“Sure thing, Manny, let me know how it goes! Thanks again for the tamales.”

I closed the door to my apartment as my guest walked out, then sighed tiredly and turned to plod back to the kitchen. A large ziploc freezer bag sat waiting for me there, steam fogging up the interior, holding a promise of dinner tonight, lunch, and possibly even dinner again tomorrow depending on how hungry I was between now and then. I grabbed a beer from the fridge, extracted a corn-husk-wrapped treat, and popped the can as I sat down on my couch.

The tamales were a payment for services rendered. While I did also accept money in exchange for my talents - as well as performing “real”, if not terribly steady gig work - my rates always varied with my clientele. In this case, Emanuel Sainz was a neighbor, from an apartment on the other side of the building, and the consult in question didn’t take long, so my rates were low. Also, his mother’s tamales were worth their weight in gold, so it felt like a fair exchange: my magic for hers.

Admittedly, in this case I didn’t think that she actually literally used magic. So far as I knew. As I bit into an unwrapped, still steaming tamale, I groaned happily and reminded myself that I did not, in fact, have real certainty that his mother did not use magic. I, on the other hand, very much did. Nearly my entire family possessed what the greater magical community apparently referred to as “minor talents”. So minor, in fact, that we were not generally welcomed into the arms of the magical community at large, and I had never spoken personally with anyone other than a fellow fringe dweller to validate that was the term. For all I knew, they called us “squibs” or something equally ridiculous and pop-culture-y. These days, though, maybe not.

My talent was a bit of an odd one, but once I understood it well enough to judge, I always felt that it suited me. Taking a little time, energy, and concentration, I had the power to assess the range of possibilities that could result from… almost anything. If you shuffled a deck of cards, and told me to pick one at random, I could tell you that you had about a one in fifty two chance to pull the ace of spades. I could tell you that without using my power, because I graduated high school and had a pretty decent understanding of statistics, but I could tell you more or less the same thing with my power. The information wouldn’t look quite the same, since to me that would look like a crystalline red field with just a hint of blueish green, rather than a specific number, but by now I had a good enough feel for the results of a power check to know what that meant.

Moreover, I could give a semi-decent lay of the odds for almost any situation I considered, with the accuracy of my reading - my “portent”, as my nerdy father described it - increasing as my understanding of the situation got better. If a random stranger off the street asked me what the chances were that they would make it to work and back safely, I could give them a quick and dirty answer that probably didn’t fall too far from an actuarial table. If I knew what they were driving, and what route they were taking, my portent would map closer to reality. If I knew them personally, and had driven their car, and the route they described, my results would be more accurate still.

Unfortunately, that’s why my talent was regarded as distinctly “minor” on the grand scheme of things. In order to more accurately predict anything, to give better odds of success, I had to understand so much about the circumstances I was predicting that my ability became less of a scrying of future events, and more about pointing out the obvious.

Much of that came down to human free will. The one area I’d always been relatively consistent with is predicting events that appear to an outsider to have a large degree of random chance, but which in truth are predetermined. Humans shuffling cards have a great deal of impact on the outcome of the deal of a hand of poker. A fully stand-alone electronic slot machine that relies entirely on its internal programming to generate results has no free will, and the only human intervention is down to the person pulling the lever. Even that has some impact on the results, though, which precluded me from making it rich anywhere in Vegas. There was also the issue of the Vampire Mafia. Apparently they frowned on any degree of “gifted” individuals intervening in their turf. I hadn’t found that out for myself, having never been to Vegas, but my aunt was pretty clear it wasn’t worth the risk.

Sometimes, though, someone wants to know the spread in front of them. Manny was an enterprising entrepreneur who wanted to get out of apartment life and 9-5 jobs, so once every couple weeks, he would engage my services and ask me what the odds of a new hustle panning out were. We would shoot the shit for an hour while he laid out his plans, and at the end of it, I would tell him what his chances were. He’d bring me some of his mom’s cooking. I had a pretty similar setup with about a dozen other folks. Some of them I charged cash, some favors, and a few of them I offered the service for free for one reason or another.

