Demon Hunter: The Vermillion Cabal

Michael Dalton

Copyright © 2021 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 Hell Yes Design Studio

https://www.hellyes.design

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

Grad student Jimmy has settled into life as a sorcerer with succubus Katarina, girlfriend Hayley, and familiar Charlotte. But much about his background and relationship to the infernal bureaucracy remains a mystery he struggles to unravel.

Hired to recover a powerful grimoire lost by Hell decades ago, Jimmy and his harem come into contact with a mysterious group known as the Vermillion Cabal. But the threat the group poses is not what it seems, and the job soon leads to a shocking series of discoveries about Jimmy’s past.

With his life hanging in the balance, Jimmy must decide which path he will walk, and where his allegiances truly lie – assuming those decisions have not already been made for him.

The Vermillion Cabal is the second novel in the Demon Hunter trilogy and contains explicit adult scenes and themes of black magic and demonology.

◆◆◆

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

Chapter 1

Hayley pulled her little Mercedes SUV off the county highway, turning into a driveway blocked by a tall steel gate. She stopped at the call box and punched in a code. The gate began sliding to the side. Beyond it, the driveway sloped down through a manicured lawn to a large, modern house that hugged the hillside in a sinuous curve, looking out on the ocean beyond.

“Nice,” I said as she drove us down the hill.

“Tell my mom that when she gets home,” she said dryly. “There’s nothing she enjoys more than compliments about her house.”

“When will they be home?” Katarina asked.

“My mom usually gets back from the hospital by seven. My dad, it depends on what procedures he’s got. He told me this morning the last one was at four. But sometimes he gets called into the ER to deal with an emergency. If that happens, he might get home at ten or even later.”

“Is it like that every day?”

“Pretty much. He works really, really hard.”

Hayley parked her car in the garage, and we got our stuff out. Upon hearing that Katarina and I had no family to see over Christmas break, her parents (with some hinting from Hayley) had invited us to stay with them during the holidays. We were keeping up the fiction that Hayley and Katarina were dating, while Katarina and I were just roommates.

That had been necessary during the fall semester when I was the TA for Hayley’s chemistry class, and we were continuing it for her parents’ sake. Hayley had come out as bi to them years ago. They professed to be fine with it, but she decided that our three-way relationship was probably too much for them to stomach at the moment.

Hayley was the only child of two busy, successful doctors. Her mother was a cardiologist, and her father was a neurosurgeon. She assured us that as long as she kept her grades up for medical school, they were unconcerned with her sex life, or much of anything else she did. As she currently had a near-perfect GPA, they were happy to host her new girlfriend from Sweden and her girlfriend’s roommate.

Hayley unlocked the garage door and turned off the security system.

“This is it.”

The top floor of the house stretched around the hillside, giving a perfect view of the ocean and the cliffs below us leading down to the beach. Past the entryway was the main living room. The kitchen and dining room were off to the right, while a hallway to the left seemed to lead to an office, sitting area, and the master suite.

Hayley’s parents’ house looked like one of those places that only exist in stock photo collections and architectural magazines. Everything was perfectly in place, perfectly coordinated, and aesthetically beyond reproach. The off-white Scandinavian-style decor was simultaneously warm and welcoming while still carrying a subtle implied warning against touching anything, out of fear that the carefully curated look would be disrupted.

“Wow,” I said.

“Yeah,” Hayley said. “My mom again.”

She led us down a flight of stairs to the lower level.

“We’re down here.”

Her bedroom and a couple of guest rooms took up the lower level, along with a home theater and another office. A balcony outside with a firepit, spa, and BBQ area wrapped around most of the length of the house. Hayley showed me the guest room I was going to occupy while she and Katarina would be in her room next to me.

Charlotte went out onto the balcony to sit on a lounge chair. It was cool but not terribly cold. I followed her out there and stood against the glass wall, looking out at the sunset.

Hayley came out from her room and leaned against the wall beside me. I took her in my arms from behind and nuzzled her dark red hair. She put her arms over mine and leaned back against me.

“Nice view,” I said.

“It is.”

“Talking about the one right in front of me.”

I slid my hands up to cup her breasts. She let me fondle her for a few moments, then turned her head and kissed me on the cheek, pulling my arms back down to her waist.

“Be patient. We’re here for two weeks, and my folks are gone most of the day. But my mom could be home soon.”

Katarina came out and joined us, and I put an arm around her. She leaned against us, and we just stood there for several minutes as the sun fell under the horizon. When it was gone, Hayley pulled herself out of my grasp.

“We should get unpacked. Put everything away in the dresser in your room or the closet. Unpack your toiletries and put them away too, then make sure your bags are in the closet. If you didn’t figure it out on the way in, my mom doesn’t like clutter.”

I laughed. “Got it.”

But Hayley didn’t laugh back. “Jimmy, I’m serious. You’re meeting my parents. Please try to make a good impression.”

“Okay. Will do.”

My bedroom was carefully decorated in dark earth tones, brown oak, and leather, kind of like a stuffy, exclusive men’s club. A big oil painting of some European landscape hung over the bed, pairing nicely with an antique brass ceiling fan overhead.

I put away all my clothes, then stowed the grimoires and Grandma Amy’s staff in the closet, along with the divining rod I’d gotten from Volach. I also brought a binder I’d been keeping on the various things I’d done, both the lab processes I’d worked out as well as other stuff like the photos Grandma Amy had left me. I wasn’t sure I would need all of it, but I didn’t like the idea of leaving any of it behind at school.

When I came out of the closet, Charlotte was curled up on the bed.

“No clawing the furniture or peeing anywhere you shouldn’t, got that?”

She meowed loudly at me, almost sounding a bit annoyed. We’d already discussed the trip in a dream the other night, and I wasn’t too concerned. So I reached over and rubbed her head while she purred softly.

Hayley came in a few minutes later. She looked around the room and then into the bathroom.

“Do I pass inspection?” I asked.

She lay beside me and began petting Charlotte. “Yes. Thanks.”

“Having seen all this, I’m kind of shocked she agreed to let Charlotte come with us.”

I knew that talking her parents into letting us bring my familiar hadn’t been easy. Hayley assured them she was a well-trained, low-maintenance outdoor cat who would stay in the guest room with me, and her mother had eventually given in.

“It took some doing. I convinced her she wouldn’t be a problem.”

Charlotte meowed again, Hayley bent to kiss her.

“Yes, you little witch, I know you’ll be fine.”

Then she rolled on her back and looked up at me. I stared down into her pretty hazel eyes.

“I’m meeting your parents, and they still think I’m your girlfriend’s roommate.”

Hayley reached up to play with my hair, then pulled me down. We kissed for about ten seconds. Then she broke the kiss and held my head in her hands.

“Just give it time, Jimmy. We’re getting there. Does this look like a house that could deal with the entire truth?”

I laughed. “No.”

We were getting to the point where the “L word” was floating around my head, but neither of us had said it yet. I could see it in Hayley’s eyes too, but there was a reason we hadn’t, and it was Katarina.

Though she was a succubus, I knew after two months together that she had genuine feelings for me and Hayley. What exactly those feelings were, though, was not always clear. Succubi were incapable of love, but they were not automatons. She’d been happy with me and mad at me, and there was no question she enjoyed being part of our lives. She’d just made it clear there were limits to what we could expect out of her.

I had more or less made my peace with them. But I knew, when the time came, it was going to feel weird telling Hayley I loved her in front of Katarina.

That was when she appeared and lay down with us on the other side of Hayley. Charlotte climbed onto Hayley’s stomach and sat down.

“Your parents have a lovely home, Hayley,” Katarina said. “Is your mother at all Swedish? Her sense of order and design is impressive.”

Hayley laughed. “No, we’re Scottish. Her parents came over here after World War II. And she has a decorator on call.”

The three of us started to cuddle, but that was the moment I heard a voice from upstairs.

“Honey? Are you here? I’m home.”

Hayley sat up. “That’s my mom. Please impress her, guys. And remember everything I said.”

We sat up with her. I hugged her quickly and kissed her on the head. “We’ll be good.”

We got up and went upstairs. Hayley’s mother was in the kitchen pouring a glass of wine. She was an attractive, auburn-haired woman in her early fifties. She looked a lot more neat and put together than I would have expected from someone who had just come off a twelve-hour shift at the hospital.

Hayley went over and hugged her. “Hi, Mom.”

“Oh, I missed you, honey.” She let her daughter go after a few seconds and turned to us. “I’m Stephanie. It’s so nice to meet you finally.”

She didn’t extend her hand. Hayley had warned us that her parents didn’t shake hands, her mother out of paranoia about germs, her father out of concern for his hands as a surgeon. But she hugged Katarina quickly.

“Thank you for having us,” I said.

“Oh, of course, after Hayley explained about your not having anywhere to go. Our holidays tend be fairly quiet. It’s no problem at all.” She turned back to Katarina. “So how are you finding things here? This must be a big change from Sweden.”

Katarina smiled. “Yes, it is. But I like it here. I do not miss the snow and ice right now.”

Stephanie laughed. “Oh, I’m sure. You really are so very pretty. Hayley wasn’t exaggerating.”

“Thank you. You have such a beautiful home. So much thought into everything.”

“Thank you, and yes. I just need something beautiful to come home to at night.”

“How was work?” Hayley asked.

Stephanie put up a hand, seeming to wave the question away. “The usual. We had a patient come in around noon with his wife because he had retrosternal chest pains. He insisted it was just heartburn, but his wife was begging us to do something, telling me he never takes care of himself. So we find out his troponin levels are off the charts, and when the echo comes back his aortic valve is so calcified it’s barely functioning and one of the coronary arteries is almost blocked. He was probably days away from a heart attack.”

Then she looked at Hayley. “What would your prognosis be?”

Hayley took a deep breath. “The troponin levels mean his heart is under a lot of stress, probably because of the blocked artery. Normally this would be a stent or a single bypass, but it sounds like he needs a valve replacement too.”

“Good, yes, that’s exactly what we recommended.”

Then they both laughed at the mild confusion on my face and Katarina’s.

“Mom likes to test me,” Hayley said.

“I want her to have some real familiarity with clinical medicine when she starts her internship,” Stephanie said. “Normally the kids arrive not knowing their knees from their elbows. The sooner you start developing your clinical reasoning skills, the better. Do you have your grades for this semester yet?”

“Not yet, except . . . ” Hayley looked over at me.

“She aced Chemistry, at least,” I said. “I know that much.”

I expected Stephanie to smile, but she didn’t. “‘Aced’ meaning . . . ?”

“Uh, I think she had a 98% for the semester.”

“What did you miss?” Stephanie asked.

Hayley seemed to cringe a little. “Just a couple of questions on the midterm and final.”

“Her homework and labs were pretty much perfect,” I said. “Dr. Vicenza can be really tough. She had the highest grade in the class.”

Stephanie nodded. “All right, I was just curious. Can I offer either of you anything?”

Katarina requested vodka; I just wanted a beer. Stephanie went to change out of her hospital clothes and had Hayley order dinner.

“Did we pass?” I asked when she put her phone down.

Hayley nodded. “She’s always like that. Don’t worry. Did I really have the highest grade in the class?”

“I’ll never tell.”

She smirked but came over and gave me a quick kiss.

◆◆◆

We ate dinner while Stephanie politely quizzed Katarina and me about what we were doing at Huntington College. I told her about my grandmother raising me and how I was working toward a PhD in Chemical Engineering. Katarina gave her the story about meeting me in Yosemite and coming to study evolutionary biology. After two months, we’d gotten it down pretty well, though this time she left out the part about our hooking up on that made-up camping trip.

“Do you think you’ll stay in the U.S. after you graduate?” she asked.

Katarina smiled and looked at me and Hayley. “I think so. I will always be a Swedish girl, but I have made friends here.”

When she got like this, I had to remind myself what Katarina really was, because she was amazingly adept at projecting a particular persona. She’d been doing it for more than a thousand years, after all.

Stephanie turned back to Hayley. “So how do you think your internship went this fall, honey?”

Hayley had been working at the school clinic for the past semester. From what she’d told me, the internships were fiercely sought after by the premed students, but her parents had pulled some strings for her.

“I really like it,” she said. “It finally started to feel normal the last month or so. I felt so lost at first.”

Her mother nodded. “That’s normal. Do you still feel like Dr. Harris is a good choice for a recommendation?”

“Yes. She’s really nice.”

Stephanie’s face wrinkled a little. “It’s important that she’s able to talk about your skills and temperament for clinical practice. The schools don’t care how nice she is.”

Hayley nodded nervously. “She will.”

“It’s certainly good that she’s a nice person, but her recommendation has to have plenty of meat to it.”

Hayley sighed. “It will, Mom.”

Stephanie nodded. “All right. I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

The three of us did the dishes while Stephanie went off to finish us some paperwork and reading. When she was out of sight, I gave Hayley a hug.

“It’s okay,” she said. “She’s right. I don’t think you guys appreciate how demanding the application process is. An awful lot of people who want to be doctors never get admitted anywhere.”

“This is what you want to do?”

“Yes. Don’t worry about that.”

We spent the rest of the evening watching TV in the home theater downstairs. Hayley’s father Derek got home around ten and introduced himself briefly. He was a tall, rangy guy who, in contrast to Hayley’s mother, definitely looked like he had just spent eighteen hours on call. Hayley got up and hugged him.

“You guys get settled in okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, Dad, we’re good,” Hayley said.

“Okay. Tomorrow shouldn’t be as bad. We can catch up then. Good night.”

We retired to the bedrooms, and Katarina created some simple cotton pajamas very unlike her usual bedtime attire. I kissed both of them goodnight and gave Hayley a long hug. Then she reached up and kissed me again.

“They’ll be out of the house all day tomorrow,” she said. “Plenty of time for fun in the morning. I just think we should keep it cool the first night.”

“Got it.

Chapter 2

Charlotte and I went to bed by ourselves, and she curled up in the crook of my arm like she usually did.

I dreamed. I had gotten familiar enough with our connection that I could go to Charlotte pretty much whenever I wanted to, provided I thought about it before I fell asleep. Other times, it would just occur to me in another dream, and I would go. And sometimes Charlotte herself could pull me in.

This was one of the times it just seemed to happen. I emerged from another dream to find myself in the vivid, lucid landscape of Charlotte’s forest. I came upon her cottage, and she stood there waiting.

“Hello, Master.”

“Hey.”

Then I noticed what she was holding: A baby.

A wave of shock and surprise washed over me, but Charlotte laughed at my reaction.

“Do not be concerned, Master. She is only flotsam of our dream, of the spirit world.”

The little dark-haired infant in her arms looked a month old, if that. She seemed fuzzy, indistinct.

“So, we didn’t . . . I guess . . . make this?”

She shook her head. “We did. The spirit world moves differently, as I have told you. But again, she is not her own thing, not alive. She is merely an echo of our lovemaking. But it tells me you are a very powerful sorcerer with great facility in dreaming. Only mages such as those can make a dream child like her.”

“Okay. Did you actually give birth here, by yourself?”

“No. She simply appeared one day.” She smiled at me. “You can make her go away, if it troubles you. But I wish you would not. She comforts me.”

She looked down and stroked the baby’s hair.

Charlotte spent some indeterminate amount of time here in between our dreams, even though she inhabited the gray tabby cat as my familiar. I had never quite understood how this worked, and she was unable to explain it in a way that made sense to me.

As she said, things were different in the spirit world.

“No. It’s okay.”

Charlotte smiled. “Thank you, Master.”

She led me into her cottage and laid the baby in a little basket. Then she turned to me, and I took her in my arms. Unlike Hayley and Katarina, her body was soft and full. And unlike my two women in the real world, I knew Charlotte loved me. It was a reflection of our familiar bond, and of her merger with the gray tabby, a stray I had been feeding and caring for long before Grandma Amy died.

We didn’t need to undress. In our dream, a thought was enough to make our clothes melt away. I pulled her to the bed, sitting back against the wall and guiding her into my lap. She kissed me as I played with her big, firm breasts.

Since anything was possible in this world, I’d been having fun with it. Charlotte had big breasts to begin with, but I’d made them so high and firm on her chest that she almost looked like a cartoon character. And just because I could, I’d given myself an absolutely massive dick, fifteen inches long and as big around as a beer bottle.

As with any dream, things seemed to happen of their own accord, thoughts taking life much like the baby behind us. And as I squeezed Charlotte’s breasts, the dream-logic of the situation asserted itself. I felt warm milk flowing from her nipples, running over my hands and down her chest.

Charlotte laughed, looking down. She wiped up some of her milk and pushed her fingers into my mouth. The taste was rich and sweet.

“Does this please you, Master?”

“I didn’t do it, exactly.”

I pulled her hips to me. She had to almost stand on the bed to take my giant cock into her body. But once I was fully inside her, she rode me eagerly as her milk continued to flow. I bent down and nursed at her, pulling a plump nipple completely into my mouth. Then with another thought, I made her orgasm. Her tight flesh clamped down around me, and milk squirted into my mouth as she shook against me.

“Master!”

I stood, lifting her up and laying her on the bed. Then I pounded her lush body over and over, watching her breasts shake and bounce under me as she begged for my seed. I made her come again, and as she peaked, back arching under me, milk still flowing from her nipples, I gave it to her, spurting deeply inside her.

She began to laugh as we coasted down, holding me tightly.

“I love you so much, Master.”

I held her as we lay there. I looked over at the baby, wondering what it meant, if anything.

Being with Charlotte was this weird merger of real and unreal. It was far more vivid than a normal dream, yet it was still a dream. Everything was more fluid and intense, even the emotions. I loved her when I was here, yet when I woke, I would wonder how much I really felt. Just like the baby, a lot of it seemed like an echo when I was awake.

I did love her, but it wasn’t really like what I felt for Hayley and Katarina.

I felt the real world tugging at me, and so did Charlotte. She kissed me.

“Come back soon, Master.”

◆◆◆

It was Katarina. The sun was up, and she was in bed beside me, snuggled against my arm. I looked over at her, transitioning from the fluid, fuzzy world of the familiar dream to the hard edges of reality.

I knew why she was here. She could sense when I was with Charlotte, through our bond, and she could feel much of what I felt. She liked to share it.

Charlotte knew it too. She rose from where she’d been sleeping between my legs, stretched, and walked up to the side of the bed opposite Katarina, flopping down again.

I rolled over, taking Katarina in my arms. She nuzzled against my chest.

“Did you have a good dream?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

She’d changed from the demure pajamas of the previous night into one of her slinky little silk nightgowns. I slid my hand up to play with her perfect breasts, marveling at how firm and wonderfully shaped they were, just a tiny bit too big to take entirely into my hand. As I ran fingers back and forth over her stiff nipple, she rolled back a bit to look up at me.

“Master?” She only called me that when we were bed alone together.

“Hmm?”

“You know I can be anything for you. Any woman in the world.”

“Yes.”

“I could even be . . .”

Her features flowed, and she turned into Hayley. The effect was startling.

“You don’t need to.”

Katarina returned. “Why do you never ask me to?”

“I like the real Katarina.”

“But this is the real Katarina.”

She became the young girl she’d been when she died. I froze, hand still on her breast, because this version of her looked about sixteen, even though she was actually twelve hundred years old. She sensed my unease instantly and went back to her usual form.

“This is the Katarina you would have been,” I said.

She smiled. “Master, had I become her, we would never have met. I would have lived and died long ago. That thought makes me sad. Why does this form please you so? You thought me equally desirable like this.”

She turned into Sabrina, the siren she’d been when I met her, back when she was luring men to their deaths and stealing their souls.

“I didn’t, actually.”

Katarina came back. “I only want to please you.”

“You do.”

“I just wish to understand.”

“I like you best this way. I’m not sure why.”

“Hmm.”

I felt her reaching down, finding my erection.

“Hayley’s parents left for work about half an hour ago,” she said.

The dreams with Charlotte were an emotional and spiritual release, but not a physical one. So Katarina liked to complete things when I woke up. I kissed her.

“Go for it.”

She eased me onto my back, throwing a leg over my waist. I felt her backing down over me as I sank into her wetness. She lay flat on my chest, only moving her hips.

“Just lie still, Master.”

I lifted her nightgown over her head to leave her naked above me. Katarina’s breasts were perfect. Her pussy was something beyond perfect. She could do things with it that no human woman could ever do, sucking at me and pulsing herself rhythmically around me with exquisite precision. I lay there as she worked on me, nuzzling my face and kissing me gently.

I put my hands on her firm butt, feeling her muscles flexing as she moved. She kissed me again, and I looked up at her.

I knew she could never love me like Hayley and Charlotte. But she gave me something I would never get from Hayley, something I didn’t even really want from Hayley – complete and total devotion and obedience, as far beyond anything a human woman could give me as what she was doing to my cock.

Katarina took me right up to the edge of orgasm, then froze, motionless. I groaned, and she laughed softly. She held herself still until my arousal began to ebb, then began pulsing and sucking at me once more. She stopped again just before I went over, and I dug my fingers into her ass.

“You could tell me not to stop, Master,” she said impishly.

I didn’t. So she waited again. This time she moved more rapidly, squeezing me more strongly.

“Don’t stop,” I groaned.

“I will not.”

She didn’t. A few moments later, I exploded inside her, shaking and shivering under her as she milked out every drop of my orgasm.

When I was finally done, she slid forward, letting me fall out of her. I felt my seed oozing out of her onto my abdomen.

“If we soil the sheets, Hayley’s mother may notice,” she said.

I nodded, still catching my breath. Katarina got up and went to the bathroom, returning with a washcloth to clean up the mess. Then she lay down with me for a while.

I was starting to doze off again, holding Katarina, when I heard the sliding glass door to the balcony open.

“So this is where you two are.” Hayley climbed into bed with us. “You couldn’t wait for me?”

“Jimmy was with Charlotte,” Katarina said.

“Wow, so I get sloppy thirds?”

We laughed together.

Katarina sat up, straddling Hayley’s waist. “I will take care of you as well.”

She pulled off Hayley’s pajama bottoms and slid down between her thighs. Hayley laughed again as Katarina took Hayley’s sex in her mouth.

I held Hayley and played with her perky little boobs as Katarina worked on her. Hayley pulled me down and kissed me, groping at Katarina’s head with her other hand.

“Don’t let her come right away,” I said to Katarina. “Do what you did to me.”

Hayley groaned and laughed at the same time. “You asshole.”

I watched Katarina alternately licking and fluttering her tongue over Hayley’s clit, slowly working her closer and closer to orgasm. I felt Hayley’s arousal as she lay next to me starting to twitch and squirm. I lifted her pajama top and bent to suck on her nipples. She had one hand on my head and the other in Katarina’s hair.

Katarina began to slow down, edging her until she whimpered and shook in frustration. Just as she’d done with me, she took Hayley to the brink three times before letting her go over. Hayley let out a sob of pleasure and shuddered against me in release.

When Hayley came down, she reached for my cock. I was hard again, and I pulled her on top of me. When I was completely inside her, I reached for Katarina, pulling her up above my head. She settled down onto my mouth and leaned forward against Hayley.

I let them take the lead from there, just thrusting up at Hayley as she rode my cock and licking Katarina as best I could with my face buried in her tight butt. I reached up and joined them in playing with each other’s breasts. Hayley, still wound up from Katarina’s attentions, came first, grinding herself down as she contracted around me. Katarina joined her a few moments later, thighs shaking against my head.

I was getting close myself. When Katarina fell to the side and Hayley leaned forward onto my chest, I rolled her over and began pumping rapidly into her tight little body. She moaned, digging her fingers into my butt. As I closed in on my own release, she began to shudder, and a series of spasms erupted around my cock. That was all I could take. I drove in with one last thrust and spurted helplessly inside her. She held me tightly as her orgasm subsided.

“Shit,” she gasped.

“Yeah.”

I looked down and nuzzled her face. She kissed my ear.

“I could get used to that,” she whispered.

“Me too.”

She reached for the washcloth, which was still on the bed beside Katarina.

“Thanks for thinking of that. My mom would definitely notice. I should have said something.”

I leaned back, letting her cover herself before anything came out. “You kind of did.”

They laughed. When Hayley was satisfied, we lay together for a little while, then went up to get something to eat.

Chapter 3

After eating, showering, and getting dressed, Hayley suggested we go down the hill to the beach.

“It’s kind of rocky in spots, but it’s really pretty.”

We brought some towels to sit on along with some water and snacks. The balcony area led to a staircase built into the hillside, which went from the house down about two hundred feet to the beach. About halfway down was a locked gate that she let us through. Charlotte hopped down the steps beside me.

“Does all of this belong to your family?” Katarina asked.

“The hillside does, down to the high-water line,” she replied. “The beach is public access. That’s why there’s the gate up there.”

“Do people try to come up the stairs?” I asked.

“No. My mom is just paranoid. But they’re gone most of the day, so I guess it makes sense.”

The beach was broad and level stretching out from the base of the cliffs, with a few isolated towers of rock out in the water, remnants of the cliffside that had eroded away long ago. Smaller piles of heavily weathered rock protruded from the sand. We walked along the high-tide line, watching the waves slowly rolling in. Charlotte darted around looking at bits and pieces of things that had washed ashore. Katarina followed her.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cat on a beach before,” Hayley said.

“Me neither.”

She took my hand and squeezed it. “Jimmy?”

“What?”

“Can . . . can you tell me what you think we have here, exactly? The three of us? Or four, I guess.”

“I don’t know. It’s good. Does it need a name?”

We walked for a few minutes before she said anything else.

“I’ve never really had a boyfriend before you. I told you that, just a few girlfriends. Only one of them was anything serious, this girl I met freshman year and dated for about five months.”

“Anyone I know?”

“No, I don’t think you’ve met her. We broke up because she needed something I just couldn’t give her. I’ll explain it sometime if you really want to know. But since then, I haven’t done a whole lot. It was partly wanting to focus on school, and partly figuring out who I was. I’m still not completely sure.”

I looked over, watching her long red hair blowing in the ocean breeze.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“About being bi. I’ve just been stuck in this feeling that whatever direction I went would mean leaving part of me behind.”

“Lots of bi people get married or pair off permanently,” I said. “Is it that big a deal?”

She glanced at me, nodding. “I know. So it seems silly.”

“I don’t know that it’s silly.”

“But it’s what I can’t get my mind around. Just committing to one thing or the other. I used to think the solution was being with two people.”

Katarina and Charlotte were about twenty yards away now, walking around an outcrop of rocks. Charlotte seemed to be looking for things, and Katarina was just following.

“I guess that would be a solution.”

“In theory, anyway. Then I met you guys, and I started thinking, ‘Maybe this could work.’ I was really attracted to both of you. But what we’ve got now isn’t quite like what I was envisioning.”

“No.”

“It’s not like Katarina is your girlfriend. You guys aren’t going to just break up. Like, ever.”

I laughed. “No.”

“It’s like she’s part of you, in a real way. So if I stay with you, I stay with her. And I’ve started to realize that means that as long as you and I are together, I don’t have to choose. I can just be me. Which . . . feels good.”

“I like what we’ve got.”

She gave me a little side-eye. “I know you do. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I feel this intense sense of possibility with us. If we’re going to keep having what we’re having, whatever you want to call it, I’m not sure what else I need. It feels right. I just—” She stopped and put her hand on her head, looking at me. “I’m sorry. I’m babbling. I just want you to kn—”

“I love you.”

She looked up at me and took a deep breath. Then she put her arms around my waist and leaned against my chest, hugging me tightly. We held each other for a few long moments.

“That was what I was trying to get out, but it wouldn’t come,” she said.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“I love you, too.”

I just stood there and held her, burying my face in her hair. She rose up on her toes and kissed me.

“And if the sex stays as good as it was this morning, I really don’t need anything else.”

I laughed. “I guess not.”

She smirked. “I’m going to tell you something that you’d better not let go to your head.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t multi-orgasmic before I met you. It was always one and done. You were the first to do it.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I don’t know what was up that first night we were together, but you pushed all the right buttons. That was why I was kind of weirded out on the way back to my dorm. I felt this really strong connection to you right away. It’s weird, like you were almost part of me, somehow.”

I kissed her. “This is good to know. Maybe we’re meant to be. I felt the same thing.”

She kissed me again. We broke our embrace after another few seconds and continued walking. Katarina had stopped next to Charlotte, who was tearing apart a dead fish she’d found in the sand.

“Is that okay?” Hayley asked.

“I do not think it has been sitting here very long,” Katarina said.

“It can’t be that big a deal,” I said. “She was a stray before she was Charlotte. It can’t be the first dead thing she found and ate.”

“It’s so weird how sometimes she’s a witch, and sometimes she’s just a cat,” Hayley said.

“The way Charlotte explained it to me, it’s not like she’s a person in cat form,” I said. “There are two of them in there, and she’s not always exerting control. It’s too much effort, and it’s not necessary. A lot of times she’s just along for the ride.”

Charlotte looked up and meowed in agreement. Then she went back to eating.

I reached into my jacket and extracted the divining rod, which I’d tucked into the inside pocket.

“You brought that out here?” Hayley asked.

“I thought we might do some beachcombing. Figure there must be something interesting here.”

I hadn’t used it since finding the box of gold eagle coins a couple of months ago. After that night, I got the distinct feeling that using the rod too often was a bad idea, as if the spirit world needed time to reset itself. That discovery had been significant enough that I was willing to wait, so I focused on selling the coins.

After some calling around, I found a coin broker who took them on consignment. I told him I found them in my late grandmother’s attic. After looking them over, he told me they were all circulated and thus worth two or three thousand dollars each “at best.” I told him that was fine. He’d since sold about 30 of the 120 or so that we’d found. That had been enough to start paying down a chunk of my student loans, though I still owed quite a bit, even with my scholarships. I figured I would hold the impulse spending until I was free and clear, which would take a few more months.

In the meantime, the divining rod began to feel more and more settled down. Over the last couple of weeks, it had felt ready to go to work again.

“I don’t want to go off on some wild goose chase,” Hayley said.

“I’m going to try to see if I can keep it focused on the beach.”

I didn’t want to go driving all over the place again either. But I also wanted to avoid being sent somewhere we shouldn’t be going. I still hadn’t figured out if the coins had some connection to Breamstone, whatever that was. We’d found them on land that belonged to some entity with that name, whether or not it had anything to do with my grandmother’s cryptic messages.

“I think you should be able to, Jimmy,” Katarina said. “That does not mean there is anything to find here.”

“Worth a shot.”

I first looked around us, up and down the beach, fixing the ocean and cliffs and sand in my head. Then I closed my eyes and opened my mind to the spirit world, envisioning the beach around us and reaching out for what might be here.

A few moments later, the divining rod twitched. And I sensed something.

“Was that it?” Hayley asked.

“Yeah. And it’s close.”

Whatever it was, I sensed it about half a mile back down the beach. We turned and walked across the sand as Charlotte picked up her fish in her teeth and carried it with her. It took us about five minutes to get there.

The rod twitched again when we reached a spot in a flat, featureless expanse of sand near the base of the cliff below Hayley’s house.

“This it. It feels like it’s a ways down.”

We started digging with our hands. About a foot and a half down, I hit some kind of fabric, which I quickly realized was an old towel, damp and saturated with sand. It took us a few minutes of digging and gentle tugging to get it loose, since I didn’t want to lose whatever was with it.

Suddenly Hayley gasped and reached down into the sand. She came up with a ring. She brushed it off a couple of times and handed it to me. It was a diamond solitaire – just a single stone in a white gold setting.

“I bet this was someone’s wedding ring,” she said. “Like she took it off and left it here, and forgot until the tide came in.”

“How long do you think this has been here?” I asked.

“Who knows?”

I carefully shook out the towel. It was a simple blue-and-white striped design. The fabric was stained, frayed, and rotten. It might have been here for twenty years or more.

“What do you think this might be worth, Jimmy?” Katarina asked.

“No idea. I don’t know diamonds.”

It wasn’t small, but it wasn’t that big either. Maybe a carat or so. “Someone obviously lost this,” I said. “But it had to be so long ago, they must have replaced it by now.”

“Well, finders keepers, I guess,” Hayley said.

“I’ll keep it,” I said. “Who knows if I might need it.”

Hayley looked at me, eyes widening. Something passed between us, and though I wasn’t about to say it, I knew that “we found it on a beach” was one of those stories that made for good romance.

But then her eyes narrowed, and she shoved me gently. “Don’t joke about stuff like that.”

I laughed. “Okay.”

◆◆◆

We found a spot next to some rocks and laid out the towels to sit down. Charlotte finally lost interest in her fish and curled up in the sun to take a nap. I sat there watching the waves as Hayley and Katarina talked. I sometimes felt they ought to have little or nothing in common, but they always seemed to find things to talk about.

After a while, I looked at the ring again. The diamond was a round cut in a simple six-pronged setting, so it didn’t take long to pick out all the grains of sand. I had no idea how to even gauge what it might be worth, but it looked nice enough, glittering and sparkling in the sun.

I wondered who had lost it. I could imagine some woman, maybe a newlywed worried about swimming in the ocean with it, taking it off and hiding it there. Why hadn’t she come back for it? Had the tide come in too fast? Had she and her husband been drinking, and maybe they forgot about it?

As I looked at the ring, I realized there was an inscription on the inside of the band. I had to squint, but I made it out after a few seconds: SGH - DKM 06-17-95.

I wondered for a moment if the initials were enough of a way to find the owner, and if I had any obligation to try after twenty-five-plus years. SGH and DKM could very well have gotten divorced by now, or even died. But before I could give it much more thought, my phone rang – that is, my demon phone. About a month ago, I’d finally stopped using my personal phone because the demon phone worked a lot better and, for whatever reason, had much better reception.

I answered it. “Hey.”

“Hey, kid. How they hanging?”

It was Volach. I hadn’t heard from him in a while.

“We’re just on the beach at the moment.”

Hayley and Katarina stopped talking and looked over at me.

“Yeah, I can see that. I guess Sugar-tits has been keeping you busy. Hope I didn’t interrupt anything.” He laughed. “Look, we got some work for you. I know you’re conveniently on break right now. This shouldn’t take you that long.”

I hadn’t done a job for Hell since recovering Caacrinolaas. I needed to pay down a huge debt in souls that Grandma Amy had left, and I’d been hoping for more opportunity to do it. But Katarina explained that the infernal bureaucracy moved very slowly. Whatever they wanted me to do had to be checked and approved and re-checked and re-approved up and down the line before Volach could hand it over.

“What do you need?” I asked.

“Too hard to explain over the phone. Got some things I need to show you. Look, there’s a diner up the road a few miles, place called Brushfire Grill. Your girlfriend, the mortal one, ought to know it. Can you meet us for lunch? Noon?”

