Notes from the Author:

No, this is not the area where I warn you about ages and fakeness. That is inferred.

--This story is a direct follow-up to "Heather Jenkins." You should read that first or you'll be lost. I have no idea how that story ended up in Sci-Fi & Fantasy. I blame the wheel mouse.

--This story is long! (So is "Heather Jenkins.")

--This story contains magic for people who are offended by such things. (There are.)

--This story is also related to "Kevin Brown," if you feel like reading more of my stuff.

I think that's all.

The last thing I thought when I saw him raise his foot above my face was: 'Severe injury to the brain.'

I managed to turn my head, but not enough to keep him from catching my hair. He lifted his left foot up and stomped on my crotch. I saw so many stars I thought my head was going to explode, my crotch had never been attacked like that before.

Before I knew it, he was lifting me up by my arm and whipped me like a rag doll across the room and toward the wall. In the back of my mind, I pictured a wall in my house in Columbus.

i managed the linear fold but was still moving at the same speed when I hit the wall in my bedroom. It hurt, but I could catch a breath knowing there wouldn't be a follow-up attack.

My most obvious pain was coming from my balls. I tried to stand, but my left leg wouldn't support my weight and I fell back down. I had to get out of my clothes, the tight feeling I loved had turned into claustrophobia. The binding and restricting my movement causing a feeling of panic.

There was a gun safe under my bed, it held a .357 revolver and a set of daggers. I pulled one of the daggers out of its sheath and cut the laces on my shoes first, dragging them off. My socks followed, and I could see my feet were normal color, so no blocked arteries. My suit jacket was next, cut carefully lest I add a slicing injury to the list.

My right arm complained when I tried to switch hands with the knife, probably dislocated when Declan used it to throw me like a rag doll. I settled for a slow cut and finally got my tank and bra off.

Before I could start on my leggings, another hand took the knife from me. "Mother, what happened to you?" Hayley cried.

"Help me reset my shoulder," I grunted.

"I'll call a healer," Hayley said.

"Don't!"

"Why?"

"There will be questions that I can't answer. I don't want people going off on some revenge mission until I figure out what happened. Are you going to help me or not?"

"What do I do?"

Hayley helped me set my shoulder, then I cut the rest of my clothes off. My left leg was broken, along with some of my ribs, and my face was severely fucked up. My balls hurt less now, a bright light in a purple tunnel.

"Can you get me some gold, Hayley?" I asked.

"That's not something I normally carry around with me. I can get some, but there will be questions. Most of the time our kind doesn't need gold, we draw most of our power from a different plane."

"Shit, I don't have my purse or you could go buy me some."

"What does it look like?" Hayley asked.

"Forget it, Hayley. It's where I was...assaulted."

"Just think about the purse. Close your eyes, imagine the color, the texture."

"Okay."

"Now reach for it in your mind."

There was a popping sound, and my purse was in my hand. I opened my eyes and Hayley was beaming. "Wow."

"Object translocation. You can call anything you own to you, no matter where it is."

"That's a nice trick," I admitted.

"Just remember that the amount of energy you expend is relative to the size and mass of the object you are calling to you. Car keys? Sure. The whole car? No."

It hurt to laugh at her explanation, but I did. I rummaged through my purse as best I could and pulled out my wallet. "Do you have your identification?"

Of course the bank would call when somebody tried cashing a five thousand dollar check drawn on my account. After answering my security questions, they finally gave Hayley the cash. Two hours later, I heard her rustling around downstairs, then she came up into my room. She handed a small bag over to me. "Declan did this to you, didn't he?"

"You let me worry about who did this to me," I warned. "There is something going on here that is beyond a simple beating."

"Like what?"

I reached into the bag and pulled out a gold necklace. It dissolved into my hand, leaving behind everything not gold. I could feel the gold in my body, but it wasn't doing much. Another necklace, same negative result.

"Why aren't you healing?" Hayley sobbed.

"I am, just a little. All of the life-threatening things are healed, it the cosmetics that aren't healing."

"Why?"

"The same reason hickeys don't heal right away. Passion. Declan picked a fight, and I pushed him back to get him away from me and that's when he attacked."

"How did he pick a fight? Hayley asked.

"He did the one thing he promised not to do, he came home with another man on his mouth. Only in this case is was about fifty men. He was coated with cum and it was nasty."

"He was cheating on you?

"Not really." I went into detail on the deal Declan and I had made before we got married. I could have my harem and Declan could have his orgies.

"That sounds kind of sick," Hayley admitted.

"Well, life is full of compromises."

Hayley was especially interested in my visit from Gaia. "So she said that you gave Declan the power to sap the masculinity from those men who were fucking him?"

"Just the ones who were fucking him for revenge," I answered.

"We need to inform the elders," Hayley said.

"No, you don't. This is my mess, I'm going to deal with it."

"So how are you going to deal with it? Let your husband beat you all the way to death the next time?"

"You let me worry about that. This isn't something that falls under the purview of the clan or the club, clear?"

"I will point out that any conflict between you and Declan may affect Brookstone Pointe," Hayley hedged.

"That comes after I at least get well enough to walk."

***

It took two weeks for my leg to heal well enough to work out with. Hayley took to sparring with me to work out all the kinks in my leg and my right arm. I couldn't lift as much as I used to back when I was Heath, probably a result of me giving Declan most of my manliness.

Even after two weeks, my bruises were healing at an extraordinarily slow rate. I was sufficiently concerned about that to let Hayley bring in a healer. The healer pronounced me fit, saying that I was consciously blocking the process. I admitted that I had some issues to resolve and she told me that we all have issues. Hayley whisked her away and came back with a business card bearing an attorney's name. A divorce attorney.

The front of the card was black with 'Arthur' embossed in white. The back was white with an address and number in Los Angeles. Only in Hollywood would they have a single-name attorney.

I called the number, they wouldn't even take my name until I could provide my referrer. I gave them Janine's name and crossed my fingers. The secretary was back in a minute, setting an appointment only an hour in the future.

My getting to L.A. in an hour wasn't the problem. Getting to a place I knew would be my problem. On a hunch, I called Janine, and she agreed to be my destination face.

"Holy shit! Hayley wasn't lying when she said Declan had dropped you off a building!" Janine said.

"He tried throwing me through a window if that counts," I said. "I take it you provided my bona-fide with Arthur?"

"Of course I would," Janine pulled me into a hug. "I'm going with you, sweetie."

We rode to Arthur's office, which turned out to be a building full of attorneys named Arthur. The idea behind the firm was to strike fear into opponents by telling them they were going up against 'Arthur.'

The 'Arthur' whose office we now occupied had a wall of degrees and certifications. The degrees were all in the name of Stewart Madison, but the nameplate on the desk read 'Arthur.'

I wasn't expecting him to look younger than me. Janine and I got a polite nod as he sat down and opened a new leather folder. He started with the basic questions, noting the answers as we went.

When I gave him Declan's name, he looked up and gave me the once-over. I could see him studying the bruises, eyes calculating the damage. I shook my head when he asked me if I needed to see a doctor.

Janine clasped my hand when she saw me start to tear up. I was thinking about the attack and how cold Declan had been. 'Arthur' passed a tissue box across his desk and started pulling information up on his computer.

When he asked about a prenuptial agreement, I was lost. I knew I had a copy, but it was in Vegas. When I told Janine I left it in the car, she understood immediately.

We promised to be back in a moment, he assured us that he was getting paid by the hour. I called Shania, who was understandably pissed and even more upset when I asked for the location of the prenup. She said that Declan had been trying to get ahold of me.

Janine, who was listening impatiently, told me to just send Shania a picture of my face. After I did, Shania replied with an apology and a picture of the folder. I was going to enjoy that magic power, even if it was the only one I used. Folder now in hand, Janine and I went back to 'Arthur's' office.

'Young Arthur' had been joined by 'Older Arthur' and both were displeased that Janine was there. The points of contention were that Janine was not only in charge of the law firm, because it was owned by Brookstone Pointe, but that Janine had substantial dealings with my husband. It was a conflict of interest for her to be in on my divorce.

Janine agreed to bow out of the meeting, promising to wait outside until I was done. She left with 'Old Arthur,' and I handed my 'Arthur' the folder.

He went through it slowly, betraying nothing until he reached the end. "Did you check these accounts to see if the monies specified were available?"

"Arthur..."

"Just call me Stew for now."

"Stew, I didn't check. At that point I didn't have any reason not to believe him."

"Do you mind if I check?"

"Sure. I've got to pay the bill somehow," I shrugged.

Arthur consulted his computer, asking me for the verification keywords. "All the mentioned monies are available. The banks say the accounts are individual. This agreement is very strange in the wording regarding the heirs. Are you pregnant at this time?"

"No, but I may have knocked up the surrogates Declan had retained before we were involved."

Stewart didn't flinch. "Are you post-operative?"

"Stew, I'm no-operative."

"You can still pursue battered spouse charges, ma'am," Stewart pointed out. "California law is very clear on that."

"The assault took place in Vegas, and I won't mention the assault if he doesn't. I did technically initiate the assault, even if I was on the losing end of the battle."

"According to this document, the divorce is just a matter of signatures. There is a small problem, though."

"Whatever could it be?" I asked.

"Well, all the properties and accounts that belong to you are listed in the name of Heather Jenkins-Sagemueller. In the event of a divorce, every asset is to be put into a trust bearing that name. Those terms are non-revocable. You can't change the names on the properties and you agreed to only spend the accounts, not transfer them."

"I can't sell the properties? What properties?"

"The penthouses in Pittsburgh, the houses in Denver, Beverly Hills and Seattle. The property in Bern would necessitate filing papers in Swiss Courts."

"He's marked me," I sighed. "Any chance of just giving it up and just taking the divorce?"

Stewart snorted and made a show of clearing his throat. "I have seen women give up as much as ten million dollars to give clear their name. But..."

"Yes?"

"I don't know about two and a half billion dollars."

"Huh?"

"Thirty percent must be put in a separate trust for any children, but the rest is yours. You could contest the terms, but you did sign the documents."

"File it," I waved my hand. "File it."

"Did you want this firm to handle the trusts? We are licensed in every state."

"Do you get a kickback on the fees?" I asked with a wink.

"My fees are fixed."

"I'm kidding, Stew," I sighed. "Any other stipulations?"

"It's not a stipulation, but he does request a face-to-face meeting in a separate letter. Invitation extended to bodyguards also. I'd take it, ma'am. Maybe there will be an apology?"

"You only see my face, Stewart. You don't see the damage he did to my shoulder and ribs and leg. We'll forget about trying to throw me out a twenty-story window because the glass didn't break. Understand?"

Stew suddenly looked abashed. "Yes, ma'am."

"Does he say where?" I asked.

"Only a picture," Stewart held up an eight-by-ten glossy.

"The Vienna House. Perfect." The bodyguards would have to be natural immortals and I would want there to be at least six. I could protect myself with magic, now that I was expecting something to happen. "How long to get those papers filed?"

"I will contact the attorney of record. He also lives in Los Angeles, so it's just a matter of filing and approval. I know a judge that specializes in divorce cases, so the hearing should be quick. Once that's done, I'll let you know, ma'am."

"Thank you." I stood, and he stood with me. Chivalrous, if not exactly necessary.

Janine was sitting in the waiting area chatting with 'Old Arthur.' "Got everything taken care of?" She asked.

"It's just a matter of filing," I shrugged. "It is pretty much cut and dried."

"I waiting until after the meeting to tell you, but Declan divested his shares in Brookstone Pointe a week ago," Janine said. "I'm glad I didn't have to fight him about that, we have a lot of that money tied up in our solar project."

"He just gave you the shares?" I asked.

"Three hundred million dollars' worth," Janine nodded.

"Very strange," I mused. "All very strange."

"Thank you, Cabot," Janine said. "Heather is a close friend and she needed my support."

"Not a problem now, ma'am," Cabot nodded. "I'm sorry, Missus Sagemueller. On behalf of my gender, I suppose."

Gender? Did I count as male because of my pecker? Probably not anymore, not with tits and ass like a Hollywood actress. "Thank you," I nodded.

Janine waited until we got back into the car to speak again. "You're very disturbed about something, Heather."

"Something I wasn't paying attention to when I signed the original prenup. Declan signed over twenty-five percent of his assets and several properties over to me as my wedding gift."

Janine whistled. "You're kidding, he signed over two billion dollars to you?"

"Two and a half, plus properties. But there's a catch."

"There always is," Janine said. "What is it?"

"In order for me to keep the money, I have to keep his name. Everything goes into trusts to assure my compliance."

"Even if you remarry?" Janine asked.

"Yes," I nodded. "He's also asked for a meeting at his house in Austria, specifying bodyguards can attend."

"I'll see if I can rustle some up for you."

"They'll have to be natural immortals," I said. "I'm not sitting on a plane for sixteen hours just for one meeting."

"Yes, of course," Janine giggled. "Forgot about that."

***

The picture of the Beverly Hills house showed a fantastic mansion set into a hillside. By the time Janine and I got to the house proper, two bodyguards and two women were there. One introduced herself as Morena Wasikowski, and the other as Celina. Celina was a guardian. She asked for permission to enter the house, then proceeded to take a tour with the bodyguards.

"That's a nasty bruise you have there," Morena commented. "You don't know any healers?"

"The remains are psychological, I have some issues to work out. Your accent, Russian?" I asked.

"Yes, it is. You are a spy?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"You have an interesting aura. It says you are welcome most anywhere in the world," Morena replied.

"Oh, goddess," Janine muttered. "I'll be in the house, Heather. Can I go in?"

"Sure, Janine," I waved. "Why is she excusing herself, Morena?"

"Because I read your entire aura, it means I have expressed an interest in you, Heather. Janine has a surface interest in you, but she knows you won't go for her if you knew her type."

"What type is that?" I asked.

"Janine is a masochist, she likes to be abused. She gets off on it, actually."

"Like spankings?" I asked.

"No, like paddling and whips and bamboo canes. Need I say more?"

"That's enough," I held up my hand. "I'm not a dominant. I prefer it on the bottom, actually."

"Too bad. I'd be willing to do you with a strap-on for hours at a time," Morena gave me a demure smile.

"That's different," I shrugged.

"Hmm. I still think you're a spy."

"I'm not a spy."

Morena considered my second denial. "It must be your passport then. Have you travelled a lot?"

Then it dawned on me. "My husband got me a spook passport so I could visit him anywhere he may be doing business."

Morena snickered. "Those are pricey, some go as high as a million dollars a country. Too bad for you that he turned out to be a raging lunatic."

I wasn't going to ask how she knew that. "That's partially my fault, I suppose."

"Do tell."

I needed something to eat, and I hoped that there was something in my house. My house. Was Declan using his properties to assure that he would have another shot at me? "I know that guardians can ward against the magic-user, can they ward against normal human intruders?"

"There is a problem with that," Celina said from behind us. "You would have to invite every single human guest into the house. That includes every guest to a party down to the cable guy."

"Well, there is a solution to that," Morena said. "You just have to appoint a trustee to handle those for you. Celina used to be a trustee, she was very good at it."

"Hint, hint," I said.

"I could recommend a few," Celina admitted.

"And why not you?" I asked.

"Because I doubt you want my two screaming toddlers to come with me," Celina replied.

"There will be more screaming children soon enough, I suppose." There was Shania, Loren and Kelsey. What about Kasey? "How many bedrooms in this palace?" I asked.

"That's the spirit," Morena joked. "Let's go find out."

I wasn't expecting Morena to latch her arm through mine, but it felt nice after two weeks of sleeping alone. There was still pain wherever she brushed up against my side, and it irritated her as much as it did me. The master bedroom and the ensuite were about the size of the whole second floor of my house in Columbus. Janine caught up with us while I was gaping at the bathroom and wishing I could take a soak in the marvelous clawfoot tub.

"It is a rather nice place," Janine said. "Almost as nice as your castle outside Moscow, Morena."

"You're very rude," Morena said. "That place is old and stuffy and cold. I much prefer the house outside Bern."

"Shit," I muttered. "What's up, Janine?"

"Did you want to staff this place? I know some excellent women who would be glad to keep up after you."

"This palace is more befitting a Russian touch," Morena countered. "The kind of touch befitting royalty."

They are seriously trying to one-up each other? "How about I kick you both out and staff the place my way?" I asked. "Seriously, Janine, can you get in touch with...my girlfriends?"

"Shania, Loren and Kelsey? I can look them up for you. Your friend Kasey has gone missing."

"I also need to get in contact with Kimberly."

"When you were in hiding, Miss Pulanski went back to Poland. She was a little heartbroken at your disappearance."
"Shit," I muttered.

"Kimberly Pulanski?" Morena asked. "Professor Pulanski?"

"That's her," I nodded.

"One of my teachers," Morena admitted.

"In which lifetime?" Janine poked.

"Why are you two bickering?" I asked. "Aren't you working together?"

"Yes, we are," Janine said. "Even though I know you're not my type, I'd still like a roll in the hay with you. Eventually."

"This is unreal!"

"You're attractiveness to both women and men comes from your contact with an ancient artifact we loosely refer to as 'The Sphere,' Janine said. "That energy makes it hard for you to escape notice."

"Or to prevent two beautiful women from fighting over me?"

"Thank you," Janine and Morena said together.

"Janine, you were going to say something before the claws came out?" I joked.

"Beverly Hills, Los Angeles in general, is a nice place to live. I was asking if you would want staff for the house; maid, cook, groundskeeper?"

"Yes, I would. I assume the bodyguards are staying?"

"A woman of your stature should have a bodyguard and driver," Morena replied.

"How about this? Since you two are both so eager to get your own personnel into my house, Gaia knows why, you split the difference: Janine hires the staff, Morena the bodyguards slash drivers?"

"That's not really fair," Morena said. "You would have your assistants slash surrogates from Janine's side."

I burst out laughing. "Well, shit. Fine, even it out. I'll cover the expenses whenever Arthur gets my trusts set up. I am covering the expenses, you got it?"

"Yes, ma'am," Janine said.

"You're funny," Morena wagged a finger at Janine.

Unreal.

"There is one room you really need to look at," Janine said.

Morena latched her arm through mine and we followed Janine into the basement. It was a big, white space that resembled my auditing sanctum back in Columbus. It was about half the size, but the tell-tale sheen of the whiteboards told me that they were computer screens rather than simple boards. "Wow."

"Declan had this made for you," Janine said. "The checks on the serial numbers of the monitors say that they were purchased about a week ago."

"Damnit," I felt a tear run down my cheek. "Why did he do this?"

"There's only one way to find out," Janine said. "You'd have to ask him."

"I need to talk to the girls," I sighed. "Excuse me for a minute."

Janine and Morena left the room, closing the door behind them. I sat down on one of the sturdy tables and called Shania. They had went back to their condo in Pittsburgh when they couldn't find me or Declan at the hotel. I asked her if they wanted to come out to Los Angeles and live with me. Shania told me that she did, and maybe the others might want to as well.

I went back upstairs, finding everybody talking outside. A man and a woman had arrived, obviously a couple in their matching clothes and red stripes in their hair. Janine introduced them as Starr and Pete, and they were going to be my bodyguards when I went to see Declan.

"Janine, you're fibbing to me," I accused.

"Why do you say that?" Janine asked.

"Starr and Pete, you're not just bodyguards, you're enforcers. I can sense that on you," I said. "The blades you are wearing say the same."

"You're very right," Starr said. "Most people can't see the swords, not even the wicca. That makes you a Child of the Sphere."

"I'd be interested as to where I came across one of your spheres," I chuckled. "Please, come inside."

When we were inside the doorway, Celina put her hand up to stop me. She pointed to the edge of the frame, two distinct sets of symbols written on the concrete. "This is your warding, the whole house, even up to the air vents is protected from magicians now, even wizards, but not Revengers. On the other side of the frame is the human protection warding. It's not a shield like it is for magicians, but it makes people not invited feel very unwelcome."

"The longer they stay, the more frightened they get," Starr chuckled. "The only place that they aren't really scared is the path to the door."

"Hmm," I smiled. "That will do right nicely."

"To make it permanent you have to etch it into the framing. A simple tool like an awl will do the trick."

"Awl," Starr snorted. "That's good."

"Inside joke?" I asked Janine.

"Something like that. Your staff is on the way, but you'll need a trustee now," Janine said.

"Celina?" I asked.

"I'll take the job. I warned you about the screaming toddlers, don't say I didn't."

"Do I need to say anything to make it official?" I asked Celina.

"Nope, you're good," Celina smiled.

"You two," I pointed to Starr and Pete. "You're staying for dinner?"

Starr shrugged. "Sure."

"Good. There's a gym here and I need to spar with someone," I said. They looked at me dubiously. "I am in charge here, right?"

"Yes ma'am you are," Morena said.

Starr helped me figure out some of the things I had lost when I had become Heather. My tits were wonderful to look at and fondle, but they threw off my balance on even the simplest things. My clothing didn't hide much of the bruising on my torso, making Starr wince when I told her to attack. We finished our bout an hour later, doing our cool-downs on the mats closest the bathrooms. The gym did have individual showers, but Starr came into mine fully aware of my cock.

"You're really very beautiful," she said. "Your transformation, done by magic?"

"Declan, my husband, his wife had been giving him estrogen. He was actually in bad shape when I first saw him. We made a deal, and I took all of his feminine attributes for myself. I was thinking I got the better part of the deal, but it turned him into a sex fiend."

"Like what?" Starr turned me around so she could wash my hair.

"Well, it started out with him wanting me to be the top. I almost always have been the bottom, and that's pretty much the way I am."

"You could have fooled me," Starr giggled. She finished on my hair and started gently washing my body. "You're very bossy when you have your clothes on. So what happened then?"

"Well, basically he turned into a cum dumpster. He started having his male employees bang him one at a time, then it was a thirty-person gang bang. He would kneel over and have them bang him from behind and jack off and shoot their cum on him. Gaia clued me in on exactly what he was doing."

"Gaia? Hmm. What was he doing?"

"Declan was stealing the manliness from the men who fucked him as a form of revenge. I didn't know what that meant at the time, but I found out when he beat me to within an inch of my life."

"Do my hair," Starr turned around.

My cock had gotten hard while she had been washing me and feeling me up. "I don't think that's a good idea. Your husband..."

"Pete understands the sensual feeling of women together," Starr said.

"He knows I'm not a total woman, right?" I asked.

"Of course. It shows in your aura, the difference between who you are and who you want to be. You love being a woman, but you like having the cock too. Morena and Janine and even Celina would be happy to feel you on top of them. Pete would be happy to feel you underneath him."

"Interesting," I mused.

"Now will you wash me?" Starr asked.

"Sure." I pulled her back by her hair and wet it. The shampooing was long and intimate, my cock poking her ass the whole time. After I rinsed her hair, I went for the soap. I turned around and lathered her legs up to her knees, making her lift up her feet so that she would be off-balance for a second. Then came the area between her legs and her thighs. I made a show of rinsing her off, sticking a finger into her pussy. I worked it in and out as I stood up, kissing her on the lips and forcing my tongue into her mouth.

Starr moved her hand down and started pushing on my hand so there would be more pressure on her clit. I rubbed her furiously until she finally let out her moan into my mouth, biting on my tongue then immediately releasing it. She stepped away from me, freeing her pussy from my finger assault. "Oh, goddess you are fine, Heather."

"Thank you." I moved closer to her, pinning her against the wall, our tits slipping together. "What do you want now, Starr?"

"I want you in me, Heather." She led me backward into the corner, lifting her right leg so her pussy was open for me. I bent my knees a little so I could slip into her. When I was fully in, she dropped her leg, tightening around my cock. "I'm yours, Heather. Bang me with that cock of yours."

My hands went to her hands and pulled them up above her head. As I pumped in and out of her, our tits sloshed together and the look on her face just spurred me on. When I felt that twitch in my groin telling me my orgasm was imminent, I released her arms and was dropping them down to get under her ass when the pain came back to my ribs with a vengeance. I pulled out of Starr as I fell to the tiled floor of the shower, my cock shooting cum as I writhed in pain.

Starr fell to her knees beside me. "Heather?"

"I'm okay," I said. "Maybe a little too much too soon."

"Baby, I'm sorry," she said.

I sat up, looking her in the eyes. "I'll be okay, Starr. I'll be okay."

Starr dried me off, not letting me return the favor. She poked and prodded at my ribs and finally pronounced me alive. There was a look of concern from Celina when we entered my bedroom, and I had to assure her that I was okay. I pulled on some panties and a cami and laid on the bed that Celina had turned down for me. The pain had been immense, and it repeated when I moved my arm again.

A healer appeared an hour later to do some prodding of her own. She applied a salve and Starr helped her bandage my ribs because she hadn't done anything like that for a long time. Dinner chat was about everything but my injuries and Declan.

Janine joined me on the observation deck to watch the sunset. It was the first sunset I had ever seen over water like that. I told her I was going to bed, I had to get up early to confront Declan, Vienna was local plus nine hours.

Morena crawled into bed shortly after I turned my lights out. She seemed to know that I didn't want sex, I just needed a chest to cry on. I hadn't thought about Carla while I had been laid up in Columbus, but my dreams reminded me that I had unfinished business with her and Ai Ming.

Breakfast was early and just with Starr and Pete. Starr helped me choose my clothes, giving me a variety of weapons to hide in them. The three of us folded to the driveway outside the Vienna house, startling the guards that hadn't seen us approach. I strode up to the house like I owned it, which I technically did, Starr and Pete following me inside.

Charles didn't even welcome us. Pete stayed behind in the foyer as Starr and I followed Charles up the stairs. Declan's appearance shocked me. He was wasted away to a shriveled body, laying in a bed surrounded by medical machines. I waved Charles and Starr out of the room and pushed the door closed.

"What happened to you?"

"Me happened to me. The doctors can't diagnose what I have, but I know what it is. I professed my love for you and then tried to kill you, so your goddess took her revenge on me. I would have, you know. I was in that red tunnel where I wanted to beat you into a bloody bag of skin."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Maybe it was all the anger I absorbed? That power, that raw power I got from them? It was like a drug. I wanted every milliliter of cum from them, and I got it." When I got into that suite, I was pissed, super pissed. When you came in there and yelled at me, that was it."

"We could have had our marriage the way you wanted it, Declan. I just had to do my part and not look," I cried.

"Maybe it was that transexual that tipped me over the edge. Kasey? She came right up to me and told me that her dick could make you scream more than I ever could because I wasn't man enough to be the top."

"She had no right to do that," I said.

"I realized, after, that I had encouraged you to find your own dick to satisfy the itch you had."

"After?"

"When you vanished, I went for her. I...I did to her what I couldn't do to you, I killed her. That's when the red went away, probably the moment that the wasting started. I was glad you came, I just wanted to tell you that I was sorry before I died. It's all yours now, Heather."

"I forgive you, Declan." I crossed the room, and stood by his bed. I didn't want to kiss him, so I did the next best thing and kissed my fingers and put them on his lips. "I forgive you."

"Goodbye, my wife," Declan gasped.

