I might have gone to sleep flanked by two Cindys, but I woke up with a Rose on one side. The curvaceous Fae woman presented a compelling argument for snuggling in close and returning to sleep, but my very full bladder presented a counterargument I was unable to overrule.

The evening’s dreams had been somewhat tumultuous, and the thought occurred to me as I used the bathroom that I could still head back to bed. By the time I had washed my hands, though, I felt wide awake—if not particularly well rested—so I wandered towards the kitchen to see who else was up so early in the morning.

It was just past dawn, so it wasn't much of a surprise to discover that my apartment was mostly still and empty. The only one who normally got up this early was Aubrette, but the redhead was nowhere to be seen, so I assumed she was doing what I’d wanted to and was sleeping in a bit.

I had just finished pouring myself a cup of coffee when someone walked into the kitchen, but it wasn’t one of the women who’d been sharing their lives with me for the past several months. Instead, Tzila appeared, dressed in what looked like one of my button-down shirts. She still had on the same loose cotton pants she’d been wearing the day before, but must have taken me up on my offer to make herself at home and checked the closets in the spare bedroom. Much of my own closet was now taken up by various outfits and lingerie, and the clothing that had been hanging there had included the nicer shirts and slacks I wore when I needed to dress up to impress a client.

The shirt Tzila was wearing looked good on her. The suspicious glance she shot in my direction did not. Still, she didn’t flee, and when I offered her a cup of coffee, she accepted. I motioned for her to pull up a chair at the table across from me and she slid into the seat smoothly, then sipped at her coffee without adding so much as a pinch of sugar.

“This is good.”

“I’m glad! Rose recommended it, they’re a local roaster.”

“I will remember to compliment her on her taste.”

I bit back a lewd comment that floated to the top of my mind on the subject of Rose’s taste, and instead took another swallow of my coffee. Mine had both creamer and sugar included, as God intended. Or Gods. I wasn’t actually entirely clear on that topic, Zarina had spent some time talking about Gods with Sara not too long ago, but I’d only been half listening, and half the conversation was spent with my nominally devoted Catholic landlady asking increasingly specific questions about saints.

“Look, Tzila-“ She turned to focus on me as I spoke. In the morning light, the metallic glow of her eyes was less intimidating than it had been right before bed, and her features seemed softer. Still slightly intimidating, but no less breathtakingly beautiful for it. “-about what I said last night-“

“Please do not concern yourself, Jack. You were absolutely in the right about the assumptions I made, and I would like to offer my apologies. You made yourself perfectly clear in your intentions, and I spent the time I could not sleep pondering my answer to your question.”

I gawked at her. She still seemed somewhat stiff, but the outright hostility in her body language was gone. In its place was a sort of conscientious choice of courtesy. It was not exactly the warmest example of civilized behavior I’d seen, but it provided at least a glimpse of a woman who might not be terrible to be around. It went a small but noticeable distance to alleviate my concerns about my ability to offer her hospitality if she were to remain combative towards everyone around her.

“You asked me to consider what you should do with me. Given my personal preferences, and what I have seen of yours, I believe there are only two realistic suggestions. While you could release me into the world to do as I will, I do not believe I would be able to simply walk away. The magic that binds me to the ring is too powerful to ignore, and I would feel a pull towards the bearer even should they resist the urge to summon me.”

That would seem to rule that option out. It was the only idea I’d had floating around in the back of my head since I’d inherited control of the Jinn’s ring. I’d made pretty much the same offer to Rose, but she’d been much more enthusiastic about staying with me, and given the amount of fun she seemed to have around me, I’d wager that she was playing up the effects of the bond at times to give her an excuse to vamp on me.

More than once, I’d been surprised to learn that apparently I had a great need to ride her, and she, as my mount, was there to serve. Then again, every time she made the offer it turned out to be a really good idea, so maybe there was something to her awareness of my needs after all.

Tzila didn’t seem quite so inclined to enthusiastically join in, so I had vaguely thought that she might be interested in me just trying to find a way to let her get on with her life. I didn’t think she would exactly have a legal identity in the world, but she could turn into smoke, so I wasn't especially worried about her being arrested if she got caught shoplifting, or whatever.

That it apparently wasn’t an option wasn’t particularly welcome, but neither did it come as much of a surprise.

“You could give the ring to someone else, of course, but that would take the matter of my fate out of your hands and into another’s. Given what you told me last night and your reaction to the suggestion that you might force me to become your servant or concubine, my assessment of your character suggests that you would be unlikely to be comfortable with that suggestion. The remaining two options I could see were that you allow me to remain a member of your household, or that you allow me to slumber away as many years as you are able, to dream and hope that time alone would be enough to break the binding of the spell.”

I swallowed. There was a challenge in the Jinn’s tone that was undeniable, but I found myself drawn to the way she all but dared me to refute her logic.

I could not. Of the options she offered, the only real variation I could see was that no matter what, I wanted to give Zarina the chance to study the ring. She might not be able to decipher the enchantment on it immediately, but I wanted to find out if that was an option, whether Tzila believed it possible or not.

But since I intended that to happen no matter how unlikely the Jinn thought the chances of success, I didn’t see any reason to quibble over the point now.

“That sounds perfectly rational, and I appreciate the concise delivery of your reasoning and conclusions. Before I say ‘welcome to the household’, I want you to talk with me.”

“To talk with you?”

“Yes. I’d like to know a little more about you. There’s more to being a good housemate than the ability to remain civil at breakfast. I want to know more about the woman I’m potentially inviting into my life.”

* * *

“I would go to the City of Carnelian and claim the throne in the Castle of Gold.”

Tzila leaned forward across the couch with an unexpectedly fond smile on her face.

“From there I would cast out whatever usurper leads my tribe today, that I might call upon the ancient alliances with the other tribes. From there, I would establish a foothold in the world of men while the seven hundred seventy seven million of our armies spread my control over the lands we once ruled. I would reunite the lands under my rightful banner and return the rule of the Earth to where it was rightfully granted in the hands of the benevolent Jinn.”