It was only ten or so.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Great. See you then. Give those tits a squeeze for me.” He laughed loudly and hung up.

I set down the phone and exhaled.

“Was that Volach?” Katarina asked.

“Yeah.” I looked at Hayley. “Do you know a place called Brushfire Grill?”

“It’s an old diner off the highway a few miles up. Pretty sketchy place, actually.”

“He wants us to meet them there for lunch.”

“Them?” Katarina asked.

“Him and Morax, I guess.”

Katarina rolled against me. I put my arm around her.

“I hope it is an important job,” she said. “They promised you. So you can pay down your debt.”

“Me too.”

Chapter 4

The diner was a single nondescript building along the county highway. If you kept going, you eventually hit the interstate and left the semi-rural coastal area where Hayley’s parents lived. A few miles past that, and you crossed into an affluent suburb, and in the midst of that was the large, modern medical center where her parents worked.

From the looks of things, most of the locals viewed the diner in much the same way: a place you knew only as something you drove past while on the way to or from somewhere else. The few people inside appeared to be here only because it was the same place they’d been going to for lunch for the last ten or twenty years.

We got there a bit early, and the demons hadn’t arrived yet. A bored waitress in her early twenties led us to a corner booth. Some of the regulars gave Katarina lingering looks as we went past, looks that ended with glances at me.

Volach and Morax arrived a few minutes later, precisely at noon. Volach appeared to be a tall, well-built man in his late thirties wearing slacks and a crisply starched white dress shirt. He carried a slick leather portfolio. Morax was a big, bull-headed guy, appearing almost like a bull with a human head. Unlike Volach’s dark, chiseled features, every sharp edge on Morax’s body was rounded off with a layer of muscle. He wore a tight t-shirt over jeans. The previously bored waitress perked up when they walked in, since they looked even more out of place here than Katarina did.

Volach flirted with the waitress as she brought them over, and I saw her trying to stifle a blush.

“Good day, people,” he said as he sat down, gaze falling on Hayley. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

“This is Hayley,” I said.

She lifted her hand briefly. “Hi.”

“So you’re the doctor, huh? Wannabe, anyway?”

“Yes.”

Volach nodded. “We should talk. I see a lot of kids in your position. You’d be surprised what some of them will do to get admitted to med school.”

Hayley’s eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t. Actually. But thanks anyway.”

Volach and Morax both laughed.

“It’s always the redheads,” Morax said.

The waitress came back to take our orders. I just got a burger, while the girls ordered salads. Volach and Morax both ordered steaks, blood-rare.

“I’m not kidding, hon,” Volach said to the waitress. “That thing better ‘moo’ when I cut into it.”

She nodded. “Gotcha.”

When she left, he turned back to us.

“So. A little background here,” he began. “This is one of those problems that’s been sitting on people’s desks for a long time, getting passed around. Part of the reason is that, for most of that time, it’s been more of a loose end than a specific problem for someone important.”

“Not like Caacrinolaas,” Morax said. “This isn’t something that’s on the big man’s radar screen like he was.”

“No,” Volach said. “At least not yet. It’s just become the kind of thing that could get on his radar screen, and that’s something that everyone would like to avoid, you know what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What it is, specifically, is a lost item that we would like you to locate. More specifically, a book.”

“A book?”

“A very special book that really needs to be returned. Let’s just say that the person who had it last has racked up a pretty significant overdue fine, which until very recently they were in the process of working off. But the book has not been returned, and this individual, despite some fairly intense inducements, was unwilling or unable to tell us where it is.”

“You can’t locate it yourselves?” Hayley said.

“No, Red, we cannot. Sugar-tits there next to you can maybe explain this a bit better, but our abilities up here are constrained by certain things. We can locate, and assist in locating, items with connections to the infernal bureaucracy. Without that connection, we’re kind of lost. That’s why we needed your boyfriend’s help to find Caacrinolaas. Because Caacrinolaas severed his connection and disappeared.”

“And this book lacks a connection?” I asked. “Even though it was borrowed?”

“Correct,” Morax said. “After it was borrowed, the borrower did something to sever the connection. Where it’s been since then, we do not know.”

“How long has it been gone?” Hayley asked.

“Thirty years,” Volach said. “That may seem like a long time to you folks, but things move differently for us. The absence was known, but until recently, it was an item of low priority. Unfortunately, however, the bureaucracy conducts periodic audits, and the most recent audit flagged this book as being missing.”

Morax leaned forward onto his arms. They looked like Christmas hams.

“Understand that when the Properties Department gets wind of something like this,” he said, “it starts getting progressively elevated. They, naturally, need to keep their books in order. That makes this absence a problem they need to clear, because they have to report the results of the audit. That report will, eventually, land on the big man’s desk.”

“It is not that anyone believes he gives a fuck about one lost book,” Volach said. “It is because no one wants to be in the position of handing him an audit report with unresolved issues, you understand?”

“Yeah, that’s understandable,” I said.

Volach reached into his portfolio and extracted a folder, which he slid over to me. Inside was some kind of printout along with several faded photos. They depicted a thick leather-bound book, but one considerably newer than my grimoires. It was hard to tell for sure from the photos, but it appeared to date from around the 1700s and was some kind of lab journal, not a printed book. In one of the photos, it was lying open and I could make out a series of handwritten notes and diagrams. I flipped one of the photos over and saw a date on it: May 1985.

The printout described the book as Liber Somnia. That translated to The Book of Dreams. It was created in 1689 by a man named Roger Wilcox in London and was noted as “returned to inventory” in 1724. It was then loaned out again in 1985 to someone named Henry V. Langdon. It should have been returned when Langdon died in 1997, but it wasn’t.

Hayley had been leaning over my shoulder as I read.

“This book was written by a mortal? Why is it your problem?”

“Because it was created with our assistance,” Volach said. “The arrangement in those situations is that upon the individual’s passing, such items pass back to us. Same thing happened with your boyfriend’s divining stick.”

“It was created by a mortal?” I asked.

“Correct. Created by him, with Astaroth’s assistance. When his time was up, it went back to the Properties Department.”

I nodded. “Okay. So, what are the terms here?”

Volach and Morax glanced at each other.

“As it happens, this book is one of the last outstanding problems flagged by the audit,” Morax said. “But because it’s been kicked around for so many years, no one has been willing to take responsibility for it. And precisely because it’s been gone for so long, no one knows where the fuck to start looking.”

“Because of the degree of general dicking around that has gone on with this audit, we are almost out of time,” Volach said. “This book was not the responsibility of my department. The duke who originally allowed it to return to the mortal world was under the misconception that the now-deceased mortal who had it could be induced to give up its location. Several months ago, when it became clear this was not working, his interrogators got a bit overenthusiastic and accidentally destroyed this particular soul. That meant that there was no longer any way to for us to locate the book.”

“Astaroth, naturally, was more than a little upset by this development,” Morax said.

Volach laughed softly. “Put another way, he had a complete freak-out and demoted this duke and several of his minions to the general pool of souls. But we were still stuck with the missing book, and he and the head of the Properties Department have been fighting over what to do about it. Astaroth has been trying very hard to convince him to make this go away, but the Properties head does not want to stick his dick out on it in case they get caught falsifying the audit.”

“So, we were kind of stuck,” Morax said.

“That is, until you came along,” Volach said. “What you did to track down Caacrinolaas so fast got people’s attention. Your divination abilities with that computer model are awfully impressive. So after we got back that night, I went to Astaroth and said, ‘How about we give the new kid a shot at finding this fucking book?’”

“That was two months ago,” I said.

“Bureaucracy, kid. Two months is a heartbeat. I’m frankly fucking amazed we got this cleared as fast as we did.”

The waitress appeared with our lunch, and Volach waited until she was gone before saying anything else. I noticed as we sat there that several of the regulars were looking over uneasily in our direction.

“So,” Volach continued, “all of that is a roundabout way of answering your question about the terms. I got good news and bad news here, kid. The good news is that because both Astaroth and the head of Properties are losing their shit over this, they are very fucking interested in incentivizing your involvement. So if you can return this book for us, it will be worth a grand off your balance. One thousand souls.”

My jaw dropped.

“A thousand?” That was roughly a quarter of what I owed them.

Volach nodded. “The bad news is that our fiscal year, so to speak, ends on December 24. That is the day the final audit report is due on the big man’s desk, and he does not tolerate lateness. That means that if you take this job, the book has to be back in our hands no later than that.”

Katarina spoke up for the first time. “That is four days away. That is not fair. What happens if Jimmy fails to find it?”

Volach shrugged. “He has to answer for its absence, Sugar-tits. Shit rolls downhill, as they say.”

“I’ll do it,” I said.

Katarina and Hayley both gasped. Hayley grabbed my arm.

“Jimmy –”

“The model works. This is a major chunk of what I owe them. I have to.”

Katarina’s face contorted in horror. “If you fail, that would mean I would be sent—”

“I know. Don’t worry. I can find it.”

She stared at me, face pale. “Are you sure?”

I reached over and took her hand. “Yes.”

“So we’ve got a deal?” Volach asked.

“Yes,” I said.

◆◆◆

We drove back to the house in silence. I went straight for my laptop and powered it up, then sat down on the bed, backing up against the headboard.

“Do you need anything?” Hayley asked.

“No. I just need to concentrate.”

Katarina got my staff out of the closet and laid down next to me. I rubbed her back.

“It will be okay.”

She tried to smile. Charlotte hopped up on the other side and curled up against my leg. Hayley lay down beside her. I tried to ignore the concern in their eyes.

I spent a few minutes reading over the printout and studying the photos. Then I picked up the staff and took a deep breath, trying to clear my head and focus on the spirit world. When it felt as if I had made a good connection, I opened my eyes and started the model.

“It’s going to take a few minutes.”

None of us said anything as the model ran. I’d continued tweaking and testing it in little ways after I used it to find Caacrinolaas. I was confident I had it about as solid as it was going to get.

After three or four minutes, the results came up.

ROTTEN

GRAB

RANCH

VERMILLION

RUN

DREAMS

CABAL

PINPOINT

BARREN

BREAM

DESTROY

ZAGAN

ERUPT

STONE

BABY

ROCK

MANUFACTURE

LIBRARY

CLIFFSIDE

JIMMY

INCARNATE

FALSIFY

FLAGSTONE

CHASTEN

I tried ignore the cold weight in my stomach as I read down the list. There was no obvious answer, yet there was that fucking name again: Breamstone.

“I need to run it again. That’s what we did with Caacrinolaas. It should weed out the irrelevant terms.”

I ran it four more times. As it had been before, a number of words came up on every run.

JACOB

RANCH

VERMILLION

DREAMS

CABAL

BARREN

BREAM

ZAGAN

STONE

BABY

ROCK

LIBRARY

CLIFFSIDE

JIMMY

INCARNATE

FLAGSTONE

“Zagan’s Rock,” I said. “That’s where it is. And that other name. Don’t say it.”

“I will not,” Katarina said.

“What name?” Hayley asked.

“Don’t worry about it. I can’t deal with it right now. I don’t know what it means anyway.”

“But what does the rest of it mean?” she asked. “Why is your name in that list?”

“I don’t know. The same thing happened before. I don’t know if it’s a bug. I don’t think it is, but I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“Dreams makes sense,” Hayley said. “Since that’s what the book is about. Maybe it’s on some ranch, on a cliffside, in the library, under a flagstone? The Vermillion Ranch, maybe? If that’s a place.”

“Possibly. I don’t know what the rest of it could mean. There’s something there. I need to do some searching.”

As Katarina and Hayley lay beside me, I went to Google and started running searches on combinations of the words, just to see what might come up. There was no “Vermillion Ranch” near Zagan’s Rock. But “Jacob Ranch” got an immediate hit – there was a Jacob Ranch Road on the outskirts of town.

Hayley squeezed my arm. I nodded.

“Okay, we’re getting somewhere,” I said.

But nothing else came up, at least nothing until I was getting frustrated and ran a search on cabal and vermillion.

What came up was . . . not what I was expecting.

It was a book. What appeared to be a self-published book on a single website devoted to the occult.

The Manifesto of the Vermillion Cabal.

I clicked through. It was in a list of other documents, most of which were translations of works on magic and witchcraft. I downloaded the file and opened it up. Several things leapt out at me immediately.

The author was Henry V. Langdon.

The title page showed a copyright in 1994, and the publisher as Flagstone Publishing. The address was 3401 Jacob Ranch Road, Zagan’s Rock, California.

I let out a long sigh.

“I think we’ve got it.”

Chapter 5

Zagan’s Rock was maybe another hour up the highway from Hayley’s house, but it was too late in the day to make the trip without having to explain to her parents what we were doing. We would have to go up tomorrow.

So instead I continued with the web searches, trying to fill in some of the blanks, as Katarina lay quietly beside me. There was maddeningly little information I could find about Henry Langdon. The name pulled up a gourmet foods company in Australia, but it had no connection here that I could see. I found his obituary from 1997, but it was very short and gave no information about any family. He “died suddenly” in Zagan’s Rock and was survived by “close friends.”

The address corresponded to a simple one-story ranch-style house along the road. There was nothing remarkable I could see about it from the Street View online. Searching the county property listings showed that it had been sold in 1998, presumably after his death, then again in 2005. Whoever bought it appeared to live there now – the Street View photograph showed an old pickup truck in the front yard.

I had my doubts that the book could have remained hidden in the house all this time, and I was not at all sure about trying to sneak in and look for it.

I looked back at the list of words. Pulling out the ones we’d assigned meanings to left these:

BARREN

BABY

LIBRARY

CLIFFSIDE

JIMMY

INCARNATE

Library when we were looking for a book just shouted at me, but I didn’t know what to do with it. Zagan’s Rock had a city library, but it was in the town center several miles from this house. Could the book possibly be there? As it happened, the library had an online catalog. A few minutes of searching pulled up a lot of recent books about dreams, but nothing that looked like Liber Somnia. Langdon’s name didn’t pull up anything at all.

Having run out of ideas, I went back to The Manifesto of the Vermillion Cabal. The file was a scan of a printed version that looked like it had come out of an electric typewriter decades ago. The text was double-spaced in fixed-width courier typeface. It was not that long – an introduction and three chapters spanning about thirty pages.

The book opened with a description of the group. The Vermillion Cabal, Langdon said, was an association of “practitioners of magic, occult, and demonology” who were “committed to devoting their expertise to the betterment of mankind” and “opposing those who would exploit these tools for their own nefarious ends.”

Langdon went on for several pages recounting the genesis of the cabal in vague terms. A group of experienced sorcerers and witches who had known each other for some time decided to pool their resources to face an unstated threat, a group Langdon had once been part of. This group was purposefully not described, Langdon said, because “its very name is a word of power.”

But he offered a cryptic clue to its identity:

The common fish of Abram

Bellows over Spain

For four and ten sterling

Hayley came into the room. “Any progress?”

“Maybe. Can you make anything of this?” I turned the screen and showed her.

“It’s a riddle,” she said.

“Obviously.”

She stared at it for a few moments. “Abram was Abraham’s original name in the Bible.”

I typed “Abraham’s fish” into Google. It brought up an article about a sacred pool outside a mosque in Turkey. Known as Balıklıgöl, or the Pool of Sacred Fish, it was supposedly created when God saved Abraham from being burned alive by King Nimrod. The pool was now filled with carp that tourists fed when they visited the mosque.

“Carp,” I said. “What does that mean?”

“Could be part of the name. ‘Bellows over Spain’ would be the next part.”

“Carp do not bellow,” Katarina said.

“Spain must mean something,” Hayley said. “What’s Spanish for bellow?”

I looked it up.

“Bramar.”

“Carp bramar,” she said.

“I don’t think we’re on the right track here,” I said a moment later.

“Four and ten sterling,” Katarina said. “Fourteen silver coins?”

I sighed. “Whatever it is, this isn’t getting us the book. Let me keep reading.”

◆◆◆

In the first chapter of his manifesto, Langdon went on at length about how the works of sorcerers, witches, and other practitioners of magic were not inherently evil as so many assumed. He railed against portrayals in movies and television associating so much of it with the devil. The Vermillion Cabal, Langdon continued, was formed to “rescue” magic and the occult from the evil ways it had fallen into among the uniformed. Magic, he said, was a gift through the power of God, not Hell.

As I read, I began to feel as if I had seen much of this before, and the feeling grew stronger the further I got into it. One particular turn of phrase suddenly triggered a memory – a passage in Clavicula Salomonis. I went into the closet and pulled it out. A few minutes of flipping through the grimoire found the section I was remembering.

When I compared it to Langdon’s book, I was startled to realize that large sections of the first chapter were lifted wholesale. He updated his cultural references, but the similarities were startling. Langdon clearly had access to a copy.

That struck me as notable. Celeste, the proprietor of Soul Journeys, had been quite surprised to hear I had one. But there was no way to know from Langdon’s book whether he was working from an original or a translation.

The second chapter recounted the experiences of several members of the Vermillion Cabal, and though he didn’t name any of them, I began seeing some useful information. Langdon himself owned a bookstore, collecting obscure books on magic and the occult, and spent much of his life studying the connection between dreams and the spirit world. Performing magic in their dreams was something only certain sorcerers could manage, those with the closest connections to the spirit world.

He described a lot of what I had already experienced with Charlotte and, I realized, Katarina. Somehow or another, she was getting into my dreams, though she hadn’t experienced anything on her end. Langdon explained this as something that took great skill and practice, even though I had done it more or less accidentally.

Then I got to a section that made me sit upright in bed.

Several years ago, while still part of the first group, he had obtained a “dream grimoire” from “the forces I now oppose” and intended to use it against them. He didn’t mention the book’s name, but knowing what I knew now, the identity of it was obvious. It had to be Liber Somnia.

That section transitioned into a description of another member of the other group, who approached him for help some time after his departure.

This woman, whom I will name M, has possessed a familiar for many years. M and her familiar have grown very close, as typically happens. M reported to me that their meetings in the world of dreams had birthed a dream child. M loves this child despite its purely spiritual nature, and she came to me to ask if I knew of a way to bring the child from the dream world to the real world.

A dream child.

Just like the baby Charlotte and I had made. But she’d said it was nothing, flotsam, just an echo. How in the world could such a thing be brought out of a dream?

Langdon was equally skeptical.

I told M that I knew of no way this might be done, and even the attempt could be dangerous. Yet the spirit world is malleable and unpredictable, and what might seem preposterous to us in this world could be within the realm of the possible in that world. I know that M is childless in this world, and her barrenness is a source of pain to her.

M told me that many in the group oppose her in this idea. Thus, she came to me for help, knowing my expertise with dream magic. After we discussed the matter and its challenges and dangers, she asked to borrow my grimoire. Though I was loath to allow it out of my sight – for I know I must one day account for my possession of it – I agreed to let her take whatever notes she desired. This she did over several days. When she was done, wary of what she might be setting in motion, I returned the grimoire to my place of safekeeping.

I looked back at the remaining list of words.

BARREN

BABY

LIBRARY

CLIFFSIDE

JIMMY

INCARNATE

M was barren and wanted a baby. A baby that would be a dream spirit incarnate.

That left library, cliffside, and, of course, Jimmy.

I went back to Google and searched for library in Zagan’s Rock. I had already looked for the town library and hadn’t bothered to read through the rest of the search results. This time I scrolled past Zagan’s Rock Public Library, and five spots down, I saw it.

There was a coffee shop about four blocks from Langdon’s house named The Library. I clicked through to their website. The place was only a few years old, and on their “About” page, I saw it:

We chose the name “The Library” in honor of the space we took over when we opened our business, which was occupied for many years by Vermillion Rare Books, a treasured landmark of Zagan’s Rock. We’ve done our best to preserve the historic ambiance of this business that served our community for so long.

“Jimmy?”

I looked down at Katarina, who was still lying next to me as I read. Her eyes were filled with concern, but she clearly saw the look of excitement on my face.

“I think I’ve got it.”

“You do?”

I bent down and kissed her. “I won’t know until we get there, but I’m pretty sure where we need to look.”

She smiled. “I believe in you.”

“We’re going to be fine. You’re going to be fine. No one is ever taking you away from me.”

She kissed me back. “That is good.”

Chapter 6

I’d been reading and researching all afternoon, so I had only just told Hayley about my discovery when her mother pulled into the driveway.

“We can go up tomorrow. No need to worry about it tonight,” I said.

She nodded. “You really think it’s in that coffee shop?”

“I don’t know for sure that’s where it is. But I’m certain we need to go there. It’s either there, or more clues are. We’re on the right track.”

Stephanie came in from the garage. “Hi, folks.”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Your father is a few minutes behind me,” Stephanie said. “He promised to make dinner.” She laughed.

“My dad can actually cook pretty well, when he’s not too tired,” Hayley said.

“He said things were pretty light today. One procedure got canceled. Me, I need a big martini.”

“Bad day?”

She nodded. “Had a patient pass about two hours after he came in. We were prepping him for a bypass, and he went into v-fib. We weren’t able to resuscitate him. I had to tell his wife. They have two kids in their teens.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Stephanie nodded. “It comes with the job. But it never gets easier.”

Hayley went over and hugged her. Stephanie hugged her back.

“Go into some specialty where people don’t die, honey.”

“I’m going to be a podiatrist,” Hayley replied.

They both laughed.

Derek appeared from the garage as well. He came over and kissed Stephanie, then Hayley.

“You told them?” he asked Stephanie.

“Yeah.”

“Mom said things were light, and you want to cook.”

Derek nodded. “I’m in the mood. Pull up at the bar, folks. Let me change, and I’ll get started.”

Derek went back to their bedroom. We sat down at the kitchen island as Stephanie mixed up a pitcher of martinis from a big bottle of Grey Goose. She poured one for me and Katarina, then one for herself. I noticed she didn’t offer anything to Hayley, and she noticed me noticing.

“This isn’t college,” she said. “Please allow me the illusion that my daughter is not drinking underage.”

We all laughed.

“It’s fine, Mom,” Hayley said. “I can wait a few more weeks.”

“What did you three do today?”

“We went down to the beach for most of the day,” Hayley said.

“It is so beautiful here,” Katarina said.

“The beach is really nice,” I said. “We walked for a long way.”

“Oh, and guess what?” Hayley said. “We found something buried in the sand.” She looked over at me. “Show her.”

I pulled the ring out of my pocket and handed it to Stephanie, who let out a little gasp.

“Oh, my. Where did you find this?”

“With this old, rotten towel,” I said. “I think it must have been there for years.”

As she looked at the ring, a strange look came into Stephanie’s eyes, and her jaw fell slowly. I watched her studying it with a growing sense of unease.

“There’s an inscription,” I said.

She reached into the breast pocket of her blouse and extracted a pair of reading glasses. She put them on and looked closely at the inside of the band.

Then she grabbed the granite edge of the island and sat down in one of the barstools, putting her hand on her chest.

Hayley’s face went pale. “Mom?”

Stephanie looked up, swallowing hard. “This is mine.”

The three of us gasped.

“What?” Hayley said.

“I lost it down there six months after Derek and I were married. Look at the inscription.”

Hayley reached for it. She looked inside the band and then gasped loudly. “Oh, my God!”

“Have you been living here that long?” Katarina asked.

Hayley handed the ring back to her mother, who stared at it in a daze.

“No,” Stephanie said. “We used to come to this beach when we were dating. Derek bought me this ring when we were just getting started. We had no money and so many loans, but somehow he pulled enough together for it. You have no idea how heartbroken I was when I lost it. We tried everything we could to find it, but nothing wo—”

She stopped, and sighed.

“It was so stupid of me. I was worried about losing it in the surf because it was loose. I should have gotten it resized, but I never had any time when I was in residency. I wore a fake diamond for years until we could afford the one I have now. When we were looking to build a house, we chose this lot because I knew the ring was down there. I was sure I would never see it again, but I thought I could be near it.”

“You never told me that story,” Hayley said.

“It was too painful, honey. I didn’t like thinking about it.”

Derek came back in the room, forehead wrinkling in confusion. “What’s going on?”

Stephanie looked up and held out the ring. “Babe, look what they found down on the beach.”

He took the ring in confusion. After a moment, something dawned in his eyes.

“Is this . . .”

“Yes. Look at the inscription.”

She handed him her reading glasses. His jaw dropped as he looked at it.

“Holy shit. How?”

“We found it wrapped up in an old towel,” I said, “right at the base of the cliff.”

Except, we hadn’t really found it. The divining stick had. And I began to wonder. As Derek and Stephanie hugged each other in joy, Hayley, Katarina, and I exchanged a look. I could tell we were all thinking the same thing.

Why?

◆◆◆

There were no answers during dinner. Stephanie put the lost ring on her right hand, and hugged all three of us repeatedly as Derek cooked dinner. He put on a pair of mechanic’s gloves before he started, and I almost asked why before I remembered what Hayley had said about his paranoia when it came to his hands.

The five of us sat down in the dining room when everything was ready. Derek made some kind of chicken and pasta dish, and he opened up a bottle of wine from the wine cooler in their kitchen. I knew next to nothing about wine, but whatever it was appeared both French and expensive.

“Jimmy, what are you looking to do when you get done with your doctorate?” he asked when we were settled in. “Do you want to teach or go into the private sector?”

“I really haven’t made up my mind. I like academia, but I feel like I want to be working on practical applications.”

Derek nodded. “Yeah, that’s the age-old dilemma. I’ve done a couple of stints as an instructional professor, but a faculty position really doesn’t appeal to me at all. There’s too much other baggage that comes along with it.”

“Jimmy was a great TA,” Hayley said.

He looked over at Katarina. “So you two are just rooming together?”

“I am here on the shoestring,” Katarina said. “I wish to save my money, and Jimmy offered to let me stay with him. It has worked fine.”

I saw a look in Derek’s eyes that suggested he wasn’t sure what to make of this. He wasn’t blind to what Katarina looked like. It was pretty clear he was wondering if I was gay.

The conversation then drifted over to Katarina’s life in Sweden. As she’d done before, she just reeled off a long, detailed, and completely in-character story about her childhood in Stockholm, her interest in the U.S., coming to Yosemite on vacation, meeting me, then deciding to come here for graduate school. As many times as I’d seen her do it, I still had to marvel at her skills in bullshitting people. It went on for about ten minutes, and Derek and Stephanie, who I knew by now were two very smart, worldly people, ate every bit of it up.

“Christmas here must be very different from what you’re used to,” Derek said finally.

“It is not that different. Most of the traditions are similar,” she said. “Perhaps I could make some lussekatter, if you would like me to.”

“Is that some kind of fish?” he asked.

She laughed. “No. They are sweet rolls, with saffron and raisins. They are not difficult to make.”

“Oh, that would be wonderful,” Stephanie said. “Why don’t you do that?”

She smiled at them. “All right. I will be happy to. But there is one Swedish tradition I do not think we can duplicate here. You will probably find this silly.”

“What?” Hayley asked.

“There is a television show that everyone in Sweden watches at Christmas. It is a collection of Disney cartoons, the same thing every year. I do not think we would be able to watch it here.”

“Oh,” Stephanie said, “like A Charlie Brown Christmas?”

Katarina feigned confusion, though I could tell through our bond that she knew very well what Stephanie was referring to. So I pretended to explain.

“Yes,” she said. “Just like that.”

“Well, maybe we could watch that instead,” Stephanie said. “I don’t think I’ve seen it in years.”

The three of us did the dishes, then Derek came down to watch TV with us. Charlotte came in, and he laughed about Stephanie’s concern with her. After some more talk about school, we went to bed just after ten.

As the girls got ready to go to sleep, I reviewed the stuff I’d found that afternoon. I’d done my best to conceal my unease about this. I was fairly certain we could find this book, but the consequences of not finding it were there in the back of my mind. I didn’t know what would happen to me. I did know what would happen to Katarina. She would be demoted to the Wood of Suicides, transformed into a dead tree to be tormented by the harpies for all eternity. All because I’d decided to try out Grandma Amy’s books and spells on her.

I was not going to let that happen. One way or another.

Charlotte curled up with me after I turned off the lights. I lay there scratching her head and listening to her purr, wondering as I usually did how much was Charlotte and how much was the gray tabby.

I tried to get to sleep, but after two-and-a-half months, I’d gotten too used to having Katarina there with me. Even though she didn’t need to sleep, and even when we hadn’t had sex, just having her in bed with me felt nice.

I was starting to drift off when I heard the sliding glass door to the balcony open and close, then pressure on the bed. It was Katarina, slipping under the covers with me. I took her in my arms.

“What’s up?”

“I felt your need for me.”

She snuggled in next to me, under my arm, and laid her head on my chest. She still had on her cotton pajamas. Somehow she sensed that I just wanted the company.

“You didn’t need to come in here.”

“You wished me to. I can return before Hayley’s parents wake up in the morning.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

I lay there for a few minutes, just playing with her long, pale blonde hair and feeling her warmth next to me.

“What are you feeling right now?” I asked her.

“What do you mean?”

“I know you have feelings about this. What are they?”

“My presence here is pleasing to you. I sensed your longing for me, now it is satisfied. That makes me happy.”

“It’s just about what I want?”

“I want to please you.”

I thought about that for a few moments.

“How much do you remember about your parents?” I asked.

“Why?”

“Just tell me.”

“They worked very hard for us. My father was a fisherman like the other men in our village. My mother worked with the women to make clothing and other things.”

“Was your family happy?”

“Yes. My mother loved her children. My father would hold me on his lap in front of the fire. He would make us little toys from pieces of wood.”

“Do you remember loving them?”

“Jimmy . . .”

“It’s just a question.”

She was quiet for a few moments. “I do. I know what you are asking about. I remember it as if it was a limb that was taken from me. I have only the memory. I cannot use it anymore. There is only a hole there now.”

“A hole.”

“Yes. So you asked about my feelings for you? They are there, but they flow into the hole and disappear, like water down a drain.”

I pulled her close. A hole. That sent a stab through my gut in ways I could not articulate. I wanted to tell her what I felt, but I knew it would cause her nothing but pain.

“I won’t ask about this again. I’m sorry.”

She sighed softly, nuzzling my neck. “Thank you.”

Chapter 7

Rodhvald and I hauled up the longline hand over hand. We’d hooked about eight or ten fat cod. As Rodhvald pulled each wriggling fish into the boat, I whacked them on the head with a stick until they were still. When he pulled in the float at the end, he tossed it to the bow.

“That’s it, boy. Let’s get back. The boat is full and my belly is empty!” He laughed loudly.

“A good catch,” I said.

“It was that.”

We rowed back toward the village in silence. The boat sliced easily through the still waters of the inlet. As we got closer, I smelled the cooking fires, and my stomach growled. We’d been out here all day.

When we reached the beach, the two of us hauled the boat out of the water and began unloading the fish. As I was cleaning the last few, I saw Katarina approaching out of the corner of my eye. But she stopped near the edge of the beach, watching and smiling.

Rodhvald followed my gaze. “You want to be a better fisherman, boy, I’d suggest keeping your mind more on the fish and less on that girl’s teats.” He laughed again. “I don’t care how fine a pair she has. The fish don’t care either.”

I glanced back at her. “She does, though.”

Rodhvald snorted and shoved me. “Get on, I’ll get the rest of these. She won’t wait all afternoon. Just give those teats a squeeze for me.”

I laughed. “I’ll try.”

I wiped off my hands and walked toward Katarina. But she turned and began walking away, out of the village. I heard a woman calling behind us.

“Katarina, your chores!”

“I am done, Mama!” she called back.

“Do not go far!” her mother said.

Katarina began walking faster as I approached. When I started to run toward her, she took off. I chased her up the hill behind the village, watching her long hair trailing in the breeze behind her. I finally caught the edge of her dress halfway up, and we fell together in a heap, laughing.

“Why do you run?” I asked.

“Because you like to chase me.”

I tried to kiss her, but she pushed me away. She squirmed out of my grip and took off again.

“You stink of fish!”

I chased her down again, this time pinning her under me.

“I am a fisherman,” I said.

This time she let me kiss her, though she pushed me back after a few moments. I looked down at her. She was the prettiest girl in the village, and I was the one she liked even though there were others who wanted her.

I put my hand on a plump breast and squeezed it. She laughed and pushed my hand away.

“Not until we are married,” she said.

“Your father seems to favor Mattias.”

“He stinks worse than you do. I will not marry him. Papa will not make me.”

I bent to kiss her again. She let me, and after a few moments, let me play with her breasts over her dress. They were truly wonderful, and I tried to envision what they looked like naked. If all went well, I would know soon.

Eventually she pushed me back.

“How can we make sure?” she asked.

“You should ask the spákona. I will give you some dried fish for her. If she tells you we will marry, your father will not argue.”

“What if she says I will marry Mattias?”

I laughed. “I will make sure she does not. We had a good catch today. Rodhvald will give me a one if I tell him why.”

“Good.”

We went back to kissing.

◆◆◆

The morning light off the ocean slowly drew me out of the dream. The view was similar, and for a few moments, I was still there on the hillside above the inlet, because Katarina was still in my arms next to me.

She turned over slowly to face me. “What were you dreaming, Jimmy?”

“Uh . . . I don’t remember exactly.”

She stared into my eyes. “I know when you lie to me, Jimmy. You do not need to tell me, but I know. I can feel it.”

I sighed. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You were dreaming of me again?”

“Yes. The bond seems to do it. Like it draws memories out of you.”

“What memories?”

“In your village, was there a boy who liked you? Who wanted to marry you?”

“There were several.”

“Because you were the hottest girl in town?”

She smiled. “Yes.”

“Was there one you liked?”

“Yes. His name was Gevald. Did you dream of him?”

“It was more that I was him. I chased you up a hill, and we were making out and talking about marriage. We talked about the seeress.”

“I see.”

“Did that happen?” I asked.

“It was the day before I died.”

I pulled her close to me.

“I did not love him, Jimmy. I was simply a young girl excited about the prospect of marriage, of becoming a woman.”

“It’s not like I want to have these dreams. They just come.”

She cuddled against my chest. “It is all right. I know it pleases you to see my life as it was.”

I kissed her forehead. “You should get back to Hayley before her folks get up.”

She kissed me and left.

◆◆◆

We hit the road right after an early breakfast. Not knowing what we might be doing, I opted to leave Charlotte at the house. Zagan’s Rock was a sleepy little town on the Central Coast. There might have been ten thousand people living there, most of whom were involved in the farming and ranching in the area.

There were only two exits off the highway, and the GPS took us to the second one. After driving for a couple of miles through rows of squat little homes and strip shopping centers, we got to Jacob Ranch Road. Hayley turned left, and we were soon passing a series of horse and cattle ranches, broken up by groups of houses.

“Do you remember any of this?” she asked.