"Goodbye, husband."

An hour after the three of us folded back to Los Angeles, I got the call telling me Declan was dead. His corporate lawyer was going to fly in from New York and brief me as to what Declan had meant when he said 'It's all yours.'

***

Even before our marriage, Declan had been selling off his companies or gifting them to the people that were running particular divisions. He had consolidated everything into a cash account on the order of nine and a half billion dollars. I was floored when the lawyer gave me that news. Another tidbit was that the will superseded the prenup because the divorce wasn't finalized by the court, so I could change my name back if I wanted to.

Declan was buried in his family plot in Austria, not five miles from the house. I had the supreme satisfaction of firing Charles' sorry ass, even if he did get a big severance from Declan before he passed. Some of my issues had evidently died with Declan because the morning after the funeral the bruises on my torso and my aching ribs had healed. The marks still on my face were another matter.

My mourning didn't last four days because Carla McCauley was on my phone asking for help. Though the FBI had foiled the first and fake auction in Las Vegas, the second auction was still going down in Shannonburg, North Carolina. Agent Sumika politely asked me to come along and see if I could get inside as an undercover. She really didn't know that I had the money to buy everyone and leave the bad guys without any slaves at all. I agreed to make an appearance, just to see if I could make a difference.

Nadia and Shehzadi were part of Special Agent Sumika's team. Janne assigned them as my drivers and backup security in case things went 'tits-up' as she called it. Nobody asked about the bruises still on my face, and I didn't want them to. I was still trying to figure out what my issues were and I didn't want anyone clouding my thoughts.

The guards at the entrance to the town didn't even think about letting us in for the auction, even though they did know my name and who my husband was. Their reasoning was that 'tits weren't allowed.'

When my limo returned to the staging area, I gave Janne the bad news. She went to mull about it and Nadia proceeded to quiz me about why I still had my bruises if I was a natural immortal. Janne walked in on the questioning and asked Nadia what the hell she was talking about.

I decided that a little linear fold couldn't hurt, so I folded out to my home in Columbus. After a few minutes there, I folded back to the staging area. I appeared a few steps behind Janne and announced my presence. She was faster than I thought, whirling around and drawing down on me. She sighed and holstered her gun while warning me not to do that shit again.

Janne decided to send a set of agents from her special weapons team into the town to get a lay of the land. The four donned some equipment including some night-vision gear and tactical cameras and slipped into the woods. They didn't reach the town until almost twenty-three hours, passing along layout and possible numbers. Janne fielded drones to provide overwatch, some of them with night vision, others with infrared to track the people.

Shannonburg had a lot of people in it, almost all of them women. The men were identified, most known criminals and involved in human trafficking. The women brought in to be auctioned off were in the school auditorium and the field behind the school. There were a lot of guards, the agents reported, all of them with multiple and automatic weapons. The refugees were spread around the town, some hiding in houses and barns on the periphery, wanting to make a run for it but unable to do so.

Janne was torn. She didn't want to break her special weapons team down any further to lead the women out, so she ordered the agents to tell the women to shelter in place to stay out of the lines of fire.

Nadia and Shehzadi volunteered to sneak in and lead the women out. Janne thought long and hard before she agreed to let them go, giving them night vision and Berettas. I left the truck and made a call to Janine, explaining the situation and asking for her help. When I finished my call, I turned to find Janne standing behind me. She was pissed and was ranting about putting me in cuffs when I pointed out that she didn't have anything on site to help deal with the women that Nadia and Shehzadi were going to sneak out.

After demanding that I run everything through her, Janine settled down and asked me to get into the surveillance truck. The technicians didn't know what to think of me, as I wasn't an agent and was seeing stuff that most civilians didn't get to see. One of the drones was in hover over the school, keeping track of the people there and marking them as a 'duck' or a 'goose.' The other drone was tracking the refugees grouping in the town and a third was showing Nadia and Shehzadi moving through the woods.

The scene played out over hours, Nadia and Shehzadi leading out two women each. On the second trip two of the four agents led out two women of their own. At this rate, it would take hours, and Janne voiced that sentiment just a minute later. "Where is my fucking backup?" She muttered.

"We still haven't been advised that any backup is coming," one woman said.

"Don't they realize what's going on here?"

"Agent Sumika, could I have a word?" I asked.

"Sure. I need a smoke, anyway," Janne sighed.

We went outside the van, Janne sighing in disgust. "I quit smoking years ago. I wish I had one right now. What's on your mind, Heather?"

"Does that mean I get to call you 'Janne' now?" I asked. She nodded her head. "I can call some people to help us out."

"Forget it. I don't need extra civilians or mercenaries running around here shooting my agents or getting shot by them. I don't know why there isn't any backup even spun up to help."

"Here's a thought..."

"Maybe some of my bosses are involved," Janne finished. "I had to fight tooth and nail to even get one squad of special weapons to help me, even more teeth to select a female team. The general feeling was that the fake raid was a real one and the boys will pat themselves on the back for weeks."

"Did you call it a 'fake raid?'" I asked.

"Only to my boss. He figured rescuing one hundred fifty trafficked women was a big enough score. When I pointed out the trail leading to Shannonburg, he waved it off. Evidently the local badges think the town is abandoned, so he doesn't believe me."

"I guess we'll see," I said.

"Heather, I meant what I said about inviting people to help raid the town. I will lose my badge if outsiders get involved."

"Janne, your techs in there counted a hundred plus on the goose side. I have special weapons training, and I know the weapons your opposition are using. There is no way you can clear that opposition without losing your people. At least let me get my people in motion." I said.

"Fine, tell them to mask their approach and make it from the opposite side of the town. God help us."

"Goddess help us," I corrected her.

"Huh?"

I gave her the line that Shehzadi had given me what seemed like ages ago: "God is a woman."

"Uh-huh."

I called Janine and explained the problem. She said that she knew people, some were even former agents that could help us. I asked her if she could get them close by in case we needed to invade, and she agreed. The teams she had dispatched to help Janne with the evacuation were four hours out, but any paramilitary people would take six. I gave her my thanks and hung up.
Janne grudgingly took the news. As an agent, she was loath to take help from people not affiliated with the FBI, but she couldn't get past the fact that her superiors hadn't lined up any support for her. She was caught between doing her duty and the possibility that she wouldn't survive the night if those slavers found out about her.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Shehzadi asked after Janne walked off.

"I'd prefer not to share my thoughts, Shehzadi. You and Nadia left me after promising me your hearts. I at least deserved a goodbye."

"Fair enough," she nodded.

"Did you two have abortions?" I had been meaning to ask the question, but no time seemed to be right. They should have been six months along, had it been only six months?

Shehzadi looked horrified that I would even ask such a thing. "No, Nadia and I had our children a month ago. It's hard to explain, we were on another plane of existence. Uliona is a place where the climate is more temperate and time passes much faster in relation to plane zero, this plane."

"Maybe at some point I can meet them, yes?"

"Of course." Her look shifted to Nadia bringing three more women out of the woods. "Let's arrange it if we survive."

Nadia led her group over to the other refugees and gave them the basics before heading off into the woods with Shehzadi. I didn't know what to do, so I went over to the refugees and introduced myself to them. I made sure that they knew I was transgender and letting them decide whether or not they wanted to converse with me or not.

Their stories were pretty much the same. Even though most of them were heterosexual, the NLA had taken them in and gave them a place to hide. Over the last couple of weeks women had been brought over to the other side of town, 'the Butches' warning the refugees to stay away from them. They gave me a brief description of how their lives had been before the others had shown up. Their lives had been mostly about coping with what happened to them, and preparing for life outside of the refuge.

Shannonburg proper was actually a functioning town. There were shops and schools and pretty much every building was used as well as half the houses. The high school and the surrounding complex was off-limits from the beginning, and nobody really paid it any notice. The complex was isolated by fence and trees, so keeping the newcomers away from the residents had been easy.

A young woman came up to me and handed me a tablet. She told me that she had gotten into the security camera network for the school before, but her battery was dead. I thanked her and promised to take care of it before I went back to see Janne.

The tablet was handed over to one of the technicians who plugged it in and started viewing the feeds. A minute later, she sat it down and was viewing those same feeds on her computer. Janne suggested in a whisper that I call my friends and share that information with them.

I wasn't sure what to do, so I just called Janine and she conferenced me in with Heather, her hacker. Within a few minutes she announced that she was in and started describing what she was seeing to Janine. After a minute or so, I had a pretty good picture of what was going on. I gave my goodbye and went to mull over this new data and how it fit into my spreadsheet.

Janine called me a half-hour later to tell me that we had a problem. Two more drones had taken up station over the area, and Heather had gotten into their feeds. We were being watched by military-grade drones that were armed with missiles. She explained that each of the drones had eight of those missiles, every missile capable of destroying more than a block of Shannonburg. Now I had to decide whether or not to share that information with Janne.

Agent Sumika was both enraged and terrified. She asked me for detailed information, so I connected her with Heather the hacker and let them converse. There were plenty of technical terms exchanged, Janne sighing after each exchange. When she handed the phone back, Janne was close to tears, but walked off before I could ask her what was wrong.

Alone at the edge of the forest, my wandering mind became attuned to what was going on around me, noises from the insects, hushed conversations from the women in the forest. Huh? Nadia emerged first, coming over to where I was standing. When I told her what was going on, she took my hand and gave it a pat. She told me that all magicians had heightened senses, but some didn't even realize it until they were with nature. After encouraging me to keep trying, she led her charges over to the staging area.

Several minutes later, I could 'feel' into the forest up to the town. There were a lot of frightened women in there, scared for themselves, scared for the children with them. The two agents assigned for exfiltration were noisy compared to Nadia and Shehzadi. Even Janne was noisy coming up behind me. She needed me to see something that was happening inside the school.

I hadn't really looked at the video feeds when they first came up because the tablet screen was crowded by agents who were actually doing something. The technician had gotten the feeds up on some of the monitors in the surveillance bus. They showed feeds of men going around handing sheets of paper to the captive women, some of which were no older than Hayley. An overwatch camera of the auditorium showed the women being led in front of a larger camera, pausing for a minute then leaving through another door.

"The auction is being broadcast?" I asked.

"It appears that some of the men going into the town are actually here to pick up their prizes," Janne said. "Only a few buyers are actually on-site."

"Then why have it here at all?"

"Shannonburg is isolated, but it is minutes away from major interstates, less than two hours from the oceans," Janne explained. "Eighteen private airfields within the same timeframe, most big enough for a Gulf or a Lock."

"Can't you call the FAA?"

"Requests like that have to come from on high, and they aren't taking my calls right now," Janne said. "I don't know what to do."

"All we can do is wait. If they start leaving, we can stop them here or call it into the locals."

"Heather I have a feeling that the people behind those Reaper drones above us won't let us intervene." Janne looked up to the starry sky. "We're targets here. The area is big but the road is a bottleneck. They blow that little bridge, we're fish in a barrel."

"If one of those missiles can wipe out a block, they could get us all with just one missile. Well, I'd feel bad because I couldn't help any of you."

"Why?"

"I can't perform linear folds with any accuracy. Known places are fine, but unknown places can kill me. Even if I could fold with precision, I couldn't fold with a mortal. It would do a lot of damage to their body or kill them."

"So no jumping in and zapping the bad guys either?" Janne asked.

"That not possible," Nadia said. "The town itself is warded, the area around the school doubly so. If Shehzadi and I weren't rescuing those women and children, we wouldn't be able to cross onto the town proper without an invitation from a resident. Someone wanted to keep magic users out of Shannonburg. I'm pretty sure that warding has been there for a century or more."

"How does that work?" Janne asked.

Nadia gave Janne the basic lesson about magic users and the laws of man. Janne was a quick learner, asking detailed questions when she needed clarification.

I started hearing a buzzing noise and instinctively turned my head to look for the source. Then I felt something, a presence coming from the general direction of the town. "Do you feel that, Nadia?"

"Dark magic, old and powerful." Nadia coughed, hard, spitting out a wad of phlegm. "It's concentrated, many dark people just appeared."

Just then, a smell hit me. It was like roadkill laying out in the hot sun times a thousand. I was lucky I wasn't facing toward either of them because the vomit wasn't staying in. "Oh my goddess that's nasty," I said. My mind instinctively reached out and pulled a bottle of water from a refrigerator in one of any number of my houses. I washed the vomit out of my mouth and when I was done I saw Janne staring at me. "What?"

"Can I have one?" Janne asked.

It was harder to call the second bottle than the first, just like it was harder to fold if I was really thinking about it.

"Object translocation," Nadia explained.

"Nifty," Janne nodded.

Whatever had caused my nausea had subsided, a lingering stench reminded me how vulnerable I was. Nadia and Janne didn't seem affected by the smell, which was unusual. Either they couldn't smell it because they were women, or it was aimed at me for a reason.

Janne was called back to the surveillance van, leaving Nadia to wonder about me. "What is it?"

"It was the nastiest road kill I have ever come across times a thousand. Putrid and rotten, I'll never forget it."

"I didn't smell a thing, so the smell is psychic. Those kinds of things can be aimed, so did you smell it because you are partially male..."

"...or because I am a Child of the Sphere," I finished. "Something tells me I'm about to find out."

"I've got to go lead another group," Nadia waved.

Janne was in a tizzy because she had lost contact with the two agents still in Shannonburg. Shehzadi and the other two agents had just completed a rescue run, and Janne had stopped them from going on another. The drone covering the school showed a group approaching the buildings, and the armed men playing guards firing at them.

"That's it, I'm sending my teams in," Janne said.

The teams mounted their specially outfitted tactical vehicles and rolled toward the town. I got a really bad feeling that something was going to happen to them and asked Janne to pull them back. She was in combat mode and told me that I was not an agent and free to leave at any time.

I sat in the van and watched the action cams from the agents with Janne and Shehzadi. The team split into two and entered the town in stealth, stealing through the buildings but not seeing anyone out on the streets. We could see a battle going on at the school, and it was going badly for the guards before the feed from the drone cut off.

"Whatthefuck?" Janine grumbled. "What happened?"

"We lost all feed and telemetry from drone one," the technician announced.

"Steer one of the others over there," Janne ordered.

The technician complied with the command. I could tell she was trying not to get physically close, instead letting the drone's optics do the work. The picture fixed on one of the teams moving toward the school, then shifted to the other team.

Another shift focused on the school itself. The firefight was still going on, if you could call it that. One group, the so-called guards of the school were firing weapons, both long and short barreled. The other group, which had spread out into twenty or so individual blips, wasn't using firearms.

There was a bright flash on the monitor, and by the time it cleared, there were more blips on the screen. Large pulses of heat went from the invaders to the guards and the guards started falling over. "What is that?" Janne asked.

"Whatever those people are throwing, it registers white-hot, like plasma?" The technician was lost, probably thinking she was watching a video game.

"Fireballs." Shehzadi was in my head. "The psychic stink, the fireballs, those are sorcerers."

Ok, so sorcerers. Why were they here? Why were they here now? Sorcerers?

The teams on the ground were frozen in place. Janne tried talking to them, the whispers she got in reply told me they were scared shitless.

My cellphone rang, Janine had to pick this moment to call. "Heather, you need to get the fuck out of there. Those Reapers are getting ready to fire."

"Everybody out!" I shouted and ran for the door. Shehzadi followed me, and Janne and the techs were startled enough to follow. We got outside just in time to see the drones firing their missiles...

...at Shannonburg. Bright streaks of light flew through the sky and were met by balls of fire coming from the ground. The shots that took the missiles down were followed by fireballs aimed at the drones. Both suffered hits, their inertia carrying them far enough so that they crashed into the nearby lake.

Then more balls of fire came from the town and two small explosions confirmed the destruction of the FBI drones that were flying over Shannonburg.

"Shit," Janne ran back into the trailer. I poked my head inside long enough to hear Janne trying to recall her special weapons teams. The screens still showed the videos from their cameras, and we could hear them, but she couldn't talk to them. "Give me the emergency flare," Janne said.

She was handed a flare gun and I got out of her way as she rushed outside. The flare gun had multiple shots and Janne popped them all off. The feeds told us that the agents had gotten the message and tried to extricate themselves from their observation areas.

Then all hell broke loose. The agents started firing their weapons at someone, Janne whispering that she hoped civilians weren't in those lines of fire.

For a brief moment, I saw a face on one of the agents' cameras before they all went out. It was a pale face, wrinkled and old. The eyes were glowing red, the nose was almost non-existent and the person had no lips. Sorcerers.

"Shit," Janne muttered.

The cameras had went out, but the audio links were still active for maybe twenty minutes. All we heard were muffled moans and screams, like they were gagged and being tortured. I wanted to do something, anything to help them, but Janne saw me twitch and blocked the door. She told me that she would arrest me if necessary, all she had to do was say the words.

Finally the audio links cut off. Janne ordered the technicians to send more drones, but they didn't get to the town before they fell from the sky and crashed.

Without even focusing my sense, I felt a presence over us. Somebody was flying, circling over the town. It was actually two people, a man and a woman. The woman completely vanished from my sense and the man did as well, briefly reappearing before he was totally gone. I had the feeling that he had crash-landed.

I reached out again with this sense and aimed it at the town. I got a smell of rotting bodies and a feeling of lots of scared women. Then a wall went up, a literal wall blocking my sense from seeing inside the town.

I popped out of the trailer to get some air and saw Nadia crossing the clearing with a man and woman following her. Shehzadi ran toward them, "Tash!"

"Shehzadi. What are you doing here?" The woman asked.

"We were helping the FBI with their invasion of Shannonburg," Shehzadi replied. She turned to the man. "I know you, you're Kevin Brown, the man who raped and beat that woman out in Los Angeles."

"That tape was faked," the woman said. "And I know that personally. Stand down, little one."

"Nadia and I thought the pictures of that woman, Simone, looked pretty real," Shehzadi said.

Kevin looked like he was ready to explode. "You want to know what happened? My ex-wife came up behind me and knocked me unconscious with a fire extinguisher. Then her and another person used my hands to beat Simone bloody. They didn't think I would survive my head being smashed in, so they assumed everybody would believe them."

"I don't believe you," Shehzadi said.

"I don't care," Kevin shrugged. "Everybody that matters, including Natasha here, believes me."

Slam down on the little twat, I thought with an inward giggle. Time to announce myself. "Well, I believe him." I held out my hand to Kevin. "Heather Jenkins-Sagemueller."

"Kevin Brown," He gently took my hand. I instantly got a sense of what he was about, he was a Child of the Sphere like me. He also knew I wasn't completely woman, and it didn't repulse him. "Wow, you look amazing. You feel amazing too."

If there was ever another man I could fall in love with, it would be Kevin. He had an ordered mind, and he was dark and handsome, fucking hot. He also had a darkness inside him. "Thank the magic." I paused, processing the darkness. "You've just killed someone, Kevin."

"In all fairness he was protecting me, Heather," Natasha said.

"There is regret there, that is what I felt," I said. "Don't feel sorry for those beings, Kevin, they are not human anymore. They are even worse than the men we were after."

"Can I ask you a personal question, Heather?" Kevin asked.

You can ask me anything. Ask me for a blow job, I'd suck your cock in a minute. Kevin wasn't wanting his cock sucked, he really wanted to know about the bruises. "I am a natural immortal. The reason the bruises haven't healed yet is because I was beaten in passion by someone I loved. Those wounds take longer to heal."

"A wife beater," Nadia muttered. She glared at Kevin. "A woman beater."

"So what's going on here? Why is the FBI involved?" Kevin asked.

"A little while ago I was contracted to look through some accounting ledgers. That's my gift from The Sphere, Kevin, I do numbers. Anyway, I found some anomalies in those ledgers that told me that there was going to be a slave auction here in Shannonburg."

"A slave auction, by sorcerers?" Kevin seemed confused.

"No, the slaver assholes are quite human," Nadia said. "We were in position, ready to take them down when the sorcerers came to crash the party. The agents didn't stand a chance against them."

"How many people are in there?" Kevin demanded.

"Over five thousand," I replied. "Shannonburg was supposed to be a haven for exploited and abused women. Just recently people had started importing women to be sold at auction here. There is no police presence in this area, the locals think Shannonburg is haunted."

"That's why this place looked so familiar from above!" Kevin exclaimed.

"Above?" Nadia asked.

"Above?" Janne echoed.

"Klara and I came through here years ago. There were a lot of tales, and I used a program to tap into all the aerial photos of the area. I was looking for some ominous signs carved around the town or something. There wasn't, at least it's not as obvious as Laurel."

"So, above?" Janne pried in her 'agent' tone.

"Kevin and Natasha flew in, Janne," I explained. "I felt them land. Well, Natasha landed, Kevin not so much."

"Flew?" Janne asked.

"Do you remember what I showed you, Janne?" I asked. "They are better at it."

"Fine, whatever. I've got twenty agents inside that town and no way to contact them since yesterday. These were the best female agents the bureau had to offer and they were tortured by animals!"

"Did they get anything out? Kevin asked. "Numbers, locations?"

"No, just a lot of grunting and moaning," Janne replied.

"Shit. Motherfucking bastards," Kevin muttered.

"What?" Shehzadi asked.

"Sorcerers don't like to hear women talk, it's like fingernails on a chalkboard to them. The first thing they do when they come across a woman is to take away their mouths," Natasha explained. "The women can recover from it, their mouths will reappear when they get far enough away."

Oh, fucking goddess. Sealing a woman's mouth shut? That is what all the moaning was, they were crying out for help! No wonder Kevin is pissed.

"You never told us that," Shehzadi said to Natasha.

Kevin's cell rang. He fished it out of his pocket and put it up to his ear. "Hello?"

I could hear the tone of voice from the woman on the other end. Panicked. "Slow down, Katie, what's going on?"

Another minute of panic. "Who took them?" Kevin demanded. "I know where they are, I'll get them back."

"You'd better!" I heard that clear as day.

"What's wrong?" Natasha asked.

"They have Sandy and Cameron and Angel in there," Kevin replied.
"Angel's pregnant, isn't she?" Natasha asked.

"Yes. I'm going in after them."

"No, you're not," Janne said. "I'm not losing any more civilians to that place."

"You can't stop me," Kevin snapped.

"You're under arrest then. Laws of man trump your magic." Oh, good one, Janne.

"Not this time, Janne," Heather warned. "Women and unborn children in danger trump the laws of man here."

"A bullet in the knee should do the trick," Janne pulled out her gun. The challenge to her authority made her mad and she totally forgot about natural immortality.

"Stay still," Natasha put her hand up and Janne froze in place. There was magic at work there.

"Tash!" Shehzadi shouted.

"It's Natasha. You lost the right to use my friendly name when you abandoned your post! What do you need, Kevin?"

"Gold," Kevin said.

Natasha pulled out a gold chain and Kevin put it around his neck. The thing must have been monster heavy by the way he shifted. I offered my gold bangles to him and he slipped them on his left wrist. Nadia and Shehzadi offered nothing, even though their gold was right on their wrists. Janne offered the gold bands on her fingers, telling him that he better know what he was doing.

I couldn't resist giving him a kiss for luck, his mouth tasting like heaven. Natasha gave him a demure kiss on the cheek. Kevin got his bearings to the main road leading into Shannonburg and took flight.

"Kevin, you better come back," Natasha muttered. "Dying on my watch is not something I can live with."

"You too?" I asked her.

"Yes, me too. He's dating an actress now, Olivia Watson. Yes, the same Olivia Watson that Simone used to work for. Yes, she set him up, you little twat," Natasha said to Shehzadi.

Shehzadi offered nothing in return. "Just one actress?" I asked Natasha.

"The line is long, Heather. Ellie Salazar and her two surrogates are pregnant, ten of Olivia's twelve surrogates. There's a couple in there I don't know about yet. Sorry."

"A girl can hope," I mused.

"I don't know. Kevin likes exotic," Natasha smiled. "I'm not fooling with you, you might have a better chance than me and I just rode on his back for the last two hours."

"Sure."

"Anyways, Kyle Andrews has more kids. You should see his line."

A dozen or so figures appeared on my 'radar.' They were above us now, coming in for a landing...now. One man, sixteen women had come just out of the sky. "Where's Kevin?" the man demanded.

"He went to the town, Kyle," Natasha replied. "I didn't know you were coming or I would have told him to wait."

"Hi, I'm Heather," I offered my hand to Kyle. "Can I help?"

"We're going to need all the help we can get," Kyle took my hand. You're untrained, can you cast anything?"

"I can barely fold," I admitted.

"Kevin went for the dome?" Kyle asked Natasha.

"Yes."

"Annabelle, give Missus Jenkins-Sagemueller a lift," Kyle ordered before he took into the sky.

"Yes, dad," one of the women came over to me as the rest shot upward. "Oh, Kevin what have you gotten yourself into?"

"You too?" I asked.

"I got the bonus," Annabelle gave me a wink. "It'll be a short flight, but try to do it yourself. It's fun to fly, especially at Mach two."

"That's bullshit," I said.

Annabelle put her arms around me. "You smell nice." Then we were flying. I saw the glowing dome over Shannonburg, then Annabelle brought us in for a landing by everyone else.

"That was pretty amazing," I admitted. "I like flying, better than folding."

"If you decide to give yourself lessons, watch your ass. Sorcerers can fly too," Kyle warned.

"Ten-four," I nodded. "What's the deal here?"

"Shield. I don't know if Kevin is in there or not," Kyle said. "Persephone tried coming down on it, got the shit zapped out of her."

I looked over where Kyle had indicated. There was one woman who looked like she had stuck her finger in a light socket. "Can we punch a hole in it?"

"Yeah, we can try," Kyle nodded. "You know that smell after a lightning storm?"

"The ozone? Sure"

"Try to key on that," Kyle said.

"Point your hands thataway," Annabelle pointed to the glowing wall. "Think lightning."

To my surprise, a lightning bolt flew from my right hand and struck the wall. It was narrow, about the width of my pinky, but I was shooting lightning, damnit.

Of course, Kyle had to show me up by letting loose with a massive ball of blue plasma. When his ball hit the shield, it dissipated. "Fuck," Kyle muttered.

A massive lightning bolt came from inside the sphere and hit the top of the dome. It let out a zapping sound like you'd hear in a mad scientist's laboratory. "That's Kevin," Kyle said.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"We've fought sorcerers before. They can cast lightning, but not even masters can throw a bolt like that."

Dozens of smaller bolts joined the massive burst going into the sky. The lightning wasn't going all the way up, it was hitting the inside of the dome itself. "Why are they focusing like that?"

"They're trying to open a portal," a woman's voice drew our attention to her stepping out of a portal herself.

"That's an awful lot of power for a simple portal, Paula," Natasha said.

"Maybe it's a tunnel, then," I offered. The geometry of the dome suggests that they are trying to take everything inside with them. It's more than just a dome..."

"It's a cookie cutter," Paula finished. "They've prepped the space for translocation."

"Not very well," Natasha said. "They were having trouble stabilizing the edges of the dome. If they are trying to take the town with them, it's going to land hard."