I was just putting away the remaining tamales and deciding between video games or Netflix for the evening when a knock derailed my train of thought. I closed the fridge and ambled over to the door, peering through the peephole before letting whoever was on the other side know whether I was home. On spying the lovely face of my very pretty landlord, Sara, I paused. As far as I knew, I was up to date on my rent - probably - and she and I didn’t normally talk casually. Sara didn’t entirely buy into the awesome powers of my talent, but she was superstitious enough that on months when I might have come up short, she was willing to accept a trade of my services for the amount I was missing. That may have just been her way of offering me charity, but as long as the late payments didn’t show up on my credit report, I was happy.

I paused for just a moment to consult my gift before opening the door. Engaging with people in real time was one of the ways my talent was weakest. People’s moods fluctuated pretty rapidly when they were socializing, and while some outcomes were relatively fixed - groping a girl at a bar would lead to a bad end ninety-nine times out of a hundred - most had at least a little wiggle room. Worse, it wasn’t as if I could look through all of the possible outcomes of a conversation and pick the one I wanted. What I got instead was more like a rainbow graph, with certain areas highlighting more vividly as I contemplated what I might say.

None of the standard greetings I might give flooded my mind with dangerous crimson, so I opened the door and gave my best winning smile. “Hey Sara! What can I do for you?”

My landlady was short - barely five-two - slender, and young, with dark hair tied back in a relatively severe ponytail. She was hispanic - I was pretty sure her parents were from Mexico, but we weren’t ‘talking about family’ close, so I wasn’t exactly sure of her nationality. She was also tasked with extracting rent from a collection of low-income losers who couldn’t pony up the funds to find a better place to live. In order to encourage those of her tenants who would just as soon not pay their rent, the young woman generally adopted a largely stern, business-like manner that spoke of her resolve and position of power. Today, however, her eyes were wide, and rather than boring a hole through my head, they darted around the inside of my apartment the moment the door swung open. While Sara rarely shouted, her voice normally carried, which made the faltering way she asked me, “Hey Jack - mind if I come inside for a minute?” stand out even more.

“Yeah, of course - come on in.” I stepped back and gestured inside, pointing towards the kitchen. I watched the brunette as she stepped through, and couldn’t help but to admire the way her pants hugged her backside. Sara was fit, and while she and I had never been involved - nor had she given me so much as a hint that she was interested - she was worth checking out. Her hips swayed gently as she stepped over to lean against the kitchen counter, and it was only an unprompted flash of red from my gift that ensured that my eyes met hers when she turned around, rather than being caught blatantly in the act of looking at her ass. As I closed the door and turned back to face her, she took a deep breath, clearly steeling herself, then spoke quietly.

“Look, Jack… I never bought into your whole… magic fortune-telling thing, but… it’s legit, right? Like… actual magic, occult power legit?”

My brow furrowed at the question and I thought for a moment on how to answer, eventually just drawling out a long, probing, “Yeeeesss….?”

It took Sara another few moments to gather herself, her eyes drifting past me to stare through the door to my apartment, before she snapped her attention back to me with a visible degree of effort. When she spoke again, her voice was still quiet, but a little of her typical brisk tone emerged. “Ok. Look, I’ve cut you deals before, because you seem like a nice guy, and you always make an effort. I never get the feeling that you’re trying to cheat me. I’m not sure that I believe you actually have magic powers, but you did warn me against that timeshare, so maybe you’re on to something. Or maybe you just read a buzzfeed article telling you all the way timeshares would screw you, and when I ignored you, that was on me. Now, though…”

She paused her sudden flood of words, inhaling again, and then continuing quickly, “I think one of my other tenants is into something weird. Occult, freaky black magic weird. I want you to check it out for me.”

I let myself drift into my talent while the pretty young woman spoke, curious to see that there was a flood of teal available in my responses. Normally conversations like this just didn’t include that much positive outcome, but there were good things that could come out of this talk. As such, I didn’t hesitate much before stating, “Ok - I’m interested. Can you tell me anything about him? About what he’s doing?”