“Not really. I was four when Grandma Amy took me after my parents died. Just bits and pieces, I think from where we lived.”

We reached Henry Langdon’s old house after about five minutes. It was the same as it appeared on the Street View. I didn’t see anyone inside. The house appeared decently maintained, though the lawn was brown and covered in bare spots, likely because the owner parked his truck there.

“I don’t think there’s any point in trying to search this place, even if we were able to do it somehow,” I said. “I feel like the coffee shop is a better lead.”

“I agree,” said Hayley. “I can’t see these poor people letting us tear apart their house for something that may not even be there, from someone who lived here thirty years ago. And I’m not up to breaking and entering.”

The coffee shop was about four blocks down around a corner. It was in another little strip shopping center, at the end of the row. I hadn’t been expecting much, but it was in better shape than I’d envisioned. The new owners had made an effort to give it a new-old look, retaining the structure of the old bookstore while replacing and upgrading the rest of it.

When we parked and went inside, what they had tried to do was obvious. The coffee counter took up one corner of the space, but the rest was still bookshop. Books were everywhere. Many of the original bookshelves were still in place, with soft chairs and little tables set around them. Most of the shelves had books on them, which the customers were apparently encouraged to read, as several of them were. The ceiling was open to the rafters, and they’d added a couple of ceiling fans. An old sign saying “Vermillion Rare Books” hung above the counter.

They’d done a good job with it. The overall ambiance was “library with a coffee counter” rather than “coffee shop trying too hard.”

There were maybe six or eight people inside sitting around reading or working. We went up to the counter and ordered, then sat down in front where a couch and two low chairs surrounded a table. The barista, a thin guy in his twenties with a man-bun, brought over our coffee a couple of minutes later.

“Is the owner around?” I asked.

“Is there something wrong?”

“No, not at all. I just wanted to ask them something.”

“Sure, let me get her.”

He went into the back and returned with a blonde-haired woman who looked about thirty-five.

“Hi, I’m Olivia,” she said. “What’s up?”

I introduced myself and the girls. “This is going to sound kind of strange, but do you know anything about the man who used to own this place? Back when it was a bookstore?”

“Mr. Langdon? Sure. He was why I decided to do it here.”

“You knew him?”

“Sort of. He was a friend of my parents. I always loved the bookstore, so when it finally shut down a few years ago, I wanted to do something with it. I’d been talking about opening a coffee shop with my boyfriend, and we decided to go for it. Was there something specific you were wondering about?”

I took a deep breath and began the story I’d worked up with Katarina’s help. “He was an old friend of my parents, though I never knew him. I was doing some research into my family, and I came across some old papers of his. There was a specific book he had that I’ve been trying to track down. The way he described it, it was something special to him, and he kept it hidden for safekeeping. Do you know what happened to the books that were here?”

Olivia laughed and waved her arm around. “You’re looking at them. When the shop shut down, the guy who took over from him just left everything here. The lawyers were talking about trying to do a fire sale, but I told them I wanted it all as-is. So here we are.”

We looked around the shop again. It couldn’t possibly be that easy, could it?

“I don’t think it would have been on the shelves. How much work did you do in here?”

“We gutted it down to the studs and rebuilt. Had to, for the permit, since it was a change in usage and we had to bring all the wiring and plumbing up to code to install the coffee counter. I’m afraid we didn’t find any hiding places. Sorry.”

“Shit.”

I looked at Katarina, whose face was lined in concern. I wasn’t sure what else to do.

“Does the word cliffside mean anything to you?” Hayley asked. “It might be written on something, or in something.”

Olivia gave her a funny look. “‘Cliffside’?”

“Yes.”

Olivia appeared to think for a moment or two, then turned toward the back of the store. “Come on in back.”

We got up and followed her. She led us through a doorway into the storeroom, then over to one corner. There were a couple of sacks of coffee beans, which she lifted out of the way. Underneath was a little cast-iron plate in the floor about a foot across.

Olivia pointed to it. “There.”

We walked up next to her, and I looked down. On the plate was the legend “Cliffside Foundry.”

I took a deep breath. “Do you mind if I look in there?”

Olivia shrugged. “Knock yourself out.”

I knelt down. I had to struggle a bit to get a grip on it, but after a few seconds, I was able to lift the plate out of the frame.

Underneath was a little space with a couple of valves. I reached around under the slab, and after a moment or two, my hand hit something. It felt like a metal box.

“There’s something under here.”

“Seriously?” Olivia asked.

“Yeah. Hold on.”

It had presumably been down there for at least thirty years, and it didn’t want to come out. I had to wiggle it back and forth. Eventually the box broke loose from whatever was holding it in there. I slid it out and up onto the floor.

It was a badly tarnished brass case the same size and shape as a large book. There was a latch on the side, which I undid. I opened it up.

The book was inside, and it looked exactly like the one in the photos Volach had given me.

I let out a long sigh. I heard Katarina gasp, and she squeezed my shoulder. I reached back and squeezed her hand.

“This is it.”

I lifted it out and opened it. On the first page was the title, Liber Somnia, along with the author’s name, Roger Wilcox of London. I flipped through it, seeing Wilcox’s notes in Latin along with a variety of drawings and diagrams.

“That looks pretty old,” Olivia said.

“It is. Look, I know this is your place and this is technically yours, but this book belongs to someone who really needs it back. It’s very important that I return this.”

“You mean like a museum, or something?”

“Something like that.”

She held up her hands. “Hey, I would never have found it on my own. We had contractors in here for three months, and no one came across it. If it’s that big a deal, take it.”

“Thank you.”

When I went to set it back into the brass box, I realized there were some things under it. One I recognized immediately – it was a copy of The Manifesto of the Vermillion Cabal. Under that was an envelope. I didn’t want to go through all of this in front of Olivia, so I closed the box and stood up.

“We really appreciate this,” Hayley said.

“No problem. Glad to help.”

As soon as we returned to the front of the coffee shop, Katarina pulled me into her arms and hugged me tightly.

“I’m sorry I put you through this,” I whispered.

“I never stopped believing in you, Jimmy,” she said. “I was just worried.”

Our coffee had cooled off a bit, but it was still drinkable. We sat down, and I discreetly tried to go through the contents of the box. Hayley took the manifesto and began reading it.

In the envelope was a set of photos. I pulled them out and began flipping through them. When I got to the third one, I froze. I felt my world tipping on its axis.

“Jimmy?” Katarina asked.

Hayley looked up. “What’s wrong? What is that picture?”

I swallowed hard. I stared at it, trying to be sure, pursing my lips as I examined the photo. There were two people in it. I knew both of them. One was Henry Langdon. I recognized him from his obituary photo. The other—

“Jimmy, who is that?” Katarina asked.

I looked up.

“This is my mother.”

Chapter 8

It wasn’t exactly something you forgot, even though I had never known her. I had pictures of her, and I’d spent a not-inconsiderable portion of my childhood looking at them and wondering what sort of person she was, what my life might have been like had she not died.

She was an attractive woman with blonde hair. In the photo, which was dated in 1995, she looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. She and Langdon were standing together, in front of a bookshelf. It might have been the bookstore, but I couldn’t tell.

Hayley and Katarina had moved next to me on the couch.

“You’re sure that’s her?” Hayley asked.

“I’m almost certain. I guess I’d have to compare the pictures I have. But yeah.”

“She looks very much like the pictures you showed me,” Katarina said. “I would agree it is her.”

Katarina, as a demon, had a near-photographic memory, even for things that had happened to her centuries ago.

“You think so?”

“Yes. This suggests she knew Langdon,” Katarina said.

“So it would seem.”

“What does that mean?” Hayley said.

“I have no fucking clue. But I was born here. My parents lived here. I don’t know much of anything about that, but this is a small town. If my grandmother was a sorceress, I suppose it's not impossible that my parents would have known him. For all I know, they were part of this cabal, whatever it was.”

I looked through the other photos. There were several more of Langdon with other people, but only one of my mother. Two of the photos showed a large stone house from a distance, as if they had been taken from the road.

“Do you know what that is?” Hayley asked.

“No idea.”

As shocking as the photo of my mother was, I didn’t really know what to do with it. There was nothing else in the box, nothing to explain what this meant. I had no one to ask about it. Grandma Amy could have given me some answers, but she was gone. I thought about running another divination with the model, but I wasn’t sure what to even focus on, and in the back of my mind, I wasn’t sure I was ready for the answer I might get either.

It was only about 10:00 a.m., and we’d already succeeded in finding the book. The job was done, with a few days to spare. Katarina wasn’t going to the Wood of Suicides, and I would get a thousand souls knocked off my balance. So maybe we could just hang out here for the day. I had never been to Zagan’s Rock, at least not when I was old enough to remember it. It wouldn’t hurt to look around a bit.

Katarina was playing with her phone, and Hayley was reading the manifesto. I figured that since I’d been the one to find it, I might as well see what the big deal was about Liber Somnia.

It turned out to be an extremely dense, detailed treatise on dream magic – how to enter the spirit world through one’s dreams and how to work various types of magic through them, magic that was purportedly not possible otherwise. Wilcox repeated the warning that Charlotte had given me: only a small handful of sorcerers had any chance of managing it. Only those with great skill in both magic and dreams, and a deep connection to the spirit world, were able to work such feats.

That appeared to include me. I wasn’t sure exactly how you might quantify it, but I’d always had deep, vivid dreams. I’d usually been able to take control of my dreams and do things, whether or not I realized I was dreaming. What had happened with Charlotte and Katarina seemed perfectly natural to me, however much they’d been surprised at my abilities. Where those abilities came from, I wasn’t sure, but this seemed like a book that could be very useful to me.

The first chapter was on preparing yourself for proper dreaming. There were instructions on how to set up your place of rest, meditations before sleep, herbs and other materials to burn as incense, and potions to prepare and imbibe before going to bed.

Assuming a dreamer was successful in entering the spirit world, there were rules for your behavior, things to do and to see. You should never, Wilcox asserted, avoid a confrontation, for these were a means for uncovering truths. You should continually seek to search and examine hidden things. Doors must be opened and stones overturned. If books were found, they should be read. If boxes were found, they should be opened. Strangers encountered should be interrogated. And so on.

All dreams, he said, should be recorded in as much detail as possible, for clues and secrets might be scattered across multiple dreams and multiple nights, and only through careful review would these become clear. But your dream journal had to be guarded carefully and never shown to others, save those whose trust was assured. A record of dreams was a thing of power that could be used to enter those dreams and work mischief.

The next chapter covered techniques for taking control of your dreams, for achieving lucidity and awareness without waking. I recognized much of this from my experiences with Charlotte, and, to a lesser extent, Katarina. Here Wilcox mentioned the use of a familiar, not simply to meet it in the spirit world, but to use that lucidity to work additional magic.

Doing so, Wilcox strenuously urged, should not be attempted until you were thoroughly familiar with the techniques of maintaining lucidity and control, for it involved performing magic from the real world in the spirit world. The same rules held, but because of the fluidity and flexibility of the dream world, mistakes and oversights were assured without proper care. Most especially, he warned, a dreaming sorcerer ran the risk of overestimating his abilities. The power of lucid dreams did not necessarily increase your spellcasting abilities.

That made sense. I’d experienced it enough with Charlotte, the degree to which things became too easy in the spirit world. I could see very clearly how you could believe your powers were much greater than they really were.

To guard against it, Wilcox recommended creating a second existence within the spirit world, a sort of “dream temple” where you could store spell books and other artifacts, and with those conduct the necessary rituals. The benefit to this, he said, was to enforce a rigor in your magic. Rather than assuming the power of lucid dreaming extended immediately to magic in the dream world, you needed to seek to recreate your possessions and abilities from the real world in the dream world. Only then, he said, should you begin experimenting with the additional powers the dream world gave.

Finally, there was a discussion of connecting with others through dreams. There were many challenges in this, because there was no guarantee of making a connection. Wilcox suggested various approaches, such as repeatedly reaching out to your target during lucid dreaming and trying to implant basic concepts and ideas. He suggested that having someone appear in your dreams might, over time, form a connection, provided one existed in the real world.

I thought again of Katarina. We had that connection already, and I was already drawing her into my dreams, at least her memories. The challenge there was that she didn’t sleep. Whatever connection we had there wasn’t going to involve her dreams – she didn’t have any.

I wondered again about Langdon’s friend M and her desire to bring a dream child into the real world. Having read Liber Somnia now, I understood now what he’d said in the manifesto. There was very little in here about going in that direction. It was all about bringing the real world into the dream world. That was the overall gist of it, anyway.

But as I sat there thinking about it, I realized that there might be another layer Langdon hadn’t considered. If you got to the point of working competent magic in the dream world, the rituals you conducted would work, dream world or real world. And if you could summon spirits from the spirit world, why not summon dream spirits from the dream world?

Whatever the truth of it was, I didn’t want to give up this book. Not yet.

“Guys, I think I might have it,” Hayley said.

I looked up. She’d been studying the manifesto and doing something on her phone. I momentarily lost the thread of what she said because she was sitting sideways in her chair and I could see right up her skirt. When our eyes met, I could tell she’d noticed me looking, and she smiled.

“Have what?” I finally asked.

“That riddle. The thing he warns you against, that they’re trying to stop. At least the first part.”

“The fish?” Katarina asked.

“Yes. Remember what we were thinking? Abraham and those carp in Turkey? But I started wondering about the first line, ‘The common fish of Abram.’ Why ‘common’? That has to mean something. Then it occurred to me that ‘common’ is, well, a really common word in species names. Think about it.”

She was right. That hadn’t occurred to me at all.

“So I went back to ‘Abram’ and what we had with bellow in Spanish. Bramar. I searched a few times, and look what came up: Abramis brama.”

She held out her phone. It was on a Wikipedia page: The common bream.

“It’s a species of carp,” she said.

Bream.

“Oh, shit,” I said.

“So what about the rest of it?” she asked. “‘Four and ten sterling’?”

Then it hit me.

“Sterling. Pounds. Fourteen pounds is a—”

“Stone,” Katarina said.

“So it’s brea–” Hayley began.

“Don’t say it!” Katarina and I said at once.

Hayley recoiled. “What? Why?”

“That word. It’s come up before. I don’t know what it is, but it’s dangerous. Grandma Amy told it to me in a dream. I asked Celeste about it, and she freaked out and told me never to speak it again.”

“It’s the thing the cabal was trying to fight,” Hayley said.

“Right. But until we know more about what the hell it is, I don’t want to take any chances.”

Hayley bit her lip. “I’ve heard it before.”

Katarina gasped. I looked around us. No one was paying any attention.

“Where?” I asked softly.

“I don’t know. It just . . . feels familiar. I can’t remember where I heard it, but I have.”

“Try to remember.”

“I will. But Jimmy, this is the thing that keeps coming up in those searches of yours. It came up this time. The two words. I remember seeing them and wondering.”

“Caacrinolaas,” Katarina said.

“What?” Hayley asked.

“It came up in the search I ran on him,” I said. “Because he was up here. At a place called Red Hawk Ranch.”

“Is that connected to the other place?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” I said. “All I know is . . . the other place is something up here. Celeste told me.”

“What did she tell you?”

“That it was a group, and a place, and a piece of land, with a building on it.”

Hayley gasped. “Those pictures.”

I reached for the box. I found the two photos of the stone house.

“Could that be it?” she asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “It would make sense. Hard to tell where this is, though.”

“Celeste said it was up here,” Katarina said.

“You said you wanted to drive around and have look at things,” Hayley said.

“Yeah. Okay. And we need to find a copy store too.”

Chapter 9

Making a photocopy of the entire Liber Somnia took about an hour. I wanted to be careful not to damage any of it, and I wanted to be sure I got everything clearly. When it was done, I had the guy at the counter bind the two-hundred-plus pages to keep it together. Hayley continued studying the manifesto while I worked.

“Should we let Volach know?” Katarina asked when I was done.

“Yeah, I don’t want to sit on this thing. But not here. Let’s wait until we get home.”

We drove aimlessly around town for about an hour, looking for anything that triggered a memory or seemed notable. There wasn’t a lot. Zagan’s Rock was pretty much just a town center surrounded by a few tract developments and an array of ranches and farms, small and large. When it got close to lunch, we stopped at a fruit and tamale stand on the outskirts. Hayley collected some fruits and vegetables to bring home while I got lunch.

When I went to check us out, I showed the pretty Latina girl at the register the photos we’d found in the box.

“Does this place look familiar to you?”

She studied it for a few seconds, then shook her head. “Not really. Looks like a lot of places around here.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem.”

“Why are you looking for it?” she asked.

“I was born here, but my family left when I was a little kid. I’m trying to track down some roots.”

She smiled and held out her fist. I bumped it.

“Fellow Zagan’s Rocker. Not too many people who leave come back here.” She turned toward the back of the stand. “Mama?”

An older woman came out from behind a crate of vegetables. The girl handed her the photo.

“They’re looking for this ranch. Do you recognize this?”

The woman looked at the photo for a moment. Then a dark look came into her eyes, and she shook her head.

“No. No. I do not know this place.”

She shoved the picture at me. Her daughter looked at her, then me, in mild confusion. I took the photo back.

“Check them out,” she said curtly, and went into the back. Her daughter watched her go, then turned back to me.

“Oookay.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry to bother you.”

“Don’t worry about it. Mama is really superstitious about a lot of stuff. She probably just saw someone there sweeping the front porch after dark.”

I laughed. “Thanks for the food.”

We went to one of the picnic tables out front to eat. The tamales were really good, and we finished them off quickly.

“Now what?” Hayley asked.

“Let’s do a loop of the outer ranches,” I said, “then head home. This place may not even exist anymore. For all we know, they tore it down to build one of those tract developments.”

“That woman seemed to recognize it,” she said.

“Yeah, but who knows when she saw it last. If that girl is right, she’s probably been avoiding it.”

“I was looking through the manifesto for clues,” she said. “He keeps referring to this group, the one you don’t want me to say, and to the things they’ve done, without giving a lot of details. I’m pretty sure that place was part of it.”

“How did they all end up here in this little town?” Katarina asked.

“That’s an excellent question,” I said.

“Oh, you didn’t get that far through it, did you?” Hayley asked.

I hadn’t finished it. I’d stopped at his discussion about the dream child, when I found the clues that led me to the coffee shop. “What is it?”

“There is something here. He’s clear about that in the last chapter. Some source of power the group was trying to control. I think it might actually be on that ranch, or near it. He said they’re using it.”

I took a deep breath. “That wouldn’t be the sort of place you would pick for a housing tract.”

“No. And if it’s true, why would this other group ever sell it?”

We were about done eating when I looked up and saw the girl coming out of the fruit stand and over to our table. She looked at Hayley and Katarina, then back at me.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hi. Your mom makes really good tamales,” I said.

“Yeah, she does. She’s kind of famous for it around here.” She glanced behind her. “Look, do you really want to find that place?”

“Yeah.”

“My great-uncle might be able to help. He’s lived here almost all his life, and he’s not superstitious like my mother is. If it’s still here, I bet he knows where it is.”

I looked at Hayley and Katarina, then back at her. “That would be a really big help. Are you sure?”

“I like a good mystery,” she said. “And not much really happens around here. You didn’t miss much moving away.”

I stood up. “I’m Jimmy. This is Hayley and Katarina.”

“I’m MJ. It’s short for Martina-Julieta, but only my mother calls me that. Look, I can take a break in a few minutes if you can wait. The lunch rush is about over.”

“Sure.”

We waited about ten minutes before MJ emerged, having taken off her apron. She was about five-six with a tight, athletic physique I hadn’t noticed under it. Her long black-brown hair was back in a ponytail.

“You can just follow me. He lives about ten minutes from here.”

She went to her car, and we got back into Hayley’s. We drove back around the outskirts of town before I realized we were heading toward the first area we’d explored. We drove past the Library before she turned down Jacob Ranch Road.

A sinking feeling grew in my stomach. This couldn’t possibly be happening, could it?

Up ahead, MJ slowed down in front of a house with a battered pickup truck parked in the front yard.

Her great-uncle lived in Henry Langdon’s old house.

“What the fuck?” Hayley said.

“There are no coincidences with the spirit world,” Katarina said.

“That’s becoming painfully obvious,” I said. “Don’t say anything to her or act like this is anything unusual. Okay?”

The two of them nodded. We got out as MJ waited for us.

“This is it,” MJ said as we walked up.

“You have lived here all your life?” Katarina asked.

“Well, through high school. I’m just back home on break from school.”

“Where do you go?” I asked.

“UC Santo Domingo. Soccer scholarship. What about you guys?”

“We’re all at Huntington College.”

“Huh. We’re almost neighbors.”

UCSD was about ten miles north of Huntington.

MJ turned to the house. We went up to the porch, and she knocked on the door.

“Tío abuelo? Estás aquí? It’s MJ.”

A few seconds later, the door opened. MJ’s great-uncle looked to be in his sixties. His hair was mostly gray, and a salt-and-pepper goatee framed his mouth. He had the weathered look of someone who had worked outdoors his entire life.

“Hi,” she said. She gave him a quick hug.

“MJ, how are you doing? How is school? How is the fútbol?”

“I’m fine. These are some friends of mine.” She introduced us. “There’s a place here they’re looking for, and I thought you might know it. Mama said she didn’t, but she got weird when we asked about it.”

“Ah, your mama and her superstitions.” He laughed. “Does she still search the stand for the chaneques each morning?”

MJ laughed. “Sometimes. She tries to pretend she isn’t.”

“All right. Come inside. It’s cold out here.”

His house was old but clean and well maintained. I could tell immediately by the spartan furnishings that he lived alone. There were no traces of Langdon I could see.

“So what is it you’re looking for?” he asked.

I pulled out the photos and showed him. He looked at them and immediately let out a long gravelly sigh.

“Yes, I know this place. It’s out near the end of Granada Road. What is your interest in it?”

I explained about my background. “I think my family has some connection to it. I found these photos in an old box that belonged to my grandmother. I’m not sure what it is, though.”

He nodded and looked at MJ. “Your mama knows this house, which is why she reacted the way she did. There were things that supposedly happened there many years ago, before you were born. The stories are that people were taken inside and did not return. People claimed to have seen strange lights and sounds, and similar things. Who knows what it was? You know how those stories go. The more people tell them, the crazier they get.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“But I have not heard of anything happening there in a long time. Superstitious people like your mama still avoid it, but I don’t think there is anything of concern there now. I am not sure anyone even lives there. I drive past it now and then, and I have seen no sign of anything. The land is not being used.”

“You said it’s at the end of the road?” I asked.

“Yes. Just go down Third Street, and head east when you get to Granada. You’ll see it.”

“Thanks.”

“I can come back later, Tío abuelo,” MJ said. “We just want to go check it out.”

“All right. I still want to hear about the fútbol. You should hear your cousins talk about you.”

MJ laughed. “I will, I promise.”

She gave him another hug, and we went outside.

Chapter 10

“Thanks for the help,” I said when we got back to the car.

“No problem,” MJ said. “Do you mind if I tag along? Kind of curious now.”

I paused for a second, not sure if I wanted to get someone else mixed up in this. “You don’t need to get back to work?”

“My mother can manage. Afternoons are slow, like I said. I just need to be back there to catch the rush-hour customers.”

I looked at Hayley and Katarina. Neither of them objected, seeming to wait for me to say something. Then I looked back at MJ. She seemed to be sort of person who could handle herself well enough. If she wanted to get involved, I guess I could deal with it.

“Yeah, okay. Sure.”

We followed MJ down Third Street and turned onto Granada a few minutes later. The road went a few miles out of town, twisting through the hills and fields. We hadn’t been out this far earlier in the day. Then we came around a bend, and I saw it.

The house was set back from the road about fifty yards. Unlike other architecture in the area, it was built from river rock and mortar, but without the Craftsman-style accents that you usually saw with it. Instead, it was much blockier and more medieval. It was two stories with a slate roof, but wider than it was tall. The field around it, as MJ’s uncle had said, was fallow and untended, with no sign of either cultivation or livestock.

As we got closer, I saw what he’d meant about it being quiet and undisturbed. The gravel driveway from the road was eroded and thick with weeds. There was no sign anyone had driven down it in years, though there were vague signs of footprints here and there.

We pulled off the road and parked on the shoulder behind MJ. There was a rusty steel gate between a pair of low pillars made from the same river rock. As we walked up, Hayley suddenly pointed at one of them.

“Jimmy, look.”

Set into both pillars was an engraved stone plate. I looked closer and realized what she was seeing: a fish that looked an awful lot like the bream she had shown us on her phone.

“What?” MJ asked.

“That, uh, that fish has shown up in some other things we’ve seen.”

MJ looked at it, then back at me. “What exactly is the connection here? Did your family own this place or something?”

I pondered what to tell her. “To be honest, I’m not really sure. I don’t think we owned it. But I think my parents may have been here. There are other pictures I’ve got.”

Hayley went up to the gate. “Someone must own this place. I mean, who’s paying the property taxes? But it doesn’t look like anyone has been in here in a really long time.”

MJ stood next to her and shaded her eyes with her hand. “You believe that story my great-uncle told us?”

“Sounds too much like a movie, honestly,” Hayley said.

“Feel like going in to see?” she asked.

We exchanged a look, and I glanced around us. The road was quiet, and there really was no sign of anyone.

“Probably can’t hurt,” I said.

We climbed over the gate and walked up the driveway. When we got up to the front of the house, I could see there had once been some kind of landscaping around it, but it hadn’t been tended in years. The hardier stuff was wild and overgrown; the rest had died, leaving only the skeletal remains of a few low bushes.

The front door was dusty and weathered. I tried it, but it was securely locked. We walked slowly around the house, finding a stone wall enclosing a garden. MJ and Hayley tried to peer through the windows of the building itself, but drapes on the inside blocked everything.

“Do you feel anything?” I asked Katarina.

“No.”

MJ turned to me, glancing at Katarina. “So, are you guys all friends, or . . . ”

“It’s a little complicated,” I said.

She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Complicated?”

“Yeah.”

She looked at Hayley, who said nothing.

“Huh,” MJ said.

We circled the wall. In the back was a wrought-iron gate. On either side were two more of the bream carvings like the ones out by the road. A stone arch over the gate was engraved with some kind of symbols:

אנקתם פסתם פספסים דיונסים

“What the hell?” MJ said.

I stared at it for a few moments. Something told me I’d seen it before, but I couldn’t place it. I took a picture of it with my phone.

“That is Hebrew,” Katarina said.

“Can you read it?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No.”

“Maybe they were Jewish?” MJ said.

Through the gate, I saw the remains of a garden with several gravel paths circling a fountain. As with the front, most of it was dead. Beyond it, there was a covered porch where two sets of double doors gave access to the house.

I tried the gate. It was locked, but when I pulled on the handle, the latch bolt popped loose from the frame, and the gate opened.

We stepped inside. Dry husks of what appeared to be rose bushes took up most of the garden. Only a couple were still alive, having devolved into chaotic masses of thorns and dead canes.

The fountain was dry, but I saw the bream motif here as well. As I came around it, looking from a particular angle toward the house, I was suddenly hit with a sense of familiarity.

I stopped short, staring at it.

“Jimmy?” Katarina asked.

“I’ve been here before.”

“What?” Hayley asked.

“I remember this fountain. I think maybe playing here as kid.”

“You’re sure it's not just déjà vu?” MJ asked. “I get those weird flashbacks too. My mother is always trying to get me to believe they mean something.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s one of the few memories I have of my childhood when we lived here.”

“What do you remember?”

“Only this fountain. I couldn’t have been more than four.”

But that was all. I took a photo of it, but we needed to move on.

The porch was strewn with wind-blown leaves. A few dusty pieces of deck furniture sat between the doors. I peered through a window. Unlike the rest of the house, the drapes here were drawn back enough to see in. Inside was an empty sitting room with some old chairs. Bookcases lined the walls.

MJ and Hayley were looking in the other set of doors.

“See anything?” I asked.

“Just a fireplace with a couch and chairs around it,” Hayley said.

I stepped back and looked around the doors. “Do you guys see anything that looks like a security system?”

The girls looked around for a few moments.

“Nothing,” MJ said.

I tried one of the doors. It was locked. MJ rattled the other one, but it was secured too.

There was a window off to my right. Hayley leaned in to look at it, then pushed up on the frame. With a squeak, it slid upward a few inches.

“Guys.”

I went over to her and helped her lift it the rest of the way. The air inside was musty and still. I looked in the window and around the frame, not seeing anything concerning.

One by one, we stepped inside.

A thin layer of dust coated everything – floors, furniture, and even the light fixtures on the walls. Here and there, old cobwebs hung from the corners and some of the chairs, but the spiders responsible appeared to have left long ago.

Now that we were inside, I began to feel something, a kind of lingering energy. It was fuzzy, indistinct, and impossible to get any kind of read on. I looked at Katarina, and I could tell she sensed it as well. But I said nothing.

The books on the shelves proved to be nothing remarkable – mostly decades-old popular fiction, and non-fiction that evinced an interest in gardening. There were no works on the occult, magic, or anything at all of that nature. There weren’t even any horror novels.

We looked through the rest of the first floor, finding little more than an old ranch house that had been closed up for years. The power and water were off. The furniture was well-made but long out of style. The kitchen appliances appeared to date from the 1980s. The pantry had been cleared out of everything beyond a few random cans and a box of cereal. There was a bathroom with a single toilet, the water in the tank long since evaporated.

When we went to explore upstairs, I stopped.

“Okay, this is getting weird,” I said.

“Another memory?” Hayley asked.

“Yeah. This staircase. I remember it too. I remember that wallpaper.”

It was faded blue with gold paisley flocking. Not something you would mistake for anything else.

“But you don’t remember any of the rest of this?” MJ asked.

“No. Just a memory of climbing these stairs.”

The second floor was no different. There were four bedrooms and an office. The beds were made and some old clothes hung in the closets. The bathrooms were also dried out. We found a few random personal items, but nothing that gave any clue to what had gone on here.

“Kind of a letdown,” MJ said finally. “Not even that creepy.”

“Really looks like they just up and left,” I said.

There were more books in the office, but they were mostly business and finance. There were two file drawers in the desk, but they were all empty. Hayley poked around in it while MJ and I looked through the bookshelves.

Suddenly, Hayley let out a little noise of discovery. She reached into the back of the file drawer, and a moment later came up with a sheet of paper. She looked at it, then up at me.

“Look at this.”

It was a letter on some kind of embossed letterhead. Then I noticed the name at the top: BREAMSTONE, LLC, with the same fish motif under it.

The letter itself was very short. It was just a thank-you note from someone named Charles Halvor to someone else named Klaus Januz, dated June 2001:

Dear Klaus,

Please let me once again extend my thanks and appreciation for agreeing to join the trust. I am sure you will be a valuable addition to our collective.

Best regards,

Charles

The letter was unsigned, and there were no creases to indicate that it had ever been in an envelope. The address under the name at the top was apparently this house: a number on Granada Road in Zagan’s Rock. Klaus Januz, whoever he was, lived in Santo Domingo.

“This is either a copy, or it was never sent,” Hayley said.

“Yeah.”

I set it on the desk and took a photo of it with my phone.

“Okay, now I’m getting some déjà vu too,” Hayley said. “I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen this before. The business name, I mean, maybe even this letterhead.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“But no idea where?”

“Not really.”

I looked around the office. Beyond the letter, there was nothing notable about it. I spent a few more minutes checking the books on the shelves and opening a few up, but it was all pedestrian fiction and business titles.

I sighed. “Seems like we’re done here. Not sure what else to do.”

“Jimmy, after you went up here, I found a door in the kitchen that led to a basement,” Katarina said. “We should look down there as well.”

So we went back downstairs. Katarina took us to the door. It led down into darkness. I could see well enough thanks to my connection to Charlotte, and I momentarily forgot about the rest of them. I was at the bottom starting to look around when the light from MJ’s phone lit up the stairwell.

“What are you, a vampire or something?” she asked. “How can you see?”

I didn’t know what to tell her, so I said nothing, just waited for them.

The basement was unfinished, just a bare concrete floor and the same stone-and-mortar walls. The beams holding up the house were spaced every six or eight feet. There seemed to be nothing down here beyond some random odds and ends, until I turned around and looked at the section behind the stairs, under the kitchen.

I let out a whistle through my teeth. One by one, the girls came up beside me.

“What the fuck?” MJ said.

This part of the cellar was taken up by an enormous boulder that had apparently been left in place when the house was built over it. Only a portion of it was exposed; it appeared that at least half of it was still underground. The exposed section was about six feet high and maybe eight or ten feet across.

Carved across the top half of the rock was another Hebrew legend:

אדגיתץ קרעשטן נגדיכש בטרצתג חקדטנע יגלפזק שקוצית

In the center of the rock was a single word surrounded by four of the same fish, as well as symbols of power and binding:

ZAGAN

The power I’d sensed upstairs was coming from here. There was something in this rock.

“Jimmy . . .” Katarina said.

“I see it.”

“What is this?” MJ asked. Then she laughed. “Wait, is this, like, the Zagan’s Rock?”

I exhaled slowly. “Actually, I think that’s exactly what it is,” I said.

“What is Zagan?” Hayley asked.

“A powerful demon.” I didn't remember much else about him, but he was listed in Liber Officiorum Spirituum as one of the eight Kings of Hell. Probably because there were so many other demons referenced in the Grimoires, I hadn’t made the connection between him and my home town until just now.

MJ’s eyes bulged. “Wait, Zagan is a demon? This town is Demon’s Rock?”

“Yeah.”

“Whoa. And what’s the deal with the fish?” MJ asked. “Is it that letterhead you found? Bream are a type of fish, right?”

The three of us went on edge. The last thing I wanted to do was speak that word in this house.

“I think so,” Hayley said evenly.

“And the house is stone,” MJ said. “So I guess that works, Br—”

“Please don’t say it out loud,” I said.

MJ stared at me, startled. Her eyes narrowed.

“There’s a bit more here than I let on,” I said. “I’m sorry. But please, whatever you do, don’t say that word.”

She didn’t answer me right away.

“And . . . why not?” she said slowly. “What will happen?”

“I don’t know. I just know it may not be good.”

MJ took a deep breath. “Okay . . . now we are getting into the creepy. What didn’t you tell me?”

“Your mother’s superstitions about this house are likely justified,” Katarina said.

MJ looked at her. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I don’t think anything is going on here now,” I said. “But we’re pretty sure something did go on here in the past.”

“Is this really connected to your family, or was that bullshit?”

“It is. I really am trying to find some things out about my childhood,” I said. “It has something to do with this house, and that group. I just don’t know what.”

“None of which explains why you think something will happen if I say that name.”

