“Wait—wasn’t it part of you? I’m not sure I understand.”

“I don’t know if I can explain it to you in a way that makes sense.” She rolled toward me, resting her head on my chest. “Yes, it’s part of you, but at the same time, it’s not. It’s like this thing that’s just with you all the time. Making it into a physical thing makes it easier to deal with. When it’s just there, inside you, it’s almost like a splinter in your toe.”

“Else’s pin was there almost from the beginning,” I said. “Like, the day after she awoke in my arms.”

“She must have made it into the pin without even meaning to, as soon as she was aware enough to do it.”

“What if someone tried to take the pin from her?”

Colleen shook her head. “No. It would just disappear, or go back to her somehow. It’s part of her, until something unmakes her, like Lucifer did to me. To be honest, I don’t know what else could do it.”

“And unpairing them would turn her back into a mindless spirit-child.”

She nodded. “I think so.”

￼

We went to the lab a little later, where we found Charlotte and Else practicing invisibility spells. This was just basic invisibility, not the lotion I’d worked up, which would also hide you from even magical detection. I’d customized it to get us into the Voodoo Room under Mission San Sebastian. Making it was a very involved process requiring some complicated chemistry that I was pretty sure Else wasn’t ready for.

And just as we walked in, Else vanished.

“Can you see me, Father?”

“I can’t. But I can tell you’re still there.”

My bond with her let me do it. I sensed her, even though I couldn’t see her. And I felt warmth and affection flowing back through it toward me.

“I’m glad you can feel me,” she said. “You can find me if I get lost.”

“Yet I can’t see you or sense you at all, Else,” Colleen said. “And I should be able to.” She looked at me. “You put a ward on her.”

Colleen’s remaining powers, those Lucifer hadn’t taken out of her, included divination.

“Yes,” I replied.

“It’s very powerful. Though I suppose it would be here.”

“I hope so.”

Else reappeared. Charlotte had her cast the spell again, and she managed it a second time.

“I think you have mastered this, little mouse,” Charlotte said.

“Now I can go outside, and the people won’t see me,” Else said.

Charlotte and I exchanged a look, but Colleen was confused.

“What people?” she asked.

“The people who live outside our castle,” Else replied.

Colleen looked at me.

“It’s . . . I’m not sure what’s out there,” I said.

“I think we should wait until you’re a little older,” Charlotte said to Else.

“All right,” Else replied. “But some of the people are very angry with Father.”

I nodded. “Yeah. The spirits.”

But Else shook her head. “No, the people.”

And then I understood. At least, I understood who she was referring to. Not how she knew.

“I think your mother is right,” I said to Else. “We should wait. They can’t hurt us up here.”

Else looked up at Charlotte. “Can I learn another spell, Mother?”

Charlotte nodded, smiling at her. “Of course, my little mouse. Let’s go back to the library.”

When they were gone, Colleen looked at me, face tight.

“What is she talking about, Jimmy? What’s out there? I can’t pierce the wards you’ve placed around the castle. Inside here, they’re like iron.”

I took us up to the platform. As Colleen looked around, I walked out to the edge overlooking the strange landscape.

She took my hand. “I feel the edges of your dream world, Jimmy. Beyond it . . .”

“It’s the spirit world. And more. I expanded this so far that somehow it connected to things beyond it.”

“I can see that. What’s out there?”

“I’m not really sure,” I said. I’d been a bit leery of going out there on my own, since it was beyond the realm where I was essentially a god. I was still very strong, but having no clue what I might face made it a risk, and an unnecessary one given my many other current challenges.

Colleen, though, might have an idea what it was.

“Hayley and I made a lot of this during a very long dream together,” I told her. “She didn’t know she was dreaming. She’d asked me for this fantasy of hers, sort of a dark Beauty and the Beast thing. At the end of it, we launched a war on those lands out there. We reached some sort of settled area before I woke her up. It had gone too far. So I don’t know what’s out there, exactly. I’ve only explored it a little.”

“There is something out there. I can feel it now.”

“Want to see?”

She nodded.

“Yes. I think . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Let’s go see.”

I summoned my staff and took Colleen’s hand. But she didn’t need my help to fly. We rose into the air, and I led her out toward the dreary gray kingdom I’d seen before. When we crossed the line of stone creatures, Colleen’s face turned grim.

We flew over the fields and farms toward a dank, dark village below. The buildings were universally gray and decrepit, all dull stone and weathered wood. One cobblestone street ran down the middle; the rest of it was muddy earth.

There were people here and there, all of them just as gray and joyless as the village itself. They walked slowly up and down the street. A few of them looked up as we landed, but most of them averted their eyes and moved away from us. The few who dared to look immediately looked away.

Colleen had shifted her form to something closer to the people around us, but even then, she blazed with life in a way none of the villagers did. They were no longer mortal, just souls in the shape of people.

We walked slowly to the center of the village, where there was a rough sort of square with a fountain. But the fountain was dry, filled with nothing but windblown leaves and debris.

Finally she looked at me.

“I know what this place is.”

“What?”

“It’s Purgatory, Jimmy.”

“Purgatory?” I knew the general concept, but I wasn’t sure how closely that applied to what I was seeing.

“The place where souls who have escaped damnation are purified of their remaining sin, so they can enter Heaven. I haven’t been here since before I was cast out, but it doesn’t change.”

I looked around us. It fit. Here was the missing thing I sensed in the villagers.

“It’s all like this?”

“It’s all different,” she said, “but with the same dreariness and depression. It’s not suffering like Hell is, but it’s not a happy place either.”

There was a voice behind us.

“Nor is it meant to be.”

We spun around. One of the villagers stood there. He was just as drab and joyless as the others, but there was an air of authority about him that they lacked.

“This is Purgatory?” I asked.

“It is,” the man said. “Who are you? Why are you here? This is not a place for the likes of you.”

Through my staff, I sensed what he was, a soul shaped into the form he’d had as a mortal. These were the things the demons were trading in Hell. The things they were paying me with.

“Are you the leader of this village?” Colleen asked.

“There are no leaders here,” the man said, “for ambition is pride, and pride is sin. We are here to expiate our sins, not add to them. But others look to me to make decisions for the whole, so I accept that burden with humility. So I will ask you again, why are you here?”

“We mean no harm,” I said. “We simply wanted to see what this place was.”

“Were you sent to increase our punishments?” he asked. “I sense power in both of you, and you have the smell of the demons who come here periodically to torment us. We are here to suffer, but we have suffered much of late.”

“Suffered how?” I asked.

“Strange creatures have attacked us and destroyed many settlements like this one,” he replied. “We are of course beyond life and death here, but the experience of reforming after what would be mortal injuries is unpleasant. As it should be, but I wonder if there is something we have done to merit these added burdens.”

I looked at Colleen. She said nothing.

“We should go,” I said. “We are not here to add to your suffering.”

Colleen nodded. We flew up into the air and returned to the castle.

“We’ve disturbed things without meaning to,” I said to her as we landed on the platform.

“Perhaps,” she said. “But I wonder. It was the spirits who drove you during that dream, who served you. It’s possible the celestial bureaucracy allowed it for some reason, perhaps just as that soul thought. It’s also possible they have no idea what happened here. Purgatory gets relatively little attention from either bureaucracy. Demons sometimes go there to amuse themselves, but the amusements they’re allowed pale in comparison to what goes in Hell.”

“So the celestials don’t care if outside elements stir up trouble?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes no, sometimes yes. It depends on what sort of trouble.”

We went back down to the library, where Charlotte and Else were studying a spell for hiding things from prying eyes. It was adjacent to invisibility, and Morrigan had used it a few times.

Thinking of Morrigan made me remember the others, and I missed them.

“I feel like we need to get back to the waking world,” I said to Charlotte.

She looked up at me. “Whatever you feel is best, Ma— my love.”

“You can get my attention if anything happens. Stay close to me.”

Charlotte nodded. “I will.”

I hugged Else. She hugged me back.

“I’ll be back soon, little mouse. I love you.”

“When I can I go with you?” she asked. “Where you’re going.”

I sighed. “I don’t know.”

“All right. Goodbye, Father.”

Chapter 3

￼

I WOKE BETWEEN Hayley and Colleen. Colleen woke with me, but the other girls were still asleep.

I woke up Katarina. My succubus sat up behind Colleen, and I took a moment to admire her perfect breasts under the slinky little silk nightgown she had on.

As she always did, she came instantly to full wakefulness. Her face was troubled.

“Something is wrong, Jimmy,” she said. “I can sense it. You were in another long dream.”

“I know. Come on.”

We went out to the kitchen. Katarina got the coffee started. While I was often unsure about her Swedish casseroles, she had a knack for making good java.

Katarina had manifested a short silk robe, which made for something of a contrast with the basic cotton cami top and pajama bottoms Colleen had on. But when Katarina handed me my coffee and I turned to Colleen, I noticed something different about her. It was actually hard to ignore.

The first night we’d been together, before we’d discovered what Colleen really was, she’d had firm, nicely shaped, but somewhat small breasts. This morning was something else. She was just as firm and perky, but she was now at least a cup size bigger, somewhere around what I’d done to Hayley and just a little bit smaller than Katarina.

She noticed me looking and laughed.

“I told you I can change myself like Katarina can. And these are actually my real breasts. I told you I’d give you my true form in stages, and these seemed like the stage you’d be able to deal with the easiest.”

As I laughed with her, Katarina reached over and gently cupped one of them, stroking the nipple with her thumb. Colleen’s eyes went wide. She gasped softly as Katarina felt her up but didn’t say anything.

“I like these better as well,” Katarina said. Then she looked at me. “But you were going to tell me what is wrong. I am unclear what it could be. Lucifer has withdrawn to Hell, and Tamiel’s power is safe.”

I glanced at Colleen.

“Her power is still in my dream castle,” I said. “But it appears we underestimated the persistence of the spirits. They somehow convinced Else to take up the power after Hayley refused to.”

Katarina’s pretty face wrinkled in confusion.

“I do not understand. Else is a spirit-child. She has no consciousness.”

“Had, past tense,” Colleen said. “I don’t understand how it happened either, but she’s much more than she was before.”

“Who is?” Hayley asked behind me.

I turned around. Hayley came up beside me and pecked my cheek. Then her eyes darkened as she took in took in the looks on our faces.

“Let’s get everyone up,” I said. “I don’t want to have to explain this twice.”

In a few minutes, the rest of my coven joined us around the kitchen table. I looked at the five women who had joined my life over the past six months. Katarina, the blonde Swedish goddess. Redhead Hayley, who was probably the smartest person the room, and who had started all this by hooking up with me one night last fall. MJ, who was forever borrowing my clothes, showing off her Instagram-worthy physique in one of my microfiber workout t-shirts and nothing else. My sub Morrigan, with the gleaming purple hair and cartoon-character breasts I had given her with my powers of improvement. And finally Colleen, the fallen angel who had chosen to spend her immortality with me.

Charlotte jumped into the middle of the table as I sat down. Then I spent a few minutes recounting what had happened with Else as the girls gasped repeatedly in horror.

When I was done, Hayley was the first to speak.

“She’s a real person now?”

Charlotte meowed, and I reached over and scratched her ears. She pushed her head back against my hand.

“I’m not sure what she is, exactly. She can cast spells. She doesn’t act like a normal child by any means, but you can talk to her and it’s clear she has a real consciousness.”

“You were there for a month with her?” MJ asked.

“I had to be sure what was going on. I brought Colleen in to get her opinion. Else seems safe for now, but how long that will last, I just don’t know.”

“And she’s growing up?” Morrigan asked.

I nodded. “It almost seems to be accelerating. She was a baby for what felt like a week or more. Then she was a toddler for a few days. Now she looks seven or eight.”

“But she hasn’t done anything with the power?” Hayley asked.

“Charlotte and I have kept her occupied as best we could. We haven’t let her leave the castle. Which turns out to be important for another reason, something I never expected, but that Colleen and I just discovered.”

The rest of them looked at her.

“It seems that Jimmy pushed the boundaries of his realm out so far that it has connected with Purgatory,” Colleen said.

“Wait—” MJ said. “What the fuck? Actual Purgatory? It actually exists?”

Colleen looked at Hayley. “It’s the realm you and Jimmy attacked in that dream.”

“We flew over and paid them a visit,” I said.

MJ stared at me, eyes wide. “And . . . what happened?”

“It’s just as drab and dreary as you might imagine,” I said. “We spoke to what amounted to the mayor of this little village. He knew about the battles with the stone spirit creatures we made. He asked if we were there to torment them. Apparently it happens, demons and whatever dropping in to help expiate their sins.”

Hayley looked at me, face pale. “Oh, shit.”

“I pulled you in there,” I said. “That one is on me.”

Morrigan reached over and took Hayley's hand.

“You were just dreaming,” Morrigan said. “You didn’t mean to torment those souls.”

“But I wanted to do what I did,” Hayley said. “I liked it. I didn’t know it was a dream.”

I was about to say something when my demon phone rang. I would have ignored it, but I realized a moment later who it was, because I’d given Volach a special ring tone.

“Should I get that?” I asked.

“I know you’ve been in a dream the last month,” Hayley said, “but for the rest of us, that confrontation with Amira and Lucifer was yesterday afternoon. He might have news.”

So I got up and went to the bedroom. I grabbed my phone in time to catch him.

“Hey.”

“Hey, kid, I know it’s been a busy week for everyone,” he said, “but we need to talk.”

“About what?”

He laughed. “Don’t worry, it’s got nothing to do with the big man or any of that shit. Just some weird timing.”

“For what?” I asked.

“Let me explain,” he said. “When Amira took over your account from Astaroth, after you paid off that soul debt, she opened you up to assignments from the rest of the bureaucracy. This was one that came up a while back, but she sat on it because of the other stuff we needed you to do.”

“This isn’t really the best timing.”

Volach laughed again. “Welcome to Hell’s payroll, kid. None of us get to pick when the jobs come due. This one is officially in your lap now. We need to get together and discuss it. What’s your day looking like?”

“Hold on a sec.”

I muted the phone.

“It’s Volach,” I said to the girls. “He says they’ve got another job for me.”

“Already? Hayley asked.

“He made it sound like I don’t have a lot of choice.”

“It has been assigned to you?” Katarina asked. “Officially?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Then it would not be wise to refuse him.”

I groaned.

“Is there some sort of deadline?” MJ asked.

“He didn’t say.”

“Then ask,” Hayley said.

I unmuted my phone. “Sorry. What’s the timeline here?”

“Not a rush job,” Volach replied. “Another search mission for something that’s been missing a while, like that book, except things aren’t as tight this time.”

“Meaning what?” I asked.

“I’d rather explain in person. Suffice to say no one has their dick hanging out on this one, you included. Can you meet me and Morax for brunch?”

I muted the phone again. “They want to meet for brunch.”

“I have to work today, Jimmy,” Colleen said. “The rest of you are still on spring break, but I have a job. I mean, I understand what’s going on with all of us, what I am now, but I’m not ready to abandon my whole life yet.”

I nodded. “Okay, yeah. I’m not asking you to, really. And I don’t think you need to be there for this anyway.”

“We’re still on break, like she said,” Morrigan said. “I don’t see how it would hurt to meet him.”

Hayley and MJ nodded. I put the phone back to my ear.

“How about eleven? And where?”

“The usual work spot for your crew?”

We’d been meeting them at this theme restaurant down the street where the servers dressed in skimpy cheerleader outfits.

“Yeah, that works.”

“Great. See you at eleven.”

￼

We spent a while longer discussing Else, though there really wasn’t anything more to tell the girls. Colleen gathered her stuff to go down to her condo, but she came up to me as she got ready to leave.

“Will you do me a favor?” she asked. “This will sound very middle school, but it means something to me. And I think you have time.”

“Sure. What?”

“Will you walk me to work?”

I cocked an eyebrow at her, but she just laughed softly.

“The women I work with at the library have been trying so hard to set me up with someone. Karen and the others have noticed us working together, and she asked me about you yesterday.”

I nodded, getting it now, and laughing with her. “Absolutely. Let me throw on some clothes and meet you in the lobby.”

I took a shower and dressed. I got down there before Colleen did, but she emerged from the elevator about five minutes later in her work clothes. I noticed as she walked up that her chest was back where it had been before.

“I was wondering how you might explain those things.”

She kissed me quickly. “They’re only for you, Jimmy.”

Colleen took my hand, and we walked over to campus. As we crossed McKinley Boulevard, I looked for Jezebel Huntington. I didn’t see her. I’d promised to help her get back on her feet, and I meant it. I had to assume she would reappear when she was ready, since I had addressed her mental health issues.

What I did see were a whole series of circular tire tracks, like someone – or multiple someones – had been out here doing donuts in the street during the night. Santo Domingo had a big car-tuner crowd, but they tended to congregate in the beach areas. This was the first time I’d seen something like this around here.

When we got to the library, I followed Colleen down to the basement where the archives were located. She took me up to the desk, and sitting there was the same librarian I’d met the first day MJ and I came down here. She looked up as we approached. Colleen turned to me, put her hands on my waist, and gave me a kiss that was just short of fuck me right now.

I couldn’t see her, but I heard the other librarian letting out a noise of surprise. Then Colleen let me go, smiling slyly.

“Bye, Jimmy.”

“Bye. I’ll let you know what happens.”

As I walked out, I heard the other woman laughing at Colleen.

“What the hell was that? What did I miss?” she whispered sharply.

Colleen laughed with her, but whatever she said in reply, I didn’t hear it.

Five minutes later, when I was crossing back over McKinley, a text came in from Colleen.

Thanks Jimmy

Anytime

That probably felt juvenile but it meant something to me

Showing me off?

Mainly getting to brag that I finally got laid

lol

They wanted details

And yes I bragged about you

Glad to help

I know you were

That was following by a winking emoji and a heart.

Let me know how it goes with Volach

Will do

Have a good day with the books

Thanks

Have a good day thinking about these

A photo popped up. It was her, waist-up naked in her bathroom, looking like she’d just gotten out of the shower. Her new and improved boobs were on full display. Whew.

There goes my attention span for this meeting

Lol

Sorry it’s been years since I’ve had anyone to do this with

You’re just going to have to let me get it out of my system

I don’t actually want it out

Another heart.

You’re sweet

I’ll take some more for you later

But I need to get to work

k

I’ll check in after we talk to Volach

Chapter 4

￼

WHEN I GOT back home, the other girls were all dressed and about ready to go. Hayley had on jeans and short little green top. MJ had her usual running tights, though she’d kept my t-shirt on, and it was clear she had nothing under it. Katarina had manifested something similar, tights and a long-sleeved Huntington t-shirt.

Finally, Morrigan had on shredded black jeans and a black-and-purple corset top. I allowed her to wear underwear with jeans, and the straps of her purple satin thong were peeking out on each side. Her ball-python familiar Echidna was in her usual place around her right arm.

“Is this okay, Master?” she asked, tugging up her thong a bit more.

I kissed her. “It’s awesome.”

I wanted to bring Charlotte with us, but since we couldn’t take a cat into the restaurant, I cast an invisibility spell over her. I could still see her, but no one else could. She didn’t complain when I tucked her into my backpack, leaving the top open.

“Everything okay in there?” I asked her. She knew I didn’t mean the backpack. She meowed softly and curled up inside.

The five of us went down to the garage and squeezed into Hayley’s little Mercedes SUV. We got to the cheerleader place a little after eleven. People stared at Morrigan and her gleaming purple hair as they always did, but I got a few looks myself for showing up with this entourage.

A hostess in a seriously abbreviated Huntington College cheerleading outfit looked me up and down uncertainly. Volach and Morax, who were always exactly on time, were already there.

“We’re meeting those guys in the corner,” I said.

“Okay, sure.” I could tell she was trying to figure out who or what I was, but I said nothing more. She grabbed some menus and showed us to their booth.

Volach appeared to be a tall, well-built man in his late thirties wearing slacks and a crisply starched dress shirt. Morax was a big, bull-headed guy, almost like a bull with a human head. Unlike Volach’s chiseled features, every sharp edge on Morax’s body was rounded off with a layer of muscle. He wore a tight black t-shirt over his jeans.

“Morning, people,” Volach said as we sat down. “Where’s the new girl?”

“Not that I’d call her new, exactly,” Morax said. Both of them laughed.

“She had to work,” I said.

“That’ll happen,” Volach said. “Free agents got to pay their bills somehow. Then again, she’s got you as a sugar daddy now, huh?”

MJ snorted.

“We’re still working out the arrangements,” I said.

“Ex-celestials tend to have expensive tastes, in my experience,” Morax said.

“Who are you thinking of?” Volach asked. “Not Lilith? Please tell me you’re fucking over her by now.”

Morax shook his head. “No, not her. Marchosias.”

“Oh. Right.”

I remembered the name from one of my grimoires, though not a lot of detail. She was a she-wolf with griffon’s wings who supposedly spent a millennium trying to buy her way back into Heaven.

The server took our orders, and as they usually did, Volach and Morax ordered a couple of bottles of their most expensive champagne.

“Anyway,” I said when the girl left.

“Right,” Volach said. “On to business.” He reached for his leather portfolio and set it on the table in front of him. “You’ll recall that audit we were running, back when we asked you to find that book?”

“Yes.”

“And you also recall, I hope,” he went on, “our discussions about the panic that was ensuing across the bureaucracy as certain items turned up missing. Most of those responsible for said items, like Astaroth, did the right thing and took whatever actions were necessary to recover them. A handful, however, did a very stupid thing and turned in falsified records for their missing property.”

Morax leaned forward onto his meaty arms.

“One of the things that goes on in the infernal bureaucracy,” he said, “as you may have noticed by now, is that everyone is checking up on everyone else. And after the audit was completed, the Properties head decided to spot-check some of the responses he got, and wouldn’t you know it, a couple of demons were unable to produce the things they had sworn they actually possessed.”

“That must not have gone over well,” MJ said.

“No,” Volach replied, “it did not.”

“What happened?”

“Both demons are now back in the pool of souls. Since we’re about to eat, I’ll refrain from describing their punishments for this mess.”

MJ laughed, but Morrigan perked up.

“No, I want to know. What happened to them?”

“I’m going to vote for waiting until after the food,” Hayley said.

“Me as well,” Katarina said, “because I have a pretty good idea.”

“Yeah, that would be wise,” Morax said, and Morrigan pouted but didn’t say anything. “To continue, Properties has placed a bounty on these missing items. One of Paimon’s people is looking for the other item, this staff that doesn’t sound like anything special. But after what you did in finding that book, the Properties head asked Amira if you could take a shot at finding this particular artifact.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“A sword,” Volach said.

I saw MJ’s eyes lighting up. “A sword?” she asked.

Volach laughed. “I figured that would get your attention. Yes, this is a sword, a very old one, in fact, dating back to the ninth century. It was enchanted by a sorcerer working for Charlemagne. It bounced around the Carolingian Empire for a few years before it was taken by a Viking chieftain in a raid. That was a problem, because as you’ll recall, enchanted items created with our help are supposed to be returned to the infernal bureaucracy upon the sorcerer’s death.”

“That was like twelve hundred years ago,” Hayley said. “How has it been lost all this time?”

Morax glanced at Volach. “It’s because of a quirk specific to this case,” he replied. “Like Amira, the sorcerer who enchanted the sword was powerful enough to be taken directly into the infernal bureaucracy when he died. And that meant, in something of an oversight, that he was also now the one responsible for keeping track of this sword for Properties, even though he no longer had it. So for the last twelve hundred years, he’s been periodically trying to find it and coming up empty, all the while sending false audit reports to the Properties head stating that it was still in his possession.”

“Oh,” I said.

Morrigan fidgeted in her seat next to me. “So is he one of the demons that got demoted and, whatever it is you’re doing to him?”

“That is correct,” Volach replied. “You may imagine that the Properties head was not terribly pleased to discover that he’d been duped for the last twelve centuries.”

“You could just text me about what they’re doing, his punishment,” she said. “So the others don’t have to listen.”

Hayley put her face into her hands and groaned. Katarina rubbed her back affectionately.

“What does this sword actually do?” MJ asked.

“Some of this is a bit nebulous, mind you, due to the passage of time,” Morax said. “But by all accounts, this sorcerer was very good at what he did, which was why he was part of Charlemagne’s court. So from what we know of the records that exist, there was the usual stuff about staying razor-sharp and shiny no matter what else happened. What set this particular sword apart was that it was intended for use by a sorcerer, not a soldier.”

“Meaning what?” MJ asked.

While Morax was talking, Volach had pulled out his phone and started doing something with it. When he set it down, Morrigan’s eyes lit up, and she pulled hers out of her jeans.

“Meaning, again based on what we know,” Morax said, “it wasn’t your typical early medieval sword. It was apparently capable of changing form, from something the size of a knife all the way up to a full-scale blade for chopping heads off. On top of that, it could amplify a sorcerer’s abilities, kind of like that staff your boyfriend has.”

I looked at MJ. Her mouth was twisted up in thought. I was about to say something when Morrigan spoke up, eyes wide.

“Oh, wow,” she said, still staring at her phone. “You guys really do stuff like that?”

Hayley reached over and put her hand over Morrigan’s phone. Morrigan looked up at the rest of us, slightly embarrassed.

“Sorry.”

“So what is the bounty you mentioned?” Katarina asked.

“This one is a little different,” Volach said, paying no attention to Morrigan. “Finding the sword is five hundred, but Properties is tossing in a little bonus. Essentially, whoever finds it gets to keep it.”

MJ’s eyes widened again.

“Then why bother finding it at all?” Hayley asked. “If they don’t care about returning it?”

Volach held up a hand. “You need to understand how the bureaucracy works, Red. Properties does not actually give a fuck where any of this shit is. All they care about is keeping their books straight. That sorcerer or your boyfriend, it’s all the same to them as long as their records line up correctly. Right now, there’s a hole in their books where that sword should be. If the kid here can fill that hole, they’re happy to let him keep it.”

“They really track all this stuff you’ve helped make for the last five thousand years or whatever?” MJ asked.

“I think the oldest item in the records is eight thousand years old, but yes.”

Hayley cocked an eyebrow at him. “But why? I mean, if it’s just the paperwork that matters?”

Volach just shrugged. “Not up to me, Red.”

Katarina leaned forward. “The number of things that go on in the infernal bureaucracy for no other reason than because they’ve always been done that way is not small,” she said. “This is but one of many.”

“Precisely,” Morax said. “Ours not to reason why, and all that.”

“So what’s the timeline?” I asked.

Volach shrugged.

“This is a twelve-hundred-year-old problem, kid. The Properties head would like this resolved soon, but where we come from, ‘soon’ is any time in the next year. That said, you’ve got a reputation to protect. You found that book in a single day. I suspect he’s hoping you can move with similar alacrity here.”

I didn’t really need another five hundred souls in my balance. But I could see the desire in MJ’s eyes, and I wanted to do this for her, assuming we could manage it around our other challenges. And who knew, there might be a reason this had come up. I’d learned not to assume anything related to Hell and the spirit world was a coincidence.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll do it.”

￼

When we got back to my condo, I was feeling a little sluggish from the food and champagne. The five of us flopped around the living room. MJ and Hayley laid their heads on my lap and put their feet up on the ends of the couch as Katarina and Morrigan sat down in the chairs across from us. Charlotte hopped onto my thighs and lay down.

“So what did Volach text you?” Hayley asked Morrigan. “You obviously want to share it, so we may as well get this over with.”

“Um, hold on,” Morrigan replied. She pulled out her phone and opened the messages. “Okay. He said . . .” She paused and took a deep breath. “Are you sure you guys want to hear this? It’s pretty bad.”

“Do I?” Hayley asked.

“I mean, you’re going to be a doctor. You’re going to see some crazy shit.”

“Fair,” Hayley replied.

“I want to hear it,” MJ said, “but I can probably do without the exact details.”

“Same,” Hayley said.

“Okay,” Morrigan said. “You guys know that movie, ‘The Human Centipede’?”

“Yeah, you can stop right there,” Hayley said. MJ laughed.

“I think we get the gist of it,” I said.

“It’s worse than that, actually,” Morrigan said. “They’re frozen together in this big lake of pi—”

“I said to stop, Morrigan,” Hayley said, putting her hands on her face.

“Well, you were the one who asked.”

The rest of us laughed for a few seconds. Morrigan finally put her phone away.

“What are we going to do about Else, Jimmy?” Katarina asked.

That chilled the mood, but I knew we needed to focus.

“I honestly don’t know. Right now, we need to keep her safe inside the castle. The longer we can keep her existence a secret, the better.”

“Why didn’t you bring us in there?” Morrigan asked.

“I was concerned that doing anything would draw attention. I finally decided I had to bring in Colleen to get her opinion on it, since she held the power before Else. And after I talked to Colleen, I felt like we could sit tight for a little while. I wanted you guys to know, but again, it felt like pulling you all in might be too much for her. She’s still very young and still trying to understand what she is.”

“Yeah, I get that,” MJ said. “She’s got to be confused about a lot of stuff.”

“We should perhaps avoid using her name,” Katarina said.

“Yeah, agreed,” I said. “Let’s try to limit the talk about her out here in the mortal world. Every time we use her name, it’s a risk.”

“Then let’s give her a nickname,” Hayley said. “Like we did with Tamiel.”

“Charlotte calls her ‘little mouse.’ It’s a German thing.”

“That’s cute,” MJ said.

Charlotte meowed.

“Especially since she’s a cat,” Morrigan said.

Charlotte meowed again, and there was an edge of annoyance in it this time. I reached out and scratched her ears. She just purred and pushed her head against my hand.

“Let’s plan on visiting the castle tonight,” I said. “I’ll bring you all in to meet her, maybe one at a time.”

“This is going to be a little weird,” Hayley said, “you having an actual daughter now. But okay.”

I looked down at her. “Is this an issue?”

She took the hand that I had been resting on her stomach and squeezed it.

“It is not an issue. It’s just . . . weird, like I said.”

“I’m excited, actually,” Morrigan said.

MJ took my other hand and sucked briefly on my index finger. Then she slowly circled the tip of my finger around her right nipple, which was stiff against the fabric of my t-shirt.

I laughed softly. “What are you doing?”

“Changing the subject here,” she said. “How do we find some sword that’s been lost for twelve centuries?”

“I guess we start with another divination. Someone get my laptop.”

“Can’t you use that quantum thing you made in the castle?” MJ asked. “That was a lot more powerful.”

“I guess I should try. It’s a direct link to the spirits, and I’m not sure how they feel right now. But, okay.” I stretched out a bit between MJ and Hayley while they held my hands. As MJ pressed my hand against her breast, I closed my eyes and focused myself.

I returned to the main hall of the castle. When I climbed the stairs to the computer room, Else came running out of the library toward me.

“Father!” She ran up and hugged me tightly as I stood there in shock. “I missed you,” she said.

“I missed you too, little mouse,” I managed, hugging her back. “How, uh, how long have I been gone?”

“I am not sure. I went with Mother when she was with you in the other world. I was listening.”

Charlotte came out of the library toward us, face lined with tension.

The Else I’d left here, what had been a few hours in my waking life, had seemed seven or eight. This one looked about fourteen. Though Else was slimmer and her long black dress was much more modest than what my familiar wore, she looked like Charlotte’s little sister now, not her daughter.

Else had grown almost as much in that brief break as she had the month I’d been in here with her.

“You were there?” I asked.

She let go of me and stepped back.

“I could see and hear the things she did. I am so excited to meet your friends. When will you bring them?”

“Tonight.” I looked at Charlotte. “How long?”

“I found her like this when I returned here just now,” she said slowly.

Else didn’t seem to understand this conversation, or didn’t care, or just took it at face value.

“I have something to do,” I said.

“Can I help?” Else asked, eyes eager and excited. “Is it about the sword?”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure what she could do, but letting her watch seemed harmless. The three of us went into the computer room and sat down. Volach had given me their file on the sword, which had the name of the sorcerer and a few other details. I started up the divination model, then concentrated for a moment.

“What do you know about the sword of Lothar the Black, who became the demon Osephus?”

Up to now, when I’d run my upgraded model on this new system, the answers had come instantly. This time, though . . . there was nothing. The screen remained blank.

“Something might be wrong. Hold on.”

I closed the model and reopened it. It seemed to be running just fine. I repeated my question, yet again nothing happened.

Beside me, Else looked up, eyes going unfocused for a moment.

“You need to help him,” she said, a tinge of annoyance in her voice.

And like that, the answer appeared.

IT WAS TAKEN TO SWEDEN IT TASTED MUCH BLOOD IT SLEW THE ONE WHO LOVED HER IT CAN HELP HER GROW INTO HER BLOODLINE YOU DEFEATED HIM IT IS HIDDEN FROM US

For a moment or two, I wasn’t sure where to go first – what all this meant, or why the spirits had answered Else and not me.

Charlotte spoke first. “Little mouse, do the spirits speak to you?”

Else looked at us. “No, Mother. Well, not exactly. I just felt them resisting Father. They need to help us.”

“But you can sense them out there?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I looked back at the screen. “Why did you answer Else and not me?”

This time the answer came immediately.

SHE IS THE ONE

I nodded slowly. Else was the one, the culmination of their six-thousand-year plot, the one I thought I’d thwarted. Charlotte’s hand slipped into mine. I squeezed it, glancing at her quickly.

I looked at Else. The purple skull pin was in place, pinning a thick lock of obsidian hair back from her forehead. Her big blue eyes were staring intently at the screen.

“What does that mean, Father?” she asked.

“I know we’ve discussed this before,” I said, “but maybe you remember more now. When you woke up in my arms, what were you thinking? Was there anything before that?”

She pursed her lips, thinking.

“I remember you speaking to me about the spirits and showing me the castle,” she said. “I just knew who you were. I felt Mother nearby.”

“The thing you got from Colleen, do you remember when it came to you?”

Else put her hand up to her head, feeling the pin. “It was in my dresser. I told you.”

“But did you feel it before that?”

She nodded. “I think so. I remember now. I wanted to see it, then I found the pin.”

“When did it come to you?”

She seemed to be thinking intently.

“I think when I woke up with you,” she said after a moment or two. Then she looked back at the screen. “So what does this mean?”

I took a deep breath and exhaled. “I think it’s time to tell you a story, little mouse.”

Charlotte’s hand squeezed mine tightly. “Are you sure, my love?”

I nodded. “I suspect we’re rapidly running out of time here. And she needs to understand.” I stood up. “Come on.”

Chapter 5

￼

ELSE AND I went to the top of the castle. There was no particular reason to go up there, except the fact that she’d never been there before. Until very recently she was too young to get much of anything out of it.

She walked out to the edge of the platform, looking around in wonder. The sky was cloudy and gray, and I knew that was because the spirits were near. They didn’t seem inclined to listen to me anymore, but I could still control them to some extent when they were this close.

I watched her long black hair fluttering in the breeze. I wondered, not for the first time, at the fact that I had a daughter now.

All the times I’d heard people talk about what having children did to you, to your perspective on the world. Guys joking on social media about being girl-dads. I’d never really understood it until that moment.

I knew this wasn’t anything like having a mortal child, going through a pregnancy, a birth, watching her grow up for years. But at the same time it didn’t matter – not to me. She was a spirit-child like I had been. I knew what she was better than anyone, and that mattered.

I’d gotten used to having her here all this time, even though she’d been something different from what she was now, soulless and empty. Because she had evolved beyond that.

Just as I had.

I thought about my mother Mary-Beth, who had come to love her spirit-child so much that she was willing to leverage the power of a trapped demon lord to bring me into the world. Who had given up a piece of her soul to make it happen. Who had died to give me life.

There was a time I’d wondered, in a way that was – if I was being honest with myself – awfully fucking patronizing, whether Mary-Beth’s infertility had become such an obsession that she was willing to give up everything to be a mother.

No.

I understood now.

I felt ten years older than I had a month ago.

Standing there, watching Else, I could only think of all the forces in the multiverse that were arrayed against her, that would want to use her, control her – kill her, even – if they ever learned of her existence. She was still so innocent and beautiful, so unaware of all the things that menaced her.

I wanted to fucking destroy all of them.

To blast them into atoms, if that was what it took to protect her. My mother had died for me. I could hardly do less for Else.

“Is this all ours?” Else asked.

“Some of it,” I replied. “The lands you can see immediately around us, I created them. Beyond that, out there, that’s a place called Purgatory.”

“The spirits live out here?”

“Yes. They can come and go from the mortal world, but this is where they reside. There are also souls out there, mortals who died and came here.”

“But what is the mortal world?” she asked. “The things I saw and listened to with Mother. How do you come and go from here?”

“I’m about to explain. I need you to understand what you are, how all this happened and how you came to be here. Some of it may be hard to listen to. I don’t pretend to understand all of it, but I’m going to tell you everything I know.”

Else walked back over, looking up at me with those deep blue eyes.

“All right. I will listen.”

“And I want you to understand that I love you, little mouse. Wherever this goes, please remember that.”

She hugged me, pressing her head against my chest.

“I love you as well, Father.”

I held her for a moment and let her go. Then I began.

I told her everything, starting with what I knew about my life, about Mary-Beth and how I’d come into the world. I told her about my life with Grandma Amy. I told her about all the things I’d learned, the truth that lay in the shadows around me all that time. I told her about binding Katarina, about how Charlotte had come into my life, and how Else had come to be.

I told her about the spirits, how they had manipulated me and Hayley and everyone else. I told her a G-rated version of how I’d brought MJ and Morrigan into our coven. I told her about Colleen, what she was, what Lucifer had done, and how Colleen’s power had come to be here. How I’d used Else to cast that treasure-finding spell. What she was now, and what she could do.

To Else’s credit, she stood there quietly and listened, saying nothing. She didn’t even really react much.

When I was done, she just smiled and hugged me again.

“Thank you, Father.”

I wondered for a moment why none of it had upset her. Then I realized it was because she had no context whatsoever to get upset about any of it. She’d known almost nothing about what she was, and now I had filled in a lot of the blanks. So it was natural for her to be happy about that.

“You understand why we have to be careful,” I said.

“Yes. I do. I will be very careful.”

“You have a power that a lot of people in the multiverse will be afraid of.”

“I don’t want them to be afraid of me.”

“They will be,” I said. “That’s just the reality.”

She stayed where she was in my arms.

“Father . . . do you think I can come to the mortal world like Colleen can?”

“I don’t know. Probably, though I don’t know how. Maybe Colleen can tell you. But I don’t want you doing it until we think things through. I’ve cast spells that will protect you as long as you stay here. Some of them should work in the mortal world. I’ve cast similar spells on the others. I just don’t want to take any risks with you.”

“All right. But I would like to see it someday. I would like to meet the others in our coven.”

The undercurrent of sadness in her voice came close to breaking my heart. I hugged her tightly.

“We’ll do it. One day. I promise, little mouse.”

￼

When Else was with Charlotte, I pulled myself back to the mortal world. Katarina, Hayley, MJ, and Morrigan were sitting there as if only a few moments had passed. From their perspective, that was all that had.

I exhaled slowly. Hayley squeezed my hand and sat up.

“What happened? You weren’t in there for just a minute or two. I can tell.”

I looked around at them.

“No.”

I wasn’t ready to tell them about Else yet. The emotions I felt were too raw, and I needed some time to process them. I would have to tell the girls later, before I took them there to meet her.

“The spirits were a little uncooperative at first,” I said. “But I got an answer, though it’s not entirely clear, I think because it’s shielded from divination.”

Katarina gave me an uncertain look, and I knew why. Because of our bond, she could tell when I was being evasive about things. But she said nothing.

“So what did they say?” MJ asked, staying put against my lap. My hand was still on her breast, and I couldn’t resist caressing her for a moment. Then I told them.

“They said, ‘It was taken to Sweden. It tasted much blood. It slew the one who loved her. It can help her grow into her bloodline. You defeated him. It is hidden from us.’”

“Sweden,” Hayley said. They all looked at Katarina.

“It was taken in a Viking raid,” she said. “That would not be surprising.”

“‘It tasted much blood’ would track there too,” MJ said, “but ‘It slew the one who loved her’?”

Katarina and I stared at each other. Both of us were thinking the same thing.

“‘Her’ could mean anyone, Jimmy.”

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

I sighed. “This is a story for Katarina to tell, if she wants to.” I was pretty sure she had never told them about the last days of her mortal life.

She looked down. “I would prefer that you tell them.”

I took a deep breath. Hayley lay back down against my lap.

“I told you guys how I’ve had dreams about Katarina’s life,” I began, “before she became a succubus. Our bond seems to do it. Some of those dreams were about what happened to her, when she was a mortal girl, in this fishing village. She was just a kid, still growing up. There was this boy who liked her and who wanted to marry her. I had a dream where I was him. I remember being him.”

I looked at her.

“I don’t know if it was me projecting onto him, but I loved you in that dream.”

She nodded. “His name was Gevald. And yes, I think he did love me. He certainly behaved like it.”

“And I dreamt about what happened to them all,” I went on. “The village was attacked by another tribe. They killed everyone.”

“Even you?” Morrigan asked her.

“No,” Katarina replied quietly.

Then Morrigan got it. “Oh. Right. Sorry.”