She shook her head, her gaze dropping down to stare at the floor while she answered. “No. Yes. Ok, so… do you know Mycah? Over in 214? He’s late on his rent. Two months late. Starting eviction notice late. One of his neighbors bitched about a weird smell coming from his place, so I stopped by to check it out.” She stopped there, bringing her eyes up to my face. The look of sudden concern she saw must have been pretty obvious, because she paused and held up both hands, “No, no, no - Edith saw him walking around yesterday, so it’s not like he stopped paying because he died. Edith is his neighbor in 215, she’s the one who complained.”

She took another deep breath, clearly affected by something more than typical slumlord dealings. “The smell was weird, too. Not rotten, or even… bad, but sharp. Aromatic, like some kind of weird flowers or plants or something. You can smell it all the way down the hallway. Anyway, I knocked on the door, just to check on him, no answer. Normally I’m supposed to give 24 hours notice before I check a place out, but if I think there’s danger, I can come in sooner. I used the master key, opened the door, and… that’s as far as I got. He has the whole living room cleared out, furniture all pushed to the side, candles lit everywhere, and some kind of circle on the floor. I don’t know what he’s doing, but…”

She shook her head, but didn't even pause as one hand came up to her chest to make the sign of the cross. “Dios mio, I don’t know what he’s doing, but I’m not going to be the one to check it out. Abuela would kill me if she heard I was even a little getting involved in anything like that. So. Fifty dollars off your next month’s rent if you go in, look around his apartment, see if the little twerp is ok, and clean up whatever he’s doing. Right now. Those candles were getting low, I don’t want my building catching on fire. If it really is magic he’s doing, I don’t want to know about it, if he’s… summoning devils to help him with his math homework, or doing voodoo to hex his old gym teacher or… whatever, just go in there and tell him to stop stinking up the hallway.”

A disarming chuckle finally escaped my lips as Sara finished her impromptu tirade, clearly feeling a little better at having gotten all of that off of her chest. She had spoken the last part in such a rush that I hadn’t had the chance to get a word in edgewise, but now that she had finished, I spoke immediately. “A hundred. Two hundred if there is anything actually magic going on. I’ll be honest and tell you. If I’m not sure, if it’s spooky but maybe he’s just trying something he found on 4chan, we split the difference and call it one-fifty.”

My gig-work had been slow this month, and while I was pretty sure I was going to make rent, a little extra buffer wouldn’t hurt anything. Also, I checked my gift as quickly as I could, and there weren’t any bright warning signs in it, meaning even if she said no, I probably wouldn’t piss her off badly enough for consequences in the process. To my utter shock, the petite brunette nodded her assent almost instantly. “Deal. I’ll walk you to the hall and give you the master key. You check it out tonight, put out any candles, and do… whatever you can to stop any spooky shit you see, and I’ll knock some off your next payment. If it’s just stupid shit, let me know and I’ll get the cops in to evict his ass. If he’s hurt in there, we’ll call an ambulance. And then I’ll get the cops in to evict his ass.”

My apartment was on the third floor - the result of a promise I made myself after my first apartment, to never let anyone live directly above me - and on the opposite side of the building, so it took a few minutes for Sara and I to walk to Mycah’s apartment. I thought back as I did, trying to conjure an image of the man. Kid, really - I think I had only met him a couple of times, but had a vague recollection of a skinny scene kid, tall and gangly, looking like he only stopped haunting the Hot Topic because mall security kicked him out for staring again. The only reason I had caught his name was that he was one of the finalists at a Halloween party costume contest some of the residents had thrown. Thinking back, I couldn’t remember the details of what he had worn, except that the scepter he’d carried around with it had looked surprisingly well made.

To my surprise, Sara stopped walking before we turned on to the hallway that contained Mycah’s apartment. Even here, probably fifty feet away, I could start to pick up the astringent herbal scent my landlady warned me about. While not overpowering, it felt like the smell drifted straight up my nostrils and settled in roots at the back of my sinuses, leaving my whole face feeling slightly itchy. The brunette woman fished out a silver key with a worn lime-green cover and held it out to me, warning, “I will need that back,” as a fierce look crossed her eyes. It faded quickly, though, and she followed it with a quieter, “I’ll… I’m heading back to the main office. Stop by when you’re done. If I don’t hear back from you in an hour or two, I’m just calling the cops to be done with it.”