“You don’t need to be involved in this if you don’t want to be,” Hayley said. “We won’t keep you here.”

MJ looked around at the three of us, taking a slow step backward. “So, what is this, some fucking bruja shit? Are you satanists or something?”

“Not exactly,” I said.

Her eyebrows went up. “Not exactly?”

“We think this house may be connected to something like that.”

“Because of the fish?”

“There’s a lot more to it than that. The fish just seem to be a symbol. I’m not sure what of.”

MJ stared at me. “My mother is into this stuff. Like, in ways you wouldn’t believe. Constantly doing stuff to ward off evil spirits and bad luck. I’m not saying I believe any of it, but I might understand more than you think.”

“There was a time I didn’t believe any of it either,” I said. “I’m getting a master’s in Chemical Engineering. Not really a thing you do if you’re into witchcraft.”

“No.”

“But I found out my grandmother was a sorceress. She left me a whole bunch of stuff, some of which seems related to this house. Other things that convinced me this is real. I’ve done things myself.”

“What stuff did she leave you?”

“Some really old books on magic, necromancy, and demonology. A staff. A whole bunch of random stones and sticks and other stuff that I’ve discovered have certain powers.”

“And it works?” MJ asked.

“I cast a divination spell to locate something we really needed to find. It pretty much led us straight here. To a place I had never heard of and had never been before. It was right where the spell said it was.”

“What were you looking for?”

“A book. I’ll show you if you want.”

MJ pursed her lips tightly. Then she looked at Katarina and Hayley. “So . . . what are your stories?”

“I’m pre-med,” Hayley said. “Jimmy was my TA last semester for organic chemistry. But I’ve seen what he can do. It’s real. We found a ring my mother lost twenty-five years ago. I didn’t even know it existed in the first place.”

Katarina was silent for a moment or two. “I am Swedish. I am here for graduate school. I have seen what Jimmy can do as well. You asked how he can see in the dark? It is because of his familiar. She is a cat.”

MJ looked back at me. “You have a familiar? Where is it?”

“We didn’t bring her.”

“And what kind of divination?” she asked. “My mother sees signs of things all the time, except then she’ll construct some explanation to back into whatever it is she wants to believe.”

“I started out like that, but you’re right, it’s too easy to project your expectations onto it. So I wrote a computer model to do it.”

Her eyebrows went up again. “A computer model?”

“What are you majoring in? Do you know how to code at all?”

“Business. And sort of. Nothing heavy.”

“It’s fluid dynamics. It models a random flow of particles, each of which represents a specific concept in a database, then it simulates them flowing down a specific path. The first twenty-four to reach a certain point represent the answer, which is a set of twenty-four words. They ought to be completely random, but they aren’t. It’s accurately predicted things, and located things, far beyond anything that could possibly be coincidence. I have to focus myself on the spirit world beforehand, but it works.”

“It does,” Hayley said. “Jimmy ran it on me, and it described something that happened to me when I was thirteen, that no one else ever knew about. Details it could never have come up with randomly.”

MJ stared at her in disbelief. “That’s fucking crazy.”

“A few months ago, I would have agreed with you,” I said.

Katarina spoke up. “Jimmy, if we are done here, I think we should not stay much longer.”

I took a few photos of the rock. “Yeah, we should go. Someone may wonder about the cars out there.”

MJ followed us out of the house and back to the road. The cars were undisturbed.

“What are you guys going to do now?” she asked. “Are you staying in town?”

“No, we’re down at my parents’ in San Sebastian,” Hayley said.

She nodded, glancing at Hayley’s Mercedes. “That explains the car, I guess. Do you think you’re coming back?”

“I think so,” I said. “We haven’t figured all this out.”

She gave me her number. “If you come back, let me know. I’m going to ask my mother what she thinks about all this. Minus the breaking and entering, that is. You’ve got me more than a little freaked out, and I’d like to know what the fuck is going on.”

MJ went back to town. We drove back to the highway and headed home.

Chapter 11

On the way, I called Volach to let him know we had the book. He let out a shout of triumph.

“Fuckin’ twenty-four hours! You’re a rock star, kid!” He laughed loudly. “You’re gonna make some people very happy. Can you be at the diner in half an hour?”

“We’re a ways up the road. I think we can be there at three?”

“Three it is. See you then.”

As Hayley drove, I went back into my photocopy of Liber Somnia. I couldn’t escape the feeling that I might have set something in motion by making a copy of it, but I needed the information about dream magic.

An awful lot of it made sense to me, and I wanted to explore the various things Wilcox suggested. So that began with getting myself prepared. The key ingredient in the potions and incenses he recommended was mugwort. I didn’t know anything about it, so I spent some time researching it on my laptop. The good news was that it was a very common ingredient in a lot of alternative medicines and herbal remedies, so it was widely available. The less good news was that it wasn’t clear what the best way to use it might be.

There was an organic market on the way back that appeared to stock several forms of it. So I asked Hayley to make a stop there after we handed over the book.

◆◆◆

Volach and Morax were waiting next to a long black BMW when we pulled into the parking lot. Hayley pulled in next to them. I got out with the brass box with the book inside.

I’d met them enough times now to recognize the tension in their eyes despite the bravado. If everything Volach had told me was accurate, I had saved a lot of their butts.

I held out the box. Volach took it and opened it.

He whistled, shaking his head. “Thirty years, and you track it down in a single fucking day. Understand something here, kid. You have made certain people, starting with me, look very good. But you’ve also made some other people look like complete, fucking idiots.”

“Who?”

“That would be Bathin, or rather his staff. Bathin is back in the pool of souls, and he won’t be coming out of there any time soon. But some members of his staff who were still insisting they could solve this problem, despite ten years of not being able to, are very unhappy about being shown up by a mortal, let alone one who just started working for us a few months ago. So, I would advise you to watch your back.”

“You can do nothing to protect him?” Katarina asked in a strained voice.

But Volach and Morax both laughed.

“Sugar-tits, the last thing I want here is anyone fucking with my new golden child,” Volach said. “But I can’t be everywhere at once. I’m just saying, you all should be careful to exercise the proper precautions, you know what I mean?”

“Okay,” I said. “So we’re good? A thousand souls?”

“Knocked off your balance as we’re speaking here. Oh, and I got something else for you, since you like your bonuses.”

He turned to Morax, who handed me a little wooden box. I opened it. Inside was a heavy gold ring engraved with an array of sigils all around its circumference.

“What is it?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure,” Morax said. “All I know is it belonged to a sorcerer I worked with in France a few hundred years ago. He got on Astaroth’s bad side and had to surrender a few things to make up for it. This was one of them. I don’t really know what it does, but he seemed very reluctant to give it up. So it must be something interesting.”

I nodded. “We’re done?”

“For now,” Volach said. “Might have something for you after that holiday I can’t speak of.”

The two of them laughed again.

“Have a good evening, folks,” Volach said.

They climbed into the BMW and drove off.

The organic market was about a mile away, so Hayley drove us over there. After browsing through the herbal remedy section, I found several options for the mugwort: tea, incense, and even essential oil. I decided to just get all of it and experiment. Wilcox’s recipe included a few other things like rose petals and chamomile, all of which the market had in stock.

Katarina seemed intrigued. “What are you hoping to do, Jimmy?”

I could see in her eyes the discussion we’d had that morning about my dream.

“I think Langdon was doing something in his dreams, something related to that house and the group that shall not be named. I want to see if I can manage the same thing, now that we know what’s in that house.”

She smiled. “Is that all?”

“For now. We’ll see.”

◆◆◆

When we finally got back to the house, we were pretty wiped out from everything we’d done that day and all the ups and downs. Charlotte came running up to us, and I picked her up to scratch her ears. We went down to Hayley’s room and just lay down together. She had a queen bed, and there was plenty of room for all four of us. Hayley lay between me and Katarina, and Charlotte curled up in the center, purring loudly. It was pretty obvious she’d missed me.

Way too much had happened today, and I needed some time to process it. We’d found the book, and the house, and a clear connection to Breamstone, though I still didn’t know what the hell it was. We’d found clues I needed to research, those strange Hebrew inscriptions.

I’d found that photo of my mother. It was clear she had some connection to Langdon and the rest of this, though I had no clue what it might be. Why I remembered that house was a mystery, but I did. That meant my parents had been in there as well. Were they part of Breamstone? Where did that leave Grandma Amy? In that dream, she told me the other photos I had were Breamstone.

I had to go back to Zagan’s Rock and do some more digging, but it was hard to know where to even start working through all this.

“We were pretty lucky today,” Hayley said.

“After twelve hundred years, I am not sure there is such a thing as luck,” Katarina said. “The spirit world seems to make its own.”

“But if we hadn’t chosen that fruit stand, and Jimmy hadn’t shown MJ those photos . . .”

“What made you stop there?” Katarina asked.

“I don’t know. I just saw it, and decided to stop.”

“That is what I mean.”

“You think the spirit world told me to?”

“It seems quite a coincidence to me that we would stop at the one place that would lead us to find that house,” Katarina said.

“What did you think of MJ?” I asked.

“Pretty sure she’s gay, or at least bi,” Hayley said.

I looked over at her. “What?”

“My gaydar was ticking over pretty hard. She’s a jock, Jimmy. The ratio of gay to straight players on women’s soccer teams is a little bit higher than average, after all.”

“You think?”

“Just a feeling I got.” She looked over at Katarina. “She was checking both of us out a lot.”

“I noticed,” Katarina said.

“I didn’t,” I said.

They both laughed.

“You weren’t really paying attention,” Hayley said.

I hadn’t been, exactly. I’d been focused on the house.

“She is quite pretty,” Katarina said.

“Yeah. I had a thing for edgy, dark-haired girls like her,” Hayley said, “before I met you.”

Katarina laughed and bent down to kiss her. I tried to ignore them. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the ring. It was a thick gold band that was well-worn with age. The engravings were a bit difficult to read.

I tried to see what I could sense from it. While there was certainly something there, I couldn’t get a read on it.

I left the girls momentarily and went to my room to get the staff. When I came back, they were still kissing gently and laughing at each other. I lay back down and tried to focus. Using the staff, I briefly took control of Katarina and had her start squeezing Hayley’s boobs. Hayley squealed and squirmed under her.

“Jimmy is doing this,” Katarina said. Hayley whacked me with her arm, and I let go of Katarina. They separated and sat up a little.

“What do you think it is?” Hayley asked.

I still couldn’t quite get a sense of what it did, but I felt an urge to put it on. So I did. But when I slid it onto my right hand, I didn’t feel any different.

“Anything?”

“There’s definitely something to it. I just can’t tell exactly what right now.”

“Maybe it will come to you,” Katarina said.

◆◆◆

Derek and Stephanie got home by seven, and we ate dinner. Hayley gave them a somewhat redacted version of what we’d done that day, just pitching it as me wanting to visit my hometown.

“Did you find anything you remember?” Stephanie asked.

“I don’t really remember much. I don’t actually know where we lived, but we found one place I recall a bit. We might go back up. There are some people I want to talk to.”

“It’s a nice little town,” she said. “I haven’t been there in a few years, but my college roommate is from Zagan’s Rock. She moved back up there after graduating. She says she likes the peace and quiet.”

I nodded. “It’s pretty sleepy.”

It was Friday night, and Derek suggested another movie. So we all went downstairs together and Derek dialed something up.

When the movie was over, Stephanie came up to me as we were getting ready for bed.

“Jimmy, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure.”

“Hayley told me more about how you found my ring. I can’t tell you how happy we are to have it back after so long, but from what Hayley told me, I realized you were probably expecting to be able to sell it. Before we knew what it was.”

“It’s okay, really,” I said. “I’m glad we got it back for you.”

“Is there anything we can do for you? Something you need for school? I know what graduate school is like, believe me. Derek and I haven’t always been like this.”

“It’s okay.”

She gave me a hug. “Please think of something, okay?”

“I’ll try.”

◆◆◆

I went through the mugwort options before deciding to just start with the tea. I mixed in the other ingredients from the book and brewed up a cup. I was settling into bed when Hayley came in through the sliding glass door and climbed under the covers.

“Hey.” She cuddled in against me. “Katarina spent the night in here last night, and I was all alone. I want to sleep with you. I’ll get up early and go back so my mom doesn’t know.”

“What’s Katarina doing?”

“She’s just going to do what she does at night. She said it’s okay.”

I turned out the light and curled up around her. She kissed me. “Love you.”

“You too,” I said.

“Did you take the mugwort? Is that what I smell?”

“Yeah.” I explained about the mediations Wilcox recommenced before sleep. “If you wake up and hear me talking in my sleep, try to remember it.”

“Okay. What are you hoping to dream about?”

“I need to work with Charlotte on something.”

She laughed softly and nuzzled my neck. “So I get to finish you off in the morning?”

I laughed with her. “Yeah.”

Chapter 12

It seemed as if I began dreaming immediately. I walked across a broad field, and it was as clear and lucid a dream as I’d ever had outside my dreams with Charlotte. I came up over a rise, and I saw the Breamstone house ahead. I was behind it, walking toward the back gate.

But it was different. The house looked lively and occupied. I opened the gate and entered the garden. All the roses were in full bloom, lush and green. Water burbled through the fountain as I walked slowly across the gravel up to the porch. The furniture was clean and new, showing no signs of the weathering we’d seen.

I opened the door to the library. The furniture was the same, but the books were very different. Gone were the dated, trashy novels and manuals on roses and landscape design. The shelves were dense with heavy leather-bound books like my grimoires. I pulled one down and opened it. The title page read De Occulta Philosophia Libri III, which meant The Third Book of Occult Philosophy. The author was Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa.

In the dream, I knew what this was. One of a set of three volumes on magic written in the sixteenth century. I found the other two beside it.

There were many more like that, hundreds of works reaching from the twentieth century back to the early Middle Ages.

“I need to collect a library like this,” I said to myself.

I looked through the rest of the house. The main sitting area with the fireplace was changed. Dark tapestries hung on the walls now, depicting dense scenes of what appeared to be warfare. I looked closer and realized that wasn’t quite right. All of them showed demons and devils tormenting legions of souls across a hellish landscape. Some of the souls burned in pits of fire, others were impaled on long spikes, still others were being torn to pieces by infernal machines.

Many of the scenes were deeply disturbing. Both male and female souls were being raped, and male souls were having their genitals tortured or simply torn off. Another scene showed a demon shoving red-hot pokers into the vaginas of female souls bound to a long wooden fence.

Still other souls were confined in pens like cattle waiting for slaughter. They cried and begged for mercy as the demon lashed at them with long whips or poked them with spears.

I turned from the tapestries and went to the kitchen. The appliances were much the same, but the pantry looked as if the occupants were preparing for an enormous holiday feast. The counters were covered in lush collections of fruits and vegetables. In the refrigerator, I found a huge goose and a rib roast that might have weighed twenty pounds.

The bedrooms upstairs were unoccupied. The office was largely unchanged, but when I went to the desk, I found the file cabinets filled with paperwork. There was a folder labeled Incarnation. I drew it out and opened it. The first document was a handwritten note.

The baby is coming soon.

–M

This made sense. I nodded and put the folder back. Then I went down to the basement.

In contrast to the bare, empty concrete room we’d seen, I found a laboratory filled with all sorts of equipment: glass vessels, burners, little braziers, a mortar and pestle, tools and implements. Surrounding the lab tables were tall shelves against all the walls, heavy with jars, canisters, and boxes brimming with powders, herbs, and animal parts.

Someone was here.

Grandma Amy stood next to Zagan’s rock, but it wasn’t the grandmother I remembered. She was the younger woman I’d seen in the photos she left me.

“So you’ve come, Jimmy.”

“Yes.”

“But it is too late. This place has passed in my absence. It has no power. You must build a new one. You have the power I did not.”

“I need to build a house like this?” I asked.

“No. You have found her, but you have so much more work to do. You must choose your own form.”

I didn’t think to ask who she meant. I was focused on the building.

“I need to build a dream temple,” I said.

“Yes.”

The scene blurred and shifted. I walked along the inlet beside Katarina’s village. But I was too late here as well. The village was aflame, with most of the buildings I’d seen before now burning. Bodies lay scattered about. The men had tried to defend their homes, to no avail. They put up a good fight, but they were overwhelmed in the end. I recognized Rodhvald, as well as Mattias and Gevald. All of them were dead.

Rough men in blood-spattered clothes walked around dragging their plunder into a heap. From the village longhouse, I heard the screams of the surviving women as they were violated by the raiders. One of the men walked out, hitching up his leggings.

The raiders ignored me. I followed the inlet around to the base of the cliff. Katarina’s body lay on the rocks, her limbs twisted into unnatural angles by the impact. I looked up, seeing several of the raiders looking down at her.

This was a dream. I could change things. I could bring her back to life.

I walked up to her, willing her to rise.

Beside me was a beautiful, naked woman with long red-blonde hair. A serpent coiled around her body.

“There is nothing you can do here,” Lilith said. “She has chosen her path.”

“She was fleeing for her life.”

“It matters not.”

“What can I do for her?”

“She will come to you in time. Until then, she must serve.”

The scene shifted yet again, becoming more clear and vivid. I was with Charlotte.

She emerged from her cottage with our baby.

“Master.”

I looked at her home, then around us at the forest. “I need to do something here.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“I need to build a dream temple.”

She nodded. “Take care, Master. Do not try to build it all at once. One thing at a time. Let the design come to you. Be sure to fix each element in your mind. You must remember, or it may fade.”

“Won’t you be here?”

“This is your world, Master. I cannot affect it.”

I looked at her cottage.

“It has always been here,” she said. “I did not make it.”

So I turned to the forest and began to envision my dream temple. I cleared a wide space in the trees first, smoothing the ground. Then I called up a broad marble-columned rotunda, about a hundred feet across. I gave it a patterned marble floor, and I created a mosaic on the ceiling. I created a pentagram in the center of the floor, and a series of magic circles around it.

I walked into the center and paused, trying to fix it all in my mind. Then I called up four rectangular structures, attaching them around the circumference, forming a ‘X’ shape radiating from the rotunda. Each was about sixty feet long and thirty wide.

I paused again, walking around and looking at what I’d created. Charlotte walked with me, carrying the baby. I went to the first building. I called up a library like the one I’d seen in the Breamstone house. The memory was fresh, and I was able to recreate the books I’d seen. I created the ones I owned, as well as Liber Somnia. I created copies of all the titles I’d seen in my research.

“This is very impressive, Master. Be careful not to overexert yourself.”

I looked around the temple again. I felt fine, and the structure seemed solid and clear.

In the second building, I created a laboratory, duplicating everything I had access to at school and more. I filled a large cabinet with all the reagents and other compounds I might need, and another with all the herbs and other natural ingredients I could think of. Charlotte suggested some others. This was so close to what I was already familiar with that fixing it in my mind took little effort.

In the third building, I created a sitting room and recreated my laptop. Then something occurred to me – in this place, I wasn’t constrained by my computer’s processing power. I could go far beyond it.

Huntington College had access to one of the older supercomputers at one of the national laboratories, though there was significant competition for processing time. I’d used it once last semester, when I helped Dr. Vicenza with one of his research projects. So I was relatively familiar with it and how it worked.

I concentrated for a few moments and recreated it here. The building I’d made was by no means big enough – the actual supercomputer comprised two banks of servers, each of them about a hundred feet long. So I hollowed out a large enough cavity in the ground and stacked the servers inside. I chilled the room down to about fifty degrees to keep it stable. Then I replaced the floor. I kept my laptop here, but now it had an interface with the supercomputer underneath.

In the last building, I created a bedroom with a huge golden bed covered in silks and plush cushions. I created a bathing area beyond it with a large marble bath, and a large closet for Charlotte’s clothes. I filled it with a vast collection of dresses fit for a queen. Finally, I created a comfy little bassinet for our dream child.

“You should live here,” I said. “You deserve much more than that little cottage.”

Charlotte gasped softly. “Thank you, Master. It’s wonderful.”

She looked around the bedroom, setting the baby down in the bassinet. She looked briefly through the closet and bathroom as once again I tried to fix it all in my memory.

Charlotte came out of the closet and sat on the edge of the bed, smiling.

“This is quite a bed, Master. What do you plan to do with it?”

I smiled at her. “Get in. I’ll be there in a minute.”

As Charlotte disrobed and climbed into that enormous bed, I walked around the entire temple one last time. When I returned to the bedroom, she was in the center of the bed against the cushions, silk sheets pulled up just over her big breasts.

I willed my clothes away and climbed in beside her, taking her my arms. I looked down into her bright green eyes, then brushed my hand against her cheek.

“I’m glad I have you, Charlotte. However we ended up together.”

She smiled up at me. “I love you, Master.”

In here, Charlotte was more passive than Hayley or Katarina, and she loved being dominated – just taken roughly and eagerly. I kissed her deeply, pushing her big breasts around and pinching her fat nipples. She moaned into my mouth, opening her body to me. I reached down, finding her wet, and slipped my middle fingers into her. I rubbed her rapidly until her back arched and she shuddered under me.

I gave her no time to recover, just rolling on my back and pushing her head down to my giant dream-cock. No human woman could have deepthroated it, but in here, Charlotte easily swallowed me down to the root.

I lay there as she went up and down, all the way in and all the way out, pausing at the top to flutter her tongue against the head before plunging down again. The sucking and slurping sensations washed over me, broken up by the feel of passing into her throat over and over. I guided her movements with a fist in her hair, and she moaned and whimpered around me as she sucked.

I lifted her up and repositioned her over my chest, hips over my head, so I could watch her from the other direction. Her breasts bounced against my abdomen as she went up and down, and I took her head in both hands, fucking her throat. Finally, with a grunt, I thrust as far in as I could get and erupted into her. She swallowed around me, sucking and moaning as my seed passed into her.

I pushed her off, sitting up and getting onto my knees. I rolled her over, taking her plump butt in my hands and ramming myself into her wetness.

She cried out as I filled her with my enormous dick. “Master!” she cried out. But I shoved her forward, burying her face into the cushions.

As I began pounding her thick ass, I made her orgasm again, but this time I kept it going, kept it rolling over her. She moaned and whimpered into the bed. Her body shook in front of me and her pussy contracted around me over and over.

As each orgasm ended, I sent another one into her, making them crash over her, roll back, and roll in again like waves on the beach. Her hands writhed against the silk sheets, winding them into balls around her fists. I kept one hand on her neck, holding her down as I fucked her roughly.

I came again with a groan, pumping thick dream seed into her spasming flesh. She moaned loudly as she felt it.

I withdrew, rolling her over again, then thrusting forward into her. She groped at my waist, still orgasming, body shaking and shuddering. I watched her cartoon tits bouncing on her chest as I pounded her, rolling up and back like water balloons. She lifted her legs, wrapping them around my waist, letting me get every millimeter of my huge dream-cock into her pussy. Her thighs shook against me as she came again and again.

Finally, with one mighty thrust, I buried myself inside her and came with every molecule of my being. The pleasure washed over me and into her. I fell forward onto her shuddering body. I finally released her orgasm, letting her coast down, then rolled over.

I lay beside her as she caught her breath. I wondered if Katarina was feeling this, if Hayley was awake, waiting for me.

“Why do you do such things for me, Master?” she gasped. “I am here to serve you. You do not need to give me such pleasure.”

I leaned over and kissed her. “How does this feel for you? For me, it seems half-dream, half-real.”

She looked up at me, eyes wide. “I know. I remember visiting this world as a witch. But for me now, this is as real as anything else in my existence. These things you do to me feel as if they should not be possible, yet they are.”

We rolled toward each other. I pulled her to me. Charlotte cuddled with me, laying her head on my chest. For a while, we just lay together. Then she set her chin on me and looked up.

“When I was first called as your familiar, I was afraid,” she said. “Many sorcerers treat their familiars as afterthoughts, even treat them cruelly. I was kind to mine, and I cared for her, but I did not imagine I would have a master such as you, who would love me so intensely.”

I cuddled with her for a few minutes, just wallowing in the love and affection I felt from her.

“What do you know of dream magic?” I asked a bit later.

“I had no talent for it.”

“Do you know anything about it?"

“I know you must take great care,” she said. “You can do things here, but the results are not always the same as in the real world, especially when you try to reach from one world to the other.”

I kissed her. “I’ve troubled you enough.”

She kissed me back. “Goodbye, Master. I love you, but Hayley is waiting for you.”

◆◆◆

She was.

When I drifted awake, she was lying there beside me, looking at me.

“Hey,” she said softly.

“Hey.” I stretched.

Charlotte was lying across my chest in the same position she’d just been in the dream, but she moved over and lay beside Hayley.

“How long have you been awake?” I asked.

“About ten minutes. It’s so weird lying here watching you, knowing the two of you are together somewhere.”

“You can tell?”

“Yeah. When I’m here like this. It’s just the way you sleep with each other. It’s hard to explain. I can just tell.”

“Not jealous?”

She smiled. “No, of course not. Except, maybe that you’re together somewhere I can never go.”

“Let me work on it.” I kissed her. “I need to write some things down here before I forget them.”

I reached for the pad of paper I’d left beside the bed and quickly scribbled down what I remembered from that series of dreams, the house, the village, and the temple I built. I tried to draw a floor plan and as many of the details as I could to fix it in my head.

“What is that?” Hayley asked.

I explained about the dream temple.

“And you can do magic there?” she asked.

“That’s the idea.”

She reached for Charlotte and rubbed her head. “Tell me again what she looks like.”

“She’s beautiful. Really. She has that German look to her face, the narrow nose and cheekbones. Long black hair, and the same green eyes. She’s not as slim as you and Katarina. More like the girls in those Renaissance paintings. Think of a waitress in a German biergarten, filling out those peasant dresses or whatever they are.”

“They’re called dirndls.”

“Okay. That’s Charlotte.”

Hayley laughed. “Big boobs and butt, basically?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Is that what you like? German and Swedish girls with big tits?”

I rolled over, sliding a hand under her pajama top. “I love your boobs.”

She reached down to grip my erection. We groped each other for a few seconds before I had to pull away. “Have to go to the bathroom. Hold on.”

“Get a towel so we don’t make a mess of the bed.”

When I came back from emptying my bladder, I crawled into bed and reached for her, finding her nude. She’d slipped out of her pajamas while I was gone.

“Yeah, this is what I like. Naked Scottish redheads.”

“It’s all yours, baby.”

I kissed my way down her tight little body, pausing to suck on her nipples until they were red and swollen. Then I slid down between her legs and took her smooth sex in my mouth, nuzzling my nose against the little patch of orange-red hair above it. I’d been with her long enough now to know exactly what she wanted, which was just firm, rhythmic friction on her clit, up and down, back and forth, round and round. So I gave it to her, concentrating on her reactions. I slid my arms under her thighs, pulling her close. She took my hands in hers, squeezing. I pleasured her like that for several minutes until her stomach started to twitch and her hips were rolling at my mouth.

A long shudder ran thorough her body, starting at her thighs and flowing up across her torso. Her hands squeezed me tightly, then thrust down to my head as she peaked, which was her signal to stop. I did, pausing briefly until she began to relax. I began licking again slowly, then more firmly. She spun up again for another minute before a deeper, longer shiver coursed through her and she pushed me off. I kissed her one last time and climbed up beside her.

When Hayley caught her breath, she slid down and swallowed me up. It wasn’t like the dream with Charlotte, but she’d improved quite a bit from that first night we’d been together, when I I’d been less than impressed with her oral skills. I knew now it was just inexperience – I was only the third guy she’d been with. After a couple of months and some coaching from Katarina, she knew exactly what I liked too. She wasn’t Katarina and never would be, but I still loved the feel of her hot little mouth on me.

Eventually I pulled her up and onto my cock. She sat back, sliding me into herself. I reached up and took her breasts in my hands as she began to ride me. I lay there holding myself up for her until she reached another peak and threw herself forward onto my chest, long red hair going all over my face. I held her close, feeling the shivers as her orgasm coasted down.

Then she fell to the side, pulling me over her. I pulled back just long enough to arrange the towel under us and entered her again. She put her arms around my chest.

“I love you, Jimmy. So fucking much.”

“I love you, too, baby.”

“I meant what I said on the beach. I’ve always felt this connection with you. I know this isn’t like Charlotte or Katarina, but there’s no place I’d rather be than right here with you.”

I kissed her. “You’re the only one who can love me in this world. Don’t forget that.”

“What you said to me, how we’re meant to be together. We are. I can feel it.”

“So can I.”

She pulled me down and kissed me hard. I kissed her back and began thrusting deeply into her. I was close now, but after three orgasms, she was still near her peak as well. As I rocked myself against her, she soon pulled herself up against my shoulder, whimpering into my ear.

“Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop . . .”

I couldn’t if I’d wanted to, and I didn’t. I held myself back as best I could until her thighs began battering my hips and her nails dug into my back. Then I lost it, and with a few more thrusts came deeply inside her shivering pussy.

I collapsed on top of her, gasping for breath, then rolled off as soon as I could. Hayley pulled the towel up between her thighs, then rolled over, cuddling under my arm.

“Fuck,” she gasped.

“Yeah.” That had been good. Really good.

“I don’t know how you do that to me,” she said. “It’s not some magic, is it?”

“Depends on how you want to define magic, I guess.”

“It sure feels magical.” She hugged me, then sat up, pushing her hair back over her head.

“I think my mom is up. I better get back.”

She quickly pulled on her pajamas, gave me another kiss, and slipped back to her room through the balcony.

Chapter 13

I was sitting at the bar in the kitchen with my laptop going through my emails when Katarina appeared, smelling freshly showered. She had on workout tights and a Huntington College sweatshirt. As usual, she had nothing under it.

We were alone, so I kissed her and briefly played with her perfect breasts over the soft fabric.

“Jimmy, there is something I should tell you. This occurred to me during the night while I was thinking about what we did yesterday. It has to do with that rock we found.”

“The one with ZAGAN carved on it?”

“Yes. You know who Zagan is, don’t you?”

“One of the Kings of Hell.”

“He was, until recently. By infernal standards, that is. He disappeared several centuries ago. How and why, I do not know. That caused a power struggle, and one of the dukes eventually advanced to take his place. The reason I wonder if this is significant is because the duke who did so is the same one you are serving now.”

“Astaroth?”

“Yes.”

“Huh,” I said. “None of the books mention that, but I guess they were written before it happened.”

“The struggle lasted a century or more, and it was another century before Astaroth was formally promoted.”

I thought about this for a few moments. Zagan’s Rock. Bream Stone.

“He just vanished?”

“Yes.”

“There were symbols of binding all over that rock.”

“Indeed.”

I thought about that for a moment. If Zagan was actually bound inside that rock, why would you build a house on top of it? What the hell was the Breamstone Collective doing there? Trying to free him somehow? If so, they really seemed to be taking their time with it.

Katarina leaned against me. “How were your dreams?” she asked.

“How much did you pick up on?”

“You dreamed of me again, didn’t you?”

“You can tell?” I asked.

“Yes. Those dreams have a certain feel to them. I sense familiar things. It is hard to explain.”

“I did. Please don’t ask me to explain it. You won’t like it. It wasn’t like the others.”

She nodded. “All right. I think I know why. This one felt different. Darker and more painful.”

“It was.”

“You were with Charlotte for a long time.”

I explained about the dream temple. She took a deep breath.

“Jimmy, you know my limitations, on what I can give you. But let me tell you something. There is no particle of my being now that regrets what you did to me that first night. That I am bound to you forever. You are destined for great things, and I want to experience them beside you. I want to be with you.”

I hugged her. “I want to be with you too.”

Hayley came up the stairs, with Charlotte following her.

“Are we going back Zagan’s Rock ?” she asked.

“Yeah. If that’s all right?”

“I’m good. I texted MJ. She talked her mom out of working today. She can meet us wherever.”

“I’m thinking we start at the Library,” I said. “Olivia is the only lead we have on Langdon and the rest of it.”

◆◆◆

I brought my binder and my laptop, as well as the staff. I was thinking I would run another divination after we talked to Olivia, and I wanted to let MJ see how it worked. We took Charlotte this time.

On the way there, MJ texted me to say we could just pick her up at the fruit stand. When we got there, Hayley swung into the lot and parked in the corner. MJ emerged a few seconds later in running tights and a UCSD athletic jacket. She climbed into the back next to Katarina.

“Hey, guys.”

“All good with your mom?” I asked.

“Yeah, she’s fine.”

Charlotte was on Katarina’s lap. She meowed at MJ as she settled into the seat.

“This is Charlotte,” Katarina said.

“You brought your cat?”

“She’s not just a cat,” I said.

MJ looked confused for a moment as Hayley pulled out of the lot. Then she leaned back in her seat.

“Oh. So . . . this is your familiar?”

Charlotte meowed again. MJ looked over at her, clearly unsure what to think.

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

“Sure you want to know?” I asked.

MJ took a deep breath and looked around at us. “Last night, I got my mother talking about her superstitions about this town. The things she believes. She didn’t want to at first, but I told her I’d seen some stuff and I wasn’t sure what to think. So she got going. She told me a whole lot. She swears there’s been some really crazy shit here over the years. I’ve heard her talk like this before, but I used to just blow it off. After yesterday, I’m not so sure anymore.”

Charlotte meowed and put her paw on MJ’s leg. MJ stared down at her, eyes widening. Charlotte just looked up at her.

“It’s almost like she knows what I’m saying.”

“She does,” Katarina said.

“She does?”

“Charlotte was a witch who died in 1593,” I said. “Her spirit came into a cat, this cat, that was hanging around my apartment back at school. We’re bonded together now. I know what she knows. I can see in the dark. I can even see through her eyes.”

“You can what?”

I turned back toward the front of the car.

“Hold up some fingers or something, I don’t know. Do it right behind my head so I can’t see.”

I focused on Charlotte, who climbed into MJ’s lap. MJ looked around at Katarina, at Hayley, then at the back of my head.

She held up three fingers.

“Three,” I said.

Then six.

“Six.”

She looked over at Katarina.

“Are you doing this?”

Katarina just covered her eyes. MJ stuck out her tongue really fast.

“You stuck out your tongue.”

She stared down at Charlotte. Then she picked her up and whispered in her ear. I didn’t hear it, but Charlotte did, which meant I knew a second or two later what she’d said.

“MJ, do you really want me to repeat that out loud?” I said. She’d described a piercing she had in a rather intimate spot.

“Fucking shit,” MJ said. “How?”

“It’s just what I said. I know what she knows.”

“You’re a fucking bruja?” she asked Charlotte.

Charlotte meowed.

I turned back around. “I’m not asking you to believe anything, or not believe,” I said. “But you wanted to know what was going on with us.”

“Is that it?” MJ asked.