“Do you remember a sword?” MJ asked after a couple of awkward moments.

“You want this thing, don’t you?” Hayley said.

MJ shrugged. “It sounds cool.”

“You have a sword already,” Morrigan said.

“Not a magic sword, at least not one like this.” MJ looked back to me. “So what about that raid?”

I shook my head. “They were all armed. Some of them had swords. Nothing stood out, really.”

“That’s if this has anything to do with Katarina,” Hayley said.

“And what about ‘growing into her bloodline’?” MJ asked.

“That cannot refer to me,” Katarina said.

“No,” I said.

“‘You defeated him.’” MJ said. “Who have you defeated?”

“Could be a few things. Maybe Zagan or Eligos? But Eligos had a mace, not a sword. And Zagan was a bull.”

“But it has to be someone connected to this sword somehow.”

“Someone with a connection to Sweden, I would bet,” Hayley said.

“If it’s still in Sweden, that’s going to make things a little tough,” Morrigan said. “Spring break is almost over.”

“I’m not flying to Sweden for this thing unless we’ve got a solid lead. And right now, we don’t.”

“How are we going to do this if the sword is protected from divination?” MJ asked.

“I wonder if Colleen could help,” Morrigan said. “She wouldn’t be asking the spirits anything, right? Her powers are innate, aren’t they?”

I hadn’t thought of that, but she was right.

“Could be. It might depend on how strong the protections are. I’ll talk to her when she gets off work.”

No one said anything for a few moments. Hayley got up.

“I guess we’re at a stopping point, then. I hate to break this up, but I have a bunch of homework and studying to get caught up on after all this stuff the past week.”

“So what about Els— little mouse?” Morrigan asked.

“Not much we can do right now,” I said. “I’ll bring you all in to meet her tonight.”

I wondered if Else was going to be even older the next time I saw her. Not that there was anything I could do to prevent it.

“I kind of need to go back to school to get some clean clothes,” MJ said, sitting up as well. “My stuff here is all dirty.”

Since MJ and Morrigan slept over here frequently, I’d given each of them a drawer in the bedroom for clothes and other personal items.

“Like half of the stuff you wear now is Jimmy’s anyway,” Hayley said.

“I like the smell of him, and they’re more comfy.” MJ said laughing. “But I need some clean underwear.”

“I just realized I’ve never seen your room,” Morrigan said.

MJ shrugged. “Come if you want.”

Katarina wanted to go to the market to stock up on food, so Morrigan and I followed MJ over to UCSD. The university was in a much more suburban area of Santo Domingo than Huntington College, which was south of downtown and surrounded by office buildings, strip malls, and an industrial park. UCSD, by contrast, was right next to Langdon Hills, the city’s wealthiest neighborhood.

After exiting the freeway, we drove through the winding, tree-lined streets before passing through the campus gates. I’d been over here a couple of times, and I knew MJ lived in one of the athlete dorms near the football stadium. The stadium had been built in a canyon and nearly all of it was below ground level so as not to spoil the views from the expensive homes above it. MJ’s dorm was about a block away.

I parked in a visitor’s space, and we regrouped. The campus was quiet, since UCSD was on spring break right now as well.

“This is really pretty,” Morrigan said.

“I don’t know how you guys can stand the neighborhood around Huntington,” MJ asked. “I mean, the campus is great, but once you leave, you know.”

“You get used to it,” I said.

MJ’s room was on the fourth floor. I sat on her bed while she swapped out her clothes. Morrigan looked out the window for a few moments.

“Where’s your roommate?” she asked.

“Back home in Arizona.”

I saw a look come into Morrigan’s eyes. MJ caught it too. She finished packing her bag and stood up, smiling. She took a couple of steps toward Morrigan.

“Why do you care, slut?”

A flush spread over Morrigan’s face. “Um. No reason, ma’am.”

MJ laughed. “Yeah, right.” She went into her dresser and dug around in the back of the bottom drawer. She came up with a little white box.

“About those rules I gave you last night.” She opened the box. Inside was a silver butt plug with a red plastic jewel on the handle. “This was what I meant. One of the girls on the team gave this to me as a gag gift last fall. So get those fucking jeans off.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Morrigan kicked off her shoes and rapidly stepped out of her jeans and thong. She stood there in nothing but the corset top. I took a moment to admire her little purple landing strip, the same luminescent purple as the hair on her head.

MJ held out the butt plug and had Morrigan suck on it, getting it wet and sloppy.

“Turn around,” MJ said. Morrigan complied, turning around and bending over, reaching back to pull apart her butt cheeks. MJ slowly worked the butt plug into her. When it popped into place, Morrigan let out a little gasp.

“That ass is virgin, isn’t it?” MJ asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

MJ pulled my t-shirt off, revealing her firm little tits with those pointy brown nipples I loved to suck on. Her body was so hard and defined after what I’d done in improving her.

She smiled at me, then smacked Morrigan’s ass hard enough that a crack echoed through the room. Morrigan whimpered softly but didn’t move. MJ smacked the other cheek, then stepped back.

“Stay there.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Morrigan remained in place, hands on her knees. Two red imprints of MJ’s hands rose on her butt. MJ went to her closet and got out a belt. She folded it in half and smacked it gently against her left hand.

“Remember the safe words we worked out, slut?”

“‘Yellow card’ and ‘red card.’”

I laughed. Of course MJ would want some kind of soccer theme.

I’d taken Morrigan as my sub when she joined the coven, during that epic dream when we had to train her as a sorcerer. But a few days ago, during our trip to San Sebastian, she told me she’d always dreamed of having both a dom and a domme. I’d sensed that dynamic growing between her and MJ during our dreams, so I pitched the idea to MJ. Things had gotten very interesting between them since then.

“Remember, you’re a lot stronger than you used to be,” I said to MJ.

“This slut likes it hard, though.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Morrigan said.

MJ laid the belt across Morrigan’s ass. Morrigan whimpered again but didn’t move. I sat there watching MJ swinging the belt back and forth as Morrigan’s ass turned red. Bent over like she was, I could see her getting very wet as well.

MJ also noticed and finally set the belt down. She reached between Morrigan’s thighs and slipped her thumb into Morrigan’s pussy, rubbing her softly.

“Did you like that, slut?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She played with Morrigan for a few moments before stepping back and wriggling out of her tights. She came over and sat in my lap.

“Lean back.”

I grabbed a pillow and leaned back against the wall. MJ leaned back against me, spreading her legs. I looked down her chest and saw that she was as wet as Morrigan.

“You know what to do, slut,” she said.

Morrigan knelt in front of us and dove right into MJ’s pussy. I had a perfect view the way MJ was sitting, as she’d clearly intended. MJ twisted around to kiss me as I played with her nipples. She broke the kiss after a few seconds and just lay back, letting Morrigan work.

Morrigan’s tongue fluttered between MJ’s bare labia, lapping up the wetness and flicking her tongue stud against MJ’s clit-hood piercing. I held MJ against me and gently tweaked her nipples. As Morrigan continued licking and sucking, MJ reached down and pushed her fingers through Morrigan’s long purple hair.

I lay there enjoying the show they were putting on. There were no sounds except for MJ’s deep breathing and the soft clicking noises of their piercings hitting each other as Morrigan licked.

“That’s good, slut,” MJ sighed.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

I kept playing with MJ’s little boobs and stroking her stomach. She kissed me again, moaning into my mouth. I could feel her getting close, feel the little twitches and tremors in her abdomen as her orgasm approached. Morrigan sensed it as well, licking faster and focusing on MJ’s clit. MJ pulled my hands from her breasts and just hugged my arms tightly against her body.

Her breath started to catch, and a few moments later she tensed up, grabbing at Morrigan’s head, and I felt her shiver in release against me. It went on for about five seconds before she pushed Morrigan back.

When MJ caught her breath, she slid over out of my lap. She reached for my crotch, feeling the hard-on they’d given me, and laughed.

“You going to stay dressed?”

I laughed with her and stood up, stripping out of my clothes. MJ stretched out on her bed with her head at the end. Morrigan was still on her knees, and I noticed that Echidna had joined this encounter. She’d slid down Morrigan’s arm and coiled around her wrists so that Morrigan’s arms were now bound together. Morrigan laughed softly as I looked down at them.

“She knows what you like, Master.”

I went to her, taking her head in my hands and entering her mouth. MJ started playing with herself as Morrigan sucked on me. I felt the stud in Morrigan’s tongue working against the head of my cock as I moved in and out. For a minute or two, I just stood there enjoying the wet friction of her mouth around me.

“I want to watch you fuck her,” MJ said.

Yeah, I liked that idea. I withdrew from Morrigan’s mouth.

“Get on the bed, above her.”

“Yes, Master,” Morrigan replied. She stood up and crawled onto the bed on top of MJ so that her reddened butt was in the air and her butt plug twinkled at me. MJ reached around her and unsnapped her corset top so Morrigan’s big boobs were free. I positioned myself behind Morrigan. MJ stretched her head back to suck on me quickly, then reached up to pull Morrigan’s labia apart. She stuck her tongue out to guide me in.

Morrigan moaned softly as I stretched her out. She’d never been with a guy before joining my coven, and she was still wonderfully tight. MJ licked at my cock and Morrigan’s clit.

“You don’t come until I tell you to, slut,” MJ said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

I held Morrigan’s hips and fucked her slowly. She bent forward between MJ’s thighs. I couldn’t see from this angle, but the movement of her head told me what she was up to. Underneath us, MJ was alternately licking Morrigan or fingering her and sucking at my balls.

For a few minutes, I just lost myself in the feel of Morrigan’s wet flesh around me and her soft butt pressing against my groin each time I bottomed out. I listened to the two girls moaning and gasping under me. MJ was still wound up, and she suddenly dropped her head back.

“Fuck,” she cried. Her hands groped for mine. I saw Morrigan’s head moving back and forth rapidly as she pushed MJ into another orgasm. MJ’s thighs drummed against the bed. The sight and sound of all it made me fuck Morrigan harder, pounding her forward against MJ.

As MJ came down from her peak, she grabbed my balls, squeezing the base of my cock.

“Are you going to come?”

“Almost,” I grunted.

“Do it. I want to feel it. And don’t fucking come yet, slut.”

Morrigan just moaned. With a few more long, deep thrusts, I buried myself into her and came. MJ squeezed my cock as the waves of pleasure washed over me, milking me into Morrigan.

“Do you feel that, slut? Do you feel him coming?”

“Yes,” Morrigan gasped.

When I was done, MJ gently eased me out of her. Then she pulled herself up and began lapping up my come as it oozed out of Morrigan. She dug her tongue deeply into Morrigan several times to get it all. Then she rolled Morrigan over and sat up, grinning at me. She crawled over Morrigan until her face was level with hers. Morrigan extended her arms, still restrained by Echidna, back above her head.

MJ reached up and pulled Morrigan’s chin down. Then she slowly drooled all my come into Morrigan’s mouth.

“Swallow now.” Morrigan did. MJ kissed her, reaching down and sliding her two middle fingers into Morrigan’s wet, swollen pussy. “Such a good little slut. I want to you to come now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Morrigan gasped.

I lay down beside them. MJ began fingering her rapidly. It didn’t take long. Maybe a minute into it, Morrigan began to shudder, big boobs heaving as her back arched, and let out a soft cry. MJ and I held her as she shook in release.

I wanted MJ too after all that, so as Morrigan caught her breath, I rolled MJ on her stomach and entered her from behind. She lifted her butt for me and arched her back as I bottomed out against her tight ass.

I began fucking her slowly and slid a hand underneath her to finger her clit. She moaned and braced herself against the headboard. Morrigan rolled against us, wanting to help. MJ grabbed her head and kissed her deeply. Then she broke the kiss and pushed Morrigan down the bed.

“Lick me again, slut,” she gasped. “Get under me and lick me while he fucks me.”

I briefly withdrew from MJ as Morrigan obeyed the command. Then I glided back inside her as Morrigan lapped eagerly at MJ’s clit. It was alI I could do to watch the two of them under me as I pounded MJ into the bed. She buried her face in her pillow to muffle her cries.

I fucked MJ roughly for a couple of minutes, knowing from past experience this was just what she wanted. Finally her hips began to shake and I felt her clenching tightly around me as Morrigan and I drove her into another orgasm.

I’d held myself back just long enough to get her there, and her spasms around my cock did it for me. I buried myself inside her and came hard, pumping my seed into her quivering flesh as Morrigan’s tongue danced and fluttered around us. I fell forward on top of MJ with a gasp.

Afterward, we cuddled together for about fifteen minutes as Morrigan came down from her sub space.

“I love you guys,” she finally whispered.

MJ kissed her. “Domming you is such a fucking turn-on,” she said. “I never realized I had all this in me, but you pulled it out. You and Jimmy. I want to you to know that, babe.”

Morrigan nuzzled MJ’s neck.

“I do.”

I hugged them both.

Chapter 6

￼

I TEXTED COLLEEN as we walked back to my car, wanting to update her on what Volach had asked us to do and what I’d learned so far.

Hey angel

A heart-eyes emoji came back.

Hey new boyfriend

I didn’t forget about you just been a busy morning

It’s fine we were busy too

A photo popped up. It was a selfie of Colleen sitting at her desk, holding the phone above her head so it was pointing down her blouse. Her true-form boobs were back, the top button was undone, and there was a fair amount of firm cleavage on display.

Fucking delicious

Thought you’d like that

How did the meeting go?

I recapped the morning and what the spirits told me.

Just how strong are your powers of divination?

I was a celestial Jimmy

So they’re pretty strong

I can break through most mortal wards

Not all of them

Not yours for example

Can you tell me anything about this sword?

Not like this

Come by the library when you get back

I need to connect with you to get a better sense of it

Right now it’s too nebulous

That made some sense. She needed something to focus on.

Okay I’ll see you in half an hour or so

As we got to my car, I explained all this to Morrigan and MJ.

“I need to get over there and talk to her.”

“I kind of have some studying to do too,” Morrigan said. “It’s fine.”

“I was thinking of working out,” MJ said. “Got off schedule this week.” She kissed me. “Go hang out with your fallen MILF. I’ll come over later.”

I laughed. “She’s not—” But I decided to let it go.

MJ and Morrigan hugged good-bye, and Morrigan and I went to my car. I drove back to campus and walked Morrigan to her dorm. I gave her a long hug when we got to her room.

“How are you doing, kitten?”

“Every day now is like I hit the lottery.”

I laughed. “I’m glad.”

“I mean it. I’m a real witch now. I have a master who understands me like no one else ever did. I have a domme who gets off on all the stuff that gets me off. I have Hayley back in my life.” She laughed against my chest. “And I have perfect hair that I don’t have to dye anymore.”

I kissed her.

“You do.”

She looked up at me with those big blue eyes.

“I love you, Jimmy.”

“I love you too, kitten.”

￼

When I got to the library basement, Colleen was waiting at her desk. I noticed her blouse swelling out as I approached and tried not to laugh.

“You don’t need to keep doing that,” I said quietly.

She stood up and kissed me. “I’ll stop if you can tell me honestly you don’t like me better this way.”

“I liked you fine the way you were.”

She laughed. “Jimmy, celestials can smell lies a mile away. And that’s without seeing where your eyes go.”

I laughed again. “Okay. Do what you want.”

Colleen took my hand. “Come on. We need some privacy for this.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “‘This’?”

She kissed me again. “Not what you’re thinking. I need to focus on you to get a fix on this sword.”

She led me into the archives, back into the sealed, climate-controlled room where the library’s most important and fragile materials were kept. We passed through the stacks, and I saw a reading room along the back wall. Colleen led me there and shut the door behind us.

There were two chairs and a little steel desk. We sat down. Colleen took my hand again.

“Can you enter your dream world and pull me in there?” she asked. "Not that castle. A separate space, just the two of us.”

“Why?”

“I can sense there’s a connection here, between it and you. But to focus on it, I need to connect with you, with no outside interference.”

I nodded. “Okay. Give me a moment.” I closed my eyes and withdrew to the dream world. I steered myself away from the castle, but I wasn’t sure where to go at first. Then I had an idea, one that seemed appropriate.

I went back to that inlet in Sweden, the site of Katarina’s village. I didn’t want to recreate the raiders, but I could recreate the aftermath of what they’d done, the smoldering wreckage of the little settlement. The memory came back to me more vividly than I’d expected – the longhouse, the little wooden houses, the fishing boats along the water. The bodies everywhere, the fishers, Katarina’s parents, and Gevald, lying along the water beside his boat.

When everything settled into place, I pulled Colleen into the dream. She appeared next to me, looking around in surprise. Unlike the last time, she wore the same clothes she’d had on in the library.

“What is this?” she asked.

“The village where Katarina lived. Where she died.”

“The sword was here,” she said instantly.

“We figured as much. What else can you tell?”

I watched her looking at the burning houses and slaughtered villagers on the ground around us. Her eyes fell on Gevald.

“He died by it.”

“That was Katarina’s boyfriend,” I said, “so to speak.”

“‘The one who loved her’?”

“Right. You’re sure about all this?”

“Absolutely,” she said. "The connection is blazing like the sun.”

“So where is it now? Who did I defeat?”

Her eyelids drooped, and she gathered herself up for a moment. “That’s what’s hidden. And not lightly.”

“Can you get through the wards?”

Colleen was silent for a few moments. “I can’t see the sword. But I see a name. Charles Halvor. Does that mean anything to you?”

I didn’t get it right away. Too much had happened in the interim. Then it hit me.

Breamstone.

Charles Halvor was the former leader of the Breamstone Collective. I’d fought him that day at Deirdre’s house, fought him and beaten him. Beaten him so completely that I’d put him in a rehab hospital with a broken back.

“Yes,” I said. “Is he Swedish?” The name sounded Scandinavian.

“His ancestors were,” Colleen replied.

“Does he have the sword?”

“I can’t see it,” she said again. “But there’s a connection, to him and his bloodline. His father possessed it and brought it to the U.S.”

Charles Halvor’s father had formed the Collective with my grandmother Amalia. She’d been searching California for Colleen’s lost power for almost two hundred years at the time.

If he had the sword, it likely wouldn’t be in Sweden. It would be here in California. I didn’t relish the idea of another trip up to Zagan’s Rock, but if that was what it took, fine.

“Okay. What about the last bit? ‘It can help her grow into her bloodline.’ Who were the spirits talking about? And what does that mean? It can’t be Katarina.”

Colleen focused herself again. Then her eyes opened wide.

“It’s not.”

“Then is it Hayley? Or Morrigan? Both of them have come into their bloodlines already.”

“No,” she said. “It’s not them, Jimmy. It’s MJ.”

My jaw dropped. I didn’t know how I hadn’t seen that. But MJ wasn’t a witch.

“I brought MJ into her bloodline as well, as a warrior,” I said. “I improved that part of her as much as I could. What is she supposed to grow into?”

Colleen shook her head. “I don’t know the answer to that. I only know the spirits meant her. It’s tied up with the sword somehow.”

“Can you see anything else?” I asked.

“No. I’ve reached the limits of my power. The rest of it is hidden almost as strongly as the wards you’ve created around the girls.”

That made me realize something.

“I haven’t put a ward on you.”

Colleen walked up to me, putting her arms around my waist and her head on my chest. “You don’t love me yet, Jimmy. And before you ask, I’m not spending a year in here until we’ve fallen in love. I want that in the mortal world, in real time. I’ve never had it, and I want it.”

I sighed. “Okay. That’s fair.”

I returned us to the library. Colleen’s eyes fluttered for a moment.

“That is quite a talent,” she said after a moment.

“You’re sure about the ward?”

We were still holding hands. She squeezed mine.

“Yes. And about what I just said, trust me, it won’t take a year out here, not the way this is going.” She glanced down at her currently ample chest. “If I haven’t made that clear already.”

I laughed.

“Yeah, you have.”

￼

I walked back to my condo. Katarina was still out running errands – it would never not be weird to think I had a succubus keeping house for me – and Hayley was alone with Charlotte, studying in her favorite chair in the living room.

“Hey.”

“Don’t ‘hey’ me,” she said. “Morrigan already told me what you guys got up to.”

I went over and kissed her. “You said you had to study.”

“I do, so don’t bug me.”

“I found some stuff out, but it can wait.” I lay down on the couch.

Charlotte came over and hopped into my lap. She booped my face a couple of times, so I scratched her ears until she settled onto my chest.

“Everything okay in there?” I asked, looking into those amazing green eyes that were so unlike any cat I’d ever seen. She let out a quiet murr and stretched out, closing her eyes.

I dozed off for about twenty minutes but didn’t dream. I woke up when Katarina returned with groceries and some other stuff, so I got up to help her put everything away.

“Not what you expected to be doing a year ago, I’d bet,” I said to her as she was setting the eggs into the egg container.

She leaned over to peck me on the cheek. “I am happy, Jimmy.”

“When you’re the Queen of Hell, I’ll make sure the condemned souls take care of this stuff.”

Her pale blue eyes took on an uncertain look. “Is that what you envision for me?”

“Who else? I’m locked into this now. Hard to see what other direction it goes.”

“You are indeed as powerful as a King of Hell, Jimmy. But I am just a succubus, and a broken one at that.”

“I could change that,” I said. “I improved one thing about you, after all.”

She smiled. “You did.” But then she sighed. “It does not need to happen now.”

I hugged her. She melted against my chest, nuzzling my neck. I felt our bond, the emotions swirling and flowing through both of us as I held her. I’d given some thought to trying to create something similar with the other girls, but I didn’t see how I could do it.

That first spell I’d cast had worked because Katarina wasn’t mortal. There were spells I’d seen in the grimoires, dark ones, by which you supposedly could enslave a mortal, but it wasn’t the same thing as what Katarina and I had. I couldn’t do it with Hayley, MJ, or Morrigan.

But I had a thought at that moment. Colleen wasn’t mortal either.

I might need to revise the spell, but I could conceivably bind her as I’d done with Katarina. I would never do it without her consent, but I saw how it could work.

I didn’t want it to control her. I wanted it because of the intimacy it created.

But that was a matter for another day.

I had some TA stuff and homework of my own that I needed to complete before the week started, so if the rest of my coven was taking a break from battling the spirit world, I supposed I could do it too. I grabbed my laptop and books and sat down at the kitchen table to work.

Hayley joined me a little later to work on her chemistry. Around five, Katarina brought me a beer and started dinner, another one of her Swedish fish casseroles. It smelled a bit odd but still tasty.

A text from MJ popped up in our group chat.

Guys its been a rough couple of days

I think I need to just crash tonight

Morrigan: Did we wear you out today?

Yeah you kind of did slut

Its okay babe we had nothing planned beyond dinner

I may call a dream meeting tonight

MJ: Fine good enough reason to get to bed early

Hayley picked up her phone and scrolled through it.

Morrigan: I’m kind of wiped out too

Hayley: Jimmy and I have just been studying

Katarina: You will miss the casserole I am making

MJ: Oh no

“Jimmy, did you add Colleen?” Hayley asked. “I don’t think I saw it.”

“Ah, no, I didn’t think about that.”

She rolled her eyes. “We added her to HLW this morning. It’s been kind of hilarious.”

HLW, or Hot Little Witches, was the girls’ group chat. A moment later, another message popped up.

Hayley added Colleen Stone to Coven Chat

We’re counting seats for dinner are you still interested?

Colleen replied a few moments later.

Yeah I’ll be up in 10

Kinda curious about this casserole

MJ: lol they’re actually pretty good

Katarina: It is not wise to insult a succubus who cooks for you

Colleen: tbh this is the first time a succubus has cooked anything for me

Hayley laughed.

Colleen: I’ll bring a bottle of wine just let me get changed

Chapter 7

￼

COLLEEN APPEARED about fifteen minutes later just as Katarina pulled her casserole from the oven. She’d changed out of her work clothes and into tights and a fleece pullover. When she gave me a quick kiss and cuddle as she came in, I could tell she’d shifted back to her true form, and it was equally clear there was nothing under her top.

She noticed me noticing and smiled.

“I’ve been informed about the coven standards when it comes to undergarments.”

“Did they explain how that came about?” I asked. “I mean, it’s not like I ordered them to.”

Colleen laughed. “Yes. Blame the succubus.”

“I accept full credit,” Katarina said. “Lucifer not only cursed Colleen to forget who she was, he also condemned her to three hundred years of bras and corsets. I am not sure which is worse.”

Hayley laughed with them. We cleared the table off and set up for dinner as Colleen opened the wine. We all sat down as Katarina served the casserole, which was a mix of salmon, onions, cream, and potatoes, topped with browned cheese and breadcrumbs.

Colleen took an uncertain bite, then nodded slowly. “Okay, I’ll confess I wasn’t sure about it, but this is actually good.”

“My skills have improved,” Katarina said.

“They have,” I agreed. “It was a bit difficult in the beginning, but yeah.”

“Cooking is not a skill succubi are normally taught.”

“I would think not,” Colleen said.

“Those sweet rolls you made over Christmas were really good, though,” Hayley said.

Katarina smiled. “I learned to make them to help me trap men on St. Lucia’s Day.”

Colleen sighed. “I learned a lot of things I always forgot. Most of it is fuzzy now.”

“And you were always by yourself?” Hayley asked. “You never married or anything like that?”

Colleen looked down at her wine and swirled it around, then took a long sip. She shook her head.

“Nope. Never. There were a lot of lives I died virginal and alone. It was starting to feel like this one was heading in that direction. If not virginal, at least celibate. When I turned thirty, I knew something was wrong with me. Even the hookup apps didn’t work. Lots of guys would message me, then ghost me after we started talking. I know now the curse was making me say weird, confusing stuff that scared them off.”

Hayley reached over rubbed her arm. I was a bit surprised to see Katarina do the same on her other side.

“Now you have Jimmy, as I do,” Katarina said. “We did not suffer from quite the same impairment, but it seems he has made it possible for you to feel love now, as he did for me.”

Colleen looked across the table at me and smiled warmly. For a moment, the true Colleen flashed from her eyes, and the force of her emotions staggered me briefly.

“It seems he did.”

￼

I had some reading to finish up, so Hayley and Katarina did the dishes while Colleen brought the last of the wine with her and curled up next to me on the couch. She just laid her head on my shoulder as I worked on my laptop.

When I got to a stopping point, she took my arm and cuddled against it.

“I don’t want you thinking I’m falling for you after knowing you a week, Jimmy . . . but it does feel like I’m falling for you.”

I nuzzled her head. “Did any of them explain about this sorcerer thing I have?”

“Yes. We discussed it at length today on HLW. But knowing it doesn’t change what it feels like.”

“What does it feel like?”

“I just . . .” She sighed. “I feel safe around you. Cozy. Comfortable. As if I could sit here like this for days and be happy. But I think it’s more than just the sorcerer thing. Breaking that curse on me, and then immediately, you know . . .”

“Fucking our brains out?”

She laughed softly. “Yes. I think that may have created some kind of bond between us. Some link. Can you feel it at all?”

I closed my eyes. I had to actually withdraw to my dream world, to that place where I could see the links I had with the girls. That massive, unbreakable bond to Katarina. The growing connections to Hayley, MJ, and Morrigan, like ropes that were slowly weaving themselves into something thicker and stronger.

There was a connection to Colleen, the thing I’d been using to pull her in here. I hadn’t looked that closely at it until now. It wasn’t anywhere near as thick as the others, but it was there, and growing.

As I looked closer, though, I realized it was different. The bonds with the girls were strong but not unbreakable. I could sever them – not that I wanted to, of course – but it would be possible to do it. They were natural and organic, living things that, like all living things, could be killed.

Colleen’s was something else. It wasn’t unbreakable either, but its structure was different.

The connections to the girls felt like silk – strong but natural. Katarina’s was like an enormous steel cable. Colleen’s was like a combination of the two, a thin rope, weaving itself stronger. But at the core, there was something more solid. A thing of magic. Like a thin steel wire, much thinner than Katarina’s but similar in form. I could probably break it, but it wouldn’t be easy. That wire was inside there, supporting the growth around it.

I opened my eyes.

“Well?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “There’s something there. It’s not your imagination.”

“Something magical?”

“Yes.”

She cuddled closer to me. “I’m okay with that. I can feel it too.”

Hayley and Katarina finally came out of the kitchen and joined us. Hayley sat on the other side of me while Katarina leaned against Colleen.

“Did you tell them what we learned today?” Colleen asked.

“Not yet.”

“About the sword?” Hayley asked.

“I saw some things about it,” Colleen replied. “Do you want me to tell them?” she asked me.

“Yeah, go ahead.” I looked at Katarina. “But some of what we suspected was right. This might be a bit hard to listen to.”

She just looked back at me. “I have lived with those memories for more than a thousand years, Jimmy. There is little that could change how I feel now.”

Colleen recounted what she’d seen about the sword. Katarina just nodded gravely.

“I see.”

“But could you tell where it is?” Hayley asked.

“Not quite,” Colleen replied. “But I know who it was Jimmy defeated. Charles Halvor.”

“Remember him, up in Zagan’s Rock?” I asked. “Don’t say the name.”

“The guy you fought at Deirdre’s house?” Hayley asked.

“Right.”

“That is very interesting,” Katarina said. “Could his family have held this sword for so long?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or it ended up in their hands somehow. But it sounds like he has it.”

“I got the sense that the connection to him goes back a long way,” Colleen said. “The sword itself is hidden, but its history isn’t, since it affected other things. The greater the effect, the easier it is to see. Which is why I can see what it did at Katarina’s village.”

“Do you think the sword is in Zagan’s Rock?” Hayley asked.

“I don’t actually get that feeling,” Colleen replied. “It seems closer.”

“And the bit about the bloodline?”

“MJ,” I said.

Hayley’s eyes widened. “Oh, wow. But that makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Sort of. Just not what growing into it means.”

“Maybe she was meant to be a warrior all this time. With her martial arts and everything.”

“I guess we’ll see,” I said.

Katarina twirled a lock of Colleen’s hair around her finger and leaned in to kiss her neck.

“Are you spending the night again?” she asked.

Colleen laughed softly, not quite reacting to what Katarina was doing.

“I haven’t slept in my own bed in three days,” she said. “But I don’t want to be down there alone. I’ve spent more than enough nights alone in my bed.”

“You’re welcome to,” Hayley said. “It’s how it works. It’s why we got that huge bed, so there’s room for everyone when they want to stay here. You’re part of us now.”

Katarina nuzzled her ear. “A Hot Little Witch like the rest of us.”

Colleen laughed and leaned her head back against my succubus. “Okay.”

But it was too early for bed, so we watched a movie all cuddled together. Afterward, Colleen went down to get her overnight stuff. One by one, we got into bed. Hayley lay down on one side of me, kissing me goodnight.

“Love you.”

“You too, babe.”

Charlotte hopped into bed with us, curling up between my feet. Katarina got in beside me, but when Colleen came to bed, she rolled back, motioning for Colleen to get between us. Colleen lay down against my shoulder. Katarina lay beside her, propping her head on her hand. Colleen kissed me as well, then lay back looking up at Katarina.

My succubus slowly trailed her fingers up Colleen’s stomach, then between her breasts. I watched Colleen’s nipples stiffening against her cami top. Katarina noticed as well, and circled her middle finger around one of them.

Katarina leaned down and gently kissed Colleen on the lips. She stopped with the fingers and took Colleen’s breast in her hand. She held the kiss for a second or two and then leaned back.

Hayley was watching this, smiling. “You seemed a little hesitant about this kind of thing the other night.”

Colleen looked over at us. “That was before I knew what I was. Sexual orientation is a mortal thing, Hayley. Sex is a mortal thing. Celestials are supposed to be above it.”

“That was why you were cast out, wasn’t it?”

“That group of us, the Watchers, yes,” Colleen replied. “Seeing what mortals could do, the things they could feel and experience, was surprising and disorienting. We wanted to experience it with them. Samyaza, the leader of the Watchers, took us down from Heaven to live among the mortals and share the things we knew. Many of us took mortals as wives and husbands. I did not, but many others did.”

“So it must have lasted a while?” I asked.

“Decades. The celestial bureaucracy moves even more slowly than its infernal counterpart, because everything has to be assessed for righteousness in addition to any other concerns. But when the judgment finally came down, it was swift. We were stripped of our connections to the bureaucracy and cast into the world. Samyaza was destroyed, as were several others viewed as the worst offenders, and the land we’d been living in was wiped away by a tsunami.”

“The Flood,” Hayley said.

“Yes. That was the historical analog of it.”

Katarina kissed Colleen again, continuing to stroke her breasts. “So you never even experienced the thing you were punished for?”

She reached up and caressed Katarina’s face. “Not until after Lucifer cursed me and I emerged into the world having forgotten everything.”

“How did that battle happen?” I asked.

“After our fall, I wandered for centuries, trying to continue helping mortals as I found them. I had to keep a low profile. One day, Lucifer approached me, asking me to formally join the infernal bureaucracy like so many others had. I refused, because I wanted no part of what he was doing. He grew more persistent over time. Finally, he told me I was a threat he could not allow to remain outside his control. We argued. The argument turned into the battle you saw.”

Katarina kissed her a third time, and this time Colleen returned the kiss, sliding a hand up Katarina’s side as my succubus played with her nipples. But then she gently pushed Katarina back.

“Can I ask for one more night to get my head around all this? I’m sure this is going to be amazing, but I’m still processing things. Tomorrow. I promise.”

Katarina smiled. “Of course. I can be patient.” She lay down beside Colleen, who rolled against me. The two of them cuddled up under my arm. I put Katarina to sleep. Hayley snuggled closer on the other side, and I turned out the light.

￼

I went to the castle, appearing in the main hall. Charlotte met me there, face tight.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, as such.” She turned toward the door to the library. “Else, Father is here.”

Else came running out a moment later, and I saw the source of Charlotte’s concern.

When I’d been here earlier, Else had looked fourteen. She was now physically maybe eighteen or nineteen, looking just a bit younger than the other girls. She came up and hugged me. I hugged her back tightly.

“You’ve grown, little mouse,” I managed.

“Yes, Father. I feel like this is what I am meant to be now.”

I looked down at her. She was beautiful and looked like Charlotte’s slimmer little sister. The skull pin was in her hair, and she wore a long, lacy black dress.

“What have you been doing?” I asked.

“Mother and I have been working on my spells.”

I let go of her. “I’m going to bring the others here to meet you. It’s time.”

She smiled broadly. “I am so happy, Father.”

“Let’s go over by the fire.”

The three of us went to the sitting area around the fireplace. I drew in Colleen first, and she appeared in her long gray robes. Colleen’s eyes widened as she saw Else, but she said nothing. I drew in Katarina, then Hayley, MJ, and Morrigan. Echidna appeared beside them. All of them wore their usual goth outfits, except for MJ in her fantasy armor.

One by one, as they got their bearings, they noticed Else standing beside the fire. Jaws fell.

“Guys,” I said. “This is Else.”

“Hello,” she said nervously.

Katarina was the first to speak. “I see you have continued to grow.”

Hayley finally looked at me. “Jimmy, she—”

“I know. It’s the powers she has now.”

Colleen stepped up to Else, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You have come into the thing we discussed. I can feel it.”

“Yes,” Else replied.

Colleen hugged her.

MJ came up beside them. “Uh, hey. It’s nice to meet you. I remember you as a baby.”

“I am happy to meet you as well, MJ,” Else said.

“You know my name?”

“Yes. I think because you are an important person to Father. I know things through him.”

“Huh,” MJ said.

Hayley joined them. “You have Jimmy’s eyes.”

Else shot me a smile. “You have his heart,” she said to her. “You all do.”

Hayley laughed in surprise. “You can tell that too?”

“Yes.”

Hayley hugged her. MJ joined the hug a moment later.

Morrigan finally came up to them. “Wow. You’re amazing.”

We all sat down. I let the girls talk to Else and get their bearings with her. Charlotte sat next to me, leaning against my chest. Echidna sat next to her. For about fifteen minutes, Hayley, MJ, and Morrigan peppered Else with questions, and Else, who seemed thrilled at this exposure to new people, answered as best she could while asking them a few things as well.

Colleen and Katarina said little, and Colleen eventually sat with me and Charlotte.

“Her powers are fully formed now,” she said quietly, “though she doesn’t even know it.”

“Which makes her a threat just as you were.”

“Yes.”

Then Colleen suddenly looked up, eyes going unfocused.

“What?” I asked.

“Something is happening. Something outside the castle. Can you feel it?”

I had been entirely fixated on Else, but when I turned my awareness outward, I saw it.

We were under attack.

“Shit.”

Chapter 8

￼

THE VERY IDEA that my dream castle could come under attack seemed bonkers. But here we were.

I transported everyone – Else included – up to the platform at the top. The sky was overcast and roiling above us, the spirits clearly engaged with whatever was going on.

I looked out across the open plain toward Purgatory. It was difficult to see much at first. But far out there, something was happening.

Something was coming.

“That’s the battlefield we created in my dream,” Hayley said to the others. “The one with the stone creatures.”

MJ peered out across the landscape. “I can’t see much of anything. That’s really Purgatory out there?”

“Yes,” Colleen said.

“That’s not how the catechisms describe it. There’s supposed to be fire, sort of.”

“There’s fire in Purgatory?” Hayley asked. “I thought that was Hell.”

“It’s fire that just purifies you,” MJ said. “Don’t ask me to explain it. I spent more time playing soccer as a kid than listening to that stuff.”

“We need to go look,” I said to Colleen.

“What about the rest of us, Father?” Else asked.

Charlotte put her hand on Else’s arm. “You need to stay here, little mouse. It’s not safe.”

Else made a face. “I want to see.”

I looked at her. “Not now. Not until we know what’s going on. Then, maybe.”

She pouted a moment longer.

“All right.”

Hayley stepped up to me in her long blood-red gown. “I want to come,” she said. “I did this. I remember how to fly in here.”

I nodded. “Okay. The rest of you stay here for now. We should be back pretty soon.”

The three of us lifted ourselves into the air, me in the middle and Hayley and Colleen on either side. We flew rapidly across the landscape below. Before long, things came into view. Just beyond the frozen stone creatures, an army was massing around the village that Colleen and I had visited.

Thousands of soldiers, lined up in ranks. Heavy cavalry, mounted on what were clearly dead horses. Siege engines, some in tow behind dead mules and other beasts, others already set up and prepared for battle. They were much larger than the things we’d faced when Hayley and I fought the nomad kingdom in that dream. These were full-sized catapults suitable for knocking down a castle.

We stopped behind the border, hovering over the dormant stone army Hayley and I had created.

“That looks like the kingdom we were going to fight,” she said.

“Except it’s not a kingdom,” Colleen said. “It’s the souls of Purgatory.”

We were close enough now that the soldiers below could see us in the air above them. Arrows began arcing toward us, but we were still within the region I controlled and I diverted them easily.

“Why are they attacking us?” Hayley asked.

Colleen shook her head. “I suspect it may be nothing more than that you drew their attention, Hayley. They are here to suffer. War is suffering. You provoked them and made yourself a target.”

“We slaughtered them in my dream.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Colleen said. “They’ve clearly all reformed. As they will continue to do, until their sins are expiated.”

“So we can’t defeat them?” Hayley asked.

“They can’t be killed. They’re all dead already. We may be able to drive them away, though.”

“One way or another, we need to stop this,” I said.

“What if we can’t?” Hayley asked. “I mean, what happens if we don’t?

“The castle is my dream temple,” I said. “I don’t know what would happen if the souls of Purgatory overrun it, but I can’t imagine it would be pleasant.”

“There’s a good chance Jimmy could be trapped here,” Colleen said.

“In Purgatory?” Hayley asked.

“Yes,” Colleen replied. “Except, not being dead, he would have no way to expiate his sins and escape.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” I said.

I looked out across the army in front of us. Then I focused myself and called out to the spirits, trying to get them to return to the stone creatures below.

But nothing happened.

As it had been when I tried to use my quantum computer, they were resisting me.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“What?” Hayley asked.

“We need Else. The spirits answer to her now.”

“It’s a risk,” Colleen said.

“I know. I don’t know if we have any choice, though.”

I turned and flew back to the castle. Hayley and Colleen followed me. We landed in front of the others.

“There’s an army out there that clearly intends to march on us,” I said. “I think we should be safe up here, but at the same time, I can’t predict what might happen if all those souls attack us. I’d like to avoid getting to that point.”

“Don’t you control everything?” Morrigan asked. “You’ve always been like a god here.”

I nodded. “Within a certain area, yes. I’ve continued to expand that area, which is what Hayley and I did in that dream. We stretched things out to the border where that army is now. I have a feeling that as they advance on us, it will push back the area I control.”

“And if they reach the castle?” MJ asked.

“If they were to get up here, it’s conceivable I could lose control of things.”

“That would be very bad,” Katarina said.

“Yep. And the problem is that our stone army no longer answers to me. The spirits that animated them refuse to go back in.” I finally turned to Else. “Little mouse, it appears they answer to you now.”

Charlotte gasped, grabbing Else’s arm and hugging it against her chest. “Jimmy, no! Please.”

But Else pulled away from her. “I can do it, Mother. He is right. I can feel the spirits waiting for me. They will help us.”