I took the key, nodding and reassuring her, “It’s probably nothing bad. If I’m worried, or he’s tripped up on drugs or something, I’ll just back out and come get you. If it’s something spooky and I don’t think I can handle it, I’ll run, slam the door behind me, and call some of my cousins...” I waited until Sara was nodding along at that before grinning, and adding, “...the Ghostbusters.”

I fled around the corner before Sara could process that entirely, laughing quietly to myself as I heard a few muttered curse words behind me. True to her word, though, the petite woman stayed behind, and I heard her start to head back towards the stairwell as I approached the apartment.

The smell grew stronger as I neared 214. I could tell immediately why Mycah’s neighbors would have complained - the faintly itchy feeling on my face intensified into an almost burning sensation through my sinuses, making me feel as though I wanted to sneeze all the way back into my throat. I swallowed a few times to try to bring it under control, stepped up to the door, and slid the key Sara provided into the lock.

The door opened easily enough, with no more than a hint of a creak. The apartment beyond mostly mirrored mine in layout, lending the space an eerie sense of not-quite familiarity. The interior of Mycah’s apartment was dark, lit only by a few oversized candles scattered around his mostly barren living room. I tried reaching inside and flicking the light switch by the door, but was disappointed when the overhead bulb flashed out immediately, dying before it had the chance to cast more than a split-second’s illumination.

I checked with my gift before I actually took the first step past the apartment threshold. To my great relief, nearly the entire spectrum of outcomes for that limited action was a dull yellow - neither weal nor woe - with only a tiny hint of dull red to the side. That meant that I was in the realm of very little human intervention, with no free will to cloud my immediate future. That didn’t necessarily bode well for Mycah, but it was possible he was so asleep - or drugged - that he wasn’t in any position to wake up no matter what kind of stimulus he was exposed to.

Stepping into the apartment more fully, I began to walk very slowly and cautiously through the kitchen and towards the living room, checking my gift every couple of steps. None of the outcomes my talent foretold spoke of anything unusual happening, either to my benefit or my detriment, so I continued until I could see clearly past the kitchen counter and into the space beyond. Past the living room, a single darkened door opened into the bedroom, with the bathroom beyond that, but there weren’t any lights on past the door frame, so I couldn’t make out any details. Instead, I focused on what I could see of the living room, slowly sweeping my gaze over an admittedly very occult looking tableau.

Seven candles were guttering sporadically, having burned down to lumps of wax that could barely support a flame. Five of them were set in some kind of glass holders to form the points of a star set into a circle of some kind of white powder. Peering into the dim light, I realized Mycah had actually pried the carpet up from the floor and shoved it to the side, revealing stained particle board underneath. The remaining two candles flanked a massively oversized book set on a short lectern, just tall enough to be read from a kneeling position. The book must have been more than a foot on each side, filled with hundreds of yellowed pages. It was open towards near the end, with only a few pages remaining, held in place by some kind of crystalline rod in the center. To either side of the lectern were about a dozen wooden bowls, most of which appeared to hold something, but it was difficult in the relative darkness to make out most of the contents.

To the right of the bowls, a couple feet outside of the circle on the floor, was a pair of converse sneakers, laces untied, one on its side. A little closer to the circle was a pair of what looked like socks, dropped onto the exposed subflooring.

At that point, I turned around, walked back to the front door of the apartment and closed it, quietly shutting myself inside. I very deliberately did not lock either the doorknob or the deadbolt.

I walked over to the edge of the kitchen and paused to check my gift again. I wanted to take my time to very deliberately think through several possible actions that I might take, evaluating them to see how likely any of them were to bring me harm.

Walking around the edge of the living room to check out the bedroom: Very low chance of harm, very low chance of anything good.

Spending a minute to look through the kitchen: Low chance of harm, slight chance of moderate good.

Walking carefully over to the lectern and examining the book sitting on it: Low chance of harm, some chance of good, slight chance of… incredible harm.