“There’s actually a lot more,” Hayley said. “But we should probably save it until later.”

“Yeah,” MJ said. “Later is good.”

◆◆◆

We pulled up in front of the Library. Because we had Charlotte, we took a table outside after placing our orders. I ordered Charlotte some milk, and she flopped into a sunny spot when we sat down.

“So what are we doing here?” MJ asked.

“The owner knew someone who was connected to that house,” I said, “and some other things here. She’s the only real lead we have at the moment. I want to talk to her.”

As we sat there, I paid a bit more attention to MJ than I had yesterday, remembering what Hayley had said about her. And several times, I noticed her gaze lingering on Katarina, or Hayley, in a way that suggested a fair bit more than casual interest.

The barista brought our coffee out and began setting it down.

“Is that your cat?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Hayley said. “Is it okay?”

“I guess as long as it stays out here.”

“Is Olivia around?” I asked.

He shook his head. “She was here earlier, but she had to go take care of some things. She should be back around noon.”

When the barista went back inside, Hayley looked at me.

“So now what?”

MJ shifted in her chair, leaning forward. “Look, I’m not saying I believe all this yet, but my mother told me something you might want to check out.”

“What?” I asked.

“I know you told me not to say that word, and I won’t do it again, but I asked her if she’d heard it before. She had.”

I looked at Katarina, whose face had gone pale.

“What was it?” I asked.

“She said there’s a business in town with that name. And, this is the thing, do you remember what was in that letter, what that guy called it? ‘Our collective’? That’s the name of the business. The Br . . . that word . . . Collective.”

“Does she know what it is?”

MJ shook her head. “Nothing beyond something else to be superstitious about. Weird stuff going on, and all.”

“Where is it?” Katarina asked.

“Downtown, by the library.”

“I guess we should go look,” Hayley said.

◆◆◆

The Breamstone Collective, whatever it was, occupied a two-story building in the town center, across the street from Zagan’s Rock Public Library and a block from city hall. We parked around the corner and got out to take a look. I brought the staff, leaning on it like a walking stick.

The building looked like it dated from the 1970s, just a simple cinder-block construction with a single door in the center of the first floor. There were no signs or any other identification on the exterior. I couldn’t tell if anyone was inside, but it seemed like the kind of business that would be closed on a Saturday morning.

“Should we go look?” Hayley asked.

I looked at Katarina. “What do you think?”

“There’s definitely something about it,” she said.

I tightened my grip on the staff and concentrated on the building, trying to see if I could sense anything.

Several things then happened.

I suddenly saw – rather than vaguely sensed – a pair of overlapping wards on the building. I could actually see the magical energy that imbued the structure of it. One seemed to be a defense against divination, the other against entry by spellcasters who were not attuned to it.

The other thing that happened was that I realized this new ability had nothing to do with the staff. It was coming from the gold ring. I looked down, seeing the enchantments on it, as well as those on the staff. As long as I was making a deliberate effort, the ring allowed me to see magic.

“Jimmy?” Hayley asked.

“I just figured out what this ring does.”

I explained what I was seeing to the three of them. Katarina and Hayley gasped, while MJ’s face twisted in disbelief.

“What exactly do you see?” she asked.

I tried to describe it. “It’s like an aura, except I can see the threads of magic holding them together, exactly what makes the wards work.”

It then occurred to me what this also meant. I could see the wards in detail, enough to understand how they had been laid.

And that might just give me enough information to bring them down.

“Let’s get a little closer,” I said.

We crossed the street and began walking down the sidewalk toward the building. The wards only protected the interior, so it didn’t seem that walking past presented any risk. And indeed, nothing happened as we got closer. But as we passed, I took a good long look at the structure of the wards. This close, I could see the fingerprints of the incantations and components that had made them.

There was no sign of activity in the windows. It looked like a law office or real estate firm. Just a bunch of desks with computers and paperwork piled around and file cabinets in the walls. The words Breamstone Collective were painted in gold on the glass of the front door.

We continued walking and finally stopped at a street bench a block down the street.

“Well?” MJ asked.

“What exactly did your mother say about that place?” I asked.

“Not a lot that was really concrete. She said the building itself bothers her, and that the people she’s seen coming out of it seem suspicious.”

“That is not much to go on,” Katarina said.

“No, and understand, my mother is always saying stuff like that. The devil is behind every tree, and all that.”

“Except this time she’s right,” I said. “It’s possible she’s able to sense the wards somehow.”

MJ twisted up her mouth in frustration. “I’ve spent the last ten years of my life thinking my mother is living in her own world with all these superstitions. And now you’re telling me she may be right about all this?”

“I don’t know about everything. But she was certainly right about that house, and this building.”

MJ sighed and put her hand on her head. “Shit.”

“What do you want to do, Jimmy?” Hayley asked.

“I want to get in there. Maybe tonight. That will mean bringing down the wards somehow. But I think I can do it.”

Chapter 14

We went back to the Library. I found the same barista and asked him about Olivia again.

“She’s in back.”

“Could you tell her the guy who found the book in the storeroom is back, and I’d like to talk to her when she has a few minutes?”

“Yeah, sure.”

We went outside to a table. Olivia emerged a couple of minutes later. I could tell she wasn’t sure what to make of this.

“Hey.”

“I’m not trying to take too much of your time,” I said. “I just wanted to let you know the owner of that book was very happy to get it back. So that’s all cleared up.”

“Okay.”

“I did have a couple of things I wanted to ask you, if it’s all right. Just because you knew Henry Langdon.”

She nodded. “Sure.”

I took out all the photos and spread them on the table. “Do any of these people look familiar?”

She looked down and immediately got a strange look on her face. “Where did you get these?”

“Some were in that box. The rest I had. I got them from my grandmother.” I pointed to one of the photos. “That’s her there.”

“That’s your grandmother?”

“Yeah.”

She stared down at the photos for a few seconds. “Well, those are Langdon. These three, actually, are my mom. My folks knew him, like I said. I don’t recognize anyone else here.”

I blinked. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“About what?”

“That’s your mother?”

She took in the stunned looks on my face and Hayley’s and Katarina’s. “Yeah.”

“That’s my mother,” I said. “That’s me right there, that baby. That’s me.”

Olivia and I just stared at each other. I felt Hayley’s hand on my arm.

“That’s not possible,” Olivia said. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“I would have been eleven when you were born. I would have been there. My mother didn’t have any kids after me.”

“My parents were killed in a car accident when I was four,” I said. “My grandmother raised me.”

Olivia leaned back and exhaled. “What’s your name again?”

“Jimmy.”

“Jimmy, my mother is still alive. She lives on the other side of town. No one I know died in a car accident.”

“She’s alive?”

“Yes.”

I picked up the photos. “But this is my grandmother. This is me. This is your mom?”

“Yes.”

“Why is she holding me?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

I stared at the photo, trying to get my bearings. Only one person in the picture had the answer here.

“I need to talk to her,” I said.

Olivia looked deeply, deeply uneasy about this idea.

“Look,” I said quickly, “if she doesn’t want to talk to me, I guess I can deal with that.” I didn’t actually, but I had to say it. “But could you at least call her?”

Finally Olivia nodded. “Okay. I’ll call her. I can’t promise anything.”

She went inside. My head buzzed as I sat there. Hayley pulled my hand into her lap.

“Jimmy? Are you okay?”

“No. I don’t know.”

She climbed into my lap and hugged me. I hugged her back as Katarina watched for Olivia and MJ sat there uncomfortably.

◆◆◆

Olivia was gone about five minutes. She came back out with her phone in her hand and an intensely discomfited look on her face. She tapped the screen and set it on the table.

“Mom, we’re on speakerphone. He’s sitting right here.”

“Uh, hi,” I said.

“What’s your name?” her mother asked.

“Jimmy Kaplan.”

“I’m Deirdre. What exactly is your relationship to that woman in the photo?” Her voice was low and humorless.

“She’s my grandmother.”

Silence came over the line for a few seconds. Then, “What did she tell you about your background?”

“I was born here in Zagan’s Rock. My parents were killed in a car accident when I was four. She had always told me that you . . . that you were my mother.”

“What is your birthday?”

“Uh, September 14, 1997.”

She was silent again for a few moments. “Olivia, take me off the speakerphone.”

Olivia picked up the phone and tapped the screen. Then she held it up to her ear. I watched her listen for about thirty seconds as her face paled. Finally she spoke.

“Okay, we’ll see you in a few.”

She hung up and sighed.

“She wants to talk to you. I’ll take you over there.”

◆◆◆

We followed Olivia to her mother’s house in silence. There really wasn’t anything to say. She drove us into one of the tract developments on the north end of town. But just as we turned in, Katarina gasped and grabbed my arm.

“Jimmy, look!”

She pointed at the entry monument outside the development, the stone signs the developers always put up to make things look more upscale and exclusive. The name leapt out at me:

RED HAWK RANCH

I almost said something, before remembering MJ was in the car with us. She seemed like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t.

There was nothing remarkable about this development, though. It was just another upper-middle-class neighborhood where the lawns were neatly maintained and the houses large and modern. We finally stopped at a single-story ranch-style house at the end of a cul-de-sac.

As soon as we got out and started walking up, Katarina stopped, freezing in place. Charlotte stopped beside her.

“Jimmy, I cannot enter. There is another ward here.”

I looked up and saw it. A strong ward against demons and spirits. It would keep Charlotte out as well.

MJ looked at us. “Why can’t she enter?”

“I’ll explain later.”

Katarina picked up Charlotte and followed a few steps behind us. As Olivia approached the house, the front door opened. Deirdre was there. It was the same woman in the photos, though she was now in her late fifties. She held a wooden rod in her right hand, and I saw the enchantment on it immediately.

Whoever this woman was, she was a skilled sorceress. Her eyes bored into me, then flickered over Hayley, MJ, and then Katarina. She gasped when she saw my succubus.

“How in the world?”

“It’s kind of a long story,” I said.

“She cannot enter, nor your familiar.”

“I’m aware of that.”

Olivia glanced around at us in confusion. “Mom?"

“Olivia, you can go back to work. This does not concern you. These are the matters we have spoken of.”

Concern lined Olivia’s face. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I am afraid I have to deal with this alone.”

Olivia looked at me. “Is he my brother?”

Deirdre glanced at her, then back at me. “That depends, I suppose, on how you want to define it.”

Olivia’s face contorted in shock. “What? What the fuck, Mom? What is going on here? You did not have another child.”

“Was I adopted?” I asked.

Deirdre groaned loudly. “Inside. I am not discussing this in my front yard.”

All of us, save Katarina and Charlotte, went into the house. We followed Deirdre into the living room. She turned immediately to me.

“Answer me one question. Was she given to you?”

I knew who she meant. “No. I bound her on my own.”

“How? In the name of God, how did you manage such a thing at your age?”

“I seem to be pretty good at this stuff. I’m getting a master’s in Chemical Engineering, and I’ve been studying Latin since 9th grade. I improved on some things.”

“What are you talking about?” Olivia asked.

“Olivia, if you want to remain here, be silent!” Deirdre snapped. Then she looked back at me. “You have already chosen your side. I have nothing to say to you.”

“It was chosen for me. I had a debt. It fell down to me.”

“You could have disputed it.”

“Four thousand souls?” I asked. “You think I could have disputed that?”

Deirdre’s jaw dropped. “Four thousand? That’s impossible.”

“They showed me the accounting. I don’t get the impression things like that get falsified.”

An eyebrow went up. “They?”

“Do you really want me to say it?”

She grumbled, glancing very quickly at Olivia. “No. It was because of your . . . grandmother?”

“The way it was told to me, she worked for them, but then disappeared. She did something that cost a ton of souls. When she died, it fell to me.”

Deirdre nodded slowly. “That is how it works. When did she die?”

“A few months ago. She left me a bunch of stuff. I worked through it, came up with some stuff on my own. You obviously knew her. What happened?”

She closed her eyes, sighing. “Under different circumstances, I could have told you, Jimmy. But what she did affected more than her. And with you now serving that side, anything I tell you could put others at risk.”

I let out a loud, frustrated groan. Hayley looked at me with concern, MJ in confusion, as if her entire worldview was being upended by this conversation.

“What is my connection to this?” I asked Deirdre. “To you? Who am I?”

“You are not my child, in the biological sense.”

“But in another sense?”

“In another, perhaps.”

Olivia whined. “Mom? Who is he?”

“I have already said more than I should. He is not your brother in any sense you need to worry about.”

"What the hell does that mean?” Olivia shrieked.

“Is it connected to that house?” I asked. “You know the one I mean. To the group behind it?”

Deirdre gasped. “Have you made contact with them?”

“No. I’m just trying to figure out what they are. I keep running into them with everything I do. Langdon was trying to oppose them, wasn’t he? I read his manifesto. The Vermillion Cabal. Were you part of it?”

Deirdre stared at me hard. “Your use of the past tense is not entirely accurate.”

“You still are? It exists?”

“Yes. As does the other group we will not name.”

“What is it?”

She let out a long sigh and sat down. “I wish I could help you, Jimmy. I truly do. But we are weaker than we were, and we were never that strong. I have told you all I can. The answers are out there, but I cannot give them to you without placing my family and others I care about at risk.”

“Does that group have them?”

“Yes.”

I looked around the room. “All right. Then I guess we’re done here.”

Chapter 15

When the four of us were back in the car, I sat there staring out the windshield for several long moments.

“MJ, I am very sorry to have dragged you into this. I had no idea we would end up where we are right now.”

I felt her reach forward and put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m okay. Really. Family is important, man. Mine drives me nuts sometimes, but I can’t imagine being where are you, with nothing at all. I want to help.”

I turned around and quickly squeezed her hand. “Okay. I appreciate that.”

“I just need a couple of answers,” she said. “Maybe just one.”

“What?”

She turned to Katarina. “What is your deal, exactly?”

Katarina looked at me. I sighed.

“MJ, the full truth here is going to take you to a place that you can never come back from.”

Her eyes widened. Then she straightened her back and settled into her seat. “I think I’m most of the way there as it is. Just tell me.”

So I did.

She took it better than I expected.

“Four thousand souls,” she finally said. “I can’t imagine having something like that hanging over my head.”

“He’s worked it down to about three thousand,” Hayley said.

“Show me this hell-phone they gave you,” MJ said.

I handed it to her. She played with the infernal apps for a minute or two.

“One soul is worth $219,000? Is that what this means?”

“Yep. Today, anyway.”

She turned to Katarina. “And you’re a sex demon? A succubus? That’s what that means?”

“Yes,” Katarina said.

“I’ll tell you, that doesn’t surprise me as much as I would have thought. There was just something about you that I couldn’t figure out. I’ve hung out with girls as hot as you before, but none of them ever acted the way you do.”

“You seem quite accepting of this given how doubtful you were at first,” Katarina said.

MJ shook her head. “It’s my mother. I grew up with this stuff. I don’t think I ever really stopped believing it, even if I acted like I didn’t.”

“That makes some sense,” I said.

“Okay. Last question,” MJ said. “The three of you are . . . complicated, like you said?”

“Yes,” Katarina replied.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Hayley said.

MJ nodded. “I can deal with complicated. I guess we’re good, then.”

“So what do we do now?” Hayley asked.

“I’m hungry,” I said. “How about some tamales?”

◆◆◆

We swung by the fruit stand just long enough to pick up a big bag of MJ’s mother’s tamales and some oranges. Then we grabbed a six-pack of beer from a convenience store and stopped at a park to eat and talk.

“These are seriously the best tamales I’ve ever had,” Hayley said.

“Yeah, they’re good,” MJ said. “My mother said she’s not sharing the recipe with me until I get married. Which probably means never at the rate I’m going.”

She and Hayley exchanged a look. MJ laughed.

“I think I can get into that building tonight,” I said. “But some of the stuff I need is back at the house, or back at school.”

“Do you think you can bring down the wards, Jimmy?” Katarina asked.

“I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I got a really good look at them today, and I can see what they’re made of, which means I can probably come up with a counter-spell. Problem is, I’d need the lab at school to do it.”

Charlotte meowed. I reached over to scratch her head, but instead she swiped at me and meowed again.

“What?”

She climbed into my lap and curled up. Then she let out another meow.

All at once, I got it. I didn’t need to go back to school. I had access to a lab right here.

“What’s she saying, Jimmy?” Hayley asked.

“I need to take a nap.”

◆◆◆

It took me about ten minutes to doze off with my head in Hayley’s lap. After some vague, indeterminate period of time, I found myself standing in the center of the rotunda. Charlotte stood nearby in one of the fancy silk dresses I’d made for her. She was stunning. She looked like a medieval German princess.

“Welcome, Master.”

“Thanks for reminding me.”

She came up and kissed me. “I am here to serve you.”

I walked around for a few minutes inspecting the temple. A few spots here and there had gone fuzzy, but I firmed them up. The key elements were all intact.

I first considered attempting a divination on the building with my dream supercomputer to get some ideas, before I remembered that the anti-divination ward was still intact. That probably meant anything could come up, and I wouldn’t be able to trust the results. I would have to try it afterward.

So Charlotte and I went into the library. I needed to look up the exact type of wards that were on that building. We found what I was looking for in Clavicula Salomonis and a couple of other works including De Occulta Philosophia libri. It was clear that whoever laid the wards had hewed very closely to the original spell instructions, and that meant I knew exactly what they had done.

The divination ward began with a fire of sandalwood, into which was cast charcoal, cloves, and ground sunflower petals. The ward blocking entry by opposing sorcerers was similar but used holly wood, dried holly berries, sulfur, and cayenne pepper. In each case, a specific incantation was repeated as the caster spread the smoke from the fire around the dwelling. I had done something very similar to this back at my apartment for the same reasons.

The question was how I undid a ward like this.

Charlotte had no suggestions, and both of us searching for what seemed like hours produced nothing that specifically dispelled a protection ward. If someone had come up with such a spell, I wasn’t able to find it in my dream library. I would need to create one.

I had never created a spell from scratch before. I had only adapted and improved ones I’d found in my grimoires.

As near as I had been able to tell in my work up to now, most spells produced a specific chemical compound that served as the vehicle for the spirit world to affect the real world. Now that I could see the end result using my ring, I knew that was basically what was going on. The spirit energy merged with the compounds to produce the desired effect. And with a ward, the combination was ongoing – I could see the threads of energy riding on the chemical compounds of the smoke from burning the spell components.

So. If I neutralized or somehow destroyed one of those components holding the ward together, would that bring the ward down?

I suspected from past experience that the key ingredient in the divination ward was probably the sandalwood. I went to my laptop in the sitting room to see if I could do a web search from this dream. It seemed to work.

The source of sandalwood’s intense odor was a compound known as tricyclic α-santalol, a type of alcohol. Burning sandalwood would combust some of it, but plenty of it would remain uncombusted to be carried away, since the idea here was an oxygen-poor fire that would produce a lot of smoke.

Most alcohols could be broken down by certain acids. If I could create a fog of, say, nitric acid, and infuse it with spiritual energy, would that be enough to break down the ward? Maybe.

The holly-based ward seemed like it would be equally vulnerable, since the sulfur would react readily with a lot of stuff. I didn’t get far researching what compounds comprised holly smoke, because holly was a family of plants rather than a specific tree. That being the case, I suspected it was the traditional spiritual elements of holly that were important here, and not its chemical composition. That likely meant that the sulfur, and probably the capsaicin in the cayenne pepper as well, were the active ingredients. Capsaicin would also react with nitric acid.

If this worked, I might be able to bring down both wards at once. I ran my idea past Charlotte, and she was optimistic that it would do the trick. But we needed to test it.

Creating one of these wards myself in the temple was simple, since I had the recipe and all the components I needed in the lab. I had nitric acid as well, but I needed a spell to create a natural fog. That proved to be fairly straightforward – there were several spells in Liber Officiorum Spirituum for shielding things from view with a sort of magical mist. It took me a couple of attempts to get it right, but eventually I was able to create a fog of nitric acid. And when I sent it toward the ward, it dissolved right before my eyes. I could see the threads held together by the sandalwood breaking apart and unraveling. In a few seconds, it was gone.

Charlotte had been watching quietly. When the ward evaporated, I felt her embracing me from behind and leaning her head against my shoulder.

“I have enjoyed helping you with this very much, Master. But you must not stay here too long. Even a dream sorcerer as skilled as you has limits.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Time moves differently in this place. But to me, it feels like we have been working on this for days.”

“Yeah. Okay. I know what I need to do now. There’s just one last thing. I need a spell to get us into that building. Something to unlock the doors and disable the security, if there is any.”

“That should be easy. There is a spell for it. Let me show you.”

It was in Clavicula Salomonis. Once the wards were removed, it was a simple incantation using my staff and an iron key – any would do.

“I guess we’re done. Thanks.”

I stood up and took Charlotte in my arms for a few seconds, just enjoying the pressure of her plump breasts against my chest.

“You’re a great familiar. I mean it.”

She looked up, big green eyes twinkling at me. “I only wish to serve you.”

It was time to wake up.

◆◆◆

I opened my eyes, feeling stiff. I was still in Hayley’s lap. MJ and Katarina seemed to have been sitting nearby talking.

Hayley looked down at me and brushed her fingers through my hair. “Anything?” she asked.

“How long have I been asleep?”

“Maybe forty-five minutes.”

“Wow. Felt like a lot longer. We were busy.”

I sat up. Charlotte purred and head-butted my hand until I scratched her ears a couple of times.

“Did it work?” she asked again.

“Yeah.” I explained the idea Charlotte and I had worked out. “All we need is some nitric acid.”

MJ leaned over. “You really figured all that out in your sleep?”

“In a dream,” I said. “I’m getting better at it.”

Charlotte went over to MJ for some attention.

“And she’s there?”

“Yeah. But she’s not a cat in the dreams we have.”

“She’s a witch?” MJ asked. “Like, the witch she used to be?”

“A really hot, sexy, and affectionate witch,” Hayley said, smiling.

“Another complication,” Katarina said.

MJ stared down at Charlotte, who just meowed again.

Chapter 16

It took a few calls, but we found an industrial supply store near the highway that sold concentrated nitric acid in one-liter jugs. We drove over and picked one up along with some rubber gloves, since I wanted to avoid fingerprints if we actually got in. After a moment of thought, I also grabbed a box of N95 masks and four sets of safety glasses. Doing it in the dream world was safe enough, but we would need some protective equipment when I did it for real.

But it was still mid-afternoon, and I wanted to wait until later that night to attempt our break-in at the Breamstone Collective. I was prepared to just wait around at some coffee shop – not the Library, since I doubted Olivia ever wanted to see my face again – but as we drove away from the supply store, MJ had another suggestion.

“Assuming you guys are okay with a few hours of Mexican soccer, I think we could hang out at my great-uncle’s house.”

“He won’t mind?” I asked.

She laughed. “Trust me, as long as we bring some beer, he’ll welcome us with open arms. He lives alone, and my cousins don’t visit him as much as they should.”

So I picked up a case of Mexican lager, and we drove back over to her great-uncle’s house. When he opened the door, he stepped back in surprise.

“MJ, what is the occasion?”

“Tío abuelo, I promised I’d come back to tell you about the football at school. Are you busy?”

He waved us in, smiling broadly. “No, no, come in, come in. I am just watching the TV. Tell me everything.”

We settled into his living room around the television. He was watching a game on one of the Spanish-language channels between two Mexican clubs I was only vaguely familiar with. I passed out the beer, and he and MJ began discussing her team at UCSD. I wasn’t that big on soccer, but I knew the basics. She played midfield and had started a few games the past fall. The team had done pretty well, making it to the Division I playoffs before getting knocked out in the semifinals.

“They should have played you more,” he said. “I have seen you. You scored so many goals in high school.”

“I’m only a sophomore, Tío abuelo. Next season.”

“That one against Cleveland High School, when you put it in from midfield. Your cousins still talk about that. Cruz Azul should sign you. They have a women’s team.”

MJ laughed. “The goalie tripped and fell down. That was the only reason it went in.”

“A goal is a goal. You could play in the Liga MX Femenil.”

She laughed again. “Do you know what they pay, Tío abuelo? 3,000 pesos a match, if I play. My scholarship is much more than that, and I get to go to school.”

“After you graduate, then. You should finish school. The women’s teams here pay more.”

They went on in that vein for a while, before the game pulled his attention back. He switched over to another after that one ended. The empty cans started to pile up beside his chair.

“Did you find that house yesterday?” he asked us.

“Yeah,” I said, “but there wasn’t anything there. Doesn’t look like anyone has lived there in years.”

“No, it has been empty for a long time.” He looked over at MJ. “I do remember when those things your mama told you about happened. It must have been twenty years ago, just before you were born, I think.”

“What was it?” she asked.

“Back then, there were rich Anglos living there, with fancy cars. It was not one family. I think a group of people. I used to wonder if it was some business. Back then, they had a vineyard around the house. It is gone now. They ripped it out years ago. I was not surprised, the land there is no good for grapes.”

“The house, Tío abuelo,” MJ said.

“Yes, the house. There were people coming and going all the time. Back then, I worked at the ranch beyond the end of Granada Road, so I went by there every day. I did not see anyone being taken in there. Those stories your mama tells, the ghosts and brujeria, no, I saw nothing like that. But I did see a very strange thing one night.”

The four of us exchanged a look at “brujeria.” He went on.

“I was coming home from the ranch. I saw many people there, more than I had ever seen before. There were lights around the house. I had to slow down because there were so many cars parked along the road, sticking out so I had to drive around them. I thought it was a party, even though it was the middle of the week. But then I saw a bright flash of light in front of the house, like fireworks. A woman came running out holding something, like a child. I could not see clearly, but whatever it was, she held it like that.”

“A child?” I asked.

“Yes. Then she jumped into a car and began driving out. People were chasing her. I had stopped because I was concerned she would run into the road. I let her come out of the driveway, then I began driving again. But other cars came out as well, coming behind me, honking and flashing their lights. I pulled over, and they sped past me. I do not know what happened after that. I kept driving, but I did not see them again.”

None of us said anything. He finished his beer and opened another one.

A little while after that, Hayley drove to a taco stand nearby to pick up dinner. She called her parents to tell them we’d hooked up with some old friends of mine and would be home late. After we ate, she and MJ sat on the couch together talking for a while, and I could definitely see some sparks between them. I wondered what to do about it, if anything.

The rest of us kept watching the game, which went into extra time and finally ended about an hour later. MJ’s great-uncle was starting to run out of gas and talk back to the TV as the post-game show came on.

By about nine, the beer was gone and he was drunkenly rambling on about things that happened forty years ago. MJ and I helped him to bed as he thanked us repeatedly for coming over and asked MJ to come to see him more often.

“My mother is going to fucking murder me if she ever finds out about this,” MJ muttered as we tucked him in. “He shouldn’t be drinking this much.”

“Seemed like he had a good time.”

“He did, but still. Did you really have to buy an entire case?”

“I didn’t think he’d drink it all. I figured we would leave some for him.”

Charlotte had been hanging around outside while were with her uncle. I let her in. The girls cleaned things up, and I carried out the trash.

“Everyone ready for this?” I asked.

No one objected. MJ locked up the house, and we drove downtown.

◆◆◆

As it usually was with small towns, they’d rolled up the streets a while ago. There was almost no one on the roads, and no one walking around downtown. There was a nightlife of sorts in Zagan’s Rock, but it was in the sports bars and restaurants around the tract developments and near the highway, not here.

We parked about a block away from the Breamstone Collective building. I carried my staff, and Katarina carried the nitric acid and a plastic bucket we would use for the spell. Rather than walk along the street, we went into an alley and came up behind the building.

“This will either work or it won’t,” I said. “So just sit tight for a minute.”

I focused on the building with my ring. The wards were in place just as I remembered them, and I saw the strands of spirit bound up with the sulfur, capsaicin, and sandalwood that I needed to remove.

Before I got started, I handed out the goggles and masks.

“Is this really necessary?” MJ asked. “We’re going to be back here.”

“It’s just to be safe, in case something goes wrong. This is going to create a big cloud of nitric acid vapor, and that’s not something you want to be breathing. Trust me on that.”

I set the bucket about six feet away from the building and poured the nitric acid into it. Then I took a few steps back. The girls and Charlotte lined up behind me.

“Here goes.”

I began the incantation that Charlotte and I had worked out. A foul, acrid mist rose out of the bucket, swirling into the air. I sent it toward the building, watching the wards with the ring. When the mist came in contact with the strands of spirit, tiny flashes of energy lit up the alley. The wards tried to heal themselves as the strands began breaking apart. Other strands flowed into the wounded area, trying to knot themselves together to seal up the hole. But as more and more of the nitric acid mist rose into the air, it began to overwhelm them. The healthy strands fought the mist only to break apart themselves.

Soon the mist was spreading around the building, and the remaining strands of the wards struggled to hold themselves together. Then all at once, like a tangle of yarn that finally lost the one knot keeping it in a big clump, the two wards collapsed and dissolved. I stopped the incantation, and the evening breeze blew away the last of the mist.

“It worked,” Katarina said.

“We still need to get in there,” I said.

I took out the key I was going to use and held up the staff. I began the incantation that would unlock the back door and turn off the security system.

Compared to the first spell, this was simple. There was nothing fighting me this time, and when I finished the incantation, I felt the door unlock and the security system disarm.

“We’re in.”

MJ exhaled slowly as I passed out the rubber gloves. “It’s clear?”

“Go see for yourself.”

She walked up and tried the door. It opened.

“I believe you,” she said. “I wasn’t a hundred percent sure about all this until just now, but I believe you.”

For all the work we’d done to get in, I wasn’t entirely sure now what to do. When we went inside, using the flashlights on our phones, I saw nothing that really stood out to me. As it seemed when we walked past earlier that day, it looked like a law firm or real estate office. The floor was in a sort of ring, the offices and cubicles circling a center section that housed all their files.

“We should look through the file cabinets,” Hayley said.

Fortunately, they were unlocked, and they seemed to be in alphabetical order. The problem was that there were about ten of them around the whole office, and they were the broad kind, the drawers about four feet across with the file folders going side to side. Each cabinet was three drawers high. It was an awful lot to go through.

“What should we be looking for?” MJ asked.

“Anything under Vermillion Cabal. And Kaplan. And, uh, Henry Langdon. That should get us started.”

While the girls looked, I decided to just scan the files randomly. But about a minute later, MJ called out.

“Jimmy, there’s three whole drawers on the Vermillion Cabal. What do you want me to do here?”

I stopped what I was doing and went to her. She wasn’t kidding. There had to be a hundred different file folders. We started digging through it. It looked like there was a folder for each member, along with folders for ‘Encounters,’ ‘Possessions,’ ‘History,’ and a whole bunch of other stuff. But I’d scarcely started looking through it before I heard Hayley’s voice.

“Jimmy!”

“What?”

“Come here!”

“What is it?”

“Just come here, please!”

I ran around the corner to where she was standing in front of an open drawer with a look of horror on her face.

“What?”

She pointed toward the drawer. I looked. It took me a moment or two to see it in the dark.

There was a big label sticking up from a folder in the drawer, segregating about half the files from the next section. It read: Kaplan, Jimmy.

My head swam. Katarina and MJ came up next to me.

“Oh, shit,” MJ said. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” I finally said. “But let’s have a look.”

Chapter 17

As it was when I tried to bind Volach, back in the infancy of my sorcery, I had completely outsmarted myself.

I spent the first twenty-three years of my life with only the barest information about my family and background, a few photos and what little Grandma Amy had been able or willing to tell me. I accepted it without thinking much of it, as kids do, only really beginning to wonder when I was in college.

Now here I stood, in front of thousands of pages of documents about me and my life. And I couldn’t do much of anything with them.

I couldn’t just take them. When the sorcerers who ran the Breamstone Collective arrived on Monday morning, they would notice that the wards were gone. They would know someone had been in here, and they would look for evidence. And if they found all this stuff gone, that would be a big red arrow pointing straight at my head. I couldn’t take that risk, not yet. I was only one guy, and I still had no idea who these people were or what they were capable of.

As I stared down at the cabinet, I realized what I was looking at. There were dozens of folders, almost all of them labeled by year, starting from the year I was born all the way up to now. I pulled out the most recent one. There was a memo summarizing my experiences last semester. Hayley was mentioned, as was Katarina. They knew what she was. There were photos of both of them, though oddly none of me.

“They’re watching us,” Hayley said softly.

“Yeah.”

“Fucking shit,” MJ said.

I grabbed a chair from the nearest cubicle and sat down. “I need to go through this on my own. Go see what else you can find. Don’t take anything. If it looks important, take a photo.”

Katarina put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right, Jimmy?”

“No. But we need to get this done, and we don’t have all night.”

They went back to the other cabinets; I went back into mine.

I read all the way through the most recent memo, wanting to see just how much they knew. It was actually less than I had feared. Somehow, they hadn’t quite caught on to my sorcery, though they knew about Katarina and my visits to Soul Journeys. There was no indication they had been into my apartment. There was a passing reference to “our limitations” in their surveillance, without explaining what those were. About a month ago, they apparently lost their means of tracking my location, though again the memo didn’t say exactly why.

One by one, I went through the folders as Charlotte sat on a nearby desk watching me. There were copies of my college and high school transcripts, my tax returns, and my credit card, bank, and student loan statements. Every quarter, there was a memo summarizing my life.

The level of shock I felt seeing all this was so great, I hardly knew where to begin in processing it. This group had been following me my entire life, for reasons that were completely unexplained.

But there was something increasingly strange about these records the further back I went. There were photos, lots of them, but all of them were of things and people related to me. There wasn’t a single photo of me, personally. It was as if they knew where I was and what I was doing, yet couldn’t find me.

As the records got into my grade school years, something else began to stand out. There was nothing whatsoever about Grandma Amy. My existence in these files comprised me and my activities, but nothing else. Why?

The details I read were not terribly edifying. I had lived all of this, after all. Some things I had forgotten about, but none of it was really that remarkable, until I got to the last few folders from the first four years of my childhood. The years were there, but the folders were empty. They looked like they had once held something, but it was gone now.

Before I could decide what that might mean, my eyes fell on a fat folder just past the year of my birth. It had a different label:

Incarnation

And I realized I had seen it before. Seen it in that dream of the Breamstone house.

Hand shaking, I pulled it out of the cabinet. Just as in the dream, there was a handwritten note on top, the same one I had seen.

The baby is coming soon.

–M

The baby was coming.

The baby.

Me?

Was I the dream child?

I don’t know how long I sat there in a daze before Hayley returned. It might have been a few minutes or an hour.

“Jimmy?”

I looked up. MJ was standing behind her.

“What?”

“We found some things.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“The Vermillion Cabal. They have files on most or all of the members. Deirdre is in there. It doesn’t seem like they’re too concerned with them. But they killed Langdon.”