They continued their discussion without me. I was seeing something on the inside of the barrier, it was a woman. "Look! She's trying to escape!"

Everybody followed me to the wall. The woman was joined by another, then by a dozen more. They tried going through the wall, and there was nothing we could do to help them. "We should try lightning, with more people," I said.

"If we punch through, we'll vaporize them," Kyle said.

"Let's try somewhere else," I said. "We can't just leave them in there!"

"Watch out!" Kyle said.

I stepped out the way just in time to avoid the lighting coming through the wall of the portal. I could hear Kevin telling the women to run through the hole. It started as a trickle and then they came in droves. Dozens of women running for their lives through a lightning hole in a bizarre energy wall. I'd shit if I was totally clueless about magic.

"You're brave and stupid," Kyle told Kevin as he stepped through the hole.

"Says the man with children of his own," Kevin snapped. "I was told five thousand souls here."

"Go and find the rest." Kyle took a place beside Kevin and let loose with lightning of his own to hold the hole open. "I've got this."

Kevin vanished into the darkness, and the only thing I could really do was direct the escapees away from the barrier. I lost count at a hundred, a hundred out of five thousand. There was no way they'd all escape, the odds were not in their favor.

I saw lightning down the road, and Kevin was flying backwards toward the barrier. He ran into Kyle and they both tumbled through the hole. The hole closed up, Kevin and Kyle laying on the ground, Kevin singed and his clothes gone. Despite the situation, all I could think of naked Kevin was 'Yummy.'

Kevin stood up and started running toward the barrier. "We've got to go back!" He just bounced off the wall and landed right where he had just gotten up from.

The barrier was pulsing now. Bright rings came up from the ground and went into the sky. Then there was a loud bang and everything just vanished. A blast of air hit me from behind, almost knocking us into the giant hole that that had been created. Nature abhors a vacuum. I looked back to where Kevin was, now surrounded by a blanket. Shit.

"Translocation," Natasha said. "I've done it on a large scale, but never like this. There must be ten square miles gone."

"Ten round miles," Annabelle snickered. "How would you do something like that? The amount of energy it took must be enormous."

"We can't really measure the energy a wizard puts out," Natasha said. "There were sorcerers in there too, how many?"

"At least a hundred," Kevin said with a shrug. "Thirty or so less now. I do hope those hostages are okay."

Thirty or so less. He vaporized their sorry asses. I hope they suffered.

"Me too," Kyle gave Kevin a pat on the shoulder. "Let's go get you some clothes."

No clothes. Please, no clothes. I sighed. That wasn't going to happen.

"Yes, let's," Annabelle smiled. "I'd hate to traumatize those poor women more by knocking you down and sexing you up, Kevin."

Stay out, Annabelle, that's my job. Maybe not.

"What would your husband say to that?" Kevin asked Annabelle.

"You heard I was married, they didn't tell you if it was a man or not, did they?" Annabelle asked. "Only one Kevin running around."

"I do not need to hear this from my daughter," Kyle sighed.

***

More busses and trucks started appearing just an hour later. Whatever group that Kyle and his family were attached to, they were fast. Food and supplies flowed in, and eventually a temporary camp was set up to help the survivors of the Shannonburg debacle. When other women started to trickle in from the woods I paired up with one of Kyle's daughters, Persephone, to help in the search. We came across scumbags too. They were armed and thought they were big with guns, but they weren't prepared to go up against women who could disarm them in a millisecond. We led them away from the camp, so we could keep them separate from the women who would probably cut their balls off given the chance.

I watched Kevin Brown vanish into a linear fold with a sigh. One of the great disappointments in my life was going to be knowing that piece of meat was going somewhere else.

"Stop drooling," Janne gave me a pat on the shoulder. "That's already taken."

"Yeah, but just once... What's on your mind, Janne?"

"Well, I've got a problem. As soon as the smell of this shitstorm percolates to the top, I'm going to be lucky to just be out of a job. I want to get a head start on the job hunt."

"I'm just trying to figure out what I want to do now. Kyle might need a counterintelligence specialist. I'm not doing any hiring until I figure out what Declan left behind."

"Do you have a recommendation as to what to do with the scumbags? I can't really arrest them for being around here, we didn't actually catch them doing anything. A DA would laugh me out of their office if I asked them to press charges, but they're guilty as sin, the blonde Russian woman assures me of that."

"Let me talk to Kyle." I walked over to where Natasha and Kyle were giving Nadia and Shehzadi their ruling on their failures.

"...furthermore, you do not continue to call someone a liar after I personally vouch for them!" Natasha said. "Hi, Heather."

"Hi."

"What do you think would be a good punishment for your little friends here?" Natasha asked. "Normally when a guardian abandons their post we excommunicate them. They are mothers of your children, however, so I ask you."

"You know, I could use a couple more guards at my home in Los Angeles. I'm sure they would happily volunteer for that as opposed to counting snowflakes in Alaska. This wouldn't be slave labor, mind you, I'll pay a fair wage and provide the benefits."

"We resigned," Shehzadi said.

"You may have resigned from the club, but you swore an oath to the clan," Natasha countered. "The second you realized you were pregnant you should have asked the clan for your replacements! Those sorcerers just killed a man to get a Child of the Sphere!"

"We can defend ourselves," Shehzadi said. "Gaia will protect the children."

"Shezzy do shut up now," Nadia said.

"What is she going to do?" Shehzadi demanded.

"Gaia can hold you to your word," Natasha said. "You agreed as surrogates to either stay with the primary and help raise the children or allow adoption. That was a conscious choice, sleeping with Heather, Nadia. Shehzadi! You asked!"

"Maybe they took off because their feelings were hurt by me going out with Declan," I offered. "Having sex in a bathroom stall, making plans to break your word to me, to Kimberly."

Shehzadi paled. "You heard that?"

"Yes, I did. In any case I would like you to come to Los Angeles. Stay with each other but close to me so that I can watch them grow up. Or you can leave, go out into the cold."

"And hope that sorcerers or dark witches don't find you," Natasha finished.

"Take a minute. I need to talk to Kyle here," I waved them aside.

"What's up?" Kyle asked.

"The scumbag slavers. Janne can't arrest them because this debacle can't be exposed to the public eye. We can't let them go, because, scumbags."

"Let them make a run for it," Kyle said. "They broke the laws of man and are getting off on the technicality. They'll get sorted out sooner rather than later."

My mind flashed back to the restaurant, the things that my nightmares were afraid of. "Revengers," I whispered.

"That's right," Kyle nodded.

"All right, I can work with that." Janne was patiently waiting for me where I left her. "Looks exciting."

"Nadia and Shehzadi? Not anymore. Let the scumbags go. Gaia will deal with them in her own way."

"Then why didn't she deal with them before?"

"She doesn't intervene in normal human history. Those men, whoever they are, wherever they came from, were normal. When they were arrested and subsequently let go on this technicality, they got marked. From the stories I've been told, the bodies won't even be found."

"Oh, really?" Janne gave me a look of disbelief.

"Look, you've studied your law, right?" Janne nodded. "Bet you've studied your history as well?"

"What's the point, Heather?"

"How do you think people evolved into a civilization before there was law?"

"I'm intrigued. Go on"

"Before there was law, there was crime. Men stealing things, men preying on the weak, et cetera. We got from there to here with a little help. Before there was man's law, there were still crimes of conscience. Revengers prosecuted those criminals, probably in very public ways. That's where we get our legends of vampires and werewolves, the creatures of the night."

"I've had more than one bad guy get away on a technicality and subsequently evade any follow-up investigation," Janne admitted. "So which is it, vampires or werewolves?"

"The thing your worst nightmare monster is afraid of," I whispered.

"Oh."

***

Janne picked out a bus and directed the prisoners into it. She didn't share her plan, I didn't want to know. When she returned three hours later, she told me that she had dropped them off in the city, what happened to them now out of her hands. She also had picked up a tail, Carla McCauley and Ai Ming had followed her back.

Carla wanted to know what was going to happen to the women and the children that had escaped. While Janne was gone I had formulated an idea and was getting ready to make some calls. A couple of years back, I had been auditing the books of an investment firm called Weyerhauser-Stein. They had a property on their books labeled 'Sunshineville,' and it was dragging down their net worth. I knew that the investment packet was actually a town, a private one.

I called the firm, letting them know I was the accountant that had audited their books and asking them if the Sunshineville packet was still controlled by their firm. I was immediately patched through to the Executive Officer of the firm, Samson Holt, and he gave me the rundown on the full situation. Sunshineville had been a dream of one of their clients. When the speed limits were dropped on the superhighway that connected most of the major arteries in California, this man had come to them with an idea.

Since the city of L.A. was so congested, he wanted them to gamble on the fact that some of the high-income families would buy homes far out from the city, but were easily accessible via the superhighway. They had agreed and a purchase of ten thousand acres of land was made in an area northeast of Los Angeles. They ponied up another twenty million to have base infrastructure laid and some model homes to be built.

Then an economic downturn hit and nobody wanted to buy new, pricey houses until the economy started looking better. So the firm was stuck with a huge parcel of land that they still couldn't get rid of. In the hopes that they might get rid of it someday, they had hired a private security force to guard the structures that had already been put into place. I asked Samson if I could take a look, and he hedged for a moment. I told him that I was genuinely interested in the entire property and I needed to see if it met my specifications. He agreed to have an agent at the gates at eight hours Pacific time and we hung up.

I caught Carla and Ai in the refugee camp talking to four women who were the appointed leaders of the group. I waited patiently until I was noticed and invited into the circle. I was recognized and thanked for my part in the rescue of some of the women in the forest and then introduced myself. I presented my preliminary idea to them and let the conversation commence. Some of the arguments were heated. They had just escaped from one supposedly safe place to be shifted to another, and the women were not pleased.

A break was called, the women going back to their group to rest after a really shitty day. Carla caught up with me on the way back to what was left of the FBI staging area. She asked me if I was serious in my plan and I told her that I would pay every dollar I could to let those women feel a sense of security. She let me go, not sure what to think of my offer, telling me that she wanted to come with me when I made the inspection. I gave her a simple question: 'If I prick you, will you bleed?'

Carla initially thought it was a sexual reference and was getting ready to give me a verbal lashing when she stopped. My hidden question was whether or not she was a natural immortal. She told me that she wasn't, and I gave her a sigh. I was due at the entrance to the estate in ten hours, something that we could make if we hurried.

I said my goodbyes to what was left of the Andrews entourage with a promise to fill them in on my plan as it progressed. Nadia and Shehzadi were all too happy to drive us out of the camp and to the airport. Carla, having her connections, managed to charter us a flight to California. We talked about a lot of things, but not the little humping session we had enjoyed in my bed. She managed to catch a nap, leaving me to my thoughts for the rest of the flight.

On the way from the plane to the car, Carla told me that my facial bruising had cleared up. I immediately took to examining my face in a compact mirror after we got in the car. When we made it to my house in Beverly Hills, I was so preoccupied with my healed face that I forgot to extend an invitation to them to come into the house. It was a good thing that Celina was there to greet us, or Carla might have gotten the fright of her life.

Nadia and Shehzadi were greeted with suspicion and treated like outsiders by the security force that Morena had assigned to me. I told the security to stop behaving like children, and my order gave them a bit of relief. I went to shower and change, offering Carla some of my clothes but not my company in the shower. I needed to think.

Carla was at the entrance to the bathroom, fully naked, when I emerged. I gently told her that while I appreciated the thought, nothing else was going to happen between us. She took it in stride, giving me a kiss on the cheek before she went to wash. Nadia and Shehzadi were in the kitchen eating a salad by themselves over in the corner. They were obviously the outsiders of the assembled, and probably were being treated by lepers because they had taken off in the middle of assignment. While that error might have been forgiven by the club, they weren't welcome by my guards, who were obviously magic-using guardians.
This being the first time we had been able to speak in peace, I made my offer point-blank. I would give them their payoff times three and arrange for a place to stay if they chose to remain in Los Angeles. I told them that while I hoped they would stay so I could see my children, I would understand if my plan was unacceptable. I left them to make their decision and went to talk to Celina. I told her that I would consider her my chief of staff, pun intended, and confidant. I didn't know the area, the people, or the languages that were spoken, and she obviously did. She agreed to my offer, saying that she would find somebody to take over her job as trustee. Celina then asked me if I would prefer a man or woman for the job as trustee of the house. I didn't get the subtle jab at my bisexuality for a second, but told her a woman would be a better trustee.

As she ate breakfast with me, Celina filled in some of the blanks Kimberly had left about the clans, specifically the Andrews Clan and the Wasikowski Clan. Then she went into detail about the four fifty-seven club and how they had been the ones to form a group around the idea that we could save Mother Earth if given the ways and means to do so. While I was digesting that information along with my food she gave me more information on Brookstone Pointe, the group that was now at the center of it all. The initial leader of Brookstone Pointe had been a woman called Jaci Stone, a woman like myself; she was a Child of the Sphere, and she was also transgender. Jaci was also the 'mother' of Celina's two children, and also had sixty-plus children running around town. A friendly jab was made, telling me that I should aim for a record of my own regarding children, and not to tie myself down with a woman who really didn't want me.

I understood that reference when I saw Carla had entered the room. She spied me talking to Celina and wandered over to us. We engaged in friendly conversation over a quick meal, Carla hedging a lot because she wasn't sure of her surroundings. I asked Carla specifically what was going on with the NLA, and she explained to me that she was going to dissolve the group when her vice-president stepped in and took the leadership. That coup had caused the conservative factions to defect to Carla, and she was still working that out when the conference had ended. Tara had been caught up in the initial FBI sweep of the fake auction being held in Las Vegas, but had been released and was at large with her friends. Carla hadn't asked any of the survivors at Shannonburg if they had seen Tara or anyone who looked like her.

Nadia and Shehzadi were more than happy to come along with Carla and I as driver and shotgun. Carla didn't do much talking to me on the drive, instead trying to line up a general contractor in case the deal panned out.

We reached the entrance to Sunshineville just at the agent was pulling up, a dashing man in his late thirties. He looked somewhat yummy, but I was there on business. He gave us ID badges in case we wandered into any of the roving guards in the town area.

I was wondering about the roving guards until we pulled into the city square. Samson had understated the amount of development that had been done so far. There was only a hundred and seventy five million dent in their books, but this looked more like three hundred million dollars' worth of town.

Cecil, the agent, pulled out a briefcase full of key sets and asked us what we wanted to see first. I told him we'd just look around.

"What the hell?" Carla asked when we got out of Cecil's hearing range. "How is this place abandoned?"

"Samson told me that they managed to get some other people on board for the speculation. I didn't know they had a ready-made coffee shop," I indicated the door we had just passed.

"There's apartments over there," Carla pointed. "Good-sized buildings, too."

"Let's go see the houses," I said.

We went back to the cars, Cecil on his phone. I indicated to him that we were going to drive around, and that he should follow us.

The town proper ended with different school buildings and parks before we got to the houses. The houses were what you would expect to see in a tract home gated community, except the tracts were much bigger. As opposed to a half-acre crowded lot, these looked to be at least two acre plots.

"Big," I commented. "Pick one and pull in, Shehzadi."

Shehzadi waited a block and pulled into a nice two-story house with what looked like a bonus room behind dormers on what could be a third floor. Cecil pulled in behind us and retrieved his briefcase. In a moment he had a set of house keys in his hand, which he offered to me.

My initial thought when I entered the house was that it was sturdy. It felt strong and looked really good. I gave a good look at everything from the master bath fixtures to the slab in the two-car garage. When Carla and I went back to a patiently waiting Cecil, I was feeling good about this place. He traded me the keys for a folder in his other hand. It was a specification sheet for the house Carla and I had just explored. The cost for everything, down to the concrete driveway was two hundred thousand dollars. The suggested selling price was six-ninety.

"This is impressive, Cecil. What about the infrastructure, the water, power, et cetera?"

"Solar provides all the fair-weather electricity for Sunshineville. That solar array also stores surplus energy so there is night availability as well. Any other need is from MidCal Edison, wired in a transformer vault back near the entrance to the town. We are currently using less than one percent of the available solar power for facility maintenance, security lighting, and the security vehicles. It was our idea that since we had solar power, we'd have electric vehicles for police and maintenance vehicles, also electric shuttle busses from the neighborhood to town."

"If those buildings and these houses, basically everything in place right now can pass an inspection, I'll offer your firm four ninety-five," I said. "That should help with the interest you've been losing for the last five years or so."

Cecil looked like he was getting ready to make a counter offer before I finished my sentence, but choked on it instead. "I'll pass that on to the president of the firm and we'll get back to you."

I wondered how long it would take to get an answer, hoping that the women who had survived Shannonburg could wait. Cecil was ready with the answer by the time we reached the town limits, pulling over and flagging us down. My offer and conditions were accepted, transfer of deed contingent on funds. He handed me a list of state-certified building inspectors, the briefcase holding the keys, and his business card.

My thoughts on the way home were about how to liberate four hundred ninety-five million dollars from my accounts. I knew it wouldn't be a simple as writing a check. Janine met us at my house and we gave Carla a ride to her hotel. Janine went with me into the bank and we talked with the high-end accounts representative about the land I wanted to purchase. She helped me set up an escrow account, so that transferring the money would be as simple as handing over an account card.

I didn't have control over the car's next stop, which was a quiet-looking restaurant a block off one of Los Angeles' busiest thoroughfares. The sign, which read 'The Lilac Lounge,' was non-imposing, probably meant to serve as a marker instead of to attract attention. The inside of the restaurant was lavishly furnished, the shades of red fabric all around and the mahogany woods gave impression of a men's club. It wasn't, The Lilac Lounge was a woman's club. Janine introduced me to the hostess, stating that I was a VIP guest of Brookstone Pointe and to be treated as such. The hostess took a subtle photograph of me to enter into her console.

Janine explained that trans women were allowed in the club, but unlike genetic women, they couldn't hit on the other patrons. She did give me a nudge in the ribs, telling me that I'd have to fight the women off anyway. I didn't know why she felt the need to show me to the restroom, their placement was easily deduced. When she led me past the restrooms, one for genetic women and one for trans women, I was intrigued.

The Lilac Lounge was a full-service women's club. They had private 'meeting rooms' in the back of the restaurant, which had both table and bed inside. "This is optional," Janine indicated the room around her. "This isn't a business deal with the head of Brookstone Pointe and one of the richest women in the world, this is about you and me."

My cock, tucked up inside me, tried to twitch. Janine was certainly a ten for body, and a ten for brains. "What about you and me?"

Janine closed the distance between the two of us, standing close but not touching. "I want your sex, Heather. I want to wrap myself up in you for hours and ride your cock like a cowgirl. I realize that you're not into sadism or dominance, so we can't have one of those lifelong relationships, but you would make a great friend with benefits."

"Why me?"

"Because you are the perfect blend of man and woman. There aren't too many of those around that I'm willing to let get close to me. I don't want some muscle-bound domme, I need soft tits to nestle into and a dick to get off on."

"You were involved with Jaci Stone, weren't you?" I asked.

"Jaci turned me back from the dark path I was on. Before this, I was my mother's daughter, happy to go around and steal secrets so she could pass them off as her own. Jaci showed me there is much more pleasure in making people happy than just living a lie. Now, Brookstone Pointe is a nationwide leader in women's beauty. We also own three resorts and three spas, one for women and one for men and another for families. There's money to be made in making people feel better about themselves."

"So you feel really good about yourself, setting the standard for the 'Ten Club?'"

"You think so?"

"Yes, I do," I nodded. "So this is the place where we eat dessert?"

"Or I could be the appetizer," Janine shrugged.

"Take your clothes off. Leave the heels," I ordered.

She gave me a demure smile. "Yes, ma'am."

Though I liked to be topped by a man, I loved ordering a naked.woman around. Laura hadn't cared for that too much, so I had taken it off the menu. Janine slipped everything off and folded it neatly putting it on the table. I got naked as well, Janine smiling at my boner. "Turn around."

"If I may offer madam a gift?" Janine asked.

"Go ahead."

She picked up her purse, pulling out a spring-shaped tube. She pulled it open and extracted a long piece of white string. Only it wasn't string, I noted when it sprang open. "It's a sliver of whale rib," Janine said. "The best switch money can buy."

"You want me to use that on you?" I asked.

"I'll beg if you want." She held up her hands and bent them over like a dog begging. "Please."

I held out my hand and she gave me the switch. I flicked it out, hitting her shoulder with it. A welt appeared where I had struck her, then vanished. Janine closed her eyes and sighed. I flicked her other shoulder with the same result and she let out a moan. "Does that hurt?"

"Just the opposite, Heather."

"Turn around and bend over that table," I ordered. When she complied, I got a good look at her pussy. She was so wet that drops were starting to form. I needed to taste her, bad. "Open your legs."

Janine started to protest when I knelt behind her and I gave her a hard smack on her ass. I didn't stick my tongue in her snatch right away, I decided to rim her first. She started to wiggle her ass, so I put my claws into her cheeks and held firm. I felt her pussy shudder on my chin, she was getting off on me clawing her ass.

I wasn't going to ass-fuck Janine yet, I decided when I shifted my tongue downward. I was going to fuck her hard and force the cleanup of my cock. She had a sweet tasting snatch, I would eat this for all three meals if I could. I let go of her ass and stood up ready to stick my cock in when she spoke: "Switch me please, ma'am."

When she said that, I hesitated. Deciding I would only lash her a few times, I bent over and picked up the switch, giving a hard smack on the opposite ass cheek before I thrust into her.

Janine's legs were open really wide but her pussy was tight. I withdrew from her a little, then slammed back in after smacking her ass. The other hand held the switch, so I nicked her with that after the next slam. She let out a moan after the nick, but she didn't tell me to stop so I kept on going.

I had to admit I was having a little bit of fun with her. After a string of several nicks, Janine let out a loud squeal that sounded like an orgasm screech. I thrust into her again and again giving nick after nick and getting squeal after squeal until I noticed that the welts weren't healing. I was in the middle of a strike unable to stop and when it landed, I drew blood. That shocked me enough that I flinched, and that threw off the precarious balance I had on my heels and I fell over.

Janine fell on top of me, flipping over so that we were facing each other. "I'm sorry," I said.

"For what?" Janine asked. "You gave me eight wondrous orgasms!"

"I cut you," I said. "Let me see your back."

Janine stood up and helped me to my feet before letting me look at her back. Sure enough, there were almost a dozen welts of increasing redness and a thin line of blood. "What do you see?" She asked.

I ran a finger down her back and showed her the blood. "See?"

Janine went into the bathroom and came right back out. The way she stomped over to me, I thought I was going to get slapped but I got a kiss instead. "Thank you!"

"Huh?"

"You marked me! Granted I didn't think that switch would cut like that, we'll have to be more careful the next time."

Next time? "You're not upset?"

Janine put her hands on my arms. "The greatest gift a sub wears are the marks from their dominant. Since Jaci made me a natural immortal, I wasn't able to keep her marks."

"The passion marks," I finished. Positive passion marks or negative?

"Exactly. I will cherish these welts until we meet again, dear Heather. What do you want me to do?"

"Clean my cock," I ordered.

Janine knelt in front of me and swallowed my cock. She bobbed her head back and forth, pausing to lick all around my public area to clean up her juices. After putting my cock back in her mouth, the bobbing was rather bland until I realized she wanted to be abused again. I grabbed a fistful of hair in either hand and started fucking her face like I had just been doing to her pussy. I started to slow when I felt the build up, preparing to shoot my wad into the air. She grabbed my hips, a sure sign she wanted to swallow. I blew wad after wad into her throat, going weak in the knees because I was so spent.

Janine stood up and licked her lips. "Dinner anyone?"

Our sexual escapade was not a topic over the dinner, even though there was much innuendo. A woman appeared and delivered Janine a tablet, which she handed to me. I logged into my email account, lots of lawyer shit from the divorce filing and cancellation after Declan passed. Other emails included details on Declan's houses every fucking where in the world.

"Nice places," Janine commented. "Would you take me there sometime?"

"You don't have to ask," I countered.

"Yes, I do. Morena's getting ready to throw some really exotic Russian pussy on you, and that's why I just wanted to be friends with benefits. You couldn't really stay with me, most of my housemates and lovers are former lovers of Jaci Stone. There are also a lot of children at the compound, but you might like that sort of thing."

"Children at play are never bad things," I said.

"Let's go get your inspectors lined up, then we'll talk."

Janine tagged along with me to an office building on the outskirts of Los Angeles. The owner, Gerry Kline, promised to have his best inspector meet us at the entrance to Sunshineville at nine hours the next morning. When I reiterated that there were over a hundred buildings to inspect, he waved me down and told me Les could handle them all.

Our next stop was to be the compound where Janine lived. I was a little dubious when we headed toward Beverly Hills. About halfway up one of the hills, the driver stopped the car and Janine told me to get out. The car pulled forward, Janine walking behind it and stopping on the opposite side of a line in the road.

"This is the boundary for the warding," she pointed to a line in the road. "Stop."

I stopped in place, wondering what was going on. "Okay?"

"Crossing the boundary requires the assent of a resident currently in the compound. If you weren't with me you wouldn't even see the this street."

"It's called a dazzle," a woman's voice came out of the darkness. "It makes sure the uninvited, human and magician alike, stay away."

"Sounds fun," I offered.

A young woman stepped out of the darkness of the street. To be more accurate, the darkness around her faded. She was a young woman, maybe twenty-five. She had a dark complexion, not black but not tan, a pleasant golden brown. Her hair was auburn, and it didn't look like a fake color. "Hi! I'm Grace Stone."

I took her offered hand. "Heather Jenkins-Sagemueller."

"Why do you keep his name?" Grace asked. "Declan did try to kill you, beat you so bad you couldn't walk."

"Grace!" Janine hissed. "I'm sorry, Heather, Grace doesn't have a brain to mouth filter."

"How do you know about that?" I asked. I didn't want everybody gossiping about my business.

"Your daughter Hayley is my girlfriend. She vanished for two weeks, I wanted deets, and maybe I was a little forceful on how I asked for them. She might come back, I miss her in bed."

I snorted. "I guess I know what that feels like now."

"What's that?" Janine asked.

"After Shannonburg, Annabelle made a comment about throwing Kevin down and sexing him up. Kyle said that there were things he didn't want to hear from his daughter."

That got a laugh from both of them. Janine reached over the line to take my hand. "Time to go meet my family."

We went toward a house that could rival mine in style. Janine paused at the front door to invite me inside. The bubbly blonde I remembered from the football party met us at the door and asked to talk to Janine in private. As they walked away she cast a glare over her shoulder at me.

"Relax," Grace said. "Marcie's concerned about Janine because of that switching you gave her earlier."

"Huh?"

"I didn't feel it myself, but some of them felt the energy of Janine's orgasms when you were giving her your marks earlier today. Orgasmic energy is tangible and can be felt over long distances by a person's magician lovers. They knew Janine was getting her sweet torture, and knew you marked her by the intensity of the energy. A lot of passion between you and Janine, don't pass that by."