This conversation had not gone the way I had expected.

The first time I met Cindy, I had learned something about my Gift. My ability to predict the future is limited to providing me with a range of outcomes, good to bad, without any greater detail. Further, the accuracy of my predictions can vary wildly due to the unexpected interference of good old fashioned human behavior.

In discussing the topic with Zarina, the wizard had informed me that the restriction of my ability was not only not uncommon, it was an absolute law of divinations. No magic could predict the actions of the truly free willed.

What I discovered when I encountered a genuine demon of Sin in the flesh, was that the truly magical creatures of the world such the tiny blonde herself were not possessed of free will. The same proved true for both the noble Sidhe and the Puca. It wasn’t something I think you could possibly notice unless you were gifted with the ability to sense the future, but to the magical sense that manifested itself as vivid colors when I focused on an outcome, the responses of any of those three was as certain as the ticking of a clock.

I obviously couldn’t actually tell what their responses would be, but they would be consistently whatever they were, devoid of the vagaries an interaction with a free willed individual like Zarina or Sara brought about.

Turning my Gift on Tzila gave me that same sense of the absolute. If I talked to her, there was a very healthy chance that there was a very good outcome.

I’d been following that thread of cerulean blue through my responses as best I could, but the responses the Jinn had been providing made me wonder what exactly my inherent magic considered to be a ‘good’ outcome. I felt like I was walking through a field with a metal detector, but when it started beeping I suddenly wasn’t sure if I was searching for treasure, or mines.

The Jinn certainly seemed to think the topic was a good one. An unexpectedly sensual smile spread across her- wow, incredibly soft looking pink lips. The lower lip parted from the top and I caught the hint of a delicate tongue as it darted out to moisten them.

She seemed to suddenly snap back to reality and remember that I was in the room. Her mouth shut and her eyes met mine. Several complicated expressions flashed across her face, but when they settled I think she was trying to be reassuring. “Humans would still be allowed to serve and prosper, of course. Under our guidance. It may be the nature of the lesser races to squabble, but all would thrive under the divine rule of the Throne of Brass.”

I stared into her eyes and asked flatly, “So if I freed you, you would immediately leave and work to enslave mankind under the rule of an army of supernatural beings with magic powers the likes of which mankind has not seen in centuries or millennia?”

I wasn’t very successful at keeping the incredulity off of my face.

“Yes.” She paused only briefly before adding somewhat imperiously, “The Earth was given to the Jinn as our birthright. That we would permit mankind to exist upon it is a product of our inherently generous nature.”

There was a lot to unpack there. My Gift assured me this was a good outcome, so I pressed on.

“Do you believe that if you were freed from the ring, you would be able to accomplish that goal? Somehow rise up and raise an army of Jinn to somehow take over the world?”

“Of course.”

There was some hurt in Tzila’s voice and she glared at me for a moment.

Then her shoulders dropped a little and she added a little more quietly, “It has, admittedly, been millennia since I was last among my people. It is a little hard to imagine that the seven hundred seventy seven million of my father’s kingdom is simply sitting idly by somewhere while the world is overrun by man, but I am confident in my capabilities. I might have been twenty-third in line for the throne, but I will not bring shame to my father’s house. One way or another, the current order will fall, and I see the return of justice to the world.”

I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped me. When her eyes narrowed dangerously, I waved a hand to fend her off and explained, “I’m not laughing at you, sorry. The way you said that, I couldn’t help but think you could get a following. If you want into politics- or hell, podcasting, you could get people to listen in. There’s a lot of people who would love to see the downfall of the current order.”

Her expression softened, mollified, and I quickly hurried on to chase after that still present thread of good fortune, “And you don’t think I could free you? No… wishing you free? Or giving you the ring?”

She shook her head, and said through a sad little smile, “You are not the first person to hold my ring and possess some honor, Jack. Others have tried. You could command me to be free, but the magic of the ring only compels my obedience, and I lack the power to free myself. The ring itself is beyond my grasp—it is less tangible to me than air. The ring is undamaged after millennia and my masters count among their number great wizards and seers who studied it long hours without deciphering its mysteries.”

I sighed. I hadn’t expected things to be that easy, but it would’ve been nice.

Still, this was probably enough. My Gift told me that, as far as I was concerned, this choice would lead me to the greatest happiness of all the ones I could think of.

I pushed myself back from the table and rose. I needed a shower. The coffee was starting to kick in, and I needed to get started on my day.

“I’ll start by saying that as soon as I met her, I asked Zarina to start working on breaking magic bindings. I want to ask her to put her skills towards breaking your enchantment. Even if, as you predict, she isn’t able to figure out how to destroy the ring or free you, maybe she’ll be able to figure out something that will help her free herself. Unless you strongly object to her trying, I’m going to ask her to spend at least some time on that no matter what.

“I won’t promise it’ll succeed, but I’m going to try to find a way to free you. If I do, I’ll ask you very politely to not conquer mankind, but you’d be a free woman at that point so whether you granted it would be up to you. In the meantime, you’ve got the closest thing to freedom I can give you within the confines of your- curse?

“You’re welcome to join my household for as long as you can get along with everyone here. I’m afraid you’re joining us at a rather… transitional moment, so things are likely to be turbulent for a while, but hopefully less than they were when we were being actively hunted by vampires.”

Tzila actually cracked a smile. “Thank you, Jack.” Her expression grew serious again and she stated, “I am still uncertain about my future but I recognize the effort you are putting effort into not abusing your power and thank you for it. Now, if you will permit me, I would like to spend some time in contemplation on my next steps.”

I gave her my warmest and friendliest smile. “Please do. I’m gonna grab a shower. You’re welcome to hang out in the kitchen and see what everyone is up to as they get up.”

