"Wow," Mara said, for the thirtieth time in a row. It was the only thing she said since they had left the restaurant where Jamie had told her the truth about his former harem of slaves and all of his dealings with magic. He had expected her to react that way. His tale was fantastical and shocking, after all. "I mean, wow!" The only thing he held back was the fact that he had some small amount of Force ability. It just felt wrong for him to reveal his last ace in the hole, even to a proven friend like Mara. The world was just too dangerous, in his estimation.

Jamie nodded, glad for the small addition to her vocabulary. He sensed she was finishing processing everything he had told her. He calmly waited and kept slowly walking her to her dormitory. Drunken youths stumbled across their path, every now and then, since it was late in the evening. The freezing, winter air had snapped Mara out of her initial shock at hearing Jamie's tale and he could sense she was slowly coming to a decision on what she was going to think of it all. Jamie checked his phone's navigation app and saw that they were now just minutes away from the dorm.

"I had thought," she said and paused. "I thought you guys had a kinky but consensual thing going on. I really did."

Jamie shrugged. "It was never consensual," he said. "I wish it had been, that would have been something, but it wasn't. It was what I just told you." He sensed her fixate on an erotic image of herself on her knees, presenting her breasts with her hands and him standing over her and spraying her with his seed. He nodded to himself, slightly bemused. Apparently, Mara decided he wasn't all that bad. Some part of what he had done to his girls appealed to her.

"Look," she said and then searched for words. "This was all very... shocking to hear. I think I need some more time to think about it all."

Jamie nodded. "I understand. You take all the time you need. I'd like to see you again tomorrow, though." He needed to find out what kind of trouble she was in and help her get out of it before he left.

They rounded a corner and Mara said, "This is my dorm."

It was an old building that had obviously been recently restored to its former glory. Its outer walls were covered in white marble and reliefs that depicted long dead people, mostly fighting battles. "Wow," Jamie said, prompting Mara's giggle.

"Yeah, don't worry," she said. "It's modern on the inside. Come on! I'll show you!" She took him by the hand and started to pull him towards the side of the building. "We need to go in through the side entrance. The front doors are locked this late at night."

The more she pulled him towards the door, the more Jamie hesitated. He couldn't sense the mind of anyone inside the building. He could see lights on inside and shadows moving across some of the upstairs windows, indicating there were people in there, but he couldn't sense anyone's mind. He didn't think the magical privacy screen over the building was benevolent, not even for a second. His experiences with magic taught him that privacy shields meant something bad was afoot. The source of Mara's trouble was most probably inside the dorm itself, concealed by magic.

Mara practically dragged him to the side door. "Come on," she urged. She knocked twice on the door and it opened. She stepped inside and her mind vanished from Jamie's radar. He stepped into the dimly lit corridor right behind her and his Jedi senses were immediately overwhelmed by all the minds in the building and the lust that was consuming them. In the split second he had lost Mara's mind from view, it had transformed into an entity of pure, carnal lust, reminding him of Laura and Alessandra under the effects of her magical lubricant. Except that this was a different feeling. When Laura and Alessandra had been under its effects, their minds were overwhelmed by it, but present in the background. Mara's mind was not. She was an empty vessel for all the lust that now filled her. Jamie retreated into his calm center and pulled the rug out from under his fear that she had been permanently transformed.

A stone-faced goon, that looked to be almost seven feet tall and had muscles that dwarfed Jamie's, put a hand on his chest, stopping him dead in his tracks. "You're late," another goon said to Mara. Mara giggled and ran off deeper into the building. Jamie almost sighed in relief. He could sense the goons' minds and he picked up on the fact that whatever had been done to Mara just now, had been done to her many times already and had left no permanent effect. As relieved as he was for Mara's well-being, he was worried for his. The goons' minds were completely obsessed with the idea of obedience to the rules, whatever those were. Jamie felt certain that he couldn't pull a mind trick on either of them, no matter how hard he tried, or how slickly he worded it. He didn't want to fight the goons since his telekinesis would be next to useless in the close quarters of the hall. He'd slam a goon against the wall only for the goon to reach out and punch his lights out. Mara was well within their reach, too. If he made a tussle right now, she might get hurt.

The goon that stopped him gestured with one of his huge arms to the first door in the hallway that the other goon opened. Jamie cast one last look at Mara as she ran around the corner, consumed with lustful excitement, and then he entered the indicated room. The goons closed the door behind him and he was left alone in what looked to be an office. He sensed one of the goons standing guard right outside the door. He wasn't going anywhere. Jamie took the opportunity to reach out and probe the minds of anyone inside the building that could give him any kind of information.

He couldn't count the number of young girls in the dorm since each one had the exact same blank mind, filled with lust and knowing only the desire to please. Jamie got no info from them. He sensed men, other than the goons, in the building and focused on those. There were a few dozen rich guys in the dorm and they were having wild sex with whatever girl they wanted. He quickly gained an understanding of what was going on. The whole dorm had been magically transformed into a top notch brothel that charged an arm and a leg to its patrons, but delivered the greatest sex of their lives. Jamie could sense all the patrons were utterly smitten with the total lack of acting and inhibitions in the many spectacularly beautiful girls they had at their disposal for the whole night.

His fists tightened as he realized Mara had probably been violated and prostituted ever since the first day she had come here. He had first sensed the vague feeling of foreboding that ultimately led him to her, about the same time she had come to Florence. He subdued his anger and focused on a strange mind that was coming his way. She was a woman and she still had her own mind, unaffected by lust. He sensed her thinking about him and wondering who he was. He realized she was the madam of this supernatural brothel and he wasn't on the guest list that she had personally put together. Her mind was strong, but secretive, and he could glean only the minimal of specific information from it. What he did read from her with certainty was that she had no compunction about having her goons throttle him to death and then dig up an old grave in the cemetery to dump his body in. Jamie summoned all his emotions to him to power his telepathy and put his game face on.

He had no idea how the spell that took Mara's mind worked and how he was supposed to end it safely. He guessed it might stop working on her just as it started, by crossing the threshold. The very act of doing so was probably a trigger for a bunch of charms already in place in the mind of every girl that was staying in the dorm. He decided to try and talk his way past the madam and explore the dorm until he found Mara and could safely sneak her out the doors. If he couldn't talk his way into the dorm proper, he'd just have to telekinetically fight his way in. That wasn't a prospect he was looking forward to. When he sensed two more goons following the madam, he decided that fighting was definitely plan B.

The door to the office opened wide and two different goons from the ones that had intercepted him squeezed themselves into the room to brush the ceiling with their short, spiky hair. Jamie gave them a look. Each wore a formal black suit that looked like it could serve as a tent for a family of five in the event of an emergency. He could sense they were wearing guns in shoulder holsters. The madam entered the room and stood between them.

Jamie's jaw nearly dropped at the sight of her. She was tall and had a curvy, hourglass shape that was lewdly displayed in her brief, black outfit. She wore a corset that cinched her waist and pushed up her ample bosom, only barely covering her nipples. From the corset hung straps for her sheer stockings and the straps framed her lacy thong, like it was a bull's-eye. Her dark brown hair was cut into a pageboy haircut and her pretty, narrow face was decorated by a playful grin of her red lips.

"Good evening," she said, speaking Italian in a silken voice.

Jamie kept a stony expression on his face and let some boredom and annoyance creep into his voice as he said, "Good evening."

"And you are," she said.

Jamie pulled a platinum card out of his pocket and said, "Interested to see if this place is as good as its reputation."

For a timeless moment, the woman just regarded him coldly. Then she smiled and said, "It is actually much better. Words cannot describe it. You shall soon see for yourself." She gestured with her hand and one of the goons took the card from Jamie's hand and pulled a wireless swiper from his own jacket pocket. He put the card through the reader and waited for it to clear.

"How did you hear of my little establishment," she asked Jamie.

"From a business associate," he said.

"And what is your business," she asked.

"None of yours," Jamie replied, somewhat harshly. "I have been assured of the utmost discretion. If that is not true, than I'm-"

"No, no, no," she said, raising her hands in a placating gesture. "We do not ask questions here. We merely fulfill dreams and fantasies." The swiper beeped and the goon showed its small screen to the madam. "You are most welcome to partake of all we have on offer..." She paused and looked at the device. Jamie had given them a card that was attached to a numbered account and bore no name on it. "Sir. All the girls are guaranteed to be disease free so you are free to shoot your load anywhere. No girl is going to get pregnant with your seed, that I promise you. You can order each and every girl to bring you anything you want. We have a very popular and well stocked BDSM dungeon in the basement, if you're interested in it." The other goon opened the door. The madam gestured at it. "Please, enjoy!" As Jamie tried to walk past her, she put a hand to his chest and stopped him, saying, "Oh, but do try to remember the one rule we have here. There are no rules. Everything you want, goes. With that in mind, if you kill any of the girls, we will be charging you extra for the loss."

Jamie nodded, concealing how sick hearing that made him feel, and went through the door to explore the brothel dorm. He could sense the woman lower her guard somewhat, now that he was no longer in front of her. She was still suspicious of him, but not particularly so. She had a habit of paying special attention to every new client, both to identify potential security risks and to customize her offer for their greatest pleasure. He soon started to sense hidden cameras and microphones planted all throughout the dorm. He realized that he was going to have to play along and act the brothel patron.

He circulated the downstairs, witnessing one act of debauchery after another. The girls were young and beautiful, wearing either nothing at all or some transparent little nothing that only accentuated their nudity. The smell of sex was thick in the air, mixed with a faint aroma of incense. There was no sign of Mara downstairs and he couldn't make out her mind from all the other girls in the dorm. He suddenly sensed that the madam was paying him special attention. To the best of his ability to read her mind, she was in the basement and watching him on a monitor. He fought the urge to look right into the camera. He could sense her suspicion and he realized he needed to fuck some chick to keep his cover.

He moved over to where two cute, naked Asian chicks were eating each other out for the viewing pleasure of a fat, sweaty and exhausted old man. "Do you mind," Jamie asked politely.

The man just waved his hand and then shouted to a blonde that had walked into the room, wearing only high heels and a pair of handcuffs, "Get me a drink!" The blonde curtsied and left.

Jamie put his hands on the backside of the Asian on top and she immediately responded, pulling her head out of the lower one's crotch and smiling at him. Jamie gestured at his crotch and she reached out to undo the zipper, barely taking her smiling eyes off of his. She reached in and fished out his cock. He was almost at full mast just from seeing all the wild fucking going around. When she gave him a few strokes, he became rock hard. The girl sucked his cock into her mouth and giggled in delight as she ran her tongue across his glans. Jamie sucked in a breath as the girl sucked him with incredible passion and skill. She took him all the way to the back of her throat, swallowing for his stimulation, she tickled his glans with impossibly perfect strokes of her tongue, she gently cradled his balls and ran a loving finger over his perineum. Jamie couldn't contain himself for long. Her ministrations made him forget all about his plight, Laura and Alessandra, his family, Mara, the madam and the goons and he shot his load down her eager throat, yelling unintelligibly as his whole body shook in pleasure.

As he came back to Earth, he realized the girl was still sucking him and he was not losing his boner. The other Asian cutie peeked out from behind her friend's ass and gave him a questioning look. He nodded for her to join in the fun and she slapped her companion's ass. The two delightfully cute and sexy Asians both knelt before Jamie and took turns worshipping his cock. He hadn't had it that good since he had lost his slave harem. The girls undid his pants and drew them down his legs, along with his underwear. He stood naked as two beautiful, young women sucked him off.

Jamie heard a grunt and looked over to the fat, old man. He grunted as he came in the mouth of the blonde that still wore handcuffs. The old man smiled a heavenly smile and then passed out. The blonde kept worshipping his cock, nonetheless. Jamie didn't have the time to be embarrassed as the Asians used both their dainty hands to stroke his shaft, tickle his balls and taint and even run a well lubed finger around and over his anus. Seeing that he didn't object to assplay, one of the girls scooted behind him and started to give him a rimjob, using her hands to tickle his taint and balls. The other focused solely on his shaft and Jamie was having trouble making coherent thoughts. Spurred on by their selfless ministrations, he shot his second load of the night and nearly collapsed in ecstatic exhaustion.

"Help me sit down," he ordered the girls. They did and he ordered them to bring him some refreshments. The Asians curtsied and rushed out of the room. Jamie heaved great big breaths and watched the ass of the blonde that was still kneeling before the sleeping man, licking away at his soft dick. Jamie fought against the sudden rush of tiredness and reminded himself that he was there on a mission. He regained his focus and sought out the madam's mind again. He could tell that she was still watching him closely, but she was splitting her attention between him and a few others.

The Asians rushed back, one carrying a tray with drinks and the other a tray with finger foods. Jamie took a big drink of water and sampled some of the food. The girls quietly offered to bring him anything he wants, but he just told them to sit next to him as he rested. They knelt at the sides of his chair and looked up at him in adoration. Jamie couldn't sense any remnant of their former selves in them. He had no idea who they were and what they came to study in Florence. He felt terribly guilty for abusing them just now and he firmly decided to free all the girls and end this witch madam's nefarious practice. He was going to toss off a heap of anonymous tips to the Carabinieri as soon as he got Mara out of there and hope they fixed things. In the meanwhile, he wanted to find Mara and keep her safe from all the other perverts in the dorm. The madam's words about charging extra for any girls killed were haunting him.

As soon as he got his strength back, he ordered the two girls to come along with him. He got up and resumed his search of the dorm. It was a messy chaos of flesh and fucking and people were changing locations at random, making it impossible for him to conduct a grid search. Finally, he said to his two Asian sidekicks, "Find me a full-bodied, pale skinned, raven-haired beauty with blue eyes. I want to fuck something like that next!" The girls nodded and rushed off to find his next fuck.

Their search was yielding results, but not the right one. The dorm had more than a dozen alabaster skinned, dark haired girls with light eyes, each more beautiful than the last. Most were skinnier than Mara and he dismissed them based on that criterion but, when he sensed the madam paying special attention to him again, he felt he had no choice but to fuck the next girl one of the Asians brought to him. Otherwise, the madam would definitely suspect him.

He bent the big-breasted brunette over a desk in one of the dorm rooms and fucked her from behind. She squealed in genuine arousal and bucked back into him, impaling herself on his cock like it was her only purpose in life. As much as Jamie hated himself for raping the girl like that, he couldn't resist the shuddering grasp of her pussy as she came and squirted all over his balls. He came in her pussy and nearly passed out in pleasure. He barely had the strength to get to the bed and lie down. The girl followed him and licked her juices off his balls and shaft. Despite his best efforts, Jamie was overcome by weariness. He closed his eyes for just one second.

He was woken by one of the goons. "It is morning," the goon said. "Time to leave!" Jamie jumped up and got dressed, feeling like an idiot for having fallen asleep and not gotten Mara out of there. The goon escorted him to the side door. Jamie could sense that all the girls were still slaves to lust with no trace of their original personality. He allowed himself to be shown to the door and then walked out and hid behind a corner. The city was just waking up and dawn was breaking across the sky. Jamie stood still in his hiding place and watched the dorm.

During the next few minutes, several other clients emerged from the side door and parted ways amicably. As they walked away, Jamie probed their minds, but all he could get was their satisfaction at a night well spent and a small degree of sadness. He focused intently on them and got a sense that they were sad because the brothel would not be operable for a short while. They got in their waiting cars and were driven off, leaving Jamie to wonder why they had been told that the brothel would not be operable and he wasn't. Something bothered him. He decided to go back into the dorm and get Mara out. If a goon asked him, he'd just say he forgot something inside.

As he walked back towards the door, the magical privacy barrier faded away to reveal the presence of more than a hundred minds inside. None of the minds were consumed by lust. Each was different and more than most were asleep. The brothel was done for the night. Jamie didn't break stride and instead focused on picking out Mara's mind. Just as he got to the door, he sensed her. She was being led out the back door by a goon. Her mind was her own, but her will wasn't. Jamie's guts churned as he realized Mara was under the effects of charm magic. As quickly as her mind appeared on his mental radar, it vanished.
He used the Force to open the side door and dashed into the dorm. Cutting straight through it was the faster way to the back door. He let the Force guide him as he parkoured his way through the narrow corridors and bounded over furniture. In seconds, he made his way through the whole dorm and was out the back door. He saw two SUVs with tinted back windows turn a corner in the distance. The madam, the goons and Mara had to be in them. Jamie nearly panicked as he realized Mara was most likely in mortal danger. He ran after them with all the speed he could muster. He retreated into his calm center and forced himself to analyze the situation calmly and rationally.

The madam must have been told that he and she came in together and that probably sent her into a frenzy of suspicion. She charmed Mara into coming along for questioning later on at a secure location. He didn't want to think what the madam would do with Mara after she told her all about him and their connection. He hoped his terrible reputation as the Bludgeoner would give the madam some pause and make her spare Mara as a bargaining chip, but he feared most that the witch would just kill her and cut her losses. She had been so blasé about having girls killed. Plus, he had told Mara that he didn't have magic anymore. If he had still been a magician, then he could have hoped for this witch to crap her pants and let go of Mara. "She might disbelieve Mara about me being a mundane," he told himself, but he didn't really buy it.

Jamie rounded the corner they had turned, only to find the road empty. He gasped for breath and cast his gaze about. The cars were already too far away and he couldn't follow them. He saw no security cameras nearby and he retraced his steps towards the dorm. There were no cameras overlooking the dorm's parking lot or the access road. He went back into the dorm itself and found Mara's room. He was shocked to find that all of her belongings were gone. He found nothing he could take and give to someone who could scry on her location. His face took on a grim cast. The witch was probably going to kill Mara and dump her corpse where it would not be found. Why else would she take everything that could be used to scry on her?

Jamie breathed through his rising rage. "I've fucked up," he told himself. "I should have split skulls as soon as I came in and left the mess for the cops to sort out. I should have gotten Mara out, whatever the cost." From his inner place of calm, he let the rage and guilt fade away. This wasn't about him. This was about Mara. He needed to find her and save her. He needed to think about the situation calmly and without passion clouding his judgment. He needed to get into the woman's head and discern her motives and future actions.

"In crime," Jamie thought to himself, "the motive was always either passion or money, or sometimes both." This witch probably got off on enslaving and pimping out young women, but she charged for it. Jamie nearly slapped his forehead and said, "D'oh," as he realized he could trace the money.

He dashed out of the dorm, parkouring his way across and around the furniture and the still half-asleep young women milling about the halls. He went out the side door and ran to his car. He got in and powered up his laptop to trace where his money had gone. It was an anonymous, numbered account, just like the one he had paid her from. He winced. The bank it was in was renowned for its electronic security measures. He had next to no chance of hacking into its database of authorization codes and taking the witch's money to ransom it for Mara's life. Even if he did, she could fix it all in minutes with just a phone call. He probed the network with Nova's algorhythms and managed to find out that the account had been opened around the time Mara came to Florence. He examined the account's activity log and saw that it had no withdrawals. There were only payments to it.

He traced all the payments back to their owners and identified the witch's client list. Now he had something he could bargain with, exposing all of her clients. Jamie paused, not letting his sense of triumph overwhelm him. Why had there been no withdrawals from the account? He cross-referenced the bank accounts of her clients and soon found another thing they had in common in recent history. They had all made similar payments to a different numbered account that had been closed since and had its balance transferred to a bank in Luxembourg, where the funds had been withdrawn in cash. As he looked further back in history, that previous account had more people depositing money into it and he then found records of yet another, older account that the witch had been using to collect her payments. That account's patrons were almost completely different from the ones patronizing her current account.

Jamie wiped his face in disappointment. The witch changed her customers over time. If he threatened her with exposure, she'd likely just retrieve her funds, cut her losses and set up shop somewhere else. And she'd definitely kill Mara in retaliation. He couldn't call the cops to raid the dorm out of fear for Mara's safety. If the girl was even still alive, the only thing that would keep her alive was if the witch didn't know what Jamie's game was and what he was going to do. The witch would be wise to keep her around as a bargaining chip. Jamie chose to proceed as if Mara was still alive. He had no other option. If Mara was dead, than she was dead and there was nothing he could do. But, if she was still alive, then he had an obligation to act accordingly.

