“Uh…we’re just good at sniffing out trouble and we don’t buy those houses to begin with.”
I tromped up the stairs and to the bedroom where I was living out of a suitcase. And I needed to do laundry. I would have to change into that dress that looked exactly like one of the old neighbors. “Yeah, I can exorcise her,” I said, peeling off my wet jeans. “But I do feel bad. Undine are mischievous and kinda stupid, but I can’t blame her for feeling hurt. This is her home.”
“All she really wants is to get married and gain a soul, is that the deal?” Jasper asked. “Could she move on or is she seriously into Sam?”
“That is what all undine want,” I said. “Such crappy magic, to have to convince someone to marry you just to get a soul. I have a feeling she might be more difficult than your usual water spirit.”
“Well, we’re all moving like crazy on the rest of the house,” Jasper said. “So if you’re so confident in your ability to get rid of pesky magical creatures, you better get going. Aw, Hel, you’re killing me…” He was watching me tear off my t-shirt and panties and I was looking very deliberately casual as I reached for my dress, although my pulse quickened.
“Maybe I’m trying to kill you,” I said.
“Mm…” He lunged for me then and grabbed me before I could pull the dress over my head. “Drop it.”
I opened my hand. The dress fell on the floor.
“Jake told me what you did to him in the van,” Jasper said. “I think I need to issue you an unsafe driving violation.”
“Issue…a violation? Oh no, sir. We were going slow…”
He bent me over the bed and thrust right into me from behind, getting right to work as I leaned forward and clenched the blankets.
I really admired how smoothly Jasper mixed work and pleasure.
But while the upstairs was quickly shaping up into a sleek, updated space—Jake had to admit the fireplace looked great when everything around it was given a more modern touch—this grotto was certainly turning into a problem. Either I had to force Maya from her home, or I had to force her into a marriage to save herself, an idea I abhorred to the core of my rebellious heart.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Helena
“BYRON, what do demigods do for a living?” I asked him as I was curled against him, in the space between sleeping and dreaming after a deliciously hard day of work. “Are you sitting on a fortune or anything? I haven’t asked about all of that.”
Beside us, Graham was sleeping. He slept so still I was tempted to check his pulse. He wasn’t used to manual labor from morning until five pm when we had to slow down to avoid getting yelled at by the Avalon Woods Heights neighborhood association.
“I have a manor,” he said. “When the worlds were separated, half the manor went to Sinistral and the other half stayed in Etherium, where Marisa lived. So now I guess she lives in the whole thing. But if we ever had a fortune…ah, no. A fortune doesn’t come with the territory.”
“Well, that seems unfair.”
He plucked idly at my hair and slid a hand down my body. I had taken Charlotte’s advice and made a schedule, although I usually ended up in a man sandwich, like tonight. Sort of. Graham fell asleep while trying to seduce me. His hand was reaching for me like a man who died trying to get to a desert oasis.
“It does seem rather unfair, now that you mention it. I liked being a librarian…but I’m not sure what magical library would want to employ me anymore, now that I stole valuables…so I suppose I will just serve my queen…” He pulled down the V-neck of my t-shirt and kissed my shoulder.
“Your queen is really tired…”
“So is our second…”
“Our second. You said that in the dream too. Like…Lady Hulda was going to have a baby with two dads?”
“That is how I was created,” Byron said. “The guardian of three worlds needs the blood of three worlds. In this case, the seed of two men can mingle together and both will be a part of one child.”
I paused. “So more children. Everyone wants me to have children. And you need to have children, don’t you? To pass on your blood to a future guardian? Part of why I left my family was to get away from the whole patriarchal baby thing.”
“Well…” Byron’s head rested on his hand, his hair falling disheveled into his eyes, such a bedroom look and I loved it. His other hand was still caressing me, stirring me no matter how tired I was, because I knew what that hand could do, and it was never disappointing. “Do you feel as if you simply don’t want children, or is it a fear of being relegated to a second-rate position in life?”
“I don’t hate children. I’d never thought about it. I’m definitely worried that I just won’t be a good mom. Like I’ll only want to pay them any attention on my time, and that won’t be enough for them to feel loved. I don’t want to just shunt them off to boarding school unless they want to go. But I also don’t want to give up a moment of my time.”
“Well, maybe the answer to how I’ll make my living is that I won’t. I will be the guardian of this magic and watch over the Way of Paths, and I’ll also take care of our child. All of your children. So you and Jake and Jasper will not lose a minute of doing what you love. My entire role in the universe is already watching an object. It would be more interesting to watch our children grow.”
“You want to be a demigod stay at home dad? Are you sure?”
He nodded. “I like children, angel. I think I have the patience to be a good father. It’s far more important to me to make sure you have enough energy to please me…but I also want you to know that if you truly don’t want to have a child, not ever…I don’t care about my blood. I will find another way to appoint a successor. I care about you. I don’t want to compromise on who you are. The magical world loves a mother and the power of a bloodline but all I love is you.”
“That’s hot,” I whispered. “All of it.”
He gave me a smile that said, I know.