"Again with the filter," Janine said as she came around a corner.

"I didn't tell Heather everything," Grace snickered. "You need to tell her before one of the others does."

Janine turned several shades of red. "When we fell over and you caught me, my thought was that we should get married and you would do that on to me a daily basis forever."

"Wow." I didn't know what to say. "Why would you push me away after having a thought like that?"

"She's scared of Morena," Grace answered.

"Please stay out of this, Grace," Janine pleaded.

"Mother warned us not to lie when it came to love," Grace countered. "The Wasikowski Clan is mostly old gypsies and assassins anyways. Morena may have been justified in her little purge, but her hands still drip with blood."

Marcie poked her head around the corner. "Hey, you guys coming?"
We had a family dinner or sorts. There were fourteen women at the table with an equal number of children. It was loud and raucous, but it was fun. The women didn't stop teasing Janine about her little release, Janine snapping back with a principal's demeanor. Marcie suggested that Janine and I take a stroll to her house before things went any further. That effectively ended the dinner, everyone excusing themselves and leaving the room.

"Thank you, Marcie," Janine said.

"Janine, that's why you made me your chief of staff," Marcie said. "Especially now."

"I know."

Evidently Janine had some deep secret to show me. "What's going on?"

"Something you need to see to believe," Janine offered her hand. "Let's get this over with."

Janine and I walked to a house further down another street. The lighting was muted outside as well as inside. The basement was open concept and... Oh my fucking goddess.

"Neat, isn't it?" Janine asked. "You think for all the money I put into this shit, I might actually get some use out of it."

"Lack of interest from potential mates?" I asked. I felt like I had just dropped into hell. Dante? Are you in here?

"This represents the combined knowledge of every S&M room I've read about and seen," Janine walked around the room, randomly touching items and implements. "Jaci and I came down here every once in a while. She didn't prefer much beyond the paddles or the canes, but that was okay for me."

"And those?" I indicated the gag selection on the wall

"The gags? No, I just couldn't deal with that. As much I hate to talk about Jaci and me, I have to give you an idea of how far I've gone."

"That's cool."

"Jaci and I didn't use the ball gag, she loved to hear me moan her name. It wasn't like we played daily, she had a wide variety of voices moaning her name."

I chuckled. "How many more?"

"All the women in the house proper, minus Grace, of course."

"Of course," I said.

"A half-dozen of Morena's girls, Celina you've met, most of the others are in Russia. Four couples around LA, including your enforcers Starr and Pete, who actually live in Jaci's old house. A couple of Hollywood stars, big ones, not the B-listers. Jaci's spread around, the children are her legacy."

"Sounds like she was also spread pretty thin," I offered. "I once was told that I didn't have to sleep, but I still do, and it sounds like Jaci didn't get any."

"For natural immortals, sleep is optional, true. It's more about how you wake up and who with. That is the bonus."

"Janine, I can honestly tell you that waking up beside you would be a bonus," I said.

"Bonus."

***

It had been a while since I had awoke with a woman in bed with me. Janine was curled up into me, arm over my chest, under my tits. An aching bladder told me that I needed to pee, a little giggle from the doorway told me I had a watcher. She was naked, running a finger up and down her slit, other hand playing with a nipple. I pulled down the sheet just enough so she could see my growing pecker and got a licking of her lips in return.

"Heather, it's too early for that shit," Janine moaned.

"Sorry," I muttered.

"Heather, meet Heather," Janine pulled her arm out from under my boobs and waved Heather over.

Heather came over to the bed and offered me the hand that she had been fingering herself with. I took it and put all her fingers in my mouth. I could taste her, she was very sweet. "Nice to finally meet you in person, and naked."

"Nice to finally meet you," Heather smiled. She didn't make a move, so I didn't know what was supposed to come next.

"She's waiting for your permission, Heather," Janine said.

"Permission for what?" I asked.

"To mount you, of course," Janine rolled over and slid out of bed. She stretched herself, showing me the switch welts were still there, along with the handprints on her ass that I added last night. "Heather's a natural immortal too, see if you can share some of your passion with her."

"How do you like it, Heather?" I asked.

"However ma'am desires," Heather responded.

Don't tempt me. "How about up the ass hard and fast?" I asked.

Heather reached over my head and pushed on a panel above me. She came down with a tube of Cosmicglide, a lubricant made especially for anal sex, which also included lidocaine for its nerve deadening capabilities. "Ma'am?"

I didn't want to take too awful long with her, so I couldn't just bareback because the nerve deadening worked both ways. "Any condoms up there?"

Janine came back in and watched Heather and I fuck. When Heather dismounted me, Janine pulled the rubber straight off so that my cum dribbled right back onto my cock and all over my crotch. She even brought the condom up to my chest and squeezed the rest of my cum out. Then both of them did rock-paper-scissors, the winner got to clean off my cock.

Heather actually won twice, because she gave me a blowjob after cleaning me off. Janine was content to just fondle my tits and kiss me while Heather polished my knob. They let me shower alone, leaving a wonderful suit in blue for me to wear for my meeting with the inspector of Sunshineville.

'Les' was actually 'Leslie,' I found out when she pulled up to the entrance. She was hot even in a work shirt and slacks, or maybe it was just the way she held her clipboard. I handed her the briefcase and she didn't even flinch at the weight. After she selected her keys, I followed her to one of the retail shops and watched her work. She was meticulous, almost anal, in her work. I didn't know how building inspectors rated, but she looked good at her job. After the fourth 'Passed' sticker was slapped on a building, she handed me her inspection reports and moved onto the next.

My inspector wasn't much of a conversationalist, she did her work and moved on, stopping occasionally to eat. I found myself wanting to explore, and the first building I went into was the town hall. The security guards had set up in the police department. Monitors showed pictures of streets and exteriors, which gave the picture of both safety and privacy.

The guard force was all women and they were armed. I struck up a conversation with them, asking how they liked Sunshineville and hinting at permanent jobs for them as the police force. Their reply was that they couldn't be police of public property because they hadn't passed the state required exams. That started me wondering if I wanted the town to be open to the public.

When I explained to them the intended purpose of Sunshineville they agreed that it would be best to keep the entire area privately owned by a single person. That way, the invitation to enter the property would be required, not implied, and they could detain any trespasser. I called the 'Arthur' firm and got patched through to a property attorney that gave me a whole bunch of questions about the properties themselves down to who had paid for the streets. He told me that if the entire property had been developed privately, without any government subsidy, that I could keep the area private.

My next call went to Weyerhauser-Stein, and I asked Samson Holt about the property development and if there were any subsidies granted. He assured me that there were no subsidies attached to the tract, not even the solar farm had been subsidised by tax deduction. Samson asked me if I was having any thoughts about putting the deal on hold, I told him that I didn't see any reasons so far to cancel it. He hinted that the four adjoining tracts were available, in case I might want to expand. I told him to give me the name of the realtor.

When I went back to see how Leslie was doing, her truck was gone. My driver told me that Leslie had went to get them some food. I thought about folding out of there to go back to the city, but I knew I probably couldn't fold back because I didn't own the town yet. I was contemplating going back to L.A. when Carla called me. She was understandably concerned about the welfare of the women that had been rescued from Shannonburg. It wasn't exactly the best weather to be housing people in a tent city, even though it was a really nice tent city.

I made a snap decision and told her to start getting them ready for transportation. I called Samson and asked him to get the lawyers together for transfer of the property. Since I didn't know any lawyers for my side of the deal, I called Janine. She promised to have a couple of guys waiting for me when I got to the offices of Weyerhauser-Stein. I also needed people to staff the public works departments, utilities first then people to administer the town itself. She told me that she knew some people that she could cherry-pick from the city departments and they could meet at one of Brookstone Pointe's garages. I hesitated before making my next request. I asked if she could make sure that most of, if not all of the people she pointed my way could be women. Janine assured me that she had already thought of that.

When Leslie returned, I asked her to move her inspection focus to the residential areas and then come back to the shops. She hedged at first, then I explained to her why I needed those areas cleared for habitation. When she got done clearing her eyes, she gave me a kiss on the cheek and asked me why more men couldn't be like me. I hadn't told her I was trans, but she had probably given me a good inspection when I wasn't looking.

I bid her goodbye and asked Iris to get me to Samson's offices as quick as possible. She gave me a wink and told me to fasten my seat belt. Three hours later, the deal was finalized. Samson presented me with the symbolic key to the city, which would make a good decoration somewhere.

A woman who identified herself as Meredith Champion met me at the warehouse Janine had pointed me toward. I was introduced to a dozen women who represented public utilities. I gave them the rundown on what I needed and would take their recommendations regarding any additional people they would need to hire. They agreed to follow me out to the town and take a look at what they might be working with.

Iris was now working with a full map of the town. She helped me direct the engineers and technicians to where they needed to go. We went to the Town Hall where we met up with Carla and Ai Ming. They had their first group of refugees-slash-survivors, and they needed housing and food.

Carla had also picked up a couple assistants and I was going to ask them to help get some food for the group when Janine walked into the room. She had brought help, a lot of help. We had a small conference, Iris interrupting to give us a map showing the houses that Leslie had certified safe for habitation.

Janine and Carla went to confer with their groups separately and then together. Carla and Ai left with the helpers and the survivors.

"It's amazing what you can do with connections," I observed to Janine.

"Those women all work for Brookstone Pointe," Janine said. "I sent out a company-wide email this morning about what was going on and I had to turn away volunteers. I'm footing the bill out of my own pocket, I could use some help."

"All right," I held up my phone. "How much do you need?"

Janine gave me a number that would have made Heath pass out, but Heather handled it just fine. Janine then transferred a quarter of that to Carla's accounts which had been drained dry with the airline charters and busses.

"Have you thought about who the administrator of Sunshineville will be?" Janine asked.

"I'm no administrator. Do you know Carla very well?"

"Only what I've heard from you and others. Iris assures me her motives are pure," Janine replied.

"If her motives weren't pure, she would have been zapped a while ago," I muttered. "Back when Kimberly introduced herself, Carla was there. The battle would have been ugly because the claws were long."

"You can tell me about it on the way home," Janine offered.

"My place tonight," I said. "No whips there."

"Not tangible ones," Janine sighed. "May as well get this over with."

Celina pulled me aside when Janine went to the bathroom. "Morena gave me a call earlier."

Uh-oh. "What did she have to say?"

"Morena is backing out of her interest in you. She feels that Janine is closer to your age and probably more compatible than some gypsy assassin." Celina was using words Grace had spoken last night, telling me she had spies in Janine's home "Morena is quite old, you know. The blood on her hands can't be balanced out no matter how much good she tries to do."

"Can I ask what happened?"

"There were a bunch of scientists who decided they wanted to study natural immortals, not caring that the immortals themselves didn't want to be studied. Morena tracked down their lab and freed the immortals, including myself, then proceeded to dispatch the scientists by whatever means she could come up with. The human half were ripped limb from limb, and the scientists that managed to steal their immortality from those immortal captives were dispatched to Mylthea."

"What's Mylthea?" I asked.

"There are many different planes of existence, which you probably already know. Mylthea is a prison constructed long ago to hold...evildoers. Wicca have tossed quite a few nasty people into that portal over the years. The problem with portals is that only immortals can cross a plane barrier, so normal humans don't make it out the other end alive."

"Neat, so an evildoers' prison plane. How do you protect the non-evil people from going there?"

Celina laughed. "The portal to Mylthea is sort of magnetic. It attracts the evil and repels the good."

"I've done some evil in my time, Celina."

"That isn't in your aura. In any case, I'm talking about pure evil, the stuff that doesn't even make it into the Hollywood movies. You'll know it if you ever see it."

"Like sorcerers and slavers?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Great. How do I open one?"

"That isn't something I recommend to a novice," Celina said.

"You're invited to go visit my property in Sunshineville. You talk to some of those women who were rescued from sorcerers and slavers and were victims of spousal abuse and then tell me what you recommend!"

Celina wagged her tongue around and spit out a crown into her hand. "Spit that in the face of evil and say the words, 'Marstalin, Mylthea.' You'll know if they reach the other side by the sound of their screams."

I took the crown from her palm and looked it over. "Do you know a good dentist?"

"Yes, I do," Janine said from behind me.

"Do you wish to stay, Celina?" I asked. "I know I was kind of harsh."

"Yes, I'll stay. You show passion and conviction, that's rare in someone your age. I guess it's been so long since I've met a person who could hurt me that I forgot that there are fragile hearts in the world. By your leave?"

"Sure."

"Well-put," Janine said. "I'd follow you."

"Janine, I'm just an accountant," I protested.

"You're more than that now. You have the power to effect change, to rebalance the books of many lives. I can teach you."

"Maybe it's time to think outside the books," I admitted.

***

I was three days into my leadership training when Natasha came to visit. She dropped a copy of a German tabloid rag on my desk and gave me a wink. Kevin Brown was being cuckolded by his girlfriend Olivia Watson-Whitehall. Kevin. Kevin naked. Ahh. Natasha had given me the gossip on Kevin, apparently he was acting now. Olivia and her lover had taken off, leaving the studio holding the bag and fuming mad.

Three weeks later, Natasha dropped by to give me the newest gossip on Kevin. Apparently Kevin had taken up with one of the Renraw sisters, women richer than I was. I asked Natasha why she kept giving me the heartbreaking gossip. She gave me her reply with a smile. Kevin and Lisann were Master and Pet. Janine gave me the explanation with a big smile on her face.

Janine couldn't stop smiling when she hooked the leash to my diamond-studded collar. I asked her why she didn't want the spiked one, and she explained that the studs meant that I was available for a swap. Swap. I'd be Kevin's pet for a night. Doggy style. My dick twinged with the possibility of being mounted by Kevin when Janine and I strutted into the club.

We found Kevin and Lisann on the VIP level, sipping whiskey and chatting. Janine and I strolled up, and after introductions were made, they asked us to join them. We had a pleasant conversation, only broken up by Janine and Lisann going to the restroom together. When they were out of earshot, Kevin asked me a question. "Heather, are you a good girl?"

"Master Brown, I am neither good nor girl," I replied.

"Would your Mistress permit me spanking you?" He asked.

Oh my goddess, spank me Kevin. "You would have to ask Mistress, Sir."

"This only works if you are willing, Heather," Kevin whispered.

"More than willing, Kevin," I whispered back.

When Janine and Lisann came back to the table, Kevin pulled Lisann over to him by her leash. They conferred for a moment, than sat back up. "Madame Olsen, would you like to sample my pet?" Kevin asked.

"Yes, Master Brown, I would," Janine nodded. She stood, ceremoniously pulling on my leash to do the same while Kevin yanked on Lisann's leash. We backed away from the table, Kevin and Janine switching leashes at the same time. Janine gave her leash a hard tug, pulling Lisann into a kiss.

Kevin did the same to me, and I got to taste him again. Wow.

"Time and place to retrieve our pets?" Kevin asked.

"Monday morning, seven hours, Brookstone Pointe building," Janine said.

Kevin flinched a little. "Very well, Madame Olsen," he nodded.

Janine gave me an air kiss before she left the table, pulling Lisann behind her. "That's strange," Kevin said.

"What?" I asked.

"Lisann wanting it rough like that in public, and I've never seen her agree to four days before."

"Master?" I asked.

"Yes, my pet?"

"That means you have four days with me."

"You won't regret it," Kevin promised.

***

We folded to a cramped, cozy house. "Where's this?" I asked, looking around. It reminded me of where I grew up.

"My home in Wadesboro, North Carolina," he replied. "Before I got my sight back and made it big. I'm not big on the Master-Pet thing, can I take your collar off?"

"You certainly can," I said. He came up behind me, taking off the leash and dropping it on the floor, the collar following a minute later after he used it to hold me in place while he humped my ass. I could feel his cock growing in his pants, it felt bigger than it had looked the last time I saw it.

"Come with me." I followed him to a small room dominated by a massage table. "Take your clothes off and get on the table."

My eyes darted around the room. The only shelf was dominated by a variety of oils, no straps or anything. A massage? For real? I complied with his order, giving him full view of my strangely compliant cock before I laid down. He pulled my hair up over my head and secured it with a hair tie. The next sensation was him nuzzling my neck and feeling my ass at the same time. Then a warm trail of liquid went down my back, a good amount going into my butt crack and trickling down to my anus and dripping off my balls.

Kevin confirmed that it was going to be one of 'those' massages by slipping a finger down my crack and toying with my love hole. He pulled back, and then went to work on my shoulders. I hadn't felt any pain since my injuries from Declan had healed, so every touch was pure pleasure. He alternated between my back and my legs, then took a special interest in my ass. He kneaded my cheeks like dough, then caressed them like breasts. When he started pulling his fingers down my back, kneading in tiny circles, I started to feel something. There was a tingle in my nipples, a twitch in my cock.
Then Kevin did it again. My nipples felt like they were getting ready to punch holes in the leather top of the table. Then he did the same thing to my legs, pulling from the heel to my ass. I felt my muscles start to tighten up, my calves and thighs clenching together when he made a second pass. When Kevin went down my back again, my nipples felt like they were being pinched and my cock grew incredibly hard. Another pass at my legs and I was a tight ball of muscle.

A small tap at the small of my back set it all loose. The breath I had been holding exploded from my lungs. My extremities started to tremble and my cock started to shoot. I was shooting so hard from my cock it felt like I was cumming from every pore in my skin. I took another breath and let out a wail of pleasure. My cock was still shooting gooey, hot cum and my ass was still trembling from his magic tap. Then Kevin's hands were on me again, massaging from my shoulders down and my feet up, again winding my body into a little knot...then I exploded again. My last thought before I passed out was: 'My balls are empty.'

Kevin coming back into the room snapped me out of my stupor. He had laid a warm towel across my ass and another across the top of my back. I heard him fiddling with something, then the towel came off my ass. There was a cold, slimy finger slipping in between my ass cheeks. He had gotten some lube! I opened my legs and he gently slipped a finger into me, rubbing around the inside of my anal ring as he pushed it deeper. This went on for two minutes, when he added another finger it told me Kevin had done this before. He pulled his fingers out, putting his hands on my ankles and pulling me backward. My face went into my cum as he pulled me back, making me feel dirty and debased. I loved it. My cock slipped over the edge of the table and my ass took Kevin's cock inside. Now I felt used. He rammed his cock into me, making my face all gooey with my cum. He was exceptionally strong, because he was still holding my ankles and balancing my weight against the table.

When he came inside me, it was filling, literally. I had taken a lot of water-bottle enemas over the years to get myself clean for riding a cock, and this feeling was a lot like that. It was exhilarating that he was cumming inside me, although I was probably imagining the volume of cum. Kevin bent me at the hips and set my feet on the floor. He was rock-hard up against me, and when I stood up straight his hands went to my breasts. "Did you like that?"

"Can you do it again?" I sighed in response.

"Maybe later. Go shower..."

"Go shower, what?" I asked.

"Nothing."

He wanted to call me a slut. It would make me feel even dirtier. "Go ahead, Kevin. You just fucked me hard and good."

"Go shower, you little slut."

"That's good," I turned around and our cocks brushed together. "You were so good, Kevin. You made me feel dirty and used like a little slut. But I'm your slut for tonight, don't forget that. Use me however you want and it will make me feel good."

"Really?"

"When I'm with women, I mostly go for the gentle approach. With men, I like feeling dirty. Not abused, mind you, just dirty and demeaned. Both holes are yours tonight, don't ask, just do."

"Okay. Go shower, you little slut."

I took the chance he wanted some more of me and pulled him into a kiss. He put his hands on the back of my head and fisted my hair, pulling me in deeper. He started fucking my mouth with his tongue and it was great. I don't know what came over me, but I had another orgasm, squirting my cum all over his legs. He pulled my head back, debating for a moment about whether or not to force a cleanup. I put my hands on his and pulled myself down to my knees, savoring the pain of him pulling my hair. I licked along his leg where most of my cum had landed, then took his cock in my mouth. I kept my hands on his and started to move back and forth along his shaft. When I let them go, he got the picture and started fucking my face. In and out, in and out he went. My hair hurt, but I didn't care. He let go of my hair, tapping on my head. It was an obvious sign that he was getting ready to cum and he was letting me choose. I swallowed. I wanted his cum in both ends of my body. He still had a lot in him, I found out about the fifth spurt. When he finally stopped twitching, I backed off his cock.

I stood up, and he pulled me into another kiss. The kiss was gentle this time, loving and tender. Kevin reached around and pulled me to him, our cocks rubbing together as his body rubbed mine. He pulled back and turned me around and walked me into the bathroom, giving me a wink before he pulled the door closed.

As much as I wanted to keep Kevin's cum inside me, I had to let it out. I sat on his commode and let it splash into the water. There was as much as I imagined, telling me that his balls were big enough to fill a dump truck. I couldn't help but orgasm when he touched me, maybe that was his appeal to women. That was probably why I wouldn't get this chance again. I showered, feeling the loving ache of a stretched-out thoroughly fucked butthole, and thinking that was the first time in a long time that I had an ache back there. Was that passion I felt? He certainly had some feeling for me, that massage was mind-blowing.

I finished washing, surprised by the presence of women's things in the shower. Did he bring other women here? Other women, I giggled to myself as I washed my asshole another time. I heard the bathroom door open and poked my head out. A pregnant woman was pulling down her leggings and sitting on the toilet. "Hi Heather, I'm Katie."

Katie. The woman who had been on the phone with Kevin outside Shannonburg. "Hi. I'm sorry we couldn't save your friends."

"From what I hear, they're in a very good place. I don't mind that, I just miss them. Don't mind me, I'll be heading out to the complex to give Kevin his time alone with you. Can I see it?"

I shut off the shower and pulled open the curtain. Katie wiped and stood up, pulling her leggings up. "I'm not sure what to say here," I shrugged.

Katie grabbed a pair of towels off the shelf. "Here. Let me help you dry off."

"Katie," I started to protest. "Kevin's here."

"You're right," Katie handed me the towels. "Maybe I'll see it later, huh?"

"Sure," I gave her a wink.

Katie left the bathroom, Kevin coming in a minute later. "Hey."

"Hey." I flipped my hair over, wrapping one of the towels around it. "Did I do something wrong?"

He twisted his fingers like he wanted to say something. "Katie..."

"Katie what?"

"We kind of have a rule around the houses, It's along the lines of 'share and share alike.' I wouldn't have minded if you and Katie had sex. I would have liked to watch, actually."

"Oh. Kevin, I didn't know. I must have broken her heart. I was here for you, this probably is going to be the only chance I get at you," I said.

"Here I was thinking this was the only chance I would get at you," Kevin snickered. "There are some other women who'd like to make your acquaintance, probably some men, too."

I giggled. "I guess I will be a little slut," I whispered.

"How about this? I'll go shower and maybe I'll walk in on you in Katie in a few minutes, okay?"

"That sounds like fun," I nodded.

Katie was waiting in the hallway outside what I thought would be Kevin's bedroom. It was. I reached out and took her hand and pulled her inside. She didn't want to help dry me off, she just wanted to get naked and have me take her over the bed. As I did her from behind, Kevin came into the bedroom and poked me with his cock to let me know he was getting off as well. He put his hand on my ass to slow me down a little bit and climbed onto the bed, moving his dick toward Katie's mouth. Katie looked up at him and shook her head. He nodded and backed off the bed, leaving me and Katie to our little session.

After I came inside her, Katie climbed onto the bed and lay on her back, opening her legs for me. I went to clean her out, but that's not what she wanted. I stuck my cock back into her and let her close her legs. She had gotten a little tighter switching positions like that, giving me enough friction to stimulate both of us to mutual orgasms. She gripped my tits in her hands, telling me not to get off the bed just yet. I lay down, Katie nestling into my armpit and her free hand toying with one of my nipples.

We talked about her pregnancy, and she told me that all of the changes she was going through was worth it because of the life growing inside of her. I rubbed her baby belly, feeling the little form within stirring inside her. I pondered my own sons growing inside Lisann and Astrid. Hayley, the daughter I had never known, I had missed so much of her life.

"I've got to go," Katie slid off me and out of the bed. "You be good to Kevin, please."

"Katie, all I want is Kevin to be good to me. Well, by good I mean bad and very dirty," I sighed.

"You go, girl," Katie giggled.

Kevin and I got down and dirty all the way through to Friday morning. He showed me ways to orgasm I hadn't felt from a man before. He even sucked my cock, and he was good for a beginner in cocksucking. When we finally thought about sleeping, he appeared in my dreams and we had more sex. The dream I loved the most was awe-inspiring. In that dream, I was a woman, and Kevin made love to me like a woman. Then he switched up and fucked me like there was no tomorrow.

When I woke up, I felt loss at having my pecker back. It wouldn't be hard to live that dream, all Kevin would have to do is take my dick away. Gaia said I could be impregnated if I became completely woman, the words just had to be said. Kevin took me out to dinner, then back to his house for more lovemaking and fucking. I fell asleep again feeling totally dirty even though I had just washed Kevin's cum out of my ass again.

***

Come Saturday morning, I was missing Janine. It was the longest time I had spent without her in weeks. I slipped out of bed and pulled on some leggings and a sports top. I folded to Janine's face, forgetting to make a bigger offset in case she was involved.

I landed in the torture chamber Janine had in her basement. She had Lisann strapped to a cross in the middle of the room and was getting ready to lash her with a bullwhip when I appeared. Lisann had actual lashes on her back, the skin red and angry. Janine noticed me and pointed to the door. She gave Lisann another lash and motioned for me to go upstairs.

"Heather, what are you doing here?"

"I was missing you, Janine," I looked at the whip still in her hand. "I thought you were the sub?"

"Lisann begged me to be the domme. Once I picked up the paddle, that was it. She begged me to do every perverted thing I could to her, and I'm nowhere near done."

"Will you be able to go back?" I asked. "Go back to being the sub?"

Janine gave it a moment's thought. "Yes, I will."

I've heard that before. "Ok. Have fun, I guess."

"You too." Janine gave me a pat on the shoulder with the hand carrying the whip. She went downstairs without even looking back. If she would have looked, she would have seen the patch of blood the whip had left on my nice white top.

Kevin sighed when I told him the story about what had happened. He wasn't surprised that Lisann had asked for a whipping, she had been visibly bored with their relatively vanilla sex life after two weeks together. Janine also wasn't the first woman Lisann had gone home with.

We spent the day at a way bigger place outside of town. The children actively sought both me and Kevin out, like we were magnetic. Kevin explained that it was our energy that attracted them. Even though I wasn't blood, I was family. I also got to meet the sultry Ellie Salazar, Kevin's long-time girlfriend, baby-momma and date to the Rocher awards the coming Friday.

During family dinner a woman named Carol took an interest in me. She was curious about accounting, and really wanted to see what I looked like naked. Sunday morning I was awakened by a woman named Jaina. She was tiny in body, but my cock fit into her pussy just fine. After breakfast Jaina and Carol took turns seeing how much of my pecker would fit into their mouths.