He quickly ran through his options. He could go visit all the cemeteries of Florence and the surrounding area, but that would only lead him to the discovery of her corpse after it was too late. He could stake out the account and wait for the witch in Luxembourg after she chose to empty it, but that would also probably only happen after it was too late for Mara. He could try and do a blood scry on the girl, but he feared that wherever she was kept, it would be warded against it. Still, it was an option. He looked up Mara's mother online and found out that she lived in New Mexico. He could call Caitlin Ford in California and have her find Mrs. O'Donnell and obtain a lock of her hair and then fly it to Florence to do a blood scry for him. It was a long shot, but one that would be worth a try.

Jamie had a better idea he wanted to try first. He hacked into the telecom's records and tried to find out how the current clients received notice of when the brothel was in operation. He soon learned they all received a text message with a time and date from a pre-paid burner phone. The phone would be turned off as soon as the messages were sent and it never popped up on the network again, meaning that it was probably immediately destroyed. Jamie retrieved the info of which tower the cell phones had been using during that time and projected it on a map. During the past few months, those burner phones had been used in the center of Florence.

After some more hacking, he managed to find out that the phones in question had been bought just minutes before their use at various shops in the center of the city. He drove to those shops and used the Force to break in and look at their security footage. It was of no use. Half of them didn't have any security cameras, and the other half recycled their tapes so they only had them from the day before. Jamie had no image of the buyer of the phones to run through databases. His lips drew down in a displeased grimace. Their choice of shops was most likely intentional.

His only real option of finding the witch was if he went around and asked her most recent clients how they had heard of her in the first place. He hesitated. That might lead to them calling the witch and telling her that he was looking for her. Jamie weighed the pros and cons for a few minutes. If they did have a way of contacting her, then he'd simply have to beat it out of them first and trace it to the witch madam's location. He looked up the most recent client's address and drove there. It was a villa on the outskirts of Florence. The man, Guido, lived there with his family. He was some kind of big shot, Jamie guessed, based on his security. Jamie parked, got out of the car and walked up to the gate where the armed and armored guard challenged him. Jamie sensed he was new at his post.

"I am invited in," Jamie said, putting all of his Force ability behind his voice.

The guard looked uncertain for a moment, then opened the gate and allowed Jamie to go in. Jamie let the Force guide him to the dining room where Guido was having breakfast with his family. He shook his head grimly. Guido had a teenaged daughter that was only a few years younger than the girls he had been violating all night long. Jamie couldn't fathom how the man rationalized his actions to himself. As he gazed at the man with his enhanced senses, he detected that Guido was carrying an emergency beacon. He sent his senses out and detected that the hub for the system was in the den. Jamie took a photo of the family and then went to the den.

After he disabled the alarm system, he sent the photo to Guido, accompanied by the text, "Come to the den, or I kill them all." He sensed Guido receive and view the picture. Guido then activated his alarm, excused himself from the table and went to the den. He paused in the hallway, looking around for his security staff that should have met him there already. Jamie opened the door and dragged the man inside. "Be quiet," he hissed. "If your family comes here, I'll kill them all." Jamie had no intention of harming Guido's family, but he had to make a very convincing show of it if he was going to get any info out of him. He deposited the scared man into a chair. "The brothel from last night! How did you first come to hear of it?"

"What?"

Jamie grabbed Guido's arm and twisted it, making him yelp in pain. "I told you to be quiet," he said. "Unless you want me to rape your wife and daughter?"

"No," Guido hissed in panic, "please, no!"

"If you don't want me to hurt your loved ones," Jamie said, "then tell me how you first came to hear of the brothel from last night!"

"I don't know what-" he started saying. He was interrupted by Jamie giving him another painful twist of his arm.

"Are you trying to stall for time," Jamie asked. "Your security detail isn't coming. And even if they were..."

"Who sent you?!"

Jamie punched Guido with all his might. It felt good, in a way, for him to be able to vent his frustrations like that. He forced such feelings out of his mind and refocused on the task at hand. He seized Guido's almost insensate form and put him in a stress position on his knees. He applied torque to Guido's shoulders and the man clenched up in agony.

"Wait," Guido begged, "wait!"

Jamie activated the stopwatch feature on his phone and held it up before Guido's face. "You have one more minute to tell me how you came to hear of the brothel in the first place," he said. "After that, I cripple you and drag you to the dining room so you can watch me violate your women, just like you did all night long."

"Are you with," Guido said and groaned in agony, "with the police?"

"Tick, tock," Jamie calmly said.

Guido struggled futilely some more, but he cracked when he saw the timer count down to ten. "Carlo told me about it," he all but yelled in pain.

"Which Carlo," Jamie asked. He could sense Guido was telling him the truth. The man was envisioning a meeting he had with this Carlo where he had been told all about the brothel after they had a few drinks to celebrate a business partnership.

"Carlo Tomassi," Guido said.

Jamie could tell he was telling the truth. He stopped the timer. "And how do you get in touch with the madam of the brothel?"

"I don't," Guido said. "None of us do. She sends us a text message telling us when the place is open for business. We're not allowed to visit there otherwise. She's dangerous! You don't want to cross her!"

Much to his distress, Jamie could tell that that was also true. Guido definitely knew of no way to contact the madam, even if he wanted to do it. "And how does she let you know that the brothel has changed venue?"

"In the texts," Guido said through gritted teeth. "If the place changed address, she'd send us the new address when she sends us the time and date. Let me go! Please!"

Jamie let go of Guido and the man collapsed to the floor in a boneless heap. He nearly cried with relief. Jamie crouched by his head and said, "If you try and tell anyone about my visit and what we just discussed... If you call the cops, Carlo Tomassi, your priest, anyone at all... I'll come back here, slaughter your security, cripple you and make you watch as I rape and cripple your family. All of them. Are we clear?"

Guido nodded frantically. Jamie could sense he had made quite an impression on the man. He stood up and left the villa, giving the guard at the gate a jaunty wave goodbye. As soon as he got to his car, he took control of every number Guido and his family had. Whatever call they made, it would get routed to his laptop first. He also had his server continually record the audio the phones' microphones were picking up. He set one of Nova's old voice recognition algorhythms to transcribe all the conversations and identify keywords in the recordings almost simultaneously as they were being made. If Guido tried to tell anyone about Jamie's visit, Jamie would know about it instantly.

He checked the address of Carlo Tomassi in his list of clients and drove off towards him. He had barely rounded the corner from Guido's street when his daughter's cellphone dialed Tomassi's phone. Jamie put his bluetooth earpiece on and said, "Very well, Guido. I'll be back later to violate your family. Don't worry, I'll bring some friends and we'll make it a real party."

He heard a frightened gasp on the other end of the line and then Guido's tearful voice said, "No, please! Don't! I'm-"

Jamie ended the call and drove on. He received no notices about Guido making any more attempts to tell anyone about Jamie's visit. He found Tomassi at his workplace, feeling smug and satisfied. The receptionist at the front door didn't even look up as Jamie walked right passed her. Tomassi's personal secretary saw him coming and sat up straight to challenge him. Jamie could tell she was too focused after her three early morning coffees to fall for a Jedi mind trick so he smiled a charming smile and said, "Please tell mister Tomassi that Guido Salvatore sent me on a private matter. I'll only take up a minute of his time."

The secretary asked him to have a seat as he waited and then relayed his words to her boss through the intercom. "Mister Tomassi will see you now," she said, after a minute, and indicated the door.

Jamie nodded gratefully and went in. Tomassi was sitting behind his desk, still basking in the delight of last night. His defenses were completely lowered, helped by the fact that he thought Jamie was there on an errand from his trusted friend and valued associate.

Jamie out all his power behind his voice as he said, "I am a close friend of Guido's. I am trusted with the secret of the brothel from last night." Carlo smiled serenely. "I wish to know how to join in the fun."

Carlo gave a small, dismissive wave of his hand. "We just bring you with us the next time it's open and you are vetted at the door," he said. "All we have to do is vouch for you. I vouched for Guido, you know."

"And how do I contact the madam if I wish for something special," Jamie asked.

"You don't," Carlo said. "You won't need to. The place has everything you could possibly want. And even if it doesn't, it will be provided for you the next time you visit. They figure out exactly what you want, even if you don't know it yet yourself. And then they give it to you." He sighed in delight. "It is heaven."

"And how did you come to learn about it," Jamie asked.

"Giovanni told me," Carlo said. He smiled as he revisited that glad memory.

Jamie snuck a peak at it. He gleaned Giovanni's identity and confirmed that Carlo had been telling him the truth. "There is no need to ever tell anyone about this meeting," Jamie said, putting all the power of his mind behind his words.

"No need," Carlo said and nodded.

Jamie left the man's office and checked on the location of this Giovanni character. He was from Milan and was staying in a hotel in Florence. He belonged to an older set of the witch's patrons and he apparently came here just to visit the brothel. Jamie drove to the hotel and was surprised to find that the extremely wealthy man had stayed in a small room near the ground floor. As he went to the door of the room, he sensed the man's mind and gleaned two things: Giovanni was packing to leave for the nearby train station on foot and Giovanni was deathly afraid of heights and flying.

Jamie snorted a laugh and went to the elevators. He went to the top floor and then climbed up on the roof of the hotel. He knew that Giovanni would walk down the side street on his way to the train station. He stood on the ledge overlooking the alleyway and waited. Soon, Giovanni walked down the street, dragging his luggage on wheels behind himself and whistling softly.

Jamie extended both his arms towards the man on the street below and put all his power into seizing him. He felt the man's panic and fear overwhelm him as he began to float straight up in the air. To Giovanni, it felt like gravity had suddenly stopped working for him and it was his worst fear come true. He flailed his limbs uselessly as he floated higher and higher. He was silent as the grave. His voice quit on him in panic.

When Jamie lifted the man to the height of the roof, he made him float there in mid-air and said, "Hello, Giovanni. Let's have a little talk!" Giovanni just stared at him in uncomprehending horror. "You are going to tell me how you first came to learn of the brothel you visited last night and then you're going to tell me how to get in touch with the madam."

Giovanni just flailed his limbs about, looking like he was trying to swim to the relative safety of the high rooftop Jamie was standing on. Jamie let go of the man and he fell. Giovanni's voice came back to him and he screamed as he plummeted to his death. Jamie telekinetically stopped his descent midway and pulled him up to his level again. He gave Giovanni a questioning look with eyebrows raised.

Giovanni was hyperventilating and looking at him with wild eyes. "She," he gasped. "She, she, she, she came to me. Three years ago! She came to me in a hotel in Geneva! She asked me if I wanted to have all my desires fulfilled!" Jamie could tell the man was telling the truth. His blind fear had rendered his mind an open book. "I thought she meant herself and I said yes, but she took my number and then invited me to her brothel! I, I, I can't get in touch with her! No one can! She texts us! She sends us text messages when the brothel is open! It's in an all-girl dormitory next to this Piazza! I forget the address, but I can show you! I swear! If, if, if you want to come, too! I'll take you there! That's all it takes! I take you there and I vouch for you at the door! And you're in! I'll take you there!"

"No more brothels for you," Jamie said and let go of Giovanni. The man shrieked in dread and agony as he fell to his death. The street rushed up to meet him in a scene from his worst nightmares. Just as he was going to die, his descent slowed and he gently landed next to his luggage. He lay prostrate on the floor, his heart beating more wildly that he had ever thought possible. He hugged the cold, unyielding and dirty asphalt of the sidewalk and cried.

Jamie descended the fire escape jumping from landing to landing, using the Force to enhance his grip and strength. When he jumped down next to Giovanni, he stood over the man and said, "You're not going to tell anyone anything about this little chat, are you?" Giovanni shook his head as much as he could, considering that he was shaking all over. "Good boy."
Jamie walked back to his car and got in. He punched the steering wheel in frustration. He had no doubt that he could interrogate each and every one of the madam's clients and not find a single one that knew how to find her. He was plum out of ways to find and save Mara. He went online and connected to Caitlin Ford's phone in California. He uploaded and installed some software on it and then made the phone ring.

Caitlin answered saying, "Hello?"

"Hello, Caitlin, it's Jamie Jacobs! Sorry to call like this, out of the blue, have you got a minute?"

"Jamie, yes! Oh, my god, it's so good to hear from you again!"

"Yeah, you too, Caitlin," Jamie said. "Listen! Are you free these next couple of days? I need to ask you to do me a huge favor."

"Uh, yeah, I'm free. And I owe you my life, literally. Ask away!"

"I need you to help me find a young woman that's in trouble. Serious trouble."

"Sure! What can I do," Caitlin asked, eager to help.

"Do you have any way of scrying on people without having any of their possessions on hand," Jamie asked.

"No," Caitlin said. "Not without a sample from their close relatives for a blood scry."

"Shit," Jamie said. "Alright, then that's what we're going to have to do. Caitlin, I need you to get packed and ready for a trip. The woman's mother is her closest known living relative and I need you to go to New Mexico to find her and obtain some hair for a blood scry."

"Ok," Caitlin said. "I can do that!"

"Thank you, Caitlin. Oh, and don't tell anyone about any of this, ok? I'm kind of a wanted man in the States. If Section ever heard of this call, they'd probably detain you for questioning. This talk we're having is secure. Don't go telling anyone else that I've just called you, or that you're helping me. Can you do that for me? Can you keep this a secret, please?"

"Yeah, sure, Jamie!"

"Ok," Jamie said and sighed in relief. "Your phone has an app on it that tells you where Mrs. O'Donnell's cellphone is. Use it to find her. The app is the yellow target icon in the bottom of your screen. Get packed and go to the airport. I'll make all the travel arrangements necessary."

Caitlin checked her screen and saw a yellow target icon that had never been there before. "Ok, Jamie. I'll get packed in a few minutes and then I'll be on my way!"

"Thank you again, Caitlin," Jamie said. "Thank you so much!" He hung up. He booked a first class ticket on a redeye for Caitlin and then made arrangements for her to fly to Florence. He paid for all the tickets to be in first class. He used the secure communication protocol he had installed on her phone to text her the details of the second leg of her trip and then sat back and ran his fingers through his hair as he tried to come up with another, faster way to find Mara.

As soon as she received the information on how she would fly to Florence, Caitlin dialed a number with a New York area code.

"Hello," Rose Romano said, in a grumpy voice.

"Rose! Hi! It's me, Caitlin! You're not going to believe who just called me!""

"And I'm not going to care, either," Rose mumbled, sleepily. "Fuck you, bitch, for calling at this hour!"

"Jamie just called me!"

After a pause on the line, Caitlin heard Rose say, "What?"

"Jamie just called me to help him," Caitlin said, excitedly. "I'll tell you all about it in the morning! Come meet me at JFK!"

Caitlin hung up, leaving Rose to yell, "Hello," into the phone. The girl sleeping next to her in bed rolled over and grumbled unintelligibly at the loud noises she was making. Rose turned on the bedside lamp, prompting the girl's grunt of protest. "Wake up, Sandra! Caitlin just called and said she's been in touch with Jacobs!"

Sandra Grant's eyes blinked open and squinted up at Rose. "You call her right back," she said.

Jamie couldn't sit still and wait for Ford to find O'Donnell and do a blood scry on her daughter. He had exhausted the money angle and he decided to take a tour of the center of town. That was where the text messages had originated from and he drove around where he could, walked where he couldn't, and used his telepathic senses to stare into every structure, hoping to find one that was hidden from his senses with a magical privacy shield, like the brothel had been last night. He hoped the witch might have an apartment somewhere around there.

After two hours of the search, he had just about covered the city center and utterly exhausted his psychic abilities with all the telepathic staring he was doing. His head was splitting apart at the seams and no amount of rubbing his temples was making the pain go away, or his concentration restore itself.

He parked in the next spot he could find and then walked around until he found a bar. He went in and drank whiskey until his head stopped hurting so much. He most wanted to crawl into bed, cover his head with a blanket and pretend the world wasn't there. He couldn't bring himself to do that while Mara was still in danger. He partly blamed himself for her predicament. He knew the witch and her goons were the real bad guys in this situation. He was the good guy. It didn't stop him from feeling responsible for the fate that befell her. If he hadn't walked into the dorm right behind her, she'd most likely be attending lectures right about now.

He checked his phone and was surprised to see a bunch of notices concerning Helena and Alice Worth. His automated warning system, that he had set up just the other day, stated that they were on an airplane right now, flying to Florence. He couldn't believe it. He wiped his face in frustration and yelled out loud, in slurred English, "You two, too!? Right now!? Fuck my luck!"

Everyone in the bar looked his way so he tossed a bunch of notes on the table, not even bothering to count them, and left. He splashed some freezing cold water in his face from a fountain that was near his car and then got in the X5 to work some surveillance on the Worths. He quickly deduced that they were not using any electronics. "Aw," he said to himself, still a bit drunk, "did the blondes learn about electronics? Well done, girls. Well done! However, HUMINT beats ELINT every time, girls. Every fucking time!"

He hacked into the airline's records and found the names of the flight attendants. He ran background checks on them and picked one. Using his admin-level access to the airline's mainframe, he called the plane itself. He had the attendant that answered bring his chosen one to the phone.

"Hello," said the attendant, a 26-year old, recently divorced mother of a four year old boy.

"Hello, Clarice," Jamie said, doing his best not to imitate Anthony Hopkins, "how would you like to make enough money to pull yourself out of your crushing debt in just one fell swoop? I imagine that would skew the impending custody battle heavily in your favor."

"Who is this," Clarice heatedly whispered.

"Never mind my name, Clarice," Jamie said. "I am the man that is offering you one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for just one, small favor."

After a brief silence, he heard Clarice say, "Who put you up to this? Is this one of Brian's jokes? I swear, I'll staple his-"

"This is not a joke, Clarice," Jamie said.

"What's the favor," she asked, quietly. She sounded tempted.

"Leave this phone on and hide it near the seats of the two blondes in first class that are traveling under the names Riker and Williams," Jamie said.

"That's it," Clarice asked, sounding surprised.

"Yes, that's it," Jamie said. "That's all you have to do to get the money."

"And how do I get paid," she asked.

"I'll wire it to you as soon as I hear the aforementioned blondes talk about what I want to hear," he said.

"No," Clarice responded. "You wire it all now and I plant the phone."

Jamie rubbed his temples. "Plant the phone right now," he said, "and as soon as I hear their voices, I'll wire you half the money. If you leave the phone in place for the rest of the flight, I'll wire you the rest of the money."

After a few moments, he heard Clarice say, "Ok."

He muted his microphone and heard nondescript noises for a few minutes. After that, he heard Alice Worth order a glass of champagne. He nodded grimly and paid his little snoop the first half of her money. The Worth girls were sitting quietly in first class and Jamie gleaned no info from them. He left his computer to record everything and then went out to get some supplies he'd need if he was to fight them. His search for Mara was going nowhere, anyway. He double checked that her phone hadn't popped up on any network, and called around to ask if she had shown up anywhere on campus. She hadn't. His instincts told him she was in terrible danger. He felt it in his gut.

After he got his supplies together, he checked his recording. The Worths had been silent and it sounded like one of them was softly snoring. Jamie finished his preparations and patiently waited to find out what they were going to do. As he waited and meditated, he dozed off himself. When he woke up, it was afternoon and he saw that his recording of the first class cabin now contained a conversation. He listened to it and heard Alice asking her daughter if she could handle herself. Helena brushed off her mother's questions about her sanity and self-control and tersely stated her intentions to have Jamie's family die a horrible, suffering death. Alice didn't disagree with her daughter's sentiment, but she did try to get Helena to understand certain tactical considerations. During their conversation, they mentioned the address of Jamie's mother's house. Jamie grimaced unhappily. There went option A, misdirection. It left him with two options; either grabbing his family and running, or standing his ground and fighting. He decided to fight. He paid Clarice the rest of the money and then burned rubber as he drove out of Florence.