“But what if they see her?” Charlotte asked me.

I focused on Else. The wards I’d put on her were solid. For now, at least. I went to Charlotte and took her in my arms, pulling her close and burying my face in her obsidian hair.

“We need to protect this place, baby. Right now, she has to stay here. If something happens, where does she go? What happens to you?”

Charlotte pressed her face against my chest. She took a deep breath and sighed.

“I hope you are right,” she said too softly for Else to hear. “I must trust you. You are my master.”

I hugged her for a moment longer and let her go, turning back to Else. “Are you able to fly? I’ve lost track of all the things you’ve learned.”

She spread her arms and rose a few inches into the air. “I can come with you, Father.”

“Okay. But I need you to stay with me, and I mean right next to me. We can’t risk your being noticed. I’ll tell you what to do when we get there.”

Else’s face filled with restrained excitement. “Yes, Father. I will do as you say.”

Charlotte hugged her. “Please be careful, little mouse.”

I rose up again. Hayley, Colleen, and Else followed me. Else flew just behind me, between me and Colleen. I reached out for her, and she took my hand.

Above us, the skies churned as we returned to the incipient battlefield. I stopped us well behind the inanimate stone creatures. There were thousands of them, some humanoid, some beast-like, some just random abominations.

“Down there,” I said to her. “Do you see them? The spirits inhabited them and made them what they are.”

“Yes!” she cried. “I see it!”

“You need to tell the spirits to go back into them. We need those things to defend us.”

She spread her arms, and her eyes began to blaze with power. Hayley gasped. Then Else looked up at the sky.

“Obey me!” she screamed.

There was a formless, invisible rush of energy from the clouds. I felt it rather than saw it – because I’d felt it before, when I’d created this army. The force of it was so intense that it knocked us all ten or twenty feet down through the air.

But the spirits answered Else’s call. Below us, the creatures began moving again, standing up and reforming into a line.

“Hold them there,” I said.

Else seemed to struggle with herself a moment. “They want to attack, Father. Who are those people out there?”

“I don’t want to hurt them if we can help it. Tell the spirits to move backward, away from them.”

She nodded. “All right.”

There was a hesitation of a moment or two, then the stone army began withdrawing slowly. We fell back with them. I told Else to pull the line back a couple of hundred yards or so. My hope was that the soul army would view that as some kind of de-escalation.

Instead, something else happened. The soldiers manning the catapults began running around and drawing them back. A few moments later, they opened fire. A half-dozen large stones arced through the air, and I watched as they descended toward our line. Two of them fell short, but the other four hit their targets, shattering six or eight of the stone creatures.

Above us, a peal of angry thunder rolled across the sky. Else clenched her fists. Her eyes blazed again.

“Father?”

“See if you can get them to reform.”

“They’re angry. They’re so angry now. They want to attack.”

I didn’t need her to tell me that. I could read their mood in the clouds above us.

“Try to hold them, Else,” Colleen said.

“I am.” But the struggle was clear from the tension on her face. “They can’t reform,” she said. “The stones drove them out.”

“Shit,” I muttered.

Another wave of catapult stones came flying toward us, more than the first time. They fell into our line, smashing more of the stone army to pieces. The sky exploded again. I looked at Else. Her eyes were on fire, her body shaking with the effort of controlling so many spirits at once.

This couldn’t last much longer, and I didn’t want her using her innate powers.

“All right. Let them go,” I said.

Else gasped, the energy draining from her. The stone creatures lurched forward. Shouts rose from the soul army, and their heavy cavalry began forming up in front of the siege engines, though whether they were preparing a charge or just trying to protect their most effective weapons was unclear.

A third wave of stones came in, but with our line on the move, their aim was off and nearly all of them missed. Above our army, the four of us floated through the air after the stone creatures.

“Can you get any kind of read on them?” I asked Colleen. “What do they want?”

Her face was grim. “Yes. They want a battle. Like I said, war is suffering.”

“All right, then,” I said. “Let’s give them one.”

The catapults kept firing, but they were much less effective against moving targets. We lost three or four more of the smaller stone soldiers. Once our army closed about half the distance to the cavalry line, they were too close for the catapults to hit them.

The soul cavalry began shifting around, clearly preparing a charge. The stone creatures continued their steady march forward.

“Get the big ones up front,” I said to Else. She nodded, reaching a hand out in front of her and looking down. Our line condensed as the humanoid creatures fell back and the beasts and abominations moved to the front rank.

“What can you do here?” I asked Hayley.

“I was calling on the spirits before,” she replied. “I’m not sure. What can I do without them?”

“They will answer you, Hayley!” Else cried.

“They will?” Hayley asked in shock.

“Yes! They want to fight! Command them as you will!”

Hayley and I exchanged a look. Then she turned back toward the soul army, red hair and dress fluttering in the wind. She raised her arms. The sky churned above her.

“Keep a grip on yourself, babe,” I said. “Remember what happened before.”

“I am!”

Below us, the soul cavalry began their charge. I watched as the dead but heavily armored horses thundered forward. I floated over toward Else.

“I’m sorry you have to be here for this, little mouse.”

“I am ready, Father. I want to fight beside you.”

And in truth, she looked ready. Her face was grim and focused. She was still young, but the girlishness was completely gone now.

I raised the bog oak staff, calling forth Ceridwen, my earth spirit. I sent her down into the ground in front of our line. As the soul cavalry finally reached the stone creatures, I thrust her forward, creating a rolling ridge of earth that surged toward them. As it rolled under the horses, many of them stumbled and fell.

Hayley let out a wordless cry to the clouds above us. Long, branched fingers of lightning shot down into the cavalry. More of the horses fell as the soul cavalry slammed into the stone beasts and abominations. The stone creatures surged forward. In a few places, the charge had remained coherent enough to shatter a few of them, but as the soul knights pushed through the gaps they’d created, they were enveloped by the humanoid creatures in the second line.

Elsewhere, it went much worse for them. Where Hayley and I had broken the charge, the stone beasts fell upon the confused horses and riders. A few more stone creatures fell, but for the most part, the cavalry was crushed. The soul knights fought well, but they fought to the last of them.

When the fight finally ended, I turned to Else. “Form them up again.”

“Yes, Father!”

She glided down through the air, flying over the stone army. As she went, the creatures reformed into a solid line, moving forward again. They left a field of bodies and scattered rubble behind them.

Ahead of us, the soul infantry had formed into a phalanx, a long line of pikes and shields. After a few moments, they began marching forward to meet our army.

Hayley rejoined me. “Why are they doing this? They don’t have a chance!”

“They want to die, Hayley,” Colleen called out. “They want to suffer. It’s what they’re here for. I can feel it as clearly as anything.”

“Then let them,” I said. I turned to Else. “Get ready to charge. Stop them short of the border. I don’t want them overrunning that village.”

“I will try!”

Our army was now in a solid line, the beasts in front and the humanoids behind. They began slowly moving forward. They couldn’t charge like the soul cavalry had, but they moved faster, a heavy, rumbling surge of animated rock and stone.

The soul army continued its march. The soldiers held their pikes out toward our line. The two armies closed with each other slowly but inexorably.

As the armies came together, Hayley called down another wave of lightning across the front rank of soldiers. I called out Enya, my fire spirit, and followed with a rolling column of fire.

The pikemen who survived the fire and lightning held their ground, and in places they briefly halted the advance of the stone creatures. For a moment, it seemed as if we were in for a serious battle.

But then the stone beasts and abominations pushed through the gaps Hayley and I had created. The line of pikes wavered and began to collapse. The stone creatures crushed the soldiers under their feet, or picked them up and tossed them through the air.

The foot soldiers fought as bravely as the cavalry had, but the outcome was not in doubt. The humanoid creatures swarmed over them as the stone abominations closed with the siege engines at the back. Their crews were an afterthought as they began smashing the catapults to bits.

In a few more minutes, it was all over. Not a single member of the soul army had survived.

“Pull them back,” I called to Else.

She rose above the rest of us, arms in the air. The stone army – its bloodlust apparently sated for now – wavered briefly, then turned around and began marching back to my lands. She stopped them in a line along the border.

Hayley floated toward me, a sick look on her face.

“They’re already dead, babe,” I said. “They’re just going to reform.”

Colleen joined us. “They’re here to suffer. They chose this.”

Hayley sighed. “I know.” She looked out across the field of mangled bodies that were already starting to dissolve into mist.

“Let’s get back,” I said.

Chapter 9

￼

WE REGROUPED back at the platform where Charlotte and the others waited. MJ was leaning on her greatsword, and Morrigan was standing next to her with Echidna. Katarina stood beside Charlotte, and I sensed that she’d been working hard to keep my familiar calm.

Even so, as soon as we settled back down, Charlotte rushed up and embraced Else.

“I am fine, Mother,” my spirit-daughter said.

But Charlotte leaned back, looking into her eyes. “Something happened. Jimmy, what happened?”

“We destroyed the army that was coming in from Purgatory,” I said. “Things are safe, for now at least.”

“The spirits answered you?” she asked Else. “You animated the stone creatures?”

“Yes. But Father and Hayley helped.”

Charlotte looked at me. “Jimmy? She did this?”

The worried edge in her voice gnawed at me, and I hated it. I went to her and hugged both of them tightly.

“There was no other way,” I said.

Else gently pulled herself from Charlotte’s grip.

“They attacked us. I had to. Father needed me, and no one else can do it. The spirits listen to me. They will do what I say.”

I saw Charlotte trying to get a grip on her emotions and pulled her close.

“She needs to learn to control her powers,” I whispered. “To do that, she has to use them. Do you trust me when I tell you I would never let anything happen to our child?”

She pressed her face against my chest. “I do, Jimmy. I do.”

“The stronger she is, the safer she is. You know that.”

She sighed. “Motherhood is so much more difficult than I ever imagined.”

I held her a moment longer and then let her go.

“So you guys had all the fun?” MJ asked.

“I don’t think this was a battle you would have enjoyed,” Hayley said. “It was pretty intense.”

“None of the souls from Purgatory survived,” Colleen said.

MJ’s eyes widened a bit. “Seriously?”

“They’ll reform,” Colleen replied, “but yes, they fought to the bitter end.”

“War is suffering,” I said.

“I wonder if anyone will notice what happened,” Katarina said. “So many souls forced to reform at once.”

“That is a good question,” Colleen said.

I looked up at the sky. The spirits had calmed down, and the clouds were still. I went over to Else. I sensed that she was getting tired of being comforted, so I just put a hand on her shoulder.

“You did good, little mouse.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“You’ll need to be stronger next time," I said. “Now that they know what you can do, they’re going to want more.”

“I will try.”

The words came. I couldn’t help it. “No. Do, or do not. There is no try.”

Her face tightened. “Yes. You are right. I will do it.”

“Good.”

“I am very lucky to have such a wise and powerful sorcerer as my father.”

I hugged her again. “I love you, little mouse.”

“I love you as well, Father.”

She went back to Charlotte. As we began filing off the platform and down into the castle, Hayley came over to me.

“Did you really just quote Yoda to her?” she asked quietly.

“Words of wisdom,” I said.

We went down to the main hall and settled in around the fire. Else sat with Hayley and the other girls, but I discreetly motioned for Katarina and Colleen to sit with me, apart from the others.

“What’s the likelihood that someone will notice what just happened?” I asked them.

“I’m too disconnected from either bureaucracy to be sure,” Colleen replied, “but Katarina made a very good point. We destroyed thousands of them, thousands, in less than an hour.”

“I do not know how it works among the celestials,” Katarina said, “but I can tell you that such a thing would definitely be noticed in Hell.”

“This is Purgatory, though. Neither bureaucracy controls it, right?”

They exchanged a look.

“That is correct,” Katarina said.

Colleen glanced over at the others, then shifted closer to me. “The celestial bureaucracy pays attention to it, or at least they did.”

Katarina nodded. “They still do. Since those souls will eventually join them.”

“Okay,” I said. “So, assume someone up there notices thousands of souls having to reform at once. What happens?”

“I have to assume an angel, or maybe even an archangel, would be sent to investigate,” Colleen said. “But it would take time. Like I told you, things move very slowly with them.”

“And more slowly still if some action needed to be taken,” Katarina said.

I squeezed both their hands. “All right. But I think we should go out there and investigate ourselves. I want you two to come with me, like we did before.”

Colleen looked across the room again.

“I’m going to send them all back to their own dreams in a little while,” I said quietly. “Then we can go.”

“Okay,” Colleen replied. “But we’ll need to be careful.”

￼

The conversation started to wind down about half an hour later. When I sensed MJ, Morrigan, and Hayley starting to wonder what we were going to do next, I gently eased them out and back to the mortal world.

Else looked over at me. “Why did you send them away, Father?”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “You sensed that?”

“Yes.”

“I need to do some things. They need to go back to their dreams.”

Then Else looked at Katarina and Colleen.

“I need them for this,” I said. And when her eyes started to light up, I shook my head. “We’re leaving the areas that I control. If you come with us, you could be seen. It’s too soon for that. Remember all the things I told you.”

“Lucifer is no one to be taken lightly, Else,” Colleen said. “No matter how powerful you become.”

After a moment, my daughter nodded in disappointment. “You are right.”

Charlotte put her hand on Else’s shoulder. “You have had more than enough excitement for one night, little mouse.”

Charlotte stood up. Else stood with her, and as they began walking up the stairs, I had a sudden thought.

“Actually, there may be something you can help me with.”

Else stopped short, turning back to us. “Father?”

I stood up and looked at Colleen. “When we were there before, they sensed what we were, even though we were trying to be discreet. That will happen again if we just go out there.”

“It will,” Colleen said.

“Are you thinking of some kind of spell?” Charlotte asked.

“Yes. Not invisibility, though. Just something to hide our true natures from them.”

“I can help!” Else exclaimed.

“There has to be something we can use in the library,” I said.

Colleen stood up, smiling at me. “You said the magic words, Jimmy.”

Katarina laughed. The five of us went up the stairs from the main hall, turning off the upper landing into the wing that held the library and laboratory. I hadn’t taken Colleen in here before, and for a few moments, she just looked around, fascinated at all of it.

My spell library wasn’t that big, but I’d modeled it after pictures of mansion libraries I’d seen. The room was about twenty feet by thirty feet, bookshelves on every wall with a second level above that could be reached with a sliding ladder. A few comfy chairs for reading were set around the room, and a small table for serious research sat in the center.

Colleen walked up to one of the shelves and pulled out a book. Then her face wrinkled.

“Jimmy, what cataloging system are you using?”

“Uh.” I laughed to myself. These were the complications of having a librarian for a girlfriend. “Nothing, really. I just think of what I want, and it’s there.”

“But how does anyone else find anything?”

I looked at Charlotte and Else. I hadn’t really thought of that.

“We just look until we find things,” Charlotte said.

Colleen gave me a very annoyed look.

“So what should I do?” I asked.

“Can you organize it?”

“How?”

She took a deep breath, looking around the room, and groaned. “There are easily ten thousand books in here. You need some kind of standard catalog system.”

I thought about what to do. The answer came quickly. “I need you to let me into your head.”

“What?”

“You understand this stuff. I don’t. But in this place, I can read what I need from you. I’ve done it with the girls.”

She got it now. “Okay. Just . . . please stick to the library science for now.”

I laughed. “Fair enough.”

I reached into her, trying to stay on the surface, trying to stay within what she was offering me. I didn’t need to pull all the knowledge out of her head. I just needed to pass everything through her. Since I knew everything that was in the library, it was just a matter of seeing my collection through her eyes.

It took about ten or fifteen seconds, but I re-sorted everything and then created a catalog for the entire collection on the table.

“Now I am wondering what there might be in your mind that you did not what Jimmy to see,” Katarina said.

“Of course you are,” Colleen replied.

Charlotte laughed softly. Else didn’t seem to know what to think, but she went to the catalog and began searching quickly through it.

“Let me show you,” Colleen said. “I know what he just did.”

“We need some way to cloak our identities,” I said to them as I sat down. “Something that will make us appear like the other souls in Purgatory.”

“But not invisible?” Charlotte asked.

“Right. Something that will allow us to just blend in.”

The five of us got started. Katarina wasn’t much help with the spell research, but she quickly figured out how to use the new catalog and happily collected books when one of us needed them.

I thought about using some variation of the invisibility lotion I’d created for our investigation of Mission San Sebastian. I’d added red palm oil as a way of giving the lotion additional protections, but I didn’t think palm oil would do much on its own.

Charlotte and Else, with Colleen’s help, soon found a number of spells that seemed to be in the ballpark. As I usually did, I looked for the commonalities first rather than trying to decipher or adapt any one in particular. Several components came up repeatedly: basil, lemon juice, and something I hadn’t heard of before, “seeds of the devil’s trumpet.”

Devil’s trumpet turned out to be the common name for a flowering weed, Datura stramonium, that was well-known for its psychoactive properties. It had a lot of traditional herbal uses but also a long history of killing people, because the range between active and lethal dosages was quite narrow.

The primary psychoactive compound in devil’s trumpet was the alkaloid scopolamine. In small amounts, scopolamine was useful for preventing motion sickness and nausea. Larger amounts would cause drowsiness, hallucinations, psychosis, and ultimately death from respiratory failure. So it was something to be careful with.

The spells clearly used scopolamine to confuse the minds of mortals, but would it work on souls? That was something I wasn’t at all sure about.

There were plenty of spells to ward off ghosts and similar things. Two common elements seemed to be raven feathers and St. John’s wort. The latter was another mood-altering herb, while the raven of course was a harbinger of death. The active element in St. John’s wort was a complex compound known as hyperforin, thought to have antidepressant and anti-anxiety effects.

Could I combine all of this into a new spell that would cloak us among the souls of Purgatory? I didn’t want to risk ingesting some mixture of scopolamine and hyperforin if I could help it, let alone asking Colleen and Katarina to do it. But maybe we didn’t need to. I wondered if I could use the raven feather as a focus for the other ingredients.

Some further research explained the reason for the lemon juice – you needed an acidic solution to pull the scopolamine out of the devil’s trumpet seeds. I found a fairly simple procedure for separating out scopolamine using acid water and a resin, from which it would crystalize as scopolamine hydrobromide.

Extracting hyperforin wasn’t terribly difficult either, though it wasn’t something any medieval alchemist could have managed. The most efficient method used sonication, that is, ultrasonic agitation.

Since I was in my dream castle, collecting all these ingredients was simple. My laboratory already had raven feathers, devil’s trumpet, and St. John’s wort. I just had to create an ultrasonic agitator.

Else had been working with me the entire time, and when we went to the lab, she excitedly asked if she could continue helping. I agreed, but given what we were going to be working with, I made sure both of us had rubber gloves, masks, and eye protection. I wasn’t sure I needed them in a dream, but I wasn’t going to take chances with Else.

I put her to work on the St. John’s wort after showing her how to use the agitator. Then I got to work on the scopolamine.

Acid water, which was simply water with a low pH, was simple enough to make, but I also needed carbon tetrachloride and a specific industrial resin. The separation process involved successive treatment of the macerated seeds with acid water, followed by the CCl_4. The resulting solution had to be soaked with the resin, after which the resin had to sit for several hours below freezing. After a few hours, the scopolamine would crystallize out of the resin as a fine white powder.

Else finished extracting the hyperforin well before I was done and came over to help. After we separated the scopolamine powder, I combined it with the hyperforin extract and some of the leftover resin. I heated it gently with some red palm oil until I had a thick, varnish-like liquid. Finally, I coated three raven feathers with the liquid and let it set.

“Will this work, Father?” Else asked.

“I think so.”

When the liquid finished drying, Else strung the feathers on black silk thread to make three charm pendants. While she was working on that, I combined the incantations for the ghost-warding and confusion spells.

When the charms were ready, I cast the new spell over them. Using my ring, I watched as threads of spirit wound around the scopolamine and hyperforin and bound them together with the feathers.

The enchantment held after I finished the incantation. It was hard to be certain, but it appeared to have worked.

I called Colleen and Katarina into the lab and showed them what we’d done. Colleen looked over her feather, nodding slowly.

“I am impressed.”

“What can you tell?” I asked.

“I can feel the energy from it. It feels inimical to unbound souls.”

“I feel the same,” Katarina said.

“We won’t know for sure without testing them. But we may as well go see.”

Else hugged me. “Good luck, Father.”

“Thanks, little mouse. You were a big help.”

Else beamed at me. I took Colleen and Katarina up to the platform. As we stepped out toward the edge, Katarina took my hand.

“I cannot fly, Jimmy, unless you want me to grow wings.”

“I can carry you along. Let’s go.”

Chapter 10

￼

WE FLEW OUT toward the border with Purgatory. In a few minutes, we passed over the battlefield.

The stone army was still there, frozen and immobile after Else’s command to remain still. There was no sign of the soul army beyond the churned ground where we’d destroyed it – no bodies, no weapons, nothing. Even the shattered catapults seemed to have evaporated.

But the village beyond the battlefield was still there, still intact. The three of us shifted our appearances to the drab forms of the souls below. We landed gently in the village square. I walked slowly around with Colleen and Katarina a step behind me.

The last time we were here, the villagers had known we were something different, looking away immediately if we made eye contact or averting their eyes altogether. Only one of them had spoken to us, but we’d been noticed.

This time, no one appeared to even sense our arrival. The villagers went glumly about their business, whatever it was. No one looked in our direction, but neither did they seem to be avoiding us.

“The charms appear to be working,” Katarina said.

“They do,” I said. “Let’s have a look around.”

We walked down the single cobblestone street that led through the center of the village. The buildings were dull, weathered, and unadorned. All of them seemed to be places where the souls lived – there were no shops or stores or other businesses we could see.

The village seemed quieter than the first time we’d been here. Inside the buildings, people were moving randomly about or sitting together on rough wooden chairs or benches. In a few of them, the souls calmly beat each other with sticks or whipped themselves with lengths of rope.

“Expiating their sins,” I said quietly.

“Yes,” Colleen replied.

I was beginning to think there was nothing here to see when we came upon a building that appeared to be a sort of tavern or meeting hall. We opened the door and went inside.

The room was indeed laid out like a tavern. I was surprised to find something like this in Purgatory, but I realized after a few moments that – despite appearances – no one was actually eating or drinking. They just sat at their tables with empty mugs and plates as if they were trying to relive this element of their mortal lives.

Two or three villagers looked up as we came in but looked back down just as quickly. No one said anything to us, and we took one of the empty tables. There was a bar of sorts at one end of the room, but no sign of anything to drink. One of the villagers stood behind it. He came over toward us, and I realized it was the same one who had spoken to me and Colleen when we had come here before.

But he didn’t appear to recognize us.

“Are you newly arrived souls?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“I thought as much. I would have recognized you otherwise.”

“Are you the leader of this village?” Colleen asked. It was the same question she’d asked him before, and again he gave no sign of recognition.

“There are no leaders here,” he replied.

‘Why not?” Katarina asked.

“As you must learn, we are here to atone for our sins, not add to them. No one seeks such things as leadership, for ambition is pride, and pride is sin. Even so, the others in this village look to me to make decisions, so I have accepted that burden.”

I got the distinct impression he’d given this spiel many times before.

“What happens here, in this village?” I asked.

“We are here to suffer. But let your hearts be still, for there has been much suffering of late, enough that many of us have moved on recently.”

“Suffering how?” Colleen asked.

He pulled up a chair and sat down. “The forces of Hell have taken an interest in this region of Purgatory. At least, that is what we believe is behind it. Not far from here, if you continue down the road, you will find a blasted landscape that was once filled with settlements like this one. One day, an army of stone beasts came down from that mountain range in the distance and destroyed everything.”

“What happened to the people who lived there?” Katarina asked.

“Those souls were forced to reform,” he said, “though some moved on. The others resettled in this land. But the stone beasts are still there.”

“Doing what?” I asked.

“They stand there motionless, unless provoked. We did not provoke them, but just as I was called to lead this village, there are others who were called to lead this land. Not long ago, they raised an army to fight the beasts, and it marched out to battle them. Many souls were blessed that day.”

I knew the answer, but I had to ask anyway.

“They defeated the beasts?”

He shook his head.

“The stone beasts cannot be defeated,” he replied. “I watched the battle. It is nearly impossible to even injure them, and the army was destroyed to the last soul. That is why this village may seem half-empty to you. Many who lived here were called to fight, and they moved on after that battle. Perhaps you will be so blessed. I am told another army is being raised to fight the beasts again.”

“What happens when y— when we are forced to reform?” I asked.

“It is glorious suffering that burns away the taint of sin. My sins were great, so I remain for now. I do not deserve the purification of battle.”

“What should we do, then?”

“Find an empty building where you may reside until the army musters,” he said. “There are many of them now. You may expiate your sins as you see fit until then.”

“Thank you,” Colleen said.

He nodded and stood up. “I wish you good fortune in moving on.”

When he returned to the bar, I leaned forward onto my elbows and lowered my voice.

“From one perspective, I guess we’re doing them a favor.”

“I suppose you could look at it that way,” Colleen said.

“But as we discussed before, this will absolutely be noticed,” Katarina added. “So many souls exiting Purgatory at once? The celestial bureaucracy is slow, but their record-keeping is flawless. It is not like Hell, where things can be hidden for millennia.”

“She’s right,” Colleen said. “This has certainly been noticed already.”

“So something is going to come around here to investigate sooner or later,” I said.

“That would seem highly likely.”

I nodded, looking down at the table.

“So it would probably be a bad idea to hang around here too long. Let’s get going.”

￼

We returned to the castle. I sent Colleen and Katarina back to the mortal world and told Else and Charlotte what we’d found. When Else went to sleep, Charlotte and I went up to our bedroom and lay down together. She rolled against me, laying her head on my chest and sighing as I took her in my arms.

“I can teach Else nothing more,” she said. “She has learned so fast.”

“I know.”

“Yet her hunger for knowledge has only grown, especially after tonight.”

“She can sense the things I do and think, just like you can,” I said.

She nuzzled against my neck. “Yes. We were sitting together talking about it while you were gone. She understands why we need to protect her, but she is chafing at these restrictions. She wants to be out there with you.”

I slowly ran my fingers through her long obsidian hair, feeling the warm pressure of her body against mine.

“I know.”

She rolled away from me just a bit. “Will you take my mind off of it, my love, for just a little while?”

I laughed softly. “Sure.”

I rolled her on her back and looked down into her big feline green eyes. I kept brushing her hair for a few moments, and then I kissed her.

I made our clothes go away and just spent a few minutes playing with her lush body as we kissed, fondling her big breasts, pulling on her nipples, and stroking her thighs. I finally broke the kiss and slid down to suck on her nipples until they stood out, pink and swollen. I probed the wetness between her legs with my fingers until she was sighing and pulling at me.

I rose up and entered her slowly, just enjoying the feel of her around me. Though I often gave myself a monster cock in here, I knew Charlotte wasn’t in the mood for that kind of sex. She moaned and dug her fingers into my back as I bottomed out.

Then I made her come, and held her there – nothing titanic, just a rolling series of orgasms that peaked with each thrust. I savored her whimpers and soft cries and the feel of her fingers on my butt. I moved in and out slowly, feeling her flesh quivering endlessly around my cock. I bent down and kissed her again. She struggled to kiss me back, gasping into my mouth.

I kept it soft and gentle like that. Her body heaved under me over and over as the waves of pleasure washed through her. I sucked at her nipples again, then began thrusting faster. I joined her in orgasm a minute later, spurting deep inside her. Then I rolled her over, putting her on top.

She threw her hair back and settled down onto my cock. She continued orgasming as she rode me, body shuddering, fingers digging into my chest. I played with her breasts, just enjoying the sight of her endless ecstasy. I came again, then rolled her on her stomach.

I took her thick butt in my hands now. I was done being gentle and began pounding her into the bed. She cried out, twisting the sheets into balls around her fists and arching her back in front of me.

“Master,” she whimpered.

I kept fucking her, feeling her clenching around me again and again. After another minute of hard pounding, I came into her a third time. Then I let go of her orgasm, letting her coast down. She let out a weak gasp and collapsed onto the bed in front of me. I rolled over and lay beside her, listening to her ragged breathing.

“I love you,” she whispered.

I kissed her. “I love you too.”

￼

I woke up with Colleen and Katarina on one side of me. Charlotte was asleep in the crook of my arm on the other side, in nearly the same position I’d just left her in our dream. But Hayley was up, and I smelled coffee.

I managed to avoid waking Colleen and Katarina, but Charlotte stretched out and came with me when I went out to the kitchen. Hayley was on the couch with her phone. I fed Charlotte, got some coffee, and joined her. I bent down and gave her a kiss as I came around to the couch.

“You guys woke me up,” she said.

“Sorry.”

“It was just Charlotte? After my part of the dream was over? She makes these funny little noises in her sleep when she’s with you.”

I laughed. “Yeah.”

I explained what Colleen, Katarina, and I had done. Charlotte appeared from the kitchen, having apparently finished eating, and jumped into Hayley’s lap. I reached over and scratched her ears. “But she’s really stressing out over our little mouse.”

“I can imagine,” she said, petting Charlotte slowly. “I mean, I can’t imagine having a kid who stays an infant for all that time, never changing, then suddenly grows all the way up in the space of a month. But I can imagine how stressful this must be for her.”

Charlotte meowed and cuddled against Hayley. Hayley hugged her.

“I just don’t know where this is going,” I said. “The only good thing is that Colleen and Katarina are both convinced it will be a long time before the celestial bureaucracy gets around to investigating. By then, she should be a lot more prepared and able to protect herself when I’m not with her.”

“So we’ve got time to track down this sword. Which you think the Collective has?”

“That’s what Colleen sensed,” I said.

“But it’s not up in Zagan’s Rock. Somewhere closer?”

“Apparently.”

Colleen emerged from the bedroom, running her fingers through her hair. She got some coffee and joined us, leaning against me on the other side of Hayley.

“Don’t you need to wake up Katarina?” she asked.

“Oh. Yeah.” I called out to my sleeping succubus. “Wake up, baby.”

“I heard you talking about me,” Colleen said.

“Hayley was asking about the sword, whatever it was you sensed.”

She took a sip of coffee. “Charles Halvor is in a hospital two hours from here. But that sword is much closer. I’m almost certain it’s in Santo Domingo. Not because I can sense it, but because I can read how it touched other people before it was hidden.”

“And there’s a connection to MJ?” Hayley asked.

“Definitely. What it is, I don’t know. That part is uncertain.”

Katarina came out of the bedroom in a little black silk robe. She got some coffee and sat beside Hayley.

“Did you tell her what we did?” she asked me.

“Yeah, I’m up to date,” Hayley replied.

“It’s Saturday,” Colleen said. “I don’t have to work. Seems like a good day to do some investigating.”

“How long are you going to keep up this facade of a mortal life?” Katarina asked. “I am just curious.”

Colleen dropped her head onto my shoulder. “I don’t know. Not forever. I’m just not ready to make a complete break yet.”

“That’s fine,” Hayley said. “No one’s asking you to.”

Colleen finished her coffee and stood up. “I’m going to go down and get dressed. Then we can figure out what to do today.”

“I’ll connect with MJ and Morrigan,” Hayley replied.

I ate a quick cup of yogurt and went to take a shower. I was just getting soaped up when the shower door opened and a naked Hayley stepped in.

“Well,” I said.

She joined me under the water. Our shower was a walk-in that was big enough for two or three people. The previous owner had upgraded it with stone tile and a rain showerhead in the ceiling, and it was one of the reasons I’d picked this particular condo.

I soaped up Hayley’s wonderfully perky boobs as she stroked me with one hand, rapidly getting me hard.

“I got all turned on lying there thinking about you in that dream,” she said, “and I know dream sex with Charlotte just gives you blue balls.”

“I appreciate the concern here.”

We spent a few minutes just playing and washing each other. Then Hayley had me sit on the bench at the end of the shower. She took down the detachable showerhead and knelt in front of me. I watched in amusement as she turned the showerhead to the massage setting and wedged it between her thighs so the water was streaming against her clit. Then, grinning at me, she bent forward and took me in her mouth.

I just leaned back and enjoyed the feel of her around me, listening to her moaning through her nose at what the shower head was doing to her. I thought about our first night together, when I’d been less than impressed with her oral skills. But in the six months or so that we’d been together, she’d definitely improved. And it was clear she’d gone to Katarina for a lot of coaching in what I liked.

Hayley bobbed and slurped at me like Katarina usually did, and if her tongue wasn’t quite as talented, it still felt amazing. I held her wet head in my hands as she went up and down. After a minute or two, she moved one hand into her lap to control the showerhead. She began sucking harder and moving faster even as her moans increased in volume.

She got there before I did, but the sight and sound of Hayley orgasming from the pulse of water between her thighs did it for me as well. As she shook against me and continued trying to suck, I erupted into her mouth. She swallowed weakly until I was done.

When we’d both caught our breath, I reset myself through Katarina and stood up. I turned Hayley away from me. She leaned against the shower wall, spreading her legs and pushing her butt back for me. I handed her the showerhead as I entered her from behind.

“Do that again.”

Hayley laughed, but she took it and aimed it between her legs. I felt the water pulsing against my cock as I began thrusting into her.

“Fuck me like you fuck Charlotte,” she moaned.

“She likes it rough.”

“I know. That’s what I want.”

So I held tight onto Hayley’s hips and began pounding her. She braced herself against the shower wall with one hand and held the showerhead with the other, playing the stream of water back and forth over our connected flesh.

Less than a minute later, she let out an anguished cry. Her legs briefly buckled, and I felt her clench tightly around me. I kept going, the sound of my slapping against her firm little butt echoing through the shower. She came again, then a third time before I finally pushed myself over the edge and spurted deeply into her. I held her hips until the tide of orgasm finished washing over me.

When it was over, I withdrew and pulled her into my arms from behind. She twisted around and kissed me deeply.

“Feel better now?” I asked.

She laughed. “Oh, yeah. You?”

“That definitely took care of the blue balls.”

Chapter 11

￼

HAYLEY WAS STILL drying her hair and getting ready when I came back out into the living room to find Katarina and Colleen sitting together. The look in their eyes told me they knew very well what I’d just been doing, but neither of them said anything.

“MJ and Morrigan are on their way over,” Katarina said.

“Something occurred to me,” I said. “Before I sold my shares in the Collective, they gave me a detailed list of all the stuff they own. That sword might be hidden in one of their properties. At the very least, we should check out whatever they have in Santo Domingo.”

“If there’s a connection to any of it, I should be able to sense it,” Colleen said.

We sat down at the kitchen table with my laptop and started working. Morrigan arrived a few minutes later, and MJ showed up just as Hayley finally came out of the bedroom.

“You must have gotten very clean in the shower, Hayley,” Katarina said. “You were in there for quite a while.”

“Yeah, you could say that,” Hayley replied without missing a beat. “Inside and out.”

Morrigan looked up from the table. “What?”

“Ignore them,” I said.

MJ laughed. “What did I miss?”

“I took a shower,” Hayley said.

I shook my head. “Just sit down, everybody.”

I explained what we had in mind to MJ and Hayley. “I’ve gone through the stuff the Collective gave me, and they own three properties in Santo Domingo. Two office buildings and an apartment complex.” I showed them the browser tabs for searches I’d run on all three. “This is the apartment complex. I assume we can rule this out.”

It was a nice but unremarkable place along the hills on the east side of town, surrounded by equally unremarkable tract developments.

“Yeah, I get nothing from that,” Colleen said.

“These are the office buildings.” One was a glass box just off downtown. It was a couple of decades old, and the tenant list mostly comprised law firms, real estate developers, and random LLCs. “Anything?” I asked Colleen.

She shook her head. “No.”

The last one was right along the beach, a stylish, trendy-looking green-glass-and-stone structure that vaguely resembled an upright cucumber. The name of the building was The Breakers, presumably because it was near a breakwater.

I looked at Colleen, whose eyes had gone wide.

“That’s it,” she said. “I have no idea if the sword is actually in there, but there’s a connection. A strong one.”

“So we go check it out?” MJ asked.

I nodded. “Best place to start.”

￼

We piled into my car and Hayley’s Mercedes. MJ and Morrigan rode with me, while Katarina, Colleen, and Hayley took her car. We took the freeway a few exits up and turned off at Whitney Road. We weren’t too far from UCSD, and we passed the campus a few minutes later. Whitney finally connected to Pacific Boulevard along the water. We turned right, going north.

Now that I knew what to look for, I realized I’d seen The Breakers before. But not having any reason to care about the building until now, I hadn’t thought anything of it. It was near the end of Black Beach, just before Pacific turned off into the mansions that stretched out along the water for several miles.

Finding a place to park on a Saturday wasn’t easy, but eventually we got out and walked up to the building. We stopped in the plaza outside the entrance as Colleen looked up.

“Yeah, there’s definitely something here,” she said. “What, I don’t know, but it’s something.”

“Can we sneak into a place like this?” Morrigan asked.

I shook my head slowly. “Maybe.” I focused on my ring and walked a bit closer. I was looking for wards, and I saw them. “The building is warded like the Collective offices were. The place locks down outside of business hours for anyone who doesn’t have a passkey.”

“But you took those wards down,” Hayley said.

“I did. And I can take these down too. Problem is, we have no idea where to look, and that’s a big building. Even with the invisibility lotion, we can’t search the entire place in one night.”

Everyone looked at Colleen.

“If we go inside,” she said, “maybe I’ll get a read on something.”

“We can’t all just go in there,” MJ said. “That could attract attention. There have to be security cameras all over the place.”

“I can block them,” Morrigan said. “I brought my spell bag.” She’d done it at the Collective house in Zagan’s Rock, and it seemed like the same thing would work here.

I nodded. “Yeah, let’s do that. You, me, and Colleen. We can go in and check out the directory, then leave.”

Katarina, Hayley, and MJ found a bench at the edge of the plaza. The three of them sat down as Colleen, Morrigan, and I walked slowly up to the building.

“There are two cameras above the entry doors, just inside,” Colleen said, “and three more in the lobby around the reception desk.”

“You can sense all that?” Morrigan asked.

“This close, yes,”

“Okay.” Morrigan rummaged around in her spell bag and got the components she needed.

“Can you do five cameras at once?” I asked.

“I’ll have to cast it twice, once at the door and again when we come in. But I have what I need.”

Morrigan cast the cloaking spell as we approached the door. It seemed to work, and she got another handful of components ready as we passed through the entrance. She cast the spell again just as we came through.

“It worked,” she said softly.

“Yeah,” Colleen said, “it did.”

“You can tell that too?” I asked.

“I’m watching the security office. The screens for these cameras just went blurry.”

“Is that a problem?”

“The security guard in there hasn’t noticed yet,” she said. “He’s watching porn on his phone. But we shouldn’t stay here too long.”

The guard at the reception desk looked up, but he said nothing as we walked over to the digital directory by the elevators.

“Any ideas?” I asked Colleen.

She sighed, swiping her fingers up and down. “No. This means nothing to me.”

I scrolled through the directory as well, looking for anything that stood out. None of the businesses at the top of the building sounded like anything I’d heard before. As I scanned through the list, Colleen drew in a slow breath.

“It’s here,” she said softly.

I looked at her. “The sword? You’re sure?”

“Yes. I don’t know how, or where it is, but it’s nearby.”

“How can you tell?” Morrigan asked.

“It’s . . . like this collective sense of things,” Colleen said. “Not the sword itself. That’s still hidden. It’s everyone who’s come through here. Little bits and pieces. People have seen it, touched it. When they come and go, they leave behind memories and thoughts that sink into . . . you could call it the aura of this building. Not enough to see where the sword is, but the knowledge that it’s here, yeah, I can see it.”

“Can you get any sense of it at all?” I asked.

Colleen closed her eyes and drew a slow breath in through her nostrils. Then she exhaled.

“It’s not at the top. It’s lower. It’s . . . it’s not far away from us.”

I looked around the lobby. There was a cafe that was currently closed, a bank, and a private mailbox store.

“It can’t be on the first floor,” I said.

“No,” Colleen said.

I looked back at the directory. I selected the second floor and looked through the businesses that came up. Nothing stood out. But when I looked at the third floor, I suddenly saw it.

BSC Holdings, LLC

I pointed to it. Colleen sucked in a little breath.

“That’s it.”

“You’re certain?”

She nodded quickly. “Yes. I see now, in the memories. That’s the office these people came and went from. It was cloudy a moment ago, but now that you pointed it out, I can see through the ward.”

“My cloaking spells are starting to fade,” Morrigan said quietly.

“Let’s go have a look,” I said. “Just go up there and then leave.”

“There are cameras in the elevators,” Colleen said.

“I have enough stuff to cast one more spell,” Morrigan said.

We went to the bank of elevators. When one of them arrived, Morrigan blinded the camera, and we went up to the third floor.

It was little different from any other office building I’d ever been in, though the decor was definitely nicer than most. There were a couple of law firms and random businesses. We found BSC Holdings around the front. I wasn’t surprised that they had a view of the ocean. But there was nothing else of note.

I tried the door, which was of course locked.

“Okay. Let’s get out of here.”

Morrigan was out of spell components, so we took the stairs to the ground floor and went out the fire exit on the side. We circled around until we rejoined the others out front.