When they released me from their clutches a little after eleven hours, they were kind enough to bring me a new outfit. Kevin and I had lunch on the roof of his house, nothing but trees as far as the eye could see. He asked me what I thought of the sisters, I replied that they were awesome little pixie chicks.

"They really are pixies," Kevin admitted. "Their magic dust is the basis for a lot of spells that the Wicca use. You've made them very happy and twice as powerful."

"Well, they were awesome and passionate. Well worth keeping my cock for," I said.

"Are you losing it?" Kevin asked.

I gave him the rundown on the spell, and how he could take the last of manliness away from me and make me a true woman. He joked that me losing my cock was the last thing he wanted, because he would have a lot of angry women to deal with if he did. That list included the other fourteen pixie sisters that wanted a magician's cock, but would wait patiently for it.

Marcie, Janine's assistant, gave me a call at seventeen hours. She needed to see me, and it was rather urgent. I told her that I'd meet her at Janine's place, and she said that it wasn't a good idea to meet there, just to fold to her. I told Kevin where I was going, and he said to make sure to show up at the pet swap meeting, even if it was just going through the motions.

I had some trouble picturing Marcie's face, but it finally cleared and I folded to her. The Marcie I folded to wasn't the Marcie I pictured in my mind, this Marcie was tied to a pole and gagged. Before that fully registered, I felt pricking in my back and then my mind lost control of my body, losing consciousness seconds later.

***

I didn't know how long I had been out, but I woke up with pain surging through every part of my body. I couldn't move, I could barely breathe. "It's awake," a man's voice said.

"Come now, Alton," a woman said. "Heather is a 'she.'"

"If you say so, Miranda," the man snorted. "We have all these freaks coming out of the woodwork now, it's annoying. I thought that Jaci Stone was a one-off."

"Nothing's for certain nowadays," the woman leaned over me. "Hello, Heather. I'm Miranda Olsen."

"Janine?" I whimpered.

"Yes, Janine is my little slut daughter. Is she still slinging that pussy around? Never mind, I don't give a shit. Welcome to my lab, Heather. Your stay will be long and unpleasant."

I was pinned down to a table. The bars were running through my extremities and parts of my torso. I could barely process the pain, but I knew I couldn't cast anything. Why?

"The bars piercing various parts of your anatomy are made of rebar coated in lead," Miranda explained. "Something we learned early on was that lead absorbs magic, so we now we have something to make sure you cooperate."

So this is why Morena was willing to kill people by ripping them apart. Good for her. "Why?"

"Everybody wants to be immortal, Heather. They are even willing to pay good money for it. The problem is that our prisoners just keep on dying on us, so we have to keep acquiring more. We didn't know about the folding power until just last year. That's something we had to work around before we could bring you into the show. Simple fact, you need to move to be able to fold, so we make sure you can't move."

"Marcie?"

"Marcie can't fold, so we just throw her in a cage with a lead necklace on. You...you'll have to stay there. To make sure you don't go do something stupid like taking your last breath, look to your right."

I looked to my right, there were at least a dozen women in cages, lead collars around their necks. A little farther and I saw Hayley nailed to the wall with spikes through her arms and legs. "Hayley." A tear fell down my face. This bitch was going to pay.

"Yes, the little one was quite hard to subdue. You see her collar? That's actually a decapitator. Your vital signs go down, like they do when you take your last breath? That kills her first. So! What are we to do with yet another witch?"

"Let us go," I whimpered.

"No! We're going to drain your blood little by little and sell it off to the highest bidder. There is some anomaly Hayley's blood that not only cures people of every disease imaginable, but also makes them younger. I figured that it's genetic, so that's why you were the next to join the party."

"The subject is ready for the next trial, Ma'am," a different male voice said.

"Prepare the transfusion," Miranda ordered.

I closed my eyes and thought at Hayley, hoping that telepathy was one of our gifts. "Hayley?"

"Mom? I can't get out, I've tried everything!"

"She doesn't know about wizards, she thinks we are just two more wicca. Can we use that?"

A jolt of pain shot through my body, blocking any reply Hayley may have given. I felt cold running into my left arm, it was burning cold. "Aaah!"

"That pain is the old blood from your patient being pumped into you to replace the blood we are taking." Miranda came into my eyeline. "Neat, yes? Your body, it changes bad blood faster than it makes new blood from the nutrients we are pumping into you to keep you alive. My idea, of course."

"Have you had many original ideas?" I asked through my teeth.

Miranda vanished from my sight, returning with what looked like a stun gun. "We don't need you conscious for this." She stuck the stun gun probes into my skin and turned it on. I vaguely remembered what Kevin had said about being able to absorb the lightning the sorcerers were throwing at him. I could feel my body absorbing that energy, squirreling it away for when I could use it.

Miranda pulled the stun gun away, tapping it in her hand a few times, disgusted. "Made in China?" I teased. "You try stealing that idea, too?"

I got a slap in the face before she stormed off. The pain in my arm was subsiding, giving me hope for a moment. "Hayley? Can we use that?"

"Mom, I don't know. The training I was given was geared for wicca, not wizards. I don't know much beyond...Look out!"

Miranda had returned with a much bigger stun gun. I braced for the bolts that were sure to come, but they didn't. "Is the transfer complete?" She asked.

"Ninety percent, ma'am," was the reply she got.

The stun gun went off, but only into the air. I cringed at the sound it made, hoping she would see the fear and not the want for the charge to hit me. "Is that all you're going to do is use me as a blood converter?"

"Now that we have you and your daughter, I have one free to experiment on. Her blood is just as good as yours, but it doesn't seem as refined, or something. Maybe because you're older and more refined."

"Refined," Alton grunted. "Freakier is more like it. A cock and tits? Mutated is more like it."

"Mixing genders is not a bad thing," Miranda mused. "You could be looking at the next step in our evolution. Maybe the step beyond that is asexual reproduction, so women can honestly tell you to 'go fuck yourself.'"

"You're a bitch, Miranda," Alton said.

"Thank you. Transfer status?" Miranda demanded.

"One hundred percent."

Miranda put the stun gun against my bare chest and turned it on. The pain it gave me was intense and so long. I tried to think about Kevin, his cock in me, his cum oozing out of me. His mouth on my cock... "Unh." I didn't even realize I had gotten an erection, and now I was shooting cum out. Some got on Miranda, some of my face, the rest weakly spurting out on my body.

The stun gun hit me again, this time near my crotch. It felt like Miranda was trying to burn off my cock with the electric arc, and she was getting frustrated at me. "You bitch!"
"Thank you." I couldn't giggle with all the rods stuck through my body, but it seemed there were a few less rods holding me to the table. They were still stuck in my body, but not through. I could work with that. Miranda moved from my dickhead to my bigger head and shocked me again. The gritting of my teeth had dislodged the gold crown overlays on each of my back molars. I had a weapon, but I couldn't use it until I was free or close to it.

Miranda took her torture to my nipples, and was getting off on seeing the burns form and re-heal themselves. The gold in my mouth, once relatively shielded from conductive contact with my body started to dissolve. I took one look at Miranda and spat at her. "Marstalin, Mylthea."

My spit hit Miranda in the face, and she dropped the stun-gun. She vanished from my sight and then I heard a sound. It sounded like popping at first, then it progressed into a huge whooshing noise. Then there were screams, lots of them. I couldn't see what was going on, but didn't care after I passed out.

I was almost grateful for the headache when I finally regained consciousness. My body still had the ghost feeling of the lead bars stuck through it, but they all were gone now. I was still in the lab on the table, thankfully covered by a thick blanket. Hayley's face popped into view. "Hey, momma!"

"Hey. Glad to see you with your head attached."

"Miranda was bluffing about the decapitator. She's gone now, along with all of her 'scientists.' A Mylthea portal, huh? I didn't have any gold on me to throw one of those, even then we're forbidden from using them."

"Because you're too young to judge people," Morena's voice said. "Even I may be too young to judge people. I need to have a talk with your mother, little one."

"Heather's my momma, Madame Wasikowski."

"Momma, then. My mistake."

Hayley wandered over to another woman and plopped down beside her. "What's going on, Morena?" I asked.

"The opening of a Mylthea portal catches a lot of attention. Your enforcers and a Revenger arrived first, they polished off the stragglers but didn't want to disturb the wounded. They called healers next, and they arrived with guardians. Once the place was secured, they called in the clan heads."

"Welcome to the party," I grunted. "Why am I still here?"

"Miranda zapped you rather hard, we were waiting for the head injuries to heal completely before moving you in any fashion." Morena looked over my shoulder, then nodded. "You can sit up now."

Morena helped me to sit up, moving the blanket so I could keep what was left of my modesty. The lab was much bigger than what I could see from the table. I was in a little section of a warehouse floor like my auditing sanctum occupied. "This place is huge."

"This place is also old," Starr came up to the table. "We've confirmed your suspicions, Morena. Some of the materials in this lab, like the lead shackles date from the nineteen twenties, and some of the notes we found date from the eighteen hundreds and before. Some of the older magicians confirm that a majority of the newer notes are actually copies of the older notes. There's more of these labs, and the notes have been passed around."

"More labs," Morena grumbled. "We've got to find them."

"Give me a couple days to recover from this, and I can find them," I said.

"How?" Morena asked. "I'm sorry, but you're not even a novice magician."

"You don't need a magician to follow the money, Morena. You need an accountant," I smiled. "I'm The Accountant."

"Very good," Morena nodded. "Would you like to accompany me to the Rocher Awards ceremony tomorrow night?"

"Sure," I nodded. "Let me do something with this hair."

Morena let out a laugh, which she immediately stifled. "Yes, Madame Heather, you'll do."

"Let me talk to Starr and Pete," I said.

"Of course."

Starr had brought me some of my clothes so I could get something on my body besides blankets. After clearing a bathroom for me, she closed the door behind us. "We never should have left you alone," Starr said. "We didn't think there would be any threat to you in North Carolina."

"Why are you following me?"

"Because we made an oath," Starr said.

"Okay, why did you do that?"

"Heather, we want to protect you, you're special. Most of the wizards are straight male or female, you're both. We want to protect you because we couldn't protect Jaci. She was the best of us, she was The Gardener, everything she touched grew and grew. Everybody she touched, their lives just got better and better until she was taken from us."

"I'm not Jaci," I countered.

"You're not, we all know that. You deserve protecting just the same. Please get dressed, ma'am, there's something you need to see. Plus, I'm getting really horny knowing you're naked under that blanket."

"Ooh, look at that crack up there," I pointed.

Starr found that crack extremely interesting until I pronounced myself ready. She had brought my favorite kind of athleisure suit, stretchy but tight, along with a jacket and shoes. I followed Starr to a room off the main lab. A body was laying on a table, a woman with a cock. "Jaci?"

"Yes, this is Jaci," an Indian woman said. "I'm Doctor Khalila Sahai, you must be Heather Jenkins."

"Jenkins-Sagemueller," I said.

"You and Jaci would have made good friends," Khalila said. "Starr, you understand I have to autopsy her."

"Yes, I know," Starr nodded. "We need to have a ceremony before the cremation, all of us."

"Of course." Khalila pulled a sheet over the body. "Goodbye, Miss Stone."

***

The discovery of Jaci's body put a bigger damper on my already shitty day. I shuffled around, collecting papers with numbers on them for use in tracking down the other labs by following the money. Starr introduced me to the survivors, some were understandably reluctant to shake my hand. Some of them were runaways and didn't have homes, so I gave them the invitation to enter Sunshineville.

Morena caught up with me as I was looking over other areas of the lab. "I knew I should have burned that place to the ground. I can only imagine how many innocents have suffered at their hands."

"As long as there is good, there will always be evil, Morena," I said. "It sounds trite."

"Gaia should not permit the suffering of her children! That is wrong! I'm going to find them all, Heather"

"We have a date, remember?" I asked.

"Fine, after the date. Your boyfriend is rather concerned for you, go and see him."

Kevin. "I'll do that."

I called Kevin before I folded to him, it turned out he was in his condo in Los Angeles. "Hey, Kevin."

"Hi, I'm Julie," a woman said from behind me. I turned to shake her hand. "Don't mind me, I'm just tidying up."

Kevin didn't look pleased. "What's up?"

"Aside from you being captured and experimented on four days? Well, my fiance has taken up with Janine Olsen for the moment. I don't know how much more of that heartbreak I can take."

"Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to do that swap," I said.

That snapped Kevin out of his stupor. "No, no, no, I don't regret meeting you for a second, Heather. As for Lisann, she would have found a hard-core mistress to shack up with anyway."

"She shouldn't have even gotten the tattoo," Julie commented. "Would you two like a drink?"

"Julie, you're not the help. Please, come and meet Heather."

I heard the clinking of glasses and Julie sat them in front of us with a decanter of whiskey. "I'm not drinking. I may be a natural immortal, but I'm pregnant and don't want to tempt fate."

"Julie, please?" Kevin pleaded.

"Fine," Julie sat next to me with a huff.

"What tattoo?" I asked.

"Lisann got a tattoo on her back, it said 'Kevin's Bitch.' It was supposed to be a Master-Pet thing," Julie explained.

"Was she?"

"For a little bit," Kevin said. "She kept wanting me to paddle her and whip her. She knew I wasn't that deep into the scene. At some point she stopped wanting me and asked me to go to the club with her so we could swap. I ended up with pets I really didn't have the eyes or hands for."

"And the one pet Kevin did end up wanting was kidnapped," Julie said.

"Kevin, this was never going to be a permanent thing," I pointed out.

"Sure, I knew that," Kevin chuckled. "But it doesn't mean there can't be hookups, right?"

"Right," I nodded.

"There's always Annalise," Julie prodded. "She admitted her interest in you."

"I don't want to go around sampling Lisann's sisters," Kevin sighed. "They were just as into the Master-Pet thing as Lisann was."

"You need to have a primary, Kevin," Julie insisted.

"Why are you having this discussion in front of me?" I asked.

"This is just a continuing discussion, Heather. Sorry, it's just the way things are around me."

"What about Ellie Salazar?" I offered. "She's really into you."

"Ellie doesn't want to be in the public eye anymore," Julie explained. "She's happy living out there in the Anson House, with all the privacy that affords. She can go into the local Chain-Mart without being interrupted by fans and stalkers."

"I understand that, so why would she go to the Rochers? Won't that put her in the public eye?"

"There's a difference, it's hard to explain," Kevin said. "She's content, I'm not going to take that away from her."

"So, I hear you're going with Morena Wasikowski," Julie nudged me. "She's quite the catch."

"Why's that?"

"Morena Wasikowski is the richest woman in the world. Personal wealth somewhere in the four hundred billion dollar range," Julie replied. "Who asked who?"

"She asked me. Actually, she's asked me twice."

"Watch her, she's got an agenda," Kevin warned.

"Kevin, all women have an agenda," Julie giggled.

***

Morena called me twenty minutes later. She wanted me to take a car ride with her to pick up our dresses. When I got into the car with her, I went to give her a kiss and she complied like a submissive would. I asked her if there was anything I could say to get her to act like my equal and she shook her head. I was half-tempted to tell her to suck my cock, but I didn't. There was so much going on in my life that I didn't know heads from tails.

When we got to the dress shop, Morena tried walking behind me until I took her hand and pulled her to my side. She introduced me to Vera, and we were ushered back to the fitting area. When Morena saw me naked she let out a long sigh, like a child finally allowed into the candy store. She reached into her purse and pulled out a pair of panties and tossed them at me. I put the panties on, tucking myself when I got up to my thighs. When I was at the top, I studied myself in the mirror. I didn't have any kind of bulge at all. "What?"

"Old Romany magic, those panties make the wearer look more and feel like the woman they want to be."

"I don't want to lose my pecker," I said.

"Are you sure?" Morena asked. "Anyway, the panties just hide your bulge with a touch of glamour, nothing deep or dark."

"Thank you."

"You'll need those panties for the dresses I picked out for us," Morena smiled.

"What if I don't like the dresses?"

Morena looked like I had just pulled the proverbial red carpet out from underneath her. "Um, well, we have time to get others if you like."

Wow. "I'm sure they will be okay," I soothed.

When Vera came out with the dresses, I was stunned. They were complementary to each other, almost as if the same piece had been cut out of one dress and transferred to the other. Vera admitted that it wasn't the first time she had done that style, but it was still glamorous and hadn't been copied yet.

Morena and I looked like a great couple in our dresses. I wondered how far we would go after the awards, would she still submit to me when I had her naked and pinned to whatever surface was closest? I wanted to find out, she was hot for her age.

I didn't keep up with Hollywood awards. The accounting firm that did all the tabulations was a tad too elitist for my taste, and that's about as far as my knowledge went. I didn't know that Kevin Brown was up for an award, let alone multiples, with his co-star in the movie, Sabrina Walker. They both won the most prestigious awards, Kevin pausing to say thank-you to his newfound peers.

Morena deferred to my judgement as to which afterparty we went to. I told her that I wanted to be able to congratulate Kevin on his award, so she took us to the party at the Renraw Sisters' estate.

The mansion was huge in the front, doubly huge once you got to see it see it from inside the atrium in the center. Four wings spread out from the center building, basically one residence for each sister, Morena explained.

Morena introduced me around, some people were nice and others were just being nice. I asked her why that was, and Morena explained that she was a big but silent player in Hollywood. Morena left me for to go get some drinks, and I migrated to the edge of the room to get a better view of what was going on, and also to look for Kevin. Lisann approached me, and though I didn't feel like talking to her, I thought it best to be civil. "Hi, I'm Annalise Renraw," she held out her hand.

I took her hand and clasped it between mine. "A pleasure, ma'am. I'm Heather Jenkins-Sagemueller."

Several emotions crossed her face when I revealed my name. She didn't pull her hand back, not even a little tug. "I'm confused."

"Why is that?"

"She's too polite to point out certain things," Morena said. "Go ahead, Annalise."

"Well, you were Janine's pet..."

"And I'm a sexual submissive," Morena finished. "Annalise, the swap wasn't totally balanced. Heather here really wanted to go to bed with Kevin, but couldn't work herself up to just ask. The swap was a ploy, Janine was actually submissive to Heather."

"Janine certainly seems dominant enough," Annalise grumbled. "Heather, I'm sorry."

"Don't be," I shook my head.

"Heather, you need a free hand to hold this glass, love," Morena snickered. When I let go of Annalise's hand, she handed me Annalise one glass, and me the other. She came up to me to give me a kiss on the cheek. "Keep her, you two make a good couple," she whispered into my ear. Then she was gone.

"Well, that certainly was interesting," Annalise said. "The first time I've seen her that happy in a while."

"What's regular happy like?" I asked.

"Usually when she's destroying the company of a person she didn't like," Annalise answered. "I hope she doesn't mind that I'm this close to you."

"What if I told you I wanted to get closer?" I offered. "Like skin-to-skin close?"

"That would be just right. Let's go mingle, okay?"

Annalise and I did run into Kevin and Ellie. They had arrived late, citing traffic. I told them to get a better story. I saw Morena near the back of the atrium, having a conversation with a strikingly beautiful woman and her twin sister. Annalise dragged me over and I was introduced to the other two Renraw sisters.

Alana and Elaine gave me their condolences on the loss of my husband. Rather than talk ill of Declan, I nodded my thanks. Alana said that she was surprised that Declan had married another woman, gossip was that he preferred men. I had to let out the truth that they obviously couldn't see, telling them I was transgender. The only reaction I got was Elena asking me for the name of my plastic surgeon.

Annalise actually seemed to more interested in me after I outed myself. After fifteen minutes of gossiping, I tried to excuse myself to go to the bathroom, but Annalise wanted to come in with me. I watched her with a wary eye as I slipped out of my dress so I could pee. She told me to wait to get dressed again if I wanted something different to wear.

I agreed that it was a little late in the day for a awards ceremony gown, and Annalise gave a rap on the door. A well-groomed woman came in bearing clothes and shoes. Annalise introduced her as Torana and asked me to inspect her. All of a sudden I started to feel really creeped out. I told Annalise that I was going to wear my gown to the end of the party and I was going to get dressed alone. There wasn't any further discussion, they just left the bathroom, Annalise closing the door behind her.

This place had turned really weird, really fast. I didn't have my clutch, I had left it in Morena's car. A second later, I remedied that problem by calling it to me. I got dressed next, fixing any little flaws in my makeup and hair before I pronounced myself ready to face whatever came next. I stopped dead in my tracks when I touched the doorknob. Was that what Annalise had meant when she had asked me to inspect Torana? Was she asking me to find flaws in her? Was there going to be punishment if I had found anything wrong? Was Torana going to get punished because I rejected her?

Shit.

I just needed to get out of the house, and if I couldn't find Morena I was going to fold out and make my apologies later. Morena was waiting outside the bedroom when I finally made my way out. "Are things not going well?" She asked.

"What have you gotten me into? Can we just get out of here?"

"Heather, what happened?"

"I didn't come here to get laid by some billionaire movie studio princess, I certainly didn't come here to inspect her assistant or whatever Torana was...like a piece of meat!"

"Inspect? I told her not to do the Master-Pet shit around you."

"You...told...her?"

"Annalise expressed an interest in you. I told her that you were a good soul and needed someone to love and cherish."

"And you?" I asked. "What do you want?"

"I really just want to have a down and dirty night with you, Heather. It doesn't matter when, I'm immortal and therefore patient. You must know we aren't compatible enough to have a long-term relationship, Heather, our sheets don't balance. Too much time has passed and I am much too jaded to fall in love again. This is why I have made it my mission to help you find you a true love."

"Wow. Why couldn't you have told me this from the get-go?"

"I did. I pushed you toward Janine, hoping she would make a move because I feigned interest in you at the house."

"There is a thing as just asking," I pointed out.

"Where's the fun in that? Elena has something she wants you to see I'm the basement."

Basement? Torture chamber. "I've already seen one."

"Let's indulge her."

The basement entrance was guarded and locked. I would do the same, given what probably happens down there and a hundred guests in the house. The scene was pretty much what I expected, Janine with a bullwhip, two women in stocks. Stocks?

Elena wasn't in the gallery, Alana and Annalise were. Also in the gallery were Kevin and Kyle Andrews. Spectator sport?

"Begin," Alana said.

Janine, with skill, let out with her bullwhip against Lisann. Four lashes, then five. More welts were added to the already numerous marks Lisann already bore. The tattoo that Julie had mentioned wasn't there, was it temporary?

Next to get the lashes was Elena, also getting five. No welts appeared on her back. Huh?

"All right," Kyle said. "That's enough for me. If you want to continue, please do it after the meeting."

"Meeting?" I asked no one in particular.

"Yes, the fact that natural immortals can show injury is something new," Kyle answered. "The basic passion marks and the like are amusing, but that level of injury shouldn't be possible, let alone communicable."

"How do you mean?" I asked.

"You passed whatever gift or curse you have to Janine. Janine then passed it to Lisann."

"That's passion, right?" I asked.

"Passion is passion, but when it crossed that line into injury, tangible injury, it became something else," Kyle replied. "In any case, I'm out of my depth here. I need to call the elders for a conference, and I would appreciate if you all would attend. The bullwhip can stay here, I don't need another demonstration. Good evening."
Lisann and Elaine exited the chamber, Janine came up to the gallery and stood toe-to-toe with me. "You missed the meeting, we were supposed to trade back."

"Did you really want me there? This isn't me, Janine, the whips? And stocks?"

"Yes, I know. I didn't know I would be into whipping, but Lisann opened my eyes to it. I'm sorry, Heather, I really am."

"That's okay, I suppose. It's not like we were in it to get married, right?" Oh Laura. You bitch.

"Yeah, married. Probably not," Janine agreed.

"Besides, I was abducted Sunday along with my daughter and tortured by your mother. She has a thing for natural immortals, she wants what they have."

"What the fuck?" Janine hissed.

"I'm sorry they didn't tell you, Janine. I can finish the story after the party, I need to talk to Kevin."

"Yeah, don't worry about it. I'm sure someone somewhere is preparing a report. Have a good night, Kevin. We can still be like, friends, right?"

"I need to finish my management courses, remember? Plus I want to keep my office up there on the executive level," I said.

"Good night," Janine smiled.

Kevin was talking to a now fully-clothed Lisann, she was apologizing to him for being hard-core, and he was apologizing to her for not being hard-core. I could tell that they had chemistry on a physical level, but that wasn't enough. She wanted something that he couldn't and wouldn't give.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I turned around to Annalise. "I'm not like that," she said. "The inspection was supposed to be about whether or not you'd accept a polyamorous relationship. Basically, Torana just wanted to see if you'd like her."

"You both are beautiful," I nodded.

"Do you want to find out more? I'll admit that this room did have appeal at one time, but now? Not so much. You might say Kevin showed us that we were too set upon the idea that we could find a master who could handle all four of us. How about you? You looking for a relationship?"

"A relationship that would be vanilla, no Master-Pet, collars and leashes?"

"What about spanking or paddling?" Annalise indicated the floor below us with her head.

"No stocks," I countered.

"How about restraints?" Annalise asked. "The padded ones, not the ropes or wires."

"Give me some time to think about it, okay?"

"Okay."

Morena had vanished from the room, and Annalise volunteered to be my date for the rest of the evening. I got more introductions, the people just as afraid of Annalise as they had been of Morena. My awe was greeted by a giggle from Annalise and a 'welcome to the top of the Hollywood food chain.'

***

Saturday morning I woke up alone at my house. There was a note on the clothes that had been laid out for me, a note telling me that my presence was requested, and a picture showing me where.

'Where' was a gothic-looking mansion in a valley which had more modern mansions scattered throughout. The one immediately behind me was all glass and white walls, modern but not too eclectic.

"It's a beauty, isn't it?" Kyle asked from behind me, evidently just folding into position. "That's Melissa's dream home, in a dream location."

"It seems rather a remote area," I noted.

"The area is remote and private and easily protected." Kyle indicated the sky above us, a dome over both houses and the surrounding area. "It's a shield, much like the one Kevin broke into over Shannonburg. The elders thought my power was scary, they haven't met Kevin yet. Or you."

"Methinks you are reading too much into the things I can do. Passion marks are part of life for natural immortals, or so I've been told."

"Yes, but the whipping is actually injury," Kyle countered.

"Maybe the size of the passion mark is relative to what the person is willing to show," I offered.

"Quite right," a woman had appeared from a glowing hole in the air. She set a small piece of what I assumed was gold on the grass and gave it a blessing before the portal closed. "Hi, I'm Natalie Birch."

I took her hand, feeling the jolt she gave me. She was powerful, and old. "How old are you?" I asked.

"When I was born, Rome was dying," Natalie answered. "Let's call it fifteen hundred years and be happy with that."

Fifteen hundred years old. What the fuck? "The things you have seen, the places you've been."

"My first years and lives were mostly spent hiding," Natalie admitted. "Some things and places I'd rather not share."

"I'll bet. Why am I here?"

"We're holding a meeting regarding some of the things we've been encountering since Children of the Sphere have begun awakening," Natalie said. "The elders, some older than I, are busy digesting this new information."

"Would you like to see them?" Kyle asked.