Cops saw him speeding and chased after him, but he paid them no mind. He outran them until the obscuration wards on his SUV foiled their attempts to keep track of him. He tore down the country roads until he found himself on the road that led from the small town he had lived in, until the other day, to his mother's house. He took out his supplies and laid them in the proper places. He assembled robotic mounts that held his AK and Saiga on hills that overlooked opposite sides of the road. He attached miniature cameras to the barrels of the guns so he could aim them remotely. He placed a small IED next to the road and camouflaged it. After his preparations were finished, he thought again of Mara. He still had no idea where to find her.

He made Caitlin's phone ring. "Hello," she said.

"Did you find Evelyn?"

"Hi, Jamie," she said. "Yes, I found her. I got what we'll need to find Mara."

"Good," Jamie said. "I'll meet you at the airport in Florence. Thanks again!"

Before Caitlin could tell him that she had Rose and Sandra with her, he hung up. The three girls poked around Caitlin's smartphone for a few minutes, looking for a way to call Jamie back, before giving up. They shrugged and went to board their flight.

Jamie switched his attention back to the Worths. He had hacked his way into airport security and watched them get a rent-a-car. Chris Welling was with them. Jamie hacked into the company's computers and turned on the GPS tracking to follow their progress. He drove further down the road and parked very close to his mother's house, but still out of sight of it. He patiently watched the blip on his screen come ever closer to his ambush spot. This early in the afternoon, no one else was likely to come driving along, but Jamie swiveled his cameras around and checked that the road was empty, all the same.

Finally, a car showed up on his screen, just as the GPS said it would. Jamie locked on to it and armed his IED. When the car drove through the laser beam, a small, shaped charge went off and punctured its rear tire. The car swerved a lot but managed to stay on the road. It spun half way around as it stopped. Jamie watched the Worth girls exit the car. Alice looked at the tire while Helena berated a stymied looking Chris that got out to change it. Alice began to insist Chris get back behind the wheel and move the car so it was no longer blocking the whole road and Helena began arguing that they should just jog over to Jamie's mother's house while he changed the tire.

Jamie called the prepaid phone he had left next to the tire trap. He watched the Worths argue for nearly a minute more, until Welling pointed out that he could hear something by the side of the road. When the girls shut up, they heard the phone's ringtone, which was Jamie's voice saying, "Answer the phone, girls."

Jamie grinned grimly as he watched Alice change colors in shock at the realization that they didn't have the element of surprise on their side. Helena marched over to his IED and picked up the phone. She then slammed a small bolt of fire into the trap, destroying it and the camera and microphone Jamie was using to watch them. Jamie had high-def cameras attached to the barrels of his AK-47 and Saiga that were positioned on hills overlooking the ambush spot. He switched his screen to those and adjusted the aim of his guns.

"I'm going to kill you," Helena hissed viciously into the phone as soon as she answered it.

"No, you're not," Jamie said, dismissively.

Alice grabbed the phone out of Helena's hand before her daughter could smash it in anger and said, "Hello? Jacobs? Is this you?"

"Why, hello, Alice," Jamie said, in a friendly tone of voice. "Yes, it is me. How are you?"

"Well, I was doing just fine until a minute ago," Alice said. "Puncturing our tire has startled me a bit." Jamie made no comment to her reasonable tone of voice. He saw on his screen that Alice was holding up a finger to Helena to shut her up. "Listen, I think there has been some sort of misunderstanding here. We haven't come all this way to rekindle old quarrels. We need your help with a delicate matter."

"Is that so," Jamie said, noncommittally.

"Yes," Alice said. "We were just on our way to see you when you shredded our tire."

"I see," Jamie said. "So, you weren't going to cut off my mother's eyelids so she could see you slowly boil my sister's skin off until she told you where I was?"

Alice winced before smiling. "You were listening in on us on the plane," she said and laughed a bit.

"I'm always listening," Jamie said.

"Ah, well, cat's out of the bag now, Jacobs," Alice said. "Here's what's going to happen here. We're going to torture you to death. You know you have it coming to you, don't you? Now, if you come to us and don't make us chase you, then we need not do the same to your family."

"Here's what's going to happen here," Jamie said, parroting her words back at her. "This vendetta of ours ends here and now. Either you are going to change your tire, drive back to the airport and fly back to the States and get on with your lives, or I'll kill you and bury your bodies where they'll never be found."

Alice gave a small laugh. "Those are some mighty big words coming from you," she said. "May I ask how exactly you intend to kill two powerful and experienced sorceresses and a guy that can snap you in half with one arm?"

"With ease," Jamie said.

Alice laughed out loud and repeated his words to Helena, who remained stone faced. "This is a waste of time," Helena snarled. "Chris, let's go!" She gestured and the two of them started jogging towards Jamie's mother's house. Jamie adjusted the aim of the Saiga and fired one enchanted water round into Welling's knee. Chris cried out in pain and collapsed in a heap.

"Take cover," Alice yelled at her daughter. She gestured as she ran towards the car. "Behind the car's engine block!" Helena and Alice dashed behind the car, leaving Welling to lie in the middle of the road. "You said he didn't have any enchanted rounds," Alice yelled at Helena, reproachfully. Alice personally enchanted the bracelets the three of them were wearing with a spell that made all projectile weapons curve around them. She had done it when they got off the plane. There was no way for them to have expired already.

"He's not supposed to have any," Helena shot back. "The French took them!"

"Fucking French pansies," Alice muttered. She picked up the phone and snarled, "Do you think one lucky shot will stop us? Huh? Do you really think that will be enough? After repeatedly raping my girl and taking her power from her? After raping me?" Alice laughed a bitter laugh. "Jacobs, we are never going to stop. We will see justice done!"

"Justice," Jamie said, adjusting the aim of the AK the girls were still exposed to. "What do you know about justice, Alice? Do you even know how to spell the word?"

"Fuck you, you uppity, little shit, I'm going to-"

"I was drained first," Jamie said, cutting Alice off. "I was just living my life, minding my own business, when your daughter decided to shorten my lifespan so she'd look better. I had no say in the matter, no choice."

Alice put his call on speaker and said, "Do you seriously think that somehow justifies what you did to her?!"

Jamie laughed and said, "Are you going to play innocent with me? Who is that boy you left to slowly crawl to cover? Oh, wait, I know him! He's that rapist that took your daughter's power away from her. Actually, she had given it to him of her own, free will, as part of the process of permanently enslaving him. Yes, your daughter is such an innocent victim in this matter," he said, sarcastically. "She had never been slowly killing people or taking slaves."

"What you did to me was way worse," Helena shrieked.

"What I did to you was karma."

"Fuck you," Helena yelled. "And I suppose my mom also deserved to get raped?"

"Yes," Jamie bluntly said. "I'm sorry, Alice, but you truly did. You abused your power to destroy my mother's life and put her through hell. You had her shipped off to jail where she got strip searched by strangers who then stuck their fingers into her body to check her cavities. For that, you deserve to get raped with a barb wire condom every day for the rest of your life, as far as I am concerned."

"I am not going to sit here and discuss morality with a boy that managed to squeeze off one lucky shot," Alice said. She hung up the phone and said to Helena, "Let's cast a spell to draw-"

Jamie interrupted her by overriding the speaker on the phone and saying, "Say goodbye, girls!"

"Fuck you, Jamie," Helena yelled. "You can't defeat us by hacking a fucking phone!"

"How about by blowing your mother's brains out," Jamie asked. He activated one of the many laser pointers he had on robotic mounts. It left a red dot right in the middle of Alice's forehead. Helena gasped in fright seeing it.

"What," Alice said. She gasped at seeing a red dot on her daughter's forehead. Her eyes went wide.

"What about you, Alice," Jamie said. "Would letting Helena live be enough to make you turn away and get on with your life?"

Helena reached up with her hand, as if she could wipe the laser beam off her skin. "Wait!" Alice threw up her hands. The thought of seeing her daughter die right in front of her was too terrifying to bear. "Wait!"

"Run," Helena yelled, letting loose a spell that kicked up the snow on both sides of the road for concealment. It was a good idea, and it completely defeated Jamie's ability to aim at them. He pressed a button that made the robotic hand cycle the Saiga's recoil setting selector and then pressed another button that made it eject the chambered water round. Next in the box magazine was a fireball round. The shotgun had already been aimed at the car. He pressed the fire button and a fireball exploded upon contact with the front wheel of the car, on the opposite side of where the trio had been hiding. The curtain of snow dissipated immediately and three figures were blown off their feet to land in the ditch next to the road. The car itself slid sideways a foot.
With the cover screen gone, Jamie adjusted the aim of his AK and fired one enchanted bullet which tore through all of Helena's magical protections and went straight through her shoulder. Helena shrieked in agony and rolled on the ground. Welling threw himself over his mistress to act as a meat shield for her. Alice groped blindly for a few moments before she found the phone.

"Stop," she yelled into the gadget, hoping it still worked. "Please, stop!"

"Why should I," Jamie asked, coldly.

"Please, please, please," she begged, while her daughter mewled in agony. "We'll go away! We'll never come back! We'll leave you alone!"

"Never," Helena screamed from under Chris.

"Yes, we will," Alice yelled. "We'll go away and forget all of this! I swear! I'll make her see reason! This vendetta is gone! Over and done with! I swear! It's done. Just let us go, please!"

Jamie watched on his screen as Alice Worth knelt in a frozen field on the side of a back road in Tuscany and begged him for her daughter's life. "How the fuck did it come to this," he asked himself. He used to play with the girl he had just shot, back when both of them had been little.

"Jamie," Alice said, her voice trembling with emotion. Her eyes were scanning the hill where his hidden rifle was installed and they nearly found the lens of the camera in their sweep. "I know you're a good boy. Man. You're a good man. You want to be a good man. Deep down inside, you're the little boy that used to play with Helena. Please, don't become the big, bad man that kills her. Please, Jamie. I swear to you, on her head and mine..." She drew a shuddering breath. "That we will leave you and your family alone. I swear."

"I'll kill him," Helena screamed.

"I'll make her see reason," Alice said. "Please, Jamie! Please don't take my baby girl away from me!"

"Funny that you should be begging me for that," Jamie said. "When you were gleefully talking about how you were going take my sister away from my mother, right before her eyes, just hours ago!"

"Please, Jamie," Alice begged. "Please, stop this! I think you're tired of killing and violence. I know you're a good boy-man! Be the bigger man! Show us mercy and we'll let go of vengeance! Please, let us go! Please. I promise you, you won't regret it. Not ever."

Jamie muted his mic and sniffed. He wiped the tears from his eyes and cleared his throat. Seeing Alice beg so desperately and earnestly was quite distressing. It was almost enough for him to tear up. He needed to make a show of ruthlessness, lest they try this again, sometime. He retreated into his calm center and opened his mic again. "Alright, Alice," he said, in a blasé tone of voice, "I'll let the three of you go. For old times' sake."

Alice repeatedly babbled, "Thank you," at the phone in her hand.

"You have four hours to get out of Italy," he said. "After that, I kill you."

"No," Alice said, "we will! We'll go!" Helena let out a shriek of frustration. "Hush, baby!"

"Just remember, Alice," Jamie said. "I am always watching. I am always listening. The next time you see a chance to have your vengeance and decide to seize it, I am not going to let you get nowhere near this close. I only allowed you to come this close to make a point. To let you taste it, if you will, before I snatched it away from you. The next time you decide to come after my family, you will die. There will be no warning. There will be no mercy. There will be no torture. This vendetta of ours will only have one more chapter written to it and it will be a short one that reads, 'And the Worth girls, brimming with confidence, walked blindly into Jacobs' trap and were dead before they even knew it'."

Jamie disconnected his microphone and took his earphones off. He got out of his car and wiped the tears from his eyes. After he took a moment to compose himself, he turned back to his computer and watched Alice and Chris help Helena sit up next to the car. Alice tended to her daughter's wound while Chris gave the car a quick once over. He gave the girls a shake of his head. Alice and Helena looked to be arguing.

Jamie made a timer appear on the phone next to them and made it beep. The timer ticked away the four hours they had to get lost. He watched Alice pick it up and then quickly set it down again to tie the triangular bandana from the first aid kit around Helena's shoulder. Chris helped Helena stand up and the three of them began to walk back the way they had come. Jamie swiveled his cameras and followed the trio. After they walked out of his camera's views, he followed the GPS on the phone Alice was carrying. He expected them to send Welling on ahead with the phone while they circled around to attack his mother's house. Jamie picked up the remote control for the toy airplane he had bought and fitted with a camera. He took off and followed the trio from the air as they walked away from his mother's house. The toy plane was very quiet and it had one of Jamie's Colt 1911s mounted under it. If the Worths turned around, Jamie was going to blow their heads off.

The trio kept walking until they came to an intersection. They rested there, for a minute, and Jamie watched as Alice tended to Helena's wound some more. He saw, on the screen, that a truck was coming towards the trio. He saw Alice clean the blood off Helena's thick, winter jacket with a spell. The girls flagged down the truck and the trio boarded it, after a quick talk with the driver. The truck rolled on down the road, away from his mother's house and away from the small town were the Rossi girls lived. Jamie heaved a big sigh of relief as the truck kept on driving.

He kept the plane following the truck, mostly on autopilot, and drove back to the ambush point. He cleaned up all evidence of his intervention and then telekinetically shoved the rental car off the road. It took him several exhausting shoves to accomplish that. He looked up at the dusky sky and gulped cold air after he finished. He kept following the truck until his plane indicated it was running out of fuel. He landed the plane in an empty field and followed the GPS. He turned on the phone's mic to check and see if any of them had gotten out and doubled back. He heard both the Worth girls quietly talking in English and sighed in relief. After listening to their whispered conversation for a few more minutes, he couldn't help but burst out in tears. Alice was convincing Helena to let go of their vengeance and the girl was reluctantly agreeing with some of what her mother was saying. It seemed that a shot through the shoulder all but inoculated her against the idea of revenge.

Jamie sat in his car and let himself cry. He wasn't sure why he was crying. He had many valid reasons. He had saved his family from being tortured to death. He had shot a girl he used to play with. He had shot a girl he had kept as a sex slave. He had gotten Mara kidnapped. He had had his head messed with by the Rossi girls. He was still a wanted man. It all piled up and he just let it out in one big, slobbery mess.

He thought of Mara and found the strength to pull himself together. After he finished crying, he took some self-propagating code Nova had left him and installed it in the phone Alice was carrying still. It was going to infect every computer and phone the Worths ever came into contact with and keep tabs on everything they ever did from now on. The server Jamie had in Florence was going to collect all that data and sort through it, looking for any sign of them making a move against his family, even by way of third parties. Jamie made a firm decision to never spend more than a few hours of his life at a time without checking the server. He was going to check up on it right before he went to sleep and as soon as he woke up. It was going to be his life-long vigil, from then on. He told himself it was the price he had to pay for his past actions.

He checked the time and saw that he had just about enough time to drive back to Florence, shower, put on some clean clothes, eat something, get a few hours' worth of much-needed sleep and drive to the airport to greet Caitlin. He got in the car, turned the key and drove off to do just that, leaving the ruined rental car by the side of the road to make the local cops scratch their heads at it tomorrow.

He got to the airport early in the morning and waited patiently in the lounge for Caitlin's plane to land. It was twenty minutes late and Jamie took another stab at figuring out how to find Mara. He came up with no new idea. His mouth drew down and he heaved a great big sigh of disappointment. He was starting to seriously doubt that she was still alive.

Finally, Caitlin's flight landed and Jamie impatiently went to greet her. His lips drew up into a hopeful grin, all on their own, as soon as he saw her walking his way. She was smiling and nodding at him. Jamie's heart began to lighten as a chance of finding Mara was walking his way. Jamie's grin fell when he saw the two girls that walked behind Caitlin. His former slaves Rose Romano and Sandra Grant were striding his way, their faces grim and determined. His heart skipped a beat and he nearly panicked at seeing them. He retreated into his calm center and sensed that neither of them could recognize him. He stood stock still and probed their minds, finding out, much to his relief, that neither girl had any magic to her name. They weren't armed either, though he could sense Rose was burning with desire to do him harm as soon as she found him.

Caitlin ran the last few yards to him and jumped into his arms. "Jamie," she said, "it's so good to see you again!"

"Yeah, uh, you too, Caitlin," Jamie said, eyeing the two girls that were following her. "Did you bring it?"

"Yes," Caitlin exclaimed, letting go of him. "Yes, I got it right here!" She rummaged through her purse and pulled out a small box. "We need to go someplace where no one can see us deploy it."

Jamie nodded and turned to leave, saying, "Right this way!"

"Wait, Jamie," Caitlin exclaimed. "Aren't you going to greet the girls?"

Jamie turned back and looked at Sandra and Rose. Both of them looked as uncomfortable as he felt in that awkward moment. He could sense their certainty that he wasn't who he was. After a pregnant moment, Sandra extended a hand and said, "Jamie," by way of greeting. Jamie shook her hand and then shook hands with Rose, too.

"Jeez," Caitlin said. "You two weren't kidding when you said it was a bad breakup."

"Yes, let's not dredge up the past and let's go see if we can find Mara and save her," Jamie said, again turning to lead them out of the airport. The girls followed him mutely. Caitlin kept shooting questioning looks at Rose and Sandra, looks that the two of them pointedly ignored. As soon as they came to the parking lot, Jamie insisted Caitlin release the hairfly to lead them to Mara. The hairfly took off and hovered this way and then that, before it settled to hover in place.

"Fuck," Jamie swore viciously. His last hope of finding Mara just failed.

"I'm sorry," Caitlin said, reaching out to touch his arm in a comforting gesture. Jamie nodded mutely. He had no other course of action left to him. He would have called Laura and asked for her help, but he knew she couldn't do anything Caitlin and he hadn't already done. Not since he had destroyed the Jonathan fetishes. He kicked himself over it. Those might have contained a way to find someone.

Caitlin then suggested that the four of them retreat to a place with good food where they can talk about old times and strategize over how they might find Mara. Jamie nodded along and drove the girls to a restaurant. They sat at a table and Caitlin did her best to animate the conversation, but Jamie was only interested in hearing new ideas on how to locate Mara. When no one came up with any, all the fight left him. He sat there, picking idly at his food and barely paid any attention to what Caitlin was babbling about. His head was full of images of poor Mara O'Donnell, probably dead in someone else's grave by now, and he was the one that pushed her out of serious danger and into mortal peril with his carbuncle into the brothel. As unwitting as his actions were, he still felt guilty over them.

He took his phone out of his pocket and checked again on the Worth girls. They were in an express train in Switzerland, heading north, further away from Italy. They had just about made it out of Italy before their four hour deadline expired. "Well, at least that's going well," he thought to himself.

Caitlin left the table to visit the ladies' room, unnoticed by him. As soon as she was out of earshot, Rose kicked his shin hard, provoking his attention. "What," he barked.

Rose glared at him and said, "Where's Jacobs?"

"None of your business," he said.

"Oh, but it is our business," Rose said. "Where is he? And who the fuck are you?"

"Yeah," Sandra said. "Why are you impersonating Jamie?"

Jamie looked from one girl's angry face to the next and felt glad the French vampire had rendered them unable to recognize him as part of the process of releasing them from being his slaves. "I am one of Jamie's decoys," Jamie said. After his encounter with Helena, he was glad for the opportunity to lie his guts out and avoid any further unpleasantness with the two of them. Just sitting there and facing them after all that he had done to them was almost too much for him to bear.

"And where is Jamie," Rose asked, insistently.

"Again, that's none of your concern, girls," Jamie said.

Sandra touched Rose's upper arm and gave her a meaningful look. Rose swallowed what she was about to say and sat back in her chair. "You see, fake Jamie," Sandra said, her voice sweet and soft, "we miss the real Jamie terribly. We just want to see him again, that's all. Maybe have some fun together, like we used to, before." Jamie could plainly tell that was a lie. Rose wanted to hurt him. Sandra also wanted to get in touch with him, though she was keeping the reason why hidden. He was still feeling the exhaustion from his telepathic search of the center of Florence and he had trouble getting a read on either girl. Rose mimicked Sandra's cuddly smile and the two of them held hands over the table. "We used to have some wild, sexy fun with him. I'm sure he'd love to revisit those memories with us."