They looked up as we approached.

“Well?” Hayley asked.

“It’s in there,” Colleen said.

“And we know where,” I said. “But we have to come back later.”

MJ, Hayley, and Katarina got up. We returned to the cars, but I didn’t want to leave yet. Instead we sat down on a couple of benches in the landscaped area just above the beach.

“So what are we going to do here?” MJ asked.

“If you’re not comfortable breaking in there,” I said to her, “I completely understand.”

I still remembered MJ having a brief freak-out about the possibility of getting caught breaking into Mission San Sebastian. It was a legitimate fear, since she was at UCSD on an athletic scholarship, and her devoutly Catholic mother would not have taken the news well either.

She pursed her lips. “We’d use the invisibility lotion like last time?”

“That’s the idea. I break the wards and disarm the security. Morrigan and Hayley cloak the cameras to be safe, and Colleen can keep an eye on things around us.”

“I can,” Colleen said. “The more I use them, the more these divination abilities are coming back to me. I would be able to tell if anyone knew we were there.”

“I don’t want to flake on you guys,” MJ said.

“It’s up to you,” I said.

She nodded. “Okay. I’ll come.”

“When?” Hayley asked.

I looked down Pacific Boulevard. As you went that direction, away from the homes along the water, there were a lot of bars and nightclubs serving the beach crowds.

“It’ll be Saturday night,” I said. “People will be out here. If we come back around midnight, we won’t attract attention being in a group, but no one will be in the building besides the security guards.”

I looked around at the girls. No one said anything right away.

“What if this sword is in some kind of safe?” Colleen asked. “Can you get into something like that?”

“Good question,” I said. “My unlock spell is for doors. It might work on a safe, and it might not. We might go home and do some research in the castle, see if I can come up with something that will be sure to work.”

“Works for me,” Hayley said.

￼

When we got back to the house, Hayley, Morrigan, and I laid down around the living room. But MJ went into the kitchen and started looking around.

“Do you need something, MJ?” Katarina asked.

“Well, I was thinking of cooking dinner tonight, and I wanted to see what all you’ve got in here.”

Hayley sat up a little. “You’re going to cook?”

MJ came back into the living room. “Yeah, um, I got an email from my mom this morning. Still trying to process.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “What is it?”

She pulled out her phone and opened her mail app. “This is what she said. It’s in Spanish, so I’m translating. ‘You should make the tamales for Jimmy. I know he likes them. Here is the recipe.’”

Hayley’s eyes widened. “Wait, didn’t you say she was never giving you the recipe until you got—”

“That’s what she always told me, yeah. So, not sure how to take this.”

“How does she know I like them?” I asked.

“No fucking idea,” MJ replied. “But like I told you, she has a sixth sense for this stuff. It does mean you officially have her seal of approval.”

“That’s good?” I asked.

“Yeah, but I texted my big sister Yvette about it.” She flipped into her message app. “‘Mama just sent me the tamale recipe.’ ‘lol better start picking out a dress.’”

Morrigan burst out laughing, and Hayley and Colleen laughed with her. MJ came over and kissed me.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “No dresses in the immediate future. But I need to go get some stuff. This is going to take all day. I’ve helped my mom with it before, so I know what to do, I just didn’t have her recipe for the salsa roja, which is the secret. It’s not just chiles.”

“Do you want help?” Katarina asked.

MJ nodded. “Yeah, why don’t you come with me? Tamales are easier to make in a group, and you need to learn to do something besides casseroles.”

We all laughed again. MJ and Katarina left to go shopping. Colleen and I sat there on the couch until Hayley and Morrigan fell asleep.

“I’m going in,” I said to her. “I’ll grab you if I need you.”

“This doesn’t sound like something I can help with, but okay.”

I closed my eyes and went to the castle. I found Charlotte and Else reading in the library, and Else had already started researching spells. Clearly I was going to need to get used to her knowing everything I did out in the mortal world.

From Else’s initial reading, it turned out I’d been right. The unlock spell was not going to work on a safe or treasure chest; it was only intended for doors.

At Else’s urging, I pulled in Colleen as well as Hayley, Morrigan, and Echidna, and we got to work.

I quickly realized that I’d glossed over something when I’d first started using the original spell. It called for an iron key, which served as a focus object, drawing on iron’s magnetic properties. However, the description in the grimoire recommended wrought iron rather than cast iron. This was a distinction that was not critical for most spells, but it mattered if the challenges were great.

The differences between wrought iron and cast iron, as I knew from an Engineering Materials class I’d taken as an undergraduate, were basically the distinction between classical and modern metallurgy. Prior to the invention of the Bessemer process used in modern blast furnaces, iron was refined through processes that resulted in a very low carbon content but left in some residual impurities like silicon and sulfur. This made it easy to work by hand, but it wasn’t very strong compared to modern steel. The Bessemer process made it possible to burn out the impurities without removing the carbon. That was important because carbon was what gave steel its strength.

However, hand-wrought iron was thought to have stronger magical properties than cast iron, precisely because it was created by hand. But since we’d had other things to worry about that day back in Zagan’s Rock – like taking down the wards around the Collective building – I’d simply gone out and bought the first iron key I could locate without worrying about the distinctions.

“The spell just uses a key with no other components,” Morrigan said. “Is it using the key to make a sort of magic key?”

“Yes,” Echidna said. “That is how it worked when I was a witch.”

“Except that spell also disarms security systems,” I said.

“Then what’s the common denominator there?” Hayley asked.

Colleen leaned forward, setting her chin on her thumbs. “What kind of security systems have you disarmed with it?” she asked me.

“Pretty basic ones, I guess.”

“Systems with just a passcode, or maybe a passkey?”

“Right. The one at the mission, and then at the Collective offices.”

“So those are locks that need only one simple thing to open,” Else said. “A key or a code.”

Colleen nodded. “And a high-security safe would not. We have one in the archives for some really high-value books donors have gifted the library. You need both a key and the combination to open it.”

“So I think Father will need a second focus object to go with the key. Something to focus the treasure-finding spell.”

I looked at Hayley. Both of us got it.

“The divining stick,” we said at the same time.

“Oh, yeah,” Morrigan said.

“The what?” Colleen asked.

I briefly explained about the divining stick I’d gotten from Astaroth as a reward for finding Caacrinolaas, and the things we’d done with it.

“Will that work?” Colleen asked.

“I don’t know. We should test it, but I would need to create a safe like that here, and I’ve never even seen one.”

Colleen smiled. “You can come into my head again, Jimmy.”

I probed into her, finding her experiences and memories of working with the safe in the archives. I was just about to withdraw when I ran into a fantasy of true-form Colleen, Katarina, and me, and holy shit.

She laughed.

“Uh. Okay,” I said.

Hayley looked at me. “What?”

“I’ll explain later. Did you do that deliberately?”

“Do what?” Colleen asked, fighting a smile.

I shoved the salacious scene I’d just found myself in to the side for now and stood up.

“We should do this in the lab.”

The rest of them followed me over there. I concentrated for a moment and then recreated the dual-lock safe from Colleen’s memories in the middle of the floor. I had to pull the divining stick in here, and then create a wrought-iron key, but that took only a moment or two. I held one in each hand and began the incantation.

But the magical energy was confused, the two spells trying to do the same thing at once and failing. I tried it again, and the same thing happened.

“It’s not working. It feels like something is missing. I think it needs another element to tie them together.”

“Like what?” Hayley asked.

“I don’t know. Back to the library, I guess.”

While the girls went back to the books, I sat down next to the safe and thought about what I was doing here. The divining stick was a treasure-finding spell in itself. The wrought-iron key was focusing the unlock spell through its ferromagnetism. But it wasn’t itself a magnet. I’d taken only a couple of physics courses, but I knew that if you were trying to do something with a magnetic field, it had to be arranged in a specific configuration.

I wondered if the magical energies here were working the same way. What if I magnetized the key? That presented the problem of how I would get a wrought-iron key magnet back in the mortal world, but I figured I would start by seeing if it even worked.

Magnetizing the key I’d made took only a moment. I stood up to try the spell again just as Else came into the lab.

“Father, I think you need—oh. You thought of it already.”

“A magnet.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Let’s see.”

I held out the key and the divining stick together and began the spell.

I felt the difference immediately. I had to control the energies, using the magnetic field from the key, and while it took me a moment or two to get the hang of it, the streams from both focus objects wove together as they enveloped the safe.

Then it was just a matter of opening the keyed lock and positioning the wheels into the right combination. A moment later, the latch fell into place with a clunk and the safe door opened.

“It worked!” Else said.

I gave her a quick side hug. “Thanks for the help.”

Chapter 12

￼

WE CAME OUT of the dream world to the smell of something rich from the kitchen. MJ and Katarina were back, and they’d already started on the tamales. When I went in, I found several pounds of pork stewing in a big pot. MJ and Katarina were in the middle of draining another pot of dried chiles that had been simmering next to the pork.

“This smells great.”

“We’ve got a long way to go,” MJ said. “The pork has to stew for a few hours, and after we make the tamales, they have to steam for another two hours.”

“Doing okay?” I asked Katarina.

She nodded. “This is actually not unlike Swedish cooking in some ways. Except we are using dried chiles instead of dried fish.”

MJ waved her hand at me. “Anyway, shoo. No men in the kitchen when you’re making tamales. Mama’s rule.”

I laughed. “Okay.”

“What is the reason for this rule?” Katarina asked as I left.

“She acts like it’s another one of her superstitions, but I think it’s just because my dad tries to taste things and interfere.”

￼

Having been banished from my own kitchen, I decided to finish up a project for my Transport Processes class. Hayley joined me at the table to study a little while later, but Morrigan and Colleen went into the kitchen to help.

When I was done, I called around trying to find a wrought-iron key. Morrigan’s aunt Celeste didn’t have anything like that, but she had some suggestions. Unfortunately, none of them panned out. People had keys, but not true wrought-iron ones, or they weren’t even clear what I was asking about.

I was stuck for a moment before I thought to call Adriana up in Zagan’s Rock. While she spent most of her time running a goth clothing store, she was also a bruxa, a witch and practitioner of Brazilian voodoo. I knew she was still practicing, and she’d made an attempt to connect with other sorcerers after I’d freed her by recapturing Caacrinolaas.

Her sultry voice came over the line after the second ring.

“Hello, Jimmy.”

“Hey, I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“Of course not. For you, my schedule is as open as my legs.” She laughed at my startled intake of breath. “When are you coming back to Zagan’s Rock?”

“Ah, I don’t know. I’d like to see you again, but spring break is about over.”

“I will have to wait, then. What can I do for you?”

I spent a few minutes explaining the spell we’d worked up and what I was looking for.

“Ah, yes, I see,” she said. “It is fortunate that you called me, because I do know someone who can help you. It is a man named Jacob. He is an artist who works with wrought iron, but he also creates things for spellcasters, like wrought-iron cauldrons. And he lives near Santo Domingo.”

“That sounds perfect.”

“Give me a moment. You will not find him on the internet. He likes his privacy.” She set her phone down and came back about a minute later. “His name is Jacob Klein.” She gave me his number. “Tell him you are a friend of mine.”

“I will, thanks a bunch. How are things up there?”

Adriana sighed. “Ah, I have come to fear that Zagan’s Rock is not the place for a Paulista like me. Life is too quiet here compared to São Paulo. Meeting you and your coven made me realize how unfulfilled I have been feeling. And to be honest, this is not the best town to be running a clothing store like mine.”

“That’s too bad. What are you thinking of doing?”

“Well . . .” She paused a moment. “I have been thinking about moving down to Santo Domingo.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“It might be a bit of a challenge. Things are much more expensive down there.”

“Yeah, for sure,” I said.

“And you and your coven are the only people I know fairly well.”

Adriana was usually very forward and plain-spoken, but I sensed an undercurrent here that she was holding back.

“You’re wondering if I would have an issue with it.”

“Would you?”

“Of course not.” Then something occurred to me. I had a very large positive balance with Hell, souls that I had been reluctant to trade for basic expenses. But helping out other sorcerers, who understood what the process involved, was another story. I’d offered Jezebel Huntington some help in that regard, though I hadn’t yet worked things out with her. I had more than enough to help Adriana.

“I might be able to help you get set up down here, if you wanted.”

She scoffed. “Oh, Jimmy, I could not accept help like that, you are a student.”

But when I explained what I meant, Adriana’s reluctance vanished.

“Well, yes, that is a different story. Let me think about this.”

“Just let me know.”

“I will. Good luck with your key.”

￼

Jacob lived about an hour away. I talked to him on the phone for a few minutes. He told me that while he didn’t have any keys like I wanted on hand, if I came out to his shop, he’d be happy to make me one, saying it wouldn’t take very long.

So Hayley and I drove out past the east side of town into the hills. We found Jacob’s workshop back in a canyon among a stand of old oak trees. We heard him at work well before we saw him. I rapped on the door, and he appeared a few moments later. He was a thick, bearded guy in his forties with a long graying ponytail.

“You the guy who called about the key?”

“Yeah, I’m Jimmy. This is my girlfriend Hayley.”

Hayley raised her hand. “Hi.”

Jacob nodded. “Come on in.”

The inside of his workshop was hot, dark, and dirty. All sorts of finished and half-finished iron art, tools, and implements were lying around on tables and workbenches. Jacob went to one of them and showed me several little animals made from hammered iron wire.

“Something like this? Just a sort of old-style skeleton key?”

“Right. Doesn’t need to be anything this detailed though.”

He nodded. “Okay. Might take fifteen or twenty minutes.”

Hayley and I sat down on a bench as he got to work. He heated up a little strip of iron in his forge until it glowed and proceeded to work one end of it into a clover shape for the head using his hammer and a little pair of tongs. When the head was done, he used the hammer to round off the remaining length of wire into the key’s shaft.

After it was finished, he set it aside and heated up a broader strip of iron. Once it was hot, he snipped off a little rectangular piece for the bit at the other end of the key. He heated up both pieces until they were nearly white-hot and hammered them together until they were welded.

He worked on the bit for a few minutes to add some cutouts and details so it looked more key-like. He finally held it up for me in his tongs.

“This work for you?”

“That’s great, thanks.”

He set it aside to cool down and then sanded off the rough edges. When he was done, he handed it to me. We’d already agreed on a price over the phone, so I paid him now.

“Mind if I ask what you need a custom-forged wrought-iron key for?” he asked.

I’d noticed while we waited that a number of the little decorations and art objects in his shop looked like magic symbols and similar designs. Given what Adriana had told me about him, I figured the truth wouldn’t faze him.

“It’s for a spell,” I replied. “A focus object.”

He nodded. “Figured it was something like that. In case it matters to you, this is new charcoal iron. It’s not recycled. Why it’s a little pricey. Not many places to get that stuff anymore.”

“That does matter, thanks.”

He smiled. “So you’re that kid at Huntington, huh?”

I blinked. Then I looked at Hayley, who was equally surprised.

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked.

“Just been hearing some talk around town, from other spellcasters like Adriana. You’ve been making some real waves, son.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I know. Not on purpose.”

“Not going to ask what you’ve got planned here, but good luck with it.”

“Thanks.”

When we got back to the condo, MJ and the others had moved on to the next stage of the tamales, since the pork was apparently done.

I needed to magnetize the key, but I had what I needed for that, a high-strength neodymium-boron magnet. I sat down at the table and spent a while rubbing the key with it. While I worked, I listened as the girls finished the red sauce and the filling, made the masa dough, soaked the corn husks, and finally started assembling the tamales.

After about twenty minutes of rubbing, the key seemed to be magnetized enough for the spell. I set it aside with the divining stick and sat on the couch to watch TV.

When the tamales were finally steaming and things seemed to have settled down, Hayley and Morrigan laid down to rest, while Katarina and Colleen went out to get some beer for dinner. MJ emerged from the kitchen and collapsed next to me, laying her head on my lap.

“You smell good,” I said.

“I fucking better.”

“You actually smell good enough to eat.”

“Later.”

I laughed. “Did you get it right?”

“They’re not Mama’s, but I think I got pretty close.”

‘You should tell her,” I said.

“After they’re done. She’s going to want to know what you thought.”

I reached over and took her hand. She squeezed it tightly.

“Te quiero mucho,” I said softly.

She rolled on her side, cuddling my arm against her chest. “You need to work on that accent, mi corazón.”

I pulled her closer to me. “Do you have a sense of where she’s really at with us?”

MJ lay there for a few moments, not looking up at me. Then she sighed.

“Jimmy, my mom likes to act like this very traditional Mexican mother, because she thinks it’s what people expect of her. She’s worked really hard to be sure me and my sisters understand where we came from, but she’s never been as strict with us as it might seem. She’s actually given me a lot of leeway in my life, because I’ve been very careful never to do anything to embarrass her with her friends and family.”

“Which means what?”

MJ squeezed my hand tightly and lowered her voice. “Can I tell you something?”

“Anything.”

“I mean it, Jimmy. I’m dropping all my defenses when I say this. And I think you know me well enough now to understand what that means.”

I took a slow breath. “I do.” And I did.

She didn’t say anything for a few moments.

“I didn’t tell you this, but after we got back from Zagan’s Rock the other night, she called me. She wanted to talk about you. She pressed me on some things, because from her perspective, we’ve only known each other about three months. She doesn’t know about all the time we’ve spent together in the dream world.”

“I mean, it’s been well over a year, really,” I said.

“Right. And like I told you, she saw right through whatever facades we were trying to keep up that afternoon. She could tell how I feel about you. She said—” MJ sighed again. “She said I was looking at you like she looked at my father when she was my age.”

I hugged her and bent down to kiss her forehead.

“So she asked me,” MJ went on, “she said, ‘Martina, do you love him? Do think he is the one?’”

She paused long enough that I had to say something.

“What did you tell her?”

“What do you think I told her?”

I pulled her up. She straddled my waist and hugged me. I just held her, smelling the scent of chiles and masa and shredded pork that had saturated her hair after four hours in the kitchen.

“You’re mine,” I whispered. “You’re not getting away from me, not after all the things we’ve gone through together.”

Her arms tightened around my neck. “That was why I told her ‘yes.’ That was why she sent me the recipe. Because she thinks it will keep you around.”

We held each other for a few moments. Then she pulled back and kissed me.

“These tamales better be good,” I said.

She laughed softly, pressing her forehead against mine.

“Do you remember the Angry Latina Button? You have your finger on it right now.”

I laughed with her. “I’m sure they’ll be awesome.”

She kissed me again. “Don’t worry. They will be.”

We stayed cuddled together on the couch for a while before she went back to the kitchen.

After testing things a few times, MJ finally declared the tamales done around seven, and we sat down to eat. I took a bite and listened to the moans and gasps around the table.

“Oh, my God,” Hayley said.

“These are so good,” Morrigan said.

Colleen leaned back, chewing slowly. “These are so much better than supermarket tamales.”

One by one they looked at me. MJ narrowed her eyes.

“Well?”

I took a deep breath. “I’m trying to decide whether I’m going to get in trouble by saying these are better than your mom’s.”

MJ fought a smile for a moment or two. “Liar.”

“They are,” I said.

“It’s because they just came out of the pot. You’ve only had ones that were sitting around the fruit stand for a few hours.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “But I won’t tell her that.”

“These are delicious, MJ,” Katarina said.

“You guys were a big help.”

We ate as many as we could, but they’d made a ton of them. As I started on the mountain of dishes, MJ wrapped the leftover tamales individually in plastic wrap and put them in the freezer.

“You made a lot,” I said.

“They’ll keep a long time. They’re so much work to do right, you kind of have to make extra.”

She finished before I did and pinched my butt on her way out of the kitchen.

“Time to call my mother.”

“Good luck.”

Chapter 13

￼

MJ WAS STILL out on the balcony talking to her mom when I finally got things cleaned up. Colleen and Katarina had gone down to her condo to decide what they were going to wear tonight, since we wanted to appear like we were out clubbing. Hayley and Morrigan were in the bedroom talking, so I went in and lay down between them. Charlotte hopped up with me.

“Hey,” I said.

Morrigan rolled over against me. “I am so damn full. Those were so good.”

Hayley laid her head on my stomach. “Did you get the key done?”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you guys have to go so far to get one?” Morrigan asked.

“Jimmy found this place.”

That made me realize I’d forgotten to explain how I found Jacob.

“Actually, I called Adriana. She knows him.”

Hayley propped her head up on her hand. “How much did you tell her about what’s been going on?”

“Not much,” I said. “Between Colleen and Else, that would be a lot to lay on her. But she did mention something else.” I told them about Adriana’s idea about moving down here.

“I bet she wants to join our coven,” Morrigan said.

“Yeah, I got that sense too,” Hayley said.

“I don’t know if she wants to take it that far. I mean, she talked about moving her shop down here. She has a house and a life already.”

They looked at each other.

“Colleen has a condo and a job,” Hayley said.

“I like Adriana,” Morrigan said. “She has such great taste in stuff.”

“Let’s cross that bridge when it comes, guys.”

“But you had a dream with her, right?” Morrigan asked. “You never told me how that went.”

Hayley groaned and rolled on her back. “Do you really need the details?”

“Oh, come on,” Morrigan said to her. “I’m just curious. She’s hot, and I know you like girls with dark hair and boobs.”

Hayley put her hands on her face. I reached down and rubbed her arm.

“If she really wants to know, tell her,” Hayley said.

I looked at Morrigan, remembering how Adriana had nearly sucked my dick off in that dream. “I took her to the beach house. She’s pretty experienced. Let’s leave it at that.”

She pouted. “You’re no fun. But now I’m even more interested in seeing what she wants out of you.”

MJ came into the bedroom and flopped next to us.

“Who wants what?”

I tried to explain.

“I was wondering when that was happening,” she replied.

“That seems to be the consensus here,” Hayley said.

“How did it go with your mom?” I asked.

“She’s happy everyone liked the tamales and that I didn’t screw anything up.”

“Is that all she said?”

“It’s all I’m telling you tonight.” MJ laughed and looked at Hayley. “I need to either borrow something for this or go back to my dorm.”

“I’ve got some stuff that ought to fit you,” Hayley replied.

“Show me.”

They got up and went to the closet. Morrigan cuddled with me as Echidna uncoiled from her arm and slithered onto my chest.

Around ten o’clock, we started getting ready. First, we had to apply the invisibility lotion, which meant all five girls getting naked to rub lotion on me and each other. Somehow I maintained my composure. I planned to hold off on casting the invisibility spell until we were ready to go into the building, but I knew from having used it several times that the lotion was good for a few hours.

Then we got dressed. I wanted the girls looking hot, but not so much that their outfits interfered with the burglary we were about to attempt. Other than Morrigan, who wore one of her lacy goth dresses, they all had on tights or tight jeans. Their tops ranged from Katarina’s loose black silk blouse to the skimpy little bra top MJ had borrowed from Hayley.

It was then that I noticed something different about Colleen. It was subtle enough that I might have missed it had I not been looking them over together.

She smiled at me. “I shouldn’t stand out too much from the rest of you.”

Colleen looked the same, more or less – just about five or six years younger. She looked no older than me or Katarina.

Hayley gasped. “That is really weird.”

“I’ll shift back when we’re done if it bothers you at all.”

“No, it’s cool,” Morrigan said.

“Let’s get going,” I said.

Morrigan and Hayley packed up their spell bags, and I collected the divining stick and the key, several flashlights, plus the nitric acid for the wards, and masks and latex gloves for everyone. Then we went down to the cars and headed out.

My plan was for Katarina to stay behind with Hayley’s SUV so she could pick us up when we were done. While there weren’t enough seats for all six of us, she would just be driving us back to my car, so one of them could ride in the back.

Morrigan and Hayley would be there to provide spell support, mainly cloaking all the cameras. Colleen would use her divination abilities to keep track of what was going on around us, especially with the building guards.

I’d thought about having MJ drive my car and pick us up with Katarina, but something in the back of my head told me to bring her along on the break-in. There was a connection between her and the sword, and I wanted her there when we found it.

By the time we arrived at the beach, it was past eleven. We parked well away from The Breakers to minimize the chances of the cars showing up on the building security cameras. That meant we had to walk back up Pacific Boulevard, but we blended easily into the Saturday night club crowd, even with my bog oak staff. The girls got quite a few looks as we went, and I got my share as well.

When we got to the street just before the building, I led my coven around back behind the block so we could come in the fire exit that we’d used before. I had no illusions about the rear of the building not being covered by cameras, but I didn’t want to be seen circling around in front.

Once we were in the alley in back, I cast the invisibility spell. As before, we could all see each other, but no one else could.

“This is impressive, Jimmy,” Colleen said, looking down at herself. “You created this spell on your own?”

“Yeah. What can you tell?”

“It’s working just like you said.”

“Good,” I said. "What about the security guards in the building? Can you tell where they are, what they’re doing? Is anyone patrolling right now?”

I watched her focusing herself.

“There’s one in the lobby, one in the security office in the basement. There’s one patrolling, but he’s on the ninth floor and going up. He only does his rounds every two hours. So we should be fine.”

First I had to bring down the wards. They were much larger in size than the ones on the Collective building in Zagan’s Rock, but no different in power and thus just as vulnerable to the method I’d used to destroy them before. It was clear they hadn’t yet figured out what I was doing.

After making sure the girls all had their masks on, I poured out some nitric acid on the ground and called forth Sídhe from my staff. She swirled through the air, gathering up the acid, forming it into a mist, and carrying it up around the building.

I watched with my ring as the wards quivered, shivered, and finally began unraveling. A few moments later, they collapsed and disappeared.

“Okay, they’re down. Let’s go.”

Hayley and Morrigan cloaked the cameras along the alley. Even though we were invisible, I didn’t want the guards seeing doors mysteriously opening and closing. I pulled out my new key and cast the unlock spell, disarming the security on the fire door and opening the latch.

The six of us filed into the building. We followed the same route up to the third floor. In a couple of minutes, we reached the BSC Holdings office.

“There are a bunch of cameras in there,” Colleen said.

“I’m on it,” Morrigan replied. She cloaked them as well.

I disarmed the security system and unlocked the door. The spell felt almost effortless using the new wrought-iron magnet-key.

The offices were plush and minimalist, a lot of glass walls and blonde wood. There was a conference room and a row of offices looking out on the water in front of the building, with hallways stretching left and right past the reception desk.

Once everyone was inside, I made sure the door was shut and locked, just in case one of the guards did an unscheduled circuit of this floor.

“Any ideas where to go?” I asked Colleen.

She closed her eyes and focused for a moment. I still couldn’t decide if I preferred Hot College Girl Colleen or Hot Librarian Colleen. Maybe I would have her go back and forth between them.

She sucked in a breath. “There’s something else here.”

Everyone looked at her.

“What?” I asked.

“Something guarding the safe. I can’t see it. It’s inside the ward. But I can feel it.”

“Someone or something?” MJ asked.

Colleen opened her eyes. “A thing. I can’t tell what it is.”

“Where?” I asked.

She looked around slowly. Then she pointed to the left. “That way.”

The hallway followed the curve of the building around the inside of the row of offices. Colleen led the way, finally stopping at a door on the inside wall of the hallway. The little sign next to the door simply said “Storage.”

Naturally, it was locked.

“I think this is it,” she said.

There were no wards on the door. But I sensed something beyond it, an enchantment strong enough that I could see traces of it through the door with my ring.

“Stand back,” I said.

“Are you sure about this?” Hayley asked.

“We’re invisible.” That sounded more impressive than it felt at the moment. “Just get ready to shut the door fast if we have to.”

Nothing happened when I unlocked the door. I reached out and opened it slowly, and a strange, musky scent emerged. When I pointed my flashlight inside, I saw the source of it.

There was a panther inside.

A black one, to be precise.

“Oh, what the fuck?” MJ gasped. Hayley and Morrigan fell backward, yelping in surprise.

“That’s what I sensed,” Colleen said.

I flipped on the light. It was a square room about twenty feet by twenty feet. There was no furniture other than a table next to the door with a small refrigerator on it. Against the opposite wall was a tall safe, and in the far-left corner was what appeared to be a large cat box.

Between us and the safe was the panther. As it paced around the room, I saw the ward I’d sensed through the door. It extended across the middle of the room, beyond the table with the refrigerator.

I could tell from examining its composition with my ring that the ward wasn’t just a shield against divination. It was also a physical barrier to keep the panther from escaping and anyone from approaching the safe from the other side.

Only Colleen seemed unfazed by the situation.

“That is not what it appears to be,” she said.

“It’s not a panther?” Hayley asked.

“It is a panther . . . at the moment.”

“What does that mean?” Morrigan asked.

“What is it, then?” I asked.

“It’s a shifter,” Colleen replied. “The enchantment on this room is holding it here.”

“A shifter? You mean . . . like a werewolf?”

“Yes.”

“Those actually exist?” Morrigan asked.

“They do,” Colleen said.

We were still invisible, so the panther – or were-panther, I guess – didn’t appear to see us. But opening the door and turning on the light had gotten its attention, and it seemed to be expecting something. I looked for signs of intelligence in its eyes and saw nothing. I noticed that it was wearing a leather collar studded with some kind of crystals.

“So now what?” I asked. “If I bring this ward down, is it going to attack us?”

MJ leaned into the room, looking around quickly. “Kind of guessing that’s why it’s here.”

I stepped forward, being careful to stay behind the ward. Having an idea of what I would find, I looked into the refrigerator. Inside was a stack of steaks still in their plastic packages from the grocery store.

“Food,” MJ said.

“So it would seem.”

I took one out. The panther definitely noticed, freezing in place with its eyes on the refrigerator. I unwrapped the steak and tossed it across the room. I was unsure what would happen with the ward, but the steak passed through it without any hindrance.

The reaction of the ward as the steak flew through it told me what was going on. It was only a barrier to living flesh. Someone had no doubt set it up that way to make feeding the panther simpler.

The panther watched as the slab of meat landed on the floor with a splat. The big cat didn’t move for a few seconds, apparently unsure how the steak had leapt out of the refrigerator on its own. But then it went over and began eating.

“Is this going to work?” MJ asked. “Should we keep feeding it?”

“I’m going to drop the ward. Be ready to fall back and close the door.”

MJ grabbed another steak and got behind me. I got the nitric acid out and poured a little on the floor. I didn’t want to annoy the panther, so I used as little as I could, just enough to neutralize the key elements of the ward. Then I put the bottle back in my backpack.

Rather than using my staff this time, not wanting the panther to get startled by Sídhe flying around the room, I cast the mist spell I’d used the first time we broke into the Collective offices.

I controlled it carefully, lifting the mist up to the ceiling and sending it against the ward. The ward broke down slowly, but eventually the strands of spirit began unravelling, and it dissolved.

MJ watched the panther closely as I worked. It was busy finishing the steak and didn't seem to notice what I’d done.

I nodded to her. She unwrapped the second steak and tossed it across the room, away from the safe. The panther got up and went to it.

“How are we doing?” I asked Colleen.

“All clear,” she said. “The guard in the basement has been sexting his girlfriend instead of watching the cameras. The guard who was patrolling is heading back downstairs. The guard in the lobby is just sitting there.”

“Okay. Let’s do this.”

With the safe exposed, I stepped around the panther. I drew out my divining stick and the iron key and began the incantation.

I sensed instantly that this was going to be more complicated than unlocking a door. The divining stick gave me a sense of the combination lock, which had no less than five wheels I had to line up precisely. I sent the strands of energy through them, seeing where they needed to be. My control was not as exact as I would have liked, but I could sense how the lock worked and what I needed to do.

It took about a minute of concentration to get all the wheels aligned. There was almost no margin for error, but I finally got them into place. Then I turned my focus to the key lock. This was more complicated than a door but much less challenging than the combination lock.

In a few moments, I lined up the pins and turned the mechanism, which had to be turned at the same time as the handle. But it worked. The handle turned and the bolts retracted into the door with a clunk.

Keeping a watch on the panther, I stepped up to the safe. MJ had pulled the last steak from the refrigerator, but I wasn’t sure we would need it. The panther had settled down on the floor, chewing contentedly on the remains of the second one.

I pulled the door back. The safe was divided vertically into two sections. The left side had four shelves, while the right side was open top to bottom. And there, leaning against the corner, was the sword.

It was about three feet long, a relatively simple design with a straight cross-guard, a leather-wrapped hilt, and a round pommel. The guard and pommel were inlaid with gold. The scabbard was also leather, battered and stained with age.

The sword was heavily enchanted, but there were no more protective enchantments inside the safe.

“That’s it,” Colleen said. “That’s what we were looking for.”

"So what’s the connection to me?” MJ asked.

I reached into the safe and took out the sword. Nothing happened when I picked it up. I could sense its power, but it was power that seemed out of sync with my talents. While I could use it, it felt as if another sorcerer could get a lot more from it.

I handed it to MJ. She took it, eyes wide in anticipation. For a few seconds, we all just stared at her.

But nothing happened.

MJ finally exhaled slowly. “I don’t feel anything. I’m sorry.”

I finally thought to check on the panther, which was lying still on the floor. That was when I noticed an enchantment on its collar. I hadn’t seen it before because it had been shielded by the ward.

The panther seemed full and content. I knelt down and reached over toward its head. I was ready for it to do something, but it just sat there.

“Jimmy . . .” Hayley said.

“Something’s going on here. Do you see this?” I asked Morrigan.

“The collar,” she replied. Thanks to her bond with Echidna, she could see enchantments just like I could do with my ring.

The panther didn’t react as I unbuckled the collar. The moment it was off, something happened.

The panther’s form shifted suddenly, stretching out and going pale. Its fur disappeared, except on its head, where it flowed out into a long cascade of black hair.

After a few seconds, the panther was gone. In its place was a nude Asian girl lying on her stomach.

She lifted her head and pushed her hair back over her face, looking up.

“Thanks. I’m Yuki. Who are you guys?”

Chapter 14

￼

FOR A FEW MOMENTS, nobody said anything. Finally, I stood up.

“I’m Jimmy. Are you okay?”

Yuki stayed where she was, lying on her arms. “I am now. But it would help if I could see you. Are you under some invisibility spell?”

“Yeah.” I looked at Hayley and Morrigan. “Are the cameras still cloaked?”

Morrigan nodded. “They should be good for a little while longer.”

I dropped the invisibility. It felt like the lotion was still fresh enough that I could cast it again if I had to, but I intended to get out of here as quickly as we could.

Yuki gasped softly as the six of us appeared in front of her. She looked around the room rapidly.

“I don’t suppose any of you have something I could wear?”

I looked at the girls. None of us had even brought a jacket. But Colleen stepped forward, and a second later, a purple stretch minidress appeared in her hands. I was surprised before I remembered that Colleen could manifest clothing like Katarina could. She just hadn’t done it in front of me until now.

“This felt like something you would wear,” she said. “It will only last until I stop concentrating on it, but it will get us out of here.”

Yuki’s eyes went wide. “Holy shit, you’re a—”

“Yes,” Colleen said.

Then Yuki looked up at me. “You’re that guy. The sorcerer.”

After the exchange with Jacob that afternoon, I was less surprised at this reaction than I might have been.

“Yeah,” I said. “What’s up with you?”

“Can I get dressed first? Then I’ll explain.”

Colleen handed her the dress. The look in Yuki’s eyes told me to turn around, which I did. A few seconds later, I heard her speak up again.

“Okay.”

I turned back to her. Yuki had pulled the minidress on. Now that she was standing up, I got a better look at her. She was short, but her body – the dress Colleen had given her left nothing to the imagination – was taut and athletic. She had bigger breasts than I’d thought at first, when she was down on the floor. Despite being, or at least appearing, Asian, she had hazel eyes with a distinct feline cast to them. And she was really hot, easily as pretty as the other girls.

“You’re a shifter?” Morrigan asked.

“Yeah,” Yuki said. “Nice outfit. You’re a witch?”

“Yeah. And thanks.”

“We should get out of here,” I said. “Then talk.”

“For sure,” Yuki said.

I closed up the safe and turned out the light. We went back to the front of the office.

“Anything out there?” I asked Colleen.

“We’re clear.”

We returned to the hallway, and I made sure the doors locked behind us. A minute later we were back in the alley. I led everyone around the block until we were in a dark spot along the street, well away from the building. Then I turned to Yuki.

“How did you end up in there?”

“One of their people captured me and put that collar on me,” she said. “It prevented me from shifting back, and suppressed the human part of my mind. I’ve heard about those things, but I’ve never seen one before.”

“They were using you to guard that room?” MJ asked.

“What?” Yuki asked. “No, I was only in there for a few days. I have no idea what they wanted with me. They fed me and put that fucking cat box in there for me, but that was it.”

“That’s interesting,” I said. “I know the people who run that company, and I have no idea why they would do that either.”

“How do you know about Jimmy?” Hayley asked.

“You’re his coven? All of you?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s been a lot of talk, with the other shifters I know, and other people. Some guy who was supposedly at Huntington University, this really powerful sorcerer who killed a King of Hell and took his powers. Who’s been doing a whole bunch of crazy shit.” She looked at Colleen. “Someone told me he had a succubus for a girlfriend, but I guess they confused her with you.”

“You can tell what she is?” MJ asked.

“A fallen celestial. They smell different.”

“We actually do have a succubus in our coven,” Colleen said.

Yuki took a step backwards, glancing at the other girls. “Seriously? Where is she?”

I looked at Hayley. “She needs to get over here. I don’t want to hang around here too long.”

Hayley nodded, pulling out her phone. “Let me text her.” She tapped out a message, and looked up a moment later. “She’s on her way.”

“I can’t believe you were the one who got me out of there,” Yuki said. “What were you guys doing?”

“It’s probably best if we don’t get into it,” I said. “Do you have a place to go tonight?”

She nodded. “Yeah. If I can borrow your phone, there’s someone I need to call.”

I reached for my demon phone, then stopped. “My phone is an infernal company phone. You may not want to use it.”

Yuki’s eyes swelled again. “Shit. Yeah, no thanks,” She looked at the girls. “Can I borrow one of yours? I mean, if they’re not all hell phones?”

Hayley handed her phone to Yuki. She quickly dialed a number and put the phone to her ear. But whoever she was calling didn’t pick up.

“Fuck,” she muttered. She waited for the voicemail to start. “Sean, it’s Yuki. I got into some serious shit, I need you to come get me. I hope everything is okay. I’m down on Pacific by that building that looks like a dildo. I don’t have my phone, so I’ll try calling again later.”

She lowered the phone and hung up.

“Sorry. Can I call someone else?”

“Sure,” Hayley said.

Then Hayley’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. No one but me would have caught it. “Was that your boyfriend?” she asked.

“No, just a friend,” Yuki said. She started another call. This time the other person picked up. “Kaitlyn, it’s me . . . yeah, yeah, I know, listen, I got fucking collared . . . yes, collared, seriously, can you come get me? . . . I have no fucking idea who, I’m standing here with that sorcerer who’s at Huntington, you know the one everyone is talking about, he’s the one who rescued me.” She listened for a moment and looked up at me. “Are you fucking serious? Just shut up with that shit, can you come get me? . . . I’m down along Pacific, you know that building that looks like a green dildo? . . . yes, that one. Can you come? . . . okay, thanks, see you soon.”

Yuki hung up and handed Hayley’s phone back to her.

“Sorry, she can be an idiot sometimes. But she’s coming.”

That was the moment Katarina came around the corner in Hayley’s SUV. Yuki looked over in alarm, but I held up my hand.

“That’s our ride.”

She pulled over next to us, and I motioned for her to park. She did. The headlights shut off, and Katarina climbed out. Yuki looked at her in awe.

“Jimmy,” Katarina said. “Who is this?”

“This is Yuki. We found her in the office with the sword.”

“You’re a succubus,” Yuki said.

“Not quite,” Katarina said, “but the details would take too long to explain. And you are a cat-shifter.”

“Yeah.”

“How can you guys tell this stuff?” Morrigan asked.

Katarina looked at her. “It is a sense you do not have, as a mortal.”

“Yeah,” Yuki said, “once I got awakened, there were so many things I realized I wasn’t seeing before.”

“We need to get moving,” I said. “I’d like to get away from that building. You can call your friend again.”

Yuki nodded. “Okay.”

We got everyone into Hayley’s SUV somehow. She drove us back to where I’d parked my car. Fortunately, there was a space open two cars down. Hayley parked, and we all climbed out.

“Is anything going on back there?” I asked Colleen.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

The Saturday-night club crowd was thick along Pacific Boulevard. We left the sword and the other spell gear in Hayley’s car, so no one paid any real attention to us. Yuki called her friend again and gave her the new pickup spot.

“You guys don’t really need to wait for me, if you need to go,” Yuki said.

“That dress will disappear as soon as we’re out of sight,” Colleen said.

“Oh. Yeah. Okay.” Then Yuki looked at me. “Anyway, I really owe you one. Cat-shifters like me don’t have packs, but I have friends. I don’t know what I could do for you, but if ever you need anything, you can . . .” She closed her eyes and groaned. “I just realized I don’t know what happened to my phone or any of my shit. But if give me your number, I swear I’ll connect with you when I can.”

Hayley found a scrap of paper in her purse and wrote out my number for her.