I was well past the point of being shocked by anything now. “They did?”

“There’s a report on it,” Hayley said. “He was poisoned. It sounds like they have, or had, a doctor as part of this group. They used potassium chloride to give him a heart attack.”

“And they got away with it?”

“Yes. It’s one of the drugs they use in lethal injections. They probably used it because your potassium levels are often messed up when you have a heart attack. So it would be tough to detect if you weren’t looking for it.”

MJ’s eyes widened. Hayley glanced at her.

“My mom is cardiologist.”

“Why did they do it?” I asked.

“They wanted that book. Not finding it has apparently been an issue for them.”

I took a deep breath. “And we returned it.”

“To Hell. Does that mean anything?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I could see MJ had something to say. “Anything else?”

MJ nodded. “I was looking through their financial records. Remember I’m majoring in Business? I think I know what this thing is. It’s an investment group.”

“A what?”

“It’s about the money. They invest in things, mostly real estate, and hold or develop them. Do you know what a REIT is? A real estate investment trust? That’s essentially what they’re running here.”

“That’s it?”

“It’s what it looks like,” she said. “There’s a whole section of files ordered by account number, one for each member of the trust. There are a couple hundred of them. There are also folders for all their properties.”

“How much?” Hayley asked.

“I couldn’t tell exactly from what I saw. But it’s a lot. I’d guess several hundred million or more, just based on the number of properties they own.”

I stood up and took the Incarnation folder. Fuck the implications. I couldn’t deal with it right now, and I wasn’t leaving it behind. Given what we’d seen, this group already knew everything about me and where I lived. They could have come after me at any time in the last twenty years.

I went back to the Vermillion Cabal cabinet and quickly scanned the names they’d found. I was looking for Grandma Amy, but I didn’t see anything that sounded like her. I never really had any feeling about whether or not she was part of it. Then something else occurred to me.

“Where are the files for the collective members?”

MJ led me over to another cabinet. Katarina was one block over, looking through the same group of files. I found it in the center drawer.

Takacs, Amalia

But as I opened the folder, there was a sudden odor of burned paper. I immediately saw why. Whatever files were in here had been reduced to ashes. Even more bizarrely, it appeared to have happened inside the folder, which was blacked and charred in the center.

“What the fuck?” MJ said.

I lifted it out carefully. There was nothing left of it. Frankly, it looked a lot like her ashes.

Ashes.

Grandma Amy had insisted I have her cremated. Was this why? It was impossible to tell when it had happened. It could have been months ago, or years ago.

“It’s my grandmother,” I said. “What’s left of her, anyway.”

I replaced the folder and looked over to Katarina.

“Did you find anything?” I asked her.

“There is a large file on that house.”

“Get it. We’re getting out of here.”

“You said not to take anything,” Hayley said.

“They know who we are already. And I think we can get away with two folders.”

◆◆◆

Hayley drove MJ back to her house, and we got out to say goodbye.

“We should get together back at school when break is over,” MJ said.

“Definitely,” Hayley said.

“Just keep your head down,” I said. "It doesn’t look like they know you.”

MJ hugged all of us, and gave me a tighter hug than I’d expected.

“Take care of all your complications,” she whispered.

“I will.”

“If you ever feel like getting more complicated, let me know.” She gave me a sly smile and turned toward her house. We watched her go inside, and then headed home.

It was past midnight when we got back to Hayley’s house. I set the two folders down in my room. It was too late and I was too tired to start going through them. The implications were too intense.

I had just undressed and finished brushing my teeth when Hayley came in.

“Come to bed.”

“In there?”

She took my hand. “I’m not letting you sleep alone tonight. My folks aren’t working tomorrow. They’ll sleep in. It’s okay.”

I followed her over to her room. Katarina and Charlotte were waiting. I lay down next to Katarina, and Hayley lay on the other side of me. I pulled them both close and tried to get to sleep.

Chapter 18

I didn’t dream, or at least I didn’t remember anything. I woke up against Katarina, spooning with her from behind. Hayley still seemed to be asleep.

“How long have I been sleeping like this?” I mumbled into her ear.

“About two hours.”

“I still wonder what it’s like for you, lying here while we sleep, doing nothing, night after night.”

“I am not doing nothing. Why do you think this is unpleasant for me? Where do you imagine I would rather be?”

“What are you doing?”

“Thinking of things. I have twelve hundred years of memories, Jimmy, and I do not forget.”

“What things?”

“I lived in London in the nineteenth century. I pretended to be a prostitute in the East End. It was an easy life for a succubus. Life was very cheap, and people died for all sorts of reasons. The men I was with were not missed.”

“How does that feel for you now?” I asked.

“I am glad to have left it behind. I had no choice about what I did. Had I failed or refused . . . you know what would have happened.”

“Yeah.”

She pulled my hand up and kissed it.

“Can you feel our bond?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

“When we are apart, do you feel a strain on it? The further apart we are?”

It wasn’t strong, but it was there, like a tension pulling at the core of my being. “Yeah, I do.”

“But when we are like this, right against each other, the strain is almost gone. When you are inside me, I feel none at all. It feels like we are one.”

I cuddled with her, pulling her closer.

“So . . . lying quietly in bed with you is an improvement on my life.” She pulled my arm against her chest, snuggling with it. “This is exactly where I want to be, Jimmy.”

“Okay.”

She was silent for a few moments.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You did not look into those records.”

“I’m not ready to. I really don’t know if I want to know what’s in there. I hate to say this, but I’m afraid of it.”

“Do you want me to?” she asked.

I thought about that for a little bit. But I wasn’t sure what the point might be. I would need to know eventually, and I didn’t want to put that burden on Katarina.

“Not yet.”

“I know some things about dream magic, Jimmy. It is not a common skill. Not at all.”

“I know. Charlotte was telling me.”

“The few dream sorcerers I have known of have all had some special connection to the spirit world. So I think you must have one as well.”

“That makes sense.”

I felt Hayley stirring behind me. I looked over my back. But she had just rolled over in her sleep.

“I’m going to work on this,” I said to Katarina. “I just need a day off. We’re supposed to be on break.”

Katarina rolled over and put her head on my chest. We lay like that for about ten minutes before Hayley finally woke up.

◆◆◆

When we went upstairs, her parents were still asleep. Hayley and I made some pancakes from a box of instant mix in the pantry and the three of us just sat in the kitchen talking about school, avoiding the issues from the past few days.

“Do you want to know something I find amusing?” Katarina said. “In twelve hundred years, I have never celebrated Christmas. So this will be odd for me.”

“Really?” Hayley asked.

“Why would I have? Christianity had not come to Sweden when I died. And after that . . .”

“Oh. Right.”

“You seem to know a lot about Christmas in Sweden, though,” I said.

“I know what people in Sweden do. I have probably spent a third of my existence there. I just did not do many of those things myself.”

Hayley’s parents still weren’t up when we finished eating, so we decided to go down to the beach again.

It was colder today, so we took a couple of blankets. We settled in against a rock formation and just watched the surf.

“Have you guys given any thought to the fact that we committed a felony last night?” Hayley asked.

“That’s true. But all we took were a couple of files,” I said. “And I kind of doubt the collective is going to involve the police when they discover the wards are down.”

“I just had this realization that an arrest probably won’t help my med school applications.”

I rubbed her shoulder. “I’ll cast a ward over you so no one will know.”

“Jimmy, why do you think there were photos of us, but not you in those files?” Katarina asked.

“Honestly? I don’t know. That’s really strange.”

“There is one possibility that seems obvious to me. There is a ward on you that prevents them from knowing your location.”

Hayley sat up. “You really think so?”

“No other explanation makes sense to me.”

“My grandmother,” I said. “She must have done it.”

“But they do know his location,” Hayley said. “They know everything about him. How are both of those things possible?”

“They know things about him. But I think something is preventing them from seeing him. There are spells that can cause invisibility for short periods. But a ward that has persisted like that for decades is a very, very powerful enchantment that could only be put in place with demonic assistance.”

That had to be it. I already knew there had been a ward on me preventing demons from recognizing me, unless I allowed them to. That was what had let me bind Katarina.

“So they can know about me, but not see me,” I said. “They must have found me online. That’s where all those records came from. They’re hacking into everything trying to track me. I bet they’ve been tracking my phone with the GPS.”

Then it hit me. A month ago, I had stopped using my personal phone and just used the demon phone. That was the lost surveillance method the memo had mentioned. Katarina only had a demon phone, and it apparently hadn’t occurred to them to track Hayley, since she lived in the dorm. That being the case, they probably didn’t know where I had gone on break. They wouldn’t have any reason to connect the break-in to us. As far as I’d been able to tell, they knew very little about what I’d been up to with the sorcery. And based on their extensive records of the Vermillion Cabal, their initial suspicions would probably be directed that way.

I explained my revelation to Hayley and Katarina.

“So we should be safe for now?” Hayley asked.

“I’m going to put a ward on both of you, and your parents’ house, as soon as we get back. Just to be sure.”

They cuddled up to me under the blanket, and we just lay there for a while.

“Hayley, what is your feeling about MJ?” Katarina asked.

“What do you mean?”

“She is interested in you.”

Hayley laughed softly. “Yeah.”

“You know what she said to me last night?” I asked.

“What?” Hayley asked.

“‘Take care of all your complications, and if you ever feel like getting more complicated, let me know.’”

Hayley looked up at me. “Oh, my God. Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

She sighed and stared out at the water.

“You told me she was your type,” I said.

Hayley looked up at me again. “What exactly are you getting at, James Kaplan?”

“I’m just thinking of that speech you gave me the other day about not wanting to leave a part of your life behind.”

“Is she your type, Hayley?” Katarina said. “I do get that sense from you.”

She let out a low groan. “You two are awful. Let me think about this.”

When we went back to the house, Hayley’s parents were up. Her mother was in her office next to the master suite, and her father was watching a bowl game in the home theater. I discreetly looked up what I needed to do to cast the anti-divination wards over Katarina and Hayley. There were several ways to do it, and I didn’t need to duplicate the one the collective had used on their building. Wards over individuals were different.

To do what I had in mind, we needed a combination of salts, herbs, spices, and powdered crystal, all of which was then ground into a powder and sprinkled over the person you wanted to protect while reciting the incantation. The twist was that the specific combination varied from person to person. Each component had to have some connection to the subject.

This was not my area of expertise. But it was Charlotte’s. So I rubbed some of the mugwort oil on my fingers to get a good whiff of it and lay down to take a quick nap.

◆◆◆

When I emerged in the dream temple. Charlotte was there in a blue-and-gold dress, and she ran straight to me, throwing her arms around my neck.

“I’m so sorry about all of this, Master. I feel your stress and anguish over it.”

I returned the embrace for a few seconds before gently pushing her back.

“I have work to do, and I need your help again.”

She nodded. “Of course. But Master, you have already spent so much time here. Are you sure?”

“I don’t think this will take long. And to be honest with you, this all feels perfectly natural to me. Things are starting to make some sense.”

Charlotte looked at me uneasily, but she followed me to the lab. She was familiar with what I had in mind, and in what seemed like about an hour, we came up with recipes for both Hayley and Katarina.

Sea salt for both of them, since they had both grown up near the ocean. Saffron, dill, and obsidian for Katarina, and fennel, mistletoe, and smoky quartz for Hayley. In each case, Charlotte explained, there was a personal or ancestral connection.

“We just need to grind it all up?” I asked.

“Get a mortar and pestle. Rinse it thoroughly between them. That should do it.”

I briefly pondered some methods for improving this spell, but without access to a lab in the real world, I was a bit handicapped. Charlotte insisted it wasn't necessary anyway.

“The strength of a ward like this depends on the strength of your connection to the person you wish to protect. Why do you think the wards your grandmother cast on you have lasted so long?”

“That’s a good point.”

“Do you love them?”

I took a deep breath. “Yes.”

“Then that is all you need.”

◆◆◆

We gave Hayley’s parents the excuse of needing to do some Christmas shopping. The organic market turned out to have everything we needed, including the mortar and pestle and the crystals, the latter of which they had as a selection of little bracelets on a rotating display next to the essential oils section.

When we got back, I ground up the two sets of powder the way Charlotte told me to. Then I recited the incantation over Hayley while sprinkling her powder mixture over her. She gasped a little as I finished it.

“Did you feel anything?”

“Yes. I felt—”

She stepped forward suddenly and hugged me tightly. I returned the hug.

“That’s what you felt?”

“Basically. Yeah.”

I did the same thing over Katarina. I wondered if she would react the same way, but she didn’t. She just let out a slow sigh. Then she leaned forward and kissed my cheek.

“Anything?”

“I felt nothing I did not know already.”

Yeah. Okay. “I guess it worked.”

Chapter 19

I spent the rest of the afternoon watching football with Hayley’s dad while the women chatted upstairs. A little while later, they went out shopping for Christmas Eve dinner tomorrow night. They came back with a big roast and the stuff Katarina would need to make her Swedish saffron buns. She explained that they were traditionally served on St. Lucia’s Day, which was December 13, but having them Christmas morning would be fun as well.

Hayley’s parents, busy as they were, hadn’t gotten a tree or put up any decorations, so we took care of that after they got back from the market. As I’d expected, Stephanie carefully stage-managed the entire process so as not to disrupt the aesthetic of the house. Everything had a specific place she wanted it, and that was that. I was a bit concerned for Katarina’s sake that the decorations would include some religious elements that might affect her – to be honest, I wasn’t sure how, I just didn’t want anything weird to happen – but things were entirely secular.

A Charlie Brown Christmas was on that night, so the five of us went down to the home theater after dinner to watch. Katarina pretended not to be familiar with it, and we discussed the similarities with the traditional Swedish Christmas TV shows.

When it was time for bed, I brewed up a batch of mugwort tea. Hayley came in, having smelled the scent of it drifting into the hall.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m pretty sure I know what’s in those files. But those are just the facts. I need the explanation, and I don’t see another way to get it.”

“Do you need anything?” she asked. “Do you need us in here? Either of us?”

“No. I need to do this alone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

She came over and kissed me good night. Then I went to bed.

◆◆◆

I was walking down Jacob Ranch Road. To my left was Henry Langdon’s house. The yard was neatly manicured, and the house sported a coat of paint that looked only a few years old. I kept walking, and about four blocks down, I turned left and reached a little shopping center. Vermillion Rare Books was at the end.

When I walked in, a bell rang, but no one seemed to respond. The shop was wall-to-wall with bookshelves, all packed with used books large and small. The scent of old paper filled the room. A little counter sat along one wall near the back, but I didn’t see Langdon. I approached the counter and realized he was in back. He wasn’t alone.

Two women sat with him at a little table. One was an attractive, brown-haired woman in her early forties, the other a somewhat younger woman with long red hair. On the table between them was Liber Somnia, and as I came in, I saw a brown-and-white weasel on the older woman's lap – her familiar. All of them looked up at me.

“Oh, Amalia,” Henry said, “I didn’t hear you arrive. Thank you so much for coming.”

“Hello,” I said.

The brown-haired woman looked at me with a mix of hope and fear in her eyes. I looked down at them sternly.

“I am here out of my friendship with Mary-Beth, nothing more, Henry. You’ve chosen your own path, and frankly, you’ve fucked up more than enough things for my taste already.”

“Amalia, please,” Mary-Beth said.

I sat down. “What you hope to do here will have repercussions, if it is even successful, which I doubt.”

“You will not help us?” she asked.

I groaned. “I did not say that.”

“I love him, Amalia. I want to give him a chance at life if I can.”

“He is a spirit child, Mary-Beth. Bringing him into the real world will have consequences. For you and others.”

“She is right,” Henry said. “As much as it pains me to admit it, it will not end with his incarnation.”

“I don’t care,” Mary-Beth said.

“We cannot do this alone,” I said. “You will need to draw on the power of the stone. What that will do is highly unpredictable.”

“I know.”

I sighed. “I understand your anguish, Mary-Beth. I do.”

“We all do,” the red-haired woman said.

“That is easy for you to say, Celeste,” Mary-Beth replied bitterly. “You have a child already.”

Henry put his hand on her arm. “I believe this will work. We just want you to understand what you are asking. There will be a debt to pay.”

“Enough!” Mary-Beth snapped. “From all of you! I understand, and I want to do this. I must.”

I nodded. “All right. The ritual I have worked out is not complicated. You must go to your dream temple. I will go to mine and call on Zagan’s power. If this works, the child will pass from the spirit world into you.”

“And then I will be pregnant?”

“Yes.”

The scene shifted. I was in the collective house, in the second-floor office, sitting behind the desk. Deirdre and two men, one tall and stocky, the other short and fit, stood before me.

“Is this even possible?” the tall man asked me.

“I suppose we will see, won’t we?”

“How do you intend to do this?” Deirdre asked.

“I will beseech Zagan. If he deigns to assist us, there is a chance.”

“I still do not understand why you wish to do this,” the tall man said.

“To see if we can?” I snorted. “Charles, your incessant fucking timidity grates on me more than I can possibly express. Stop sucking your own cock and get with the fucking program here!”

The tall man glared at me briefly, but I returned his glare and he looked down.

“As you wish, Amalia.”

“As I fucking wish, indeed.” I looked at the other two. “To answer Charles’s question, once again, if this child actually enters this world, he could be one of the most powerful dream sorcerers to ever live. One who stands apart from the usual limitations of the dream world, having come from it himself. If we can raise him and train him, his powers could be enormous.”

“I agree,” Deirdre said. “As you know, I have supported you in this from the beginning.”

She glanced at Charles, who stood quietly, saying nothing more.

“Surely there is a risk to Mary-Beth?” the tall man asked.

I shrugged. “There is a risk for her, for all of us. Her fucking obsession with bearing a child has blinded her to all of it. She doesn’t seem to appreciate, or doesn’t want to appreciate, that this dream child has no soul, so his soul must come from somewhere if he is to survive. Where that soul will come from, I have no idea. But perhaps Zagan will resolve this.”

The three of them nodded, saying nothing.

“So we are agreed,” I said.

“Yes,” the three of them replied.

I was in the cellar next to the rock. Deirdre stood next to me. Between us was a golden bowl filled with angelica root, patchouli, geranium, hawthorn, mustard seed, and powdered moonstone, all of it mashed together into a paste with Mary-Beth’s menses. The foul scent of it rose into the air around us.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

We began the incantation. Only I knew how to do this. Only I had the key, the key I’d had in safekeeping for two hundred years.

The power, constrained though it was, flowed out of the rock and into the bowl. It swirled through the paste we’d made, concentrating itself, reaching out for a vessel to fill. Then I felt it connecting with Mary-Beth, who was upstairs, asleep and dreaming, waiting in her dream temple. The connection was there now, and I felt the energy entering Mary-Beth above us, entering her womb. The rest of it was up to her. She would need to direct the power into the dream child, then pull it out of the dream world and into this one.

For long moments, I felt her struggling with it. I began to fear it would all end in failure, and Mary-Beth’s soul would be torn apart in the backlash. No mortal could hold so much power within herself without giving it a purpose. But then something happened. The flow began to slacken – not rebounding but withdrawing, its goal achieved. I heard a cry from the house above us, a mixture of pain, anguish, and fulfillment. I felt the spell ending with the joy of success rather than the discordant frustration of failure.

It had worked.

“Did you feel that?” I asked Deirdre.

“Yes,” she replied.

I was back in the office. Deirdre and Mary-Beth, her belly beginning to swell, stood before me.

“Is there no other way?” Mary-Beth asked.

“He knows the truth, Mary-Beth,” I said. “All of it. It is a risk. A risk to your son.”

She looked down in defeat. Deirdre returned my gaze, face grave.

“Did you talk to your friend?” I asked.

“I have discussed it with her,” Deirdre said. “It should be painless and untraceable.”

“She is certain about that?” I asked.

“So she says. Something about the potassium levels in your blood being messed up after a heart attack. Unless they have some reason to test for it, there should be no suspicions. He is not young.”

I nodded. “All right. Then do it. And let’s find that fucking book once and for all. Find it if you have to tear that bookstore down.”

Yet again, I found myself somewhere else. Deirdre and I stood in the garden beside the fountain. She held the baby as Charles snapped some photos of us.

“Why is this necessary?” she muttered through a forced smile.

“A record, Deirdre. There are fucking conventions that must be observed if we are to raise this child in Mary-Beth’s absence. Unless you would like the state to take him away from us, now that she is gone.”

She handed me the baby, and I held it as Charles took another photo.

“Such a lovely child,” I said.

◆◆◆

I woke up in a cold sweat, heart pounding. It was dark. It took me long moments to regain my bearings. The clock said 4:17.

I groped for the light on the nightstand, switching it on. The folders were across the room on the dresser. I staggered out of bed and grabbed them. Then I fell back onto the end of the mattress as I opened the first one, Incarnation, and began to read.

Having come straight from the dream where I’d inhabited my grandmother’s memories, all of it was painfully familiar.

Henry Langdon was a member of the collective, but he broke off several years before my birth to pursue his studies of dream magic, taking Liber Somnia and forming the Vermillion Cabal with Celeste and several others. Mary-Beth was the woman with the dream child, conceiving it with her familiar, a Russian sorcerer who had lived in the twelfth century. She’d been married; her husband divorced her over her inability to conceive despite multiple in vitro attempts. In anguish over her desire to bear a child, she sought to bring her dream child to the real world.

Grandma Amy, the leader of the collective, though she cared little for Mary-Beth’s anguish, saw a chance to create a dream sorcerer whose power could be unrivaled. So she sent Mary-Beth to meet with Langdon. The two of them, with Deirdre’s help, created a spell to put the dream child in Mary-Beth’s womb. Once Mary-Beth was pregnant, they killed Langdon to cover their tracks.

It worked. It also killed her.

Mary-Beth died giving birth to the dream child.

Mary-Beth was my real mother. She died giving birth to me.

The consensus among the collective’s sorcerers was that the spell, drawing on Zagan’s constrained power from the rock, had tied her soul to the child. When I was born, the incarnation of my soul had torn hers apart.

I killed my own mother being born.

But that was the end of the folder. There was nothing else, no information about what happened afterward, how Grandma Amy ended up with me.

What I experienced in the dream bore no resemblance to the grandmother I remembered. Grandma Amy had cared for me, raised me. Never once did I doubt that she loved me. The angriest I ever saw her was when anyone threatened me. I was bullied occasionally growing up, but it never happened more than once. I eventually learned to be very careful about reporting those sorts of events to her, because bad things always seemed to happen to anyone who caused me trouble as a child.

I had only my own memories to go on. Something happened between my birth and what I remembered.

I went into the other folder, the one Katarina found about the house. It was built in 1943, during the war. Grandma Amy and another sorcerer found the rock and purchased the land it was buried on. The inscriptions convinced them that Zagan was trapped within it. Over time, they determined that he had been confined there by Astaroth centuries ago. The books I now owned identified Zagan as one of the eight kings of Hell, but at some point Astaroth had tricked him and taken his power, taking over his kingship, just as Katarina told me.

Yet even confined within the rock, he still had some residual power. Grandma Amy and this other sorcerer formed the Breamstone Collective to harness it. In time, they used that power to grow their wealth and influence. MJ was right – the collective was essentially an investment group that focused on real estate, using the power of the rock to improve their forecasts and decision-making.

Which . . . made no sense.

Grandma Amy and I were poor. We lived hand-to-mouth for my entire childhood, living off the random jobs she took. She was proud of never taking charity, but it meant we lived on the fringes of society. Somehow or another, I’d done well enough in school with her support to earn a full ride at Huntington.

What had happened? The records for the first four years of my childhood were missing. She told me my parents died when I was four. Her records had somehow incinerated themselves. That suggested to me that something important had occurred when I was four.

I remembered the story MJ’s great uncle told us.

I saw a bright flash of light in front of the house, like fireworks. A woman came running out holding something, like a child.

The house was abandoned now. It was obvious no one had been in there in many years. Were they still using the rock? Unless the collective had some means of doing it remotely, the answer seemed to be no. But who could I ask?

Deirdre.

She had lied to me, or at least let me believe things that that were clearly false. She’d been part of the collective, whatever allegiances she pretended to have now.

Grandma Amy was gone, but she had the answers. And I wanted them.

“Jimmy?”

I looked up. Katarina was at the door, face lined in tension.

“I know you said you wished to be alone. But I saw the light. And the pain I have been feeling from you is tearing my spirit in two.”

I just sighed and reached for her. She came over quickly and climbed into my lap, sliding her arms around my neck. I held her tightly and fell back onto the bed.

“I’ll tell you everything tomorrow. I just need to get back to sleep.”

We crawled into bed. I reached over and turned out the light as Charlotte curled up next to us.

◆◆◆

I dreamed again.

I was shocked. I was upset. I was confused.

But I was also angry. Angry at being lied to. Angry at having my entire life be the subject of the collective’s surveillance. Angry at not knowing who I really was.

I needed to start taking some control of the situation. But I was only one sorcerer – albeit with some help from Katarina, Charlotte, and Hayley – and that meant I needed more skills than I currently had. In particular, some offensive spells.

But did such things even exist?

So I went to see Charlotte again.

I appeared at the center of the rotunda. She was there waiting, and stress lined her face at the sight of me.

“Master, you must not spend so much time here. I am growing very worried. I love being with you and helping you, but this is a risk.”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t think it is. This feels as natural to me as the real world. Nothing is holding me here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Charlotte, I came from here. This dream world. I can feel it now. I’m not a sorcerer from the living world who risks being stuck here, because it’s not a place he belongs. I belong here as much as the real world.”

Her eyes widened. I told her what I’d dreamed as Grandma Amy and read in the collective’s files.

She finally nodded. “Yes. That explains everything. Your facility with all of this. The power I sense in you when you are here, when we are together.”

“Good. Because I need more help from you.”

“Anything, Master.”

“Are there such things as combat spells? To, I don’t know, throw fire and lighting and that kind of stuff? To protect yourself during a fight, whether it’s between sorcerers or otherwise? Does that even exist?”

She nodded. “Yes, they exist. I am not skilled in them, I am afraid. I was simply an herbalist and healer. I did not seek to fight anyone. They require practice and a specially enchanted focus object. But you have one already.”

“I do?”

“Your grandmother’s staff. It is one of the most heavily enchanted objects I have ever encountered. You have drawn on only a fraction of its power.”

That hadn’t occurred to me at all, but it made sense. Of course Grandma Amy could have done such a thing.

“What do I do with it?”

“I do not know how to do it. But I know you must call on the elemental spirits to serve you. Air, fire, earth, and water. You can call them alone or in combination. You have done it already for minor things like the ward on your apartment. But the staff has the power to command them to do much more. I am sure the answers are in your library.”

So we went back in there. It didn’t take very long, and in Liber Officiorum Spirituum I found the enchantments that Grandma Amy must have used. She apparently bound a set of four spirits into the staff itself, and through them could call upon others. The better you were at connecting to and communicating with the spirit world, the more control you had.

It wasn’t something I could practice in the dream temple though, since I needed the actual staff. I would have to do it back in the real world.

Chapter 20

When I woke up, I found Hayley in bed with me as well. She’d woken up to find Katarina gone and come in here. I cuddled with the two of them for a little while, but I wasn’t in the mood for fun. I told them everything I’d learned from the dream and the files.

They were stunned. Hayley cried, trying to tell me it didn’t matter, that I was still me and she still loved me. Katarina just sat there in a daze, finally telling me that a lot of things now made more sense. I knew she meant my dreams about her.

When there was nothing else to say, we got up.

Charlotte and I went down to the beach with the staff to see what I could do with it. I was far enough along with this stuff now that I knew it wasn’t a matter of holding up the staff and yelling at the spirits. To command them, I had to connect with them.

It proved to be trickier than I expected. I sat down on a rock and held the staff in my hands, just trying to see if I could sense the spirits Grandma Amy had bound inside it. All I felt at first was the same power I had always felt in the staff. Twenty minutes of trying to connect with them accomplished nothing.

Charlotte sat next to me on the rock, front paws on my leg, trying to stay warm. I idly scratched her ears as I wondered what I was doing wrong. I could connect with her easily. Even like this, in the waking world, I could feel her in there, could feel very the same love and affection I felt from her when we were together in the dream world. I could feel it right now. I didn’t really even have to try.

Charlotte meowed at me and climbed into my lap. I could sense that she felt what I was thinking. Connecting with her wasn’t a matter of trying to reach into the cat-body she occupied. It was just a matter of relaxing my mind for a moment and letting her spirit reach out to mine.

Was that the way to do it? I was a little hesitant to open myself to a set of elemental spirits that had been trapped in this staff for who knew how long. They were probably not happy about the situation. But I wasn’t sure what else to do.

I tried to empty my mind of all my many other concerns and just focus on the staff as I did with Charlotte. I wasn’t trying to command it, just communicate. Not being sure what else to do and feeling a bit silly about it, I gently stroked the staff as if I was petting Charlotte.

For a few moments, there was nothing. Then I began feeling low sensations in the staff, warmth, then cold, then tingling, swirling around and through each other. I could feel them there, trying to reach out to me, but I could not make a connection. There was nothing beyond the random sensations.

After another twenty minutes of struggling with it, I was ready to give up. Whatever I was doing here was not working. I needed to rethink this and try something else.

◆◆◆

When I got back to the house, the girls were sitting around the kitchen with Stephanie. Derek was in his office going through his emails.

“Did you have a good hike?” Hayley asked.

I was coming inside with the staff – my “walking stick” – so I knew she was getting ahead of any questions her mother might send in my direction.

“Yeah, it’s really nice out there. Not too cold.”

“Your cat is so well behaved,” Stephanie said. “I’ll admit I was a little concerned when Hayley mentioned her. I didn’t think cats could be trained to follow their owners around like she does.”

“It’s mostly her,” I said. “She just gets it.”

Charlotte jumped into Hayley’s lap and meowed. Hayley laughed and hugged her.

“I love her so much.”

Stephanie seemed to be fighting some uneasiness at having Charlotte that close to the kitchen, but she said nothing more about it.

“Well, we should start thinking about getting prepped for dinner,” she said.

Katarina glanced at the clock. “It is only 11:00 a.m. When are we eating?”

Hayley laughed. “It’s going to take us a while just to set up the dining room.”

Stephanie laughed. “I like to get things right. You do need to get the sweet roll dough started, don’t you?”

So for the next few hours, I tried to forget about everything and focus on Christmas Eve. As Katarina made the sweet rolls, Hayley and I helped Stephanie set up the table, which involved placing all the plates, silverware, napkins, candles, centerpieces, and decorations exactly where she wanted them. After each step, we would wait while she stood back and assessed the arrangement. The whole process took about two hours before she was satisfied. Charlotte just sat on a chair and watched us.

Hayley hugged Stephanie when we were done. “It’s beautiful, Mom.”

“I just don’t understand people who don’t want to take a little extra effort to make things look nice.”

After that, they went into the kitchen to get the roast prepped. Katarina had finished the sweet rolls and put them in the refrigerator for Christmas morning. She came out to where I was standing beside the tree.

“I thought you told me you couldn’t cook,” I said to her quietly.

“There are a few things I know how to do. This is one of them.”

“How did that happen?”

“It is part of the tradition around St. Lucia’s Day. All the young girls in the villages put on long white dresses and go around in groups singing and often passing out cookies and lussekatter. Usually the prettiest one will be chosen to represent St. Lucia. So many girls take part in the tradition that it was an easy thing to exploit as a succubus. Perhaps not so much now, but certainly in the early years. So l learned to make lussekatter.”

“I guess this is the first batch that won’t result in anyone’s death.”

She smiled and leaned against me. “You have enjoyed my sweet roll many times without dying.”

I laughed and hugged her.

“I love you,” I said softly. It just came out. I wasn’t thinking. And then I felt like an ass.

Katarina sighed. “I know, Jimmy.”

“It’s okay.”

“Do you want me to say it?”

I knew what it would sound like, the emptiness of it. And I didn’t want to hear it. “No. I know how it is. Don’t worry about it.”

“All right.” She pecked me quickly on the cheek and went back to the kitchen.

◆◆◆

The dinner was wonderful, and for a few hours I was able to forget everything that had happened the past few days. I was with people I loved for the holidays, something I hadn’t ever really experienced before, and I made myself just enjoy it.

For dessert, Stephanie, without telling any of us, had driven ninety minutes up the interstate to a Swedish bakery several towns away in order to get a batch of pepparkakor, Swedish gingerbread cookies, which actually made Katarina gasp in surprise. Derek went into their wine chiller and came out with a bottle of French dessert wine, and this time it was Stephanie who let out a little gasp.

“Derek, is that the Château d’Yquem?”

“Yes.”

“Please tell me it’s not the 2001.”

He smiled broadly. “It’s a special enough occasion.”

Stephanie laughed, putting her face in her hands. “Oh, my God.”

Derek poured it out for everyone, including Hayley. It was the sweetest, most delicious wine I had ever tasted. By the time it and the cookies were gone about half an hour later, all of us were laughing and hugging each other and declaring that this was the best Christmas Eve ever.

We assembled around the tree with some coffee and listened to Christmas music on the stereo. Stephanie and Derek didn’t notice or didn’t really care about how Hayley and Katarina were cuddling with me on the couch. We finally said good night around ten. Katarina and I went downstairs while Hayley stayed to help her mother finish cleaning up. We offered to help, but Stephanie shooed us away, insisting we were the guests and they would take care of things.

So Katarina and I just lay down together on my bed.

“How was your first Christmas Eve?” I asked her.

She rolled against my chest, sliding her arm over my waist. “It is not my first Christmas Eve. It is the first I have spent in such joy.”

“I’m glad they didn’t take away your ability to be happy,” I said.

She exhaled slowly against me. “I have been happy. I have not been happy like this.”

Charlotte climbed onto my lap, and we just sat there waiting for Hayley. She appeared about ten minutes later with a somewhat dazed look on her face.

“What’s up?” I asked.

She lay down with us on the other side of me. “I have a pretty awesome mom.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I got my grades for the semester today. All As. So she was good. But when we were doing the dishes just now, she said, ‘Is there anything you want to tell me about Jimmy?’”

“Uh-oh.”

“So I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and she said, ‘I’m not blind, honey.’ I didn’t know what to say. I was ready to freak out. But then she said, ‘Whatever is going on with the three of you, I’m okay with it. I just want you to be happy.’”

“Wow.”

Katarina sat up. “What did you tell her?”

“Nothing. I was kind of speechless. But then she said, ‘You don’t need to keep trying to hide what’s been going on downstairs, whatever it is. It's okay.’”

I laughed softly.