"But, until then," Rose said, suggestively, "perhaps we could have some fun with you."

"Yeah," Sandra drawled happily. "You look just like him!" She reached out and squeezed the muscles on his arm. "Only you're built better."

Rose lifted Sandra's hand and kissed the back of it. "We could treat you like we used to treat him," she said and then sucked one of Sandra's dainty fingers into her mouth.

Jamie felt decidedly uncomfortable being reminded of the many times he had used them like that. He wanted them to go away so he could focus on finding Mara. Every second they sat before his eyes was another second that reminded him vividly of how he had abused them. "Yeah, you girls need to come to terms with the fact that you'll never again see Jamie Jacobs. It's for the best. Trust me on that."

"That's not for you to decide," Rose said, somewhat sharply.

"Yeah," Sandra interjected, "if you could just give Jamie a message from us?"

"No," Jamie said. "No messages, no contact whatsoever. Jamie told me all about you. He knows you want to be avenged for all the wrongs he had inflicted upon you. That is not going to happen. You need to find a way to get on with your lives, or you will have no lives left."

"Get on with our lives," Rose hissed viciously. "Are you fucking kidding me?! After he took-" Sandra's hand on her shoulder made her pause. "You have no idea what he took from us."

"I do," Jamie said, sadly. "He told me all about it."

"Then how can you sit there and tell me to get on with my life," Rose asked. "I'm ruined! I had magic, now I don't. I can never gain magical power again, even if I could find someone stupid enough to give it up to me. I'm..." She sniffed back her tears and buried her face in her hands. Sandra rubbed her back and whispered into her ear.

Jamie was having a hard time keeping his head on straight. The mere presence of the girls was shoving all of his past misdeeds into his face, so he could no longer suppress the memory of his crimes. He had built a life for himself in Italy, but it had been based on the lie that he had not been a bad guy. He was almost glad that life was over. The lies would have destroyed it, anyway.

"I was a beautiful, young witch," Rose said, "with a bright future before that nobody Jacobs just up and decided to ruin me. Ruin both of us."

Jamie's brow drew down in displeasure. "Really," he said. "I heard a different story. I heard that you just up and decided to cut his life expectancy in half and got enslaved when he turned your own ritual against you."

Rose snorted. "You would hear that," she said. "Jacobs is a fucking liar. Always has been."

Jamie crossed his arms across his chest. The terrible feeling of guilt that had been gnawing at his insides was fading away to be replaced by a slight feeling of vexation at the story Rose was telling. He decided it was best if he simply scared the two of them away, like he had done with the Worths. "The past is the past," he said and fixed his most fearsome expression on his face. "You need to worry about the future. In the future, if you go looking for Jamie, you'll find one of us decoys and the other decoys will shoot to kill. Do you understand? Jamie planted us decoys so we'd kill anyone that tried to find him and settle old scores. You girls need to go back where you came from and forget all about him."

Sandra's already pale complexion managed to turn visibly lighter at hearing his words. Rose also sat up straight with an expression of barely contained terror on her face. The two of them exchanged a worried look and then Sandra whispered, "But you aren't going to kill us? Right?"

"No," Jamie said. "Not this time." He saw Caitlin exit the powder room and walk back over to them. "You two girls need to go home and forget about Jacobs. Find some kind of meaning or purpose to your lives or..."

Rose and Sandra nodded and made their excuses as soon as Caitlin sat back down at the table. She barely had the chance to say goodbye to them as they rushed out of the restaurant. Jamie watched them go and wondered if that was the last time he'd ever get to see them. He felt like the worst kind of shit for threatening them like that, but he could sense that Rose was dead set on ambushing and killing him, somehow, somewhere. He had gleaned from her mind that her original plan was to find a Mafioso and get a gun to shoot Jamie dead with. She had been so fixated on it that she had been broadcasting it mentally. Even in his exhausted state of mind, he had managed to pick up on it. Sandra's intentions remained a mystery to him. He was just too exhausted to go probing around in her mind. Especially after the day he had had yesterday and the lack of sleep in the past two nights.

"Why are they leaving," Caitlin asked Jamie.

"They don't have magic and they don't feel like they can be of any use," he said.

"But they were so eager to see you! It was all they could talk about the whole trip over here! And now they just up and leave, after talking to you for less than three minutes!?"

Jamie just shrugged in response. Caitlin was utterly stumped by the girls' behavior and she kept pressing him for an explanation while they ate their dessert. Jamie wasn't in a talkative mood. He wasn't in a listening mood, either. His past had caught up to him that day and spray painted the word "LIE" over everything he held dear. His own personal story of self was ripped up and burned away in a furnace of abuse and murder. He had always laughed at poets when they had written about pains of the soul, but now he truly felt those. He found himself wishing he could feel empty inside. Caitlin talked about disturbed spirits in North America. She mentioned Section and many other things, but Jamie was hardly listening to her. His thoughts ran solely to the time he had been a slave master and worldwide slaughterer. He truly felt like someone who should be called the Bludgeoner, in a pejorative sense.
A dark depression claimed him and Caitlin stopped talking and started asking concerned questions. "I got you a hotel room," were his only words to her. He got up and led her to a hotel where he had booked a room for her the other day. He walked her to the door of the room and checked it for traps with his Jedi senses. Finding nothing amiss, he said, "Get some sleep," and turned around to walk away.

"Jamie, wait!" Caitlin seized his sleeve, making him pause in his stride. "We need to talk about how we're going to find this girl, Mara. Isn't that what we're going to do tomorrow? I mean, later today."

"Why bother," Jamie said. "She's dead already. She must be." Caitlin's blue eyes got damp as she looked up at him. "Even if she isn't, I can't do anything to help her, anyway. I'm useless."

"Don't say that," Caitlin said. "It's not true."

Jamie met her gaze and said, "You're right. That's not true. I'm worse than useless. I'm the one that got her killed. I should have just gotten her out and then called the cops in, but I didn't and she's probably dead by now and... All she ever did wrong in her entire life was get mixed up with me!"

"Hush," Caitlin said, hugging him. She shushed him repeatedly as he started to cry. "You're not a bad guy, Jamie Jacobs. I know you're not."

"You have no fucking idea who I am," Jamie said, his voice cracking.

"Then tell me," Caitlin said. "Tell me everything." She started to steer the two of them back towards her door and opened it with her keycard. "Come inside and tell me all that's been bothering you."

Her arms were surprisingly strong as she hugged him. Her voice was so warm and her hair smelled like something sweet and exotic. Jamie felt lost in a deep, dark cave and the spark in her eyes seemed like the distant light of fading stars. He let it guide him. He followed her into the room and sat down on the seat she guided him to. He drank the drink she poured for him. She asked him for his tale and he buried his face in his hands in shame. If he started telling it, he couldn't stop himself. He didn't want to stop himself anymore. He felt two conflicting desires well up inside of him. One wanted him to shut up and go back to the way things were. The other wanted him to tell her the truth and say goodbye to the lies he had been telling himself. He had believed that he had to keep his slave-taking, raping and murdering days to himself and not reveal them to anyone. He had thought that was key to making a new life and identity for himself. He had thought it the key to any chance for future happiness. He decided to try the truth. He told her his story, starting from the day he had accidentally caught Helena draining him of his life force to make her breasts grow. As with Mara, he kept his newfound mental abilities hidden.

Caitlin was shocked, amazed, horrified and finally saddened by his story. He held nothing back. He even listed some of the porn titles he had made Sonya, Helena, Rose and Sandra do. He told her over and over about how he had gotten Sonya killed.

She cried. He cried, too. She hugged him and he hugged her back. She kissed him and he kissed her back. In the cold, dark place his mind was in, she felt like the Sun, come to rescue him. He sensed her compassion and sympathy and he let himself bathe in it. He needed it like a desert needed rain. He wanted it more than anything. Their hands worked their clothes off their bodies and they wound up naked. Their skins rubbed against one another as they tried to meld their flesh into one. He ran his hands all over her body, letting himself explore all of her. She responded in kind. He was too amazed by the fact that she hadn't run away in horror to question things anymore. He made love to her with a passion and urgency that he had never experienced before. They did it in the missionary position, looking into each other's eyes the whole time. He lost himself in the love and acceptance he saw in her eyes. He came inside her when she climaxed and felt the blessed relief wash over him. He rolled off her and passed out in sheer joy when she snuggled against him.

He dreamed he was a Jedi, training with Yoda in the swamps of Dagobah. The dream ended with the image of him hanging off the bottom of Cloud City and calling for help, telepathically.

He woke up feeling a lithe, warm body in his hands. He peeked with one eye and saw that Caitlin was still asleep. He gently disengaged from her warm embrace and snuck out of the bed. He went to the bathroom and took a long leak. After that, he used his phone to check up on his surveillance of the Worths and the rich guys he had interrogated earlier. The rich guys had left town without telling anyone about him. The Worths were in Münich, of all places, having lunch in a hotel. "Whatever," he said to himself. It was almost two o'clock and Mara had been missing for more than 32 hours. Even if this was a conventional, magic-less situation, the odds of her still being alive were slim to none.

Caitlin shifted in the bed and slept on. Jamie looked at her and wondered what harm he would bring upon her in the future. His track record with women so far had been horrible. Some kind of misfortune would befall Caitlin for the mistake of sleeping with him, even if she had only done it once. He was sure of it. He forced himself to not dwell on past mistakes, real or imaginary. He sat down on the plush carpet, assumed the lotus position and meditated. He did it primarily to calm his mind, but also to see if he could feel Mara, like he had a few times already.

He went deeper and deeper into trance. He wanted to achieve a nirvana-like state of clarity, but his mind kept dragging up memory after memory for him to review. Jamie passively accepted that he was going to achieve no clarity and let the memories play out before his eyes. He relived impassively all the memories that were weighing down on him. He gave them each impartial consideration and tried to set them aside as quickly as he could. He tried to focus on the witch madam and envision her face in as clear detail as he could. If he couldn't sense Mara's mind, perhaps he could sense hers.

As he thought back to the brief minute he had spent face to face with her, he felt a rush of adrenaline. He began to experience an uneasy feeling, like he was about to get hit by lightning. He stayed with it and felt like someone was trying to point something out to him, only for him to be unable to see it, after all. He was starting to feel frustrated with his inability to pierce through the veil that separated him from a vital clue that he was only marginally aware of. Just as he was about to give up, the image of the wireless card swiper the goon had held popped up in his mind.

Jamie gasped aloud as he remembered the tiny logo that he had seen on the top of the device as the goon had shown it to the witch. It was the logo of a local bank. Jamie suddenly realized he had had a clue to Mara's location all along. The wireless swiper worked off of cellphone towers, but it was a secure device that connected to the local bank's server before getting routed online to do its mistress' bidding. Cellphone service providers only kept records of phone usage for a year. A bank would keep records almost indefinitely. If Jamie hacked the bank's server, he could get the info on every cellphone tower the device had ever in contact with. Maybe, just maybe, the first time she had ever turned it on, she had been at home and learning how to use it properly. And if it hadn't been her, than it would have been one of her goons and it would still constitute a lead to follow.

Jamie nimbly jumped up to get dressed. He needed to get to his car and laptop ASAP. He jumped into his trousers, feeling like the worst kind of idiot for not having thought of it sooner. He pushed down those thoughts and shot his ego in the head. "This isn't about me not being the smartest guy in the world," he told himself. "This is about saving Mara. End of story." The short jog to his car, through the cold winter air, woke him up fully. He got to his laptop and went online. The ancient city of Florence was bustling around him. He set his algorhythms to hack into the bank and waited. It was going to take a while, so he picked up his laptop and went back inside the hotel room where Caitlin was still asleep. He ordered up breakfast for two from room service and sat down to watch his latest hack's progress.

"Good morning," Caitlin softly said, stirring him from his work.

Jamie cleared his throat and said, "Good afternoon." He was feeling more than a little awkward. He had been very emotional and vulnerable last night and he was starting to feel some regret about it. "Hey, uh, listen... I'm not sure that, uh, that last night was... you know, wise of us." He stopped and rolled his eyes at himself. Caitlin just sat up in bed and waited for him to say his piece. "What I mean to say is that it's not a good idea to get involved with me. Every woman I've ever dated has come to a bad end, so far. I think it might be best if-"

"You shut up about now," she said, finishing his sentence. "I'm not settling for a one night stand, Jamie."

Jamie sensed that Caitlin was harboring some strong emotions towards him. He hadn't picked up on those in the morning. Back when he had been a high school kid, he would have given an arm and a leg to get just one girl to feel like that about him, but now he found himself all but wishing for the exact opposite. "Look, Caitlin," he said, "this way, you might just get out of my mess with all your limbs intact. I just don't want to see you get hurt. Not physically and not emotionally, either."

Caitlin laughed and jumped out of bed, revealing her slender, but curvy, young flesh in all its glory. She giggled and said, "You're not getting off that easy, Jamie. And certainly not with such a dumb excuse."

Jamie shot her a look. "It's not like that," he protested. "I'm not trying to use you! I was the one taken advantage of, last night."

"Oh, really," Caitlin said. "Then why do I feel like I've been ridden hard and put away wet?"

"Ugh," was Jamie's comment. She giggled some more. "Look, I'm being serious here. Every girl I've ever been with has wound up hurt and abused, or, or even dead and I..."

"You what," Caitlin asked. "Do you think that you're a doom magnet?" She walked over to him and gently stroked his salt and pepper hair. "Cursed to roam the world alone lest you watch your loved ones suffer and die? Is that it?"

"Mock it all you want," Jamie said, "but it does feel like that sometimes."

"Oh, Jamie," she said and sat down in his lap. She put her arms around his neck. "You're not. You really aren't. Everything that happened to these women, happened cause it should have happened." Jamie scoffed in an almost indignant tone. "I'm serious, Jamie!"

"So, you're saying that Sonya deserved to die?"

"Yes. She had plotted to kill you, hadn't she? She was going to kill you, just as soon as all of them were done draining you. And why was she going to kill you? Just so that nobody ever found out that she wasn't still a virgin and that you were her first. No other reason than that. I'm sorry to say it, Jamie, but the world is a much better place without such a cunt in it."

Jamie lifted her out of his lap and stood up. "Don't say things like that," he said.

"Like what," she said. "True things? Cause it is true. And you know it, your own self."

Jamie turned away from her and said, "You don't understand. It's... It's..."

"It's what?"

There was a knock on the door, followed by a voice calling, "Room service!"

"I ordered food," Jamie said.

Caitlin passed him on her way into the bathroom and gestured at the door. As soon as she was out of sight, Jamie answered the door. The cart was wheeled in and he tipped the attendant generously before closing the door again. Caitlin came out of the bathroom wearing shorts, leg warmers and a knit sweater that hung off her perky tits. She grinned at the way Jamie's eyes lingered over her physique, even after she got dressed, and sat down at the table. She could tell he found her very attractive so she resolved to sort out the mess in his head and get rid of any obstacles that might hinder a relationship between the two of them.

She looked intently into Jamie's eyes and said, "You think I don't understand what it's like, carrying all that guilt. You're wrong. I do. I'm responsible for the deaths of a hundred people."

Jamie sat down opposite her and said, "That's not true."

"Yes, it is."

"It wasn't your doing," he said.

"But it was," she said. "I was the one that went summoning blindly and I'm the one that allowed herself to get possessed by a vengeful spirit from the Great Beyond. All those people sacrificed to turn those villains into vampires are on my head. All the people those vampires then killed after that are also on my head."

Jamie had been shaking his head in disapproval during her whole speech. "No," he said, firmly. "None of that was your doing and none of that is your fault!"

"But it is, Jamie. According to your logic."

"No," he said. "Those were the actions of others. Their choices, not yours. You didn't send those rituals. You didn't sacrifice those innocent people. You didn't murder people."

"And you didn't kidnap Mara," she said. "You didn't pimp her out and you didn't put her life in danger."

"What happened to Mara is my fault," he said.

"I would be willing to stipulate to that," she said, "so long as you gave me even a shred of evidence to support that theory. For instance, did you send her to school here in Florence and arrange for her to stay in that dorm?"

"You know I didn't," he said.

"Did you enslave her, wipe her mind, replace it with lust and charge a bunch of rich guys for fucking her?" Jamie glared at her in response. "Are you currently holding her hostage with the intent of killing her?" She quirked her eyebrows at him and reached for a pastry. "Well, there you go, then."

"It's my fault that she got kidnapped," he said.

Caitlin spread butter on her pastry and said, "How so?"

"If I hadn't gone with her to her dorm," he said, "she would have been left alone."

Caitlin had a bite of her pastry and moaned in appreciation of the taste. "What measures did you take to ensure her abduction," she asked.

"What?"

"How did you get her kidnapped?"

"I walked into the dorm right behind her," he said.

"I see," Caitlin said. She took another bite of her buttered pastry and chewed on it thoughtfully. After she swallowed it, she shook her finger at him. "Yes. Yes, I agree. It's all your fault. You should have seen all the possible consequences of such a dangerous and inherently risky action as walking. Shame on you! Shame on you. The magical barrier and you not having any magic to your name are no excuse for you not being omniscient and omnipotent."

"Fuck you, Caitlin," Jamie spat.

"We already did that last night, Jamie," she said. "Don't you remember? You know what I think? I think this whole hissy fit of yours is because you used to have power. A lot of power. You made up your mind and a powerful, international, supernatural crime syndicate vanished before your terminator." She gestured with the last of her pastry. "That must have been such a great high. Having so much power." She popped the pastry into her mouth and said around it, "I'd be bitchy too, if I lost that kind of power."

"That's not what this is about," Jamie said. Her words were provoking a response from deep down inside himself. It was anger, of all things. He sensed that she truly meant what she was saying about him not being a monster in her eyes. She had already made that clear last night. He kept his anger in check and asked himself if he could agree with what she was saying.

"Yes it is," she said. "I'm not some wise, old sage, but I do have the gift of perspective. If you spent just a few days possessed like I did, used as a helpless puppet, worn like a meat suit, than you'd be blessed with the gift of perspective, too." She peeled an orange and got a faraway look in her eye as she said, "I wonder if I should arrange something like that for you."

Jamie stood up, now seriously angered. She held up her hands and said, "I won't! I wouldn't! I swear! Relax! Calm down, would you!" He walked over to the window and looked out. The view was beautiful, but he hardly noticed. "Look, you told me the whole story and I have to tell you that you did do one thing wrong. Just one." He turned around and looked at her, expectantly. "You let that tall, thin, big-breasted, blonde bitch get away with more power than she has any right to wield. That's your one wrong deed so far."

"I don't want to talk about this any more," he said and turned back to the window.

"Answer me this, Jamie," she said. "Do you think that I'm a monster chaser? Do you think that I made love to you last night because I thought you were the worst thing on two legs? Or was I moved by how much you have suffered? Did I make love to you because I felt this great compassion for you and a connection?" Jamie stared out the window, unseeing. "Well?"

"I don't know why you made love to me," he said, even though he had plainly felt her compassion for him.

"Fuck you," she spat at his back after a brief silence. She got up, found her bag and started to pack. Jamie hung his head and made no comment. "I know that those Ross bitches damaged you, Jamie, but trust me on this! You can always recover. You are tougher than you think. And not all women are nuts like those cunts."

"Rossi," he said.

"What?!"

"Their name is Rossi, not Ross."

Caitlin growled wordlessly in response and slammed her bag shut. She put on her coat and picked up her bag. Jamie leaned his forehead against the window and softly said, "Please, don't go!"

"What," she barked at him, uncertain of what he said.

"Please, don't go," he said. He could sense her anger fade away at hearing his voice so small. She hesitated for a minute more and then huffed loudly.

"Alright," she said, "I'll stay. On one condition!" He turned around and looked at her, waiting. "You stop talking crazy!" He nodded. "I mean it! Any more talk about how everything wrong in the world is your fault and I walk out the fucking door. And I'll make your face break out in shingles, too!"