I paused there for a moment, surprised. Most of the time when I was faced with possible different outcomes from my actions, it was down to the fact that I am myself quite human, with all the free will that implies. I’m also quite fallible, so if I have a chance to, for example, trip and fall onto something, my talent will pick that up as a chance of harm or danger. Usually, though, the outcomes of walking across a room were relatively bland and mild. Minor actions typically have correspondingly minor outcomes. In this case, though, something about my walking across a room to look at a book had a chance of causing something my gift identified as catastrophic. I doubled down and tried to focus on that, spending a few moments thinking through some very granular and specific sets of actions. If I were to walk around the kitchen, nothing terribly bad was likely to happen - very small amounts of dull red. If I were to step just inside the living room, six feet from the edge of the circle, I got the same quantity of very bright crimson red. If I were to step to the edge of the circle, I got a slightly larger amount of brilliant crimson danger. Bracing myself, I looked to answer the inevitable question.

If I stepped into the circle, I would die.

The moment I pondered letting so much as a finger drift past the edge of what looked like a star in a circle drawn with salt in the middle of Mycah’s apartment, my gift flashed a brighter scarlet than I think I had ever seen; at that moment I was pretty sure that stepping into traffic would produce a calmer shade. The violence of the response caused me to gasp and take an involuntary step back. When I stopped considering crossing the barrier, my gift’s warning faded, and I paused to steady my breathing and let my heart stop racing quite as quickly. I considered just standing here, waiting to see what happened, and received a second shock: my gift immediately flashed the same scarlet warning. Standing idle is no safer than crossing the barrier. As though reading my intentions, one of the candle flames flickered for just a moment despite the lack of breeze.

I immediately turned my talent on the notion of deliberately extinguishing one of the candles. Curiously, the outcome of that was divided into very clear areas of danger and safety.

I forced myself to calm down, realizing that the adrenaline pumping through my veins was clouding my use of my talent. Extinguishing a candle carried risks, but did not spell certain doom so I focused on the actions needed to extinguish a specific candle, stepping through each in turn. The outcomes for that were starkly divided. Blowing out the candles by the book would be relatively safe, with fringes of potential danger. Blowing out any of the candles around the edge of the circle brought the same immediate warning of terrible, unavoidable danger.

I knelt down and, one at a time, I worked my way through the steps which did not lead to my immediate demise, letting my gift guide me down the only safe path I could find.

Reading the book, enunciating each word carefully and deliberately.

Reaching into each bowl in turn, scattering first dark brown powder into the air, then flakes of dried herb into the candles.

Raising my hands to form a sign with my fingers, mirroring an image in the book. More reading. More signs. More powder, which burns into a smoke, which in turn floats up and forms the outline of a humanoid figure in the center of the pentacle.

With a final turn of the page, I took the only action I could find which would not result in immediate death, calling out in nearly a shout, my tongue forming words that felt unfamiliar and uncomfortable in my mouth.

All at once, the shape that was outlined in the ritual circle coalesced with a flash of deepest crimson, a light the color of blood which shone through my eyelids even as I shut them to try to avoid being blinded. When eventually I opened my eyes some moments later, the light had gone out, and in its place was a woman, kneeling up and looking at me intently.

I have always been terrible at guessing ages, but would have put her in her early twenties, mid twenties at the latest. Her face was objectively gorgeous - symmetrical, clear cream colored skin, with bright green eyes framed by long dark eyelashes. Full lips of a deep purple that could not possibly be natural. Her hair was cut into a short pixie bob, bright blonde with narrow streaks of green, pink, purple, and red peppered throughout.

She was also entirely and completely naked, and apparently unconcerned about that fact. While I had more pressing concerns on my mind, I will admit that I took a few seconds to take in her appearance. It had been a while since I saw an attractive woman naked in person, and my libido was apparently as unconcerned with the recent horrendous danger as she was with her lack of attire.

She was slender - far more so than I usually preferred - and obviously fit, with well defined abs and thighs. Her breasts were modest, but distinctly feminine, topped by small, bright pink nipples that were standing at full attention. Her knees were close enough together that a sliver of whatever modesty she might have was preserved, but a tiny tuft of blonde hair, streaked with green and pink, was just visible.

As she saw me looking over her, she leaned forward, hands and face pressing up as though against an invisible pane of glass. Glancing down, I realized that the pane matched with the edge of the circle drawn in white powder below.