With that I turned and headed to the bathroom to try to boil away the hours spent riding in the saddle the day before.

* * *

As I soaked in steaming hot water courtesy of a recently magically cleaned and repaired central water heater, I let my mind wander.

I was pretty sure the point I’d made the night before about the life going on after a grand adventure was not only true, but overdue for examination. While the last few weeks had gone by, I’d mostly been coasting on the savings I’d managed to build up thanks to adding honest-to-god physically obvious magic to my otherwise slightly sketchy-looking inherent powers.

I’d been able to make a ton more money, because I could take away the element of uncertainty in what I was selling—there was no doubt to my clients about whether or not I was performing magic. When a dude watches his car detail itself after another dude draws a chalk circle and burns some incense around it while chanting from a big ass ancient book, it’s not like he can deny that the supernatural is occurring.

It had gotten to the point where I’d been concerned about drawing attention to myself.

My parents, when they gave me ‘the talk’, had spent no small amount of time imparting a sense of vague dread surrounding the consequences of divulging the supernatural nature of our family. One of the key elements was the distant presence of ‘The Wizards’, and the evils that could befall you if you drew their ire.

When I started selling my services I wasn’t really concerned about being noticed. There are thousands of ‘psychics’ in the world who claimed to see the future, and in a lot of ways, the only difference between me and them was that my advice was better.

I was sure there was no way a wizard would trace anything back to me. The impression my parents had made on me was of a handful of distant towers filled with bearded men and flinty-eyed women who had their noses buried among the stars as they deciphered the secrets of the universe.

As far as I could tell, the only reason they’d come down on someone was if that person was doing something which might cause enough of a fuss to disturb their wizardly meditations, or whatever, and my Gift just wasn’t a big enough deal.

When I’d started translating and performing the rituals from the book, I’d gained access to a slowly growing repertoire of abilities, some of which were obvious and, therefore, might have drawn the ire of ‘The Wizards’ of which my parents had spoken.

The money was too good to resist, though, so I’d talked to my regular customers and expanded my offerings. I figured that if ‘The Wizards’ were really so high and mighty, me performing a few little rituals for cash was probably not even on the scale they’d notice and recognize.

For the first several months that I’d done it, I’d made very sure not to let anyone film anything I did with their cell phone, or anything. The last thing I wanted was to go viral on TikTok and wind up with the high and mighty deciding that I was worth investigating after all.

When I’d started talking to—and banging—a wizard, I’d learned that while she was in fact mighty, she was also incredibly friendly after I’d cleared up her initial misunderstanding. Thanks to her perspective, I’d learned a whole lot more about what was actually going on than my parents’ fifth-hand rumors had allowed.

For one thing, I’d gotten things backwards when it came to wizardly intentions and abilities—there were hundreds or sometimes thousands of them in several major cities, so while the world population of wizards wasn’t exactly vast, it was larger than I had realized. There were enough of them around that they could have tracked down those performing magic for the ‘normal’ population, myself included, had they chosen.

That they didn’t wasn’t because it was beneath their notice, but because sometime in the late sixties, there had been a shift in attitudes towards the secrecy of magic.

The wizards of the world were ready to go public.

They obviously hadn’t decided to just make a TV broadcast and be done with it—they were still wizards, and not only bound by their traditions, but also by an apparently well-earned reputation for needing to do things in a roundabout and sneaky way, even if it took decades.

The current encouraged behavior was normalizing the presence of magic, and my commercial activities actually fit right in. If a random dude in the suburbs could—for example—perform a magical ritual to help keep your car clean, the people who knew about him were a lot less likely to panic when it turned out that sometimes one of his girlfriends had cat’s whiskers and goat’s feet.

Standing in the way of their plan were the centuries of tradition that had kept families like mine in hiding. It wasn’t like even the major wizarding families in the world like the Malles, the Kheraskovs, or the Kaminaris were monolithic. Some wizards opposed the plan, others were fine with it but weren’t willing to take action to advance it, and the ones who tried to actively spread the word still didn’t have access to any kind of registry of wizards and minor talents in the world.

One of the reasons Zarina had been spending some of her time in the library was an attempt to make contact with the communities and grapevines of St. Louis. I’d only come to her attention in a negative light because I’d shown up asking about demon-summoning and the Fae.

Unfortunately, messages got distorted in the passing from mouth to ears, and not everyone trusted the elites of the magical world to play nice, so reliably spreading the word had proved all but impossible. Not helping were the inevitable cases where a wizard had been a bit gruff in asking some small group to keep their heads down a little so they didn’t spook the normies all at once. Rumors tended to get bigger as they spread, and by the time they reached people like my parents, a quiet word in private had turned into twelve people being banished to the hells because two minor talents were seen talking in public at a bar.

Once Zarina let me know what was up, I’d been able to expand my services a lot, which had also nicely grown my bank account.

I’d also sent several emails to my parents asking them to spread the word, which had resulted in a bunch of confused responses from my mother that meant I was going to have to find time to call her sometime soon. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to that. As much as I loved my parents, they could be a lot to deal with, and any conversation with my mom was going to involve a lot of prying questions which I was reluctant to answer, especially given my recent love life.

For now they were going to have to make do with emails while I figured out what to do with my life. I had Cherto’s whole ‘ransom’ to deal with, and while I knew intellectually what the gold represented, it was hard to wrap my head around it emotionally.

I’d spent most of my life hovering on the edge of poverty. When Cherto came to my apartment to broker peace between us, he’d done so carrying a sum of money so vast and so far outside of my life experiences I had no idea what to actually do with it.

Fortunately, I had more than one person I could talk to about that, including someone who was both well accustomed to the behaviors of the upper crust and had personally experienced the process of being uplifted from a common background to a position of nobility.

Aubrette might have only been a lady in waiting, and not the sparkling crown jewel of her royal court, but she would have some wisdom to share with me.