He nodded and the two of them sat down to have breakfast together. He realized she was right, after a fashion. He had been told he was a worthless shit all his life, particularly by his father, and he had always acted a bit tougher and smarter than he was, as a result of that. Once he had gotten magical power, his narcissistic tendencies had exploded into full bloom and he was still feeling the aftereffects. The fact that Mara had been taken wasn't what made him so angry. The fact that he was powerless to help her was what was really eating away at him. He was, for all his mental abilities, a mere mortal in the face of experienced witches and that was a bit too much for him to handle.

Across the Adriatic sea from Italy, in the Balkans, their worst possible curse was, "May you have and then have not!" He understood it now. He had had so much power and it hurt his pride and self-respect to admit to himself that he wasn't a badass anymore. It stung terribly. He resolved to let go of that shit. It was just pride. Pride never did anyone any favors. He didn't have a clue as to how he was going to do that, but he wasn't going to stop trying until he figured it out. It was all in his head, after all.

An audible alarm from his laptop broke him out of his reverie. He went to it and gasped in delight as he saw he had gained the info on the wireless swiper. Its signal had been routed through a dozen cellphone towers. Two were near the dorm, the other nine were grouped around three locations and the twelfth one was only used once, for half an hour, in the summer of 2009. It was the very first cellphone tower that the device had ever been connected to. That tower was outside Florence, deep in vineyard country.
"I think I have a lead on Mara," he said.

Caitlin saw the spark in his eyes and smiled at it. "I'm coming with you," she said. Before he could protest, she said, "Don't even! I'm going to back you up and help save this girl. If you feel like killing the witch madam and her goons, know that I support that decision one hundred percent. In fact, I'll kill some them myself, I just won't be using my magic to do so directly." Jamie gave her a surprised look. "What? These fuckers are messing with innocent women's minds and pimping them out. They deserve to die."

Jamie held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "If you expect me to talk you out of this..."

"If you just try to talk me out of this," she said, "I will give you those facial shingles. Now, quit fucking around and let's mount up and roll. There's violence to be done!"

They gathered their belongings and left the hotel. Jamie just tossed a handful of bills on the front desk and gathered her passport with telekinesis. They went to his car and he drove them towards that tower. "You do understand that I don't do the whole 'judge, jury and executioner' routine anymore," he asked Caitlin.

"Yeah?"

"Yes," he said. "We are going there strictly to get Mara out. After that, I'm calling the police to handle things. The Carabinieri have shown themselves to be quite capable, once they take your call seriously."

Caitlin shrugged and said, "Hey, it's your call. You're practically one of the locals and this is your show. I'm just here to back you up."

"Good," he said. "I just wanted to clear that up. As soon as we're in the car with Mara, we call in the cavalry and get lost."

"Ok, chief," she said.

He drove them to the tower itself. It was on the top of a rocky hill, overlooking its surroundings. They got out of the car and started to look all around. The view was splendid. Most of the valley was full of vineyards that looked sad covered in snow and icicles. There was a cluster of small houses on one side of the valley and a large, industrial hall on the other. What immediately caught Jamie's eye was the villa on the north side of the valley. It was surrounded by immaculate grounds that were free of snow and something inside him simply told him that that was the place to go.

"There," he said and pointed to the villa. Caitlin sighted along his arm and nodded. They got back into the car and he drove them towards the villa. When they passed a small copse of pines a quarter of a mile from the villa, Caitlin nearly exploded.

"Stop the car," she yelled. "Stop the car! That was our closest cover! You just passed it and exposed us to their view!"

"Relax," he said, "the car's warded."

"Warded," she asked. "Warded by who? How? I didn't ward it! You don't have any magic! They're going to see us coming! Drive past! Drive past!" Jamie stopped the car across the road from the villa's main entrance and parked it. "What the hell are you doing!?"

"I told you, the car's warded against anyone noticing it," he said. Caitlin looked to be on the verge of panic. "We could fuck, right here, right now and no one would pay us any mind. Seriously. Trust me!" He ignored Caitlin's sputtered protests and extended his senses into the villa itself. He couldn't sense anyone in there. After Caitlin calmed down a bit, they watched the place in silence.

"What are we waiting for," she asked.

Jamie shushed her gently and said, "Patience."

After about half an hour passed, they saw a very large figure in coveralls move between the villa and its adjoining garage. It was one of the witch's goons and Jamie pointed him out to Caitlin. "This is the place," he said. "It's got a privacy shield over it."

Caitlin stared at the villa and the goon carrying a gargantuan armload of wood into the villa proper. "I can't feel anything," she said.

"Maybe it's best if you stay here, in the car," he said. She shot him an angry look. "Secure our retreat?"

Caitlin snorted at his peace offering and said, "I'm coming with you."

"Ok," he said. "I'm sorry, I'm just a little nervous. The last girl that came along with me to this bitch's domain turned into a lust monster the instant she crossed the threshold. I don't want that to happen to you, too."

"It can't," she said. "Those girls must have been fed potions and charm magic on a regular basis to achieve such an effect. If she had somehow managed to spell the dorm itself to turn any female inside it into a sex slave, then she'd be affected too. For her to create such a tremendous spell, she'd need some serious mojo. Some very heavy enchantments that were usually powered by human sacrifices. For her to make an exception of herself, to be able to walk inside such a spell's area of effect unaffected? Ho-ho-ho, I don't think that's at all possible but, even if it is, it would require her to wear some pretty heavy jewelry at all times. She'd practically have to be encased in gold! You said you didn't see her wear any jewelry at all, right? No golden bands anywhere?"

"Nope," he said. "None. And she wasn't wearing anything that she could conceal jewelry with."

"Well, then, there you go," she said. "Your fears are completely unfounded. I'm not going to change as soon as I step across that threshold. Now, what's the plan?"

"It's simple," he said. "We have no concealment between here and the front door, so we get out of the car, run across the front lawn to the door, I open it and we rush in to search for Mara. We stay as quiet as we can for as long as we can, but once they sound the alarm, we fight our way in and out. With Mara in tow!"

"So, we're basically winging it?"

"Yup," he said. "Ready?"

"Ready," she said and winked with a smile.

They rushed out of the car and jogged across the road. As soon as Caitlin entered the grounds proper, her mind vanished from Jamie's senses. Jamie followed a few steps behind her, since his side of the car had been facing away from the villa. When he crossed the line of the grounds, he nearly doubled over in shock as his senses could now sweep the grounds. Caitlin's mind was gone. She was a creature of lust and desire, dashing towards the house to offer up her body and services. Jamie nearly tripped on his own feet. He roused himself and seized Caitlin telekinetically. She squealed loudly and giggled as he raised her in the air and then floated her back towards the road. As soon as he moved her out of the grounds, her mind snapped back to what it was. He set her down on the snowy ground and ran to her.

"Are you ok," he asked.

"What happened," she asked. "How did I get turned around like this?"

"You changed as soon as you crossed into the villa grounds," he said. "Can't you remember?"

"No," she said, alarmed, "what happened? How long was I out?"

"Never mind that," he said and seized her by the arm. He gave her a gentle push towards the X5. "You need to get in the car and stay there. I've got to do this alone!" He could only hope that they had remained unseen so far, even though they had been standing out in the open for half a minute now. He was beginning to feel weary and weak. "You need to go..." His weariness was starting to overwhelm him. "And I need..." Darkness was descending upon his eyes, making it hard for him to focus and see. "I need to..." The last thing he heard was the soft thump of Caitlin falling unconscious at his feet. Then he fell asleep. He didn't even register his own fall.

He dreamed that a profound darkness enveloped him and then clutched him with numerous talons. The talons ripped his skin off, but he didn't hurt. He felt no pain from being peeled like a potato. As his skin was removed, a new him emerged. He was made of fire and heat and the darkness burned away in an agony that made him smile.

He woke up still wearing that smile. It froze on his face as he blinked his eyes open and saw a smiling face above himself. It was the face of Sylvie, supervampire extraordinaire in service to the french Directorate. She was smiling and Jamie could only hope that he had experienced a false awakening and was just in another level of his nightmare.

"Good morning, Bludgeoner," she said. Her accent was thick and Jamie realized that she actually spoke English.

Jamie swallowed repeatedly. His throat was dry and he was shivering all over. His heart was pounding madly. He tried to talk, but couldn't manage more than a croak.

"This was quite a surprise for me," she said in fluent and hardly accentuated Italian. "Getting you delivered all gift-wrapped after an anonymous call. I can only imagine how shocking this awakening is for you."

She spoke in English, saying, "Your face is, how you say it, priceless!"

"I see that you have been quite busy since we saw each other last," she said, reverting again to flawless Italian. "You've managed to rejuvenate yourself and undo your punishment. That's quite impressive. We've received your vampire, thank you very much for her, but we are a bit angry that you hurt our agents." She leaned in closer to him and her wavy hair fell forward to frame her pretty face. It nearly fell down to Jamie's face.

"It's a shame the Directorate is such a stickler for the law," she said, wistfully. "For instance, you cannot be prosecuted for assaulting the agents we had sent after your charmed belongings because they had been on a secret mission. A mission that never happened and therefore, they never got attacked by a lesser vampire under your control. How lucky for you. I also can't undo your rejuvenation, either. No legal grounds for it. Isn't that just awful? You get away with flaunting the law and perverting the course of justice."

Jamie couldn't get a read of the vampire's mind, he couldn't even sense her presence right above his face, but he was certain that he wasn't dreaming anymore. This was real. His worst fear had come to life and crouched above him. Something in the tone of her voice told him that there was a big "but" coming along.

"I don't have the legal authority to drain another thirty years from you and restore your punishment because you did that on american soil," she said and laughed a small, bitter laugh. "The only way I'd have the authority to restore your penalty was if one of the mercenaries you had drained to restore your youth had been a french citizen."

She looked away and made a face like she was deep in thought. Jamie shut his eyes. He just knew what was coming.

"Oh," she exclaimed and made a face like she had just remembered something important. She looked back down at him. "Wait! I just remembered! One of them was a french citizen!" She barked a glad laugh. "I get to restore your punishment, Bludgeoner. Look at me!" Jamie squeezed his fists. Despite actually being laid out on the ground, he wasn't going to just take this lying down. "You will open your eyes and look at me!" He drew a deep breath and burst into action. He sent out a blast of telekinetic energy at the vampire, intending to shove her as far away from himself as he could.

Sylvie went flying like a piece of paper on a stiff breeze. Jamie righted himself, blinked, and realized he lost sight of her. He took quick stock of himself and his surroundings. He saw that he was in a field. The Sun was low on the horizon, telling him that he had been out for either four hours or a full day and four hours, but he also recognized the possibility that it could have been even longer than that. The ground was cold and frozen, but had no snow upon it. That told him he probably wasn't in Tuscany anymore. He looked around for any trace of the vampire, but couldn't spot her. He couldn't sense her mind's presence at all and he had no idea where she actually was. He was very unnerved by his total inability to sense her mind.

He heard her giggle from above. He lifted his gaze and saw her hovering above him. He tried to sweep her from the sky with the Force, but she dodged his swipe with inhuman speed. She swooped low and rushed down at him. The wind rushed out of his lungs with a loud, "ooomph" as he was knocked flat on his ass. She screamed like a banshee from somewhere next to him. Jamie struggled to catch his breath and roll into a defensive crouch. When he finally succeeded, he saw Sylvie kneeling a few yards away from him and looking at her hands in shock. She looked up and their eyes met. He saw his death in her big, brown orbs. He didn't have the time to blink, or the chance to be afraid as she closed the distance instantly. She put her hands upon him and shrieked out a scream, the agony of which made Jamie's heart stop.

She flew away from him as fast as she had flown at him and Jamie looked down at himself in confusion. As he drew a deep breath, he smelled the stench of burning flesh. Before he could look down to see where she had burned him, he heard her scream in agony again. She sounded like death dying. It made him want to crap himself in blind fear. As his eyes caught up with her, he saw that her hands were rapidly healing from massive burns. Her sleeves were smoldering.

He couldn't understand how she had caught fire. The hatred in her eyes was very easy to understand, however. She stood up and cast against him. A flame made out of the darkest of blacks flew at him. Jamie didn't even have time to try and dodge the spell before it fizzled out harmlessly. Sylvie looked as shocked as he did at that development. She tried another casting and nothing at all happened.

Jamie took the chance to stand up. He had no idea what was wrong with the vampire and he had no desire to stick around and find out. He wanted to get as far away as possible. Sylvie roared in wrath as she pointed her finger at a rock on the ground next to him. The rock shot up to strike Jamie, but it lost momentum at almost the same instant and fell harmlessly next to Jamie.

Sylvie looked completely bewildered. Jamie felt exactly as she looked. A lesser rift suddenly appeared between them, making them both blink in surprise and step back from it. Visible inside the lesser rift was the face of an middle-aged, Arabic gentleman. He nodded his head at Jamie and then the rift flipped around to face Sylvie. Jamie watched as the face of a young, black man showed up next to the Arab's face. Text began to scroll up on the remaining third of the rift. It was in French and Jamie couldn't quite make out what was written there.

Sylvie angrily responded in French to whatever was written there and she started to behave more and more angrily towards the floating faces between them. The faces in the rift remained calm and more and more text scrolled by in French. Finally, Sylvie settled for glaring through the rift at Jamie. He gulped at the intense hatred in her eyes. Without a word, she took off and disappeared into the dusky sky. A supersonic boom was soon heard.

Jamie wiped the sweat from his brow and nearly collapsed in relief. Despite the cold, he had been sweating bullets from encountering her. He didn't know if she was really gone. All he knew was that he was still alive. When he straightened back up, the rift was right in front of him, like a giant plasma screen. The lesser rift was perfectly harmless, just a way to share images between two locations, but Jamie took a startled step backwards, all the same.

The Arab in the rift smiled happily. The young black man next to him was replaced by a person that was completely covered with a purple headdress. Only her eyes were visible. On the left third of the rift, words started to slowly scroll. They read, "Mister Jacobs, I am Ahmed ibn Rashid Al Mahud and I am deeply honored to finally meet you."

Jamie's brow raised in surprise. He had no idea what to make of this situation. "Yeah, uh, glad to meet you, too," he said to himself. He felt up his pockets, trying to find his phone. It wasn't in his pocket. Neither were his wallet and keys.

New words scrolled up the rift, reading, "Glad does not begin to cover my feelings towards you, Mister Jacobs. I, my family, and many families worldwide owe you the biggest debt of thanks."

Jamie blinked in surprise. "Can you hear me," he asked.

Ahmed smiled and shook his head. Text appeared, reading, "No, but my associate is a very adept lip reader of the English language." Ahmed nodded at the purple garbed woman next to him. He then gestured at the floating letters that read, "And this is a simple enough illusion."

Jamie nodded and then got to the point. "Where did the vampire go," he asked.

Ahmed waved a dismissive hand and said, "She will never bother you again, Mister Jacobs. Let me assure you of that. She is gone away and she will stay away from you from now on."

"I'm, I'm very grateful for that," Jamie said, confused. "But why would she leave me alone? And what happened here, just now? How did I get here? Where am I?"

Ahmed's image in the rift raised both hands and the text read, "Slowly, please, Mister Jacobs. Those are too many questions for my interpreter. And for me, also. First, let me express my gratitude for saving my niece and nephew in Mogadishu. I had been under the thumb of the Syndicate, much like Laura Rossi. We, whose loved ones had been taken by the Syndicate, had tried to get organized and fight back to free our relatives, but we couldn't do it. All it took was for the Syndicate to kill a few hostages and all our efforts would be for naught. Everyone would be discouraged from any further resistance."

Jamie rolled his eyes. He needed to find out where he was and what happened, not read a tale of woe and sorrow. The Syndicate was over and done for. He had seen to it himself. Mara and Caitlin were in trouble right now. Only one question took precedence over that. "Why did the vampire get burned when she touched me," he asked.

Ahmed on the rift paused and Jamie could see the woman's face mask puff out as she spoke. Ahmed nodded and text started scrolling, reading, "We have reformed our society of late, at the behest of Laura Rossi, only this time, our agenda was clear and our membership united. We all pledged to cast protective charms upon your person each and every day of your life in thanks for saving our loved ones and delivering us from the clutches of the Syndicate."

Jamie's jaw dropped in shock. "What? How?"

More text scrolled up the rift, reading, "Laura sent each and every chapter of our society across the globe a small lock of your hair and we use those to cast the protective charms upon you." Jamie thought back to when she had insisted she cut his hair. He couldn't believe she had set up a secret society with the purpose of casting protective spells on him. "At any given moment, you are covered with the protective blood magic of hundreds of grateful casters from all over the world, Mister Jacobs. The Law of Numbers, the most fundamental law of magic, is on your side. I cannot even conceive of Mistress Sylvie ever eating enough magicians to increase her count to be able to overcome our protection."

Jamie roused himself and said, "Listen, Ahmed, I don't mean to be rude, but I'm warded against blood magic." Jamie pulled out his warded, silver and leather dog tags and showed them to the face in the rift.

Text appeared that read, "Against harmful and tracking blood magic, yes. No one can defend against that which is freely given to benefit them."

"Thank you," was all Jamie could say in response. He was too shocked by this development to say anything else.

Ahmed smiled a warm, broad smile and text appeared that read, "No, no! Thank you, Mister Jacobs!"

"Can you tell me where I am," Jamie asked.

Ahmed shook his head and the text read, "Alas, no. Your wards prevent us from tracking you, just like they would prevent anyone else tracking you. I cannot trace this rift, either. Casting it blindly and untraceably was a requirement for sending it to your location. I have no way of knowing where you are, but my guess would be that you are somewhere in France."
"Yes, that's probably right," Jamie said. "Listen, some friends of mine are in mortal peril in a villa just outside of Florence. I need you to get in touch with Laura Rossi and have her call the Carabinieri and send them to raid the castle and this one dorm in the city itself."

The rift started fading away. Some text appeared, reading, "I'm sorry, I can't maintain this spell any longer. I am flying to Florence, where I hope to meet you in person."

"Wait," Jamie yelled. "I need your help!"

The rift blinked out of existence, leaving Jamie alone in a strange field without a clue as to where he was. He couldn't wrap his mind around what he had just seen. The whole situation was just too bizarre. He wasn't sure if he believed Ahmed's claims about being impervious to magic, especially as he had been put to sleep by a spell right outside the witch's villa. Jamie couldn't believe the witch spared his life. She obviously knew enough about him to deliver him to Sylvie and she had had him utterly at her mercy. She could have had him killed by placing him face down in a shallow puddle of piss and she instead chose to let him live another day. He punched his fist against his palm and promised himself that that was the very last mistake she ever made.

He scanned the horizon for any sign of another human being. Spotting none, he tapped into his anger and his need to save Caitlin and Mara and let his instincts guide him. He closed his eyes and reached out with his mind. He imagined eight of himself moving in every cardinal direction as far away as he could still sense himself. He imagined another eight of himself standing still at that point and stretching out their senses while the original eight moved on. When they reached the limit of his imaginary duplicates' senses, another eight mental duplicates appeared and acted as telepathic relays between himself and his projected searchers. This went on and on until it was starting to get difficult for him to keep track off all those mental duplicates. He tapped into his wrath and let the thought of Mara and Caitlin being hurt power his resolve. He kept up with his search.

Finally, a telepathic message came to him. It had bounced through time and space. He saw in the mind of himself that went southwest that he would see in the mind of himself that went even further on that he would see in the mind of the one ahead of himself and so on, and so on, that he would come across a village in just over an hour's brisk walk.

Jamie ran full tilt southwest. As he ran, he kept getting deja-vú after deja-vú. In the gathering dark, the flat ground before him looked so much alike that it was easy to mistake one stretch of it for another, but he nonetheless recognized the view of the land before himself as he ran over it. It was as if he was receiving the information from his future self and then passing it on to his past self that had already received it whilst seeing it for himself for the first time. He fought through the bizarreness of his incredible exploit and pressed on. The paradoxes piled up, but he ignored them. Soon, he saw the image of the village in the distance that had sent him on his course and felt a blessed relief as the perpetual state of deja-vú ended. He felt like his normal, one timeline self again.