She spoke as I was trying to gather my wits about me, her voice lower, throatier than I would have expected from her appearance. “You should let me out so we can fuck. If you break the circle, I can make you feel so, so good.”

She writhed slightly against the invisible force holding her in, slowly insinuating her body against it, her breasts pressed flat against the air even as her eyes sought mine out and locked her gaze to mine. A delicate pink tongue slipped out from between her purple lips, moistening them quickly and adding a few seconds to the time it took me to form a response.

“I… you’re trapped in there, right? The ritual, I… It wasn’t mine. I’m not familiar with what exactly it was trying to accomplish. Are you… a succubus?”

I finally managed to tear my eyes from hers, glancing over towards the pair of shoes outside of the circle, before turning my eyes towards the woman once more.

She answered easily enough, no hint of shame or hesitation in her throaty voice. “No. I’m a Sin Demon. Very different. Succubi are lesser demons, usually servants of some demon lord or prince sent to gather human souls and essence.” She paused for a moment, slowly sinking back onto her heels, only to let her knees drift very slowly and deliberately apart to flash a glimpse of what lay within. “I’m a greater demon. Not a lord or a prince, but not lesser. I have enough power to stand on my own, owing allegiance to none, save now to you, my Master.”

The demon’s last words staggered me for a moment, and I was silent for long enough that she took the initiative to speak again. “You should fuck me now. Get your initial offering of sins out of the way. I can feel the lust within you. You want this body. You want to take that fat cock of yours and plunge it into me again, and again, and hear my moans, and feel…”

“Enough!” I cut her off, rising to my feet and nearly staggering into the circle as my legs, stressed from kneeling for most of an hour while I performed the ritual, threatened to give out in protest. “I… yes, obviously you’re very attractive, not exactly my type but…”

She interjected smoothly, clearly not offended, “Forgive me, Master. My shape was formed by the one who initiated the ritual. I cannot change it without being released and re-summoned.”

I shook off her comments, beginning to pace back and forth in the limited confines of the apartment. “Look… You’re hot. Fuckable, obviously, that’s not my point.” She preened a little at my words, and began to slowly rise to her feet, dragging her body up along the invisible wall that confined her in an obvious show of provocation. “My point is that I don’t know the details of the ritual. You say I’m your Master? Well I… uhh… I command you to tell me the details of what I just did.”

I paused for just a moment, speaking again even as she opened her mouth to reply. “Not in like… exhaustive detail. I don’t know how much of a literal genie you’re going to be about this whole thing, I just want to know what kind of ritual this was and how it affected you and me.”

She looked at me quizzically for a moment at that, stating carefully, “I am not a genie, though I have met a few if you are looking to contact them. I am a Sin Demon. Gluttony, Wrath, Sloth, Pride, Envy, Greed, Lust. These are my domains. That one…” A delicate looking hand gestured towards the pair of empty shoes outside the circle, without taking her eyes off of me. “Sought to bind me to his service, specifically in my aspect of Lust. He did not perform the ritual correctly, nor do I suspect he truly understood it. He entered my embrace while the ritual was incomplete, and very nearly released me into the world entirely untethered in the process.”

She let out a little sigh at that, a fond smile curling her lips up for a moment before she continued. “You completed the binding. For as long as you continue to provide me an offering of Sin on a daily basis, I remain in your service, and will obey your commands to the best of my considerable ability. I am prepared to unleash Wrath upon your enemies, make you the Envy of your friends, fulfill your Gluttonous urges, and indulge your every whim of Lust with this body. In exchange, you will provide me with that which I require. You may sate my needs however you wish. Indulge your Pride, lording over your lessers, and I will absorb it as a plant soaks in the sun. Swell with Greed as you take, take, take, more than you could ever possibly use.” Her voice began to rise in pitch, obvious excitement creeping into it as she continued. “Take for yourself that which causes your Envy - your neighbors should not have what you do not have. Smash aside those who cause you Wrath, let them feel your fury.”

Her left hand, apparently entirely absently, traced its way across her abdomen, sliding down between her thighs to begin rubbing a single well manicured finger across the lips of her pussy, slowly beginning to spread the moisture that I now recognized was dripping out of her wildly excited sex. “Or, of course, let me soak in your Lust. Exhaust yourself upon my body, give in to your most depraved desires, and I will serve you loyally and faithfully. Or fail to deliver what was promised to me, and release me from your service into this world.”