“You really don’t know what the people in that office wanted with you?” I asked.

“No idea,” she said. “I met this guy in a club one night, and I think he put something in my drink. He put that collar on me. I don’t remember much after that, just that he just stuck me in that office. They fed me about once a day. Then you came in.”

I nodded. “I know the company that owns that building, like I said. They’re not good people. If you know who I’ve been dealing with, that ought to mean something to you.”

Her face paled. “Yeah.”

“When you get your stuff back, you call me, all right?”

She nodded rapidly. “I will.”

Before I could say anything else, I heard the noise of some car with a loud custom exhaust coming up the street. I glanced over, seeing a heavily modified blue-green sedan pulling up next to us.

“That’s Kaitlyn,” Yuki said. She gave me a quick hug. “Thanks again.” Then she ran over to the car. The windows were heavily tinted, so I couldn’t get a good look at the driver. Even so, I got the distinct sense that I was being observed closely.

Yuki got into the passenger side. A moment later, the engine revved loudly, the tires briefly squealed on the pavement, and the car shot away from us.

When they were out of sight, I turned back to the girls. “We should probably wrap up the business end of this first.”

“You mean Volach?” Hayley asked.

“Right. He may want to meet.”

I stepped away from the street, across the little greenbelt that overlooked Black Beach, so we would be away from anyone who might overhear the conversation. When I got to the railing above the sand, I pulled out my demon phone, turned on the speakerphone, and called Volach.

He answered on the second ring.

“Hey, kid, I’m guessing this is good news.”

“It is,” I said. “We found the sword. Do we need to meet up again?”

He laughed. “The Properties head is rapidly turning into your biggest fan. No, just turn on the camera, let me see you holding it.”

Hayley ran back to her car and got the sword. She handed it to me, and I gave my phone to Katarina.

She pointed the phone at me. I saw Volach sitting in some dimly lit office filled with dark wood furniture and dark red carpeting. It looked like Hell’s law offices, which might actually have been the case. He nodded as he looked at me.

“All right, your fee is on the way. Just, whatever you do, don’t lose that fucking sword like the last guy.” He laughed loudly.

“This is all you need?” I asked.

“That is indeed all I need, kid, just a record that it’s in your possession now. Have fun with it. I know that girl of yours has a thing for blades.”

He laughed again and hung up. I put my phone back in my pocket.

“Let’s get going.”

￼

When we finally got back to my condo, we reassembled around the dining room table. I set the sword in the center of it.

“There is a very strong enchantment on this thing,” I said.

“There is,” Morrigan said.

“But we don’t know what it does, exactly,” MJ said.

“‘It can help her grow into her bloodline,’” Colleen said. “Whatever that means, it refers to you.”

“My bloodline is my other sword, the rapier, and Juan Jose Perez Hernández.”

“But this is something you’re supposed to grow into,” Hayley said. “Which sounds like it’s something you don’t know about.”

“Yet,” Katarina said.

MJ looked around the table. “So . . .”

“This is a sword that is supposed to be carried by a sorcerer,” I said, “that is supposed to enhance their abilities.”

“I’m not a sorcerer.”

“Could you make her one?” Hayley asked. “Like you did with me?”

“Not without the right bloodline,” Katarina said.

“Hernandez was a sorcerer,” MJ said. “I’m his descendant. I know you said the bloodline doesn’t just flow down to everyone, but it could have.”

All of them looked at me. I took a deep breath.

“Is this really what you want?”

MJ looked at the sword for a moment, then reached for it. She drew it slowly from its scabbard. The blade was clean and shiny, showing little indication of its twelve centuries of existence. The hand forging was evident. It looked like a high-end carbon-steel kitchen knife, razor sharp and ready. A set of Norse runes was engraved down the center of the blade.

She looked at Katarina. “What does that say?”

“The first is the symbol of Týr, the Norse god of battle. The others are for protection, strength, and destiny.”

“They were probably added by the Viking warlord who took it,” I said.

MJ took the hilt in her hand and lifted the sword upright. She stared at it for a few moments before looking at Hayley.

“What was it like,” she asked, “when he gave you all that power?”

Hayley glanced at me quickly. “It's hard to explain. It happened in that dream when we fought Zagan, which made it even weirder. But have you ever picked up a book you think you’ve never seen before, then you start flipping through it and suddenly realize you’ve already read it? You used to know it but forgot about it, and now you remember everything? That’s kind of how it felt.”

MJ exhaled slowly and looked at me.

“Do it. I mean, if you can.”

“You’re sure? I can’t undo something like that.”

“Yes.”

I took a moment to focus myself and then reached into her.

I’d been through this before with all of them. I’d improved MJ’s combat abilities during the fight with Zagan. I’d given Hayley bigger boobs and magical talent. I’d given Morrigan firmer boobs and purple hair. I’d given Katarina the ability to love. I’d fixed Colleen’s inability to emotionally connect with people, in the process breaking the curse Lucifer had put on her.

MJ hadn’t asked for anything after that night, and I hadn’t looked for things I might improve. That was largely because of all the things I loved about her – she was tough, proud, self-sufficient, and had worked very hard to get where she was. Improving anything more just didn’t feel right.

But this was different.

Could I do it? As I delved through all the things that made MJ who she was, I saw a variety of elements I could potentially improve, had she wanted me to. For the most part, she didn’t.

The stuff on the surface was mundane. Her math skills could be better. Anything related to soccer was off-limits. There was room for improvement, but she didn’t want my help.

A couple of things made me wince. She was worried she wasn’t that good in bed, that she wasn’t experienced enough with straight sex to satisfy me. That was partly why she’d taken so hard to her thing with Morrigan, because she knew how much I loved it. I left that alone.

I pushed through everything. Down at the bottom, deep in her soul, I finally saw the connection. The same kind of bloodline I found in Hayley. MJ had it too, though it was even more dormant. None of her ancestors had awakened it in generations, but it ran back to Hernandez and beyond.

At the same time, it was different from what I’d seen in Hayley and Morrigan. As MJ sat there, still holding the sword, I felt the attraction between them. Her bloodline pulling toward it, the sword trying to connect to her.

So rather than just improving MJ’s dormant sorcerous abilities, I tried something different. I went in through the sword. The enchantment – designed to enhance its owner’s power – let me do it. Then I poured all the energy I could into her.

She gasped, straightening up in her seat, eyes swelling.

“Oh, shit!”

“Did it work?” Morrigan asked.

MJ looked at the sword. Its form suddenly shifted, turning into a jeweled and gold-plated basket-hilt rapier similar to the one Hernández had left for her, but much fancier.

The other girls gasped softly. MJ smiled.

“Yeah. I think it did.”

Chapter 15

￼

MJ STOOD UP from the table and took a few steps into the living room, holding the rapier out in front of her.

“Okay, don’t freak out here, guys. I’ve got control of this.”

“Control of wha—” Hayley started, but the answer came before she finished the question. Flames lit up all along the length of the sword.

“Whoa!” Morrigan exclaimed.

The flames went out. MJ kept moving the rapier through the air, and it was suddenly covered with frost, trailing cold mist behind it.

“How are you doing that?” Hayley asked.

“Pretty sure it’s like Jimmy’s staff,” MJ said. “It’s elemental spirits doing it.”

The frost disappeared as little sparks ran along the blade and tendrils of electricity crackled behind it.

“Are they trapped in the sword?” I asked.

“No. I’m using it to call them to me. All I have to do is concentrate.”

“What else can you do now?”

I’d enhanced her magical skills, but I hadn’t given her any specific knowledge about magic, like I’d done with Hayley. The sword had taken care of that.

MJ took a step toward us, then turned around again, extending the rapier. She made a move with it, and in a flash, she was across the room. She’d moved so fast it was nothing but a blur.

“Holy shit!” Hayley said.

“That is very impressive,” Katarina said.

I stood up. “How did you do that?”

“The sword is a focus object,” MJ said. “That was a spell to move really fast, but I don’t need anything else to cast it.”

I nodded. “That makes some sense. If the sorcerer who made that sword was powerful enough to be taken right into the bureaucracy.”

“I guarantee you he was really, really pissed to lose it,” MJ said. “This thing is awesome.”

In a flash, she was back over next to me, arms around my neck. I felt a sharp blast of air against my face as she did it.

Then she kissed me hard. I kissed her back. She broke the kiss after a few moments.

“I love this. I love you.”

I pulled her closer to me. “I love you too, babe.”

“These are different kinds of spells from what Hayley and I can cast,” Morrigan said.

“My bloodline is different,” MJ replied. “I feel it now. Most of my ancestors who were sorcerers, like Hernández, they were also soldiers or duelists or whatever. And it’s the sword. What Jimmy did in awakening my abilities, the sword shaped it.”

“So you’re what, a warrior-wizard now?” Hayley asked.

“Something like that.”

“There are not many sorcerers like that,” Katarina said. “It is a rare bloodline, but those with both of those talents whom I have encountered in the past were all very dangerous.”

Morrigan laughed. “So you’re dangerous now.”

MJ smiled, extending the tip of the rapier toward Morrigan. She coiled a strand of Morrigan’s purple hair around it like she was using her finger and drew it back.

“Yeah, you’re going to see just how dangerous I can be, slut.”

Morrigan’s eyes widened a bit in anticipation. “Yes, ma’am.”

Then MJ lifted the rapier in the air. A moment later, it shrank down to a blade about size of a little hunting knife. She reached for the scabbard, which had also shrunk down into a little leather sheath. MJ slid the knife into the sheath and then tucked it into her tights.

“Convenient,” I said.

“Definitely.”

￼

It was late and we were all tired, but when I started getting ready for bed, Hayley pulled me aside.

“Colleen asked for a little favor,” she said.

“Which was what?”

“Did you forget what she asked Katarina last night?”

My stomach fluttered just a bit. “Oh, yeah.”

She kissed me. “I don’t think she’s ready for the full coven experience just yet. Go have fun. I had mine this morning.”

She, MJ, and Morrigan went to bed. When I went back out to the living room, Colleen and Katarina had already left. When I went to the door, Charlotte ran after me.

“Coming to watch? Don’t let Else see anything.”

She just meowed. We went down one floor to Colleen’s condo. Katarina opened the door as I approached, smiling at me.

“I can sense your anticipation, Jimmy,” she said.

I kissed her and shut the door behind me. Her clothes shifted to a sheer little black nightgown.

“An angel and a succubus at once isn’t exactly something I’ve done before.”

Colleen appeared from the bedroom. She was still in Young Colleen mode. I laughed as I saw her, because she’d manifested something identical to what Katarina had on, except in white.

She came up and pressed herself against me and Katarina.

“Fallen angel. I’m fully capable of being very naughty.”

I kissed her. “Can you open up a bit more of your true form? I feel like I’m ready for it.”

It was the same as what she’d done before, in the dream castle, though less intense. She still looked mostly the same, just more – more beautiful, hair longer, her body edging closer to perfection. She stopped it right about the point where Katarina was. They didn’t look the same, but their overall appearance was quite similar now – two smoking hot blondes in nightgowns that concealed nothing.

“Is this okay?” she asked.

I exhaled. “Whew.”

Colleen nuzzled my neck. “Before we start, I want to tell you something.”

“Go for it.”

She sighed. “Since I got my divination abilities back, they’ve been getting progressively stronger, like I told you. One of the things I could do before was sense the future in certain ways. That’s the hardest thing, and the trickiest, and it’s coming back slowly. But I can do it now.”

“Okay.”

“Trying to sense your own future is dangerous, as you can probably imagine.”

I nodded. “Because you could change things without meaning to.”

“Exactly. So I’ve tried not to do it much. But there are things I sense anyway, the longer I’m around you.”

I hugged her. “Which are what?”

She was quiet a moment. “Like I told you this morning, I’m still sorting through my feelings for you. But I can sense where they’re going. It’s pretty obvious. I like you a lot, Jimmy, and I . . . I want to love you. Because one of things I can sense about our future . . . and this is because it seems so strong and certain . . . is that we’re going to be together a long time.”

I kissed her forehead. “That’s good.”

She looked up. “Jimmy, you’re not hearing me. I’m immortal. When I say ‘a long time,’ I don’t mean in the scale you’re thinking. I’m talking something more like—”

She looked at Katarina. I lost my breath for a moment.

“Oh.”

“Right.”

I’d spent the last six months getting my mind around the idea that Katarina and I were bound together for all eternity. It was something that was tough to hold in your head when you were only twenty-four. I understood it, even if I had a hard time envisioning what it was going to be like in a hundred years, or a thousand.

The idea that I might now have two immortal females with me all that time was a bit of a shock.

“Katarina and I are spellbound,” I said. “We couldn’t be apart even if we wanted to be.”

“Which I do not, of course,” Katarina said.

“I don’t know what it’s going to be like,” Colleen said. “I only know what I can sense. I haven’t looked at the details, and I don’t want to. But it’s there.”

I hugged both of them. “We don’t need to work all this out tonight.”

Colleen rose up and kissed me. “No. So come on.”

They pulled me to the bedroom and undressed me, and the three of us came together in an embrace. I felt their firm, perfectly shaped breasts on either side of me. They were different in some subtle ways. Colleen felt a bit fuller, Katarina a bit higher. I played with their nipples through the fabric of their nightgowns as they kissed and sucked at my neck.

I kissed Colleen, then Katarina, then they kissed each other. I backed up to the bed, pulling them with me. We lay down. I lay on my back as they crawled above me. We kissed back and forth for few moments before I pulled them up.

Katarina’s nightgown disappeared, and Colleen’s vanished a moment later. They smothered my face in their plump breasts, and for a few minutes I was just lost in kissing and sucking all the flesh in my face.

I felt a hand reach down for my erection. I couldn’t quite tell who it was, but another soon joined it, stroking and teasing. I stayed where I was until they started kissing their way down my chest. I looked at the two blonde heads in my lap, at the two gorgeous immortal creatures who wanted nothing more than my dick.

They came together in a kiss, with it right in the middle. They started making out around it, tongues and lips going up, down, and around. I lay back and just played with their hair, enjoying the feel of what they were doing. After a minute or two of this, Katarina took me in her mouth, effortlessly swallowing my entire length.

Colleen gasped softly as she watched. As always, the sensations from Katarina’s mouth were beyond anything I’d ever experienced, twelve hundred years of succubus technique all focused on my enjoyment. How she was able to work her tongue and lips with such agility while still maintaining so much suction was beyond me. I was simply glad to have her.

She drew back, and Colleen took over. The difference was so striking that I couldn’t help reacting, though I tried. And she noticed.

She pulled back and sighed. “I’m not a succubus, Jimmy.”

“It’s okay, really.”

“Don’t lie. It’s not attractive.”

I groaned.

Katarina leaned over and kissed her. “Jimmy, you could improve her skills, could you not?”

“Uh.” I looked at Colleen. Her eyes swelled a bit. “Should I?”

She looked down at my wet dick, then at Katarina. “Yes.”

“I don’t think I can get you to her level. It’s not how this power works. Like, I can’t take a couch potato and turn him into an Olympic athlete.”

“But you can make me a lot better?”

“I can.”

“Then do, please. I don’t want to feel like I’m disappointing you.”

“At oral sex, or everything?” I asked.

“Yes, everything.”

Katarina laughed softly. So I did what she asked. It wasn’t a big challenge.

Colleen’s face got a little red as the knowledge flooded into her head. “Oh, wow.” She looked at my dick again. “Huh.”

Then she swallowed me up. She wasn’t Katarina, as I’d warned her, but she was probably the second-best I’d ever had. Adriana might have approached her, but then that had been in a dream. Colleen took every last millimeter down her throat and pulled back slowly, sucking hard and spinning her tongue around me.

“Oh, shit,” I groaned.

My cock came out of her mouth with a pop. “Better?” she asked, grinning.

“Fuck, yeah.”

The two of them worked on me like that for several minutes until I felt my head starting to swim. I didn’t want to come this fast, so I finally pulled them up to me. I kissed them both, but when I tried to pull Colleen up over my head, Katarina stopped me.

“No, Jimmy,” she said, smiling, “I know what you want.”

She had me lay back against the pillows, and then had Colleen lay back against me. She kissed Colleen deeply for few seconds, then kissed her way down slowly down Colleen’s body.

I held Colleen against my chest. She twisted around and kissed me as Katarina began sucking her nipples. Then Colleen took my hands and wrapped them around her waist.

Katarina settled between Colleen’s thighs. I had a perfect view of everything as Katarina’s tongue came out in a point and began fluttering around Colleen’s clit.

Colleen gasped softly, hands squeezing my wrists.

“Hold on tight,” I whispered to her, “this may put you into orbit.”

She just whimpered, pushing herself back against me. I’d been through this with all the girls, but it was still an amazing thing to watch as Katarina slowly and expertly drew Colleen toward orgasm. The closer she got, the more Katarina slowed down, kissing her, licking gently, tongue fluttering here and there.

Colleen whimpered again, shaking against me, fingers digging into my arms. This close to both of them, I could feel what Katarina was doing, how she edged Colleen over and over, building all the energy inside her. Colleen let go of my wrists and dug her fingers into Katarina’s hair.

“I can’t . . .”

Katarina kissed her clit ever so gently. “Ask me for it, Colleen.”

“Let me come. Please.”

“Jimmy?” Katarina asked.

I caressed Colleen’s wonderful breasts, pulling gently on her nipples. “All right. Do it.”

Katarina went back to work, this time holding nothing back. After a few moments, Colleen began shaking against my chest, then her thighs slammed tight around Katarina’s head. She let out an anguished cry as she finally crashed over, back arching against me as I held her close. Her orgasm seemed to go on for ten or fifteen seconds of squirming and shaking and whimpering before she finally went limp and gasped for breath.

“I’ve never . . . I’m sorry, Jimmy, but that was . . .”

I laughed. “I know. That’s what I wanted for you.”

She whimpered again. Katarina climbed up and embraced her. The three of us held each other for a few moments. Then Colleen rolled Katarina on her back. She climbed over her, kissing her slowly and gently. I could see what was coming and slid down to the end of the bed.

As Colleen lay between Katarina’s thighs, I moved around behind her, pulling her hips up so she was kneeling in front of me. She settled down, pushing her butt back at me. I slipped slowly into her wet, quivering pussy as she began licking Katarina.

I watched the two of them as I fucked Colleen. It was different from the first time I’d been with her, because of what I’d done. Even as she pleasured Katarina, she pinched and clenched herself around me with each thrust. I just held her hips and enjoyed it, watching her bring Katarina to orgasm.

It didn’t take long. Katarina was quite wound up from everything we’d done, and Colleen’s oral skills were obviously much improved. When Katarina finally cried out, legs thrashing on the bed, I rolled Colleen to the side and climbed up above her. Katarina was still twitching in release as I entered her, but she knew what I wanted, clamping down tightly around me and milking my cock as I fucked her.

I’d held off long enough, and it took only a few thrusts before I got there myself, stabbing deeply into Katarina and filling her with my seed. She held me tightly until it was over. Then I rolled over between them, using my connection with her to stay hard.

Colleen climbed onto me and began bouncing eagerly. Katarina sat up and went behind her. They kissed as my succubus began tweaking Colleen’s nipples with one hand and fingering her clit rapidly with the other.

I felt Colleen trying to milk me as Katarina had done, but between the two of us, she didn’t last long. With a sharp cry, she came again, pounding herself against my dick as Katarina finished her off. She threw herself onto my chest with a gasp.

Keeping myself inside her, I wrapped my arms around her chest and rolled over, putting her under me. Katarina crawled up beside us. Colleen pulled her up, getting Katarina to sit on her mouth, facing me.

I fucked Colleen slowly as she licked up at Katarina, who leaned against me, biting at my neck. I held myself up, playing gently with her breasts. She pulled back a bit and kissed me.

“What you did, Jimmy,” she moaned in my ear. “She is very talented.”

“That’s good,” I laughed softly.

I looked down between Katarina’s thighs, seeing Colleen licking eagerly at her, her tongue lapping rapidly at Katarina’s clit. Katarina moaned again, pressing her face against my neck. I held her as I thrust into Colleen, savoring the pinching and milking around my cock.

Katarina got there first, nails digging into my shoulders and breath hot against my face as she shook in release over Colleen’s mouth. As it peaked, she fell to the side, leaving Colleen to me. I lowered myself down, and as I did, Colleen suddenly exposed her true form to me, every last bit of it.

I gasped at the sight of her – at the impossibly beautiful woman under me, the immortal celestial who was pulling me into her perfect body, begging for my cock.

“Come in me, Jimmy,” she moaned, “Give it to me. Do it.”

I groaned out loud, all control lost, pounding myself against her. She clenched herself as tightly around me as she could. I’d been holding myself back, and it took nearly a minute in which I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her. She lay there looking up at me, urging me on, letting me have everything. Finally I reached the edge and tipped over with a groan. Colleen pulled me against her as I spurted deeply inside her. She milked me exquisitely until it was over, and finally I collapsed on top of her with a gasp.

When the tide of pleasure passed, I lifted up and kissed her. She’d gone back to just being smoking-hot Colleen.

“Did you like that?” she whispered. “What I did at the end?”

“Yes,” I gasped. “Just a bit of a shock.”

She smiled. “I was waiting to do it. I wanted to give that to you.”

Katarina cuddled against us. I withdrew from Colleen and lay between them.

I took them both again a few minutes later, getting them into a sixty-nine position and rolling them back and forth so I could fuck them both. I came into Colleen, then Katarina, as they brought each other to orgasm repeatedly. We finally broke to rest after half an hour or so.

I was lying between them catching my breath when Charlotte jumped up onto the bed and meowed loudly. I sensed immediately that something was wrong. She meowed again and pawed at me.

“I think she wants me in the castle.”

Charlotte meowed in agreement.

“Okay. Then go,” Colleen said. “Bring us in if you need to.”

I put Katarina to sleep and went.

Chapter 16

￼

WHEN I ARRIVED in the main hall, Charlotte came running up to me, face twisted in anguish.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She grabbed my arms. “The army from Purgatory is attacking again! Else went out on her own to face them!”

“Oh, shit!”

I immediately pulled in Colleen and Katarina. They appeared next to me.

“What is it?” Colleen asked. I explained. “Oh, no,” she said.

Then I thought of the others. Were they asleep? I sensed there had been some girls-only fun while I was downstairs, and it had only just wrapped up. MJ had fallen asleep, but Hayley and Morrigan were still awake. They couldn’t help us.

So I pulled MJ into the castle, along with her sword, and dressed her in her armor.

She came to lucidity almost right away, and I explained what was going on. She drew the sword, expanding it into something even larger than the Viking blade, about as long as she was tall.

“We need to get out there,” I said.

“What about Hayley and Morrigan?”

“They’re awake. I can’t bring them in.”

MJ nodded. “Okay. Then let’s go.”

I jumped the four of us up to the platform.

“Can you fly?” I asked MJ.

She immediately lifted into the air. I reached for Katarina’s hand, but rather than taking it, huge black bat wings expanded out from her shoulders.

“This will be simpler,” she said.

“Are those real?” MJ asked. “Like, a succubus thing?”

“Real is relative here,” Katarina replied. “But appearances matter.”

Off we went, Colleen and me flying innately, MJ using her sword, and Katarina on her wings. In the distance, I saw the battle already underway, the line of stone creatures battling another soul army.

A dark speck hovered over them – Else.

As we swooped in, I saw that this battle was progressing quite differently than the last one. There were more catapults this time, bigger ones, and they’d done a lot more damage to the stone creatures. The heavy soul cavalry was advancing now, but they weren’t riding horses. They were on armored elephants.

Else shouted at the spirits as we closed in.

“Forward! Fight them!” She raised her arms and called down an explosion of lightning across the elephant charge. A few of them fell, but most continued.

“Else!” I screamed.

She turned toward me. “Father! They attacked! You were not here! I had to do something!”

“We’re here!”

I flew up beside her, and she embraced me quickly. I looked at Colleen.

“What’s going on with this?” I asked.

“Something different is driving them,” she said. “Something powerful. I can’t quite see it, but it’s out there.”

I looked across the battlefield. I couldn’t see anything beyond the gray haze that hung over the land beyond.

“I’m going down there,” MJ said. And she dove toward the battle, sword pointed ahead of her.

“Those are elephants!” I yelled.

“I’ve got this!” she yelled back.

She landed on the ground between the stone beasts and the charging elephants. The stone creatures stopped just behind her. I began the same spell I’d used before, calling out Ceridwen and sending her into the earth. A wave erupted from the ground in front of MJ, spreading forward until it reached the elephant charge.

Unlike the horses, the lumbering beasts were unable to avoid the wall of earth or leap over it, but they were also large enough to withstand the sudden impact. Many of them stumbled, and the charge lost its cohesion and momentum, but they kept coming.

MJ began circling the sword over her head. A vortex of fire grew rapidly above her, and it formed into a huge flaming sphere. When the ball of fire was as big as three elephants, she swung the sword forward, and the fireball rolled rapidly across the battlefield.

The cavalry line, already disrupted by my spell, wavered in confusion as the ball of fire closed in. It slammed into a cluster of elephants, spreading out like a bursting soap bubble. The agonized screams of the beasts and riders floated up toward us.

But the remaining elephants kept coming. All at once, the catapults fired again, and a wave of huge stones rose into the air toward us. Our line was stationary behind MJ. She was busy whipping up another ball of fire and didn’t see what was happening above her.

“Move the line!” I yelled at Else.

As Else called out to our army, I swooped down toward MJ, watching the catapult stones start to fall. One seemed like it was going to come very close to her. I raised my staff, calling out Sídhe and Ceridwen and swirling them together into the biggest bolt of lightning I could manage. The bolt shot out, striking the stone and blasting it apart.

The shards of rock began raining down around MJ, but she was too focused on her spell. She threw the ball of fire forward just as the remaining catapult stones fell into our army. Else had moved a lot of them, but about half of them hit their targets.

MJ’s fireball slammed into the elephants. Their charge was now thinned out and weakened, but some of them were still coming.

“Get up here!” I yelled to MJ.

She looked up at me and rose into the air. Her face was flushed with a battle-lust I had never seen before. She came to me and gave me a rough kiss.

Below us, the charging elephants finally reached our damaged line of stone creatures. The abominations and beasts met them, stone claws and tentacles meeting armored trunks and tusks. But it was not the slaughter of the previous battle. The elephants held their own for now, giving as good as they got. Many fell, but so did many of the smaller stone beasts, which were knocked over and broken.

I heard Else screaming above us as battle continued. MJ and I flew back toward Katarina and Colleen.

“When we fought Eligos,” I said to Katarina, “you changed into a warrior. Can you change into something bigger?”

“Like what?”

“Like—” I honestly wasn’t sure.

“How about a dragon?” MJ said. I gaped at her. Nothing like that had ever occurred to me.

“Perhaps a small one,” Katarina replied.

Her body shifted, her wings spreading out and her body stretching into a long, black reptilian form. She wasn’t that big – maybe fifteen feet long nose to tail – but she was now a dragon.

I looked at Colleen.

“I’ll try,” she said.

She shifted to something similar to Katarina, except in white – mimicking the outfits they’d had on earlier. The two of them dove down toward the battle as MJ and I followed.

The elephants were still engaged with the stone beasts, though they were beginning to falter as more of them fell. When Colleen and Katarina swept down on them, spraying out streams of what looked like napalm, the elephants finally had enough. The line broke, and they turned in panic. The stone army surged forward after them.

I sent Ceridwen at them again, only this time from the other side. As the elephants staggered and stumbled away from the streams of flaming dragonfire, the wall of earth slammed into them. Their bellows and screams of terror rose into the air as the stone beasts and abominations began tearing them apart. A few of their riders escaped, fleeing back across the battlefield to where the infantry was waiting.

MJ flew ahead of us, landing on the field beyond the riders. She turned, twirling her greatsword through the air. I watched as most of the fleeing cavalry tried to avoid her, but a few of them closed in.

Was she really ready for this? Were all the things I’d done for her enough?

Four of the armored knights circled around, trying to gang up on her. As they drew their swords, she suddenly flashed between two of them like she’d done that night in my living room. One of their heads went flying into the air. She stopped, spun around, and decapitated the other one.

The two remaining knights fell back, but it was too late. MJ shot forward again, lightning from the sword trailing behind her, and cut down both of them in the blink of an eye.

Beyond her, another volley of catapult stones rose through the air. I turned to Else, who floated above and behind me about thirty yards away.

“Forward! Get them moving!”

She screamed at our army, which lurched ahead over the still-screaming and struggling elephants. They moved slowly, but it was enough to avoid most of the catapult stones, which fell behind them. A few at the rear were unable to avoid the barrage and shattered as the stones slammed into them.

I floated down beside MJ. Colleen and Katarina, still in dragon form, landed beside us a few moments later.

I looked over at MJ, her armor splattered with blood and her long black-brown hair trailing behind her in the wind. The sword glowed with eldritch energies that swirled around it like smoke. Her eyes shone, and her face was alive in a way I’d never seen before.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“This is who I’m meant to be, Jimmy.”

“I can’t say I’m too surprised.”

She came to me, grabbing my head and kissing me again. “Fighting beside you is a turn-on like nothing else.”

A roar rose from across the battlefield. The soul infantry was charging toward us. In the other direction, our stone army plodded forward.

“What do you want to do here?” I asked MJ.

She grinned and looked at Colleen and Katarina. “I figure Jimmy must already have rode you guys pretty hard tonight, but . . .”

Both of them laughed. It was really weird hearing their familiar laughter from a pair of dragons. Colleen took a step forward and lowered her neck. MJ climbed onto her back. Katarina knelt next to me, and I got on as well.

We rose into the air as the infantry closed in on us, charging across the field, screaming and waving their weapons in the air. Else floated overhead, closing up the ranks of stone creatures behind us.

“Else!” I yelled, “Watch for the catapults!”

“I will, Father!”

It was a really strange feeling riding dragon-Katarina, simultaneously intimate and weird. Even as her leathery wings beat around me, I couldn’t help thinking of making love to her and Colleen less than an hour ago.

“I kind of like you like this,” I said.

She turned her head toward me. “I could do it in the mortal world, if you like.”

“Might be a bit much.”

Ahead of us, MJ raised another huge fireball. Katarina and I circled around her. I raised my staff, calling up another round of lightning. MJ cast the ball of fire forward, and as it burst against the charging infantry, the lightning crashed down over them.

The charge wavered. The stone army continued thundering forward. It didn’t look to me as if they needed any more help.

“MJ!” I called out. “Forget the soldiers! Let’s take out the catapults!”

Colleen wheeled through the air, gliding over the line of infantry. Katarina and I followed them. MJ summoned yet another fireball, and this time I called out Enya. The catapult crews were still in the process of reloading as we closed in.

MJ’s fireball rolled over them, setting two of the siege engines aflame. I sent a wall of fire against the other end. Colleen and Katarina circled around, gliding in along the line of catapults, breathing fire. In moments, all of them were burning.

We returned to the battlefield, where the remains of the soul infantry, now surrounded, were making a last stand against the stone beasts. But we’d taken quite a few casualties this time, and it looked as if our stone army had been reduced by about a third.

Else rejoined us as we floated above the lingering fight. I sensed that Katarina wanted to return to her usual form, so I rose off her back. In a moment, she was hovering beside me on her bat wings. MJ and Colleen separated as well, and Colleen resumed her usual self.

But before I could say anything, she gasped, pointing back toward Purgatory.

“Jimmy, there. That’s what I sensed.”

There was something coming rapidly toward us through the air, a dark yet glimmering figure. As it grew closer, I made out more details – humanoid in form, but with black feathered wings, carrying a huge black sword. The glimmering I saw came from its armor, which was black and polished to a high sheen.

“So much for moving slowly,” Katarina said. I felt something from her that I’d never sensed before.

Fear.

I floated in front of her. Colleen floated up beside me, and a moment later she revealed the whole of her true form. Had I not just been with her like that, I would have lost all interest in anything else that was going on. As it was, I just barely managed to shift my attention back in front of us.

And I understood now what we were facing.

It – this being was so perfectly androgynous I had no idea what to think of it as – drew up about ten yards away from us, floating in the air as we were.

“Azrael,” Colleen said.

“Tamiel,” it replied. “Long have you been lost, yet long have you been sought.”

“I am not what I once was,” she said.

“That is clear.” Despite its appearance, Azrael’s voice was a deep, rich baritone that thrummed through my gut. “You are responsible for this?” it asked Colleen.

“No,” I said. “I am.”

Azrael’s eyes slowly met mine, and they bored into me for a moment or two. Other than Lucifer, I’d never faced a gaze like this.

“You are a thing that should not exist,” he said. Its voice had me thinking of it in male terms now.

“Yeah, I’ve gotten that before.” It was exactly what Lucifer had said to me the first time we met.

Then Azrael looked at MJ. “And you, mortal, you place your soul in great peril by involving yourself with these three.”

But MJ was unfazed.

“I’ve already decided who it belongs to.” She glanced over to me, smiling quickly.

That was when I realized Azrael had said “these three.” Else was floating right beside me. Yet Azrael didn’t even seem to be aware of her existence.

The archangel looked back at Colleen. “Your case has been in abeyance for more than three millennia. You will return with me to answer for your crimes.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “She was already cast out.”

“Be silent, abomination!” Azrael thundered. “Celestial justice is a matter far beyond the concerns of those such as you!”

“You’re not taking her anywhere.”

“I don’t answer to the bureaucracy anymore,” Colleen said.

Rather than responding, Azrael lunged forward and swung his sword at us. But MJ flashed in front of him almost too quickly to see and blocked the strike. Her sword withstood the blow, but the force of it was so intense that she was knocked back and went spinning past me.

Azrael had clearly not expected such resistance, but he recovered almost instantly and readied another blow at Colleen. She fell back behind me, and I raised my staff, letting loose with everything I could muster – all four elemental spirits in a blast of searing magma.

The archangel fell back, roaring in outrage. But rather than use his sword, he extended his other hand, returning fire with a blast of black energy. I barely got my staff up in time to deflect it with a wall of air from Sídhe. But I wasn’t able to turn it aside completely, and a splash of it hit my arm.

For a moment, I felt my soul being drawn out of my body. I gasped aloud as Katarina cried out in horror.

Through this stunned fog, I heard a scream of rage beside me. Else lurched forward.

“Father! NO!”

She pointed her hand toward Azrael, and a blinding bolt of light shot forth.

Else’s blast struck the archangel dead-center in his chest. And Azrael disintegrated in a shower of sparks.

The claw around my soul evaporated. Colleen let out an incredulous whimper.

“Else,” she gasped. “What have you done?”

Else looked at her.

“He was hurting Father.”

“That was Azrael. The Angel of Death. One of the four archangels of the celestial bureaucracy.”

There was a long, heavy silence. Katarina finally spoke up.

“I suppose it makes sense that he would be the one to investigate this,” she said quietly.

Colleen took my arm. “We need to get back inside the castle. Now.”

I nodded.

“All right. Let’s go.”

Chapter 17

￼

“SO THERE ARE only four archangels?” MJ asked Colleen when we reassembled around the fireplace. “I thought you were one.”

“I was,” Colleen replied. “There used to be more. But since Lucifer and I and the others were cast out, since the formation of the celestial and infernal bureaucracies, there have been only four. Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Azrael.”

“Who was the Angel of Death,” I said. My grimoires covered none of this, and Grandma Amy and I had never gone to church, for what were now obvious reasons.

“Right. The archangel who was responsible for shepherding the souls of mortals after their death, dividing them between the ones going straight to Heaven, the ones going to Hell, and the ones who needed to spend time in Purgatory.”

“I guess his absence is going to be noticed,” MJ said dryly.

Colleen laughed bitterly. “That’s putting it mildly.” She bent forward and put her face in her hands. “We are so fucked.”

I reached over and put an arm around Else. She was still confused and traumatized, and she leaned her head against my shoulder.

“You did what you had to, little mouse.”

“He was going to kill you,” she said softly. I hugged her.

“So what now?” I asked. “How long before anyone knows about this?”

“They know already,” Colleen replied. “What an archangel knows, the bureaucracy knows. Which means they now know about me as well.”

“And presumably Lucifer will learn about it also,” Charlotte said. “He will know what it means.”

“He’ll know what he thinks it means, at least,” I said. “That I broke the deal we made and used Tamiel’s power. He doesn’t know about Else.” I paused a moment. “Which brings up something else. Did any of you notice how Azrael didn’t even seem to see Else?”

“Yes,” Katarina replied.

“It had to be all the wards you put on her,” Colleen said. “You hid her from everyone, didn’t you? Infernals and celestials both.”

That made sense. I’d cloaked Else in every way I could come up with.

“What did Azrael mean about your case?” MJ asked Colleen. “You were already cast out, like Jimmy said.”

Colleen leaned backward, laying her head on the back of the couch and staring up at the ceiling.

“Those are two different, if related, things. My existence in Heaven was severed immediately because of my transgression, because nothing with the taint of sin can exist there. There would have been a specific punishment for what we all did that came later. But like I said, things move very slowly with the celestials.”

“They were going to punish all the fallen angels?” Charlotte asked.

“At first, yes. That was precisely why Lucifer formed the infernal bureaucracy. But because I never joined with him, I was considered still to be under celestial jurisdiction. My case must have come up for adjudication after Lucifer and I fought, and he confined me in the earth. His curse hid me from everyone, including them.”

“And you are still a free agent,” Katarina said. “Or are you?”

Colleen’s eyes widened. She looked at me, jaw dropping, face going pale. She was still in her true form, and the sight of it made me dizzy.

“Jimmy . . . this is it. This is what I saw.”

“What is?” I managed.

“The only thing that will save me now is if I’m no longer on my own.”

And I saw it too.

“You have to bind me like you did with Katarina,” she said.

MJ and Charlotte both gasped. Else seemed not quite to understand, but Katarina just nodded.

“It would work,” she said. “Jimmy works for the infernal bureaucracy, and so you would be part of that as well.”

“You’re okay with this?” I asked Katarina.

“I do not wish for Colleen to be destroyed.” She smiled ever so slightly. “And it would be nice to have someone else to share your eternity with. Especially now that I know what it would involve.” Then she smiled at Colleen, who, incredibly, blushed just a bit. Then Colleen looked back to me.

“It’s the only way, Jimmy,” she said.

I exhaled slowly. “We should discuss this with the entire coven. I don’t think it will take long, but we should.”

The rest of them nodded. Hayley and Morrigan were asleep now, so I pulled them into the castle. They appeared at the edge of the sitting area with Echidna, Hayley in a long red dress, Morrigan in a very short black one, and Echidna in a sort of fantasy slave-girl outfit, all gold chains and gauzy fabric. It was nothing I’d created – it had to be something the two of them had worked out on their own.

All of them came to lucidity quickly.

“What’s going on?” Hayley asked.

“Sit down,” I said. Colleen and I explained what happened, and what we needed to do. It was a few long moments before either of them could say anything.

“What does this mean?” Hayley asked. “What will the celestials do?”

“If things go like usual for them, it will be at least a thousand years before they get around to doing anything to any of you about Azrael’s destruction,” Colleen said. “My case is ready for adjudication now. And Lucifer isn’t going to wait for them.”

“Not that I want anything to happen to you,” Hayley said, “but what would the celestials do?”

“The kindest thing that I could expect would be a forced repentance. Essentially, a reprogramming. I’m not sure what I would look like then, but the Colleen you know would be gone. I certainly wouldn’t want anything to do with you guys. The worst thing, well, you can probably imagine.”

Hayley pursed her lips tightly and looked at Morrigan and Echidna. “I’m okay with this. We can’t just abandon her.”

Morrigan nodded. “For sure. If this is what it takes.”

“The decision is of course yours, Master,” Echidna said. “But I support it as well.”

I looked at Colleen. “This is what you want?”

She stared at me, eyes wet. “If you’ll have me. You understand what it would mean.”

“Yeah.” I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

￼

We returned once more to the library and started to work. The spell I’d used to bind Katarina was for succubi. There was nothing in any of the grimoires about binding a fallen angel. But that spell seemed like a good starting place. It required the blood of the caster – me – along with cinnamon oil, clove oil, vinegar, and several minerals that I knew served as emulsifiers.

Most of the ingredients seemed aimed at demons. Colleen wasn’t a demon.

“How exactly did you do it?” she asked.

“I brewed up the solution, added my blood, and had her drink it.”

“She drank it? Willingly?”

“He used my true name to compel me to drink it,” Katarina said.

“That won’t be an issue here.”

“She wants to be bound,” Charlotte said. “I wonder how much difference that makes.”

“For those wards you’ve cast on all of us,” Hayley said, “you collected stuff that had some connection to each of us. They were all different.”

“Right.”

“So maybe it’s something like that.”

The wards Hayley was talking about used a combination of salts, herbs, spices, and powdered crystal, all with some personal or ancestral connection to the subject. Except that Colleen didn’t have an ancestry in the same sense as the other girls.

“Maybe I just need to pick them myself?” she asked. “Whatever feels right?”

I shrugged. “It’s worth a try.”

While they worked, I went looking for Else. I found her in one of the side wings of the castle, in one of the little alcoves that looked down on the beach. She was sitting on the cushion next to window with her knees drawn up to her chest, staring out on the water.