As I resolved to speak with her, my mind latched onto the thought of sparkling jewels and something tickled at the back of my head. It took me a moment to chase the thought down, but my mind connected the arrival of the Jinn to the sparkle of jewels, and my eyes grew wide with excitement.

* * *

It turned out that the diamonds Jannsens had tried to use to buy the book—which was apparently called The Book of Jannes—from me were not among the items Cindy had brought back from the witch’s lair. On the other hand, when I asked Tzila about them, she was able to immediately tell me where they’d been hidden, because she was the one who had actually placed them there, burying them among the wooded ridges of the park on Josina’s orders.

“Shall I fetch them for you?”

The Jinn’s words were polite, but there was an edge to them. She’d been in the midst of talking to Aubrette when I’d finished my shower and gotten dressed, and the two appeared to have been bonding over some shared tales of their respective royal courts. I wasn’t sure if her body language was a result of my having interrupted a chance to bond or if there was something else going on, but it left me studying her in surprise as I tried to figure out if I had misstepped.

In the meantime, her glowing eyes gazed unblinkingly up at me as she put on an obvious display of patience in response.

My eyes closed as I deliberately tried to re-frame my approach to her. I could figure out why she was acting angry later, for now I just needed to make sure things stayed civil so I shrugged my shoulders lightly. “It’s not an order, if that’s what you mean.”

It was her turn to study me, before she carefully stated, “As a member of your household, it would not be out of place for you to make certain reasonable requests of me. Your Sidhe vassal, for example, has explained that she regularly uses her magic to assist you. Even if you were not the bearer of my ring, it would behoove me to put forth effort to please you as the head of my new house.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose between two fingers and did my best to bite back a sigh. For all that Tzila had mentioned joining my household, it occurred to me that she might have a view of how a family behaved that wasn’t exactly in line with my own sensibilities. I had, for example, been hoping to avoid any overt shows of obsequiousness from the Jinn.

My eyes closed as I did my best to think through Tzila’s perspective. I could guess at some of the treatment Tzila had undergone at the hands of her former Masters, and she’d shown me a little of how she had been raised to behave. Between that, and a judicious consultation of my Gift, I eventually crafted a reply that should continue down the path of a good outcome.

“I did not invite you to my house with the intention of making you my subordinate, Tzila. You made it clear this morning that you believe you should be ruling over all of mankind. Maybe some of your former- the people who held your ring before-“

“My former Masters.” The Jinn’s tone was informative rather than angry, so I just used her word rather than trying to find my own.

“Maybe some of your former Masters believed things should be the other way around and they should be ruling you. I don’t. I do, however, believe that if you intend to remain as a member of this household, you should do your best to contribute as an equal. I’m not going to use either the power of the ring, or whatever authority I have as the ‘head of the household’ to command you. I will say that I’d be stupid not to go and collect a hundred thousand dollars worth of diamonds that are just buried in the ground, and if you wanted to thumb your nose at the evil witch who enslaved you for the last five-hundred years, or whatever, recovering the spoils of war from her would be a good step in the right direction."

This time, it was my turn to stare a challenge into Tzila’s glowing golden eyes, and her turn to study me in silence for a time.

“One hundred and sixty-two.”

When I tilted my head to the side in obvious confusion without looking away, Tzila explained. “I was kept by Josina Janssens for one hundred and sixty-two years, to the best of my understanding. She kept a journal which I was able to examine once, and discovered that she had noted the date of the first time she had summoned me. I cannot easily track the passage of time myself, because I cannot measure time which passes when I am returned to the ring.”

There was still an edge to the Jinn’s voice, but it was much more tightly controlled. She put clear effort into controlling her emotions, and continued in a somewhat more even tone, “Your statements are reasonable, and I will do my best to conduct myself as a worthy member of your house, Jack. My apologies. I will try to moderate my own behavior to fit in here.”

“I-“ My response died on my lips. She was obviously trying to fit in, but the attempt wasn’t as smooth as I would have preferred. My Gift still shone with a welcome blue, though, so I wasn’t entirely surprised when she cracked a tiny hint of a smile.

She turned towards Aubrette and asked, “Will you excuse me? I believe I have a case full of diamonds to retrieve.”

It was a start. For now, it would have to do.

* * *

One of the things that I always appreciated about Aubrette was that she took her position as my vassal seriously.

The Sidhe woman might have originally sworn an oath to my service because she needed a way to obtain Glamour to survive outside of Faerie, but she didn’t behave as though her position in my household was a fiction. Instead, she dutifully dedicated herself to behaving as though I was the entirety of the new royal court that she served—a prince in exile, to whom she could devote her service.

The fact that I allowed her to indulge her kinks and expose the naughty fairy behind the prim mask she wore wasn’t even at odds with her description of her former court. Aubrette in particular hadn’t been able to express that side of herself, but that didn’t mean that her behavior in my house was particularly at odds with some of the hijinks she described—Royal Sidhe might have been stately and regal figures when viewed from a distance, but apparently the redheaded voyeur of my house wasn’t even close to the kinkiest fairy around.

When she wasn’t spying on me, though, she was diligently working to contribute to the betterment of my household. The fact that said household was currently comprised of a Sidhe, a Puca, a demon and a wizard was irrelevant compared to the fact that it was mine. It was heartwarming how much Aubrette didn’t care where anyone had come from, since she focused entirely on the fact that they were here now.

The morning after Tzila recovered a case full of diamonds from the forest, I found Aubrette seated in front of my laptop in the kitchen. Despite the early hour, she was already dressed in a long sleeved blouse of rich forest green, with a neckline that swooped low enough to reveal a mouthwatering expanse of her delectable décolletage. She offered me a warm smile when I slid into the chair beside her, and gestured at the screen.

Her choice of reading material was one of the driest subjects I could personally imagine, but there was genuine excitement in her voice as she asked, “Good morning, my Lord! Do you have time this morning to sit and discuss the matter of your recent windfalls and the plans which you expressed a desire to explore?”