This time when I was silent, she gave me time to think and absorb her words. Or perhaps she was simply absorbed herself into what she was doing, as she continued to slowly and deliberately run the tip of a single delicate finger up and down her sex, occasionally letting it slip between her lips to gather more of her copious lubrication as she spread it on her pussy.

I took the time offered to check with my gift, and was slightly astonished to discover that nearly all of the danger I had been sensing was gone. I was surprised further when I realized that despite being in the room with another living being, the readings of my immediate future were as sharply distinct as they were when I was alone in the room. The only free will acting on the situation was my own - this Sin Demon, whatever she was, possessed no will to muddy the possibilities.

I quickly checked to verify that there was no immediate harm in the action of breaking her containment. No red flashed across my vision, no sense of danger. In fact, the only things I could discover leading to my harm were if I took action to do so myself - and even then, only if I did so while leaving the Sin Demon in the circle. If, for example, I released her, and then took a kitchen knife to myself, she was apparently willing, and able, to prevent any harm from that act.

I took another appraising look at the woman who was now beginning to let the middle two fingers of her left hand push past the outer lips of her pussy, starting to finger herself in a standing position, leaning up against the invisible wall of the ritual chamber. Now that both she and I were standing, I realized that she was tiny, barely more than five feet tall. While she was fit, she was also slender, without any sort of bulging muscles or substantial fat on her body. Clearly, if she had the ability to stop harm from coming to me, there was more to her than met the eye, but my gift was telling me that none of the futures which branched off from my releasing her lead to my harm.

I swallowed, hard and deliberately, and then stepped up to the circle. Reaching one foot forward, I carefully pushed my toe through the ring of powder.

Immediately, the Sin Demon surged forward. While she had been leaning against her containment moments before, she showed nothing but grace and languid fluidity as she pressed her naked body against mine the moment she was able. Through my clothes, I could feel firm small breasts press into my chest, and her entire body seemed to radiate heat as she moved her lips to my ear. “Thank you, Master. I promise you… my service will not disappoint.”

I opened my mouth to respond, only for her to slide the two fingers that she had been using to play with herself between my lips. I was greeted with a sharp, tangy, and almost spicy flavor that had me closing my eyes and sucking at her fingers hungrily. Even as I did so, I could feel her other hand wrapping around me, pulling me into her firmly. Despite her slender frame, there was considerable strength in her embrace, and while I had no particular desire to escape right now, I questioned whether I would even be able to. My hands rose up on their own, cupping her backside and finding that each of her cheeks fit nicely into my palms, firm and only slightly yielding to my clutching fingers.

With her lips still pressed to my ear, I felt her hot breath wash over me as she spoke in that throaty voice of hers, words quiet and intense. “I want you to fucking rut in me, Master. You and I are going to fuck so much, and later I will take the time to bring your lust to a boil before you give into it, but right now I need you to slake your lust on this body.”

She let her fingers slide from between my lips as she finished, instead trailing them down my body and letting her hand undo the zipper of my pants with a single motion. I felt her fingertips quest their way through my fly, slipping into my boxers, and I couldn’t help but let out a groan of need and relief as her hand wrapped itself around my cock. I couldn’t be certain, but I was fairly sure I had been rock hard from the very moment my eyes set upon her in the circle, and now that I could feel her working her wrist to stroke me in short motions, I desperately needed even more from her still.

My eyes darted over to the darkened door to the bedroom, and as though she could sense my gaze, the Sin Demon slid her fingers free, releasing my dick and causing me to gasp in protest. Instead, she wiggled delightfully, somehow escaping my hands which still desperately longed to cup her firm ass, and strutted her way into the bedroom.