Hayley went on. “She said she could hear us going back and forth on the balcony and talking about it. I knew she was a light sleeper, but I thought we were being discreet enough.”

“She’s okay with it?”

“Yeah. The only thing she asked was if I was being responsible with birth control. For med school, you understand.”

I knew she was on those pills that stopped her period, and I’d been with her long enough to know she took them with religious regularity. “Which is all good.”

“Yeah. So,” Hayley said, “I think if you guys want to spend Christmas Eve in my room together tonight, my folks aren’t going to care.”

I hugged them both tightly. “That would be good. I’m not really in the mood to sleep alone again.”

Hayley kissed me. “And I’m not in the mood to let you.”

Chapter 21

I was starting to get used to the strange dreams that my sorcery spun up, but this one was really weird. I floated over a rolling landscape spotted with small ponds and broad clumps of trees – oak, yew, and pine. Somehow I knew this was pre-historic Scotland. I circled around a stand of trees, coming in toward a spindly oak. The wind was blowing hard across the open fields. Swaying in the wind, a long branch broke free from the oak and fell into the damp vegetation underneath.

Time spun. The branch settled into the wet soil, eventually being submerged in the nascent peat. Humans came, harvesting the trees. Low vegetation grew up in their absence, trapping the moisture in the soil below. The oak branch remained, buried in the acidic peat where no bacteria could start the process of decay. Over time, it absorbed the tannins from the water saturating the soil. Six thousand years passed. The Celts came to the area, displacing the Neolithic Scottish peoples. The Romans, Angles, Vikings, and English would follow.

In the seventeenth century, the farmers and ranchers in the area began harvesting and drying the peat for fuel. Bit by bit, they cut away at the peat field where the oak branch was hidden. One day in 1754, a peat cutter finally reached the branch. He drew it out of the wet soil and examined it. It was a solid piece of wood, hard and undecayed. But it was now black as coal from the millennia of its confinement. He set it aside. He knew there were those who paid very well for the black wood, and he knew why they valued it.

Something about the peat cutter struck me as familiar. He was a rough, solidly built man with a thick red beard. I had a connection to him, though what it might be was not apparent.

The peat cutter took the branch back to his cottage and laid it out to dry. Some weeks later, a trader came through the village, and the peat cutter offered his branch. They agreed on a price, and the trader took it along with several others he had purchased. In time, he returned to his warehouse in Edinburgh. The branch sat with his stock for several months. This was a fine piece of wood, one of the finest he’d ever come across, and the price he demanded deterred the craftsmen who inquired about it.

Eventually, a certain woman entered his business. She was fairly young, perhaps thirty, but I recognized her. It was my grandmother, Amalia Takacs. She asked to see the trader’s selection of bog oak. When she saw the oak branch, she inquired about the price. He told her. To his surprise, she paid him, not even bothering to haggle. She took the branch and left, as the trader congratulated himself for holding out for the right buyer.

Grandma Amy left Scotland and traveled back to Hungary. In her workshop, she began crafting the branch into the staff I knew. She engraved symbols of power along its length and inlaid little crystals, metal, and other components of her enchantments into the wood. One night, she went up to the roof of her home and began an incantation, calling out into the sky for the spirits to answer her and do her bidding. They came.

I fell forward into the staff, finding myself in a strange black void, yet one that seemed spider-webbed with dark patterns. I slowly recognized them as the grain of the wood.

I was not alone.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw four forms near me. They were alike in some ways, but very different in others. These beings – I didn’t want to call them women, for they were clearly not human – were all female. They were the size of children, but with the bodies of full-grown adults. They floated around me, nearly naked but wreathed in energy that served as a sort of clothing, like thin, filmy gowns.

One had long silver hair, pale skin, and ice-blue eyes. Another had brown skin, black-brown hair, and eyes like agates. The next had orange skin, crimson hair, and eyes that flickered like candle flames. The last had hair the color of a tropical sea, pale blue skin, and eyes like sapphires.

“Are you our master?” the silver one asked.

“We have heard you calling to us,” the blue one said, “but you did not come.”

“Who are you?” I asked. But then I knew. These were the spirits bound into the staff. Air, Earth, Fire, and Water.

“We are the ones who served the maker,” the earth spirit said.

“My grandmother,” I said. “But she’s gone. She left me the staff.”

“Then we serve you now,” the fire spirit said.

“How long have you been here?”

They just stared at me. Then I remembered what I kept forgetting – time passed differently here. The very question I asked had no meaning.

“You are our master,” the fire spirit finally said.

“How do I call on you?”

“Now that you have come to us,” the air spirit said, “we know how to find you. We will come when you call.”

“Do you have names?”

“I am Sídhe,” she replied.

“I am Enya,” the fire spirit said.

“I am Sinann,” the water spirit said.

“I am Ceridwen,” the earth spirit said.

As they spoke, I saw something else. I’d wondered if they resented their confinement, but I realized now that concern completely misunderstood what they were. They served the owner of the staff because they knew nothing else.

In binding them, Grandma Amy had given them consciousness and identities, even names. Before being bound, they were nothing but mindless elemental energy, having no knowledge of anything but their elements, except when they were called up by some spell.

Now, at last, I finally understood what I had in my grandmother’s staff.

It was a weapon. A powerful one. And I intended to use it.

“I will call on you soon,” I said.

And I woke.

◆◆◆

But I wasn’t doing anything on Christmas, let alone Christmas morning. The three of us got up, and Katarina put her sweet rolls in the oven. Derek and Stephanie emerged, and we ate breakfast. The lussekatter were delicious.

It was a tradition in their family to go for a walk on the beach after breakfast but before opening the presents. As we walked along behind Derek and Stephanie, Hayley leaned over to me.

“My mom got you something kind of extravagant,” she said quietly. “Because of the ring. I just want you to be prepared. Please don’t make a big deal about it. Just be thankful and let it go. ”

“It’s okay. She kind of already suggested she would.”

I told them about the dream I’d had about the elemental spirits. Hayley gave me a look.

“More dream girls?”

I laughed. “No. They’re not girls. They’re not like Charlotte. They’re just spirits, elemental energy in somewhat human form.”

“What are you planning to do, Jimmy?” Katarina asked.

“I need to practice with this first. But then I want to go back to see Deirdre. She has some explaining to do.”

“You think she may object?”

“The staff isn’t for her, exactly. I just want to be prepared. When we go back to Zagan’s Rock. I have no idea what the collective might be up to.”

Hayley nodded.

“You deserve some answers, Jimmy,” she said. “We’ll do whatever you need us to.”

◆◆◆

Stephanie had gotten me a gold Apple Watch, the kind with the designer band that cost about $1,500. As Hayley asked, I did my best to be properly appreciative, which wasn’t hard. It was really nice, and somewhat to my surprise paired easily with the demon phone.

Having some extra money on hand thanks to the gold coins we found, I’d splurged a bit on my gifts. I got Hayley a handmade Shetland wool sweater and Katarina a Nordic-patterned sweater I ordered from a Swedish retailer. I knew giving Katarina anything was kind of pointless – what do you get the girl who can just manifest any possessions she needs? – but we had to keep up appearances.

And little bit later, she said as much to me, out of earshot of the others.

“The sweater is lovely, Jimmy. But did you get it just so Hayley’s parents would not suspect something? You know I do not need clothes.”

“Yes. That isn’t really your present. There’s something else I’m working on, now is just not the time.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Now I am intrigued.”

“When all the stuff up here is over.”

Stephanie had planned a much simpler dinner for Christmas night, so there was little else to do that day. Later that afternoon, we went back down to the beach so I could practice with the staff.

This time, when I focused on the staff and tried to connect with the spirits, the reaction was instantaneous. I felt the four of them surge forward so fast that I didn’t even know what to do with the energy they brought forth, and the backlash from it knocked me onto my butt. Hayley let out a yelp and jumped forward.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I, uh, I think it works now.”

I stood up and brushed myself off. I tried again, this time specifically reaching for Sídhe, the air spirit. There was an immediate gust of wind that kicked up a big cloud of sand in front of me.

Katarina gasped, and Hayley squealed in surprise.

“Was that it?”

“Yep.”

Enya brought forth a burst of flame that rolled across the beach, Sinann a burst of water. Ceridwen caused the sand itself to surge forward in a wave.

“That’s so awesome,” Hayley said. “What if you combined them?”

“Good question. Let’s see.”

It turned out that, not surprisingly, two or more of them could create additional effects. Enya and Sinann created a blast of steam, Sinann and Sídhe a burst of frost. Sídhe and Ceridwen together produced a sort of dust storm, Enya and Sídhe a fire tornado. Sídhe and Ceridwen produced a bolt of lightning. Enya, Sídhe, and Ceridwen produced a flaming vortex of searing sand that basically pulverized a log I found near the cliff.

With more practice, I was able to focus and control their energy instead of creating a big blast. I could move the sand around and arrange it with a fair bit of precision. I could light one piece of driftwood on fire without lighting the one next to it. It took a bit more effort to get it to work, but eventually I was able have Sídhe pick things up and fling them through the air, as well as deflect things the girls threw in my direction.

After an hour so, I was getting tired, and the spirits seemed to be losing energy. I would need to let them rest for a while. But I’d set out to do what I intended.

Katarina came up behind me and nibbled my neck.

“Have I told you what your displays of power do to me?” she whispered in my ear. I felt the heat of her body against me.

I laughed. “Yeah, you have.”

◆◆◆

We ate dinner at six, watched another movie, and then headed downstairs to bed. Hayley shut the door to her room and came over to me, kissing me on the cheek.

“I got something to wear for tonight. Just get in bed.”

She and Katarina went into the bathroom. I stripped out of my clothes and sat on the edge of her bed. Hayley emerged in a few minutes wearing a sheer little red babydoll nightgown that basically concealed nothing. Katarina came out behind her in one just as short, but in red silk that hugged her breasts and butt. They came up on either side of me, smiling.

“I love it.”

“I told you to get in bed, young man.”

I took them in my arms. I kissed them both, then we came together in a single kiss. I ran my hands over their bodies, reaching under their nightgowns to caress their bare butts, then between their legs. Both of them were wet, and I stroked them gently with my fingers, feeling the little patches hair above their clits with my thumb.

They leaned against me, biting and sighing into my ears. They reached for my erection, squeezing and stroking me.

I fell back onto the bed, pulling Hayley with me.

“Come here.”

I pulled her up above my head. She planted her knees on either side of me and lowered herself onto my mouth. Her nightgown fell down around my face. I felt Katarina kneeling between my legs, and a moment later, her lips sliding down over my cock.

I held onto Hayley’s tight little butt as she rode my tongue. Her fluids flowed out of her, and I lapped them up eagerly. Down below, Katarina had me deep in her throat, sucking and swallowing around me. I concentrated on Hayley, just enjoying the feel of what Katarina was doing in the back of my mind.

Hayley’s sex swelled in arousal as I licked up at her. She rocked her hips over me slowly, sliding herself over my mouth. I kept her close as my tongue fluttered over her. Her motions grew more rapid, and I felt the twitches of her impending release shooting through her gut. Then she began to whimper softly.

“Jimmy . . . don’t stop . . . just like that.”

Her hips started to shake, and she reached down to grip my hair in her hands. I held her tightly against my mouth, tongue spinning rapidly over her. As she went over the edge into orgasm, her thighs battered my ears and she let out a soft sob of pleasure.

Katarina hadn’t stopped what she was doing to me, and she knew exactly what it took to get me off. She’d been sucking firmly and rhythmically on the last few inches of my erection for the several minutes now, tongue massaging the head as she moved up and down. I tried to focus on Hayley, who hadn’t left my mouth.

I drove Hayley toward another orgasm, spinning the tip of my tongue around and around her clit. Her hands were still in my hair, holding me close. I could feel her rising rapidly again to release, and Katarina had me almost on the edge as well. But she seemed to sense what was happening, and slowed down, waiting for me to finish off Hayley. And as Hayley shivered into another intense orgasm and threw herself forward off my mouth, Katarina renewed her attentions.

I reached down for her head, but she needed no guidance. Just as I started to come, she plunged down, swallowing every inch and letting me erupt down her throat as the pleasure washed over me. When she’d sucked out the last drop, she climbed up onto the bed between us.

After Hayley and I had caught our breath, we rolled together to focus on Katarina. I pulled down the straps on her nightgown to expose her perfect breasts. Hayley and I each took a nipple. When we’d gotten them red and swollen and Katarina was sighing under us, Hayley suddenly rose from the bed.

“Be right back.”

I returned to Katarina’s breasts, and Hayley returned a few moments later with the staff in her hand and a wicked look on her face.

“Do that thing where you make her come endlessly.”

Katarina moaned in anticipation. Hayley settled between her thighs and began to lick. I picked up the staff and took control of Katarina, who gasped and reached for me. As I brought her quickly to orgasm, she let out a soft cry and pulled me to her. I held her right at the peak of it, sucking on her nipples as Hayley sucked and licked at her spasming pussy. She moaned and writhed on the bed, locked into a continual climax.

I pulled myself away from her and went behind Hayley. My connection to Katarina allowed me to draw energy out of her to stay hard and ready no matter how many times I came. Hayley’s butt was up in the air. She spread her knees and lowered her back, offering herself to me. I entered her wet sex slowly as I watched her tormenting Katarina in front of us.

Katarina held Hayley’s head between her thighs as she shivered and shook in orgasm. I buried myself inside Hayley and fucked her slowly, feeling her tight wetness around me. I just enjoyed her as I watched the scene in front of me.

After a minute or two of this, I wanted more. I made Katarina sit up and reverse herself on the bed. Hayley climbed forward over her, leaning down to keep licking. Katarina wrapped her arms around Hayley’s hips, looking up at me. She extended her tongue into Hayley, guiding my cock back inside. Still orgasming, she licked up at us as I fucked Hayley.

The girls went after each other eagerly, licking and sucking. I felt Hayley getting close again as Katarina and I worked on her. She moaned into Katarina’s pussy, pushing her butt back at me with each thrust. Finally, her thighs started to shake and I felt her contract around me several times in release. The feel of it was enough to push me over as well, and as she began to coast down, I buried myself into her and came hard.

When I withdrew, Katarina stretched up to lap up my seed as it flowed out of Hayley. I lay down beside them, and finally released Katarina from her five-minute-long orgasm. She let out a gasp.

The two of them rolled into my arms.

“Merry Christmas,” Hayley sighed.

“Things could be worse,” I said.

Chapter 22

Derek and Stephanie both had to work at the hospital, so we set out for Zagan’s Rock after they were gone. Hayley checked in with MJ, who said she wanted to join us. We made plans to pick her up. When we’d been on the road about fifteen minutes, Hayley looked over at me.

“I’ve been talking to MJ off and on since we came back,” she said.

“And?” I asked.

“She definitely seems interested in joining this little coven of ours when we’re back at school. She’s been asking a ton of questions about what exactly you’ve been doing with the magic and everything.”

“Yeah, I texted with her about that too,” I said.

“So . . . I’m kind of wondering about something.”

I shook my head. “Don’t wonder. I meant what I said.”

She looked over at me. “Which was what?”

“I don’t want you to feel like you’re leaving any part of your life behind. And I was thinking, I’ve got Charlotte. If you’re having thoughts about MJ, I can deal with that.”

She pursed her lips. “Okay. I appreciate that. And, you have a point about Charlotte, who by the way I love, and I don’t care about whatever goes on in your dreams. They’re dreams.”

“Very vivid dreams.”

“But still, dreams. MJ isn’t a dream.”

“It’s close enough for me.”

“Here’s the thing, though. I’m pretty certain MJ isn’t just interested in me.”

“What do you mean?”

Hayley and Katarina both laughed in disbelief.

“Jimmy,” Katarina said, “you are a very talented sorcerer, but you can be remarkably dense about women.”

“Have you already forgotten what she said the other night?” Hayley said.

“She was talking about you. Wasn’t she?”

Hayley shook her head, still laughing. “Jimmy, no girl is going to say something like that unless she’s interested in you. Also, I know she’s bi, not gay. She mentioned a boyfriend she’d had. And some other stuff.”

“Oh.”

I’d been trying not to pay too much attention to MJ for Hayley’s sake, but this put a different spin on things. “So what are you getting at?” I asked.

“Just that, if we go in that direction, and I’m not saying I’m ready to yet or that I’m sure she even really wants to, she’s not just going to be my side piece or something.”

“Oh.”

Katarina reached up to stroke my shoulder. “I know things do not work like this now, Jimmy, but you would not be the first sorcerer I have known to collect a harem.”

Hayley groaned. “We are not using that word, whatever happens here.”

“Complications, then,” Katarina said, smiling. “The life of a powerful sorcerer is often complicated.”

◆◆◆

We picked up MJ outside her house, and the look she gave me as she climbed in beside Katarina more or less confined what Hayley told me. I guess I’d been ignoring it subconsciously because of all the other things I had to worry about, but the interest was definitely there. And as I looked her over in her workout tights and cami yoga top, with a UCSD hoodie over it, I couldn’t deny I was attracted to her too.

“So what are we doing here?” she asked.

I filled her in on everything I’d figured out from the files and my dreams. When I got to the part about being the dream child, her eyes bulged in shock. She stared at me in awe.

“It’s real? That really happened?”

“I’m pretty sure the kid your great-uncle saw that night was me. That was my grandmother taking me away from them.”

“Holy fucking shit. That’s insane. But it’s why you have all these powers?”

“Pretty much,” I said.

Katarina then told her what I’d done with the staff and the elemental spirits.

“So you really are a brujo,” MJ said.

“Yeah. Whatever you want to call it.”

She shook her head, smiling at me. “I can’t wait to see this.”

We drove over to Deirdre’s house. The car in the driveway indicated that she was home.

“Here’s what I want to do,” I said to Katarina. “I need you to be Olivia long enough to get her guard down and let us in there.”

“But the ward, Jimmy. I cannot enter.”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m taking it down.”

I could see with the ring that the ward on her house was similarly composed to the ones the collective had used on their building. I’d brought the rest of the nitric acid for that very purpose.

I didn’t bother with a fog spell this time. Calling up Sídhe was enough to create a fog of the acid and send it swirling around the house. The ward dissolved in a matter of moments.

“Okay, go.”

Katarina turned into Olivia and walked up to the house as the rest of us followed. She knocked on the door, and a few moments later, Deirdre answered.

“Hi, Mom,” Olivia said.

“Olivia, what on Earth? You cannot be here right now. I have people coming over.”

“They need to talk to you again. Please.”

“I’ve learned some things,” I said.

“Mom, it’s important.” Olivia walked forward into the house, and Deirdre stepped backward. She seemed deeply conflicted by our appearance, but didn’t stop us.

“Olivia, I don’t understand. We discussed this at length yesterday, and I told you to leave it to me. These are things and people I don’t want you involved with. You need to leave. Now.”

“Well, that’s okay,” I said. “She’s not involved, actually.”

I nodded to Olivia, who shifted back to Katarina.

Deirdre gasped. “What—How—The ward—”

“I dispelled it to get us in here. I need some answers from you.”

“You dispelled my ward?”

“Yes.”

She lunged across the room for her staff, which was leaning against the corner of the entryway. But Sídhe got there first, seizing the staff in a fist of wind and flinging it out of Deirdre’s grasp and into my hand. I passed it to Hayley. Deirdre cried out in horror.

“I’m not here to hurt you or anyone else. I just want to talk. You lied to me the other day.”

“How did I lie?” she asked.

“Letting me think you were somehow my mother, when you helped kill her. I know what happened now. I know where I came from.”

Deirdre sighed and sat down. “You know about Mary-Beth? Amalia? All of it?”

“Some of it.”

“Then you know Mary-Beth killed herself. Amalia and I warned her that what she had planned could kill her. The stress on her soul was just too severe.”

“So she died giving birth,” I said. “I figured that much out. What happened after that? You and Amalia raised me? In that house?”

“No. Olivia was old enough by then to understand, so I had to keep my distance. It was mostly Amalia. She grew very attached to you. The rest of us began to feel she was losing her perspective. You were important to the collective’s goals, too important to allow personal feelings to affect her judgment. But she was very stubborn about it and refused to listen to any of us.”

I nodded. This was the Grandma Amy I knew.

“So it came to a head one night, there was some big dispute, and she ran off with me and disappeared?”

“Essentially.”

“How did she stay hidden all those years?”

Deirdre sighed. “Amalia was the most powerful sorceress I have ever met, bar none. If she wanted to stay hidden from everyone, she was capable of doing it. How she did it, I do not know. I suspect she made some pact with one of the demon princes she worked with . . .” A light came into her eyes. “. . . which would explain the debt you inherited.”

Of course. What had Volach told me that first night? She made a very expensive bargain with my boss, only to decide right afterward that she was retiring without paying her bills. His boss, of course, being Astaroth.

“Four thousand souls, give or take?” I asked.

“Cloaking the two of you so completely for twenty years would have been a very expensive request. Believe me, people have been looking for you.”

“They found me, sort of,” I said. “Found my records and the things I’ve done. Just not me.”

“Correct.”

“You were all part of that group, the collective. Her, Langdon, and Mary-Beth.”

“Yes. Henry left first, several years before your birth,” she replied. “He was not a key member, so we just let him go. Amalia’s departure, though . . . broke some things. Important things. There were disagreements about the direction we would take afterward. In Amalia’s absence, Charles grew desperate. The collective splintered, and several other members left. Did you happen to find Henry’s manifesto?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know about the change of heart he had. I decided he had a point. Henry had formed the cabal with another woman, who continued it after his death. I and another woman decided to join her. Until very recently, the cabal and the collective largely avoided each other.”

Now I understood the relationships here. “That other woman. Was it Celeste?”

Deirdre’s eyes widened.

“Yes. You know Celeste?”

I decided not to get my contact with her recently. “I saw her in a dream. What happened with Mary-Beth?”

“She died in childbirth, like you said. We buried her ashes on the grounds.”

“At the house?”

“I suppose you didn’t look closely enough. She’s in the corner by the fountain. There’s a marker with her name on it.”

I wondered if that was why I remembered the fountain, if it was why that thing was one of my few memories of living there.

“So what’s the deal with all those fish?” MJ asked.

Deirdre looked over to her. “Bream. Carp. They’re a connection to white magic. I know you’ve been in the house. Did you notice the inscription on the rock? The one in Hebrew?”

“I did,” I said. “What is it?”

“It’s the forty-two-letter name of God, from the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh.”

“That’s the original Hebrew version of the Liber Razielis Archangeli, right?”

“Correct,” she said. “That word is what’s holding Zagan in there.”

“That is not possible,” Katarina said. “Zagan was bound there by Astaroth. How could Astaroth do such a thing? He cannot even know that name, let alone cause it to be inscribed there.”

“How do you know any of that?” Deirdre snapped.

But Katarina just cocked her head and lifted her eyebrows, and Deirdre’s pique evaporated.

“Oh. Yes,” she said. “Well, the answer is, I have no idea. The rock is what it is. Zagan is in there, and the inscriptions are what is holding him. Of that, I have no doubt.”

“But the fish all around the house?” I asked.

“Amalia’s idea, when they built it. She didn’t want to do anything to upset the confinement. Did you see the other Hebrew inscription, over the gate to the garden?”

“Yes. Is that another name?”

Deirdre nodded. “The twenty-two-letter name, also from the Sefer Raziel. Amalia thought it would help bind the house in place and assist our use of the stone.”

“So the collective is using Zagan’s power?”

“Was using it. Amalia’s departure put an end to that. No one else has been able to manage what she did.”

I sighed. That explained the state of the house, and the dream I’d had where Grandma Amy appeared to me in the house. It had “moved on,” she said. Because she’d left.

“So what are they doing now? Without the rock? ”

“Continuing what they can of Amalia’s legacy, which is making a great deal of money using various sorcerous tricks. Beyond that, I am not sure. I suppose you were the one who broke in there the other night?”

“Yes.”

“So you took down those wards just like you just did with mine?” she asked.

“I did.”

“That is very impressive. They were laid by the leader of the collective, who is no novice sorcerer. He was very upset to find them gone. He initially accused me of breaking our truce, until I explained about your reappearance here.”

“What does he want with me?”

Deirdre stood up and looked out the front window. “You may as well ask him yourself. They are here.”

Chapter 23

The four of us spun around. Charlotte darted over and stood between my legs. There was no time to do anything. Four people were coming up the walkway to Deirdre’s door, two men and two women. The man in the lead looked to be in his late sixties. He was heavyset and balding and carried a slim staff – I could see the enchantment on it with my ring. The two women were about Deirdre’s age, both professionally dressed in skirts and blouses. Behind them came a tall man in his thirties with a black beard.

The doorbell rang.

“May I answer it?” Deirdre asked. “They know I am here.”

Katarina came up next to me, while MJ and Hayley circled behind us.

“Yes,” I said.

Deirdre went to the door and opened it.

“Hello, Charles.”

The older man stared at her suspiciously. “Your ward is down.”

“I have uninvited guests.” She stepped back to allow them in. “As it happens, the very people you were hoping to find.”

The four of them walked into the house. Their clothes and manner exuded wealth well in excess of what was typical for Zagan’s Rock. Charles wore a heavy gold watch, and the women’s clothes were stylish and expertly tailored. One had a gold necklace with what looked like a large ruby suspended from it.

Charles stared at us incredulously. “A succubus and a pair of college girls? They did this?”

Deirdre’s recoiled a bit in surprise.

“They had—” Then she stopped and looked at me. “You can’t even see him, can you?”

Charles and the others glanced around the room.

“See who?” Then his eyes widened. “He’s here?”

I glanced at the girls, who were equally stunned.

“You seriously can’t see him standing here?” MJ asked. “None of you?”

“Can you even hear me?” I asked. But none of them reacted.

“Incredible,” Deirdre said. “It’s still in place after all these years. The power this would have required.”

“So how can you see me?” I asked.

“I assume that is because I turned my back on the collective and its goals many years ago. The ward must affect anyone who is part of it or acting at their behest.”

Charles grumbled, looking at her and then the girls. He seemed to be trying to make eye contact with me somehow. “That is correct. We cannot see or hear him.”

“But you’ve hacked all sorts of things to track him, haven't you?” Hayley said. “I saw the records.”

He glared at Hayley, almost seeming insulted at having to address her. “Yes. He is very important to us.”

I looked at Hayley. “Ask them what they want with me.”

“He wants to know what you want,” she said.

Charles nodded, forcing a smile onto his face. “We mean you all no harm. We simply need his help. Amalia’s disappearance has prevented us from continuing her work.”

“Which is what?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” Hayley said. “What is the work?”

“Your . . . intrusion into our records should have given you an idea, I would imagine.”

“You’re running a REIT, aren’t you?” MJ asked.

Charles nodded. “Clever girl. Yes, that is indeed the core of our activities, though not all of them. We purchase real estate and make it worth more. But that depends in large part on seeing which properties might appreciate, and which will not.”

“Which requires some pretty precise divination,” I said.

“He said that must require some precise divination,” Hayley said.

Charles laughed. “Oh, divination is child’s play. It’s one thing to try to predict the future. It’s another to make it. But our abilities were much more powerful when we could call on the power of the rock. Amalia was able to. We, despite a great deal of work, are not.”

“And you think I could do it?” I asked.

“And you think he could?” Hayley asked.

“We know he could. He was created with it. His power with it could exceed Amalia’s. We have been trying for many years to find a way to contact him and discuss this, but whatever ward Amalia placed over him, as you can see, has prevented that.”

I stared at them hard, trying to read them. Knowing what I knew of them, what they’d been doing in tracking my life, I had no interest in helping them. Why should I use my abilities to make a bunch of other people rich? It didn’t seem like they even really needed me. How much money did they really need?

“Don’t repeat what I’m about to say,” I said to Hayley. “But I want no part of this. I don’t care what they want or what they think I can do. We need to get out of here.”

Deirdre stepped back away from us. “He’s not going to help you.”

“Oh, tu pinche perra!” MJ snarled.

Charles held up his staff. “Get the girls,” he said to the others.

One of the women stepped forward, grabbing at Hayley’s wrist. The tall man reached for MJ’s arm. But then something happened that I didn’t expect.

Before the man made contact, MJ grabbed the man’s wrist instead and twisted his arm around with both hands, forcing him to turn away from her. She pulled the arm up sharply against his back, causing him to bend forward, and before he could do anything, she kneed him hard in the balls from behind. He groaned and fell to the floor.

All of this happened in a split second, and before the other three could really react, MJ leaned back and kicked the woman holding Hayley right in the head, connecting her foot directly with the woman’s temple. She fell back, stunned, letting go of Hayley.

Charles was clearly trying to gauge where I was standing, and I realized I needed to move away from wherever he had started to focus. I stepped to the side, away from Katarina, and called Enya forth. But as soon as the blast of fire emerged, Charles countered it with a shield of air and water. The entire room filled with a cloud of steam as Deirdre cried out in horror.

“My house! Stop it, all of you!”

The other woman was now trying to deal with MJ. But MJ grabbed her arm and twisted it forward, immobilizing her. Then she hooked her foot around the woman’s arm and kicked her right in the face, sending her backward into the wall behind her.

Charles sent a gust of air in my general direction, but it was off target, succeeding only in knocking Hayley to the ground. To my left, I saw two Deirdres struggling with each other, and I realized instantly that one of them had to be Katarina. They fell forward into the living room away from us.

I called out Sídhe and Ceridwen, sending a lightning bolt right at Charles, but he deflected it again with a shield of water. He struck back with a bolt of fire, but it too was off target, and I easily redirected it away from me. Unfortunately, that sent it toward the back of the room into the drapes around the window behind me, which immediately burst into flame.

The bearded man was struggling to get to his feet, but MJ turned around and leapt into the air, throwing a scissor kick right at his head. He was still disoriented from her assault on his balls, and her foot connected squarely with his jaw. He flipped onto his back, stunned, and collapsed onto the floor.

Charles turned and aimed his staff at her. A burst of flame began to emerge, but I sent Sinann straight between them, and the wall of water she erected exploded into another cloud of steam.

Over to the other side, the two Deirdres were still wrestling with each other. Hayley was beside them, holding Deirdre’s staff, but she clearly didn’t know who was who. She called out to me.

“Jimmy! Which one is her?”

But I knew because I could feel Katarina’s anguish at possibly failing me.

“Deirdre is on top!”

She brought the staff down hard on Deirdre’s head. She collapsed instantly, and Hayley tossed the staff aside. I turned back to Charles just in time to deflect another blast of air at MJ.

“MJ, get out of the way!” I shouted.

She dove to the floor. I gathered up all four of the spirits and threw them directly at Charles as hard as I could. It was too much. He tried to erect a shield of air, but Sídhe pierced it, and Enya, Sinann, and Ceridwen enveloped him a blast of steaming mud. The impact of it threw him backward and tore the front door off its hinges. He tumbled across the porch.

“Let’s go!” I yelled.

We ran out of the house toward Hayley’s car. Charles was still lying stunned on the front stoop, so I sent Ceridwen at him, binding him in a cocoon of stone and mortar.

Hayley and MJ were beside me, pulling me toward the car.

“Jimmy, for God’s sake, we have to get out of here!” Hayley shrieked.

I looked around us. I had completely forgotten we were in a staid, HOA-compliant tract development, and people were starting to come out of their houses to see what all the commotion was. We dove into Hayley’s car, and she stomped on the gas pedal to get us away from Deirdre’s house. I sent Sídhe and Ceridwen behind us to hide her license plate in a huge cloud of dust. I looked for Charlotte at about the same moment she leapt into the front seat and into my lap.

“Fuck!” Hayley yelled.

“We’re fine,” I said. “No one is going to see you. Just go.”

But none of us began to calm down until we exited the neighborhood and it was clear no one was coming after us. With MJ guiding her, Hayley went around a few corners and finally pulled into a vacant lot about a mile down the road. I began to hear sirens a ways back, but there was no sign anyone was looking for us.

“That was not quite what I was expecting,” Katarina finally said.

The other three of us exploded into nervous laughter.

“What the hell was all of that shit you were doing?” MJ asked me.

“It was the elemental spirits. What the hell were you doing?”

She looked around at the rest of us. “Uh, Taekwondo. My cousin runs a dojang. I got my black belt at fifteen and worked there as an instructor for a couple of years in high school. It meshed pretty well with soccer, you know, with the kicking techniques and flexibility.”

“That’s good to know,” Hayley said. She let out a long sigh.

“I think we’re okay,” I said, looking at MJ. “But I need to put a ward on you.”

“A ward?”

I tried to explain how they worked. “I put one on Hayley and Katarina. You saw what I have on me. But they could find you unless I do it for you too. I suspect they might try to get to me through you. I don’t want that to happen.”

She nodded. “Okay. How?”

“That’s the thing. They’re unique to the person being protected. I have to figure out what yours would involve. So I need Charlotte’s help again. She knows much more about this stuff than I do.”

MJ laughed in disbelief. “You have to take another fucking nap?”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, that’s the only way I can connect with her.”

So we drove around until we found a park MJ felt was secluded enough. The four of us, plus Charlotte, walked across the grass to a clump of trees and sat down. MJ sat back away from us, but I turned to her.

“I have a feeling this will work better if I sit with you.”

She looked at Hayley, who nodded and motioned to her. MJ leaned against a tree, and I laid my head on her lap. She looked down at me as Charlotte curled up on my thighs.

“Am I going to feel anything here?” she asked me.

“As long as you stay awake, I don’t think so.”

“What if I sleep with you?” She gasped softly, laughing. “I mean, if I sleep while you sleep?”

I laughed. “Honestly, I don’t know. Just do what you feel like doing.”

Chapter 24

I dozed off after about ten minutes. I appeared in the dream temple. Charlotte was there in a green-and-gold gown. She came over and hugged me, and I returned the embrace.

“I am glad you are safe, Master.”

“So am I. Let’s figure out what MJ needs.”

It took a little bit of research, but we quickly settled on what would work for her. Rock salt, cinnamon, chili powder, and fire opal. The problem was the last one. I had no idea where we might get fire opal, or what it would cost.

“That is a challenge, Master,” Charlotte said, “but it may not be the largest one.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember what I said about the strength of the ward.”

“Oh. Yeah.” I got it now.

“The weakness of your connection to her is the problem.”

“I know her. I like her. We’ve been through some things.”

“That is something. It may not be enough, as powerful as the collective seems.”

“What can I do?” I asked.

Charlotte looked down. “I do not know. Under these circumstances.”

“Are you saying that without the same connection I have with Katarina and Hayley, this may not work? That the ward could fail?”

She nodded sadly. “It is possible. I am sorry, Master.”