I let my mug of coffee warm my hands as I offered her a slightly more subdued smile in return. Despite the somewhat heavy nature of the thoughts echoing in the back of my mind, it was hard not to find the redhead’s earnest disposition endearing. Compared to a certain Sin Demon, Aubrette was less performative, but she also didn’t do things by halves, which meant that when I got to see her pour herself into a project I knew that it was coming from a place of personal satisfaction.

“Sure. I’ve got something to talk to you about when we get some time, but I’d love some help in figuring out how to proceed from here.”

She spun my laptop around to show me the screen.

“I have taken the estimates of the value of your gold that Mistress Zarina has provided and used them as a starting point to begin to explore the local properties that are available in this territory. You expressed the desire to remain in this area so that you could continue to expand your base of clients and customers, and I have taken that into account when choosing the parameters of my search. I have been studying the laws by which estates are purchased and taxed, and I believe this list of properties is a decent starting point from which you might select a future home.”

I raised my coffee to my lips and sipped as I leaned forward and started to look over the screen.

Lots of the numbers on it were larger than I was used to dealing with. The apartment I’d been living in when Cindy came into my life had been around six hundred square feet in size, and wasn’t the smallest place I’d ever called home.

The smallest building Aubrette had chosen to show me this morning was more than six thousand square feet, and the largest was nearly three times that size. They also had price tags to match, and I had to work hard to avoid spraying coffee over the screen when I saw how many digits followed the dollar signs at the top of the screen.

“Naturally, I would love to hear your particular thoughts on each of the properties I have selected, as well as any criteria you would like me to add to my requirements.”

I spent the next couple minutes sipping my coffee and clicking through the different tabs of real estate listings on the screen while I did my best not to wince at the numbers displayed along the top. It wasn’t easy, but the pressure I felt as I struggled to accept my new reality helped remind me why I’d sought out the fairy in particular.

“Hey, Aubrette-“

She turned from where she’d been leaning over to look at the screen and I lost myself as I turned to meet her brilliant blue eyes. I had to fight back the urge to lean in and claim her appealingly full lips because I knew that if I succumbed to that urge, there was no way I’d be able to stop at just a kiss.

I cleared my throat and started again. “I was hoping you could help me with something. I’m- not from a rich background. My parents didn’t exactly struggle to feed me growing up, but we were barely middle-class at the best of times, and I’m not sure how to-“ I struggled for the words for a moment, then gestured at the screen and finished, “-how to live my life when numbers like that aren’t just a fantasy, but a real thing I have to keep in mind.”

And because Aubrette took her role as my vassal seriously, she responded to my words with quiet thought and contemplation rather than giving me a glib or simple answer off the top of her head.

I did my best to avoid squirming under the intense scrutiny of the gorgeous Fae woman as she studied me. The sense of vulnerability I felt gnawed at me from the inside, but the thoughtful, open expression Aubrette showed went a long way towards easing the massive sense of insecurity that quivered at the edge of my mind.

“There are many ways in which you could conduct yourself, My Liege, but I would suggest that you have perhaps already started down the path which I would most recommend, you merely lack the context required to recognize that you have already set yourself up for your success.”

My confusion must have shown on my face, because the redhead paused only long enough to let her words settle in before she continued. “When I was elevated from Common to Noble Sidhe, I found myself subject to a host of rules which guided my new behavior. It is the nature of Fae to behave as we must to fulfill our roles and duties, and while the specifics will vary from individual to individual, we are what we are and cannot escape our fates. I was thrust into the royal court within a day of receiving my mantle, and expected to perform my role with the same dignity and gravitas as the grizzled warden of the hunt who carried the prince’s spear for the past thousand years.”

Her nose crinkled a little when she smiled and added, “Thanks to a particularly talkative maid, I found out a year later that he’d also been ‘carrying the prince’s spear’ for most of that time, but that is not particularly relevant to this discussion.”

She paused to take a sip of her coffee, and I resisted the urge to jump in and ask her for more details. The Sidhe was obviously building to a point, and I wasn’t going to help by interrupting.

“More important to my personal story was the behavior of the Lady Fredda. She had joined the court some mere decade or two before my arrival, and it was she who provided me with a model of behavior to emulate. Her bearing was noble, of course, but it was the way that she surrounded herself with those who empowered her success that truly inspired me. The Lady was a ward of the royal court, which should have meant in theory that she had only what power the crown chose to give her, but through a deft touch and a close circle of friends she was the woman I knew who was always prepared to handle any situation that arose, from feuding margraves to recalcitrant cooks.

“My position in the court was never one of great import, and I was never able to perfectly emulate her success, but her approach was one that served me well, and which it might benefit you to adopt.” As Aubrette continued, she favored me with a warm smile and gestured with her free hand to indicate the apartment around us. I’d started to lose myself in visions of noblewomen and grand surroundings, and it occurred to me that the very Glamour that fueled the Fae was likely having an effect on my perception of her tale—it was all too easy to just sit and listen to the stories of how the great and distant Sidhe court behaved while losing track of my own surroundings.

“You have, through a combination of your own diligence and good nature, surrounded yourself with intelligent and powerful women who are prepared to dedicate themselves to your success. My recommendation is to allow them to do so, rather than attempting to change the nature of who you are to fit your new circumstances.”

The words bounced back and forth in my mind like an echo as I mulled them over.

It was true that I’d found myself in the company of women who possessed incredible capabilities, and I’d been more than happy to let them leverage those capabilities on my behalf, but the thought that doing so was anything other than common sense hadn’t really occurred to me.

Of course I was going to let Zarina advise me when confronted with the mysteries of the Arcane. The woman had been raised in one of the most powerful families of wizards in the world, I would have to be an absolute idiot to ignore her advice. Rose might have been a mischievous prankster, but the Puca also possessed an uncanny insight into what made people tick that sometimes meant I didn’t even have to tap my Gift to advise someone, because the bubbly little Goth had already whispered in my ear that the only thing they were really seeking was permission to pursue the course of action that had already settled in their heart.