"See the whats?" I asked.

"The spheres, of course," Kyle said.

"Shouldn't we wait for Kevin?" I asked.

"He's on his way," Kyle nodded.

At first I couldn't 'see' them, all I saw were two empty pedestals. When I focused my eyes on the pedestals themselves, I could see the spheres resting on them. "That's amazing." I walked closer, I wanted to touch one, to feel them.

"That's not a good idea," Kyle warned.

"It's okay, Kyle," Natalie said. "The response you got from Sam hasn't been duplicated by anyone since then. Let her try."

Natalie got it, she had said 'her' without second thought or hesitation. It was nice. I put my hand on the nearest sphere and felt it. I could feel the energy from it, but it didn't feel right. I touched the other one, different energy but not right. "These aren't it," I said. "Neither one of them feels like the power inside me."

"Are you sure?" Kyle asked.

"I recognise the energy they are generating, but it isn't what changed me. Wait." The memory was coming back now. "I found a little sphere once, about the size of my thumb. I always felt different when I had it in my hand or pocket, like I could fly." I recalled the memory of the little toy nobody could see. My parents used to call it my 'fake marble' because I was the only one who could tell that it was there. I still have it, my things from childhood stored in the garage."

"What was it, Sam?" Kyle asked.

"It was a sensor," a voice coming from the sphere answered. "Like I am a probe, I used sensors to collect detailed information from a longer range."

"How many of these sensors are there on Earth?" Kyle asked.

"Only twenty or so that I can immediately sense. Those are in the ocean adjacent to us, I can't read any data from the ones that may be on the land unless I am in the air," Sam said.

"All right, Sam. That is all."

"Why didn't it tell you before?" I asked.

"Because Sam only answers direct questions. It is a probe with a limited AI, so it has instructions and limited leeway as to how it carries them out. Sams are advanced technology, but not alien to humans at all because they were built by the First Ones. They lived here on Earth about fifty thousand years ago."

My mind was spinning. "From Atlantis? Did they come from there? How do you know all of this?"

"No, they migrated from here to Atlantis Anyway, when the first conduit was opened, somebody came back through, his name was Stan."

"We're still debating the presence of Stan on Earth," Natalie fumed. "He's disruptive."

Kyle looked at Natalie and chuckled. "Stan gave us the rundown on how they evolved and what's been going on since they left here. He's on walkabout, last I heard he was in Germany."

"First conduit? How many more are there?" I asked.

"Just one other. A group of sorcerers approached Stan and asked him to help open a conduit to Abbadon. He helped them because they asked nicely."

What a shock. "They didn't take hostages this time?"

Before Kyle could answer, Kevin appeared out of thin air. He was holding a picture of me in his hand. "That's funny," he said. "Why didn't I get my invitation first?"

"You did," Kyle snickered. "You both got them at eight hours, your local time. The others are already here, let's go to the meeting now."

I met all of the other known Children of the Sphere at the meeting. The situation was debated endlessly, with Kyle giving his take on what was happening. Even I was called for questioning, making this 'meeting' seem like a trial. Kevin was next, Gemma Margus after him. At the end of the questioning, the elders departed for discussion.

"Why does this feel like a trial?" I asked Kyle.

"That's a good question. They have been rather cagey since Natalie found me and introduced me as a wizard. The feeling is that we shouldn't complete Merlin's Polygon, simply because they can't stand more than one Stan running around."

"Stan," Kevin snorted. "He's a trip. Basic language and idiom are foreign to him. For the most part, their culture has evolved independently for a thousand years. Even our language had to be learned from others that have made their way to Atlantis."

"Others?" I asked.

"Every once in a while, a person or two manages to make their own conduit to Atlantis. Shannonburg was an anomaly the Atlanteans, the sheer amount of power it took to move a million tons of dirt from one planet to another was completely baffling."

"Yes, it was," a man announced his presence. "I've seen the equations for Merlin's Polygon, the power involved in that opening will be immense. Hi, Kevin."

"Hey, Stan. Come to crash the meeting?"

"Of course, old chum. You must be Heather, I've heard nothing about you," Stan offered his hand to me.

"Charmed," I took his hand. Stan was a wizard, not as powerful as Kevin, but his power was high on the scale.

"Yes, I am," Stan made a show of looking at my crotch after he released my hand. "You know, they mean to banish you."

"What?" Kyle asked.

"Not you, Kyle. Kevin and Heather here. Just like the elected of this world, pushing away what they don't understand."

"Thank you for that information, Stan," I said. "But they can't banish either of us, we're chosen."

"I'm going to have a chat with them if it comes to that," Kyle fumed.

"You need to stay out of it, Kyle," Natalie said. "You pledged your allegiance to the clans in exchange for leading them, remember?"

"The leading thing goes both ways. I agreed to ask the elders for guidance, but the decision ultimately belongs to me, remember? If they pull their pledge, I pull mine," Kyle countered.

"Kyle..." That was as far as she got.

I had been feeling something strange for the last minute, attributing it to Stan's handshake and the general horny state he had imparted to me. When she came into the room, everybody immediately shut up and turned to face her, some even bowing. Gaia.

"I've never felt an eternal before," Stan whispered.

His whisper had been heard, Gaia turning our way and smiling. She crossed the room, reaching the area in front of the dias as the obviously confused elders emerged. "Gaia, you honor us with your presence," Marcus said.

"You don't give honor," Gaia said. "Pretending to know my thoughts and willing to pass judgment in my name against people you don't understand."

"Gaia..."

"Silence! You propose banishing my children from this sanctuary, seizing their properties, saying that it would be in the best interest of all? How dare you! Wizards are the next step in evolution for all magic users, and you would presume to act in my name against them!"

A young woman in the back of the room had started walking toward Gaia. "Gaia, ma'am, can I speak?"

Gaia turned to the girl and smiled. "Certainly, young one."

"I don't what they were getting ready to do, but some of these people have been really nice to me."

"Child, they only reason that they have been nice to you is because they fear you and don't want others to use your power against them."

"I don't understand," the girl said.

Gaia turned her head to look at me. "Heather, your child Hayley? They taught her only the basics, just enough to sate her curiosity, but not enough for her to be advanced. They were actually holding her back with magic because they were afraid that she would be like Grace and refuse their authority. Had Hayley received the proper training, she could have destroyed every evil person in that facility before they even had the chance to kill any of my children. Hayley was a second generation Child of the Sphere, both mothers having magic within them and sharing it with her. She took her last breath an hour ago, not able to live with the horrors she witnessed."

Hayley was dead? I felt weak and dizzy and would have collapsed if Stan hadn't caught me. I wept into his chest, letting out a wail that his body muffled. There was a collective burst of murmuring from the assembled, but Gaia's voice rose above them all.

"Natalie Birch. I don't fault you for listening to the advice of people you have trusted for centuries, most of the time they have been right. They are not right today, and I am stepping in to finish it."

Stan turned me around, still keeping a hand on me to stop me from falling. "Watch, luv."

"For conspiring against those who will come to lead you, conspiring to violate the laws of conscience and of man, I sentence you to death." Gaia waved her hand and the fifteen elders vanished into dust. For a moment, I saw blue shapes of their bodies and then they vanished.

Holy shit. Holy fucking shit!!!

Gaia turned around to face us. "You still need elders and advisors, so pick the wisest among you to advise. Dearest children, take this as a lesson and not a threat. I won't question every decision you make, why you make it, or even if it is a little stupid, it's okay. The level of conspiracy going on behind that door? That was not acceptable."

"So Gaia?" I raised my hand.

"Put your hand down, Heather. This isn't school."

"What about the...um...passion marks? That was the one of the reasons this meeting was called."

"Heather, when Declan abused you, you carried the marks because you hadn't forgiven yourself. You changed that power and passed it along as the ability to retain marks given in passion. What is wanted is kept, even the scars, do you understand the correlation?"

"Yes, ma'am," I nodded.

"Stan, you may not be of Earth, but you still have to follow the rules, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am," Stan tried to bow but couldn't because I was in front of him.

Gaia strode out of the room, and I felt her presence vanish seconds later. "That certainly was something," I said. "I need to go see my daughter."

"I'll come along," Stan offered.

"Stan, sweetie, no man can go where I'm going. Understand?"

"Dinner sometime?" Stan asked.

"Sure," I nodded.

"That's good." He pushed a card into the front pocket of my jacket, rubbing his hand along my breast before he pulled back. "See you later."

"Oooh, so suave," Kevin muttered.

"Don't be jealous, Kevin. That was something else, wasn't it?"

"That was something new," Kyle admitted. "Natalie? Did you know they were holding Hayley back?"

Natalie shook her head and left the room without saying anything.

"I've got to go," I said. "To see Hayley one last time."

There wasn't anything left of Hayley to see. Evidently when you take your last breath, your body kind of goes away. Some of the women who had been imprisoned with Hayley were already in mourning, so I joined them in the back yard of the house that they had been sharing. Our makeshift wake attracted most of the block, some who actually knew Hayley and were sorry for my loss. I wasn't recognized as the owner of Sunshineville and I was glad for that.

Izzy, one of the women who had been with Hayley, gave me the letter she had left behind for me. I said my goodbyes and folded home, retreating to my bedroom to read it. Most of the letter was about how happy she had been to know me, all of the little adventures she had followed me on, some of the times she had helped me out, leading up to the time she had been captured. Miranda had run tests on Hayley for three weeks, something that she hadn't told me about when she had been freed. Miranda had then used Hayley's phone to lure wicca into her lab and run tests on them as well. Over half the women Miranda had lured into the lab had died. The ones we had freed hadn't seen the horrors Hayley witnessed.

Her final warning to me was that Miranda had not been sucked into the Mylthea portal like I had thought. Once she realized that I had called for a portal, Miranda had threw the gold spit off her and ran as fast as she could.

Shit. Damn. Fucking motherfucking bitch whore Miranda was on the loose! I'd find her, though. Once I got ahold of their books, there wasn't a criminal alive, and some dead, that I couldn't track down. I'd need help, though. I would need a hacker like Heather to help me find those numbers hiding in the ether.

***

Celina was cooking breakfast when I finally emerged from my bedroom. She didn't speak until I felt like talking, and that wasn't much. After we ate, Celina explained to me that taking a last breath wasn't as much suicide as it was calling it quits. She didn't know if the memories that had caused Hayley to leave this life would haunt her in the afterlife.

In the sanctum that Declan had created for me rest boxes of papers which had been recovered from the lab-slash-prison where we had been held. I separated them out, lab numbers being separate from accounting numbers, and started to organize them. A call to Heather the hacker added more information to my growing pile. She blew me a kiss before vanishing from my screen.

Dinner was brought by a woman I hadn't met before. She urged me to eat while she helped arrange my papers and write the pertinent information on the blank boards opposite the boards I had been working on. When I had finished my food, the dishes vanished along with the woman.

Her work was good. It wasn't accounting per se, but it did involve numbers. She had arranged numbers by relationship in a three-dimensional grid, adding depth to the wheres and whens and hows by adding a why. After I absorbed her method, I took my work to the still-untouched section of the room and started delving into the numbers from the different point of view. At twenty-two hours, Celina showed up to remind me that even though my body didn't need rest, my mind did.

She led me me upstairs to a snack with the other occupants of my home. I could tell the security from the other staff, all of whom offered me condolences on the loss of my daughter. I sat apart from them, enjoying my wine on the terrace, and was pleasantly surprised when Annalise Renraw joined me. She sat close, but not too close, touching me on occasion to reassure me. Celina interrupted us for a brief moment to add a snack and another bottle of wine to the table, giving me a wink before she left.

Annalise accepted my invitation to bed, having sex with me rather than me with her. She was content to hold me to her bosom and stroke my hair until I fell asleep. In the morning I led the sex, including a little roughness in the shower as we washed each other. Clothes were laid out when we emerged, Annalise asking me to inspect her before she would get dressed. I gave into her blackmail, inspecting her so close as to make her horny as hell before she put her clothes on.

I took a pass on continuing my audit, instead going to the building that housed the offices of Brookstone Pointe. Annalise gave me a long kiss before I got out of her limo, and a promise for dinner later. My morning was occupied with managing the needs of Sunshineville and tracking down Carla so that she could tell me the needs of the residents. Our discussion evolved into me giving her the reins of the town along with an account to get and keep things running smoothly.

Annalise picked me up at fourteen hours for lunch at The Lilac Lounge, and then led me to one of the back rooms to work off some of the calories we had consumed. She admitted that no matter how hard she had tried, she couldn't relieve herself of the horny state I had left her in that morning.
When we went back to the limousine, Torana was waiting for us. She passed some papers to Annalise, who read and then signed them and handed them back. Torana started to get out of the limo, but I offered my hand and asked her to stay with us. When Annalise dropped me off at my office, she asked me if it was okay if Torana came with me. Having asked her to stay in the limo with me and Annalise, I couldn't refuse that request.

I noted in the elevator that Torana was remarkably well-groomed. Her makeup was flawless and not a hair out of place. Marcie, Janine's chief of staff, was waiting outside my office. I told Torana to man the secretary's desk until I returned.

"She's very pretty," Marcie commented.

"So are you," I countered. "What's going on?"

"Janine has gone missing as leader of Brookstone Pointe."

"Kidnapped?" I asked in alarm.

Marcie put her hand on my arm. "Let's finish this in her office, okay?"

Once we were in Janine's office, Marcie closed the door and locked it. "Janine decided to take a vacation with Lisann Renraw. She left word that you could manage Brookstone Pointe until she returns. Or if."

"Or if? What the fuck? I'm just an accountant, I can't manage this company!"

"You have been managing it. Janine was basically letting you run things about three days into your training. All of the work you had been doing was actual and she was just standing by."

"Three days in? I had been managing the company for that long?" I asked.

"Janine has been looking for a replacement for a while. You care enough about the people and can manage the company the way Jaci would have wanted it."

"You do know..."

"Yes, I know they found her body at that lab. There was always hope that she had just been in hiding and would come back to us, but that's not going to happen now. I'm making the funeral arrangements and we'll handle that when the time comes. Yes or no, Heather? I can manage this place, but I don't have business savvy, just people savvy."

"Goddess," I sighed. "All right."

"Torana, is she your assistant?" Marcie asked.

"Marcie, I'm going to have to ask her that. At one time Annalise asked me to inspect Torana, I just don't know what that means."

"That means she wants your acceptance to become a lover, Heather," Marcie smiled. "Probably even more than that."

"What's more than a lover?"

Marcie giggled. "I recognize her groomed look, I used to do that for a living. That flawless makeup and hair? Torana is an artist. If you accept her, she can make you look your best so you don't have to worry about it."

"Artist?"

"How much time do you spend on your makeup and hair? It takes time to get it right, correct?"

"I get what you're saying," I nodded. Getting a makeover was always better than trying to do it yourself.

"Like I said, more than a lover, an intimate." Marcie nodded. "I'll appoint you some staff and find you an assistant, Heather. If you don't like the art on the wall, I can find some new works."

"They're fine," I indicated the pictures on the wall. "Thank you."

Marcie returned a minute later with Torana. She gave me a wink and a nod, saying she would be back in an hour to give me time to inspect the office. I gave Torana the flat-out question as to whether or not she wanted to have sex with me. She nodded and added that she also wanted to be my artist. I told her that I would have to inspect her first.

There was a suite built off of the office, something befitting a corporate president. Torana entered first, stopping in the center of the floor, I closed the door behind us. She stood stock-still as I pored over every inch of her. In a world of making women look one step above the rest, she looked extremely good herself. "Take your suit off," I told her in a whisper.

Under her suit Torana wore a corset with garters attached to some very sexy stockings. The stockings were black, but so sheer they were almost see-through. I inspected her again, this time adding my hands to the mix. She wasn't immune to shivering when I blew air across her skin. "You're immaculate," I said.

"Yes, ma'am."

"You're supposed to say, 'I know, ma'am. I spend every free hour making myself up to be at the top of my fucking game,'" I said. Torana repeated what I said with a smile. "So, why do you do what you do?"

"For one thing, it's a shitload of money. Ma'am."

"Drop the 'ma'am' when you're alone with me, Torana. I want a lover, not a robot."

"Of course. At some point, it became about more than just money. I was working for one of the richest women in the world, making her beautiful and the envy of every other woman who saw her. There's a feeling in that realization that goes beyond money."

"Then there's sex, of course," I offered.

"Yes, there is sex," Torana admitted. "Yes, I'd like to be your confidant and lover, Heather."

"What about Annalise? Won't she miss you?"

"I have trained my replacement in case the two of you get separated physically, or goddess forbid, emotionally."

"So you're giving yourself to me?"

"No. I have always had the right to walk out the door and live quite well with the ninety million dollars in my bank account. Can you believe that? A million dollars a month to do what I absolutely love?"

"It's still payment for sex," I pointed out.

"No, it's not. In order for me, or any of the artists who work for the sisters, to accept our jobs as confidants, we alone have the power to initiate sex. All we have to do is ask for an inspection."

"Neat. So what about me telling you I want to inspect you? Isn't that a violation of that agreement?"

Until I asked that question, Torana had been standing relatively still, giving answers to my questions like a private answering a sergeant. She turned her head and locked eyes with me. "I will tell you the same thing I told Annalise, the first time she asked me that: I have the right to say 'no.' There is not a civilized person who would ignore that word, and I know how to stay clear of the uncivilized people."

"Good point," I nodded. "So, you're standing there all hot and haughty, what do you think I should do with you?"

"I'd tell me to take my panties off and bend over the bed. Then I'd put a condom on and doggie me silly."

"Take your panties off and bend over the bed," I ordered. "I'm assuming you know where the condoms are in here."

"Either nightstand," Torana said. She unsnapped her garters and slid her panties down. When her panties were on the floor, she snapped the garters back into her stockings. I went to retrieve a condom while she made herself look even sexier by bending over the bed, wiggling her ass as she waited on me. I took my suit off, my bra and panty set seemingly bland next to Torana's super-sexy lingerie. My panties came off next, it taking only seconds to roll the condom down my cock.

Torana had stopped wiggling her ass and spread her legs as moved in behind her. A test with my finger told me that she was wet and ready, licking that same finger told me she was tasty. She pushed back as I pushed forward, telling me she wanted my cock as deep as I could go and as hard as I could give it. I wanted to reach for her hair, yank it and ride her like a pony, but I didn't. I wanted her to keep her look until we could be truly alone together. I did settle for her hips, using them to make my pounding harder and harder until I finally let loose into the condom.

Careful not to let any cum escape, I held onto the condom and pulled my cock out of her. Torana stood up and gave me a smile. "Thank you."

"For what? I was really horny from examining you and came too quick," I sighed.

"Heather, I know how to keep my orgasms quiet when I need to. I had one, a good one, while you were probing my insides."

"At some point I want to make the sex about you, Torana."

"I can be loud if need be," she gave me a smile. "Can I get dressed?"

"Well, if you must. You could run around in that sexy boudoir lingerie all day for all I care."

"You like it?" Torana gave a tug at the neckline of her corset.

"Torana, I'm fucking jealous. I feel like I'm wearing Chain-Mart lingerie compared to you," I replied.

"I will do my best to acquire you some. It will be hard to match those magic panties, do you have any others?"

Magic panties. Of course she knew about magic. "Morena gave them to me, said they had a touch of glamour attached to them."

"Maybe you could invite her over tonight," Torana said.

"My night is going to be long. I need to get my papers sorted."

"Yes, of course. We don't need any more evil scientists running around here," Torana said with a shudder. "I'll see what I can do about the lingerie."

"Thank you."

My next four hours was taken up meeting with the division heads of the company. Marcie made sure that they knew their guidance had actually been coming from me rather than Janine. They did acknowledge that the orders had felt different for the last month. I promised that I would do my best to keep the company afloat before they left.

"You're not too bad," Marcie admitted after the last of the division heads had exited.

"So what was bad?" I asked.

"You can be a little more personal with them, ask how their families are, most of them have wives and kids."

All of the division heads were genetic women. "Must be nice," I said. "I came close once."

"Heather, it just takes the right woman. Right, Torana?"

"Yes, ma'am," Torana answered. "I believe Annalise is good for you, Heather, call me biased or not."

"If there's nothing else today, I need to finish my audit."

"Audit?" Marcie asked.

"I'm going to track Miranda Olsen down and give her a taste of her own medicine," I said.

"Best to leave that sorting out to the Revengers," Marcie said. "That's their job."

"The Earth is a big place," I countered. "Besides, I only want to stick some lead rods through her."

"Don't do that, please," Torana said.

There was a knocking on the office door. Torana went to answer it, admitting a tall, blonde-haired man. "Hello," I said.

"Good day, ma'am," he nodded. "My name is Joshua."

"Joshua is a Revenger," Marcie said.

"I just wanted to ask you to let me handle the mad ones. Your soul is too bright to be tainted by murder."

"Joshua, I've killed men in my time. I once was an agent of the government."

"There's a difference between defense and murder," Joshua said. "A difference between enforcing the laws of man and violating them."

"Good point," I nodded. "Just let me know when you catch up to them, okay?"

"For peace of mind, I will," Joshua replied. "Strangely enough, I can't track them, so I will need that information should you acquire it."

"All right."

"Till next time." Joshua didn't bother with the door, he just vanished.

"The car is coming," Torana announced.

"Good. I'll be back tomorrow, Marcie."

"Bring your running shoes," she teased.

While I was deciphering what little information I had on Miranda Olsen, I wondered why Joshua the Revenger couldn't track Miranda. Revengers were supposed to be the trackers and killers of the evil ones. Was Miranda warded somehow?

I needed more information, so I went to talk to Celina about just how powerful someone would have to be to evade a Revenger. She was intrigued, and asked me why I wanted to know. The light came on over her head when I told her I wanted to try and track the gold Miranda would have to be using.

Celina suggested I contact the gold exchange division of Brookstone Pointe. The woman who ran those companies could give me pointers on how the large-scale sales of gold were handled.

Torana was warming up my bed when I came out of the shower. She told me that Annalise was flying to Europe to work on a deal with another movie company. I told Torana I had houses all over the world, and would be glad to meet Annalise at the closest house to her. Torana said that she would pass that offer along. Then she flipped the covers back, showing her nude lower body and asked me to inspect her.

***

At eleven hours the next day, Marcie introduced me to Doctor Michaela Winters, the woman who controlled Brookstone Pointe's precious metals division. Michaela answered my questions about gold and worldwide exchanges, but didn't offer much more. Before Michaela left, she made it known that she did not care for me sitting in Jaci's chair.

She was stopped by Marcie outside my office door. "Goddess, Michaela, what was that?"

"I don't care for her," Michaela replied. "Second day in the chair and already asking about the gold."

"Doctor Heather Jenkins-Sagemueller isn't after the gold, Michaela. She is the widow of Declan Sagemueller and could buy the depository twice and still have money left over. She wants to know about the markets because she is trying to track down the woman who took Jaci from us."

"What? How does knowledge of the markets help?"

"Do you remember Joshua and his job?"

Job? That's a trip.

"How can I forget?" Michaela asked.

"This woman, Miranda Olsen, is able to hide from Joshua. To do that, you need powerful magic and the gold to fuel it. This isn't just any pawn-shop gold, they need the pure stuff."

"Oh. So Heather needs names of wholesalers and smaller exchanges?"

"Precisely. Hi, Johan, Petra. Go right in."

My office door was pushed open and a couple came in. They were a power couple, sleek and refined. I went to greet them, shaking Petra's hand first. She was surprised when she sensed what I was, tilting her head like she was sizing me up. Johan was totally opposite her, I couldn't feel anything from him.

"I'm talent-negative," Johan said after he released my hand. "That's why you don't sense anything."

"So, welcome," I indicated the chairs in front of my desk. "What can I do for you today?"

"We've just come to check out the new leader of Brookstone Pointe," Johan said.

"Hmm. I'm interested in what BSP and Birch America have in common."

"As of now, Your company and ours are separate entities with common interests in several third-party companies such as Jacer Semiconductor."

"That's the company that built the solar array for Sunshineville " I nodded.

"Big waste of money, that place," Petra commented. "Hillary's lucky she got paid at completion of the job."

"I don't think Sunshineville is a waste of my money," I said. "The town is fulfilling a destiny."

"How would you know that?" Petra asked.

"I own it and am turning it into a haven for abused women and children. I think it was because my husband beat me that gave me the will to buy a whole town for that one purpose."

"But you're not a woman," Petra said.

"Heather is a woman just like Jaci," Johan grumbled. "Don't forget that, Petra."

"Of course," Petra nodded. "My apologies."

"Accepted," I nodded. "So, there's nothing sinister about this visit?"

Johan laughed. "No, we just wanted to meet you and size you up."

"See if I was up to snuff? Well, I may not be as good at this job as Jaci Stone was, but by goddess I'll track down the woman that killed her."

"You'll what?" Johan asked in surprise.

I hesitated. My mouth had gotten ahead of my brain because I was pissed at being sized up.

"Heather, it's okay," Marcie announced her presence. "Johan and Petra were close with Jaci."

There really wasn't much for me to tell beyond being kidnapped by Miranda and the subsequent torture. Johan was especially interested in my search and how it was going. I told him I was working on it without being really specific as to how. They made small talk for another five minutes before deciding it was time to go. When the door closed behind them, I was glad they had left.

I was doing my own research on gold exchanges when Marcie let herself back into my office. "Michaela is compiling that information for you."

"Her report would be biased because now she is researching something specific that might skip over what I'm looking for. Do you see?"

"Sort of."

"When people bring me their books, I tell them not give me any information as to what I am looking for. If they tell me I'm looking for embezzlement from John Q. I might miss the same from Jane Y."

"Okay. I'm sorry about that, I just wanted to set her straight."

"Doctor Winters has already made up her mind about me. Johan and Petra have made up their minds as well. I was being measured against Jaci's books and found lacking."

"That's not true," Marcie sputtered.

"Every time I mentioned something off hand but related, I could see them checking it off the list in their heads. I applied misdirection and watched how they reacted to it. That's basic counter interrogation, Marcie, day one of agent training. Johan caught on to what I was doing there at the end, but I was done."

"Good for you, I suppose," Marcie said. "They measured you up and you did the same."

"Are they essential in the operations of Brookstone Pointe?"

"No, they're just friends," Marcie answered.

"Good. I don't want them in my office or on my calendar unless it is business related."

"What?"

"I don't like to be measured, Marcie. Being judged on my own merits is fine, but not measured against someone else."

"Your skin is just a little thin, Heather," Marcie accused. "You can't do business like that."

"Then I won't," I shrugged. "If Johan thinks that someone else can do the job better than me, fine. I'm still not too happy being co-opted into this job anyway."

"There isn't anyone who can do this job better than you, Heather. Hell, Jaci would probably want you to take this position. You know why?"

"Indulge me."

"Because you want Brookstone Pointe to succeed but don't care about what your bonus check looks like. That is the person we need to lead us."

"There is another reason, Marcie," I prodded.