I put my arms around him. “Can you demon out for me?” I whispered. “And fill me?”
“It’s a good thing for you that you enjoy being filled,” he said huskily, and he stripped off his clothes and transformed for me, his already impressive build becoming truly godlike again. I liked feeling petite against his nearly seven-foot height and strapped arms, corded muscles in his arms and legs. I wasn’t that small of a girl, and it would be very inconvenient if I was, but once in a while, it felt good.
Byron and I embraced for a little while, just making out hardcore while my hands savored the feel of him and I drank in his magic. When he started getting more urgent, his breath quickening, I knew his own control was slipping and he pressed my palms into the bed and sucked on my nipples. Then his tail slipped inside me. Readying me for him.
“Ooh…oh…” I wrapped my legs around him, riding a wave of feeling. “Gosh, all this while Graham is sleeping… What will he do while we’re working on houses and you’re raising the kids?”
“I think Graham has other roles to fulfill. Have you noticed how much time he spends talking to the familiars?”
“I guess he chats with them more than the rest of us.”
“Graham isn’t done with politics,” Byron said decisively, and I might have asked more about it if I wasn’t starting to quiver with the slowly and steadily increasing pleasure.
Byron’s tail slipped out and his cock pressed its way in, a feeling that never ceased to be overwhelmingly pleasurable. I once heard a friend of mine (one who was clearly more free-wheeling than I was at that point) describe sex with an incubus as sex that would make you “take anything and like it” and I got what she meant. As Byron started slowly fucking me, his tail slipped inside my ass, and I was so turned on I was practically drooling.
Which was when Graham suddenly murmured, “Holy shit.”
“Nice way to wake up, isn’t it?” Byron said. “Care to join in?”
“At this point it might kill me not to join in…” Graham gave a bemused head shake, like h
is human side was still wondering what he was doing, but he was already stripping. As if they had done this very move a thousand times already, Byron’s tail pulled out of me and Graham’s cock went inside, his hands reaching for my breasts, the two of them finding a new rhythm almost immediately
To be the girl in the middle of these two was a hopeless surrender to pleasure, words replaced with little pleading moans as my fingernails dug deep into Byron’s muscle. My head was flung back into Graham’s chest, my body torn between the limp surrender of their touch and the exquisite tension of every muscle in my body working with their motion. The pleasure built steadily and all too quickly, but I don’t know how long I could have borne it either. Soon I was screaming out an orgasm. I guess I satisfied them too, but I think I might have fallen asleep before they had even fully pulled out.
Well, that same friend also told me that it took a while before incubus sex didn’t completely wipe her out. She told me that was her favorite part. The amazing sleep.
But she wasn’t trying to renovate a house on a time schedule.
It really was some amazing sleep, though.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Helena
“THAT’S A NICE STORY, mate, but we can’t just become free from our wizards,” a wallaby familiar was telling Graham as he was sitting in the garden with a small but captive audience, sleeves rolled up, necktie on. I giggled behind my hand as I watched him from behind a plant with huge spiky leaves. Concerned politician uniform: go!
“You are free right now,” Graham said. “Yes, I know you’re worried about the covenants, but…you told me magic was about will, correct?” He gestured to a budgie.
“That’s right,” she said. “But I don’t think I’d have the will to defy a covenant. It would never end well for us. And most familiars are happy.”
“Yes,” Graham said. “That’s a good point. When a group in power oppresses another group, they have tactics they employ to maintain that power. Your main tools for resisting would be along the lines of strikes, but considering the private nature of your relationship with a wizard, that is a dangerous option. I don’t want anyone to get hurt. So in this case, what I recommend is to speak out and try to build sympathy for your movement. It doesn’t seem like most wizards are aware that systemic abuse is a problem in the wizarding community. I know it can be really difficult to talk about, but sharing personal stories is a great way to engage the community.”
“I’ve never met a demon who talked like you,” said a skeptical-looking armadillo. And no, I was not aware until this moment that an armadillo could look skeptical.
“Hm.” Graham shrugged. “I guess demons don’t do community organizing. Well, this is a handout…I think I have enough…that one is more of a general tip sheet for how to talk to people about issues you care about. I’m going to do a little more research—”
“So you want us to…tell other wizards and familiars about…our lives?” The budgie was getting puffy and hunkering down like the idea terrified her. “I don’t even know if a happy familiar would believe me.”
Graham whipped a pencil out from behind his ear. “I worked on a bipartisan bill about sex trafficking with a charity…you know what, you don’t know what I’m talking about and you don’t need to either. But I definitely hear you, the victim should not be expected to have to relive the abuse. It’s kind of new territory for me so just, bear with me here. We’ll meet again tomorrow.”
He stood up and immediately saw me standing behind the bush, and then let out a groan. “Were you spying on me?”
“I was just watching you do your thing. Are you embarrassed now? You’re awesome! Are you building a political movement with familiars?”
“I’m probably being very naive and bringing paperwork to a wand fight,” Graham said. “It sounds to me like the magical world still solves a lot with violence.”
“Um…well, when you put it that way…yes. We are barbarians. I trust you’ve read fantasy novels.”