I still did my best to provide the magical guidance they’d requested, of course, but it was easier to be certain when I already knew that no matter what I told them, their mind was already made up.

“And you don’t think that I should, I don’t know, try to behave more like the people who grew up living in-“ I gestured towards the screen, where a massive mansion was displayed in a series of gorgeously framed professional photographs, “-places like that?”

Aubrette smiled at me, and her expression was both warm and kind. “My Liege, I would much, much rather you behave as Jack. That is the man who brought in a dying woman out of the goodness of his heart when she could not even speak his language, before he knew so much as a hint of her nature and capabilities, and while I remain in this world, it is to that man I would prefer to bend my knee.”

There was a hint of mischief in her eyes as she added sotto voce, “Or knees.”

I met her gaze and couldn’t help but feel uplifted by the playful joy on her face.

When she saw that my expression changed and some of my anxiety began to fade, she leaned forward, and I caught a whiff of strawberries and honey that made my mouth water and my pants feel suddenly tight.

Before I could take any of the actions that scent inspired, though, the redhead parted her sweet lips and added in a sultry tone, “If you’ll… permit me, My Liege-“

The sudden blush that suffused her cheeks told me volumes about how the banished noble felt about the topic she wanted to broach, and I found myself again fighting not to claim her lips with my own. I nodded slowly as I fought to control that impulse, and Aubrette averted her eyes as she spoke in musical tones that tugged at my libido as much as my heart.

“In my time at court I was privy to a host of indiscretions and affairs both wholesome and impure. You’ve already discovered my- yearnings, but the desire to spy on the affairs of my social superiors led me to more than wet thighs and dalliances with the maids.”

That Aubrette had apparently done more than gossip with the help in the Sidhe royal palace didn’t exactly come as a surprise, but it wasn’t actually something she’d mentioned before. I tried to make a mental note to follow up on that later, but as focused as I was on her continued words, I wasn’t sure how well I’d retain that particular thread of investigation.

“It also led me to begin to construct a- a- a fantasy, I suppose, of the house in which I would have liked to serve. I was never a member of the nobility outside of the royal court—when I inherited the mantle of my power, I stepped from a standing that was as common as a High Sidhe can be into the echelons of the elite of my people without a single stop in between.

“Over the centuries, I built myself a picture of what it might have been like to have served at the behest of a Liege who was noble, but perhaps not so consumed with national affairs as the royal family. I managed to largely avoid notice so long as I performed my duties, but I often thought of what could have happened if I had been called to function as a vassal of a noble Lord who desired my more- direct involvement. In my mind, I would perform my duties as intended, but also help him to structure his household such that every member of his staff had a role they could perform—not only as his servants, but also as an important person in his life.”

The obvious intoxication with the fantasy was writ large on Aubrette’s face, but rather than sinking into her own mind as she described it, the redhead set down her cup of coffee and reached over the table towards me. I likewise set down my mug and turned over my hand, and soon had her palm pressed against my own as she joined her hand to mine.

“I would be his steward, of course. Where he was the unquestioned master of the household, I would take my role as his chief of staff and the administrator of his business affairs. It would involve long hours taking… direction, from my Liege-Lord, but I would be ever ready to receive everything he had to give.”

She blushed again, and I couldn’t help the wry smile that touched my lips. By now I was intimately familiar with the redhead’s preferences and knew exactly what it was she wanted me to give.

“A steward is not the only role that a house requires, though. While the royal family had a staff of hundreds to see to their needs and lost their focus on the individual as a result, I would see to it that my Liege retained a staff of those who would accommodate his needs and desires, while ensuring that it remained small and tight enough that he never lost track of who surrounded him.”

Her choice of words may or may not have been intentional, but as I watched her blush continue to spread, I had little doubt that she knew exactly what she had implied. I gently worked my hand free of hers, then slid my arm under the edge of the table so I could wrap my fingers around her upper leg. The silky material of her skirt felt smooth to the touch, but I knew that it was nothing compared to the skin beneath, so as Aubrette continued to speak I started pulling the fabric up, inch by inch, bunching it up higher and higher until I finally felt my fingers brush against the creamy flesh of the woman’s thigh.

Her breath hitched at my actions, but words continued to pour out in a rush as she realized that I was not only permitting her to reveal her fantasy, but was actively indulging her desires. “The chamberlain draws their title from the chamber of their Liege. It is their responsibility to see to the personal well-being and needs of their Lord. Your bound demon already fulfills the role to an extent, but if given the specific structure I believe she could take to the task with enthusiasm.”

I didn’t feel the particular need to rush my actions. Aubrette was intoxicating to the senses, and as her musical voice filled my ears, the scent of her took my nose and I allowed myself to luxuriate in the heat of her skin as I started to caress up and down her thigh.

“The- fact that it is Cindy, of all people, would likely mean that the duty of seeing to the clothing of your staff is- would result in an environment well suited to feed her particular needs but- I do not- I would not object to that. It might not have been a part of my original fantasy, but there is room for- what she would desire.”

The idea of Cindy getting to choose what everyone else wore all the time was decadent enough to pull my mind away from the moment, as I tried to envision what kinds of ridiculous lingerie and outfits she might design.

My fingers wandered on their own, though, and when I felt heat and moisture radiating from the Sidhe beside me, it was enough to banish those thoughts for now so I could pay attention when Aubrette pushed her legs apart to accommodate my probing fingers. A quiet moan escaped her, but she continued speaking as my hand slipped ever further between her legs in search of additional evidence of the redhead’s excitement.

“The warden is at times the equal in authority of the steward, tasked with the wartime disposition of the household and matters of security and discipline. As much as I am certain that your demon would prefer to be empowered with the authority to direct the women around you, I would feel that the wizard Zarina would be a far more natural fit for the position.”