She looked up as I approached. “I am sorry.”

I sat down with her and took her in my arms. “Don’t be sorry about saving me, little mouse.”

“I felt what he was doing to you. It terrified me.”

“It wasn’t pleasant for me either,” I said.

“I did not want you to die.”

I just held her for a little bit.

“How did you do it, exactly?”

“It’s the thing that was Colleen’s, that came to me. The pin. I was frightened and angry, and then the pin seemed to speak to me. It told me I could stop what Azrael was doing. It all happened so fast, I did not think.”

“Like I said, you did what you had to. We’ll deal with this somehow.”

She cuddled against me.

“Am I to be trapped in this castle for all my life, Father? To avoid all these people you speak of?”

I sighed. “I hope not, little mouse. I hope not.”

“I would so dearly like to have a life in the mortal world,” she said quietly. “Like you and your coven. I would like to be part of it.”

“In a way, you already are. But I told you how I was a spirit-child like you, what it took to bring me to the mortal world. It killed my mother.”

“But Mother is here. She is your familiar. It is not the same.”

“No,” I said. “Which means I wouldn’t know where to start in bringing you there.”

“Then perhaps I will try to find the answer.”

I kissed her forehead. “Why don’t you do that? You’re smart, and you have a lot of magical talent. Maybe you’ll be the one to figure it out.”

Colleen spent about half an hour flipping through the options with Charlotte and Hayley. When Else and I returned to the library, she’d completed her list. She showed it to me.

I cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Rock salt, oregano, black pepper, and gypsum?”

She looked at me a bit sheepishly. “I like oregano. I didn’t know what else to pick. Nothing spoke to me.”

“Gypsum?”

“It’s the cheapest and easiest.”

I groaned and set it down. “I don't think this is going to work. We need some connection that means something to you.”

“You said we already have some kind of connection,” Colleen replied. “You said you saw it.”

“That’s true. I’m not sure what it is, but yeah, it’s there. Not like Katarina, but it is.”

“Then let’s try with just the blood. Maybe blood and wine. I like wine.”

So I drew some of my blood and mixed up the solution.

“The last thing I need is your true name.”

“Okay. But can we do this alone?”

I nodded. “Sure.”

The two of us went up to the top of the castle. The location just felt right somehow, after everything that had happened. Colleen stood in the very center of the great magic circle.

“Tamienix-Sozruxeth,” she said.

“That’s your true name?”

“I haven’t spoken it in ten thousand years. And never to another being before you.”

I put my arms around her and held her. I was starting to get used to her true form, though I kept getting lost in her face, like I often did with Katarina.

“Last chance here.”

“Do it, Jimmy.”

The ritual I’d used with Katarina needed only a little tweaking. I stood back from Colleen, lifted my staff, and began.

Tamienix-Sozruxeth, I command your spirit to obey.

Tamienix-Sozruxeth, I call on the multiverse to compel your obedience.

Tamienix-Sozruxeth, I bind your spirit to mine.

Tamienix-Sozruxeth, I command you to bind yourself to me.

Tamienix-Sozruxeth, I call on the angels of Heaven and the kings of Hell to compel your obedience.

Tamienix-Sozruxeth, I bind your spirit to mine.

Tamienix-Sozruxeth, I command your spirit to obey me in all things.

Tamienix-Sozruxeth, I call on the spirits of the air, of the earth, of water, and of fire, to compel your obedience.

Tamienix-Sozruxeth, I bind your spirit to mine.

I felt the energies filling both of us. I handed Colleen the solution. She tipped it back into her mouth and swallowed.

It was exactly like that night when I bound Katarina. A cold fire rushed through me. My entire body buzzed, and I convulsed against the sensations. In front of me, Colleen cried out, throwing her head and arms back and falling to her knees. The fire inside me collected around that nascent connection we had and filled it, expanding and strengthening it until it was like the steel cable of my bond with Katarina.

And I felt Katarina joining this. I knew she felt what was happening, because she was now bound to Colleen just as I was. Colleen’s body shook violently, and she fell forward onto her hands.

It was done. We were bound. I saw it as clearly as I saw what I had with Katarina.

And I saw something else, something that made me lose my breath. I saw what that first connection between us really was.

How had I missed this? How had I not felt it before now?

It was a shock – yet somehow it wasn’t, shouldn’t have been. Our first night together had been so abrupt and spontaneous. Neither of us had been thinking of anything beyond fucking like weasels. She hadn’t been with anyone in over two years.

Did she know? It had only been a few days.

And how? She was a celestial, and I was . . . well, maybe that might have explained it.

But there was no doubt.

She rose slowly back onto her knees. I went to her.

“It worked,” she said softly.

“Yeah. It did.”

“We’re bound.”

I pulled her up to her feet. We embraced, holding each other.

“This is so much more than I expected,” she said. “I can feel you.”

And I could feel her too, the same way I felt the things that Katarina felt.

“It’s going to take some getting used to. Talk to Katarina.”

“I will, for sure.”

She was quiet a moment.

“I can feel there’s something you want to tell me,” she said.

Which meant she didn’t know.

“Not now,” I said. “Later. There’s been too much tonight already.”

“All right.” She laughed softly. “I guess I have to obey you now.”

“It won’t be like that.”

Colleen grinned. “Maybe I want it to be. Maybe I like that thing you have with Morrigan.”

I looked down at her.

“Do you?”

She kissed me. “That’s something for me to tell you later.”

Chapter 18

￼

WE REGROUPED IN the main hall. Colleen and Katarina sat together, linking hands. They exchanged a sly look that made me wonder just what they could feel with each other.

Eternity.

I was going to spend eternity with the two of them, the two sexiest, most beautiful girls I had ever seen. It was frankly too much to hold in my head just yet, so I put it aside for now.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ve solved one problem. We still have two. Even if it’s a thousand years before the celestial bureaucracy gets around to some kind of retribution for Azrael, his disappearance is going to cause them some serious problems.”

“Definitely,” Colleen said, “but now that I’ve had a chance to calm down and think about it, that may not be an immediate problem for us. It may actually be a good thing.”

“How?” MJ asked.

“Without Azrael to shepherd the new souls, they’re not going to know where to go. They’re going to pile up until someone can assume his duties.”

“Pile up where?” Hayley asked.

“Purgatory. It’s the default. And while that’s going on, the celestial bureaucracy is going to be scrambling to fix the problem. And understand, ‘scrambling' for them means it could be months.”

“Aren’t we right next to Purgatory?” Morrigan asked.

“That is a good point.” I said.

Colleen nodded. “It’s an issue, for sure. It’s going to be chaos out there. But chaos is better than organized assaults.”

“Either way, that gives us time.”

“Definitely.”

“So that leaves Lucifer,” Katarina said. “And the infernal bureaucracy will certainly notice if the flow of new souls is suddenly interrupted. They have most likely noticed already.”

“They wouldn’t automatically know about Azrael, though, right?” I asked.

“They would not know in the way the celestial bureaucracy does,” she replied, “but there will be an investigation into what is going on, and they will learn why.”

“And there’s no other way Azrael could have been destroyed?” Hayley asked.

“Not really,” Colleen said. “And Lucifer has been here, remember. Once he finds out about that battle, he’s fully capable of putting two and two together.”

“Any idea how long that could take?” I asked Katarina.

“The infernal bureaucracy moves faster, especially with something like this,” she replied. “Even so, I would say it could be several weeks before Lucifer would learn the truth. It might take that long for them to even decide—”

My demon phone began ringing. Everyone looked at me. I pulled it out of my pocket and stared at it in shock.

“They work everywhere, Jimmy,” Katarina said. “Even here. That is what they are for.”

It was Volach. I answered it.

“Hey, kind of busy at the moment,” I said. “Can I call you back?”

“Negative, kid. We’ve got some very serious shit going on here, and it’s all hands on deck right now.”

I held my breath for a moment, looking at the stunned faces of my coven.

“What’s going on?” I managed.

“Lots to explain, but long story short, the flow of souls into Hell just shut down. No one knows why. We need your help. You solve this problem, the big man is going to be very happy with you, and the rewards will be commensurate to that.”

“Hold on a moment.”

I muted the phone.

“This would suggest they have no idea we’re responsible,” Katarina said.

“Oh, you think?” MJ exclaimed.

“You can’t say no, Jimmy,” Hayley said, “or they’ll know something is up.”

I nodded. That was obvious as well. I unmuted my phone.

“When do you want to meet? We’re all in the spirit world right now. Middle of the night here.”

“First thing,” Volach said. “Sunday brunch, usual spot. Nine a.m. work for you?”

“It does. See you then.”

I hung up.

“Well, this should be interesting,” Morrigan said.

￼

I awoke between Katarina and Colleen. Colleen had concealed her true form again, though she was still Young Colleen and she’d retained her true-form boobs. She was naked beside me, and I couldn’t resist rolling over and cupping one of them gently. She rolled closer and kissed me.

“First day of the rest of our existence,” she said.

“Yep.”

“This feels so different. So much more intimate. How does Katarina stand it?”

“For the first five months we were together, she was incapable of loving me. So we had some time to adjust.”

“I’m not incapable of love,” she said.

I thumbed her nipple and kissed her nose. “I know. I can feel it.”

Then she closed her eyes. “Jimmy, you’re keeping something from me. I can feel that. What is it?”

I sighed. “Will you let me decide when to tell you? One thing at a time.”

Her eyes opened, and she stared at me. “It’s that big?”

“It is.”

“It’s not bad?” she asked.

“Far from it.”

“Okay. I guess I have to trust you.”

“It won’t be long. I still need to get my head around it, and I want to get us to a good place first.”

She nodded, biting her lip a little. “Fair enough. This some serious shit.”

I woke Katarina and went upstairs to get ready. Hayley was up making coffee. She had on shapeless cotton pajamas and her long red hair was up in a messy bun, but she was still beautiful.

“Hey,” she said.

I kissed her. “Hey. You all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“With everything?”

“Yes, James Kaplan, I am fine with the fact that I’m now sharing you with two gorgeous immortal beings who are going to be with you long after I’m dead.”

I looked for a trace of sarcasm in her face and saw nothing.

She laughed. “You don’t believe me.”

“I want to believe you.”

She slid her arms around my waist and hugged me. “This is going to sound weird. It feels weird even saying it. But there’s a reason.”

“Which is?”

“Katarina has been with you the entire time I’ve been with you, except that first night. She lives with us. She knows me. And she never forgets anything. Like, nothing.”

“Right.”

“Which means you won’t ever forget me. She won’t let you. She’ll be able to replay every conversation we ever have. And I gave her permission for something, and please don’t freak out when I say this.”

I pulled her closer. “I think I know what you’re going to say.”

“Yeah, you do. She’s allowed to be me, when I’m gone, so you can remember me. If you get an itch for me five hundred years from now when you’re a demon lord, you’ll be able to do something about it. And that actually feels good to me, knowing it.”

“I definitely lucked out with you.”

She rose up on her toes and kissed me. “All I ask is that you never forget that.”

￼

When the six of us arrived at the cheerleader restaurant, I was shocked to realize that Volach and Morax were already there. Every other time we’d met them, they’d been exactly on time. Today, we were a few minutes early, and they’d gotten there before us. The reason came into view as the hostess took us to their booth.

Amira was here as well. She was dressed somewhat conservatively – for her – but she still radiated sex appeal in every direction.

“Hello, Jimmy,” she said.

“Amira.”

She looked at Colleen. “Your coven continues to expand, I see." Then she looked at MJ. “In power, as well as number. Impressive.”

“Things have been busy.”

“He bestowed the sword upon you?” she asked MJ.

“Yes.”

“May I see it? Just out of morbid curiosity.”

MJ had shrunk it to the size and shape of a letter opener to fit into a pocket of her tights. She discreetly drew it out and set it on the table.

“Bound to you already,” Amira said. “Such a thing of power for one so young. What will you do with it, I wonder?”

“I’ve done a few things,” MJ replied.

The waitress came over, and MJ quickly hid the sword again. Volach ordered two overpriced bottles of champagne, and the rest of us put in our orders.

When she was gone, Volach leaned forward. “We should probably get down to business.”

I remembered something Katarina told me a while ago. Demons can smell lies. I would need to be very, very careful here.

“I’m here,” I said to Amira, “and so are you, which I find interesting.”

Amira smiled. “This is a matter of great importance, as Volach told you. The currency of Hell is souls, and our wellspring has abruptly shut off. No one knows why, and our contacts with the celestial bureaucracy, such as they are, have gone silent. This may be a temporary problem, and it may not, but we need to know what is going on. Other inquiries are being launched, but given your remarkable successes of late, Lucifer instructed me to engage your services once again.”

“What do you know? Even if it’s very little.”

“Do you know who Azrael is? The Angel of Death?”

“Yes.” This was the truth, and I couldn’t pretend otherwise.

“He is responsible for directing new souls to their final destination. The pure ones go to Heaven, those capable of being purified go to Purgatory, and all the others go to us. As people die every moment, that is normally a steady stream. But several hours ago by your reckoning, Azrael stopped directing traffic and disappeared. All those souls are now stuck in Purgatory until he returns. None go to Heaven, none come to us. That is, as I assume you can understand, a serious problem.”

“I can imagine.”

“So we need you to investigate,” Amira said. “The celestials are certainly conducting their own investigations, but they move far too slowly for our taste. Lucifer wants this addressed now. Your dream castle is conveniently next to Purgatory, so I would suggest starting there.”

“That’s it?”

“That is the sum of what we know.” She smiled and looked at Katarina. “And no, I did not forget the matter of compensation this time. Any solid information will be worth a thousand souls. Solve this problem, and I am empowered to guarantee you a seat as a King of Hell when the time comes for you to assume it.”

I listened to the soft gasps around me. But I kept my eyes on Amira.

“I’ll do what I can.”

“Good. Now, I am afraid I need to get back. Enjoy your brunch.”

She vanished.

The waitress returned with the champagne and orange juice and began pouring out the mimosas. Volach tossed his back and extended it for a refill. She filled him up again and left.

“You’ve come a long way, kid,” Morax said. “This shakes out well for you, I hope you’ll remember the ones who helped you get there.”

I nodded. “Yeah, don’t worry about that.”

￼

I was concerned that Volach and Morax would want to talk shop, but instead they wanted to talk about the basketball playoffs. Grateful for the reduced risk, I was happy to take them up on it. I had no idea so many professional basketball players were on contract with the infernal bureaucracy.

When I finished my omelet, I got up to take a piss. As I came back through the restaurant and passed the hostess station, the girl standing there suddenly waved her hand at me.

“Um, hey,” she said, “can I ask you something?”

I stopped. “What?”

“Are you like, really rich, or something like that?”

“Uh, no.” I sort of was, but I knew it wasn’t in the way she meant. “Why?”

“I mean, you come in here a lot, and you’ve always got all these beautiful girls with you. You don’t look like an actor or an athlete, but there’s obviously something about you. I just can’t figure out what it is.”

I looked her over for a moment. It was fairly obvious that, like most of the girls who worked at this place, she’d been hired as much for her face and body as for any other qualities, though she wasn’t really my type. She was too conventionally, forgettably hot, and my tastes ran to pretty girls with memorable looks like Hayley, MJ, and Morrigan, or to absolute drop-dead beautiful like Katarina and Colleen.

But I realized I’d seen her before. She was the same girl whose math skills I’d improved a couple of weeks ago.

Despite everything that was going on, I didn’t feel like just dismissing her. I’d spent so much time hiding who I was, yet people saw it anyway. Jacob the blacksmith. Yuki the cat-shifter. And this girl. No doubt there were others.

I knew I could probably tell her whatever I wanted. She might repeat it, but no one would believe her.

“Do you go to Huntington?” I finally asked.

“Yeah. I’m on a lot of financial aid, which is why I have to work here.”

“What's your name?”

“Brandi.” Somehow I heard the i. It fit. It had to be that or Tiffani.

“Brandi, did you used to have trouble with math, but about two weeks ago, everything just clicked? All of a sudden, you got it? Math is easy for you now?”

Her eyes swelled, and her jaw dropped a little.

“Yeah. How did you know that?”

“Because I did it,” I said. “I don’t know if you remember, but it was the last Sunday brunch I was here. Maybe you had math homework that night, and you were surprised at how easy it was. Maybe your professor even wrote you a note about the sudden improvement in your work. I can sense that you’ve spent the last two weeks wondering what the hell happened.”

Her eyes had gone as big as dinner plates.

“How?” she gasped softly.

“I have this power to improve things,” I went on. “Make people better. There are a lot of other things I can do, but that’s the biggest. If you can keep quiet about it, I can grant you another wish. Is there something else you’d like me to improve?”

“That’s impossible,” she gasped.

I tilted my head at her. “No? Okay.” I turned to go, but then she lurched forward.

“Wait—”

“What?”

She looked around rapidly. We were mostly out of sight of my booth, and the place was busy enough that no one was paying attention to us.

“Can you really do anything?”

“Not anything, but most things.”

She lowered her voice. “Can you make my tits bigger?”

I had to stifle a laugh. I’d sensed the desire in her that morning, that she wanted bigger boobs and a smaller butt. But I’d been through this with Hayley and Morrigan, and I wasn’t going to judge her.

“How much bigger? Too much and people will notice.”

Brandi looked down at herself.

“I’m a 32B. Can you give me a C? A big C?”

I looked into her head. She wanted this so badly that seeing it took almost no effort. She wanted firm, gravity-defying boobs like Hayley’s. So I gave them to her, shrinking her ass in the process just because I could.

The cheerleader top she had on swelled outward, and Brandi gasped loudly. She grabbed herself, then let go and looked up in embarrassment, glancing around to see if anyone had seen what she’d done. Then she looked at me.

“Oh, my God.”

“I need to get back to my girls. Have fun with those.”

She watched as I walked away.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Chapter 19

￼

“SO WHAT DO we do now?” Hayley asked when we got home.

I was lying across the couch with my head in Hayley’s lap and my feet in Morrigan’s. Hayley was gently playing with my hair and Morrigan was playing with my toes. MJ, Colleen, and Katarina were sitting around us.

“Can we actually solve this problem we created?” I asked. “How did Azrael get that responsibility in the first place?”

“It was assigned to him in the very beginning,” Colleen said. “He’s the only one who has ever been in that role.”

“Was this a power he had, or whatever?” Morrigan asked. “I mean, he can’t possibly have been sitting there just directing traffic with so many people dying every second.”

“I’m not really sure,” Colleen replied. “He wasn’t always this busy.”

“There are a lot more people alive now,” Hayley said.

“To be sure, the flow has increased substantially since I became a demon,” Katarina said.

“Okay, then work with me a second,” I said. “If it’s a power he had, would it have survived him? Could it have an existence separate from him, like Colleen’s powers?”

No one said anything for a few moments.

“It’s possible,” Colleen finally said. “That’s all I can tell you. It’s possible.”

“Did you ever use that power of yours?” Hayley asked her.

Colleen’s face tightened. “Yes.”

“How did it work, exactly?” I asked. “I talked to Else about it, but she really had no idea what she did. She was terrified I was about to die and just lashed out.”

Colleen nodded. “That’s how it worked, actually. As an expression of anger and fear. And it just . . . disintegrated them, like you saw.”

“So do you have any sense of what happened to Azrael?” Hayley asked. “If there’s anything left of him? Can you see it?”

Colleen closed her eyes for a moment. “No. By which I mean, Purgatory is a hot mess right now. Tens of thousands of souls running around that don’t belong there, and more every minute. The entire functioning of it is being upended. If there’s something left of Azrael, I’m not sure I could sense it.”

“How could we find out?” MJ asked. “Could we ask the spirits?”

“Else could,” I said. “Assuming they were willing to help her. But she’s really upset about this right now.”

“What about your computer model?” Hayley asked.

I shook my head. “It didn’t work last time until Else yelled at the spirits. I think they’re still pissed at me.”

“Isn’t Adriana good at this stuff?” Morrigan said.

I thought about that for a moment. “She is.”

“You should ask her about it, then.”

“It’s a place to start, at least,” Hayley said.

It was, but before I called her, I wanted to check on something, a follow-up to the discussion I’d had about her moving down here. A few minutes at my laptop was enough to answer my question in the affirmative. Then I got my phone and called her.

I thanked her for connecting me with Jacob before getting to the matter at hand.

“Before I explain things, you need to understand this is something that is potentially very dangerous. It has the attention of both bureaucracies. But it’s a problem I need to solve if I can.”

“All right,” she said, “then Jimmy, I have a question of my own for you first.”

“Shoot.”

“If you are asking me to take such a risk, I require assurance about where I stand with you. I think I have made my feelings about you perfectly clear by now. This sounds like the sort of task you would ask a member of your coven to undertake. And it feels odd that you would ask a mere acquaintance such things.”

“You’re asking if I want you as part of my coven,” I said.

“I have told you several times that I am willing to join you . . . assuming you want me. You have never quite answered me on that point.”

“The reluctance was only due to your being in Zagan’s Rock,” I said. “Are you serious about moving down here?”

“Does your offer of support still stand?” she asked. “I have a house I would need to sell and a business I would need to relocate.”

“It does,” I said. “In fact, there are several condo units in my building that are for sale right now. One is on the fifteenth floor, a few doors down from Colleen. If you’re ready to move, I’ll trade in some souls and buy it for you. I can pay cash. Based on the listing, it’s unoccupied. We could close on it in a week. You could rent your house or whatever and focus on moving The Black Rose. That’s my offer. Come down here, and I want you with us.”

She answered me instantly. “Then I accept. You are a powerful sorcerer, and I am ready to serve however you desire.” She laughed softly. “And you know I mean that.”

I laughed with her, remembering that dream. “I do. But wait until you hear this before getting too excited.”

“All right. Then tell me.”

So I explained everything. Adriana sighed when I got to the end of it.

“Caralho! Such things you get yourself mixed up in, Jimmy! This must be the explanation for the turmoil in the spirit world today.”

“I’m sure. Do you think you can help?”

“I can certainly try. What they will tell me, I cannot say.”

“Thank you. Just let me know what you find out, if anything.”

“I will. This may take an hour or two. I will call you when I am done.”

￼

While we waited for Adriana, I went to the castle to check on Else. I found her in the library, surrounded by a big pile of books.

“Hello, Father.”

I looked closer and saw that nearly every book was open to a ritual on summoning. In the center of everything was a pile of notes she’d taken.

“Any luck?” I asked.

“I am still reading.”

“You’re wondering whether I could summon you to the mortal world?”

I saw the yearning in her big blue eyes, and it nearly killed me.

“Yes,” she said.

“You’re not a demon or a celestial. You’re not even a spirit-child anymore. I’m not sure what we might do.”

“I know,” she said. “I understand. I am not sure what I am either. But this seems like the place to start.”

I sat down with her. “Let’s see what we can find, then.”

She smiled quickly and pushed a stack of books toward me.

“These rituals are for summoning celestials. I thought since I have Colleen’s power, and she is a celestial, this might be the way.”

I nodded. “All right. Let me have a look.”

I spent about an hour reading through the things she’d found. Summoning celestials was an entirely different proposition from summoning demons. If the grimoires were to be believed, they simply wouldn’t answer a call from sorcerers who weren’t serving the celestial bureaucracy, unless they were very powerful. And even then, it was dicey.

Else wasn’t a celestial, and she had no connection to the celestial bureaucracy. She wanted to be summoned.

Demons generally wanted to be summoned too, because coming to the mortal world gave them more opportunities for mischief. But that was why the rituals were so complicated. They had to be set up so the demons did what you wanted and nothing else.

Else didn’t need to be confined either. She only wanted to come to the mortal world to be with me and my coven.

The common denominator was simply getting her there. And I realized I had never really given much thought to the actual mechanism. What was it, exactly, that pulled a demon or celestial to the mortal world when they were summoned?

“I think we’re looking at the wrong thing,” I said finally. “We need to focus on whatever magic is necessary to take you from here to there. Nothing else. None of the rest of this seems like it would matter. Figure out that transport mechanism, and I think we can get you there.”

She smiled. “You are so wise, Father. I will see what I can find.”

“Do you think you could help me with something else first?”

Her eyes lit up. “Of course.”

“It’s about Azrael. So I fully understand if you’re uncomfortable with it.”

She bit her lip quickly.

“It is important?”

I told her about the meeting with Amira, Volach, and Morax.

“If we’re to solve this problem,” I said, "we need to know. You’re the only one the spirits seem to listen to anymore. They’ve stopped answering to me.”

“I am so sorry I caused this.”

I shook my head. “That’s behind us, little mouse. Put it behind you. We’ve got to move forward.”

“All right. I will try.” Then she pursed her lips. “No. I will do it. There is no try.”

I stifled the grin that tried to crease my face. “Good.” I stood up. We went to the computer room, and I started up the divination model.

“Remember what happened last time?” I asked her.

“Yes.” She looked up, and her eyes went unfocused. “You must help us!”

I turned to the screen.

“Did Azrael’s power to direct the souls to their final destination survive his destruction?”

The answer came instantly.

YES

I exhaled slowly as a tingle rose up my back.

“Is it still in Purgatory?”

NO

No? I thought. Then where the fuck did it go?

“So where is it?”

LOST

Yeah, no shit.

“How do we find it?”

WE CANNOT HELP WE CANNOT TOUCH IT WE CANNOT SEE IT YOU MUST FIND IT YOU MUST TAKE IT UP THE NOISE THE NOISE THE NOISE THE SOULS ON FIRE AND CONFUSED AND LOST AND ANGRY SAVE US SAVE US SAVE US WE BEG IT

“They seem somewhat upset,” Else said.

I leaned back in the chair. “That they do, little mouse.”

I stared at the screen for a few moments.

“Is there someone who can help us find it?”

ADRIANA THE CAT-GIRL

“Adriana?” Else said. “She is not a cat, nor a girl.”

I sat there staring at the screen in disbelief.

“The things the spirits say aren’t always straightforward,” I said. “I think they mean Adriana, and someone I met the other night. A cat-shifter. Her name is Yuki. What she has to do with this, I have no clue.”

She put her hand on my shoulder. “So did this help?”

“Definitely.” I stood up and kissed her forehead. “I need to get back. See what you can figure out in the library.”

“I will, Father.”

￼

When I emerged from the dream castle, only Hayley, Morrigan, and Katarina were there. Hayley was studying, and Katarina was folding laundry in the bedroom. I had my head on Morrigan’s lap now. She must have moved over while I was projecting myself.

“Where is everyone?”

“MJ went back her dorm to get some clean clothes and stuff,” she said. “Colleen went downstairs. She said to call her if we needed her.” She picked at my hair affectionately. “Is Adriana really moving to Santo Domingo? What about her store?”

“She’s going to move that too.”

“Do you think she’d let me work there?” she asked.

“You want to work there?”

She laughed. “Are you kidding? I would kill to work in a place like that.”

“What about Celeste?”

“I love Celeste, but it’s becoming very obvious she’s uncomfortable with me working at Soul Journeys, because of my connection to you. You know how she feels about all this demon stuff.”

Morrigan’s aunt Celeste ran a spell shop where Morrigan worked part-time. Celeste had broken with the infernal bureaucracy long ago and had made it clear she wanted to live a demon-free life.

"I would bet Adriana would love the help, especially getting things set up here.”

I checked my phone. There was nothing from Adriana. I wasn’t sure what to do about Yuki. She’d said she would call me when she was able to. Then I thought of something.

“When Yuki used your phone the other night,” I asked Hayley, “what number did she call?”

She looked over. “Why?”

I told her what Else and I learned from the spirits. Her eyebrows went up.

“That’s crazy! What could she possibly have to do with this?”

“I have no fucking idea, which is why I need to find her.”

I got up from the couch. Hayley pulled out her phone and scrolled through her recent calls. She found the two Yuki had made and gave me the numbers.

The first one, I remembered, was to some guy named Sean who hadn’t picked up. The second was to her friend Kaitlyn, who had come to get her. Starting there seemed like the best bet.

I dialed Kaitlyn’s number. No one answered, and it went to voice mail. I left a message explaining who I was and that I needed to talk to Yuki.

I didn’t want to bother Adriana, since she was likely in the middle of something I didn’t want to interrupt, now that I knew she was one of the ways forward. So instead, I opened my demon phone and cashed in enough souls to buy that condo downstairs. Then I called the real estate agent who had helped my find mine and explained what I wanted.

Naturally, she got quite excited at an immediate, unexpected commission.

“You understand that ‘cash’ means you wire your own money immediately?”

“The money is sitting in my account as we speak here.”

“All right, good. I’ve just encountered clients who have strange ideas about what ‘cash’ means, like it’s still cash even if the cash is coming from the bank. You want me to make the offer right now? Sight unseen? If you want to close that fast, we can’t put any contingencies on it.”

“It’s the same floor plan as mine and the photos look fine. And yeah, I want it ASAP.”

“All right, give me a little while to draw up the offer and get it over to you for signature.”

“Thanks.”

Hayley looked over at me when I hung up. “You’re really doing this?”

“Adriana needs a place to live.”

“When do I get my condo?”

“When you ask, and when you’re comfortable paying for it in souls.”

She laughed. “Kidding. I’m fine here.” She leaned over and pecked me on the cheek.

I had only just caught my breath from the conversation with my agent when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, but I answered it anyway.

“This is Jimmy.”

“Hey, Jimmy the sorcerer, it’s Yuki. Sorry about not calling you, but I literally got my new phone an hour ago. Still setting it up. Kaitlyn said you called her.”

“Yeah, there’s something we need to discuss,” I said. “Can you meet me?”

“Like, right now?”

“Right now, or very soon. This is better explained in person, but it’s important.”

“You need me for something important?” She paused a moment. “Does this have anything to do with the place you got me out of? Because I’d really prefer to stay as far away from them as possible.”

“Yes, and no it doesn't. It's something different.”

“Okay. Then where?”

“How far are you from Huntington?”

“Ten minutes, maybe,” she said.

“There’s a coffee shop across the street from campus on the corner of McKinley and Prescott. Can you be there in fifteen minutes?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. See you then.”

Charlotte hopped up on the table and meowed at me.

“Everything okay?” I asked her.

She purred and rubbed against my arm. I scratched her ears for a moment.

“I don’t know how long this will take,” I said to Hayley, “since I have no idea what’s going on here.”

“Just don’t bring home any stray cats,” she said. “You have one already.”

“I know.” Charlotte meowed again. When I stood up, she swiped at my arm. “What?” I asked. She meowed again.

“She wants something,” Hayley said.

Most of the time, I could get a general sense of what Charlotte wanted. And what I sensed now was that she wanted to come with me.

This made sense, I guessed. I was meeting a cat-shifter. For all I knew here, my cat familiar might have something to contribute. I picked her up and put her over my shoulder.

“You’re taking her?”

“Looks like it. I’ll see you later.”

Chapter 20

￼

I GOT TO the coffee shop before Yuki did. I left Charlotte at a table outside and got my coffee, then came back out and sat down. Charlotte hopped into my lap.

I’d been there only a few minutes when a little silver Japanese sedan with racing graphics on the hood and doors pulled up in front. The engine revved once, then shut down. Yuki got out a moment later.

Unlike the other night, when she’d been naked, she was wearing red tights and a white bra top, with a short hoodie over it. She saw me immediately and came over to my table.

“Hey.”

“Get your coffee, if you want anything.”

She went inside to order and came back a minute later. Her rather sizable boobs bounced noticeably as she sat down. That was when Charlotte jumped on the table. Yuki gasped, and her jaw dropped.

“She’s your familiar.”

“Yes,” I said. “She wanted to come for some reason.”

“I know.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “You can tell?”

“Cat-shifters and cats can communicate. You have to know that much.”

“You're the first shifter I’ve ever met, cat or otherwise.”

“Huh. So, hey, first thing, just so there’s no misunderstandings,” she said. “I saw all those hot girls in your coven. If you’re thinking of anything like that here, I’m sorry, I owe you big-time, but that’s not something I can do.”

“That wasn’t why I asked you here.”

“Okay. It’s not about you, honest. I don’t know how much you know about shifters, but we mate only once. You seem like a really cool guy, but I can tell you’re not my mate. It’s a pheromone thing. I’m still looking for him.”

“Well, I’m not a shifter,” I said.

She laughed in mild disbelief. “Wow, you really don’t know anything, do you?”

“What am I missing here?”

“All cat-shifters are female. We mate with human males. But like I said, you’re not him.”

I nodded. “So, how does it work with you, exactly? You have a human form, and that panther form?”

“We have a big shift and a little shift. That’s the panther, and I can also shift to a cat-form like Charlotte.”

I looked at my familiar. “She told you her name?”

“Yeah. And for our mates, we can take hybrid form, mostly human but with cat ears, claws, and a tail.”

“You said something the other night about being ‘awakened.’” I asked. “What does that mean?”

“I didn’t know what I was until a couple of years ago. It’s weird, I spent my childhood just not fitting into anything, I didn’t like most people, but I loved cats. My mom hated them, so I would feed the strays.”

“Your mom wasn’t a shifter?”

“No, that’s not how it works. One day when I was eighteen, this stray bit me, and boom. It wasn’t like I was infected with anything. It was like it woke everything up inside me. I could talk to cats and understand them. That night, I shifted for the first time.”

I took a long sip of coffee.

“Okay. The reason I wanted to meet is that I think you can help me find something. Does the name Azrael mean anything to you?”

Her eyes widened. “You know Azrael?”

I lost my breath for a moment. “You know Azrael?”

“Big Black guy, drives a black Gen IV Supra with a 1GZ-FE swap?”

I shook my head in confusion. “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand a single word you just said.”

“It’s a car. You know what a Supra is, right?”

“A Toyota.”

“The Gen IV Supra is like, the Holy Grail of tuning. They’re collectors’ cars now. An unmodified one in good condition would cost you like two hundred grand. And Azrael’s has a twin-turbo V12 from a Toyota Century limo. He’s never lost a race. Sometimes noobs will try racing him anyway, but nobody ever sees them again. People call him the Angel of Death.”

I just sat there as my ears rang and the blood drained out of my face. Yuki stared at me.

“What did I say?” she asked.

“Do you think you could help me find him?”

Of course, I knew that if this Azrael was the Azrael, the same one Else had destroyed – and something told me he was, as insane as this seemed – he was gone. But I was willing to bet he’d left something very important behind.

“I have no idea where he even lives,” Yuki said, “except he tends to race down by the beach. But I guess I could ask some people.”

“You help me find this guy, we’re even.”

Her eyes widened a bit. “Wow, it’s that important?”

“Yes, it is. You have no idea.”

“Okay, I’ll do what I can.”

￼

By the time I got home, my agent had drawn up the offer for the other condo and emailed it to me for signature. She suggested we offer the list price, since the market was fairly hot right now. I’d only had to cash in five souls out of the thousands I had in my balance, so I didn’t really care. I clicked through the link she’d sent, read through it briefly, and signed.

Adriana still hadn’t called, so I went to my laptop to do a little research. I read up on the car Yuki had told me about, and I realized I’d seen a few of them around Santo Domingo over the years. I wasn’t a car guy by any means, but Santo Domingo had a healthy custom car scene, as well as an underground street-racing culture, so just living here was enough to get exposed to things.

The articles I read confirmed what Yuki had told me about their value. Anyone using one of these things as a legit street racer had to be rich enough not to care or had a completely different set of priorities from the average car owner, let alone collector.

I then did a search on Azrael, Supras, and Santo Domingo street-racing. That brought up a bunch of posts on an internet car forum. It didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know from what Yuki told me, but there were several photos of Azrael’s car. The shots were taken at night during a race, and the details were hard to make out clearly.

It was a black Supra with gold custom wheels, a lowered suspension, and what looked like a custom body-kit. Unlike a lot of the tuner cars I’d seen around town, it wasn’t covered in stickers and graphics. There was just something on the hood that looked like a bird, or a set of wings.

There were a few discussions of Azrael himself, but specifics were limited. Nearly all of the posts had an undercurrent of wariness around him. He came and went from the meetups, said little or nothing, and never challenged anyone to a race. But if challenged, he always accepted. The consensus was that anyone challenging him had a death wish. There had supposedly been crashes and disappearances, though all of these stories sounded secondhand. No one seemed to know anything about him, or at least no one was willing to post what they knew publicly.

My phone rang while I was reading through all this. I picked it up, hoping it would be Adriana, but it was my agent.

“The owner accepted your offer and the short escrow,” she said. “Are you ready to move on this?”

“Yeah, let’s do it.”

“All right, I’ll get started on the paperwork. Should be ready later tonight.”

“One other thing,” I said. “Does anyone in your office do commercial real estate? I’m looking specifically for a good spot for a goth clothing boutique that’s not too far from my house.”

“I do not,” she said, “but I definitely know someone who can help. I’ll get you in touch with her.”

“Great, thanks.”

Morrigan had been studying with Hayley at the kitchen table while I was on the couch with my laptop. She beamed at me when I hung up with my agent.

“This is going to be so cool,” she laughed. “My life just keeps getting better.”

“We just murdered the Angel of Death,” Hayley said, “and you think things are getting better?”

Morrigan just wiggled her head. “That stuff will work itself out. It always does.”

￼

Adriana finally called after lunch. I filled her in on my conversation with Yuki.

“That is fascinating," she said. “Jimmy, I may have something for you as well, but I cannot tell you what it means. What I saw makes little sense to me.”

“I know the feeling. What did you get?”

“Please understand that my contacts with the spirits are not like yours, like your computer. It is nothing so clear and straightforward. When I go into my trance, I see things, visions and images, and I must sort through them on my own. I spent quite some time in there, but I saw only two things clearly.”

“Which were what?” I asked.

“I saw a building. It looked like an old gas station, with a repair bay. There was a black car parked inside it. Do you think it could be the same one this girl described? I know nothing about cars.”

“Possibly. What else?”

“I also saw a ring of keys.”

“A key ring?” I asked.

“Yes. There were several keys on it, but one stood out. The grip or whatever you would call it, the part on the end, it was black plastic and had a Toyota logo. I saw it. The key ring itself had something that looked like a pair of gold wings on a little chain.”

A key ring.

Azrael’s lost power was the key to this race car of his. It had to be.

“Jimmy?”

“Sorry, I was thinking.”

“Does this make any sense?” Adriana asked.

“It does, believe it or not. Did you get any kind of feeling about where that key ring was?”

“Other than that these two things are near you, I did not. I am sorry.”

“That's good enough. It may well be what we need, if this cat shifter can give me a lead on where Azrael lived or at least parked this car, and it matches this place you saw, this could do it.”

“Good luck, Jimmy.”

“By the way, I put in an offer on that condo, and the owner accepted. My agent is taking care of the sale. I also got her working on finding a good place to relocate The Black Rose. The commercial agent is going to get in touch soon.”

I heard her taking a deep breath.

“Jimmy, when I arrive, you should be prepared for me to fully demonstrate my gratitude for all the things you have done for me. I expect that it will take us quite some time.”

I laughed. “I’ll make sure you have it.”

￼

After a rather eventful day, nothing more happened that night. I didn’t hear anything from Yuki. We all had school in the morning, so we turned in early. Morrigan stayed for dinner, but went back to her dorm afterward. I texted with MJ for a little bit. Colleen came up to spend the night, and the four of us cuddled up in my giant bed, me between Hayley and Katarina, with Colleen against Katarina’s back.

“This still feels weird, sharing a bed now,” Colleen said, “but I like it.”

Katarina turned her head around and kissed her. “And now you will never be alone again, Colleen, nor will I.”

Colleen just hugged her. I put Katarina to sleep and turned out the light.

Once I was asleep, I went to the castle to check on Else. I found her in the library with Charlotte.

“How’s it going?”

“We are still reading, my love,” Charlotte said.

I sat down with them.

“Father?” Else asked. "Can you tell me more about how you were born? Do you know the spell that Amira cast?”

I’d watched the event through Amalia’s eyes, during a dream, and I remembered it all vividly.

“It was a ritual she conducted with another witch named Deirdre,” I explained. “There was a potion of sorts they brewed up, and Amalia called Zagan’s power into it. Then the magic went from the potion into my mother’s womb. I was formed from her and Zagan. That pulled me into the mortal world, but in doing so, I had to take a piece of my mother’s soul. She survived the process until I was born. My being born tore her soul in two and killed her.”

“I think I see it,” Else said. “There was a focus object, the potion, and a vessel, your mother’s womb. That allowed the magic to pull you into the mortal world.”

“And you think we could do something similar with you?”

Charlotte put her hand on Else’s arm. “His mother died, little mouse.”

“Because Father did not have a soul until the spell was cast.”

I looked at Charlotte. “She has a point. Else’s spirit seems fully formed to me.”

“So we only need a focus object and the vessel,” Else said.

“It still took the power of a King of Hell to do it,” I said, “deposed though he was.”

“You have that power now, Father.”

“I do, yeah. At the same time, I’m not sure how my power of improvement helps us here. We may need something else.”

“And what of the vessel?” Charlotte asked.

Else sighed and looked down at the books. I reached over and rubbed her shoulder.

“We’ll figure something out. I think you’re on the right track. Maybe the answers will come to us.”