"Because," Marcie paused to wipe a tear from her eye. "Because Jaci hated this job. She would rather have been knees down in the dirt planting her flowers. Janine was just caretakering until we could find the best person to give the company to."

"You said 'give the company to,' you mean 'take the reins,' right?"

"Heather, Brookstone Pointe is a private company. There's no board, no shareholders in the mix, just family. Janine chose you, I think she chose well."

"What was with all the subterfuge regarding the training? I was supposed to be learning about how to manage what money I have, not running a multi-billion dollar company!"

"Doesn't having ten billion dollars of your own qualify you to run a billion-dollar company? Either way, you're managing the lives of dozens of people," Marcie shrugged. "Bankers, lawyers, stockbrokers, all are employed based on how you manage your wealth. Now you also have thousands of people who are counting on you to balance the books of BSP and come out ahead."

I wasn't going to win this argument. Was I fated to run this company? Before I was a Child of the Sphere, I was a very exclusive and private accountant. Then, the NLA fiasco happened. I lost my job and roped into an audit in the same day. Then I met Declan and it was all downhill after that. Or was it uphill?

"Marcie, I'll give it a month, okay? I liked being a private person and if this doesn't work out, I'll go hide from you guys in China or something."

"China has outlawed witchcraft, you may not be able to use your powers there. Laws of man, you know," Marcie countered.

"Whatever. I'm going home, I've got to figure these papers out."

"Very good, ma'am."

You won't call me ma'am if I bend you over a bed and fuck your brains out. "Torana, are you ready?"

"Just a moment, Heather," Torana's voice came into the office. "Annalise says she's in Paris."

Paris. "I have a house there, in the northern part of the country. I can pick her up."
A pause. "Annalise says one meter. Have a good night, ma'am."

"I will."

Annalise was in a hotel suite wearing nothing but a bra and panties. She smiled when I appeared, reaching out for a hug. "I forgot you can come and go as you please."

"And cum and cum," I pulled her into my arms. "You might want to get some clothes on, I don't know what kind of staff we're going to encounter."

"Just a minute."

There was no staff at the Paris house, there wasn't any food, either. Annalise and I walked to the local market, I was glad she had some Euros to spend because they didn't take dollars.

On our way back to the house a group of men offered to carry our groceries and make our acquaintance. I was getting ready to fold out with Annalise, not giving a shit about the consequences when Starr and Pete stepped out of the shadows to intervene. The four men were obviously unimpressed until Starr knocked two of them down with a spin kick that you could only see if you were looking through the dilation wave she cast. I invited them in for dinner, but they declined in favor of inspecting and warding the house proper.

Annalise was really happy to hop into bed with me following our shower together. Our after-sex pillow talk was a little about business and a lot about our pleasure. She did admit that she had bedded her replacement makeup artist, and was frustrated that she couldn't achieve anything close to the orgasms she had with me.

I was immediately worried that I was having some kind of magical influence over her, that she couldn't orgasm without me, and she waved me off. Annalise said that she had to update her orgasm scale after we had sex the first time. My response to her praise was to tell her to keep stroking my ego. Annalise found something a little more tangible to stroke.

***

It was breakfast time in Paris, and after I bade farewell to Annalise, I met up with midnight in Los Angeles. I got scolded by Celina for being a show-off, hopping continents like I was. For wicca, long distance magic travel was expensive, about a thousand dollars each way to any destination. I promised her the next time I went to Paris, I would take her along. I got a thoughtful look and a kiss, so all was forgiven.

Having had a few hours of sleep with Annalise, I went down to my auditing room to work on the Miranda problem. Someone had added a list of common gold exchanges along with companies that did normal business with them. What I was really looking for were the outliers in the sheets, and I wasn't finding them.

Heather was just a teleconference away, but it was almost three hours so I put my request into an email instead. I fiddled around with the other avenues I had been chasing, but what I really wanted to track for now was the gold. I shut off the overhead lights in my sanctum and went for a walk through my house. I would have thought that Torana would have been in my bed, but she was in another bed, with still another woman wrapped around her.

Suddenly a whole bunch of questions popped into my head; Did this mean Torana had chosen someone else? Was the open door an invitation? Was it okay for me to watch? What about joining in?

While I was pondering, Torana woke up. She extended a long, manicured finger and gave me the come-hither. I raised my hands to beg off, but she made the motion with all her fingers. The woman wrapped around Torana popped her head up, and I could see that it was the same woman who had brought dinner to my sanctum and given me the three-dee plotting idea. I blew them a kiss and continued with my wandering.

I hadn't paid any attention to the guest wing of the house until today. I had Celina to take care of the wants and needs of the guards and staff. The first door I came to was open about the length of my arm. Was it an invitation to look inside?

"It is," Celina whispered into my ear. "Go ahead."

Peeking inside the room, I saw a variation of the scene with Torana and her companion. There were three bodies on this bed, all dressed in silk pajamas, and all looking comfortable. I pulled my head out of the room and turned to face Celina. "Hello. I thought you went to bed?"

"I sensed your confusion and came to clarify things for you. Every open door is an invitation to look inside. There are a few exceptions, Nadia and Shehzadi's room being the most prominent because it is the only closed door.

"Nobody minds the voyeur element to living here?"

"I chose the guards and the staff based on you. The women with the open doors are open to the idea of being awakened by you fondling their bodies. My door is shut at night because of the little ones, but it's open sometimes."

"This is unreal! There have got to be some men around that they would like."

"Actually, it's unfair," Celina chuckled. "Let's go back to the kitchen area and let them sleep."

Over a cup of strong coffee, Celina laid it on me: There were approximately one hundred magic-using women per magic-using man on Earth. Even then there were problems matching levels of power. Normal wicca who lived in the world and used magic every once in a while were lower powered and could mate pretty much as they pleased. More powerful women like healers and guardians needed equally powerful men or their passion could turn the unlucky man to a pile of dust. Then Celina made a crack about the pixies who had jumped my bones. She said they could have turned me all the way woman if they weren't careful.

Great. I was in a world full of women who would seek me out and try to make my acquaintance because they would dissolve a normal man into a little pile of dust. "I don't want to refuse anyone, but I don't want to be seen as taking advantage of them, either," I said after a moment.

"You aren't," Celina shook her head. "More Children of the Sphere are waking every day. Some of those women have waited a century or more for a good fucking, another month or year isn't that long in comparison. The rest of those pixie sisters will probably come looking for you, Heather, pixies are a rather picky lot and if one chose you the rest will follow."

"How do I explain all this to Annalise?" I asked. "I don't want to scare her off by an ever-growing line of women seeking me out."

"Annalise doesn't mind," Torana appeared. "She will mind if any of them try staking a claim." She giggled. "Staking a claim, when you are the one with the stake."

"Haha."

"You should get promise rings, or better yet, a companion tattoo," Celina offered.

"What's a companion tattoo?" Torana asked.

"Tattoos on extremities that match together," Celina explained. "The most popular ones are on hands or forearms."

"Sounds neat," Torana said. "Would it be tacky for like, the girlfriends to have the same half as the wife?"

"You'd need to have the whole tattoo," Celina answered. "So as to discriminate the station."

"You make it sound like royalty and serfs, Celina," I scolded.

"Not like that," Torana countered in Celina's defense. "Like lady-in-waiting or... surrogate."

"Yes, like that," Celina smiled. "A confidant, not a servant. The companion tattoos to designate the halves, the whole tattoo to designate their...love of the whole. The tattoos are also a form of warding as well, they say that fun is to be had, but no commitment."

"Friend with benefits," I chuckled. "Okay, I guess Annalise and I need to discuss where we are going."

"What was that?" Celina asked.

"What was what?" I responded.

"Torana's thoughts. I'm not in your head, Torana, you're just loud. Do share."

I got a hesitant look from Torana. "Lisann was hoping that if you and she committed to one another that you would be happy with just women as sex partners."

Ahh, no more dick. Was that something I could give up? I really hadn't felt the need for any cock for a while, not even when Stan had me wrapped in his arms. Of course, with the works of art that Annalise and Torana were, I hadn't felt the cock-want.

During my weekend with Kevin, he had told me about his magic massages and the effect that they had on his relationships. From his wife Klara trying to kill him, to Olivia Watson's nymphomania. The only women that he had steady relationships with, like Ellie Salazar, had never been on the receiving end of the magic massage. He did admit that he wanted to experiment on me, see how a woman with a pecker reacted to it.

I couldn't quite place the timing of the lost feelings, the memories of pixies named Jaina and Carol having fun with my boner taking over when I thought about it. Was that something that Kevin had given me along with his massage? Could I live without cock in exchange for a stable relationship? "Do you feel the same way, Torana?"

"Yes, I do," Torana replied.

"What about you, Celina?" I asked.

"You leave me out of this," Celina wagged a finger at me. "I've seen some shit you wouldn't believe."

As to not to offend Torana, I called up a mental image of Declan's orgy and thought it at Celina. "How about that?" I asked.

"No, haven't seen that," Celina admitted.

"Okay, Torana, I'll have to talk it over with Annalise. If I give up other men, will you give up other women?"

"If I gave up other women, I'd have to give you up, Heather. You're nothing but woman to me, you should know that by now."

Maybe I've always been that way.

"You know what she's talking about, Heather," Celina prodded. "Just like some women have different color hair or bigger tits, you just have an..."

"...abnormally sized clit," I finished for her. "I've heard that before. Torana, what is your companion's name?"

"Janara Chopal. Would you like to inspect her?"

"Shit," Celina muttered.

***

Heather hand-delivered her results to my office before lunch the next day. She looked new, different, and I found out why when she asked me to inspect her. Torana had gotten a hold of her and given her a makeover before pushing her into my office. I didn't want to disappoint Heather, so we took a half-hour to do some interfacing in my bedroom suite before she left.

Torana came into my office as Heather left with a big smile on her face. She handed me a note from Annalise, asking me to meet for a late dinner at her hotel at twenty-three hours local. Annalise took me to dinner in the restaurant in her hotel, and we had a long talk in her suite afterward. She evidently had been talking with Torana because she handed me a large velvety case. Inside the case was a pair of matched rings, diamonds set in platinum. She had forgotten how gold reacted to her and ended up having to pay for a gold band that had absorbed into her hand after she had put it on.

We exchanged promises as we put our rings on, making plans to have a wedding and a honeymoon when my job settled down and I could take some time away. I asked Annalise if it would be okay if she could use a strap-on dildo on me once in awhile to scratch the itches that built up inside my prostate. She shook her head and told me that while she didn't want any men inside me, she knew a few women who could help me out. I hoped she meant other transgender women, feeling a pang of guilt about what had happened to Kasey and what Declan had done to her.

The information that Heather had given me was equal parts confusing and revealing. There was so much double-dealing going on in those exchanges, I'd demand an audit of all those businesses. The normal person in me figured out that while the activity was detestable, it was probably accepted on the world political stage. There was one exchange for each major country, some of the stockpiles pooled at various locations for security purposes. There were also assay companies, places that put gold from miners and recyclers into the world gold economy. Aurea's, Doctor Winters' Company, was such a place, it took gold and refined it before adding it to the global stockpile. Aurea's was worth three quarters of a billion dollars in buildings and equipment and had almost three billion on deposit. No wonder Michaela had been in such a fit when I started asking her about the way the gold exchange system worked, she thought I was going to gamble with her company.

Four hours into deciphering the information, I decided to call it quits. Heather the accountant and Heather the President of Brookstone Pointe needed to rest a bit before the next business day.

Torana informed me at lunchtime that Annalise wasn't going to be able to meet me that night. I didn't feel bad about it, because I needed to get some more work done on my audit. Twenty hours that evening I figured out that all of the information that had been given to me by Heather the hacker was fake. Every single piece of the puzzle that was outside the paperwork recovered in the lab was slightly off, just enough to throw my investigation on the wrong path.

Paranoia set in, who could I trust? The information acquired outside the lab had been fed to me by Heather, but Janara had shown me the three dimension plotting scheme that I had based my gold hunch on.

"You can't trust Janara or Torana," Celina said from the doorway. "I figured that out about ten minutes ago."

"Torana too?"

"She's involved at the behest of Annalise Renraw. They're very clever keeping their thoughts from me, my powers are somewhat limited regarding them for some reason. It may be training, they may be naturally immune, it happens."

I waved a hand around, "They might have bugged my room."

"Cone of silence spell," Celina said. "What do you want to do with them?"

"How many of my house guests are spies?"

"Just those two. The guards, my staff, and your enforcers are beyond reproach."

"How can I tell what they are up to? If Annalise is leading them..."

"The next time you meet Annalise, use a truth conjure. Although, if she's as good as the two twats running around this house, that might not work. Maybe take Torana to see Marcie's house. Jaci's daughter is young but skilled, she'll sort it out for you."

"Okay. I've got to call Marcie."

"You can do that in the morning, you need your rest, I can sense it."

"Done. Thank you Celina."

"Make me welcome later," Celina smiled. "Cone of silence off."

I folded to work the next morning, going up to the highest floor so I could call Marcie without fear of eavesdroppers. She was upset that there was something sinister going on regarding a trusted friend. A plan was made to pick me up that afternoon and take us to the compound where Jaci's children and numerous baby-mommas lived.

Torana was unpleased that I had changed the limo and our itinerary. She already had an invitation to the compound, and was treated like any other guest to the house. Grace came out when dinner was served, sitting across from Torana two seats down from where I was sitting at the head of the table.

Everybody had been briefed as to what was going on, idly chatting about their days at work and their children. I was having a pleasant conversation with the woman to my right, her name was Tiara and she was a casting director currently between movies.

I almost missed Grace hitting Torana with the whammy. "Tell me, Torana, how much is Annalise Renraw paying you to sleep with Heather?"

The conversation around the table instantly stopped, so we all heard the reply: "Fifty thousand per fuck, but I'll get a bonus when I hand over Heather's little child-spawn to the leader."

"What about Janara?" Grace prodded.

"She gets twenty a fuck, but a bonus for some weird math shit to throw Heather off."

I was getting ready to burst into tears. Marcie, who was on my left, put her hand on mine to keep me quiet so Grace could continue her interrogation.

"How are you blocking the mind readers at Heather's house?

Torana pulled the clip out of her hair. "An electronic thing to keep the telepaths out. I almost screwed it up the other morning by forgetting to put it in."

Grace continued for another five minutes, questioning Torana about other people and places the labs might be, but not getting anywhere. There was a pause, Grace holding up her cue-card for me to see. My final question for Torana. "Do you get any pleasure having sex with Heather?"

"Are you kidding? I barely can stand fucking that tranny. But I am a good actress so I can fake it till I get exchanged out for some other unlucky woman."

"Come on, let's go to the bathroom so you can show me how to do that hairstyle," Grace stood and Torana followed her like a little puppy.

I couldn't help it, tears started flowing from my eyes. Marcie gave me a tug and I let her lead me upstairs to a bedroom. It took me a moment to calm down, but I finally got the tears to stop. "What am I going to do?" I sighed.

"You can ease them out or toss them out," Marcie said.

"Easing them out sounds good," I nodded. "Best to allay suspicion from Annalise that way. So now I have a question for you."

Marcie smiled. "Yes, I sat Tiara next to you for a reason. Full disclosure, she has children from Jaci and Kyle Andrews. She'd like a third if you're up to it."

"Am I ever going to find someone to settle down with?" I asked.

"I heard Morena Wasikowski has the hots for you," Marcie offered.

"Morena told me that she's just out for a roll in the hay with me. She says that she's too old and jaded to think about settling down."

"I'll do my best to find a suitable mate for you."

Kimberly. "Can you find Professor Kimberly Pulanski?"

"The kind professor declined Janine's offer to make her home with you. From what I hear, she declined Morena's offer as well."

"Okay," I shrugged. "What's going on with Torana? Is Grace doing something to her?"

"Grace is putting a forgetfulness spell on her now, but there's a problem with that."

"Sure, it's never easy," I muttered.

"The spell is tied to a keyword, and normally that would be enough. The technology Torana is wearing is anti-magic and may kick the spell loose before you are ready."

"I only need to get through tonight and maybe tomorrow," I said. "Is Tiara seriously interested in me?"

"Yes, she is," Marcie nodded. "I'll take a blood oath and swear I will never hurt you."

"Your word is enough."

Tiara was outside the bedroom door when I opened it. She took my hand and led me up to the roof. "It's so beautiful here. All the houses in a four block radius belong to the chosen."

"It is pretty. The view from my house is similar, only higher I think."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'd like to take you home and ravage you," I answered.

"I mean what about Little Miss Stuffy Pants who is really just a high-class hooker," Tiara clarified.

"Just high-class?" I teased.

"I don't think there's any stable of hookers in L.A. that collectively pulls in fifty grand a fuck. We'll call her exceptional."

"Yeah, exceptional." I just wanted love, and that's how Annalise had suckered me in.

"Wake up," Tiara nudged me with her foot.

"I just want to settle down," I said. "A wife, some playmates, kids...The works."

"You'll find her, or him," Tiara promised. "Can we go now?"

"Sure."

Torana was at the bottom of the stairs, a frown crossing her face when she saw me hand-in-hand with Tiara. She had the good sense to not say anything either there or on the way home. I got Tiara settled on the balcony with some wine and was going to my bedroom to change when I was ambushed my Torana. "What are you doing?" She demanded.

"I'm going to change into something a little more comfortable so I can continue my conversation with Tiara," I replied. "Some fucking will be involved, but she's not into threesomes so you can't join in, sorry."

"You're going to have sex with her?"

Too easy to bring out that anger, way too easy. "Of course. She's smart and has some good stories to tell."

"Are you serious?" There was the pouty, vain tone.

"I was unaware that I had to clear my sexual partners with you," I growled. "I conceded sex with men, not my entire sex schedule."

"But you committed yourself to Annalise," Torana whimpered.

"We didn't commit solely to one another. We both agreed that it was okay to bed other women, and Tiara falls into that category. See you in the morning."

"Fine," Torana spun on her heel and walked back down the hall. I briefly wondered if I would have been as brusque with her if I didn't know she was sleeping with me for money.

Annalise called my cell right as I was slipping into my flats. "Hey, Heather."

"Annalise, how'd your meeting go?"

"Fruitful," she replied. I heard a woman in the background asking Annalise where her shoes were. "I hear you have a guest."

"I hear you have a guest as well," I countered. "Does she like bananas?" I knew she'd get the reference to a strap-on dildo.

"And then some. Heather, Tiara Thatcher is a casting director for Renraw Entertainment International. A relationship with her could expose the company to liability."

"Tiara is retiring. She's settling down to raise her kids and thinks another would be just dandy," I said.

"Please don't sleep with her," Annalise said.

"Why are you breaking our deal? Our arrangement was that I don't sleep with men, and I can have any woman I want." I would have been offended if I didn't know her secret. "Well, I'm not going to sleep with Torana after her little fit and Celina has the 'do not disturb' sign on her door."

"What about Janara?"

"Maybe tomorrow night. For now, I'm going to go make good on my promise to show Tiara a good time. We'll hash this out later."

"There won't be a later if you have sex with Tiara," Annalise snapped.

"So be it. Pleasure doing pleasure with you." I hung up, not giving her a chance to retort. I went down to the room Torana sometimes slept in to find her already packing. "For what it's worth, your invitation is revoked, Torana. Have a nice life."

"Whatever."

I shrugged and went back upstairs. Celina was keeping Tiara company and drinking my wine. "How did it go?" Celina asked.

"As well as could be expected," I shrugged

"I'm sorry, Heather. I should have caught onto her sooner," Celina stood to give me a kiss. "I won't let another do you like that."

"Thanks for your concern," I smiled. "Can you secure my auditing room, Celina?"

"That's already done. I hung a spell over that door so powerful to give a normal nightmares for a month. Make sure that you escort your guests into the room, don't just call out and say they're invited."

Scary. "Thank you."

Celina gave me a smile as she stood. "Tomorrow's Saturday. Have a good weekend."

Saturday? Where had the time gone? Paris. The week had been wasted, time with Annalise, time on the audit. Tiara had a hopeful look on her face, she wouldn't waste my time.

***

When Tiara and I emerged from my bedroom Saturday morning, Celina had a breakfast ready on the balcony. Tiara joined me, bright and refreshed in a matching athleisure suit. The question of where hers had come from was left unasked, but she obviously had an admirer among my staff.

Tiara took me to to see a movie, one that she had done the casting for. I had told her about Annalise's threat, but she waved it off saying that she worked for the Renraw Brothers, not Annalise. After the movie she took me home to meet her children, who took after their mother in looks. I could feel the power laying dormant in those two little ones, wondering when it it would start to manifest.

Hayley came into my thoughts, and Gaia's rant about how Hayley had gone untrained in her wizard powers because the wicca had been too afraid of her. I told Tiara about what had happened at the meeting, and she assured me that her children would receive the best training from the Andrews family. Then she asked me if I had been learning how to use my powers to their potential. I admitted that I hadn't the slightest clue.

We spent the evening outside in the yard, playing with her children. I caught her observing me a few times as I played with them without her nearby, and I wasn't sure what to think about that.

Bath time came and went, Tiara having to lend me some of her clothes because Sally had gotten more water on me than I did on her. I took her to her bedroom and she assured me that bedtime story came before she went to sleep.

I read Sally the story she chose, but she didn't make it through the first chapter. It seemed logical, even natural to place her into bed and tuck her in. Tiara was waiting in the hall, pulling me into a tight embrace. "You're perfect, do you know that?"

"Umm...sure?"

She pulled away from me and clasped my hands. "Come with me." I was led to the other side of her house, a sitting room with only two chairs and a small table between them. "Whiskey?"

"Double and triple," I nodded.

Tiara left the room and came back with a bottle and two glasses. "I know we can't get drunk, but it still tastes mighty fine." She gave us three fingers each and set the bottle down.

"What's on your mind, Tiara?"

"When we came into my house, what was your first thought?"

"I was thinking that this looked like a home," I confessed. "It's the little things like spots on the windows and a little dust bunny. My house is starkly clean, everything in order. It feels sterile."

"Yes, it does," Tiara nodded. "Arielle, my guardian-slash-nanny clued me in on your thought before she took off."

"I didn't even see her," I admitted. "She pick up any of my dirty thoughts?"

"No, she told me I'd have to figure out your intentions on my own."

"You know my intentions," I said.

"I know your intentions at the moment," Tiara countered.

"Last night I told you what I wanted. A wife and kids and maybe some playmates. I want a life. I think I was so vulnerable to Annalise because of Janine taking off on me. It's just been one heartbreak after another since Laura left me."

"Why did you mention playmates?"

"To be honest, it's fun." Tiara's face fell. Was she thinking about having a relationship with me? "I'm sorry, I don't know if I am capable of monogamy anymore."

"Well, it isn't just that," Tiara said. "I'm not jaded on the concept of polyamory, I just think there should be a defined boundary. I don't want a long parade of women through our bed...shit."

"So what changed your mind?" I asked. "First you were giving me the impression that you just wanted a one or two-night stand?"

"The way you were with my children today. Sally and Tucker just took to you and you to them, it was wonderful. I'd like to have that, for as long as I can. The problem is how to combine a wet and wild lifestyle with that. The kids, they can handle two mommies, but fifty aunts and uncles?"

"Fifty," I snickered. "We don't have to bed them here, I do have a house of my own."

"True, but I'd still like to be with my children at night," Tiara countered.

"Well, we'll call it a date night. I probably shouldn't stay here too much at first anyway, right? Plus I need some more time to get adjusted to L.A."

"You get the point," Tiara said. "Now I want yours."

"Certainly," I smiled.

***

I was awakened by a gentle nudging of my elbow. "Heather," Tiara whispered.

"Hey," I whispered back.

"We need to get ready to go somewhere. Kyle sent out an invitation far and wide."

"For what?" I asked.

"I don't know. Come on."

Arielle had Sally and Tucker ready by the time Tiara and I made it into the kitchen. "Natasha's my mother," she said to my inquisitive look.

"I'm still getting used to the way things are. So Sally is your half-sister?"

Arielle nodded. "Our destination is on your cell."

Sure enough, there was a message on my phone with a picture of a sign that read: "Death Valley Wizard Academy." I kept the picture in my mind, putting my phone away and taking Arielle's and Tiara's hands. Together we took a step forward.

It was dark but not cold at our destination. Arielle and Tiara took off with the kids as Kyle Andrews and Stan approached us. "Welcome."

"Wizard Academy?" I asked. "Are you the teacher?"

"There's really no handbook to wizardry. The little information we have is from the book that Merlin wrote in the late twelfth century. He mostly wrote about what he could do, not how he accomplished it. I'm guessing that he thought he took all the wizards with him to Atlantis."

"Twelfth century, huh?" I chuckled.

"A long time ago. Can we keep that lesson for later?" Kyle asked. "We have a limited window for practicing out here."

"Yes, let's practice," Stan nodded. "We don't need any more of our people falling prey to mad scientists."

I thought that Stan might be one of the instructors, but he was just as much a student as the rest of us. Kyle's children, his twins named Jack and Jill, showed us what being a wizard was about.

Most of the people who had been at the 'trial' were also in the class. They each had various levels of training, and they gave the novices pointers. We practiced our power against objects which had been brought in, our stray shots contained by a shield created by groups of guardians at the perimeter to the valley.

The last lesson came an hour after the sun came up, Jack stepped forward and called a rainstorm to come and give the parched land around us something to drink. We were encouraged to try our skills in places that wouldn't catch the attention of normal people. Everything we could cast was tangible and could be tracked with radar and satellites if somebody was actively looking.

One by one we folded to an auditorium. I was quizzed about my captivity and the method by which I was restrained. Nobody had told me that when I had been found, over half of the lead coated rebar spikes holding me to the table had been severed. The general consensus was that I had partially melted them because I called fire from inside me. The spikes were keeping me from manifesting that energy outside my body, but couldn't do anything to keep me from using the energy inside. Needless to say, I was not eager to try and duplicate that experience, but someone would do it soon to test the theory. I felt bad for the person who was going to participate in that experiment.

Then an idea came out of nowhere: Wicca could use the same method for escape, that spell was already in their book because that was part of their classes. I voiced this idea aloud, and it was pooh-poohed because wicca needed gold for spells and the first thing Miranda's mad scientists had done was to strip them of their gold. I offered the gold crown idea, and everyone agreed that while it was a good idea, any further abductees would probably have their mouths examined as well.

Kevin came to my rescue by positing that a coated capsule of gold could be implanted into a person. The function would be much like implanted birth control and it could be mentally called to release its full load at one time. There was a lot of nodding and discussion, telling him it was a worthy idea.

Stan came up to me after the meeting was adjourned, and I quickly gave him my apologies. He understood about my sudden lack of interest in him and men in general, though sad that we didn't have our chance together. He then mumbled something about ripping Kevin's fingers off for ruining me, but laughed it off when he saw my alarmed look.