Aubrette gasped and stuttered unintelligibly for a few moments when my fingertips brushed against the swollen and slippery nub of her clit. That wasn’t exactly my intended destination, but I found the sounds that emerged so compelling that I spent a few moments caressing the sensitive little button just to hear her moan, before I gave her mercy and let my touch dip a little further still.

“She- would keep your best interests at heart better than the Sin-driven demon, and I suspect her approach to discipline would be more effective than the chains and whips Miss Cindy would employ.”

I couldn’t deny that. Zarina was a wizard, but more than that she was an intelligent and well-motivated woman who was more than capable of plotting a course to determine the best way to accomplish a goal, and she was far less likely to be sidetracked by a desire to keep me Lusty and far more likely to keep my overall wellbeing in mind.

One of my fingers slipped between the lips of Aubrette’s welcoming pussy without resistance. The Sidhe was sopping wet, and an undignified and unladylike squelching noise emerged from beneath the table as I started to probe her cunt as she struggled to continue her speech.

“It- might seem- natural to call Miss Rose to serve as your groom or huntsman, since she shares an inherent affinity with animals and the wild, but her- predilections make her more suited to the role of valet. Her talents with a sewing needle make her well suited to work closely with your chamberlain, and the job frequently requires an individual who can interface with others. Rose’s gregarious nature would help her ensure that she maintains a close relationship with all across the house, and is in a position to help you remain aware of any strife before it grows.”

The hitch in Aubrette’s voice got worse when I added a second finger, but the fact that she slid her hips forward to give me unfettered access to her slippery pussy told me that she wasn’t about to object to my actions. Even though I was fingering the redhead’s cunt, I did my best to actually pay attention to her suggestions. I wasn’t sure that I was entirely on board with the idea of structuring my family like a traditional Fae noble household, but nothing that she had said was far outside of how everyone had behaved from time to time, and the idea of asking everyone to contribute to a life of harmonious structure did have a sweetly romantic appeal.

The fact that I could tell the redhead was also doing her best to set things up to arrange an environment in which she could recreate some of the spying she’d indulged in the centuries before didn’t escape me, but that also wasn’t too much of a change. Rose certainly had a finger on the pulse of the household, but it wasn’t because she kept her hand near anyone’s wrist. It was far more likely any feedback she provided me would be gathered in the course of her enthusiastically promiscuous relationships with the other women of my house.

Aubrette’s mind might have been following a similar track to mine, because she continued her increasingly breathy explanation as my fingers pumped in and out of her channel by addressing one of Rose’s favored partners.

“Sara is- not someone I assumed would want to be a member of your staff, so to speak. The young Mistress has her own concerns and life ahead of her, but the idea of her submitting herself as a ward to gain access to your resources in exchange for her attendance to your desires had crossed my mind. From time to time.”

The way she clamped down around my digits told me exactly what shape the voyeuristic noblewoman’s fantasies had taken, but the fact that Sara had recently spent weeks voluntarily under my spell meant that she might not object to an arrangement like that. She certainly seemed to enjoy herself then, and she’d expressed the desire to be free of her current position working for her uncle’s company more than once.

“I will admit I had not planned for Mistress Tzila’s arrival, and I do not yet have a firm grasp on her character. Perhaps she too will simply be a ward, but if she means to behave as a member of your house, I am certain she could find a role to fill. Her natural talents make her well suited to- to- several positions, but-“

As I continued to probe Aubrette’s silky depths, it became increasingly difficult for her to form a coherent sentence, but she desperately attempted to retain focus for long enough to complete her thought.

“-the idea of a- a- former royal serving as a- a- scullery maid might- it might humiliate her too much to- to accept-“

I had no idea what Tzila might have thought about the idea, but Aubrette clearly found it arousing—her channel clamped down around my fingers as a brief orgasm shook her body.

I waited until her moaning slowed and her eyes regained their focus, then leaned in to whisper hotly in her ear, “Aubrette, if you want to carry on this conversation, I will be an eager and willing participant, but you’re going to have to do it from my bedroom. I am so goddamn hard right now that I’m about to burst out of my pants, and if you don’t follow me into bed and slide onto my cock, in the next two minutes, I’ll be forced to find a different willing partner. I’d much rather look up and play with your beautiful tits while you bounce on your Lord’s cock and tell me the rest of the details of your fantasy, but I’m sure Cindy would be willing-“

Before I could finish the thought, Aubrette was already on her feet and walking towards the bedroom.

Her skirts didn’t seem to have made the transition, though, and the hypnotic sway of her voluptuous ass was distracting enough that I forgot what I was going to say.

When I finally filled her with a load of cum a while later, she still hadn’t finished telling me how she wanted to structure the maid staff, but she’d gone into quite a lot of depth on the kinds of affairs she expected—and hoped—to see.

* * *

In the following days, Aubrette proved that while her fantasies might have included some deliciously naughty desires, she was willing to do the work it required to make them come true. She sat herself down with my laptop and a few books Zarina had gotten for her from the library and devised a step-by-step plan to go from point ‘A’—a box full of vampire gold and a case full of diamonds—to point ‘B’—a manor house filled with sexy people having complex relationships on which she could spy.

She consulted with Trudy and Zarina, then took us to meet with Daxon—the attorney I’d been working with at the exclusive law firm Stacy’s father had introduced me to. After a worrying number of signatures on my part, the four of them—fairy, wizard, accountant and lawyer—began to create the accounts that were going to house my newfound wealth.

We ultimately determined that we were going to cash in the diamonds now rather than to go through the scheme we were planning with the gold. I lost the exact details somewhere along the way, but it boiled down to Zarina’s family internationally wiring me the cash and collecting the gold. I’d report it to the IRS as a gift, but I wasn’t going to need to pay taxes on it.