I stayed with them because I wanted to help, though I had no clue about what to do here. Finding what amounted to a surrogate mother who would accept a spirit-child into her womb, like Mary-Beth had done for me, seemed like a non-starter. That was without getting into the issues of turning Else back into an infant, given what she knew and could do.

I had no idea what the result of that might be. Would she remember anything or not? If she did, would she be able to handle life as a helpless baby? If she didn’t, would she still have her powers? It wasn’t hard to see the potential problems with a toddler packing the ability to destroy angels and demons during a tantrum.

Could we use a different sort of vessel? But if so, what? Mary-Beth had used her womb because she wanted to bear a child. Else’s mother was Charlotte. Charlotte had an existence in the mortal world, but as a cat, not a human. And we certainly couldn’t put Else into cat-Charlotte.

Or could we?

I thought about all things I’d learned that day, and I had an idea.

Chapter 21

￼

ANGEL OF DEATH or not, spring break was over and I had school to worry about. Monday morning, Colleen and I went down to the gym together to work out. She didn’t exactly need to anymore, but I did. We’d been doing it since I met her there that first day after working in the archives, and we had just continued.

We were on the treadmills when she looked over to me.

“Still not ready to spill this big secret?”

I tried to ignore the twinge in my gut. “Let’s get this other stuff resolved first. I want to be able to focus on it.”

“You’ve really got me intrigued now. It better be worth all this build-up.”

I thought about it for a moment, what it meant. What it was going to mean for our existence together.

“That won’t be an issue, trust me.”

I had Dr. Vicenza’s Inorganic Chemistry lecture at ten. Hayley and Morrigan were in this class, though Hayley was in a different lab section from mine. Since I hadn’t told anyone about Morrigan, she was still in the same section from last semester. She and Hayley sat together in the middle of the lecture hall, while I sat up front by myself as I usually did. I’d been trying very hard to hide our relationship so the undergraduates wouldn’t think I was showing any favoritism.

By the time class let out, my agent had sent the purchase documents for the condo. I spent twenty minutes clicking through all of them and signing. When I submitted everything, she sent the instructions for transferring my money to escrow when the time came in a day or two.

There was still nothing from Yuki, but the commercial agent called me just before eleven. I explained what we were doing and gave her Adriana’s number. Adriana called me about twenty minutes later. She was putting her house up for sale and starting the process to relocate her boutique.

“I forgot to mention this,” I said, “but Morrigan expressed interest in working for you, if you need the help.”

She laughed. “Of course I will need help! Do you know how much work this will be? I was going to ask if she was interested, she would be perfect. She understands things, and she has exactly the look the customers who come to my store want. And I want her spreading the word among the students at your school.”

“Great. She’ll be thrilled. I’ll let her know.”

I told Morrigan when the three of us met for lunch. She was so excited, she got in my lap and kissed me until Hayley threw a wadded-up napkin at her.

I had CE Thermodynamics after lunch. When I was walking back home, a text came in from Yuki.

Hey is this a good time?

Yeah did you find anything?

I asked around about Azrael

Everyone knows about him but nobody knows much

I got that impression myself

Some stuff I read online

Yah

But a friend of mine knows someone who supposedly knows him

Whatever that means

But this friend said Azrael has a shop near the beach

A shop?

A tuner shop

Doesn’t have a name

Blue building that looks like an old gas station

Just like what Adriana saw. Can’t say I was surprised.

It’s near the beach?

That’s it?

He said the south end of the beach right off Pacific

Didn’t have the address

Or didn’t want to give it out

Which I understand

If you ever saw Azrael you’d understand too

Assuming it was the same Azrael, as seemed obvious now, I definitely understood.

I get it yeah

Its something

Thanks

I know the neighborhood tho

It’s kind of a shifter hangout

I could help look if you want

Can you do it tonight?

Sure

When?

Let me check on some things and let you know

k

Talk to you then

￼

I called the coven together for dinner.

“Look, I know it’s a weeknight and school just started up, but I want to do this as soon as possible. I don’t know what we’re going to find there. It may be nothing. Azrael is dead. Then again, we don’t know what protections he put on this place.”

“Assuming it’s even him,” MJ said.

“Right. I’m almost certain it is, but there’s a possibility this is some huge coincidence. So if any of you want to bow out, tell me.”

Hayley sighed and looked down. “I have a molecular biology exam tomorrow, Jimmy, and this course has been kicking my ass.”

“I find that very hard to believe, but I think we can manage without you. It’s okay, babe.”

She nodded. “Thanks. I’m sorry.”

“I’m in,” Morrigan said. “I’ve got nothing much this week.”

“We’re breaking and entering again?” MJ asked.

“Possibly.”

She groaned.

“You can take a rain check,” I said. “I seriously doubt there will be anything to fight here.”

MJ shook her head. “No. I’m coming. ‘Seriously doubt’ isn’t good enough for me.”

“You need me,” Colleen said.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Jimmy?” Katarina asked.

“I think we’re good. You can stay with Hayley. Figure she’ll need some coffee tonight.”

Hayley laughed weakly.

After dinner, I connected with Yuki and confirmed that we were still on for tonight. Then I called Adriana, asking her to watch her texts. In case we found something, I intended to send her a picture before we did anything, since she was the only one who’d seen this place, even it was only in a vision.

There was still plenty of the invisibility lotion left, so I had MJ, Morrigan, and Colleen cover themselves in case we needed it. Then we got changed into some dark clothes. MJ packed her sword, and Morrigan brought her spell bag. I brought my usual gear. At nine, we got ready to go.

“Be careful,” Hayley said. “And keep us posted.”

I drove down toward the water, reaching the south end of Pacific Boulevard in about fifteen minutes. Yuki had asked me to meet her in the parking lot of a strip shopping center, and her little silver sedan was there waiting for us when I pulled in. She got out as I pulled up and parked.

She was dressed about the same as she’d been the previous day, tights, little cropped t-shirt, and a gray hoodie.

“Hey.”

“You hear anything more from your friends?” I asked.

“No. This is it. How do you want to do this?”

“You said you know this neighborhood?”

“I mean, yeah, sort of,” she said. “But I have no idea where this place could be. We’re just going to have to drive around and look.”

“I’m pretty sure I know what to look for. Can’t be that many old gas stations.”

“Just, if you do stop, wait for me. Like I said, this is a shifter hangout at night, and if anything happens, it will go easier if I’m with you.”

“Sounds good.”

We got back into my car. Yuki pulled out, and I followed her.

“We just drive around?” MJ asked.

“Look for anything that looks like an old gas station that’s been converted to something else. Yuki said it’s blue, but that might be hard to tell in the dark. If we see any possibilities, I’m texting Adriana to confirm.”

“What should I do?” Colleen asked. “Just try to sense anything? If this is actually Azrael’s secret mortal-world hideout, the place has to be protected by the strongest divination wards ever.”

“Probably. Just do whatever you can.”

We followed Yuki through the neighborhood behind Pacific. This was mostly commercial offices, warehouses, little strip shopping centers, and anonymous single-story buildings, many of which were boarded up. We passed a couple of gas stations that were clearly not what we were looking for, as they were still selling gas. About a mile down, Yuki turned right, then right again, taking us back the other direction.

After about twenty minutes of searching, we’d found nothing, and Colleen hadn’t sensed anything either. Yuki finally pulled over to the curb and stopped, then got out. We joined her.

“I’m sorry. This was where he told me to look.”

“It’s a big area,” I said. “Maybe we could look further to the south.”

“He said it was at the south end of Pacific. But I guess that could mean past the end.”

Colleen gasped softly. “Someone's coming.”

Yuki looked past me. “Yeah.”

I turned around. The street was dark behind us, but with the feline night vision I got from Charlotte, I could see fairly well.

Up the block, a group of people were coming down the sidewalk. As they got closer, I saw that it was four girls. But they moved with an easy, confident grace you would not have expected from a group of young women out at night in a neighborhood like this one.

“Shifters?” I asked Yuki.

“Yeah.”

They were all dressed in tight, sexy clothing, short skirts and t-shirts, tights and bra tops, or minidresses. They pulled up as they got within about fifteen feet of us.

The girl in the center of the group, who was tall and thin with orange hair, spoke up.

“Yuki.”

“Felicia. We’re not looking for trouble.”

“These aren't your grounds.”

“We’re just stopping for a minute. Not doing anything.”

“Who are they?” Felicia asked.

“I’m Jimmy,” I said.

Felicia looked at me. “Nice car.” Then at Morrigan. “Nice hair.” Then back at me. “What are you doing here?”

“Business.”

“Which is?”

“Which is my business. Like she said, we’re not looking for trouble.”

She narrowed her eyes me. The impression I got from her wasn’t feline. It was something else. She had eyes almost like a fox, big and red-brown.

I saw MJ reaching discreetly toward the pocket of her tights where she’d stuck the sword. I extended my hand slowly in her direction, and she froze.

Felicia seemed to assess me for a few moments, then took a slow step backward. She looked at Yuki.

“Who the fuck is he? He’s not some chud you lured down here.”

Yuki looked at me. I nodded slowly.

“He’s that guy at Huntington. The sorcerer. I’m helping him.”

Felicia’s eyes widened, and the other girls lost the confident demeanor they’d had up to now. All of them stared at me.

“I heard you got collared and taken to that building,” she said to Yuki. “Was it him?”

“No. He was the one who got me out of there. So I owe him. That’s why we’re here.”

Felicia looked back at me.

“I’m looking for something,” I said. “Maybe you could help too.”

“What is it?”

“Azrael’s shop. I need to take a look at it.”

All four of them gasped.

“Why do you want to find Azrael?” one of the girls asked.

“My business, like I said. It’s probably safest if you don’t get involved with it. But if you know anything, I’d appreciate the help.”

Felicia looked at her little pack, then back at me.

“I know where it is,” she said.

“And?” I asked.

“I can show you.”

MJ took a step forward, pulling the sword from her tights. It quickly grew into the gold rapier she'd made the other night. She twirled it casually around in her hand, then pointed it directly at Felicia.

“If you think for a single moment that you’re going to fuck us over, trust me, do it and I will slice your fucking head off. Do you understand?”

Felicia’s face had gone completely white. She let out a noise that sounded very much like a dog’s frightened whimper.

“I won’t.”

She looked at the other girls. “I’ll be back.” She and Yuki got into Yuki’s car. We got back into mine and followed them. She drove south, and as I’d expected, we went just past the end of Pacific Boulevard. Yuki turned left, then into a narrow side street, then around another corner. Then she pulled over.

Up ahead, about halfway up the block, I saw a dark building that looked very much like an old, decommissioned gas station. The pumps were gone, but the overhead shelter was still there. Past what had been the little cashier’s station and quick-mart were two large bay doors, both closed. There were no signs or any other indication about what this place was.

Yuki and Felicia got out. Felicia pointed down the block.

“That’s it.”

“Hold on. Don’t go anywhere.”

I pulled out my phone and walked up until I could get a decent shot of the gas station. There were so many wards on it that it positively glowed.

I took a picture and sent it to Adriana. She answered almost immediately.

Yes

That is the building I saw

Please be careful Jimmy

I beg you

I will

I looked at the girls.

“Let's go.”

Chapter 22

￼

MJ, MORRIGAN, AND COLLEEN followed me up the street as Yuki and Felicia turned around and drove away. We kept to the sidewalk on the other side, away from the gas station. As we got closer, Morrigan gasped.

“Oh, wow.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“It’s warded?” Colleen asked.

“Like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” I replied.

“Makes sense,” MJ said.

The entire station was surrounded by an array of overlapping wards well beyond what the Collective had been using. There seemed to be an anti-divination ward, and some kind of distraction ward under that, something that would cause people to just ignore the place. There was more, but I couldn’t quite get a read on it from across the street.

I walked slowly up with the girls following behind me. The wards covered the entire property up to the sidewalk. I got a better look at them now. The composition was different from spells I’d used, but it looked like the caster had used some kind of aromatic incense, as well as sulfur. That was something I could bring down.

But I also saw something that gave me pause. There appeared to be something trapped within the wards, some kind of energy that was flowing all around the building. There was a binding ward holding it there, and that ward was woven through the others.

“Do you see that?” I asked Morrigan. “What’s inside it?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I think it’s some kind of trap,” I said. “Bring down the wards, and you get blasted.”

MJ drew her sword and extended it forward.

“There are elemental spirits trapped in there,” she said.

I nodded. That was exactly what it looked like, a combination of air and earth that would produce lightning.

“So what do we do?” Morrigan asked.

“Can you bring these wards down?” Colleen said.

“I think so,” I said. “They're not the same as the others, but they look vulnerable to the approach I’ve been using. I guess it’s unorthodox enough that no one expects it.”

“Could we drive off the spirits?” MJ asked.

I walked around studying things for a minute or so. The spirits were tightly trapped between the layers.

“I don’t see a way to do it without breaking the wards. And doing that releases the energy.”

MJ stepped up next to me. “Could we shield ourselves somehow?”

I thought about that. “How?”

“I don’t know. You’re the sorcerer everyone is afraid of.”

“If it’s lightning, could we create some kind of lightning rod?” Morrigan asked.

“Maybe. This isn’t natural lightning, though. It’s going to go where it’s directed by that ward, not necessarily where a normal electric discharge would go.”

“I can control that stuff with my sword,” MJ said.

“Creating it isn’t the same as collecting it,” I said. “But you might be onto something.”

I thought about this idea. The energy being contained looked a lot stronger than anything MJ had created so far. But if MJ could at least catch the discharge, could I redirect it from her sword to somewhere safe?

I raised my staff and called out Sídhe and Ceridwen. Rather than create any effects, I had them circle the wards, trying to get a feel for things. I got the distinct sense they wouldn’t be able to handle the initial blast, but if MJ could momentarily collect it and exercise a bit of control, they ought to be able to take it from there.

“I’d have to bring down the wards,” I said, “then you catch the lightning just for a moment, then I use my staff to guide it to a ground contact to dissipate it.”

She nodded. “That could work.”

“Could?” Colleen asked.

“I don’t see another way. This is a two-person job.”

“Let’s do it,” MJ said.

I nodded. “You might want to make that thing bigger. As big as it can get.”

She expanded it into the greatsword she’d used in the battle in Purgatory, then pushed it beyond even that, to something Conan would have been proud of.

“Wow,” Morrigan said.

I got out the last of the nitric acid and set the jug on the ground in front of the gas station. Then I stepped back into the middle of the street. I gave MJ a mask and glasses and donned mine.

“Get in front of me,” I said to MJ, “just not too close. The rest of you back up.”

MJ positioned herself about halfway between me and the sidewalk. Colleen and Morrigan went back down the street about twenty yards. I looked around for a good spot to send the lightning when I had it. The closest thing was a stop sign on the corner behind me. It would have to do.

“Okay, get ready.”

I raised my staff again and brought out Sídhe. I sent her into the nitric acid and formed a cloud in front of us. Then I sent it up against the wards. MJ extended her sword.

When the cloud of acid enveloped the wards, they began sparking and crackling as the acid broke them down. I watched the threads of magic energy twisting and contorting, trying to hold the wards together. The energy trapped inside convulsed and spasmed. The elemental spirits rocketed around in their confinement, sensing their imminent freedom.

As the outer ward collapsed, there was a noise like a crack of thunder. The elemental spirits and all the energy they’d created and contained exploded outward toward us in a blazing bolt of electricity.

MJ caught the bolt on the end of her sword, which lit up like a lightsaber. She held it tightly in two hands, struggling to control it as glowed brighter and brighter.

“Fuck!”

As soon as I was able to, I pulled out Ceridwen again to join Sídhe. I sent them swirling around MJ, trying to gather up the energy in MJ’s sword. All at once, another bolt of lightning erupted forth from the end of the blade. I strained with my staff to bend it away from her.

As the lightning arced upward through the air, I pulled it toward me and over my head into the stop sign. There was another crack-a-boom as it struck the steel post, which immediately exploded in a shower of sparks and molten metal that lit up the entire block.

MJ had fallen to her knees on the street. I ran over to her.

“I’m okay,” she gasped. “I’m okay. Just give me a minute.”

Her sword was still glowing dull red, no doubt from the heat that exchange had generated. Colleen and Morrigan rejoined us.

“Are you all right?” Morrigan asked. MJ nodded. I helped her to her feet.

“That was not what I would call discreet,” Colleen said.

She was right. There had been two big cracks of thunder in addition to all the lightning. Someone had surely noticed it.

“Time to go invisible,” I said.

I quickly cast the spell, and we vanished. But the wards were down.

I approached the gas station slowly, looking for any other dangers.

“Can you sense anything now?” I asked Colleen.

She nodded rapidly. “It’s locked up, and there’s a security system. And there’s something inside, something of great power.”

“The keys?” Morrigan asked.

“I can't tell. Maybe.”

I got out my wrought-iron key and cast the spell to unlock the place and disarm the security. That took only a moment. Then I handed out the latex gloves in my backpack.

There was a door in the main part of the building next to the mechanic’s bays. I opened it slowly.

The room beyond was about twenty feet by thirty feet. There were marks on the floor showing where shelves and the cashier’s station had once stood, but now there was nothing but a couple of old steel desks and three chairs, along with several piles of cardboard boxes. A couple of faded pin-up posters, both of them Black girls, hung on the walls. One door appeared to be a restroom, another led to the repair bay.

“Not terribly celestial,” I said.

“The Azrael I remember was a bit of a black sheep,” Colleen said. “He kind of did things his own way.”

“I guess being the Angel of Death will do that,” MJ said.

“Let’s look around, I said.

The boxes proved to contain a collection of aftermarket headlight and taillight kits. The desks were empty of anything but random paperwork – invoices, receipts, and blank forms. We found no keys.

The door to the repair bay was also locked, so I unlocked it. Then Colleen spoke up.

“Jimmy.”

She was looking out the front window, and a moment later, I saw the source of her concern. A SDPD police car was rolling slowly past, apparently investigating the recent disturbance. Someone had no doubt called them.

We all doused our flashlights. The police car stopped on the corner, and a cop got out. He walked up to the remains of the stop sign and looked down. I watched as he picked up the warped, blackened sign and examined it. Then he stood up and appeared to make a call on the radio on his shoulder.

We sat in the darkness for a few minutes as the cop looked around the area, but eventually he got back into the car and drove off.

“Thoughts?” I asked Colleen.

“He called in a report of vandalism. The SDPD has far worse things to worry about tonight.”

“Okay, good.”

I opened the door to the repair bay. I’d been expecting a cluttered, grungy expanse of tools and parts, but the reality was quite different. The place had clearly been cleaned up and cleaned out when the gas station shut down. There was a single upright rolling tool chest, and more cardboard boxes stacked around the room. There was a refrigerator near the door. A big flat-screen television hung on the back wall, and an old couch sat in front of it.

But we’d found Azrael.

His black Supra was parked in the center bay with the hood up. On the hood was a graphic in the shape of gold angel’s wings.

Azrael himself lay on the floor beside the car.

He was obviously dead. But it wasn’t the Azrael we’d fought. This was the Black guy Yuki had described – big, muscular, about six-four or six-five. He wore jeans and a red t-shirt. In the center of his chest was a blackened hole about six inches across. As I stared at the body, I saw a fuzzy sort of aura around it.

None of us said anything for about five or ten seconds. MJ was the first one to speak up.

“How?”

“That’s Azrael,” Colleen said. “What’s left of him, anyway.”

I walked over slowly. The body on the floor was clearly human.

“You’re sure?” I asked.

“The most powerful celestials can create vessels for themselves in the mortal world, in addition to appearing in their actual forms. It allows them to have dual existences, not entirely unlike a familiar does. That would appear to be the case here.”

“So this was his vessel?” But I was thinking of Else.

“Yes,” Colleen replied. “I can only assume this was his escape from his duties, when he felt the need.”

Morrigan had gone around to look in the car. As Colleen and I were examining Azrael’s body, she opened the driver’s side door and looked inside. A moment later, she came out with a key ring.

“Is this what we’re looking for? There’s no enchantment.”

It looked like an entirely mundane ring of keys, but on it were an old Toyota key and a little silver charm like the graphic on the hood.

“Tamiel’s tablet had no enchantment on it,” I said. “Because it was magic incarnate.”

Morrigan handed it to me. I set it on the rolling tool chest and took a picture, then sent the photo to Adriana.

This is what we just found

Once again, she answered right away.

That is the thing I saw

I picked up the key ring again. It didn’t feel like anything at first. Then again, neither had the tablet. But as I focused on it, I saw past its physical form. This was Azrael’s power, where it had taken refuge after Else destroyed him.

And like Tamiel’s tablet, which could only be taken up by a female, I saw no way I could have taken this power, had I wanted to. It was waiting for something else.

“This is it,” I said.

“The power?” Colleen asked.

“Can’t you tell?”

She stared at the keys for a moment and then nodded. “Yes.”

“We should get going, then.”

“What about the car?” Morrigan asked.

We all looked at the Supra. Based on what Yuki had told me, this thing had to be worth a fortune – though, of course, I already had one. I wasn’t sure about just taking it, but at the same time, given its connection to Azrael and the keys, I didn’t like leaving it here either.

“Every street racer in town knows this thing,” I said. “We’d need to hide it.”

“Where?” MJ asked.

“Our two spaces in the parking structure are being used,” I said.

“We could park it in mine,” Colleen said. “It’s just my car. I’m not using the other one.”

I looked around. “See if you can find a car cover.”

Sure enough, there was one on a shelf across the bay.

“And what about the body?” MJ asked. “Sooner or later the cops will be back here. It’s going to look like someone shot him in the chest with a shotgun and stole his car.”

To be fair, we had killed Azrael. Just not in any way the SDPD could connect us to it.

“If this is really Azrael’s mortal vessel,” Colleen said, “it won’t last long without him. To be honest, I’m surprised it’s lasted this long.”

“What, it’s just going to dissolve or something?” MJ asked.

“It should.”

I squatted down and took a closer look. I realized that what I’d taken as an aura was actually the body slowly losing its corporeal existence.

“I think she’s right,” I said, standing up. “Let’s get out of here.”

“So who’s driving the car?” Morrigan asked. “I can’t drive a stick.”

“Yeah, me neither,” I said.

MJ held up her hand. “Gimme.”

I tossed her the keys. She got into the Supra and started it up. The engine turned over with a rumble. Morrigan got in with her. I found the switch to open the bay door behind it, and they backed out. I closed the door and went back through the building locking up and left out the front door.

MJ followed us down the street to my car. We got in and headed home.

Chapter 23

￼

AFTER PARKING THE Supra in Colleen’s extra space and concealing it under the car cover, we went back upstairs. Hayley and Katarina were still up, as I’d texted them on the way back to let them know how things had gone.

Hayley stared at the keys when I set them on the table.

“It’s really a key ring? The power to direct all mortal souls to their final destination is some guy’s car keys?”

Colleen nodded. “I know it seems strange, but when powers are separated out like this, they often manifest as things of value to the being that held them.”

“I guess Azrael really loved that car,” Morrigan said.

“It was pretty sweet,” MJ said. “I wanted to open it up, but I was afraid of what would happen. I can tell it’s a beast.”

“We need to hide this somewhere safe for now,” I said. “I’m going see if I can take it to the castle like the tablet.”

“You should be able to,” Colleen said.

Hayley leaned back in her chair and sighed. “I’ve crammed all the molecular biology into my head that I can fit. If you need to go to the castle, let’s just go to bed.”

“I’d love to stay, but I have an eight o’clock tomorrow,” MJ said.

“I can stay,” Morrigan said.

As the others got ready for bed, I walked MJ down to her car.

“What the fuck are we going to do with that thing?” she asked. “We can’t hold on to it. This is like the fate of the universe that’s at stake.”

“I’m going to try to figure that out tonight. Don’t be surprised if I pull you in.”

She kissed me, and we hugged quickly. I went back upstairs. One by one we climbed into bed. Hayley and Morrigan lay down on one side of me, while Colleen and Katarina were on the other. We cuddled up together and went to sleep.

￼

I went immediately to the castle. As soon as I appeared in the main hall, Else came running out of the library. I hugged her tightly.

“I am so happy you were successful, Father. But you should come see this.”

“See what?”

She took my hand and jumped us up to the platform.

“When did you learn to do that?” I asked.

“I have been watching you. Here.”

She had the feather charms I’d created for myself and Colleen. She put one on and the other around my neck. Then she lifted into the air. I called my staff to my hand and followed.

After seeing how Azrael had been unable to detect her presence, and knowing the charms worked well, I felt comfortable enough about Else going back out here. We flew to the edge of our territory, past the border with Purgatory. I heard the noise of it before I saw what was going on. When the village came into view, we slowed down.

Things had changed considerably. The once-quiet settlement was overwhelmed. It looked like nothing so much as a refugee camp, hundreds of souls milling angrily around, every building full to the point of collapse. The square was full as well, a near-mob surrounding the dead fountain in the center as the tavern-keeper stood on top of it trying to address them.

No one noticed us, even as we dropped out of the sky into one of the few open spaces in one corner of the square.

“My friends! My friends!” the tavern-keeper called out. “We are doing everything we can, but this village is at capacity. Never did we expect something like this. All we can do is have faith and hope the situation is resolved.”

“I don’t belong here!” a woman cried out. “This cannot be true!”

Others shouted in agreement with her. The tavern-keeper waved his arms again for calm.

“I have no explanations to give you! Nothing like this has ever happened before!”

“I’m happy to stay here, to be honest,” another soul called out. A mix of jeering and laughter came in response.

The crowd continued yelling at the tavern-keeper and each other. I finally took Else’s hand and led her out of the square, down the street to the tavern. The streets were crowded, and we had to navigate through a confused mix of the souls from Purgatory and those who had arrived since Azrael’s destruction.

Many of them sat in the street against the buildings, crying into their hands in confusion. Others argued or even fought with each other. It was nearly impossible to tell one group from the other.

But before we got to the tavern, a trio of rough-looking male souls suddenly stepped in front of us.

“Hey, asshole,” one of them said, “is this your girlfriend?”

“He’s my father!” Else yelled at them.

“You’re going to want to step aside, friends,” I said.

“Or what?” one of the others asked, stepping in front of me.

“Or you’re going to learn how to reform yourself the hard way.”

I wanted to avoid getting into a fight here, but when one of them grabbed at Else, I was done with this. I gripped my staff and called out Ceridwen, sending her into the earth and lifting up the ground underneath these three thugs. Else tore her wrist free as they tumbled backward in surprise, falling onto their backs.

The other souls around us recoiled in surprise, crying out in fear. I pulled Else away, ducking between two of the buildings. The thugs didn’t follow us, and I circled around until we reached the tavern.

To my surprise, it wasn't terribly full. There were more souls here than when Colleen and Katarina and I visited, but it wasn’t wall-to-wall like some of the other buildings. There was nowhere to sit, so we stood near the bar.

“Where’s the bartender?” one of the souls yelled. “I need a beer!”

“Do you really think they serve beer in Purgatory?” I asked.

The man turned to me. “What?”

“Where do you think you are?”

He stared at me a moment. “I’ll be perfectly honest with you, man. I have no fucking clue. I went to bed last night, then I woke up in this zoo. What the fuck is going on?”

“You’re dead. This is Purgatory.”

His eyes widened. “I’m dead?”

“I’m sorry to break it you. But you are. This is where mortal souls go when they die.”

He looked down at himself, then around the room, then back at me and Else. Something in his eyes told me he knew this, he just didn’t want to believe it.

“Who are you? Who is she? Are you guys dead too?”

“No,” Else said. “We live in a castle up in the mountains.”

“What are you doing here, then?”

“We heard the commotion,” Else said. “We’re trying to fix this.”

“Fix what?” the man asked.

“We should go,” I said to Else.

She bit her lip, then nodded. “All right.”

“Good luck,” I said to the man. Then we left the tavern. I lifted into the air, and Else followed me. We flew back to the castle. As we landed, Else turned to me.

“This is so terrible, and it is my fault! We must fix it!”

“Come back downstairs,” I said. I took her hand and jumped down to the library. We sat down at the table, and I called Azrael’s keys to me. I knew immediately that these were the real deal, not a dream construct.

“This is what’s left of Azrael.”

“This is his power to guide the souls?” she asked.

“Right.”

“How can we use it?”

“I don’t know. It didn’t respond to me.”

Else reached for the keys. I held my breath, not knowing what was going to happen here. But nothing did.

“They do not speak to me either. Not like my pin.”

I sighed. “Amira and the infernal bureaucracy set us to find this. I’m not handing it over to them. There’s no telling what Lucifer would do. But I don’t want to just give it to the celestials either. They’re not likely to be interested in dealing with us over it.”

“So what do we do?” Else asked. “We cannot leave things like this. I caused this problem, and I want to solve it.”

“You may not be able to, little mouse. Something has to take over this power.”

She sighed and looked down at the keys.

“I did have something I wanted to talk to you about,” I said.

“What, Father?”

I explained what Colleen had told me about celestials and their mortal vessels, then about the idea I’d had about Charlotte’s dual existence. Her eyes widened.

“I would be a cat like Mother?”

“I have no idea what would happen. She was a mortal, who died, and who became a familiar, because Morax sent her soul into a cat that was hanging around my apartment. I’m just suggesting, she’s your mother and she has an existence in the mortal world. It could be the link you need.”

Her jaw vibrated slightly. “I do not think I would like being a cat. I want to be human.”

I nodded. “We can keep working on it.”

She looked down again. “But if it is the only way, I would do it. Mother enjoys it. I would be with her there.”

That was when Charlotte came into the library. She sat with us. I saw the look on her face and knew she’d been listening to our discussion through me.

“I want you to have a chance at a life, little mouse,” she said.

Else leaned against her, and Charlotte put her arm around her.

“We need a vessel and a focus object,” Else said. “Could the keys be the focus object?”

I looked at Charlotte, whose face had gone white.

“Not unless you want to take Azrael’s place,” I managed.

“I destroyed him. It is my responsibility.”

Charlotte pulled Else to her and hugged her tightly. “It is not for you to solve this problem.”

“I caused it, Mother.”

Charlotte looked at me. “Jimmy, tell her!”

She had never snapped at me like that, but I could see the mama-bear energy in her eyes.

“This is on all of us,” I said. “We're all going to sort it out together.”

Else didn’t look convinced. But there was little more to say on the subject.

￼

Tuesdays were one of my busiest days at school. I had Chem 550, my graduate Transport Processes class, from nine to eleven, Dr Paulson's Biochem 328 lecture at one, and finally my Inorganic Chemistry lab section at three-thirty. This was the section I had with Morrigan, and she was the first one to arrive as she usually was.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey, Master.”

She came over and nuzzled against me, and I pushed my face into her luminescent purple hair. She had on a black-and-red corset and a black plaid schoolgirl skirt with fishnet stockings. I reached under it to check on her. I found only bare flesh as there should have been, so I gave her clit ring a gentle tweak.

Morrigan laughed softly as I played with her.

“Now I’m going to be wet the entire lab.”

“Good thing you’ve got a black skirt on.”

“What are we going to do about things?” she asked. I’d told them all about my discussion with Else and Charlotte that morning at breakfast.

“I really don’t know. We can’t sit on this, but I have no idea what to do with it.”

One of the other students came in, so Morrigan went to her lab table. Over the next few minutes, the rest of the class showed up, and I got them started.

We were well into the semester now, so this was a fairly complicated experiment in which they were supposed to synthesize a compound known as acetylferrocene. The compound itself was nothing significant. The point of the lab was to demonstrate acylation, the process of adding an acyl group to a compound, which was an important element in certain chemical procedures. The experiment involved synthesizing and isolating the acetylferrocene, and then characterizing it with a spectrophotometer to demonstrate that they’d gotten it right, so I fully expected this to take a couple of lab sections.

When all the teams were working, I went back to my bench to think.

Something had been bothering me for a while, a thing that had hung in the back of my mind for months. I’d kept it there because there was little or nothing I could do about it without dynamiting this life I’d built. But binding Colleen, and the things the girls had been saying to me the past few days, had pulled it front and center.

I was stuck serving Hell because I had no choice. My origin and the things I’d had to do meant the celestials would never want anything to do with me. The same was not true of Hayley, MJ, and Morrigan. They had mortal lives, and their souls belonged to them. Yet they’d tied their fates to mine because they loved me, despite what it would mean.

Azrael’s warning to MJ still stuck in my mind, as did her reply to him.

But she was wrong. Her heart might be mine, but I had no sway over her soul. At least, I didn’t as long as Azrael existed.

Now, all of this was an open question.

If I gave Azrael’s power back to the celestials, I was sealing their fate. If I gave it to Lucifer, it was hard to see how they would be better off.

But just sitting on it wasn’t an option either, and we currently had no way to use it.

I needed to figure this out.

Morrigan was sending me frisky looks through the entire lab, so by the time things were wrapping up, I was weighing the risks of bending her over one of the lab tables for a quickie after everyone was gone. Then my phone rang.

I looked at it and saw that it was Amira.

“Got to take this, guys,” I said to the class, “I’ll be right back.”

I went out into the hall.

“Hey, I’m in class right now.”

Her sultry voice came over the line. “I know, dear Jimmy. Meet me outside when you’re done. We have something important to discuss.”

I did my best to ignore the chill in my gut. “Okay. See you in a few.”

As class broke up, Morrigan came up to me.

“Everything okay?” she asked quietly. The friskiness was gone.

“That was Amira. I need to go talk to her.”

“Do you need me?”

“No. Just meet me at the quad.”

As soon the lab was secure, I locked up and went downstairs. I didn’t see her at first, then she seemed to appear from behind a tree across the sidewalk. She was in a different form from our meeting at the restaurant, younger, looking like one of the undergraduates, but still hot enough to burn. She wore cutoff shorts and a tight, low-cut Huntington t-shirt. Her curves were on full display, and every male eye in the area zeroed in on her.

She bounced up to me like a girl who’d been waiting for her boyfriend.

“Hey!” She got her arms around my neck, but I held her off just far enough to prevent her from making out with me in front of everyone. I let her kiss me, then eased her away. She pouted.

“Is that any way to greet me?”

People were staring, so I took her hand and started walking. She pressed herself against my arm.

“What do you need?” I asked.

She smiled up at me and licked her lips. “I need a reason to see my Jimmy?”

“You said you had something to discuss."

She pouted again and looked ahead.

“Things are rapidly going to complete shit,” she said, “in Hell and upstairs. Where are you with this?”

Demons can smell lies. But I figured I had to give her something.

“Azrael is dead.”

She closed her eyes. “Shit. I knew it. How did you find out?”

“He had a secret existence here. We found his body.”

Amira’s face tightened, and she squeezed my hand tightly. “Do the celestials know?”

“Colleen said that whatever he knew, they knew. I’m not so sure.”

“Neither are we. They know he’s disappeared, but no more. At least, that's all we can get out of them. But no one has assumed his office. Which suggests to me that his control of things didn’t pass on.”

I phrased my next words very carefully.

“Colleen said she thinks his powers could have separated from him.” Which was true – she’d just said it before we learned the truth. “But based on what we know, the powers aren’t here.” Also true. They were in my castle.

Amira stopped. “Do whatever you can to find them. Find them before the celestials do.”

“I can’t promise anything.” True as well. I had no idea what we were going to do here.

“Just do your best.”

We’d reached the quad. Amira kissed me again and walked off.

Chapter 24

￼

I FOUND MORRIGAN waiting for me in the quad. She’d taken Echidna out of her backpack, where her familiar usually resided during class, and let her coil back around her arm. We walked home.

“I just got totally clam-jammed, didn’t I?” she said.

“What?”

“You were looking at me like you were ready to rail me on one of the lab tables the moment class was over. Then she called.”

I laughed. “I was.”

Morrigan groaned. “Shit.”

“Later. I promise.”

She took my hand and lowered her voice. “I am so fucking wet right now I’m probably leaving a trail.”

I looked behind me. “I don’t see anything.”

Morrigan laughed and leaned against me. “What did Amira say?”

I filled her in on our conversation.

“It sounds like don’t have a lot of time here,” she said.

“I agree. We don’t.”

When we got back, Hayley was studying at the table and Katarina was starting dinner. I told them about my conversation with Amira and then checked in with MJ and Colleen. MJ had to go to some function with the soccer team, but she thought she could be there by eight and asked us to save her something. Colleen promised to come up a bit later.

Hayley leaned back and stretched. “What the fuck are we going to do?”

Charlotte hopped up next to me, and I scratched her ears. She just purred, which told me things were okay in the castle.

“I have some ideas. I want to wait until Colleen gets here.”

Katarina was attempting carne asada tonight, apparently with a recipe MJ had given her. Colleen arrived with a bottle of wine as Katarina was finishing up. I got a beer while the girls passed the wine around. The dinner proved to be pretty good.

“I like that you’re finally branching out,” Hayley said.

“MJ threatened to boycott further dinners unless I moved beyond Swedish cuisine,” Katarina replied. “So I am giving it a try.”

MJ arrived as we were finishing up. She made herself a plate and joined us.

“Not bad for your first batch.”

“I have no experience with beef,” Katarina said.

“Yeah, I would argue that point just a little bit,” MJ replied. The rest of them exploded in laughter, and Katarina joined them.

I looked around the table, just feeling this intense sense of happiness and satisfaction. Whatever else was going on, having this group of awesome girls in my life felt really good, even more so because they got along so well with each other, despite their wildly different origins and the endlessly bizarre situations my existence kept dragging them into.

Then Colleen caught my eye, shooting me a sly smile as Katarina leaned against her, and our bond told me what she was thinking. And I thought about that thing I was keeping from her, and what it meant. It was too much to deal with right now.

Whatever it took, I was going to get us through this, find a way to save my mortal women as well as my immortal ones. I would—

Charlotte let out an agonized yowl like I’d never heard before. The whole table went silent as all the girls looked at her. My familiar jumped into my lap and yowled again. Her green eyes were filled with terror.

“I need to get in there,” I said.

“Go!” Hayley yelled.

I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes, and went. When I appeared in the main hall, Charlotte was already there. She threw herself at me and grabbed my arm.

“What’s going on?”

“It’s Else! You have to help her!”

She pulled me toward the lab. I ran after her. When we burst through the door, I saw the source of her distress.

Else was floating in the air, limp as if she were being suspended from her chest, head hanging back. Yet her eyes were blazing with power, and her entire body shimmered with energy.

“What the fuck?” I yelled. “What happened?”

“She told me she was looking for a way to create a vessel in the mortal world,” Charlotte cried. “She thought Azrael’s keys were the way. I told her to do nothing until you returned, but she must have tried something on her own.”

That was when I saw the keys clutched in her fist. I leapt at them, but the moment I touched her, I was thrown back violently by the energies around her.

I got up, moving more carefully this time as Charlotte whimpered behind me. I looked closely at Else, trying to figure out what was going on. It wasn’t clear at first, but slowly I got a sense of things. There was an enchantment around her, but it seemed incomplete.

Then I got it. She was in the middle of an unfinished spell. But what could I do to finish it? Could I get her out of this?

It wasn’t like breaking the wards. Whatever she’d done with the keys had unleashed power like I’d never seen. Interrupting this spell could do anything. It could destroy her. And the longer I looked at her, the more I sensed the energies around her were looking for an outlet.

A vessel.

I had to find one, or she could be trapped like this forever.

What could I use? I’d had only one idea, and she’d been cold to it. But if it was a choice between leaving her like this for all eternity, seeing her destroyed, or putting her into a cat like Charlotte, then I would do what I had to.

I leaned back against one of the tables.

“I have to find a vessel for her.”

“What vessel?” Charlotte asked.

I explained what Else and I had discussed about her becoming a cat in the mortal world.

“She did not want to do it?”

“She said no. But you’re part of her. I can feel those energies inside her, the gray tabby. Can’t you feel it?”

Charlotte pursed her lips tightly. “Yes.”

“So it’s what we have to do. Otherwise she could be stuck like this. That’s if we’re lucky. This could well be unstable, and if the enchantment breaks down, anything could happen.”

“How would you do it?”

“I’m really not sure,” I said. “It seems like some sort of summoning.”

She clutched at my arm. “Then let us look in the library.”

We went. I thought about bringing the others in, but they were all awake, around me at the table. Only Colleen could have come in, but she wasn’t a sorcerer. Then I remembered what she’d told me about the celestials creating mortal existences. So I yanked her in.

She appeared in front me with a yelp of surprise, still wearing the same tights and long-sleeved t-shirt she’d come to dinner in.

“Jimmy!” she gasped. “What’s going on?”

I explained.

“Oh, no.”

“Yeah. Go look at her, then come back.”

As Charlotte and I tried to get our bearings with the summoning rituals, Colleen went over to the lab. She came back, ashen faced, about a minute later.

“She’s trapped between this world and the mortal world. Whatever she did has her stuck there.”

“I got that impression,” I said. “So we have to get her out.”

“All I can sense is that her way out is through the mortal world.”

I nodded. “That seems clear.”

“What can I do?” she asked.

“I know it’s early. But I’m going to send you back. Tell the others to get to sleep so I can get them all in here.”

"What about Katarina?”