“I am a very low-key Star Wars fan, if you remember,” he said. “So I get it. The beginning half of the movie has all the talk but in the end you fight with a lightsaber. I mean, sure, instead of getting the Supreme Court involved in the 2000 election we could have just handed Al Gore and George W. Bush lightsabers and at least it would make for better television.”
I looked at him a little blankly and for some annoying reason my complete cluelessness about human politics seemed to give him confidence.
“I’m too young to remember the year 2000 anyway,” I grumbled.
He grinned and put an arm around my waist. “All right, my little barbarian witch. You’ll have to keep teaching me about this new world. But what I am used to doing is listening to problems and solving them. Well, trying. It’s often difficult and incredibly complicated. You fix one thing and it causes another problem. But I’d feel like a jerk if I didn’t at least try. And no one has ever even listened to these familiars before.”
“I really had no idea they were hurting,” I said.
“Exactly. I need to find a way to make their stories heard, to start.”
“But before that, Graham, we have to break those covenants. That’s a magical tie between wizard and familiar and it binds them together.”
“No matter what?”
“No matter what,” I said.
“Well, that’s some horse ass.”
“Another great line from your speeches?”
“I am a demon now. Maybe I should talk like one…”
We heard a gate creak open and slow but confident footsteps at the side of the garden, by the citrus grove, and we both peered around the trees to see Isaac fussing around the garden.
“This isn’t good,” he said without preamble, turning on us accusingly. “These plants need water. Do you know how many rare botanicals are in this garden that you’re just letting die? What has your undine been up to? I saw she isn’t working the fountain either. Makes the house look shabby, doesn’t it? She needs to water these plants.”
“Hi, Isaac, um…the undine can’t stay, you know,” I said. “She lives in the pool and no one can use it.“
“You know how to get rid of an undine?” Isaac asked.
“I do know,” I said, reluctantly. I was circling back to the same problem. I felt bad for the undine. I just wanted to be left alone to work on the house. But I could only imagine trying to tell my Realtor and potential buyers, The undine stays.
“Nope!” Isaac barked. “That’ll just make more trouble. She’s sad and that’s why everything’s messed up. I guess she’s heartbroken over Sam. I understand. She’s been here a long time working with the water here, and you can’t just get rid of her or this entire garden will die of drought and your pool will dry up. You have to give her a happy sendoff so she will bless your garden and your pool.”
“Wizard real estate seems like a nightmare,” Graham said.
“Ha! Yes,” Isaac said. “You two don’t want to keep this house, do you?”
“I am planning on selling it,” Graham said. “It’s a great house, but we need more bedrooms.”
“The undine is very moody,” I said. “She’s sad because she misses Sam. I don’t know what to do. She’s so human that I can’t just kick her out like a poltergeist. But we have to do something about her.”
“She just has to get married,” Isaac said.
“Do you want to marry her?” I asked, a little desperately.
“Me? No, no, I just lost my wife and she’d kill me from beyond the grave. I don’t really know what you can do about it, except that maybe you should just keep the house. You’re not bad neighbors, a little high on the drama, but not bad.”
I sighed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Bevan
JENNY HAD BEEN in bed for days now. It was finally quieting down around the house. New familiars didn’t show up that much anymore, just two or three a day. Thankfully there was an end to it all. Most familiars, it seemed, were still pretty h
appy with their witch or warlock.
But I couldn’t forget the pain, because Jenny remained unconscious, clinging to life. I couldn’t get her to eat. I made healing poultices of every recipe I could find. I was barely sleeping because I kept shooting awake to see if she’d stopped breathing. I didn’t dare bring her to a healer in Etherium, considering who I was now. Who my witch had become. The destroyer of Etherium as we knew it.
It was definitely better for me to lay low. Soon, they would come for me too and I would probably have to leave this world and go to one of the other realms.
I’ve been naive, I thought, as I chopped some herbs for another pointless concoction. I’ve never had to look death in the face like this. When Harris lost his familiar all I could think was to be grateful Helena never got herself in any trouble.
Jenny had a lifetime of trouble. Just like Chester, the poor guy.
“Mm…” Jenny made the smallest murmuring sound and I almost cut my finger off.
“Jenny? Jenny. Talk to me. Can you turn human?” If I could at least get her to turn, it would be easier to administer healing.
“Mm…mouth…dry…”
I grabbed a clean cloth and dipped it in a pitcher of water from the spring, then put it to her mouth. She sucked on the rag a minute and then sighed.
Her body suddenly exploded out of the little wooden box I had made into a toad bed and I barely caught her before she fell off the table. I carried her to my bed.
“Warn me first, huh?”
“I didn’t know if…I could.” She winced. “Hurts…”
“You’ve been comatose for several days.” I poured a cup of water for her now and lifted her head as I put it to her lips. “You need to drink and eat.” She looked pallid and skinny, the days of unconsciousness sucking the life right out of her before my eyes, and all I wanted was to restore that life.
Some water trickled down her chin. She tried to wipe it off but her arm had no strength. It fell back beside her head. “Where am I? Who are you?”
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