He ran as fast as he could the rest of the way, but his strength was failing him. He had never been one for endurance running. When he came to the nearest house, he was gasping for every wheezing breath and struggling to stay upright. He knocked on the back door and waited for a response, glad for the respite. He knocked again and again, getting no response from within. Finally, when he felt strong enough, he tried the door handle and found it to be locked. He reached out with his senses and confirmed that nobody was home. He used the Force to unlock the door and went inside.

He found the landline in the front room and nearly collapsed in relief when he picked up the receiver and heard it was a working line. He immediately dialed Laura's number. It went to voicemail. Alessandra's phone did, too, so he dialed the number for the takeout orders. Andrea answered the phone, saying, "Hello, Trattoria Rossi, what would you like to order?"

"Andrea, it's Jamie, put Laura on the phone, please," Jamie said.

"Sorry, Jamie, this line is for business only, call them on their cell phones! Bye!"

Andrea hung up, leaving Jamie to stare at the receiver in his hand in bewilderment. The phone had only a rotary dial so Jamie had to spin it to dial again. When he finished with the time-consuming task, the line was busy. He tried two more times before he got through again.

"Hello, Trattoria Rossi, what would you like to order," Andrea said.

"Listen here, you little shit," Jamie roared, "I'm coming back there today and if you don't put Laura on the phone right this fucking instant, I'm going to rip off your arms and use them to break your legs!" Jamie took a deep breath to calm down. He was a bit surprised at his outburst. There was silence on the other end of the line, but it was still open. "Hello? Hello?!"

Jamie strained to hear anything on the other end. There were muffled noises there, but he couldn't quite make them out. Finally, he heard a concerned, female voice say, "Andrea, what's wrong? Are you all right?" Jamie sighed in relief when he recognized Laura's voice. "Hello, who is this?"

"Laura, it's me, Jamie," he said. "I don't have the time for apologies or talking, lives are at stake! Listen to me very carefully. Pass this on to the Carabinieri as quickly as you can and I promise I'll come to the trattoria tomorrow and we'll talk. Ok?"

After a slight pause, she said, "I thought you didn't want the police to get involved in your affairs."

"Please, Laura, lives are at stake here," Jamie said. "Be mad at me all you want, but please call the Carabinieri and pass on this information from me! Do you have a pen and piece of paper?"

After another pause, Laura said, "Yes."

Jamie gave her the address of Mara's dorm and the villa outside of Florence and told her about the lust spell, the witch and the goons. He did his best to not mention Mara or Caitlin. He suspected that if he did, Laura would choose to not call the cops. "Please, Laura," he said, "whatever the situation between us might be, I'm counting on you to call the cops and save all those innocent, young women."

"And which one of them is so special to you that you would risk police attention like this," Laura asked, a hint of venom in her voice.

Jamie grimaced in frustration. If their breakup or her petty jealousy led her to not call the cops, he was going to lose his shit. He calmly said, "I don't know any of the girls in the dorm. Not a single one." He thought that he wasn't lying, strictly speaking. Mara was no longer to be found in the dorm and he had no idea who the girls he had fucked there were. "Please, Laura, those are innocent young women being held captive and exploited against their will. Please call the cops! Think about if Alessandra was one of them. Wouldn't you want someone to make that call and save her? Now you can-"

"Shut up," Laura indignantly said, cutting him off. "Alessandra was going to go to Florence to study before she had been taken. I don't need any additional motivation to call the police and it's insulting that you think I would." Jamie sighed in relief. "Also, you calling like this, in the middle of my busiest hours to get my help after leaving us like you did and expecting me to drop everything to play phone tag? Very insulting! Now, is there anything else I need to pass on to the Carabinieri?"

"No," Jamie said. "Not that I can think of."

"Good," Laura said. "I'm hanging up now and calling them."

"Thank you," Jamie said, but she had already hung up. He hung up as well and then searched for mail by the front door. He found none, so he searched for paid bills. He found some in the drawer of a desk and read the address of the house he was in. It was written in French. He dialed the operator and tried to ask for the number of an air taxi service in his mangled French. The amused operator knew English and quickly gave him what he wanted. Jamie was connected to the air taxi and asked what it would cost for him to get a helicopter flight to the nearest airport and then a plane to Florence. When he gave them his address, they informed him that they could have him at the airport in Nice and on a charter to Florence in no time. He ordered the flight, dictating a number for his virtual credit card that he only used to shop online. It was the only one of his account numbers that he knew by heart and the only one he could still hope had some money in it. The rest of his accounts must have been drained by now, since the witch had his wallet and cards. While he was waiting for his flight, he called and found out the time and date. He had been out for only four and a half hours.

After ten minutes, a helicopter landed in the field behind the house and Jamie ran to it, bracing himself against the icy rotor wash. He got in and was quickly ferried to the airport. In less than forty minutes, he was on the ground at the airport in Florence. There, he rented a car and drove to the villa as fast as he could.

He slowed down when he got to the copse of pines he had passed earlier in the day with Caitlin and pulled over, out of sight of the villa. He got out and crept forward to a spot from which he could observe the place undetected. There were no cops to be seen and his X5 was right where he had left it. Jamie's fists tightened in rage. If Laura hadn't called them out of jealousy or anger at him, then he was going to be very angry with her.

He crouched and fretted over what he was going to do. The cops weren't there and he couldn't count on them coming at all. Caitlin and Mara were most likely already dead, but he needed to be sure of that before turning back. He nodded to himself as he came to a decision. "I've been a pacifist too long, anyhow," he whispered out loud.

He got back in the car and drove calmly down the road towards the villa. He parked the rental car on the opposite side of his X5 from the villa and hoped that it would go unnoticed there. He got out of the car and looked at his SUV. There were guns and ammo in the trunk, but it was locked. The only way to get at them was to get his keys back from the witch. The many wards on the car prevented picking its locks and one of the wards specifically made it impossible to unlock a door after its window had been smashed. He would have liked to be able to go in armed, but he guessed he'd just have to settle for his telekinesis.

He walked to the villa with a steady step. As soon as he stepped onto the grounds, he sensed all the minds present. There were nine goons, the madam and two female minds that were utterly consumed by lust. He let himself hope that those might be Caitlin and Mara. He realized no one had seen him coming and he ran the rest of the way to the door. He flattened himself against the wall, next to the front door and double checked that no one was paying attention to the door.

He used the Force to open the door quietly and slip inside. The inside of the villa was very warm, making him uncomfortable in his winter clothing. He took off his coat and stuffed it out of sight, under a large chest of drawers that was in the front room. He could tell that the madam and one of the women were upstairs with four of the goons. He sensed that three goons were in the basement with the other woman. Of the two remaining goons, one was in the garage fixing something and the last was in the kitchen, cooking.

Jamie decided to sneak downstairs into the basement and see who the poor girl there was. He could sense that the goons were using her for their sexual pleasure. The thought that it might be Caitlin or Mara made him angry, but he kept it in check. He used the Force to gain surreptitious access to the basement. He soon found himself traversing a long, brick corridor that branched into many large rooms with steel bar doors. The first rooms he passed contained barrels and sundry, but the rest had cots in them. Jamie grimly realized that he was in a makeshift prison, or dungeon. The sounds of feminine pleasure reached his ears from the end of the corridor. He crept closer and was soon able to smell sex as well as hear the soft, rapid slapping of flesh against flesh.

He made certain that none of the goons were watching the door before leaning his head in and peeking to see who the molested girl was. When he saw a bruised Mara O'Donnell kneeling naked on the hard concrete floor, impaled by a big goon from behind and sucking off another while the third jacked off next to them, all restraint went out the window.

Instantly, Jamie slammed the two standing goons against opposite walls, making the cock of the one that was getting sucked slip out of Mara's mouth with a loud pop. Neither goon was even winded by the impact. They immediately found their footing and ran to the door. Jamie slammed them against the back wall, again to little or no effect. The third goon pulled out of Mara and stepped over her to get to Jamie. Jamie pushed him aside and then slammed him against the far wall. He pushed back the other two goons that were already rushing at him again.

All three goons effortlessly shrugged off any thought of damage from being thrown against the walls and kept finding their footing and rushing at Jamie with incredible speed and single-mindedness. Mara knelt on the ground and tried to grab one of them to fuck her some more, but they were running and flying past too fast for her to catch.

The goons were so fast and earnest in their efforts to land a blow against Jamie that one of them managed to reach the bars on the door because Jamie spared a split second's consideration to Mara. The goon held on to the door when Jamie's telekinetic blast swept his legs out behind him and towards the far wall. As soon as Jamie slammed another goon back, the hanging goon found his footing and lunged at him. Jamie had to dodge the punch and send the goon flying down the hallway. He didn't send him far because another goon ran out of Mara's cell to strike at him that very instant. Jamie tossed him aside, but again, not very far as he had to repel the third goon.

The three of them kept rushing at Jamie, giving him no time or chance to formulate a plan. They were simply too fast and too insistent. They charged at him the whole time and they ran at him just as fast as he was throwing them away from himself. Even tossing them a short distance was draining Jamie's strength and he couldn't push them much farther back before he had to let go and push another. He simply couldn't push two of them at the same time. They were too fast for him to even think consciously about repelling them. The Force guided him instinctively through his desperate defense. He felt his endurance waning and started to jog backwards, away from the goons and away from Mara. He immediately dismissed the thought of ordering her to follow him out of genuine fear that she would be seriously injured if she left her cell.

Jamie retreated to the heavy, wooden door to the cellar and allowed the Force to guide his hand as he grabbed the handle and pulled. The door slowly swung open with a very loud creak while Jamie kept up with his efforts to push the rushing goons backwards. He stepped through the doorway and telekinetically slammed and bolted the door shut behind himself.

Before he could even think about breathing a sigh of relief, he received the instinctive warning to jump back. He did so and narrowly avoided getting pelted by the many splinters the door shattered into when a goon's massive fist went through it. Jamie seized the split second reprieve in their attacks to turn around and run up the stairs. The goons swung the door open and bounded up the stairs like they were on springs.

Jamie interfered with their ascent as much as he could, sending them toppling one over the other down the stairs, but he was feeling completely overwhelmed with the demands on his telekinesis. As he reached the top of the stairs, he sensed the cook goon had heard the commotion and came out of the kitchen to investigate. Jamie swore when the goon reached back into the kitchen with one hand. He sensed the alarm was coming a second before the klaxons were heard. He sensed all the goons react instantly to them and ran headlong towards the front door.

The goons from upstairs were rushing down, the goons from the basement were joined by the cook in their chase after him. They were so fast that they caught up to him before he reached the front door. The garage goon showed up at the door and Jamie dived out of the way and into the front parlor. He slammed the door in the faces of his pursuers with the Force. They smashed the door into kindling in a second. Jamie sent a chair flying at the head of the first goon, but he just lifted an arm and swept the chair aside to smash against the wall. Before Jamie could send something flying through the windows and try and escape, a second goon rushed him, crossing the front room in an instant. Jamie was tackled to the ground and pinned under the almost three hundred pound heavy mountain of muscles.

The rest of the madam's enforcers surrounded him in short order and he knew he lost. To his pleasant surprise, then didn't beat him up. They merely scooped him up, seized all of his limbs firmly, and carried him into the central hall. Once there, two of them set him down on the polished marble floor, forcing him to kneel, and stood on his ankles, making him scream out in pain. His bones hadn't been broken, he suspected, but even the slightest motion in his legs now resulted with blinding pain. They grabbed his arms and bent them behind his back until his shoulders nearly popped out of their sockets. It was pure agony.

A third enforcer came up behind Jamie and seized him by the hair. He yanked his head back. Jamie grimaced in pain and let out a growl. When he opened his eyes, he saw the witch madam standing at the top of the circular staircase that wound its way around the round central hall and led upstairs. He turned his eyes away and focused on the roaring fire in the fireplace that was against the far wall, nearly directly ahead of him. The madam smiled a disconcerting smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Well, well, mister Jacobs," she said, "this is quite a surprise. I expected to see you again, but not for two more days." She gave him an appraising look. "And not so young, either. How did you manage to get away from Sylvie?"

Jamie couldn't bring himself to meet her eyes. This was the second time he lost to her. She had spared him the first time and shipped him off to meet his doom at Sylvie's hands, but he suspected that wasn't going to happen again. One of the goons walked up to the witch and whispered something in her ear. She reacted by looking sharply at Jamie and narrowing her eyes. The witch nodded her head and the goon bounded up the stairs. Jamie sensed another leave the hall to go into the basement. He realized he was getting a second wind with his Force abilities. He cast his gaze all around, looking desperately for something he could use to his advantage when he tried to break free. His main concern were the goons that were squeezing the life from his limbs. He had no idea how to loosen their grip on him.

The witch began to slowly descend the circular staircase, like she was a Hollywood diva joining a party. A naked and tired-looking Caitlin showed up on the top of the stairs, followed by the goon, and started to follow the witch down. Jamie sensed Mara being brought up from the basement, too.

The witch descended the stairs and stood right before Jamie. "I'm quite grateful, actually," she said. "I get surprised so rarely these days that I find myself welcoming any and all breaks from the routine." She studied his features with an intense gaze. "Even the unpleasant ones." She ran a hand through the hair on his left temple. "Like showing up at my brothel unannounced and making me wonder if I'm going to get raided the instant I return there." She yanked some of his hair out as she grabbed it and pulled hard. He bit back a yell of pain. "Or tossing my boys around without any magical power to your veins. That's something completely new for me, I must say." She stood over him as if expecting him to say something. He could vaguely sense her expecting him to beg for mercy. He thought he could tell she wanted him to, so he kept quiet.
While she had been talking, Jamie was doing his best to not meet her gaze. He sensed that the goons were armed and he tried to put together a plan. He kept trying to predict how the goons would react when one of their guns zipped out of its holster and started firing at them. He deduced that no matter which gun he drew first and whom he shot at, he was going to get killed in an instant. He needed to focus and draw more than one gun at the same time.

"Not feeling talkative, Jacobs," she softly asked. "That's all right. We'll talk plenty later, after I charm you into telling me everything you know so I can adjust my plans accordingly. At any rate, your surprises have been unpleasant and that has made me a bit cranky. I sent you to Sylvie, who the girls tell me is your worst nightmare, as punishment for disrupting my operation. You were supposed to get all traumatized and aged and not..." She gestured vaguely at him. "Free. Oh, never mind. You'll tell me all about how you got away from her, later. First, you are going to entertain me! You have disrupted my routine and I need a pleasant diversion from my worries over whether or not I am going to have to set up shop someplace else with a fresh gaggle of girls.

"Here's how you are going to amuse me! My boys are now going to go to work on your girls." Three goons stepped up to Caitlin and Mara each. "One of them is going to fuck her pussy..." Two of the goons lay down on the floor on either side of their mistress and released their cocks. They had really big schlongs, thick and long. Mara and Caitlin eagerly stepped over the erections and crouched to impale themselves. "Another will ream their asses..." Each girl was stopped in her gyrations when a goon grabbed her hips and slowly, but steadily pushed their hot, hard meat into their assholes. The girls moaned and twitched impotently, sandwiched between the musclemen. "And the third will, naturally, fuck their throats." The remaining two goons took out their cocks and slammed them into the eager mouths of the blank-minded girls.

Jamie retreated into his calm center. This was his chance to break free and do something. Six of the nine goons were occupied. Jamie knew their minds well enough to know that they would react almost instantly to anything he did, even while they were fucking the girls. But he also knew their reactions would be hampered by their dicks being inside of the girls' bodies. The guys getting sucked would only be slowed by a fraction of a second, but the guys fucking their asses would take up to a second to pull out and the last two would have to wait for those to stand clear before lifting the girls off their dicks and getting up. As tiny a window of opportunity as that presented him, it was probably the very best he was going to get today. Or ever again, for that matter. He braced himself mentally and ran through his options on how to get free.

"This is all very common stuff," the witch said, regarding the gang-bangs happening on either side of her, "and not very amusing. But this is! Each of my boys is going to kill your girls when they climax!" She smiled and clapped her hands. "The ones they are riding will slit their throats..." Those two goons pulled out their knives and laid them across the girls' throats, ready to slice. "The ones in their asses are going to snap their necks..." Those grabbed a big handful of each girl's hair and yanked their heads back, making the remaining guys slide their dicks in and out of their throats even faster. "And the remaining couple will blow their brains out." The guys in question pulled out their sidearms and placed them against Mara and Caitlin's temples.

Jamie was aghast as he watched the girls subjected to a triple death threat. Neither Mara nor Caitlin had any awareness of their imminent fate. He sensed in their minds nothing but the supernatural lust that was consuming them. Their bodies were bucking back at the many fucks that were driven into them and they were doing so faster and faster by the minute. Jamie tried again to come up with a combination of attacks that led to saving all of them. The horror of the girls' imminent demise gave him strength and he focused with all of his might. He felt able to draw two sidearms at the same time and aim them, but he couldn't figure out who to shoot first without getting killed instantly.

As he tried his best to come up with a way, he suddenly became aware of the girls' impending climaxes. "No," he called out loud, but it was too late. Mara and Caitlin came at almost the same time, their sweaty skin blooming visibly scarlet and their muscles shuddering uncontrollably. The goons kept on fucking them.

"Oh, you misunderstood," the witch said. "Not when the girls cum, when my boys cum. That's when they kill them!" She gave a small, polite laugh at his misunderstanding and stepped back to where she would not be sprayed with blood. Jamie was out of time and options. No matter which scenario he tried to envision, none told him of success. He grimly decided to fight anyway. He refused to die on his knees, without putting up one last fight and dragging some of these bastards with him.

As he realized his death was inevitable, he thought on all the things he would miss seeing. He'd never see how his sister grew up, or if his mom found happiness with her boyfriend. Two of his children were going to get born and raised without him. That ached the most. He hadn't wanted to have kids, but now that he was about to die, he found himself wishing he could be there for them, to be a better dad than his ever was, to give them all the chances he never had and show them all the beauty in the world. He had made so many mistakes for someone his age and the thought of his children repeating them was heartrending.

When he thought that his children would be born into a world where witches like this one could exploit and kill them with impunity, his wrath boiled over. His decision to fight to the bitter end encased itself in adamantium and he attained a level of calm and clarity that he had never experienced before. He summoned all of his power to him and reached out to become one with everything in his vicinity as preparation for his final battle. When he reached out and sensed all of the goons at the same time as their mistress, he stumbled upon a new piece of information. The goons subconsciously gouged their mistress' mood and continuously adjusted their actions to be in complete accord with her intentions, even without thinking about it. His instincts told him that if he managed to distract the witch, the goons would prolong their fucking and not cum and kill the girls until they had her full attention. It was the thinnest of chances that would not save any of them in the end, but Jamie had nothing left to lose and had recently gained a vivid appreciation of each and every living breath he took. He needed to get her talking, like she was a villain in a cheesy B-movie.

"An area of effect spell," he said. "That's quite impressive. Where are your counterwards?"

"I don't need any," she said with a sneer.

"How so?"

The witch smiled like she could see through Jamie's feeble effort, but then said, "I am protected by the deep magic against spells that would transform me, particularly if the purpose of that transformation was abuse." She gestured at Mara and Caitlin.

"You're not underage."

She affected an insulted gasp and put her hand to her chest, saying, "Why, Bludgeoner, are you commenting on a lady's age? Shame on you! Weren't you raised to know any better?" Jamie ignored the hypocrisy of her giving even a faux moral lecture and sensed that the goons were slowing down their efforts and delaying their gratification. It was working. "No, I am not underage, but I am as protected as a child from all consequences of magic, save for the madness that comes from killing someone directly with my power." She laughed. "Fortunately, that's what my boys are for."

"How can you be protected by the deep magic," Jamie asked her, lest she devote any attention to Mara and Caitlin, whose mindless bodies were climaxing yet again.

"Because I have been declared legally disabled and unfit for independent living. I am unfit to make my own decisions and have had a guardian appointed to make all my decisions for me," she said, smugly. " My legal status is exactly the same as that of a child. The protection of the deep magic against permanent changes and harmful, mental modifications extends to me, as well."

"What," Jamie asked in genuine surprise. "How?" She smiled at him and said nothing. She was enjoying his bewilderment. When he sensed her attention turning back to the imminent executions, he pressed on. "You can't charm your way into such an arrangement! It wouldn't work. It's impossible!"