“Shit,” I muttered.

My succubus only slept when I told her to. Then I had an idea.

“You can feel my bond with her, right? It feels to me like the three of us are bound together.”

She nodded. “Yes, absolutely. I can feel her like I can feel you, almost. Not exactly the same, but close.”

“Try to get her to go to sleep. Tell you’re relaying my instructions. Just look at her and say, ‘Katarina, go to sleep.’ Put all the force of your bond behind it.”

“Okay.”

“Repeat it. In my voice. You can do it, right?”

She focused for a moment and then spoke. “Katarina, go to sleep.” It sounded like listening to a recording of myself.

“If that won't work, nothing will. Go.” I released her, and she disappeared.

I knew it would take a while before the girls dropped off. But sure enough, within a couple of minutes, I felt Katarina’s hold on the mortal world suddenly loosening. I pulled on her, and she appeared in front of me.

“This is very interesting, Jimmy,” she said.

I pulled in Colleen, who was smiling.

“It worked,” she said.

“I can see that. What’s going on back there?”

“Hayley, MJ, and Morrigan are trying to get to sleep like you asked.”

“Good. Just, I don’t know, sit tight until we figure out what to do here.”

One by one, I felt the girls falling asleep, and as soon as they were, I pulled them in and put them to work helping me and Charlotte as best they could.

If we were going to summon Else to the mortal world, we had to design a ritual around her. The strongest thing we could use was a part of her, like a fingernail paring or a lock of hair. We couldn’t approach her without being thrown back by the energies around her, but Charlotte was able to collect a small handful of hair from her brush. That would have to do.

One problem was that Else was neither a spirit nor an angel nor a demon. So it was difficult to know how to approach this.

“Honestly, Jimmy, isn’t she a little bit of everything?” Hayley asked. “She’s part of you, and you’re part demon. She’s a spirit-child. And she’s trying to absorb Azrael’s powers.”

“She is right, Master,” Echidna said.

“So maybe we merge all of that,” I said.

Summoning demons meant sulfur and mandrake root. Summoning spirits depended on what kind we were summoning. The feline connection meant a tuft of cat fur and a bit of musk from a cat’s anal glands. Charlotte’s eyes swelled when I read this.

“Take whatever you need from me, Jimmy.”

Summoning celestials was a whole different story, but it appeared we needed gold dust and something connected to the angel’s portfolio.

“I have some gold earrings you could grind up,” Hayley said.

“What about the rest of it?” MJ asked. “He was the Angel of Death.”

“We need something connected to death,” Echidna replied.

“That’s a problem,” Hayley said.

“This sort of thing was much easier when I was a witch,” Echidna said. “You work so hard to hide from death now. None of it is near you anymore.”

But a moment later, it hit me. I had what I needed. It was sitting on my mantle.

“Grandma Amy’s ashes,” I said.

All of them gasped in realization.

“But she’s a demon now,” Hayley said.

“Her body was mortal. And presumably Azrael sent her straight downstairs when she died.”

“So that’s everything,” Morrigan said. “What about the vessel?”

There were a few moments of silence.

“Do we actually need a cat?” MJ asked. “Like, a live cat?”

They all looked at Charlotte, but I shook my head. “That cat is occupied. We need another one.”

“So where do we find one?” Hayley asked.

“There's the pet place we got Echidna,” Morrigan said.

“It’s got be closed now,” MJ said.

I sighed. “Another burglary, then.”

“A cat burglary,” Morrigan said. The others laughed. But then Colleen sat upright in shock.

“What?” I asked her.

“We’re under attack again.”

I jumped everyone up to the platform. The noise of it was apparent even here. I looked at Charlotte.

“I will stay with Else,” she said.

The rest of us lifted off. The battlefield came into view quickly. But it was a very different sight from the last two. The stone army was silent and still, and a vast mass of souls was hammering them to pieces. I reached out for the spirits, but they refused to answer.

“They’re threatening Else!” I shouted at the sky. “We need you! Get in there!”

There was no answer beyond the wind.

I floated there watching the destruction of our army. The souls from Purgatory were nothing like they’d been before, a disciplined, heavily equipped force. This was a crazed mob. Whatever had set them off, they were coming after us.

I wondered if it was that conversation Else and I had with the man at the tavern. Or if the tavern-keeper, in desperation, sent the new souls out against us, just to give them some target for their frustration and anger.

“What do we do?” Colleen asked.

There were five of us and easily fifty thousand of them. Even with the advantage of our magic, we couldn’t tackle all of this at once. We had to fall back.

“Come on. We can’t do this here.”

The castle was at the top of a tall mountain, easily five thousand feet up from the plain below. I’d created it that way, but in doing so, for that dream of Hayley’s, I created a road to the top – right to my front door. It was still there. A long climb, but these souls weren’t going to get tired.

We flew over the mountain, and I hovered over the long, twisting road from below. I tried to collapse the cliffs that the road climbed up, but I found them strangely resistant. My godlike control here was wavering.

“What’s wrong?” Hayley asked.

“I can’t reshape the mountain. I think it’s because the borders of Purgatory are closing in, now that our army is being destroyed.”

“Can't we defend this?” MJ said. “For a while, at least? That’s a really narrow road. Wouldn't take much. I think we could hold this for a long time.”

“Can you do it?” I asked. “While we take care of summoning Else?”

She nodded, drawing her sword. “I’m on it.”

“I’ll stay with her,” Hayley said.

Colleen shifted into her white dragon form. “I can help. I’m no good with the spells.” Katarina joined her a moment later.

“We've got this, Jimmy,” MJ said. “Go save Else.”

“I’m not much good with combat spells,” Morrigan said.

“Nor am I,” Echidna said. “I am sorry.”

“All right. Then you two come back with me, and we’ll go find this fucking cat.”

Chapter 25

￼

I PULLED MYSELF back to the condo. I ran into the bedroom. Hayley, MJ, Morrigan, and Katarina were lying on the bed, asleep. Charlotte was curled up next to Hayley.

I gently woke Morrigan. She started briefly, then sat up, stretching.

“This is really weird,” she said.

“Don’t wake up the others.”

She slid carefully down the bed and onto the floor.

“We need to get all the components together first,” I said.

I got Charlotte. She didn’t resist as I plucked some fur and used a cotton swab to collect the musk. The sulfur and mandrake root I had from previous spells. I scooped a little bit of Grandma Amy’s ashes from her urn. Finally, I went to the bedroom closet and found Hayley’s jewelry box. She had a lot of earrings, but I found what looked like the ones she’d mentioned. I hoped I wasn’t accidentally picking some family heirloom, but there was no time to wake her up and ask her.

I took the earring out to the kitchen and used the whetstone Katarina used on the kitchen knives to shave down the earring.

“What about her hair?” Morrigan asked.

“Fuck.” It had completely slipped my mind that Else’s hair would remain in the spirit world. I went back to the castle and found Charlotte.

“Jimmy?” I explained what we’d found. “They have it under control now. Where is that ball of Else’s hair?”

It was in the library. I picked it up and pulled myself back to the condo. I looked down at my hand. It was empty.

“Anything?” Morrigan asked.

“No.”

I went back to the castle. Charlotte was where I’d left her.

“We may have to do this together,” I said. “Stay with her. I’ll be back.”

“I will,” she said. “Good luck.”

￼

It was fairly late by this point. I looked up the pet superstore where we’d gotten Echidna, and confirmed that it was now closed. Morrigan had to go get her spell bag so she could cloak the security cameras, so we drove over to campus. Charlotte and I waited for her in the car. She came back in about five minutes.

As we pulled out of campus, we had to backtrack past my building. Up ahead, something was going on – there were several heavily modified cars racing around in front of it, doing donuts and kicking up a big cloud of smoke. It looked to be the same thing that I’d seen the tracks from last week.

As we slowed down, I noticed something else. Two of the cars had someone hanging out of the passenger window, both girls. They seemed to be yelling something, yelling up at the building. But the noise from the squealing tires was far too loud to hear them.

Then one of the cars peeled off from the donut, and other two followed. In moments, they disappeared down the street.

“Wow,” Morrigan said. “What was up with that?”

I wondered if it was related to Azrael, but now was not the time for it. We drove down the street toward the pet store. I parked on a side street about a block away, not wanting my car to show up on any security cameras. We came up the back. There were a couple of cameras on the back of the building, but Morrigan cloaked them.

After breaking through the layers of security around the Collective building, getting into a pet store was easy. I deactivated their basic security system with the wrought-iron key and unlocked one of the rear doors.

The door led to the staff area in back – a break room and meeting area. We walked down the hallway, through another door, and into the main store. The cat adoption room was around the side, a little glass-fronted space with a dozen kennel cages inside. About half were occupied by sleeping cats. In front of the kennel was a little area where the cats could play while prospective owners watched.

The door was locked. I unlocked it, and we went inside.

“Now what?” Morrigan asked.

“We pick a cat.”

“Does it matter which one?”

“Good question.”

There were seven of them, two of which were in the same cage. All of them had little biographies pinned to their cage doors with their names and how they had ended up here. All the cages had padlocks, but that wouldn’t present a problem. We just had to pick a cat.

Charlotte paced around in front for a moment, then hopped up onto the cat tower against the wall.

Most of the cats stayed where they were, hanging back on their beds or pressing themselves into the corner of their cages. But two of them came forward. One was fat and orange, the other black and kind of thin. According to his bio, the orange cat was male and had been given up by his owner. He pressed himself against the cage door, apparently wanting attention. The black cat was female and about ten months old. She meowed at us. Her bio said she was a stray a volunteer had taken in.

Charlotte rose up and put her paws on the second row of cages in front of the black kitten. They sniffed each other for a few moments. Then she turned and meowed at me.

“She’s cute,” Morrigan said.

I used my key to unlock the padlock. The black kitten let me lift her out. She began purring almost immediately as I held her. Morrigan reached over to pet her, and the kitten pushed her head back against her hand.

Charlotte meowed again.

“Any objections?” I asked.

"She looks good enough,” Morrigan replied. Charlotte meowed in agreement.

We closed up the room and left. The kitten happily rode in my arms, still purring. When we got to my car, I put her in the back with Charlotte, and we headed home.

￼

The girls were still asleep when we walked in. I set the kitten down with Charlotte, and she began exploring. I got all the components together – Charlotte’s fur, the cotton swab, the sulfur and mandrake root, Grandma Amy’s ashes, and the gold dust, and put them all into my brass brazier.

I set it on the floor and sat down. Then I went to the castle lab. Charlotte was where I’d left her with the ball of Else’s hair.

“Any changes with Else?”

Her face was tight.

“No.”

“Any word from the others?”

“No.”

“I'm going to go check on them, and then we can start.”

I jumped up to the platform. The noise was considerably more intense than when I’d been up here earlier. I flew out across the mountain toward the little road and saw why.

The great mass of souls had climbed the mountain and nearly reached the top. The girls had withdrawn from the spot where I’d left them, and it was obvious they’d been forced back. The mountainside below, for at least a mile back down the road, was littered with bodies that were slowly evaporating.

MJ stood in the center of the road before the mob. Unlike the last battle, she wasn’t throwing fireballs. Instead, a huge blade of flame extended out from the end of her sword, and she swept it back and forth, cutting down half a dozen or more souls with each blow.

Above her, Hayley rained lightning down on the mob while Katarina and Colleen swept back and forth through the air, spraying fire all up and down the road. Hundreds of souls died as I watched. But tens of thousands of others were still coming, jeering and shouting and screaming at the girls in rage, forcing their way up through sheer weight of numbers

I looked behind us. The mob was less than half a mile from the gates of the castle.

“What’s going on?” Hayley shouted.

“We have the cat! We just need to start the summoning! Can you hold on?”

“Make it fast!” MJ screamed at me.

I sent a blast of fire down the road to relieve some of the pressure on MJ, then turned around and flew back. As I got closer to the castle, I regained control of the landscape.

When I built this place, it was just meant to feed Hayley’s fantasies. The main entrance had no real protections – it was nothing but a tall wooden double door. The mob would break it down in moments if they reached it.

So I strengthened it considerably, pushing out the walls to enclose the end of the road so nothing could get around them. I created a trench and a massive iron-bound wooden drawbridge that I pulled up and secured. The girls could fly up to the walls, but the mob would be held here a while.

Then I beefed up the main door, and created a pair of iron portcullises as well. The entrance was now an enclosed passage between the drawbridge and the castle door. Assuming the mob got past the drawbridge, they would be trapped in here while the girls could rain death on their heads.

Then I jumped back to Charlotte.

“It’s getting bad. But I bought them some time.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I’m going to start the summoning on my side. You need to do it on this side as well, just using her hair.”

“I can burn it in a brazier.”

I nodded. “I don't know what else we can do.” I kissed her quickly and went back to the condo.

Morrigan was sitting on the floor with the kitten on her lap. She looked up as I awoke.

“It’s getting bad in there,” I said. “We have to start this.”

“What’s going on?”

I explained. “They can hold a while longer, but not forever.”

“What should I do?”

“I guess just sit tight while I start the summoning. Hold the cat.”

I fired up the brazier and lifted my staff. I looked at Charlotte.

“Ready?”

She meowed.

All I needed now was the incantation. I’d adapted it from the rituals in the Key of Solomon, because I had nothing else to go on.

Else my daughter, bearer of Tamiel’s power, I call to you

Else my daughter, I summon you to appear

The smoke from the brazier began swirling around in the air above it. Through my connection to Charlotte, I sensed her repeating the ritual on the other side.

By the power of Hell, I call you to me

By all the spirits of the worlds, I call you to me

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

A sudden bolt of pain shot through me. I grunted against it as I felt the energies flowing around me, through the connection to my dream world. Charlotte let out a pained yowl.

The pain redoubled, blinding me. I felt like my head would explode. This was power beyond anything I’d ever encountered, and I suddenly understood why. In doing this, we were merging Else with both Tamiel’s powers and Azrael’s. Was it too much?

My consciousness stretched across the divide. I saw Else in the lab. Her body convulsed, and she screamed in agony. The energies – and pain – continued to grow. I felt my grip on them starting to slip.

And then Else awoke, looking at me.

“Father!”

“You need to come to me!” I screamed.

“I can’t!”

“You can do it! Just come! We have the vessel!”

I saw her looking past me, to the black kitten in Morrigan’s lap. It had gone rigid, tail puffed up.

“I will be a cat?” she cried.

“There’s no other way!”

And I could see it now. I could see the path she needed to travel to me from the spirit world. It was paved by her connection to Charlotte, by Charlotte's existence in this world as my familiar.

She let out a sob of anguish. I saw Charlotte in front of her, struggling with the same energies I was trying to control.

It was too much for me. I wasn’t strong enough to pull her here.

“Else!” I screamed. “You have to let go! You have to push yourself here!”

Finally she did, reaching for me. The energies surged forward. Our hands came together. I pulled her toward me. She tried to pull back.

It was almost enough.

Almost.

I felt things teetering on the brink. If I lost her, there would be an enormous backlash of magical energy between this world and my dream world. It could kill her. It could kill me.

But even together, we were just a tiny bit too weak to pull her across. She began to slip.

Then I saw it, the missing element. The one last bit we needed. The other half of my daughter.

“Charlotte!” I cried.

She knew. I didn’t have to say it. She took hold of the other end, the tail of it all, and pushed.

There was a thunderclap and a blinding flash of light. I was thrown backwards beside Morrigan, who cried out. Then the room was dark, lingering spots from the flash floating through my eyes.

I could only lay there on the floor trying to get my bearings and catch my breath. The ritual was over. All the energies had dissipated.

But what had I done?

I felt something soft against my face. I looked over and saw the kitten, purring, rubbing herself against my cheek.

And I saw Else. She had Else’s eyes, those big blue pools I recognized.

I sat up.

“Did it work?” Morrigan whispered.

I picked up Else and looked into her face.

“Did it?” I asked her.

She meowed, a high-pitched sound quite unlike Charlotte. But then, she was a kitten. Charlotte got into my lap. I set Else down next to her, and they cuddled together. I felt them both in there and hugged them.

I looked at up Morrigan. “I think it did.”

“Does that mean she has Azrael’s powers?”

That was a good question. I couldn’t really tell. I reached down and stroked Else.

“I’m so sorry we had to do it like this, little mouse. I know you wanted so much more.”

She meowed again. Then she got out of my lap and walked into the living room.

And something extraordinary happened.

Else stretched out on the floor. A moment later, her body began to expand, forward and backward, up and out. Her fur began to disappear, replaced by bare flesh.

I knew what I was seeing because I’d seen this before. I’d seen it when Yuki shifted out of her panther form.

Else was shifting.

In a few moments, the black kitten was gone. My daughter lay in her place.

Charlotte let out a yowl. Morrigan gasped, throwing her hands over her mouth.

Else slowly sat up. She looked at me.

“Father?”

She was naked. I reached for a blanket on the couch and wrapped it around her. My head spun as I looked at my spirit-daughter, now flesh in the mortal world.

She looked exactly as she had in the castle, a beautiful girl of about nineteen or twenty, with long, shimmering black hair and deep blue eyes.

It was her. She was here.

I hugged her, not quite believing any of it.

“How do you feel?”

“Very strange,” she said quietly. “But good.”

“How did you do that?” I asked. “You were a cat, and now you’re not.”

“I am not sure. I just wanted to be myself. But I can still feel the cat. I can be her again if I want.” Charlotte came over to us, and Else stroked her. Then she looked up. “Hello, Morrigan.”

Morrigan came over as well.

“Does that mean you’re a shifter?” Morrigan asked. “Do you even know what that means?”

Else nodded. "I think so. But I am not like the others.”

“Azrael,” I said.

Her face tightened. “Yes.”

“You have the power now?”

“I do.” She stood up, keeping the blanket around her. “We need to get back.”

“Can you do it?” I asked. “Do you think you can project yourself like I can?”

Else went to the table and sat down. “Yes. Let’s go.”

Chapter 26

￼

WE RETURNED TO the castle. Else appeared beside me, once again dressed in one of her princessy goth dresses. Charlotte embraced her, but before we could say anything, I heard a rhythmic booming noise from below.

“They’ve reached the castle,” Charlotte said.

I took Else’s hand, and we jumped outside.

The mob was at the gates, and the girls had fallen back to the gatehouse I’d created. Colleen and Katarina flew around, breathing fire all along the endless line of souls coming up the road. The souls had filled the trench with their own bodies, just climbing over each other until it was level, and they were now assaulting the drawbridge with a tree trunk they’d pulled down.

Some were even trying to climb the walls, but MJ and Hayley cut them down as they came.

Else floated out above them all, eyes blazing with power. She spread her arms.

“It is time for you to move on!” she cried.

And all at once, the mob dissolved. There was a great susurration as the souls evaporated before her. In seconds, the siege was over, and the road was empty.

The sudden silence was almost deafening. Else and I landed beside MJ and Hayley. Katarina and Colleen rejoined us, turning back to their human forms.

All of them stared at Else.

“You did it,” Hayley finally said.

“Yeah,” I said. “We did.”

“I can go to the mortal world now,” Else said, beaming. “I am so happy.”

"As a cat?” MJ asked.

“As a cat, and as a person.”

The girls now looked at me.

“I’m not sure what happened,” I said, “but it seems mortal Else is a shifter like Yuki.”

“That’s wild,” MJ said.

“But you have Azrael’s power?” Colleen asked.

“Yes,” Else replied. “I do.”

“What is that like?” Hayley asked.

“It is hard to explain. It feels a bit like my hair pin.” She reached into her dress and pulled out the keys. The Supra key was still there, but the charm had changed from the wings to a whimsical cat face. “This is it. It’s part of me now. I feel things in the back of my mind. I can see the souls coming here. I am helping them move on.”

“Right now?” I asked.

“Yes. I sent all those others on, but more have come as we have been talking here.”

“They’re going to know,” Colleen said. “They know Azrael was killed, and now they’ll know something else is going on.”

I looked back at Else. The summoning spell, or perhaps taking Azrael’s power, had wiped away all the wards I’d put on her.

It was time for her coming out party.

“Yeah,” I said. “So let’s get inside. I suspect we’re going to have guests very soon.”

￼

I repaired the damage to the castle. Colleen went back to the condo to let Morrigan know what had happened. Morrigan went back to sleep and rejoined us. Expecting what was coming, I expanded the main hall into something more impressive, more akin to a throne room, with a tall, gilded seat at the end where the stairs rose up to the library and laboratory.

Colleen came up to me as I was finishing the details.

“They’re coming.”

I nodded. I could feel it as well.

I called the girls to me. I had Else stand at my right side with Charlotte, Katarina, and Colleen beside her. I put Hayley, MJ, and Morrigan on my left. Then I waited, opening the drawbridge and the gates outside, and then the doors into the castle.

“So what are we doing?” Colleen asked.

“The only thing we can do.”

I reached for Else’s hand. She squeezed it and smiled at me. I didn’t need to tell her what I was about to do here. She knew because I did.

A few moments later, two figures walked in. One I knew, recognizing the dark hair, dark features, and red-brown eyes. He wore the same long black robes trimmed with glittering rubies that he’d worn the last time he was here.

Beside him was someone else.

I recognized him through Colleen. He was much less androgynous than Azrael. He was very tall, likely seven or eight feet, his body a wall of chiseled muscle. He wore gleaming silver and gold armor and carried a long silver lance. His whole form radiated power and energy.

“I suppose I should have expected this, Mr. Kaplan,” Lucifer said. “Quite amazing the damage you’ve done to the established order in only a few short months.”

“Abominations upon abominations,” Michael thundered.

The archangel’s voice boomed through the entire hall. Had we been anywhere else, the force of it might have killed me. But here, I was in control.

“You will return these things you have no right to, mortal!” he shouted.

“No,” I said.

Michael’s eyes flared in anger.

But Lucifer just chuckled. “Yelling at him isn’t going to accomplish anything, brother. I’ve been here before.”

“I am not here to bandy words with you, Light-Bringer. I am here to restore the unsettled order you refer to.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” Lucifer asked.

Rather than speaking, Michael lowered his lance at me and stepped forward. I heard the girls – other than Else – gasping on either side of me, but I simply raised my hand and stopped him.

It was a little bit of a struggle, but here, at the core of my power, I was much stronger than he was. And with Else on my side, now that she’d taken control of Purgatory, I was vastly stronger than I’d been before.

Michael’s face contorted in rage and disbelief as I pushed him back.

“Here’s how it’s going to work,” I said. “Else will retain the powers she took from Tamiel and Azrael. She has assumed Azrael’s role and, as you are no doubt aware, has resumed directing the souls to their destinations. That will continue. If either of you have a problem with the situation, you can take it up with her. But you might ask Azrael how his negotiations with her went.”

The two of them glared at me for several moments.

“And what do you want?” Lucifer asked.

“Beyond a few minor items, nothing. Do nothing. Leave me, my family, and my coven alone. No more sieges or subterfuge. If either of you try anything, Else will shut off the flow of souls again. I assume, based on how all this just went, that’s a situation you would prefer to avoid.”

“She has no right to make those determinations,” Michael growled. “That is a role that has always belonged to us.”

“Things change,” I said. “And keep in mind, if you make an issue of this, I can have Else just turn off your flow and not his.”

The archangel fumed but remained silent for the moment.

“And these minor items you referred to?” Lucifer asked.

“The souls of the three girls to my left,” I said. “When they die, Else will send them here. Neither of you have any claim to them. Assuming they still want to, they belong to me.”

I heard Hayley, MJ, and Morrigan gasping. I glanced over at three pale faces and smiled.

“And to think,” Lucifer said, “you could have been a King of Hell.”

“Well, I’m King of Purgatory now, and I think I prefer that.”

“Anything else?”

“My soul balance remains undisturbed. I may be open to further collaborations with the infernal bureaucracy, on a case-by-case basis.” I looked at Michael. “I don’t imagine a similar arrangement would be in order?”

“No,” he replied coldly.

“I agree to this,” Lucifer said.

Michael took a long, slow breath and exhaled.

“Provided the flow of souls into Heaven remains unimpeded, and no souls are released from Purgatory before their time, we agree as well. But we will be watching you very closely, mortal.”

He spun on his heel and stalked out of the hall.

But Lucifer remained. He smiled up at me.

“Well done, Mr. Kaplan. I would have preferred to control the power myself, but dealing with you is vastly preferable to dealing with them.”

“I’m sure.”

“So let me offer a small token of my good faith, such as it is.”

He raised his fingers and snapped them. There was a pop, and Amira appeared beside him. Her face paled as she took in the scene before her.

“This is largely your doing, Amira. As such, I think it’s best if you are his responsibility going forward.”

I felt something flow toward me, a link not unlike what I had with Katarina. It wasn’t same bond by any means – it had none of the intimacy and emotion – but I felt the same level of control. She belonged to me now, completely and utterly.

Amira gasped. “Lucif—”

“Enough,” the Prince of Darkness snapped. “Unless there is anything else, Mr. Kaplan, I assume we are done here.”

I nodded to him, and he disappeared.

Amira looked up at me. For once, her face was empty of its usual guile and fire.

“We’ll discuss this another time,” I said. I waved my hand and sent her to one of the towers. Then I stood and turned to the girls.

Hayley’s face was streaked with tears, MJ’s tight with emotion, while Morrigan was still in shock.

“Jimmy . . .” Hayley said.

I took her hands.

“What you said to me the other day. About having Katarina be you when you were dead, so I wouldn’t forget you, I don’t want that. I just want you. I want all of you around as long as I have Katarina and Colleen. So you’ll get to live your mortal lives however you want, and when they’re over, you’ll come here, and we’ll still be together. And no one has to turn into a demon, least of all me.”

Hayley let out a sob and threw herself at me. MJ and Morrigan joined us a moment later.

I held them for a long time.

￼

Despite having defeated both the celestial and infernal bureaucracies, I had my Transport Processes lab first thing the next morning, and it wasn’t something I could just skip. After that was Chem 245, CE Thermodynamics, and my Biochem lab.

Else had no clothes, so Hayley loaned her something to wear until we could go shopping. She wasn’t like Katarina and couldn’t manifest clothing. Nor, it seemed, was she like Colleen, able to move bodily from the mortal world to the spirit world. She was closest to Charlotte, with a sort of dual existence. I concluded that giving her a vessel – the kitten we’d taken from the pet store – meant she now had a body both here and in the spirit world, the same way Charlotte did.

She came to Chem class with Hayley and Morrigan, and we had lunch together afterward. Else blended in well enough with the other students, even with the wide-eyed look of wonder on her face. She spent the entire day on campus with the girls, and I knew she loved every minute of it.

I knew all this because we now had a bond very much like my bond with Katarina and Colleen, absent my ability to control them. But I could sense Else’s feelings and emotions the same way, and she mine.

I came back after my Biochem lab to find her sitting with Charlotte in the living room while Hayley was studying and Katarina made dinner. I sat down with her.

“What do you think about staying here?” I asked.

My condo had a second bedroom I’d originally thought could be a sort of office, but we’d barely used it. Hayley preferred studying in the living room or at the kitchen table, or in bed, and I tended to prefer the extra space at the table.

“I think I shall do what Mother does. I want to take my cat form and go back to the castle at night,” Else said. She looked down and stroked Charlotte. “I want to be with her, and I like my room.”

Charlotte meowed in agreement.

“That’s fine, really.”

“But I would like to see the car.”

My eyebrows went up. “The car?”

“Azrael’s car. It is mine now, is it not?”

Hayley looked up at us. “Uhh . . .”

“I guess there’s no harm in looking,” I said finally. “But let’s do it after dinner, when it’s dark.”

She nodded. “All right.”

So after we were done eating, Else and I went downstairs to the garage.

“I guess you have the keys?”

She pulled them from the tights she had on, which Hayley had loaned her. I found the Supra and pulled the car cover off. Then I just blinked in confusion.

For a moment, I wondered if we had the right car. It was a Supra, to be sure, and its basic form was the same. But its appearance had somehow changed.

It was no longer black. It was an insanely iridescent purple the same shade as Else’s hair pin. The angel wings on the hood had been replaced by a large graphic of an anime-style cat face. The wheels were a different style, now purple-accented silver rather than gold.

Else got into the driver’s seat before I could say anything. I knew this car was about twenty years old, but the interior had clearly been refurbished and upgraded. There were purple and black racing seats and a big touchscreen display in the dash, as well as purple LED lighting accents.

Else put her hands on the wheel and took a deep breath. Then she slid the key into the ignition and started it up. The engine rumbled to life.

“I guess I should ask how much you know here,” I said.

“What Azrael knew, I know.” She looked at me. “I would like to drive it.”

I nodded slowly, still not believing what was going on here. “Okay.”

Else smoothly put the car in reverse and backed out of the space. I tried to keep my composure as she drove out of the garage and onto McKinley. This was bizarre beyond anything I’d experienced in a while, even having come face-to-face with Lucifer several times. But it rapidly became clear that not only did Else know how to drive, she was actually very good at it.

I sensed the power of this thing, but she kept it in check until we reached the freeway. Then she downshifted, and the car punched me in the gut as the boost kicked in and it shot forward with a roar from the back end.

We were going over a hundred within a couple of seconds, then she backed off of the gas, letting the car coast and slow down.

“I like it,” she said, grinning at me.

“Let’s not overdo it the first time,” I said.

Else drove to the next exit and turned around. We drove back home at a more sedate speed. As we pulled in, I looked at the tire tracks in front of the building and wondered what direction this element of my life was going.

Chapter 27

￼

I closed on Adriana’s condo a few days later. The commercial agent found her a spot for The Black Rose right next to campus, in a little shopping center that was popular with the students at Huntington. I signed the lease, we got the gothic redecorating started, and Adriana began packing up for her move south.

I talked to Volach about getting Else some official identification for her life in the mortal world. There were costs, but the process was fairly simple and what she got was legit ID, not fakes. It turned out that Hell had quite a few people on contract with the DMV, IRS, and Social Security Administration who could create entirely new identities where required.

When I showed Else what I’d done, she asked if she could also enroll at Huntington. While creating transcripts and records for her was one thing, actually getting her admitted at one of the most competitive private universities on the West Coast was another matter altogether.

Volach had no one to leverage in the Huntington Admissions Office, so I had to take care of it myself. After a series of phone calls, the process finally ended with my cashing in a few more souls, making a seven-figure anonymous donation to the school, and the admissions officer waiving a few things to get Else admitted for the summer semester.

“What do you want to major in?” I asked her after hanging up with Admissions. “Magic isn’t a subject here. Street-racing isn’t either.”

“Then I want to do what you are doing, Father. The chemistry.”

So that was what we settled on.

I’d been putting off dealing with Amira, but I could only put it off so long. After the Tuesday Biochem lecture, I found a spot to rest in the Chemistry building lobby and went to the castle to talk to her.

I’d kept her confined in her tower since the confrontation with Lucifer because I didn’t want her interacting with Charlotte or Else. So she’d been alone for a while, though it was very much a gilded cage.

But she’d clearly been waiting for me. When I entered her rooms, I found her lounging in a long, lacy black robe. She got up as I came in, leaving the robe half-open so I could see the skimpy lingerie under it.

“Hello, Jimmy,” she purred. “You certainly took your time coming here.”

“If you were hoping to affect my decision-making,” I said, “this is not the way to do it.”

She pouted. The lingerie shifted to a web of black silk rope that artfully crisscrossed her naked body, binding her arms behind her back and her legs and ankles together.

“But you control me now. If you’re angry with me, then hurt me for it. Torture me. You could do things to me that no mortal woman would ever survive, and I would love it every moment of it. You could make me do anything. Anything at all.”

“What if I want you to be my grandmother again?”

I watched the surprise and disappointment blossom in her eyes. I half-expected her to change her appearance to Grandma Amy, but she didn’t. That told me all I needed to know.

The rope vanished, and her clothes shifted to a long black dress.

“Amalia Takacs is behind me,” she said. “You need to accept that. A great deal of who she was is gone forever.”

“Clearly.”

“I am not your grandmother, Jimmy. I never was. I’ve explained that to you. I may have been the sorcerer who helped create you and gave you a chance at life and success, but that is not the same thing at all.”

“That kid you raised might feel differently,” I said.

Amira scoffed. “You’re no longer that little boy either. Far from it.”

I nodded. “No. So where does that leave us?”

She closed her eyes and sighed. “You must decide. Lucifer placed me in your hands. I have no choice in the matter. But I could be very useful to you. However you wish to . . . use me.”

“That’s a start. Maybe think about that for a while.”

And I left.

My last thing that day was the Chem 245 lab section. Morrigan arrived with the other students, so I didn’t get to talk to her beforehand. They were wrapping up the acylation lab from the previous week, so once they finished, they began drifting out. As the clock approached five o’clock, only Morrigan and a couple of other kids were still there. They were finishing up, but I could tell Morrigan was lingering.

Just before five, the other students left. Morrigan watched them go, then stood and walked over to me. She had a stretchy little black lace dress that was short enough to expose her garter straps.

She smiled. “I feel like we have some unfinished business.”

“We do. Go lock the door.”

“Yes, Master.” She turned around and locked it. I was still sitting on my lab stool. Morrigan came over and knelt in front of me. She licked her lips. Her appearance and mood were not unlike Amira’s had been, except I knew this was coming entirely out of love. Morrigan wanted nothing more than to be with me.

“I am so fucking wet, Master. I’ve been waiting for this all day.”

“Show me.”

She reached between her thighs, sliding her middle finger against herself. Then she held it up for me, glistening with her inner fluids.

“Come here.”

Morrigan stood up, smiling. I took her finger and sucked it clean, then kissed her. She melted into my arms. I tugged her dress up to her waist and stroked her bare butt, then reached around to feel her. Her whole pubic area was slick and hot. I poked a finger into her, and she moaned into my mouth.

I fingered her casually for a little bit, tugging on her clit ring and twisting it gently, then sliding my fingers around to tease her. She moaned and clutched at my back. The dress had a built-in bra. I unsnapped it now and tugged down the front of it to expose her big breasts.

“When was your last orgasm?” I asked as I took a stiff nipple between my fingers.

“That night you were down with Katarina and Colleen. Every night MJ sends me a new video to edge to. She knows exactly the stuff that hits me the hardest. It’s torture.”

I laughed. “Which I know you love.”

Morrigan nodded against my shoulder.

“Back to the floor,” I said.

She dropped to her knees. I opened my jeans and freed my erection. Morrigan leaned forward and took me into her mouth. I sat there on the edge of the stool, enjoying the wet friction of her mouth around me, her lips tight as she went up and down, massaging my cock with the stud in her tongue.

I pushed my fingers through her gorgeous purple hair, and she looked up at me, big blue eyes filled with lust. She held the eye contact as she sucked and bobbed over me. Soft slurping noises filled the room.

I let her work on me for a few minutes. But I wanted more. I finally pulled her to her feet and turned her around. Morrigan stretched out across one of the lab tables as I got behind her and spread her feet. She moaned in anticipation.

I smacked her hard on one butt cheek, then the other.

“Where’s your phone?”

“Um. My purse.”

I found it and handed it to her. “Call MJ. FaceTime her.”

“Yes, Master.”

I entered her slowly, pressing my thumb against her butt plug as she dialed MJ.

MJ answered on the second ring.

“Ma’am?” Morrigan gasped.

MJ laughed. She seemed to be in her dorm room. I watched her tilting her phone around trying to see what we were doing. “What the fuck? Where are you?”

“One of the chemistry labs.”

“Lift your phone up so I can see better.” Morrigan immediately obeyed.

“Finger yourself, slut,” MJ said. “You don’t get to come until I say.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Morrigan replied.

Morrigan had gotten me very turned on with her mouth, and I wasn’t in the mood to take it easy on her. As she reached between her legs to rub her clit, I began fucking her roughly.

Morrigan laid her face on the lab table and whimpered. MJ looked at me through the phone.

“What the fuck, Jimmy?”

“I thought you’d like to be a part of this.”

She laughed as I pounded Morrigan against the table. I felt Morrigan’s fingers against my balls every time I bottomed out. She was incredibly wet, yet even so, she was tight enough to create delicious friction around me.

I knew I could keep going, so I didn’t hold back. As Morrigan whimpered and moaned and tried not to come, I pumped myself into her rapidly until I tipped over the edge and came hard deep inside her.

Morrigan was almost crying in frustration now. MJ laughed.

“Is he coming, slut?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You can feel it?”

Morrigan nodded rapidly. When the tide of pleasure passed, I refreshed myself and kept fucking her. I saw MJ set her phone down, and it bounced around on her bed for a few moments as she did something that wasn’t visible. When she picked it up again, the view flipped as she changed cameras, and the explanation appeared. She’d pushed her tights down and was now masturbating as she watched us.

“Do you see this, slut? Do you see what I’m doing?”

I watched MJ’s fingers stroking her bare flesh and dipping inside to lubricate herself.

“Yes, ma’am,” Morrigan gasped.

“You can come when I do. I’ll tell you.”

I slowed down, giving MJ a chance to catch up to us. Morrigan could only moan and whimper against her delayed release. She pushed back against me with each thrust. I slapped her ass again and pumped her butt plug with my thumb.

This was clearly turning MJ on as well. I watched her rubbing herself rapidly, watched her getting very wet and slick. Her clit-hood piercing glistened on the screen.

“Almost there, slut. Are you ready?”

Morrigan just nodded, unable to speak.

I fucked Morrigan faster now. MJ’s fingers were moving so fast the image was largely a blur. Then she cried out.

“Fucking come now. Do it!”

Morrigan finally pushed herself over the edge, and I felt her clench around me tightly in a spasm of urgent contractions. I knew how intense her orgasms were when MJ and I did stuff like this to her, and we’d clearly maxed her out this time. She had to bite her hand to keep from making too much noise, and even then an anguished moan escaped her lips.

I watched MJ squirming around on Morrigan’s phone as she finished herself off. I pounded Morrigan a few more times and joined them, coming inside her a second time. Morrigan was still rubbing herself as the last twitches shot through her gut. She lay limply on the lab table trying to catch her breath.

I reached out and took her phone. MJ switched cameras again, and her flushed face appeared on the screen.

“Wish you were here, babe,” I said.

She laughed. “This was a nice surprise.”

“Thought you’d enjoy it.”

“Is she conscious?”

“Barely. She’s going to need a few minutes to recover.”

“Give her back the phone.”

I did.

“You’re a good little slut,” MJ said. “I love you guys.”

“I love you, too, ma’am,” Morrigan whispered.

￼

I’d put things with Colleen off as long as I could. When Morrigan and I got back to my condo, I texted her.

Time for that discussion if you’re up for it

Definitely

k

Be down in a minute

I went downstairs and found her in some loose cotton pants and a sweatshirt. She kissed me.

“This had better be good.”

“I think it is, but it’s likely to be a shock.”

She stared at me. “Okay. Then spill it.”

“I only know this because of the bonding spell. Somehow it let me see where that strange little connection we had was coming from. I remember it coming to life that first night we were together, though I didn’t know what it was. I don’t pretend to know how this happened, but it has.”

Colleen’s face had gone pale. “What are you talking about?”

I took a deep breath.

“You’re pregnant.”

Her jaw dropped, and her eyes went wide. It was several long moments before she could say anything.

“That’s impossible.”

“Am I wrong?”

Her eyes went unfocused. She let out a little whimper, and her jaw started to vibrate. “No. How did I miss this?”

“You couldn’t possibly have been looking. It’s been what, a couple of weeks?”

“How did this happen? I’m a celestial, Jimmy! I’m not human! How could I possibly be pregnant? How did you even get me pregnant?”

I took her in my arms and hugged her tightly. She hugged me back, pressing her face against my neck. I realized she was crying.

“I’m not quite human either. I think, what I did to you that night, maybe somehow . . .”

She rocked against me, holding me tightly. Neither of us said anything for a while.

Finally Colleen sighed against my chest.

“Does anyone else know?” she whispered.

“I haven’t told them. I’ve been trying not to think about it at all. So I don’t think Charlotte knows either.”

“It’s a girl.”

“I know.”

“I can see her in there. I don’t know what she is.”

“I suppose we’re going to find out.”

She pulled back a bit and kissed me. Then she pressed her forehead against my chin. “Will you humor me on something? I’m still letting go of my old life. I was going to give notice on Friday. It’s time to stop pretending I’m a librarian. This will be enough of a reason.”

“Anything. What?”

She held up her left hand. A diamond engagement ring appeared on her ring finger.

“It’s just for show,” she said, smiling at me. “We’re already bound for all eternity. But I’d like to go out of this life with a bang.”

I laughed. “Of course.”

She kissed me again. Then she shifted to her true form. I looked down at this incredible being that I had bound to me.

“I told you it would take longer than this. It should have. But this pretty much did it. I love you, Jimmy. I do.”

I kissed her back.

“I love you too, angel.”

￼

Another Author’s Note

If you were hoping Yuki the cat-girl street racer would join Jimmy’s coven, fear not – she (and Else, and a few others here) will be back in a new series, Shifter Girls, which is set in the same universe as Demon Hunter. It should be out later in 2022.

Demon Hunter 6 will be along eventually, but I won’t make any predictions as to when.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Another Author’s Note