After Stan folded out, Tiara announced her presence behind me by putting her hand on my shoulder. I hadn't seen her approach, and Stan hadn't given any clue that she was there. We gathered Arielle and the children and folded back to her place. I begged off spending the afternoon with them, citing my want to wander around Sunshineville to get my thoughts straight. Tiara sensed I was in distress and wasn't going to take 'no' for an answer to come along.

I couldn't think of a good place to end a fold, so I called Hayley's friend Izzy and asked her if we could travel there. Once I explained my plans, she sent me a picture of a private area in one of the parks. She assured me that even if anyone saw us appear, they'd accept it as part of normal life in Sunshineville.

I wanted to see what was going on around town, and the best way to do that was with a nice, long walk. Tiara hadn't heard anything about Sunshineville, so I had to told her about what had happened at Shannonburg and why I had bought the town. Our walk had taken us out of the town proper and we were going down the road to the service area when a SUV went zipping by us. It didn't have any town markings on the side, so we kept going so I could investigate.

I offered to take Tiara home before approaching the apparent intruder, and she refused. She said that the presence of two people would be a better idea, she could help me out in case I got into trouble. I snickered and turned her around to introduce my ever-present guardians Starr and Pete.

"Why are you guys following us?" Tiara asked.

"We're not going to make the mistake of thinking any place is safe for Heather," Starr answered. "This whole area may be warded, but we like to stay close."

"You don't stay really close, do you?" Tiara's face was red.

"Not that close," Starr said. "You have a guardian at your residence."

"Why couldn't you figure out what Torana was up to?" Tiara demanded.

"That's a good question," Starr shrugged. "The technology that they are using is new, hence unexpected. We are forced to be extra careful until it is figured out."

"Doesn't Gemma know about technology converted from magic?" I asked.

"Like I said, we don't know," Starr sighed. "The driver of the vehicle is Hillary Milano, the designer..."

"...of the solar array that powers the town," I finished. "I should meet her."

"Hillary is a bit of a prima donna," Tiara warned.

"So am I," I snickered.

All of the power that came off the solar array was routed into a building simply labeled 'Operations.' I had taken a look inside after I had purchased Sunshineville, seeing lots of electronics and lots of shiny copper busbars. The operations manual baffled me, but the gist of it was that the entire town was supplied with DC current at twenty-four volts. The individual houses had their own inverters for any alternating current the residents might require.

While Janine had been 'teaching' me Brookstone Pointe operations, one of the capital outlays I had made was for design and manufacturing of twenty-four volt DC motors. Until now, my mind hadn't made a connection between those motors and the huge array around me.

Tiara tugged on my arm. "You still with us?"

"Just making some entries in my knowledge ledger," I admitted. "I'm coming out ahead."

"Getting rich on knowledge is always good," Tiara agreed.

Hillary was at a panel above the entryway, flipping levers and muttering to herself. She was on her way to a computer when she noticed Tiara and I standing there. "You're not supposed to be in here, this place is dangerous."

"I've been in here before," I admitted. "Right after I bought Sunshineville."

"Sorry, Miss Jenkins, I'll be right with you," Hillary said. "Please don't touch anything."

"Certainly."

Tiara and I wandered around while Hillary bustled between terminals and panels. She caught up with us ten minutes later, "I'm Hillary Milano. I designed your power grid."

I took her hand and gave it a shake. Hillary was a natural immortal, and had been made so by blood transfusion rather than any of the other methods. "You're immortal?"

"And you're a wizard. I know this because you folded into an area near a power distribution node. Please don't do it again."

"What?" Tiara asked.

"You misunderstand me," Hillary held up her hand. "When you fold into an area, you create a small but powerful electromagnetic bubble. AC systems shrug that off because they have line noise reducers and filter it out. DC systems get a little feisty because that bubble you create momentarily depolarizes the distribution bus and that's when breakers start to pop."

"I'm sorry," I nodded. "Did I cut power to the town?"

"You didn't cut power, the breakers have recloser circuitry to handle momentary blips like that. I'd ask you to find a different area in the town limits for a folding destination, or you can fly in."

"Sounds good," I nodded. "Thank you for your fast response."

"Normally I would let the system handle the problem and get the report later, but I happened to be in the area checking on the one system I can't brag about. Your restrictions keep me from bringing guests in to show the system off," Hillary said.

"There's a reason for that," Tiara said.

"Yes, I know, and I think it's very good of you to have made this place. I heard you bought the adjoining plots, are you going to put similar enclaves there?"

"I don't know yet," I admitted.

"Well, if you do, I'd like a secure place to live while I'm in the area. I'm trying to expand on my success wriggling a contract to get part of LA powered by solar after that earthquake a couple years back. I'll need a place to call home every once in a while, even though my manufacturing plant is only a plane ride away," Hillary offered her hand again. "If you have any questions, call me."

"Just one more, actually," I said. "How is your research into twenty-four volt motors coming?"

"How did you know that? That's right, you own Brookstone Pointe as well. I need an outlay of seventy-five million to have a factory built. Scaling the motors up and down isn't really the problem, not having to import them is. I'd prefer to keep the manufacturing here in the States."

"Call Marcie tomorrow and tell her that I want to meet you. She'll understand," I said. "Thank you."

"Thank you as well," Hillary nodded. She went out to her SUV and tore off on what seemed like another mission.

"She's happy," I observed.

"Hillary was one of the early members of the club," Tiara said. "She was also an abused spouse."

"Do tell." Tiara told me the story of Hillary Milano's husband, and what had happened to him. "Good," I nodded.

"Let's go home, Heather. I want one more night with you."

I got my bearings, and walked around behind Tiara. When I wrapped my arms around her, she giggled because she knew we were going to take flight.

***

Monday morning was rather dull without Torana to make me up. Hillary showed up at nine hours with Johan and Petra for the meeting because they also had partial interest in her company. Between the four of us and three hours we managed to ink a deal to get a start on a factory to make motors and the appliances to go with them. They left and I took my lunch with Marcie to an excellent Italian restaurant. I was going to take the afternoon off to work on my audit when Marcie showed Annalise into my office.

Pete shifted in his chair in the corner of the office when Annalise sat down. I knew he could be comfortable in any position, his shifting was to let Annalise know he was there. "Does he really have to be here?" Annalise asked.

"Yes, he does. Don't you, Pete?"

"I certainly do, ma'am. I'm here to protect you from physical and emotional harm," Pete replied.

"Really," Annalise huffed.

"Why are you here, Annalise? You gave your ultimatum, I called it, we're over." Damn you, Laura, for making this so easy. Breaking up was supposed to be hard to do.

"I may have been a bit hasty," Annalise hedged.

"You were hasty. As a person who thrives on agreements, you were awful quick to break your word," I said.

"Sleeping with an employee is a bad idea," Annalise countered.

"It's only a bad idea if Tiara is my employee, she's not."

"What is wrong with you?" Annalise demanded. "I gave you Torana, you yourself admitted that she is an eleven on your ten scale."

"Gave her to me? That's exactly the problem!"

"Because I'm paying her?" Annalise blurted out.
"Exactly."

Annalise covered her mouth, telling me that Pete had something to do with her exclamation. "I wanted to make sure you had the best."

"Well she was a pretty good actress, she made me believe that she actually wanted me," I said.

"Then she was well worth the price," Annalise snapped.

"Just go, Annalise. Please don't come back."

"I can ruin you," Annalise said. "You won't be welcome anywhere in Hollywood. Tiara won't be able to cast a kindergarten play when I'm done with her."

"Damn," Pete snickered.

"Before you try anything, remember that Morena is a good friend. You are afraid of her, so just imagine what she'd do if she finds out you betrayed me. Maybe, just maybe, if you survive her, remember that I can pull the worst nightmare creature you've ever seen into reality and send it after you."

"There's no monster hiding under her bed," Pete said. "The greatest fear that Annalise has is growing old."

Annalise whipped her head around to look at Pete. "I'm immortal. I'll stay this way until I take my last breath."

"Whoever told you that is full of shit," Pete countered. "Gaia can strip you of your immortality, that means you will grow old and get those wrinkles you are so afraid of. Gaia likes Heather, so she has but to ask and your gift will be gone."

Now Annalise was showing a little fear, I could see it even on the side of her face. She slowly turned her head to face me. "Heather, we can work this out. Please."

"No, Annalise. I have no idea why you approached me, and after finding out that you were paying Torana, I can't trust you to want me for me, so no. Goodbye."

I watched as a tear ran down her face. She stood, gathered her purse, and left my office with a sob. "She was acting," Pete assured me. "She did think the threats would actually work, which was really odd."

"No picking up on her ulterior motives?" I asked.

"Once Annalise figured out I was using a truth conjure on her, she must have activated another device to try and keep the magic at bay. That's dangerous technology, we need to figure out where it came from."

"So technology is trumping magic?"

"Neither are infallible," Pete countered.

"I believe that," I nodded.

***

Marcie agreed to cover for me so that I could go and work on my numbers. Board after board had to be cleared. Word of my work didn't take long to reach Janine, who called me right as I was starting anew.

The few minutes of gossip we traded included her telling me that she had cut Lisann loose from her life. The motives of the Renraw sisters would remain unknown for now, and that frightened me a little.

Janine also told me that Heather had been suborned by our supposed opposition. They had kidnapped Heather's sister and were using her to get Heather to feed me false information. Janine wouldn't go any farther in her brief, only telling me that the problem was being worked on.

While Kevin and I had been taking a break from classes at the 'Wizard School,' I had explained my problems regarding the numbers to him. He admitted that he wasn't the best person to be sorting through databases at the moment, but gave me the number of a hacker called tra1nwreck. The hacker turned out to be a very pleasant Chinese woman who took my requests in stride and posted that information on my electronic boards. She bade me good day without any sexual innuendo and that was a breath of fresh air.

Celina arrived promptly at twenty-two hours to lure me out of my sanctum using Tiara as bait. Tiara assured me that Arielle had everything under control at home before I let her pull me toward my bedroom.

Tiara didn't mind that another woman joined us while we were taking an intermission. The woman slipped into my bed and proceeded to mount Tiara from behind with a modestly sized strap-on dildo. Tiara reached out for my cock, which had gotten very hard, very fast, and gave it a tug. I could tell that she wanted me in her mouth, but I wanted to see the two of them in the throes of passion from my current vantage point.

Tiara totally forgot about my cock a minute later when her rider extracted one orgasm, then another. After the third orgasm, Tiara bucked back against her rider, who promptly dismounted. Tiara crawled onto me, fiddling a bit before my cock slipped into her dripping pussy. I felt her juices dripping down my balls as she moved her hips up and down.

A finger touched my cheek, then pulled back so I would focus on the owner. She sucked on her finger, as to ask me if I wanted to do the same. I nodded, and she took her hand down and rubbed it around her pussy before she put her fingers in my mouth. I lapped at them like a kitten at its mother's teat, sad when they went away. She gave her fingers another application of juice, but put them everywhere on my face but my mouth. Tiara didn't leave the juices on my face for long, she used her longer than normal tongue to clean me off.

The twitch I felt in my groin was new and exciting. Juices were reapplied to my face and quickly cleaned off. The feeling in my cock was agonizingly sweet, and Tiara was just dragging it out. When I exploded in Tiara, my ejaculation was hard and intense. She dropped her pelvic bone onto my cock, making an extra hard rub as I continued to shoot inside her. As my orgasm eased, I took a deep breath. Tiara collapsed onto me, her mouth finding mine and tongue invading it.

Morning came too soon, Tiara and I showering together before I took her home. We ate breakfast with her children before we loaded up in her car to take them to daycare. Brookstone Pointe business took all day, Marcie apologizing for taking away from my auditing time. I assured her that I needed that time away from those numbers so I could approach the problem with a new perspective.

When Tiara showed up at the end of the day, I found myself smiling at her smile. After dinner she introduced a strap-on into our play, scratching the anal itch I had been building up since I saw her get fucked. Another person joined us on the bed while Tiara was pounding me into the pillows. I looked up and there was a real dick within arms' reach, it was coated with pre-cum and it was begging to be sucked.

My ass was suddenly free of Tiara's fake cock, so I shifted to get the real one into my mouth The owner of the cock was a curvy brown-haired woman with good-sized tits. I fell on my side and she fucked my face rather than me sucking her. There was a probing at my ass, then a vibrating dildo was eased into my anus. The woman with her cock in my mouth moved in and out, and the vibrator in my ass did the same in time. I felt a hand wrap around my cock, also moving in time with the others. The cock in my mouth started spurting cum that tasted like apples, causing my release seconds after. The bliss took a minute to wear off, at which time I realized that I was alone on the bed.

Apple taste still in my mouth, I got off the bed and went into the bathroom. Tiara was standing there, talking with the owner of the dick that had been in my mouth. The trans girl was named Sherry, and Tiara had met her at work. Sherry was a beautiful sight to behold standing up. She was just a shorter than me, but her cock was a little bit longer. When Tiara admitted that she had sampled Sherry's goods before she asked her to join us, I felt a twinge of jealousy. Then I reminded myself that Tiara and I weren't really a couple yet, and hadn't made any kind of commitment for exclusivity. The three of us shared a kiss, and Tiara suggested that we get cleaned up while the sheets were changed on the bed.

The shower was big enough for three, and I urged Sherry and Tiara to wash each other while I watched. There were bars stuck to the walls of the shower, which normally would be for handicapped people, but were just as good for sex. I sat down on the floor, Tiara clasping the bar above my head and presenting her ass to Sherry. I got to have a unique look at Tiara's orgasm face multiple times before Sherry finally let her go. I was about to ask for the same, but Sherry climbed out of the shower before I could. Tiara got a confused look on her face and followed Sherry out of the shower and into the bedroom.

Resisting the urge to follow, I lathered up and was rinsing myself off when Tiara came back in. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"Sherry, she's going home. She didn't like that scene very much, so she's bowing out."

"Are you going with her?" I asked.

"Um, no. I'm staying here with you, Heather."

"Thank you," I sighed.

"So I have a question for you."

"Shoot."

"Would you mind me seeing her on the side?"

"No, I wouldn't," I shook my head. "Although, I did have this idea about you and me in a relationship at some point."

"We can do that, right? Have playmates on the side?"

"Yes, that would be wonderful," I nodded.

"Good, let's you and me go back to bed, then."

Over breakfast at Tiara's place, Arielle reminded Tiara that a casting trip was on her schedule. Tiara told Arielle to get her phone so that she could call her boss. There was a lot of back-and-forth between her and Parker Renraw before she finally hung up.

"I have to go, Heather, I can't back out without a replacement at this level of production. I gave him my word."

"Tiara, I have to work too. It's not that big of a deal."

"Sherry's going with me," she sighed. "I'll be gone for three weeks."

"Can I come visit you?" I asked.

"Yes, you can. I do encourage you to stay home every once in a while, there is some work you still need to finish."

"Dinner tonight?"

"I'll call you."

Tiara called a little after sixteen hours from Atlanta. We had dinner downtown, and I took her to the Atlanta house for desert. She called me the next night to beg off for dinner with the producers. Celina had obviously been alerted to my situation because a woman named Salome joined me for dinner and in my bed that night. I didn't know why I felt a weight in my heart Friday evening when Tiara called to tell me she had plans. That night I slept alone, my mind staying awake not with thoughts of numbers, but Tiara.

Sunday morning Tiara called early to have breakfast with me. She seemed all serious, and I thought for a moment that she was going to break it off with me. Instead she told me that she had broken off her relationship with Sherry in favor of me. When I asked her about the long face, she told me about her promotion to full casting director for the movie. That meant she would have to stay in Atlanta for two months.

Being promoted sounded just fine to me, I could still commute back and forth to Atlanta. The problem was that along with the promotion came public scrutiny, and she couldn't be seen out in public in what people would construe as a lesbian relationship. Atlanta was in The South and the residents were mighty religious and could cause trouble.

Before I could offer to whisk her to L.A. every weekend, Tiara added that we also couldn't be seen together in Hollywood for the duration of the filming because I was in the public eye. I countered that we could maintain our relationship under the radar if she wanted. She did, so I called up a copy of the key to the Atlanta house and told her that the hotel would get mighty boring.

Friday morning Tiara asked me to bring her home to L.A. We spent that day with her kids and that evening in each other's arms. About half past two hours a burst of inspiration hit me. I had been hitting walls on my audit and was getting discouraged about finding the mad scientists. Tiara had said something about the computers that they were using on the set and how Kevin had fixed them. It clicked in a dream, the people I was looking for, they needed computers. They had computers.

Tiara wasn't too happy when I woke her, but she urged me to go when I told her the reason. I took just a moment to slip into leggings and a top, grabbed my purse, and then folded directly to my sanctum.

Tra1nwreck had been helping me rummage through the books of gold exchanges worldwide, and most of the major named exchanges were relatively straight. Dr. Winters had also added her expertise regarding a dozen or so shadow exchanges, which mostly specialized in laundering war spoils, sunken treasures and drug profits.

Kevin and a few other hackers had done a deep, thorough raid on the books of those exchanges. As shady as their operations were, they weren't what I was looking for. There was a vague reference to a person called The Observer, but nobody wanted to elaborate on him or her.

Tiara had mentioned that Kevin had fixed some computers that controlled specialized cameras that the studio purchased. Some disgruntled employee had sent out a remote update that had 'bricked' almost a billion dollars' worth of cameras belonging to every studio on the planet. Kevin fixed them and disabled the ability to kill the cameras remotely.

The computers at the lab where I had been tortured had been remotely wiped and then told to self destruct if they were moved. The only people with the knowledge to completely destroy those systems would be the ones who had built them. I wasn't looking for a shadow company, I was looking for a completely legitimate company that manufactured specialized computing systems.

I dropped all the shadow gold exchanges from my list and started my search in Europe. When Celina came to bring me breakfast at a quarter past seven hours, I knew I was on the right track. I had been focused for so long on finding one entity, I didn't consider there might be two...or seven. I put my findings into an email and shot it off to Kevin Brown, the most computer-smart person I knew next to Heather. I was just polishing off my breakfast sausage when he called to ask for an invitation to my house. When he folded in, I rushed into his arms and gave him a hug. It was a long-lost friend hug, not a former lover hug. I took him to my sanctum, explaining my findings to him.

We spent hours going back and forth. I taught him my world, line items and capital outlays and he taught me computer basics. The companies I had flagged were connected because each specialized in a specific part of an overall computing system.

My part in the search was mostly over. I had tracked the people responsible for the torture deaths of dozens of innocents and ultimately responsible for the death of my daughter. Kevin made some calls and then asked me to not get involved with the physical matters. Even though I had agent and basic special weapons training, the club and their allies had paramilitary people to handle the physical side of the threat. They also had wicca, wizards and enforcers like Pete and Starr to aid them in the magic side. Pete appeared to ask me permission to participate in the operation if needed, and I told him that he and Starr both should go. He nodded before vanishing again, leaving me alone with Kevin.

"You guys better get a hold on these people, Kevin," I said. "They killed my daughter!"

"I'll be on tech support," Kevin assured me. "We are going to strip them down and the CAW squad is going to fuck them up."

"What's that?"

"The CAW squad evolved from the Crimes Against Women group in the four fifty-seven club. Their favorite pastime was staking out bars and clubs for guys who didn't like the word 'no.' The name was kept because it sounded cool."

"I'll bet." When I was an agent, I had learned to tolerate vigilantism because I knew that there were only so many law enforcers in the world. "Too many bad guys, I suppose."

"You should know better," Kevin wagged a finger at me. "You only hear about the bad guys because they were bad."

"I know. What were you, 1uckydud3?"

"Naughty, all the time."

We hugged before he folded out. I had noted his erection when he pressed up against me, but wasn't excited by it. Was my want for men totally gone?

"Earth to Heather," Tiara said from the doorway.

Tiara was hanging at the threshold because she was scared of Celina's warding. I took her hands and pulled her into a kiss. "Hey, you."

"When I heard that Kevin was here with you, I was a little scared," Tiara said after I released her. "I don't know why, we haven't agreed on anything beyond not bedding outsiders in my home."

"Because he's a man?"

"There are stories about his magic massages, every woman who has experienced them has had some sort of major psychological change in their lifestyle," Tiara sighed. "I didn't want to come back and find that you didn't want me anymore."

"Did you forget about my massage? I think that turned out pretty good for us, did it not?" I asked.

"Yes, it did," Tiara admitted. "But did it turn out okay for just you? Being truly bisexual was a part of your life, did taking away that feeling somehow subtract from you?"

I took a moment to think about that. "I think that feeling was on its way out when I met Declan. Then I got tits and a figure and started feeling like a real woman. I think the only thing I would really want from Kevin now is his ability to enter other people's dreams."

"He can do that?" Tiara asked. "Yeah. I'd love to share dreams with you, Heather. That would be fun."

"We found them," I blurted out.

"I heard. Can you still spend the afternoon with us? Arielle has the picnic stuff ready."

"Yes, yes I would."

***

Rather than just folding to a park, we drove a simple minivan to South L.A. I was a little wary of the surroundings, but Tiara told me to settle down and think of District Thirteen. That was the neighborhood I had helped back in Columbus when I had caught an embezzling council member. When we found a place to edge into, she turned to me. "Word of what you did for your neighborhood got around. This place represents some of the work Jaci did here. Yes, everybody hates comparing you to Jaci Stone, but I think you two were twins separated at birth."

"Thanks?"

"Come. Remember, you are standing by her side, not in her shadow."

I followed Tiara into the park proper. I carried the larger basket, Sally and Tucker carrying smaller baskets for their food. The park was amazing, green and lush and flower gardens along the periphery. Off in the distance there was a group of teenagers pushing around hand mowers and others raking up the clippings. "Hand mowers?" I asked.

"The city is noisy enough," an elderly black man announced his presence behind us. "Hello, Missus Jenkins-Sagemueller, I'm Cassius, the custodian."

"Pleasure, sir. I know the term, from parks back home."

"This park is open to all, including you. Nice to see you again, Miss Thatcher."

"Thank you, Cassius," Tiara nodded.

"You're very welcome, ma'am." Cassius tipped an imaginary hat and walked off.

I noted the presence of toughs around the edges of the park. These would be the enforcers, to keep the peace and the children safe. Tiara and I were reclined out on the grass watching her children play catch in the sun when one of the enforcers came over and knelt beside us. "Y'all have watchers. Don't look friendly."

"Police?" I asked.

"Private pigs, long lenses. Five-oh coming to check them out, you know, for the children."

"Thank you," I nodded.

"It's nothing." He gave me a big smile and ambled off toward what I assumed was his station. Minutes later, I heard a whoop-whoop of a siren. The sound caught some glances, then everybody went back to what they were doing.

I put the watchers in the back of my mind since Tiara didn't seem to concerned about them. I chose to drive back to her place, getting used to driving in a city ten times more populated and hectic than Columbus.

Tiara's phone rang, she looked at the display and put it back into the holder. She gave me directions, and we ended up at the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We idly walked down the sidewalk, Tiara pointing out some of my favorites as we went along. Sally and Tucker were extremely well-behaved for such a large crowd around us. Tiara's cell continued to go off, and she stopped checking the screen until we got back into the van. After making sure the kids were buckled in and happily listening to the cartoons playing on their tablets through their earphones, Tiara made a call.
"Tiara, finally you call back."

"Parker, you're on speaker and I'm not alone," Tiara announced.

"Yes, I know you're not alone," Parker replied. "Despite my wishes."

"So I decided to have a day out with my kids and girlfriend," Tiara snapped. "I don't remember my social life in my contract."

"Well, you don't have to worry about that anymore," Parker said. "You're fired."

I took a breath and was going to give him a piece of my mind, but Tiara held her hand up "Fine, Parker. Have a good time finding a replacement!"

"There are a million hungry people in this town," Parker huffed.

"But only one of me. Goodbye, Parker."

Tiara didn't hang up, but she did hit the 'mute' button on her phone. "I appreciate you wanting to come to my aid, but I wanted this, okay?"

"You got fired," I protested.

"If Parker fired me, it was because at least three of the others leaned on him to do it. Listen."

"You got what you wanted Annie. Tiara's gone. We'll be lucky if she doesn't sue us for breach of contract!"

Annalise's voice came through the phone. "Tiara has no grounds to sue. Her contract ended two years ago."

"That contract was extended on a movie-by-movie basis rather than renewing it for the entire term. Our company got four more high-grossing movies under her casting eye. You can't put any of that on Pouncey, she's been doing his work for half his pay for three years now."

"Pawn-sey," Tiara corrected. "They never pronounced his name right, pissed him off to no end."

"What is happening here?" I asked.

"Thursday night Parker and I had a chat. He noted that I had been lighter on my feet for a while and I was suddenly down and out. I told him that his edict was stifling me and you, so he gave me the choice. I could choose to keep the secret, or I'd go out in public with you and he would gladly fire me. This afternoon, I made up my mind. I want you, Heather. The job can be reclaimed with a phone call, but I don't think I will make it."

"...now I'm going to ruin her girlfriend, Heather."

"You're taking this a bit far, Annie," Parker warned.

"That's putting it mildly," said another man. "You don't have any reason to go after Heather Jenkins-Sagemueller now. You're being petty and that's personal. On the business side, not only does Brookstone Pointe own partial production rights in a dozen of our movies, but the company is friended by Morena Wasikowski. She owns sixty percent of the non-family shares, and could do real damage if you piss her off."

"Morena is the literal boogeyman at this level of business. Sure, she could probably have wiped us out ten years ago, but we're stronger now," Annalise scoffed.

"Drop it, Annie. Don't force us to strip you of your remaining shares," yet another man said. "We've got the entire board here, remember that."

"We'll do it, Annalise," a woman said. "You don't have my or Alana's support on this."

"That's Elaine," Tiara whispered. She hit the 'end' button on the phone. "Like I said, I wanted this."

"I'll do my best to make your sacrifice worth it," I gave her a wink. On our way back to Tiara's house, I pondered her willingness to give up her job to be with me. Several times I almost said something, but decided to hold it in until later.

When we got to Tiara's house, she got Tucker from her side of the van, and I got Sally from mine. Before I set her down, she whispered in my ear: "I think you'll make a good mommy."

Dinner came and went, bath and story were done, and then Tiara and I were alone. "Tiara..."

"I understand you wanting to continue Brookstone Pointe. It's fine with me, being the housewife." She put up her hand to stifle a giggle. "I think we'll do great."

"What about others?"

"Definitely keep our open relationship. I want it and you want it too. That stuff can happen at your house and the family stuff here."

"Thank you."

"With all my free time, I might cast the players for our scenes."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm the director."

"Of course."

***

I was awakened by the sound of my cellphone. I knew that I had turned that thing off, there was nothing that couldn't wait or be forwarded through Arielle. She happened into the bedroom as I picked up my cell. "Hello?"

"Heather, you need to come to the Beverly Hills house," Celina said. "We have a problem."

I shook Tiara. "Emergency."

"Go."

I grabbed a robe and folded to Celina. I took stock of my surroundings. Kevin was lying on one of my auditing tables, clothes burned and perforated with what looked like bullet holes.

He sat up and looked at me as I approached. "Heather, it was a trap. They knew we were coming."

--