"True," she said, paying him her full attention again. "You cannot charm your way into such legal status. You have to earn it. The deep magic draws only upon true things, but it does not draw upon absolute truths. All it takes for me to enjoy such vast protection is for a bunch of doctors, social workers and judges to unanimously agree, of their own free will, that I deserve such a status. I don't actually have to be disabled to be afforded that level of magical protection."

"How did you get all those people to agree to grant you such status," he asked as Mara and Caitlin orgasmed again.

"It wasn't easy," she said with a sigh, "and it wasn't quick, either. To cut a very long story short, I staged a car accident and then faked getting injured in it. After that, I used potions and spells upon myself to fake the devastating effects of a traumatic brain injury, along with a great big dose of very good acting. Just about when my patience was running out, they all agreed that I was a hopeless case and gave me a permanent legal guardian." She laughed. "Naturally, I used potions and charm magic to make him my bitch on the very first day and I've had the best magical protection there is, along with all the freedom I liked, ever since.

"Oh, by the way, Caitlin told me what a hard time you've had finding me. Such a shame, Bludgeoner, that you hadn't thought of looking at the renovations that had been done to the dorm itself. You would have found out that they had been arranged by my legal guardian and that would doubtlessly have lead you straight to me, wouldn't it?" She waved a hand dismissively. "Never mind that, now. We've found each other in the end."

Jamie sensed her attention going back to the girls. "Is that how you cast this great big spell," he asked. "You use the statues? The reliefs on the outside walls of the dorm? Those are enchanted by human sacrifices, aren't they?"

"Yes," she said. "Your visit to the Johansson vault has taught you a lot, hasn't it? Shame you destroyed all the goodies inside it, I could have put many of them to good use. Hush now and focus on the girls! It's time for them to die."

Jamie sensed that she was done being stalled. The goons picked up on her attention and started cresting over that hill that led to orgasm. Jamie closed his eyes and summoned all of his powers to him. He withdrew his senses from the goons, no longer caring about what was going on in their minds. He needed everything he had focused on the present moment. Time seemed to slow down for him. As he opened his eyes again, he saw the frenzied jackhammering motions of the goons' hips as single, slow thrusts. The flames in the fireplace licked upwards in slow motion. He felt each gun in its holster and their chambered rounds. He no longer cared if one bullet to the brainpan was going to be enough to instantly shut down the single-minded, giant goons. He was going to draw the guns of the two that were raping Mara and Caitlin's throats and shoot the guys holding his hair and right hand. The guy wrenching his left arm out of its socket would be shot next, probably not fast enough to stop him from dislocating Jamie's shoulder, followed closely by a shot to distract the witch and delay any spell she might cast. He had already gleaned from her mind that she was warded against gunfire and the bullets weren't enchanted. After that, he'd just let his instincts guide him and do as much damage as he could before he was killed.

The goon raping Caitlin's throat groaned and stuck his cock all the way down it. He was cumming. Jamie could see each and every orgasmic shudder as they spread across his body. It was Jamie's cue. It was now or never. The entire room around him seemed to have frozen in time. He reached out with the Force and worked the safeties on the two guns he was going to draw. He then tugged at them, telekinetically. Nothing happened. He tried even harder, but his mind felt sluggish. He realized that his gaze was frozen, focused at a spot on the far wall. All motion in the room stopped. He could see, out of the corner of his eye, that the flames still licked upwards in the fireplace. He focused his attention on the goons instead of their guns and sensed their confusion and panic. The witch was panicking, too. He sensed dozens of tense minds surrounding the villa itself.

Before Jamie could try and make sense of what was going on, all the windows and doors of the villa exploded inwards. Loud shouts of, "Carabinieri," rang out. Burly men in body armor, wielding assault rifles ran into the great hall, accompanied by many casters in uniforms. Jamie would have cried in delight at that moment, but only if he could. The goons, girls, witch and he were all completely frozen by a powerful spell the Carabinieri cast before storming the place.

The Carabinieri wasted no time in seizing and hobbling everyone present, including the girls and Jamie. He lost track of everyone else as his rigid body was carried out by the cops. Out in the front yard of the villa, he felt the bite of the night's chilly air. The men carrying him stopped and a voice rang out, ordering them to set him down upright and release him from the spell.

As soon as they lowered him to the ground, the spell of paralysis faded from him and he stood up from his uncomfortable kneeling position. "Mister Jacobs," Jamie heard a strange voice say. He turned and saw the source of the voice. It was Ahmed and he was weaving his was through the cops milling around the villa's front yard. An older gentleman, wearing a Carabinieri dress uniform with many medals pinned to his chest, followed him. Jamie could only spare one glance around to find Mara or Caitlin before Ahmed came up to him and hugged him. "It is such an honor to meet you at last, my friend," he said, speaking English with a British accent.

Jamie stood there, feeling awkward. His hands were bound by magic-suppressing manacles and Ahmed was hugging him firmly in public. Worst of all, Jamie was almost shivering in the man's embrace. He told himself it was from the cold, but he had only been out for ten seconds. It was from the aftereffects of the adrenaline rush and the heady rush of surviving a close encounter with the Grim Reaper.

Ahmed stood back and held himself at arm's length from Jamie. He looked down at the manacles and his ecstatic smile vanished. His brow drew down and he turned to speak to the old Carabinieri with the medals. "Get these restraints off of him at once! This is an outrage!"

A middle-aged, swarthy man repeated Ahmed's words in Italian and the Carabinieri senior commander gave the nod to the riot gear boys that were standing guard behind Jamie. One of them stepped forward and removed the manacles from him.

"You are free to go, mister Jacobs," said the commander, in Italian, "with the apologies of the Carabinieri for any inconvenience."

Jamie's eyebrows raised in utter surprise. He didn't know what to make of it all. The cops moved away from him and left him in the presence of their commander, Ahmed and Ahmed's interpreter. "What's going on," Jamie asked Ahmed in English, while eyeing the commander suspiciously.

Ahmed held his hand out to his interpreter and the man placed a diplomatic passport into his hand. Ahmed handed it to Jamie and shrugged, saying, "Nothing out of the ordinary, just exercising your diplomatic immunity."

"My what," Jamie asked and looked down at the passport in his hand. It was a diplomatic passport of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. He opened it and his jaw dropped when he saw it was his. His real name and information were written in it and it sported a photo of him that had been taken for his student ID more than a year ago. "Holy fuck!"

"Try not to blaspheme, mister Jacobs," Ahmed said.

"But," Jamie stammered, "but, I'm not, this is, it isn't..."

Ahmed clasped his hands gently around Jamie's. "This is the least we could do for you. My sister would be here too, but she is otherwise engaged."

"How is this even possible," was Jamie's next question. "I'm not Jordanian."

"You are now," Ahmed said. "You are a diplomatic envoy of the Kingdom of Jordan and Italy has already agreed to enforce your immunity from prosecution and arrest." Jamie glanced at the unhappy-looking commander standing next to them. The commander's impressive moustache twitched twice and then he moved off to oversee the clean-up of the villa.

Jamie followed him with his gaze and saw Caitlin being carried out. "She's an innocent victim," he yelled out in Italian. The Carabinieri ignored him.

"What is the matter," Ahmed asked. "How can I help?"

"Those two girls are innocent victims," Jamie said, indicating Caitlin and Mara. "They're my friends. Where are they taking them?"

Ahmed gave his interpreter some orders in Arabic and the man ran over to the commander to talk to him. They were too far for Jamie to overhear, but the commander certainly didn't like whatever the interpreter was saying. After a few minutes, the interpreter came back and said, in English, "They are taking the girls away for debriefing and examination. After they make sure they're innocent and alright, they will be released. Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?"

Jamie was almost taken aback in shock at being called "Sir" by a man that was his elder and could command the Carabinieri, but he gathered his wits and said, "Yes. Yes there is. There's a lot I'll need done."

"Just name it," the man said.

"Yes, do not hesitate," Ahmed said. "Yousef is the Charge d'Affairs of our embassy and he knows how to get things done around here."

Jamie nodded and said, "The witch had taken my keys, wallet and banking information from me. I'll need those back. I also fear that she has drained all my bank accounts. Can you do something about that?"

"Yes, of course," Yousef said and went to speak to the commander.

"Oh," Jamie exclaimed, rubbing his hands up and down his arms, "and my coat, too! It's stuffed under the closet just inside the front door!"

Ahmed took off his own coat and wrapped it around Jamie's shoulders, despite his protests. "Please," he said, "just until your own coat is returned."

Jamie stood there awkwardly as the Carabinieri moved to and fro, carrying sealed boxes and paralyzed goons and doing other coply things. His benefactor waved his hand and slowly ignited a line of fire around himself. It floated around him at waist level, giving off a lovely heat. The cops gave him suspicious looks and several almost cast spells at him, but they ignored him after the commander barked some orders.

Jamie held up his passport and said, "You really have to explain this to me. Is it for real?"

"Of course it is, mister Jacobs," Ahmed said, sounding a little insulted. "I am a deputy minister in His Majesty's government. I would not be caught dead handling falsified passports. I would have given it to you even sooner, but Laura Rossi feared that you would not appreciate it, for some reason."

Jamie shook his head to himself. "I definitely appreciate it, now."

"I thought you might," Ahmed said.
"So, I'm really free to go?"

"Yes," Ahmed said.

"Wow," was Jamie's only comment. He held up his passport. "So, how does this work, exactly?"

"It is simple," Ahmed said. "You are immune from arrest and prosecution by any country that recognizes your immunity and chooses to enforce it. Which is pretty much the entire world. If you do commit a crime, you can be detained until your identity is verified and then you can be deported and forbidden from ever returning. No other harm can be done to you without outraging His Majesty's government."

"Oh, well, I wouldn't commit any crime," Jamie said, "not while-"

Ahmed interrupted him with raised hands and said, "Please, mister Jacobs! Sometimes it is necessary to do a small wrong to right a greater one. Like what you had done with the Syndicate. You shall still enjoy such a power. The French have agreed to uphold your immunity and you will not be prosecuted for any crime. I have already contacted the governments of each country on whose territory you had slain Syndicate personnel and they've all agreed to extend you immunity and not prosecute you for any wrongdoing. Some might even give you medals." Jamie's eyebrow raised at that comment. Ahmed nodded. "The Syndicate had managed to compromise a few smaller countries' governments. They were quite relieved when you ended them.

"Now, the Americans are a different story. They've agreed to uphold your immunity, but you are officially persona non grata." Ahmed reached over the ring of fire and put a comforting hand over Jamie's shoulder. "I'm sorry, but you can never go back to the country of your birth without getting immediately deported."

"That's all right," Jamie said. "It's a huge improvement to getting arrested and sentenced to death by vampire's touch." Ahmed nodded and smiled. "I've been meaning to ask, how does this protection spell you cast work, anyway? I was rendered unconscious by a spell right here."

"The spell is cast by casters from all over the world, myself and my sister included," Ahmed said, "and it wraps itself around you to protect you from harmful magic. Unfortunately, it cannot protect you from beneficial magic, or neutral magic. Sleep spells are, by their nature, neutral spells."

"Neutral?"

"Yes," Ahmed said, "their effect is dependent on their use. They can be used for good, to cure insomnia, or for evil, to make a driver fall asleep in traffic and cause a terrible accident. We can and do protect you from spells that are outright harmful and can not be used for good. All combat spells count as those, as they are always harmful with regards to their subject. We also protect you from a vampire's touch and all spells a vampire would cast on you, even the beneficial ones. Vampiric magic is drained from others, so it is, magically speaking, different and can be protected against. Our protective spell wards you against all spells a vampire would cast." Ahmed smiled and shrugged at Jamie's questioning look. "Laura told us how much you feared Sylvie, so we devised our protective spell with her in mind. One might even say that the general protection against harmful and combat magic is just a side effect of the spell that protects you against vampiric magic."

Jamie nodded, glad for the explanation. "I have a question," he said. "If someone was to use an offensive spell against me in self defense, or defense of another, wouldn't it count as a beneficial spell? Go past your protection?"

"No," Ahmed said. "It would most certainly not. Spells' effects are judged based on their effect on their target, not their use in a broader context. Combat spells are always meant to destroy their target and are always counted as harmful, regardless of the context of their use. You are protected against such spells. But, be warned! If someone is to lift a rock with a spell and drop it on your head, that would not count as a harmful spell. The spell is cast upon the rock and it is a spell of motion, a neutral spell. The fact that it would result in your death means nothing, so you would not be protected by our spell."

"Unless if it was done by a vampire," Jamie said.

"Exactly," Ahmed said and chuckled. "Vampires can't even do that to you. But, be warned, anyone else can."

"Thank you for the warning, Ahmed," Jamie said, "and the explanation. And casting the spell upon me, you have literally saved my life!"

"Think nothing of it, mister Jacobs," Ahmed said. "I, and over a thousand others like me, owe you our hearts and honors. It is us who are indebted to you and it is us who have decreed that you shall be protected for the rest of our lives."

Yousef returned at that moment, carrying Jamie's coat. Ahmed dispelled his space warmer spell and put on his coat when Jamie handed it back to him. Jamie put on his own coat. "Your keys and wallet are in your pockets," Yousef said. Jamie checked and thanked the man. "The Carabinieri will restore all the funds the witch took from you this very evening. The girls will be kept overnight for observation and treatment and they will be released before noon, tomorrow."

"Thank you Yousef," Jamie said. Yousef smiled and bowed, making Jamie feel very awkward. "Well, I guess I better get going, then. I promised Laura I'd come to her house and talk."

Ahmed smiled and nodded, before saying, "I shall visit with you tomorrow, then."

"You shall," Jamie asked.

"Yes, to give you presents that will welcome your children into this world."

"Ah," Jamie said. "How kind of you."

Ahmed smiled and said, "Please, we are family now!"

"We are?"

"Yes," Ahmed exclaimed joyfully and put his hands on Jamie's shoulders. "Ever since you saved my sister's children, you have been in our hearts and minds. We always set aside a place for you at our table and I want you to know that you will always be welcome in our home."

"Thank you, Ahmed! Thank you for everything!"

"Thank you, my brother," Ahmed said and hugged Jamie. Jamie hugged him back. As strange as Ahmed's words have been and as prejudiced as Jamie was against middle-eastern people, as a consequence of growing up in post 9/11 America, he was genuinely moved by the man's words. He could feel their sincerity in his heart. "Unfortunately, I cannot stay here and talk with you for much longer, no matter how much I would like to. I have made an official engagement in Rome this evening, so I could justify coming to Italy on such short notice. I need to let you go to your women, anyway. We shall talk some more tomorrow!"

"Yes, all right," Jamie said, still feeling a little flustered by the night's events. Ahmed and Yousef turned to leave and Jamie tapped his fingers on his passport, considering. "Hey, Ahmed!" Ahmed turned around. "Just one question! I hope it doesn't offend you, but... Does this passport get revoked when the government changes after an election, someday?"

Ahmed smiled, showing no sign of offense. "No, mister Jacobs," he said, "it does not. Thanks to your actions, my sister is marrying into the royal family next year and your status will be permanent, regardless of my political career. Just as you will always be welcome in our hearts, you will always be protected by the Kingdom."

Jamie nodded in understanding and appreciation. Ahmed put his right hand over his chest and bowed to him, before leaving with Yousef. Jamie gave them a wave. He walked to his own car and unlocked it. He sensed Caitlin and Mara's minds as they were driven off in separate ambulances, escorted by the Carabinieri. Their minds were their own again and he felt their confusion as they were driven out of the spell's area of effect. They were soon overwhelmed with relief, when the medics and cops assured them they weren't in any trouble.

Jamie double checked that all of his things were still in the trunk before driving to Laura's house. The Carabinieri were wrapping things up anyway and the girls were already taken away. He drove slowly, not out of fear of losing grip on the icy roads, but out of uncertainty of what to say when he got to her house. He would have driven to his mother's home first, told her the glad news and be reunited with her and Suzie, but that was the easy thing. He was more than welcome there. He wanted to get the hard part over with, first. His brush with death made him realize that he wanted to be a dad, even if it meant raising two kids who were each other's uncle and nephew.

He had blown up so readily at Laura and Alessandra mainly because they had been doing things behind his back. The thought of being a dad at his young age had also wigged him out, but he had a new perspective on things now. He knew now that there wasn't going to be a magical turning point in his life that will tell him he is ready to be a father. He was determined to be a good provider, protector and role model for the kids. That was all he could do and it would just have to suffice.

He wasn't sure how the Rossi girls were going to react to his return. There was probably not going to be a warm welcome waiting for him. He set his jaw and steeled his resolve. He was going to get back in their good graces, no matter what it took. A cordial relationship with the girls was necessary, if for no other reason, then for the sake of his children. He wanted to be a dad. He wanted to settle down. He wanted to have a life. He wasn't sure if he wanted to get back together with the Rossis, but he was ready to forgive them for getting pregnant with him behind his back.

He sighed heavily as he realized he couldn't lie to the girls about all the sex he had since he had left them. He didn't want to start anew on a foundation of lies. He wiped his face as he thought about Caitlin and Mara. Both the girls harbored strong feelings for him. He had deflowered Mara and saved Caitlin from being possessed by the spirit of the head of the Syndicate. After his brush with death, he finally understood just how strong their feelings towards him must be.

They ultimately didn't change anything, he realized. He was going to be a dad and that meant that he wasn't free to start a relationship with either girl. Particularly not a relationship that led to marriage, family and more kids. Maybe someday, but not now. Jamie told himself that he had to let them down gently, but firmly. There was nothing else for it. He was to become a parent with Laura and Alessandra and that was that. He was taken.

He sighed again and rubbed his temples. He started wishing for the simple life of a monk, locked up somewhere, miles away from the nearest woman. A life of celibacy seemed like a walk in the park compared to trying to navigate the treacherous waters of the heart.

The root of his problem was that he had never before in his life thought he'd be wanted by four hot women at the same time. His closest experience to that was when he had four sex slaves and that was hardly something relevant to his current situation. He was close to calling it a predicament. He thought about the situation during the whole drive to Laura's, but he ultimately decided to play it by ear. According to everything he had seen in movies and on TV, playing it by ear meant that he'd wind up all alone and sexless, but he told himself that was only possible in fictionland. Whichever girl wanted him the most would wind up his new girlfriend in reality.

He drove slowly through town and pulled up in the alley behind Laura's trattoria. He cracked his knuckles and reaffirmed his resolve before dialing her phone.

"Hello, Jamie" Laura said. "How did it go with the Carabinieri?"

"Very well," he said. "I'm parked behind your house. May I come in?"

"Of course," she said. "Go upstairs and wait for us! We're nearly done closing up."

"Ok," he said and got out of the car. He had left his key behind when he had left, so he used the Force to gain entry. He climbed upstairs and was relieved to see the place looked exactly the same as it did a few days ago. That meant that there hadn't been any furniture-destroying temper tantrums thrown there and he found comfort and hope in that fact. He reached out with his senses and took a quick poll of all the people in the trattoria.

Andrea was making a hasty getaway, obviously scared of him. Jamie shrugged. He couldn't care less about the sous-chef. Laura and Alessandra were giddy with anticipation and excitement as they practically shoved the last of their customers out the doors. Jamie nodded to himself. It was a good sign. He had expected bitterness and recriminations.

He patiently waited for them to finish clearing and locking up the downstairs. He stood in their living room and faced the stairs as he sensed them ascending. Laura climbed up first. She stood still and looked at him. Her eyes were brimming with emotion. He could sense the relief that was flooding through her very being. Just as he was going to say something, Alessandra squeezed past her mother and ran at him, shouting, "Jamie! You're alive!" She practically jumped into his arms and nearly knocked them both over. She hugged him with all her strength and held on like letting go would kill her.

Jamie hugged her back. He went probing into her mind to see how she felt and what she was thinking. The days of giving them room and respecting their mental privacy were long gone as far as he was concerned. She was ecstatic that he was back, doubly so since Laura had told her about his recent troubles in Florence. He could tell that she wanted to be his girlfriend, too.