I went over to the reading room across the temple and sat down in one of the chairs, trying to think. If the ward on MJ failed, it could lead the collective to Hayley and Katarina. But the wards I had on them were based on the love we shared, even if Katarina couldn’t return it.

I liked MJ. We had a connection, one that felt like it could grow. But I didn’t love her. I couldn’t manufacture that. Maybe, if everything went right, once we got back to school and we had the chance to get to know each other, I could see a time when I might love MJ. Things had that feel already. But by then it could be far too late.

I didn’t see how I could make it happen. It was a matter of time, of—

Time.

I had time.

Here, in this place, I had all the time I needed. I was the dream child. I could stay here as long as I wanted to. I just needed MJ.

Could I bring her here?

I went to Charlotte, but she had no idea. She had no facility with dream magic. So instead, I laid down on our bed while she lay beside me. I tried to reach out, to see if MJ was even there.

For a while, or what seemed like a long while, there was nothing.

Then felt her.

Just a trace, out there, just a thread that led to the flavor I’d come to know as MJ, all the sass and passion. I reached for it. At first, it was like trying to catch a single grain of sand. It fell through my grasp. But after some indeterminate number of tries, I caught it and pulled it to me.

It grew.

It was her. She was asleep next to me back in that park.

I pulled her to the dream temple. And she was there.

I got up. She stood in the center of the rotunda, looking around in wonder. Her eyes fell to me. She smiled as I walked toward her.

“Jimmy.”

“I’m glad you’re here.”

“Together at last,” she said. “I know you think I’m gay.”

I realized immediately that she was dreaming and not knowing it, lost in her own dream world where nothing really mattered. But I had to make this work.

“I know what you really are.”

She smiled. “You could tell. I knew it.”

She slid her arms around my neck. Then she noticed Charlotte, who had come up beside us.

“Is this your cat?”

“Hello, MJ,” Charlotte said. “I am so happy to meet you.”

MJ laughed. “Oh fuck, you’re hot. I had no idea.”

Charlotte laughed with her. “I should leave you two alone.”

Charlotte walked away, and MJ promptly forgot her. She looked around.

“What is this place?”

“My dream world. I brought you here.”

She smiled. “And what are you going to do with me?”

“Come on.”

I took her hand, and we walked out of the temple into the forest. I immediately turned it into a tropical beach. We walked along the water holding hands.

“I love Hawaii,” MJ said.

Somehow I knew she’d never been there. But neither had I.

“We need to stay here for a while,” I said.

Up ahead, I created a little cottage on stilts above the water, just a bedroom and balcony looking out over the ocean. We walked up to it, and she was suddenly wearing a little white string bikini. Her dream-self had made it.

MJ laughed, running through the surf and climbing the ladder to the cottage. She looked amazing, her body so lithe and taut and athletic. I ran after her, and she turned toward me, letting me catch her. We came together and kissed deeply. She pulled me back into the bedroom.

We made love in a dream-blur. I let it happen, letting her dream-self control it. This wasn’t because of me. Some part of her wanted this. It went on for a long time, and then we were laying together in a mess of white sheets, watching the waves roll in.

“This is so beautiful,” she said.

I leaned over to kiss her. “Not as beautiful as you.”

She pulled me down, kissing me back. We made love again. Then we slept.

◆◆◆

We stayed in that cottage on the beach for a long time, what felt like weeks, just talking and running around laughing in the surf, and having a lot of really athletic sex. I’d only started to imagine what she looked like naked before that day in Deidre’s house. Now I knew. Her body was so smooth and tight and defined, her butt so hard and toned. Her breasts were not large, but they were as taut and firm as the rest of her. Her nipples were wonderful, fat little eraser tips I never got tired of sucking on. She had a little stud through the hood of her clit, the thing she’d whispered to Charlotte that day when I was trying to prove my connection to her.

I could control MJ’s reactions and orgasms just like I did with Charlotte, though I had to be subtle about it. Each one drew us closer. In between, we would lie in bed talking about her life and what we had here.

One day we walked into the jungle to see what was there. She wore that same delicious little string bikini, which had gotten more and more revealing the longer we were here. It was barely a thong at this point, and the top only just covered her breasts. We held hands walking over the jungle floor. I created a stream through the trees, and we followed it to a waterfall. MJ ran into the water under the spray, laughing, and I followed her. We came together under the cascade, kissing and holding each other. Then she pulled me out from under the water and leaned against my chest.

“This is the happiest I’ve ever been. It’s so strange. It feels like we’ve been here forever.”

I’d been in the dream world long enough by now to know how it intensified your emotions and feelings. But I needed to let that happen.

“It hasn’t been that long,” I said. “But it’s great.”

“I had no idea all this was here.”

“There’s more. Come on.”

We continued through the jungle. A bit later, we found the ruins of some kind of old temple. MJ climbed over it. I climbed up and joined her, sitting on the edge of a huge stone block.

“What do you think this was?” she asked.

“Hard to tell.”

She took my hand and leaned against me. “Can I tell you something?”

“Anything.”

“My family doesn’t know I’m bi. None of them. I worry sometimes about it. They talk about how women’s soccer teams are full of lesbians, and how it must be hard for me.”

“You have to be who you are,” I said.

“I’ve been able to hide it by dating random guys, just casually. I always break it off before it goes anywhere. You’re the first guy I’ve been with who makes me feel like myself.”

“That’s good. It’s what I want for you.”

She squeezed my hand. “You’re so awesome. I miss Hayley and the others.”

“They’re fine,” I said. “We’ll be with them again soon.”

“When?”

“When we’re done here. Do you want to leave?”

“No.”

She hopped down and backed away from me, smiling. When I jumped down as well, she darted into the jungle.

“If you catch me, you can put it where you want.” Then she ran off, laughing.

I let her win. I could have caught her, but instead I got to the bed just after she fell into it, laughing at me. Her bikini vanished, and I took her in my arms.

◆◆◆

Another day she wanted to go snorkeling. I’d never been, but I knew she never had either. So I created some snorkeling gear I pretended to find in the cottage, and we swam out into the water. I had to recreate what I could remember from movies and videos I’d seen about tropical reefs, but it was enough to convince MJ. We swam around for a long time watching the fish and exploring the corals. I spent as much time watching her swim, watching her lithe form moving through the water.

Finally we returned to the beach, and I watched as she emerged from the surf, pushing her long brown-black hair back over her head and squeezing the water out. She was so fucking sexy in that little bikini.

She saw me watching her and stepped over, sliding her arms around my neck.

“You just can’t get enough of me, can you?”

“No.”

We kissed. I tasted the sea. Then she pulled back, leaning against me.

“Let’s go rest on the beach.”

We lay down in the sun to dry off.

“This place feels so strange,” she said. “I can barely remember when we got here.”

“We came from that building where you met Charlotte.”

“Oh, yeah. I remember now.” She sat up and looked around. “Is she coming?”

“I don’t think so.”

MJ rolled on her side and looked at me. “I feel so bad for you,” she said, “about your family. I can’t imagine what it must be like.”

“It’s all I knew.”

“Is that why you have all these girlfriends? You’re making your own family.”

I hadn’t thought about it that way, but she was right. “Maybe.”

“I have like thirty cousins. I probably couldn’t name them all if you made me.”

“That seems just as strange to me.”

MJ laughed. “It’s just what it is.” She propped her head up on hand. “I feel like I know all your secrets. Ask me one of mine.”

“You don’t know them all.”

“I know enough. Just ask. I’ll answer.”

It felt wrong, somehow, asking her anything secret in this place. She would tell me things she would never tell me otherwise. But I had to continue it.

“Have you ever been in love?”

She laughed again. “Oh, fuck that, ask me something you really want to know.”

“Like?”

“Like . . . when did I realize I liked girls.”

“When did you?”

“I was maybe twelve when I started thinking about it. Fourteen when I knew. There was this other girl on one of my soccer teams. She liked me too. I slept over at her house a few times, and we fooled around. She gave me my first orgasm. Then her parents got suspicious and basically banned me from their house. Nobody knows that story either. ”

“That’s better than any of my secrets.”

She crawled over on top of me. “Did that turn you on?”

I laughed. “Maybe.”

She kissed me. “Meet me in bed and show me how much.”

Then she got up and ran for the cottage.

◆◆◆

“This is the most amazing sex I’ve ever had,” she said. “You make me come so hard. Does my pussy feel good?”

I’d gotten used to the completely unfiltered things her dream-self said to me. Unfiltered responses worked best.

“It’s great. You’re really tight.”

“You’re only the second guy I’ve been with, and he was kind of small. I don’t like dildos. That has to be why.”

“Really, it’s awesome.”

“I want to be one of your complications. I really like Hayley and Katarina. I want to be with them too. Katarina is so fucking hot.”

I kissed her. “You will be.”

“Does she have a nice pussy?”

I laughed. “You have no idea.”

She laughed with me. “How do we make it happen?”

“Do you remember the ward I need to cast on you?”

MJ flickered next to me, as if the subject was pulling her into lucidity. “Yes.”

“It won’t work unless I love you.”

She reached up, laying her hand against my cheek. “Then I love you, Jimmy.”

I looked down at her, at her big brown eyes and thick hair spread all around the pillow under her. As much as I knew this was the dream world, the weeks we’d spent here together had gotten to me. I loved her now. I wanted her in my life. The ward would work.

But now I needed to ease her out of this.

“This is a dream, MJ. In a moment you’re going to wake up, and we’ll be back in that park.”

She flickered again. Her face twisted in distress. “This can’t be a dream. It feels so real. I love you. I want to stay here.”

I kissed her again.

“I’m sorry, MJ. I hope we can make this work.”

◆◆◆

I drifted awake. I was badly disoriented after so long in the dream world. My eyes drifted around, seeing Katarina and Hayley nearby. For a few moments, it didn’t seem real. That beach had been real, and this was so different.

I finally looked up at MJ. She’d clearly just awoken as well. She blinked at me.

I sat up slowly. She ran her hand through her hair, eyes wide.

“Did you . . .” she asked.

“I’m sorry, MJ. Like I said. It was necessary. The ward won’t work otherwise.”

Her eyes went unfocused. “Fuck.” Then she looked at me, swallowing hard. “We were there. On that island. It felt like a month. Or longer.”

“I know. We were.”

“The things I told you . . . that we did . . .”

“They’re private. I can pretend it never happened. But I had to do this for the ward to work. It will now.”

She took a ragged breath. “I meant it. In the dream. It happened.”

“This is between us,” I said. “You can just tell me what you want to do with it.”

She nodded rapidly. “Yeah. Okay. That works.”

We had to drive about half an hour back down the highway to find a jewelry store that had a piece of fire opal we could use, but the rest of it was a trip to the nearest grocery store. I powdered all of it and sprinkled it over MJ as I recited the incantation. When it was done, MJ gasped softly.

“I felt . . .”

Hayley’s eyebrows went up.

“You did?” she asked.

“I’ll explain later,” I said.

We took her home. She gave me a quick hug and went inside.

Chapter 25

I checked my phone repeatedly for any news about what had happened at Deirdre’s house, but there was nothing. I downloaded a police scanner app and finally found a mention of the 911 call. It was just listed as a domestic dispute.

“Assuming the collective doesn’t tell the police anything,” I finally said, “which I can’t imagine they will, we should be okay. The wards will protect us. They won’t be able to track you now either.”

“About that,” Hayley said.

“What about it?”

She kept her eyes on the road. “You and MJ were asleep together for about twenty minutes. What happened?”

“There were some things I had to do to make the ward work on her.”

“What things?”

“Do you want to know?”

She looked over at me now. “Jimmy, I told you that first night I found you in the lab. I can handle weird things. I think I’ve proven that a hundred times over. What I can’t handle is dishonesty or deception.”

So I told her everything.

“It was the only way,” I said when I was done. “If the ward on her were to fail, they could use her to get to you guys. I can’t let that happen.”

She didn’t say a word the entire time I was talking. Now she nodded, but didn’t look at me.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m not mad. I just . . . need to process this.”

“Okay.”

◆◆◆

She was quiet and distant the rest of the day, even when we went down to the beach after lunch, even when we were all sitting on the balcony around their firepit after dinner. I gave her the space as best I could.

I started and deleted about twenty texts to MJ that afternoon, before I finally gave up around seven and decided to keep it simple.

I’m sorry for hurting you

She answered me almost immediately.

Sometimes things you have to do still hurt

Either way, I’m sorry

Almost all the things I can remember telling you in that dream were true

Just most of them were things I wasn’t ready to tell you

I’ll forget them until you’re ready

Thanks

You’re a good guy Jimmy

Was the stuff you told me in the dream true?

Yes

The thing I felt when you cast that ward?

Yeah, that too

I’m sorry

Understand that world is very different for me

It was like actually being there for weeks with you

Living it almost

It’s okay, Jimmy

I understand

Really

So we’re good?

Yeah, we’re good

Just

That part about being one of your complications?

That was something I was about ready to tell you

So you don’t need to forget it

Okay

I won’t

Good night, Jimmy

Good night

◆◆◆

I wasn’t sure where I was sleeping that night. But as I drifted into my room, Hayley appeared in the doorway.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

She came over and took my hands. “I’m done processing, and I want you to come to bed.”

“Okay.”

“Jimmy, I love you. I do. I’ve known pretty much from the very beginning that you weren’t going to be a normal boyfriend, and I’m okay with that. And, we’re complicated, like we keep saying. So this isn’t about the feelings you have for MJ or whatever happened in that dream. I honestly don’t care about any of that. I’ve just been wondering why, over three months, you never tried to pull me into your dreams like you did with her.”

I sighed. “Before today, I had no idea I could do that. Charlotte was always telling me that was a thing only the two of us could share. I guess she was wrong, but she doesn’t know much about dream magic.”

Hayley nodded. “Okay. That makes sense. But . . . would you try tonight?”

“With you?”

“Yes. I’ll try to wait for you, in my dreams, however that works.”

I smiled and leaned down to kiss her. She hugged me.

“I’ll do my best. But baby, you realize things are very different in there. I’m . . . like a god, basically.”

She smiled up at me wickedly. “So you could make me come for twenty minutes like you do with Katarina?”

I laughed. “Is that what you want?”

She laughed softly. “Let’s try five and see how it goes.”

So I brewed up some of the mugwort tea for her, and we went to bed.

◆◆◆

I was becoming so adept at moving between the two worlds that it seemed to happen almost right away. Charlotte was waiting under the rotunda.

“You spend almost as much time here now as I do, Master.”

“Hayley is coming, if I can bring her.”

“I know. I am amazed at what you’ve been able to do. I had no idea such things were possible.”

“You don’t care about sharing our private little world?”

She laughed and hugged me tightly. “Master, are you asking if I care about meeting the other women you love in a way I can talk to and be with them? The answer is yes, yes I care, and I love this. I cannot wait to meet her.”

“Okay.”

I had to sit down and concentrate. I had to find her like I’d found MJ. At first it was just empty, nothingness, a void. But as I reached out, I began to sense something, threads that stretched away from me, out of my dream world. I hadn’t noticed them before because I’d always been focused inward when I was here, focused on Charlotte and the things I needed to do.

And when I focused on the threads, they came into better view. They weren’t all the same. Each was different. But there were more of them than I expected. It was hard to tell how many, but there were at least four of them.

One seemed familiar. It was thin and new, barely more than a few strands. But it was growing. As I looked at it, I saw where it led. To MJ.

The next was larger, and I knew right away who it was: Hayley. It was thicker and stronger than MJ’s. I could see it slowly knitting itself into something more. It wasn’t indestructible, but if it continued growing, it would be very strong in time.

The third one was something else. It wasn’t growing. It was already the most it could possibly be. It wasn’t a thread, or even a rope. It was like a six-inch steel cable, something strong enough to hold up a suspension bridge. It would never break no matter what tension it was put under.

That was Katarina. We were stuck with each other, as I knew.

But the fourth was different from the others.

It was old, dense, stained, darkened with age. It wasn’t growing. If anything, it was slowly decaying. Some kind of steam, or smoke, rose from it. And unlike the others, which seemed to radiate outward from me, this one went down.

Down seemed meaningless in this place, which had no direction, but there it was. The other three led to the material world. This one did not.

After a few moments, I realized where it led.

Amalia.

Or more properly now, Amira.

My once-grandmother, now a Duchess of Hell. We were somehow still connected. She was still out there somewhere. I could reach her, if I chose to.

But now was not the time. I had a promise to keep.

After what I’d done with MJ earlier that day, it was simple. A gentle tug on the thread, and Hayley was there, standing in the center of the temple.

I went to her. I saw the same disconnected look I’d seen in MJ’s eyes. She was dreaming and didn’t know it, didn’t know she wasn’t really here, that this wasn’t reality.

She saw me and smiled. “Jimmy.”

“Hey.”

“I don’t know where we are. We should explore. This place looks amazing. There could be things here you could use.”

I took her in my arms. “Hayley, baby, you’re dreaming. You’re in my dream temple. I brought you here, like you asked.”

She flickered. For a moment or two, I wondered if I’d woken her up. But then the distant look faded from her eyes, and she looked around in wonder.

“This is it? We’re here? You really did it?”

“Yes.”

“I’m dreaming this. I can feel that. But it feels so real.”

“It is, in a way.”

Charlotte came up to us. Hayley looked toward her and gasped.

“Hello, Hayley. I am so happy to see you here.”

“You’re just like I imagined,” Hayley said. “What Jimmy told me. You’re so pretty.”

They embraced, laughing. Hayley turned to me.

“I love you. Show me everything.”

We showed her the baby first, our spirit child. I had told Hayley and Katarina about her the morning after I learned about who I was, so it wasn’t a surprise. But she still stared down, wide-eyed, as Charlotte passed the little girl to her.

“This was what you were?”

“Yes,” I said.

“There’s something about her. She . . . she doesn’t seem quite real.”

“She is not,” Charlotte said. “What they did to bring Jimmy into the real world is magic beyond anything I am familiar with.”

“And it killed Mary-Beth,” I said, “so I don’t anticipate trying to repeat it.”

Hayley hugged her, kissing her head. “Does she have a name?”

I looked at Charlotte. We had never discussed it. She glanced at me, then the baby.

“Else,” she said. “My mother. I did not mean to name her, knowing what she is. It just came to me once as I held her.”

Hayley laid the baby back in her little bed. Then we walked around as I explained what I’d created here, the library, the laboratory, the computer room, and finally, the bedroom. Charlotte sat on the edge of her huge golden bed, smiling.

Hayley laughed, looking around in amazement. “This where you live?”

“Yes,” Charlotte said. “What do you think?”

“It’s like a palace. Like you’re a Disney princess.”

“That was what I had in mind,” I said.

“This bed is big enough for six people.”

“It will fit three well enough,” Charlotte said.

Hayley drew in a slow breath. “The thing is . . . I was kind of wondering . . . are you . . . ?”

Charlotte smiled. “As a mortal woman, no. But here, I am happy to be whatever Jimmy needs me to be. There is nothing I would enjoy more right now than making love with you, Hayley.”

Hayley looked at me, biting her lip. “Do you remember what we talked about, before we went to sleep?”

Charlotte laughed. “I heard your discussion. Be careful what you ask for.”

“Has he done it to you?”

“Yes. Several times.”

With a thought, I made their clothes go away. Hayley gasped when she saw Charlotte naked.

“Oh, my God. Your breasts are . . .”

Charlotte smiled, reaching up to hold herself. “Jimmy gave them to me. I love them.”

Hayley turned to me, grinning. “Give me boobs like that.”

“Baby, I love your boobs the way they are.”

“Oh, just shut up and do it. This is a dream.”

So I gave her the same huge, ridiculously firm and upturned breasts I’d given Charlotte. She laughed and felt onto the bed, feeling herself. The two of them climbed under the covers, still laughing. Charlotte pulled Hayley to her, and they began kissing. I wanted to see them together, so I had them briefly forget about me. After a few minutes of kissing and fondling, Hayley reversed herself over Charlotte and they were soon licking eagerly at each other.

I lay down beside them. Hayley looked over.

“Where did you go?”

“I’ve been right here. Keep going.”

She dove back in, and it was that moment that I made both of them orgasm, then locked them right at their peaks. They held each other tightly, moaning and shuddering and trying to keep licking. I climbed behind Hayley and entered her spasming pussy with my giant dream-cock. She cried out in surprise. She could handle it here, but I hadn’t told her about it.

“Jimmy!”

“I warned you what it was like here.”

“God!”

But she was too consumed with pleasure to say anything else, and I commenced fucking her tight little butt as Charlotte continued licking up at us. It was all they could do to hold onto each other as wave after wave of orgasms crashed over them. I came into Hayley with a grunt, burying myself inside her. When the tide of my climax passed, I withdrew and rolled them over, putting Charlotte on top.

I went around above Hayley’s head, where she lay between Charlotte’s thighs. She shook and moaned even as her eyes widened in shock at the size of me. I thrust into Charlotte, and Hayley pulled herself up to lick. After I came into Charlotte, I rolled them apart and spread Hayley’s legs. She looked down at me, laughing around her endless orgasm.

“That thing is impossible. Fuck, Jimmy!”

I moved into her slowly, letting her feel every inch of it. She moaned loudly as I stretched her out. When I was completely inside her, I began pounding her as I held her knees, watching those big cartoon tits bounce around on her chest.

I used them like that for what felt like hours, one after the other, keeping them orgasming continuously until they were begging to be released. But only when I was done with them did I finally let them go and lay down between them.

Hayley flopped over onto my chest.

“I said five minutes,” she gasped. “That seemed like five hours.”

“Time moves differently here,” Charlotte said weakly.

“How can you stand it?” Hayley said.

“This is my existence now. I would not trade it for anything.”

I pulled Hayley to me and kissed her. “I gave you everything because I’m pretty sure we can’t do this too often.”

She rolled on her back and felt her big dream tits. “Yeah, that’s fine. I think I’m good for the next year.”

◆◆◆

When we woke, Hayley was in the exact same position against my chest as she’d been in the dream. Katarina lay on her side watching us, smiling.

“That must have been quite a dream.”

Hayley stretched and rubbed her eyes. “I can still feel it.” She looked over at Katarina. “What did you feel?”

“It was not necessary to feel it, though I could. You were moaning and shivering and writhing around in your sleep for a very long time.”

Hayley seemed to notice something and reached under the covers. She began laughing.

“Oh God, Jimmy, what did you do to me? I’m a mess.” She laughed again. “I have to change my pajamas before we go upstairs.”

After she got up and went to the bathroom, Katarina reached for me.

“Do you need me, Jimmy? It seems the dreams are different for Hayley than what they are for you. It was obvious she was orgasming in her sleep.”

I lowered my voice. “How long was it?” I asked.

“Perhaps half an hour. I was quite impressed.” She smiled. “So what about you?”

“If you feel up to it.”

She smiled. “I am always up for it.”

As she pushed back the covers and bent to take me in her mouth, I began to think about something.

I brought MJ into my dreams. I brought Hayley. Could I bring Katarina in as well? The connection was there, far stronger than the others. And if brought her in, there were things I could change, just as I’d changed things with Charlotte, MJ, and Hayley.

The only issue was that she didn’t sleep. Did that matter?

As I sank into her throat, I decided I wanted to find out.

Chapter 26

There was only one thing left to do, one more trip up to Zagan’s Rock.

I wanted MJ there, but her mother needed her at the fruit stand that morning. We made plans to pick her up after lunch.

So the three of us went for a walk on the beach. Charlotte ran around in front of us, looking for anything interesting in the sand.

“I am never, ever going to look at her the same again,” Hayley said.

I laughed. “You understand now why I’m so attached to her.”

“Yes. She’s wonderful. And that dream was insane.”

“I really am just fine with your boobs. Dream or not.”

She squeezed my hand and leaned against me. “Keep lying to me like that. It’s okay. I don’t want boobs like that in real life anyway. I’d have to start wearing bras again, and I know you like me this way.”

“I do. And that’s why, actually.”

We walked past the point where I found Stephanie’s ring, and I suddenly wondered about something Volach told me. We can locate, and assist in locating, items with connections to the infernal bureaucracy. Did that apply to the divining rod? It found those gold coins, and they were on land that the collective owned. The collective definitely had that connection. But there was no connection to Stephanie’s ring that I could see. So maybe he meant something else.

And like the devil whose name is spoken, my demon phone rang.

It was Morax.

“Hey, kid, how’s it going?”

“We’re good.”

“Just wanted to update you on a few things. That book is back where it belongs. Audit went fine, thanks to you. Big man is happy and everyone looks good, which is how we want it.”

“Okay.”

“So anyway, me and Volach were talking with Astaroth afterward. Turns out he knows who you are, which neither of us realized. Seems he hadn’t made the connection. Had to do with something that went on a little while ago. Maybe you know what the fuck I’m talking about already?”

I closed my eyes, sighing. “I do.”

“Huh. I figured you would. Volach was fucking baffled. Anyway, once Astaroth put two and two together, he got all excited. Said he was going to have some things for you to do. So, upshot of that is that it looks like you’ve got an excellent shot at paying off your debt pretty soon. Figured you’d wanna know.”

“Thanks. That’s good news, I guess.”

“I don’t know what it is yet, mind. You know how it goes. Things got to get signed off first, but we’ll be in touch.”

After he hung up, I turned to the girls, who had been listening nervously. I briefly explained what Morax had said.

“It’s Zagan,” Katarina said. “It has to be. Whatever they did with that rock to bring you here from the dream world.”

“That seems logical. And there’s something else I keep wondering about, that has to be related to it. Why, out of all the goddamned places in the world, did Caacrinolaas pick Zagan’s Rock as his hideout? He was in fucking Brazil.”

“You think there’s more to it?” Katarina asked.

“No idea. But there had to be a reason. And I don’t know what else it could be besides Zagan.”

“So what do they want you to do?” Hayley asked.

“I guess we’ll find out.”

◆◆◆

We picked up MJ at the fruit stand. She gave me a nervous look as she got in the car. I remembered our dream as our eyes met, and I could see she was thinking the same thing.

“Jimmy,” she said.

“MJ.”

We drove out to the house. Hayley parked along the road, and we walked up. This time there were signs that someone had been here quite recently – tire tracks on the gravel and weeds of the driveway, footsteps in the dust around the front door. But there was no sign of anything right now.

We went around back. I looked up at the inscription over the gate to the garden, wondering what it was doing, if anything. The latch was still loose, and the gate opened.

Mary-Beth’s marker was around the side of the fountain, which was why I hadn’t noticed it. The inscription was simple.

Mary-Beth Kaplan

March 21, 1955

September 14, 1997

I felt Hayley take my hand. A moment later, MJ took the other.

“This was your mom?” MJ asked.

“Yeah.”

“She had your name,” Hayley said.

“Uh-huh.”

“And your abuela?” MJ asked.

“She raised me. She loved me. She left me the things I would need when I was old enough to handle it. She was family, blood or not.”

MJ squeezed my hand. I squeezed it back. The four of us just stood there for a while until I felt like I was done.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

◆◆◆

We went to lunch. Afterward, we took MJ back to the fruit stand. She exchanged hugs with the girls before turning to me. We hugged, then she pressed her forehead against my chin.

“Just give me some time,” she said. “I can get to where you are, but it will take a little while.”

“You’ve got it. No pressure.”

She let out a long breath. “Will it be as good as it was in that dream?”

Somehow I could hear what she meant by it. “Ask Hayley some time.”

She laughed softly. “I will.”

“See you back at school.”

“Definitely.”

She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and went inside.

On the drive back, I just lay in my seat trying not to think too hard about MJ and the dream we’d shared. It would happen if it happened, and trying to rush any of it would probably end it. I tried to think of something to take my mind off of her.

“You were going to tell me about that girlfriend you had freshman year,” I said to Hayley.

She glanced over at me. “Do you really want to know?”

“Seemed like something you wanted to tell me.”

“It was just one of those things where you really like each other, but you also realize you’re not right for each other either.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“She needed something from me that I just couldn’t give her.”

I pondered whether to ask what it was. I finally decided she would tell me if she wanted to tell me.

She glanced over again. "You want to ask.”

“If you want to tell me.”

“She was a lot kinkier than I was. Let’s just leave it at that for now.”

I laughed. “Okay.”

I wondered, not for the first time, how I had ended up with a girlfriend as awesome as Hayley. Our getting together had seemed like such an accident, but good things just kept unfolding. I reached over and took her hand. She squeezed it briefly and smiled at me. Then she went back to driving.

I settled back in the passenger seat, and my mind drifted back to MJ. I supposed I didn’t need to resist it. Hayley had made it clear where she was on that issue. So I just closed my eyes and relived that dream for a little while.

I felt something twitch in my jacket.

Startled, I reached into the inside pocket and realized the divining stick was still in there. I hadn’t put it away since that day on the beach. When I drew it out, it twitched again.

“Uh,” I said.

Hayley looked over again. “What?”

“I seem to have activated this somehow.” I could feel it. The stick had found something, and it was trying to lead me there.

“By accident?” Katarina asked.

“Well, I didn’t mean to do it. But it’s locked onto something.”

“Where?” Hayley asked.

I focused on it. “It’s a ways ahead. Not close.”

So we kept driving for a while. Not until we got back into San Sebastian did it twitch again.

“Next exit,” I said. We were still a couple of exits from Hayley’s house. But she turned off the highway and came up to the light at the bottom.

“Left,” I said. She drove. We were right in the middle of town, heading uphill away from the beach. It still seemed a few miles away. After we passed through the center of town and kept going on, Katarina spoke up.

“What is up here, Hayley?”

“There’s the mission,” she replied, “but beyond that, kind of nothing. Right after it is a park, but then it’s just ranch land up in the hills.”

A minute later, we drove past the Mission San Sebastian, a long white adobe building with a bell tower at one end. The Christmas decorations were still up, and clumps of tourists were wandering around taking photos. A few blocks past it, the stick twitched again.

“Right, up ahead,” I said.

This led us into a big county park behind the mission. Hayley drove all the way to the end of the parking lot and stopped.

“It’s a few hundred yards ahead,” I said.

She pulled into a parking place, and we got out. I followed the stick across the park up into the hills. There was a hiking trail, but the stick led me away from it. We climbed around and through the chaparral and scrub oak for a few minutes before arriving at a big pile of rocks.

I stared at the rock formation in front of us. There was a big overhang, under which were a lot of smaller rocks. We were a long way from the trail by this point, and there was no sign anyone had been over here in a long time. You couldn’t even see this formation from the trail or the park below.

“Well?” Hayley asked.

“It’s in there somewhere. Whatever it is.”

"Under the rocks?”

“Yeah.”

I got a general fix on it and began pulling the rocks aside. It took a few minutes and some struggling to make any progress, but it quickly became clear that the rocks under the overhang had been placed here by someone. The way they were arranged was too artificial and deliberate.

Finally, after rolling aside a rock the size of a basketball, I exposed a cavity under the overhang. Inside it was a wooden box. Based on the condition of the wood and the way the box had settled deep into the dirt and dust, it had been here for a really long time, maybe a hundred years or more.

“Is that it?” Hayley asked.

“Yeah.”

I couldn’t immediately get it out of the cavity. I had to wiggle and tug on it for about a minute before it finally broke free from the dirt around it. It was a long, narrow case about six inches square on the ends and maybe four feet long. Dust and dark stains, maybe mold or lichen of some sort, covered the exterior, but it seemed to have been far enough in here to be protected from significant moisture. The case was solidly constructed from some kind of hardwood, maybe oak. There was a silver plate with an inscription set into the top, but it was so black with tarnish that I couldn’t read it.

After brushing off the dust, I found a seam that seemed to indicate the lid. With a bit of fiddling, I got my nails under it. Hayley picked at it as well, and with some more work, we were able to get it open.

She gasped softly. “Wow.”

It was a sword. Specifically, a rapier with a basket hilt and a long, narrow blade. It lay inside a velvet-lined depression, though the velvet had long since decayed and begun to disintegrate.

But unlike Stephanie’s ring and the box of gold coins, it was hard to say if it was worth much of anything. It was relatively simple, if well-made, with no significant embellishments. Certainly no gold inlay or gems. It did look like a serious weapon – the edge and point were still sharp – but its worth was difficult to gauge.

“Any thoughts?” I asked Katarina.

“This is very old. I would say it is similar to things I saw in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.”

“I bet this was left by a soldier from the mission,” Hayley said.

“Why would he climb all the way up here and hide it, though?” I asked.

“I have no idea. But have you ever been in there?”

“The mission? No.”

Hayley looked back down the hill. I could just see the bell tower from here. “It’s not quite like the other missions. The whole thing has this creepy feel to it that’s hard to explain. There’s this weird chapel they discovered in the cellar when they were doing some restorations about thirty years ago. It was sealed up for some reason.”

“Weird, how, exactly?” I asked.

“Again, it's hard to explain in a way that does justice to it. The décor is darker. There are little statues in there that don’t look quite right. There’s a big circle carved into the floor with a bunch of symbols around it. The kids around here call it the Voodoo Room, just to be funny. That’s what it looks like, but after all the stuff I've gone throuhg with you, I think now it might actually be something sorcerous. It reminds me of things in your books.”

“None of which explains the sword,” Katarina said.

Hayley shrugged. I looked back under the rock to see if anything else might be there, but I found nothing – there were no more answers forthcoming here. Finally, we went to the car and headed back to the house.

◆◆◆

When we got home, it was just after three. After everything that had happened, I wanted to do some reading, specifically in Liber Somnia. Since it was a photocopy, I figured it didn’t matter if I marked it up a little. I asked Hayley for a highlighter.

“There has to be one in my mom’s office. Hold on. Let me look.”

She went in there and began looking through Stephanie’s desk. Maybe a minute later, she came back out to the kitchen as I was reading.

“Jimmy?”

Her voice was so weak and strained that I looked up in alarm. On her face was as great an expression of horror as I’d ever seen.

She didn’t have a highlighter. Instead, she held a single sheet of paper.

“What’s wrong?”

“I . . . I guess I know where I saw this before.”

She held out the paper. It was a letter. When I looked at it, the disconnect between what I was seeing and what I’d believed about a lot of things was so great that I briefly wondered if I was dreaming.

It wasn’t really anything I hadn’t seen before either. The letterhead was familiar. The name across the top. The fish. The name at the bottom. And the recipient, of course, I knew.

Dear Stephanie,

As this year comes to a close, I want to thank you again for your continued trust in our stewardship of your assets. The success of the collective’s many investments depends on the support and participation of our members, and your support in particular over these many years has been instrumental in our continued growth. I look forward to even greater success in the future.

Best wishes to your family this holiday season. Please do not hesitate to contact me if there is anything you need.

Best Regards,

Charles

◆◆◆

The story continues in Demon Hunter 3: The Breamstone Collective

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