With very little conscious thought contributing to the decision, I followed. Whatever warnings or advice my gift might offer were a distant haze in my mind. By the time I reached Mycah’s bedroom, the Sin Demon was lying down on top of a shockingly neatly made bed, on her back atop the blankets with her knees bent and her feet pulled up to her ass to give me the best possible view of a pussy that was pink, gushing fluid, and spread open to welcome me. Her green eyes looked across the small room at me from between her raised knees, purple lips parted as she breathed hard, panting out, “Master… please…”

I’m not entirely sure at what point my clothes were removed, but somewhere between the doorway of the bedroom and the foot of the bed itself, I found myself naked. My cock stood out ahead of me, quite possibly harder than I had ever been in my life prior, and it took me only a few moments to slide my body on top of hers. One of her arms wrapped around my shoulders, urging me closer, while her other hand slid down between us. I could feel her fingers grasping my cock, lining me up with her slit, even as her hips rose up off of the bed to meet me. I allowed myself to be guided, and in a single smooth stroke, buried myself hard into her pussy. Her entire body rocked as I did so, a deep moan escaping her lips as she flung her head back, hips rocking forward to meet my thrust. “Oh Fuck, Master… more please… fuck me more…”

I gave the woman what she wanted. I pulled my hips back, her pussy dragging at me, embracing me, trying its best to keep my cock inside her, only to give way and welcome me back as I thrust forward again. The inside of her body was molten hot, and my cock seemed more sensitive than normal, every nerve ending lighting up with rapture as her cunt hungrily devoured everything I had to give.

The Sin Demon’s back arched as I gave her what she had been begging for since she arrived. Her breasts, small but incredibly firm, barely gave way as she pushed them towards me. I accepted her offering, lowering my own head to wrap my mouth around one taut nipple, then the other, drawing further encouraging moans from her. “Oh Master yes… bite them, suck them, play with them. Every lustful urge you have, sate it upon this body. Your body. My body is yours, my Master!”

My hips pulled back, then slammed into hers, even as I let my teeth bite down on her nipple, feeling the tight nub yield to my advances. I began to let out my own moans as the feeling of the Sin Devil’s pussy grabbing and rubbing at my cock with every thrust started to urge me towards orgasm. Her hands wrapped around me, grabbing at my body, and I found myself with my head pressed to hers, her lips so close to my ear that I could feel her hot breath on my skin as she urged, “Fill my cunt. Fuck, fuck, yes, fill me. Soon enough you can take me however, whenever, wherever you want, but right now let me feel you fill my needy, greedy little pussy with your cum. My Master’s cum. Please please please yess…..”

I could feel the orgasm taking the Sin Demon even as my hips continued to slam into her, the tightness of her pussy doing everything it could to push at my cock, even as her hips lined up to ensure I could keep up the rhythm of fucking her as hard and as fast as I was able.

A moment later, I could feel another flutter of her pussy around my cock as another orgasm rocked her body, leading to her fingernails lightly raking across my back, and that was enough. I could feel my orgasm tipping over the edge, and my entire body rocked, my hips pressing forward as I buried myself as deeply inside my Demon as I was able, claiming her. Spurt after spurt of my cum filled her, pushing forward into her molten pussy, filling it and marking it as my own, even as she moaned into my ears. “Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes, make. Me. Yours!”

What felt like an eternity later, I collapsed atop her, still buried inside a pussy that now slowly squeezed around my cock, milking me for the last drops I had within me. It took me a moment to realize I must be crushing her under my weight, but she surprised me when, as I moved to shift my weight off of her, she instead wriggled her hips to bring them closer to my own and squeezed both her arms around my body. “Mmm please, Master. Let me enjoy this a little longer. Don’t worry - I can take it.”

I breathlessly collapsed atop her, letting her body support me, panting gently as I attempted to catch my breath. Her hips continued to writhe, and when I opened my eyes to look at her, I discovered hers were closed, an expression of rapture on her face, dark purple lips parted in ecstatic pleasure.

Eventually, the sensations started to become too much for me, and I shifted my hips back. Her arms squeezed around me once, as though to prevent me from leaving, then released, letting me push myself back up and causing my cock to slip free of her molten embrace. I gasped a little at the sudden change, but then allowed myself to slump to the side, my body still pressed to hers. Her voice was sleepy and warm, her eyes still closed as she murmured, “Yes… now sleep, Master. More fucking in the morning. Sleep now…”

I felt my eyelids slide shut as I began to give in to Sloth.