"Oh, great," he thought to himself. "Mara, Caitlin, Alessandra... Let's see if Laura is also in the mood for some Jamie!" He reached out and felt her jealousy, desire and lust warring with her pride and the thought that she should stand aside and let Alessandra claim him as her own. "I have four potential lovers. I just know I'm gonna wind up alone."

"Ahmed tells me I have you to thank for being a free man," he softly said to Laura. She shrugged, self-consciously. "Thank you, Laura. Thank you for all that you did. You saved my life. Literally."

"I did it because I love you, Jamie," she said. "I really do."

"I know," he said. "I'm sorry if I acted like a jerk before." Alessandra sniffed in his hug. Laura just smiled warmly and walked closer to put a comforting hand on her daughter's back. "Why didn't you tell me? You were fixing all of my problems and making them go away for good. I'm ever so grateful, but why didn't you tell me?"

Laura teared up and shrugged. "Whenever I tried to talk to you about your troubles, or the future," she said and paused. "You'd just get so angry, I'd lose courage. I felt that you had a lot on your mind and that it was best if I didn't burden you with false hope if things didn't turn out as well as I hoped. I wanted to sort everything out before I told you all about it."

Jamie gave her a sincere, if sad, little grin. "Thank you, Laura," he said, earnestly. "You've made me a free man. You've saved my life. I just had to come back here and thank you in person."

"And what," Laura said and swallowed nervously. "And what will you do with your freedom? Now that you have it?"

Jamie sensed Alessandra tense up in expectation of the answer to that question. Laura, too, was all but holding her breath for the answer. He felt their hopes that he would get back together with them. He felt their fear that he would leave them again. He didn't want to keep them in suspense any longer, so he said, "I'm not sure just yet, but I would like to stay here and be a father to my children, if that's all right with you?"

Both women sobbed out a delighted, "Yes," and hugged him as tight as they could.

He sensed their ecstasy and relief. It almost hurt him to say the rest of what he had to say. When they started kissing the sides of his throat, he rediscovered his resolve. "Girls," he said, "just because we are going to be parents together, that doesn't mean that we are going to be lovers any longer."

"What," Alessandra asked as she stepped back, while keeping him in his grasp. "Of course we are going to make love! We have to! It's what mommies and daddies do! Tell him, Mamma! Tell him!"

Jamie could sense Alessandra's desperation to get him back, but he didn't allow it to sway his resolve. Laura was also disappointed by his words, but she was not so affected. Her life experience had told her things just couldn't go back to the way they had been. "No, Alessandra," Jamie softly said. "You and your mother lied to me and used me to get pregnant without my knowledge and against my will. That's not something I can just get over."

"But, but," Alessandra sputtered, "we love each other! All three of us!"

"When you love someone," Jamie said, "you don't do to them what the two of you did to me. You don't make such great decisions about their lives behind their backs. Your mother saved my life and ended my persecution, also behind my back, and that is the only reason I'm back here, talking with you." Alessandra let go of him and stepped back with tears in her eyes. Laura gave her a comforting hug, but her eyes were moist, as well. "I've had some epiphanies lately and I've decided I want to be a father to your children. Our children. But that does not mean that we're going to go back to the way things were."

"Why not," Alessandra asked, her voice breaking.

"Well, for one thing," Jamie said, "You hurt me badly and I'm not sure I want to ever put myself in a position to be hurt like that again."

"We wouldn't do that to you ever again," Alessandra all but yelled. "We wouldn't! Mamma, tell him!"

"Jamie knows that, sweetie," Laura said to her, "Jamie knows."

"And for another," Jamie said, "I've had sex with four girls since I left you the other day."

"What," Alessandra asked in shock.

"I've also had to shoot a girl I used to play with when I was little," he said, "and issue death threats to two more girls, all because your mother didn't honor her promise to me and went around talking about me to half the casters in Tuscany."

"But, that's all over with, now," Alessandra said, pleadingly. "Isn't it? It's all over now, right?"

"It can't be over," he said. "Not until your mother tells me why she did it in the first place, why she had to betray my confidence like that and make me break my mother's heart by telling her that I was leaving."

"That's a long story, Jamie," Laura said, with a haunted look in her eyes.

Jamie sat down on their couch and made himself comfortable. "You have until you deliver to tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about it. Until you tell me why you did what you did, we can't have a future together. If you don't tell me, I'm leaving for good and never coming back."

"Jamie, I'm very sorry for everything that has happened, and if I could take it back, I would, but-"

"But I'm not interested in excuses," Jamie said, cutting her off.

Laura heaved a great sigh and sat down on the lounge chair opposite him. Alessandra took the chance to sit on the couch next to Jamie, but careful not to touch him. He could sense her fear that one wrong action or word would send him away again. He wanted to kiss her and dispel such a silly notion from her mind, but he needed to present an austere face to her mother first. He could tell she was about to tell him the truth.

"I was using the fetish that allowed for communication with restless spirits in the Great Beyond," Laura said. "I wasn't even bothering with studying the other fetishes."

"And why were you using that particular fetish," Jamie asked.

Laura looked uncomfortable with this line of questioning, but she finally relented under his stare. She hesitated a few times and then said, "The first time I used it, I used it to make sure my father's spirit was at rest and not stuck in the Great Beyond. I just wanted to know that he had gone to be with my mother in Paradise." She blinked away her tears and sniffed. "He wasn't. He hadn't. He was staying in the Great Beyond, in the Purgatory of casters' souls, just so he could deliver a warning to me.
"You see, my father was not only a caster, but he was also a seer; the most rare and potent of combinations. He was called a prophet of magic by his contemporaries and people and organizations from all over the world vied for his favor and talents. He could see limited snippets of the future, like any other seer, but, since he had also been born with magic, he could cast spells that allowed him to look into the future and gain specific knowledge at will. Coupled with our family's table, he was all but omniscient."

Laura sighed heavily and shook her head. "In the end, his great gift was his undoing," she said, her voice bitter. "I still don't know who it was that killed him. I was just a little girl at the time, but even I knew that no one could catch him unawares and his ability gave him every possible advantage against any caster fool enough to try and harm him, or his family. I asked him. His spirit, that is. Again and again, as I had my friends contact him for me, I asked him to tell me which serpent had killed him and how. You see, I guessed that they must have threatened him with something terrible to get him to come peacefully and allow himself to be killed.

"As I grew into my magic, I learned more about it and I thought that I had been the reason my father let himself be killed. I had thought that he had been threatened with harm against me and that that was the reason..." She wiped her eyes and sniffed. Jamie patiently waited for her to continue, noting that the story completely occupied Alessandra's mind, temporarily driving away the thoughts of losing him.

"He told me that hadn't been it," Laura finally said. "I had been pestering him to reveal the identity of his murderer to me each and every time I had had him summoned. He never did reveal it, but he did tell me that I was not the instrument of his undoing. He told me that threats against me had been a daily thing ever since I had been born and his gifts revealed to the magic world and that he had effortlessly dealt with those in the most ruthless fashion. I asked him, then, why did he allow himself to get murdered, over and over, and over and over again, he refused to tell me. I still don't know why, or who did it." She looked out the window and looked lost to Jamie's eyes.

He could sense that there was no duplicity in her mind. She was telling him the truth, so far. "What sort of warning," Jamie asked.

"What," Laura said, as she looked at him, uncomprehending.

"What was the warning your father's spirit wanted to give to you," Jamie said.

"Oh," she said and looked to her daughter. Alessandra looked uncomfortable under her mother's teary-eyed, haunted gaze. "He said that I am to die before the year is out and that both my child and Alessandra's are to follow me into the grave."

Alessandra and Jamie gasped in shared shock.

Soft mumbling woke up Lilah Marsh. She stretched on her uncomfortable, wooden pallet and slowly rolled off it to stretch some more in a standing position, as well. The pallet wasn't doing her back any favors. She stepped over to the door of her cell and bent over at the waist to peer out through the crack of the food slot. As usual, three men in hooded robes were standing right in front of her cell and casting the enchantments that prevented her from using her magic, or her shapeshifting abilities.

It was the only break she had in her daily routine of sitting in her featureless cell, ever since she had gotten kidnapped, not counting the two tasteless meals that were delivered to her every day. She was beginning to lose track of time in the dark, windowless cell, illuminated only by a small, weak bulb on the ceiling. She had no idea what time it was in the world outside, or where exactly she was. She had tried her best to keep track of the casters outside of her cell, but their mumbled chanting was impossible to keep track of. Today was different. When her dinner had been delivered, the sliding cover of the food slot had not been closed properly and she could now see outside.

At first, she had not seen anything, just a dark corridor, but now she saw that the corridor was lit with fluorescent lights from its ceiling. The corridor itself was brick and mortar, just like the walls of her cell. She saw no other feature up or down the corridor, for as far as her limited perspective allowed her to see. She focused on the casters standing by the door and confirmed that there were three of them, as she had suspected.

As she watched the trio finishing up with its casting, she thought she caught a glimpse of a familiar face among them. She squinted as best as she could at the middle figure, but it was cowled and the light from above was not helping her. She couldn't quite place the face. She had nothing left to lose, so she decided to try and connect with it, whoever it was.

"Help me," she screamed, using her little girl voice. As a shapeshifter, born of a werewolf raping a woman, she carried twice the magic of a normal caster and counted as two under The Law of Numbers. That was the reason why three casters had to cast the enchantments on her cell to stop her from using her magic. She also aged at half speed of normal people and lived to be twice their age as a consequence. At present, she was thirty years old and looked like she should be starting high school. She decided to play the lost, little girl to get her captors to connect with her and maybe even drop their guard around her. She had had no contact with any of her jailers since her kidnapping. Maybe they didn't know who she was.

When the trio finished its casting, the middle figure tossed back his hood and nodded at the other two figures. Lilah gasped as she realized where she knew the man from. He was Section personnel, a marksman from the alpha strike and intervention team. As the other two figures walked out of her view, she struggled to recall his name, since they hadn't served together long enough to be on a first name basis.

He crouched before the door and opened the food slot wide. "Hello, Lilah," he said.

She looked at his handsome face and polite smile. The smile didn't quite reach his brown eyes that looked a bit crazed. She gulped nervously and whispered, "When is Section coming?"

"Section," he asked. "Coming here?" His face drew up in a confused grimace as he scowled. "Why would they be coming here?"

Lilah finally remembered the man's name and addressed him by it. "Dana! When am I going to get rescued? Where am I? What is this place? Why aren't you helping me? How come you're a caster now?"

Dana Moran saw the rising horror and betrayal on her face and smiled a wide, sincere smile.

"You're not undercover, are you," she asked, her voice resigned. He shook his head no, still sporting his smile of predatory contentment. "Whatever's going on here, you're part of it, aren't you?"

"Not just part of it," Dana said. "I'm actually in command of this facility and our special project."

"Were you the one that kidnapped me from my bed," she asked. "Are you the one I have to thank for this predicament?"

"No, sadly," he said, "I was commanding the attainment of Drinks Rain."

Lilah's heart leaped up at the mention of one of the other two shapeshifters. "Is he here, too?"

"No," Dana gleefully said. "We sacrificed him first."

Lilah searched desperately for a sign of sanity, or compassion, on her former colleague's face. Finding none, she mournfully asked, "Sacrificed?"

Dana nodded. "Yes, we are sacrificing shapeshifters so we can take command of the curse the natives put on this land."

"Take command," she asked, taken aback.

"Take command and turn the resulting disease against all casters, instead of against all who live on north american soil."

"That's insane," she whispered in shock.

Dana snorted. "More insane than the very existence of magic? I don't think so."

"It wouldn't work. It can't work."

"It can and it does," Dana said, "if you have all the items the original shamans used to cast the curse and connect it with the earth. Add to that the blood of their descendants and a live shapeshifter sacrifice and..." He laughed smugly.

"What are you trying to accomplish? End all magic?"

"Yes," Dana said, nodding. "That's precisely it."

"Why?!"

"Because the world needs to make sense again," he said. "Because this 'gift' of magic turns the few into superior beings that walk all over the masses with impunity and that we can no longer abide."

"No," Lilah said, shaking her head in denial. "That would never work. You could never get all the casters in the world to catch the disease."

"All it takes to spread is for their auras to touch," he said. "Whether just by standing very close to one another, or by casting spells together, or on each other, the disease spreads. We've already had our test run and worked out the details."

"But, you're a caster, now! You're on our side! If you were to do this, then it would mean the death of you, too!"

"Oh, Lilah," Dana said, "don't be so naive. We have access to an obedient vampire. It gave us our magic, and it will take it away again, just as soon as we're done with it."

"You'd give up that kind of power? Willingly?" She shook her head. "No way. I can see it in your eyes. You've got something else in mind. After this disease of yours runs its course and vanishes from the world, you'll emerge as the only magician left, won't you?"

Dana smiled an ugly smile and said, "It was nice talking with you, Lilah. Goodbye!" He slid the slot shut and walked away, leaving the girl to bang impotently against the heavy, metal door to her cell. As he passed the armed guard post at the end of the hall, he stopped and said, "From now on, only agent Rodriguez can deliver food to the sacrifice. Understood?"

The senior guard saluted and said, "Yes, sir!"

The junior guard frowned and said, "Isn't she deaf?"

"Yes," Dana said, rounding on the junior guard with a death glare, "she is. That is precisely the reason why she will be the only one to come in contact with the sacrifice until the ceremony. The young shapeshifter speaks several native languages, which is a fact that we hadn't known about her and there is genuine concern that she might be able to ensnare the mind of an agent blessed with the gift of hearing."

"Ensnare their mind, sir," asked the senior guard with trepidation in his voice.

"We are surrounded with ancient items that bestow incredible powers upon those descended from the native tribes," Dana said. "I don't want to take any unnecessary risks. If there's even a remote chance that she can call upon those powers to influence a person's mind, I want it dealt with. From now on, only Rodriguez brings her food! Understood?"

"Yes, sir," both the guards said in unison and saluted.

"Good," Dana said and turned to leave. He huffed as soon as he rounded a corner. He had given a pretty lame excuse for his orders, but he couldn't afford to have Lilah Marsh sow the seeds of discord between him and his patsies. Not now, when his victory was drawing nigh.

He ascended the winding cave that served as the prison annex, until he came to a large set of wooden double doors that led to the sacrificial chamber. He opened them and stepped through. The chamber itself was large and round, with a domed ceiling. Its walls were carved out of the bedrock and it represented an exact replica of the original cave where the great curse had first been laid upon the land. The other exit from the chamber was to Dana's left and he started towards it. He cast another look at the various items in the chamber. They appeared to be scattered haphazardly about, but they had actually been carefully placed to recreate the events of the original casting.

The altar had been cleaned of the blood of the second shapeshifter that Dana had personally sacrificed this morning. He grinned in satisfaction. The results of his little experiment had been most satisfactory. He felt assured of his success.

Noises coming from the other exit interrupted his satisfied musings. Shouted challenges were heard through the door and angry voices responded. Dana grimaced. "News of my little experiment must have reached the wrong ears ahead of schedule," he thought. He went to the door to open it, but it burst open on its own.

At that moment, Joseph Franks walked through the other door, startling Dana. "Joseph," he said, "what a pleasant surprise!" The two men closed the distance between them and shook hands. "What brings you here? I thought you were enjoying your retirement."

"I was," Joe said. "I am. The senior management just asked me if I'd stop by here and have a little chat with you."

"Oh," Dana said, surprised. "What about?"

"About you sacrificing the second shapeshifter this morning and not even releasing the disease," Joe said. "They're a bit confused as to why you did that. Dana, you know that half of them don't want a young buck like yourself running a big, autonomous operation like this all by yourself."

"They didn't seem to mind me running things while the going was good," Dana said.

"Yes," Joe said, nodding, "no one minds anything as long as things go smooth. Honestly, I'm surprised this place is still up and running. Didn't you determine with the first sacrifice that you can't use the native curse to kill all magicians?"

"There were some," Dana said and paused, "obstacles that needed overcoming, yes. But I've figured out a way to overcome them."

"I'm glad to hear that," Joe said. "The half of senior management that believes you're the anti-magic messiah will be very glad to hear that, too, I imagine."

"Yes," Dana said, chuckling. "That's the purpose of your little visit, isn't it? To see if I've made any progress?" Joe nodded. "I figured as much. You want the short of it?"

"Always," Joe said. "You know me, I like to keep it simple. But, keep in mind, I haven't been briefed about this project in full. All they told me was that they found out after the first sacrifice that it can't be done. They want to pull the plug on this place and divert their resources elsewhere. Tell me what went wrong the first time!"

"The two main problems we've had," Dana said, "were the guardian spirits and the nature of the magical disease itself."

"Guardian spirits?"

"Yes, some of the shamans that had cast the original curse are standing guard over it in the spirit world. Apparently, they can see it being deployed and they tried to change it into a disease that kills everyone in North America, just as they intend it to do. We had to pull the plug, lest we cause the Apocalypse to happen."

"Oh, that does sound bad," Joe said.

Dana nodded. "I've figured out a way to get past them. You see, they have a blind spot. This very place," Dana gestured all around them, "is an exact replica of the place they first cast the curse and connected it to the land. It has been consecrated with the blood of their descendants and it is a blind spot to them. We can summon the disease upon it and leave them in the dark about it."

Joe looked at the cavern and the many items strewn about it and said, "Well, that's nice, but I don't see how you're going to squeeze all the casters in the world in here."

Dana smiled. "We don't have to. All we need is one. One particular man needs to be here to receive the disease."

"One," Joe asked, surprised. "How can one be enough? Who is it?"

"Jamie Jacobs, The Bludgeoner," Dana said, making Joe's eyebrows rise. "He is protected by the blood magic of over a thousand spell casters from all over the globe. If we infect his aura, then all of those people will be infected when they renew their protection spell upon him. It will be a worldwide, simultaneous release of the disease and the end of magic in our time."

"Wow," Joe said. "That sounds... That's... Won't this protective magic, you know, protect him?"

"Well, it would, if he was a caster in need of protection in the first place," Dana said. "He isn't, which is why I had to sacrifice the second shapeshifter this morning. I needed to figure out a way to both make the disease weaker and to make it linger in the protective aura that surrounds Jacobs."

"Weaker? Shouldn't you be making it stronger?"

"The problem with the disease is that it kills casters too quickly," Dana said. "We've infected hundreds and nearly none of them lived long enough to pass it on. Even if we hadn't pulled the plug on it, it would have failed to achieve our goal. Mundane quarantine measures would have been able to defeat it. Section actually believes that's how it saved itself and the world. They're having their entire staff trained by the CDC in Atlanta."

"But that won't help them," Joe asked.

"No," Dana said. "I've modified the disease to linger in a caster's aura for a week before killing them. That way, they serve as our unwitting disease dispensers before they die. Imagine it, Joe! A thousand casters, all over the world, walking around for a week and infecting every other caster they come in contact with! Then they fall ill, leaving the others they've infected to panic and try to help by banding together and spreading the disease even further. All the world's governments would try to fix the problem by themselves, or hide it to not appear weak in the magic department to their enemies. By the time the information finally leaks, it's too late to do anything about it, anyway. I've run simulation after simulation and most of them predict total success on our part."

Joe nodded along, engrossed in the vision. "It might just be enough to wipe them all out," he said.

"I think it will, Joe, I think it really will."

"But it all hinges on this thousand casters casting a protection spell on Jacobs and the disease somehow bypassing it," Joe said. "The senior management will want proof of all this. They really are eager to shut this whole place down, you know."

"Don't worry, Joe," Dana said. "I've got ECHELON intercepts of a Jordanian diplomat putting this 'Jacobs Protection Society' together and I know every last detail of their protection spell. I've already tested my modifications to the disease. They'll work!"

"So, that's why you sacrificed the second shapeshifter?" Dana nodded. "Well, then, my boy, take me to your office and let's put together a presentation for the senior management and convince them to give it a whirl!" Joe clapped Dana on the shoulder and the two of them walked out of the sacrificial chamber to go to Dana's office. Dana felt certain of his imminent triumph and rise to power.