The transaction would probably show up on some government reports as a red flag, but since I knew I wasn’t actually selling drugs or anything, I eventually accepted that as a risk I’d need to take. The only way I could realistically avoid notice was to not sell the gold, or do it over a long enough period of time. Neither of those was an option with what I had planned, so this was a risk I was going to have to take.

I was able to follow along with the plan in the broad strokes, but she lost me when she went over the web of legal entities she was having Daxon create—shell companies and such—in order to structure my income and investments. The glee with which the Sidhe woman approached the configuration of agreements was one of the most terrifyingly Fae traits I’d seen in her, but I couldn’t object to something that seemed like it would be of pretty intense benefit to me, without requiring me to spend my evenings studying law.

The prospect of Aubrette finding a way to establish a genuine legal identity for herself and going into practice as a lawyer filled me with such a vivid vision of the future that I briefly wondered if it was the result of my Gift kicking in rather than merely an overactive imagination.

I’d never actually seen visions of the future before, but the terrifying mental image of Aubrette coolly standing in a courtroom as she picked apart each and every one of her opponents' arguments was so wildly vivid that for all I knew, it was the first.

With the burden of figuring out finances off my shoulders and onto hers, I was free to set myself to two important tasks.

The first of those was that I got back to my actual work.

It was good to feel the freedom to actually return to doing my own thing. The whole deal with the vampires and the witch had occupied so much of my attention that even when I’d been able to get out of the house and use my Gift to help someone, I’d been so distracted that I hadn’t been able to derive much satisfaction from it. It was frustrating to feel like the act had been robbed of its joy, and I was happy to again be able to enjoy helping people.

I liked using my Gift for other folks. It felt good, even if the times when I had to give someone bad news weren’t exactly pure joy. It was still better to let them make an informed decision about their chances than delude them about something that might otherwise bite them in the ass.

Manny, for example, really should have listened to me about his last business venture, but at least when I worked through his next reading I was able to give him neither weal nor woe—something close to fifty-fifty odds.

I got another massive bag of tamales out of it, too.

The second task I’d set myself was getting to know the Jinn who had provisionally joined my family, and that proved more challenging.

Over the next few days, I got to watch as Tzila went out of her way to ensure that she built a decent working relationship with every single member of the household.

Except me.

Tzila was never anything less than civil when she spoke to me, but I got to watch her sit down beside Rose and share a love of craft with the Puca. The look of joy on the latter’s face when the former revealed that she had experience as a blacksmith and had, in fact, once been responsible for forging the arms and armor for her tribe only made sense when the sketch pads had emerged. The curvy goth seamstress had immediately started plotting for the inclusion of hand-crafted bronze and brass elements in her designs, and I made a note to ask Aubrette if her plans for a house included somewhere that we could build a forge.

The fact that Tzila had spent a little while talking about how she had loved wielding air and fire to soften metal until she could shape it as she willed probably had a deeper meaning that went over my head. She’d made sure that I was close enough to hear it, but I was pretty sure I lacked the context to fully understand what she was actually trying to say.

There were occasional hiccups, though. For example, while I did my best to tamp down on the intimate activities that regularly happened in my apartment—or at least to restrict them to behind locked doors—that wasn’t a particularly popular change. Especially with Cindy in the mix I wasn’t entirely successful in my attempt to keep our activities reasonably tame.

The first time we had a movie night, I managed to make it the whole way through Basic Instinct without letting the Sin Demon do more than subtly grind her hips as she rubbed her naked pussy against my fingers. She’d worn a skirt that was just this side of legal street wear and had slowly but surely pulled my arm down until she could slide herself over it without drawing too much attention, but I was pretty certain that Tzila had been so thoroughly absorbed in the movie that she hadn’t actually noticed.

Rose had, though, and she’d drawn Aubrette’s attention to it, and from the way the two Fae women reacted I suddenly realized that I wasn’t the only one feeling a little repressed by the need to keep things under the covers.

When the movie ended, and Tzila walked off into the next apartment, there was an unspoken agreement that passed between the those three women and myself and we started the next movie—a newer rom-com that Rose had reported looked like it was actually pretty good—as we had discussed, while behaving ourselves.

When five minutes turned into ten, and the Jinn still hadn’t returned from the next room over, we stopped paying as much attention to the movie. My pants stayed on, but the slutty little bundle of Sin beside me slid up onto my lap, pulled down my fly, and found her way onto my dick. An incredibly inattentive bystander might not have noticed that there was anything lewd going on, but anything more than a casual glance would reveal the way Cindy had pulled up her knees until she was kneeling over my lap so she could oh-so-slowly grind her hips forwards and back as she dragged her drooling pussy over the increasingly slippery length of my shaft.

By ten minutes after that, she’d given up any pretense and was bouncing up and down fucking herself with enthusiasm while Rose had moved to stand behind Aubrette and was whispering into the redhead’s ear while the latter grasped at her own uncovered tits and tugged the nipples with a rapturously tortured expression on her face. I had no idea what the Puca was actually saying, but from the combination of blushing shame and the way her full lips lay parted with desire, I was pretty sure I could get the gist.

Fifteen minutes after that, the Sin Demon was clamping her asshole around the base of my cock as I emptied my balls into her. Aubrette was sucking on one of Rose’s massive tits while the Puca knelt over her on the couch next to us, having been narrating exactly what I was doing to Cindy the entire time. Her lascivious descriptions were deliberately lurid and over the top. It was actually pretty entertaining and sexy to listen to her go on and on about how hot it looked watching me ‘split the demon in half’ with my ‘massive cleaving sword’, and she’d gotten the blushing Sidhe to move right next to us so she could get a better view of the action.

It was right after the last aftershocks of my orgasm faded that I happened to catch a flash of motion in the corner of my eye and watched as Tzila returned from the next apartment over and walked into the room.

* * *

I felt like kind of an asshole.

Tzila had made a surprisingly decent case for not having been bothered by what she walked in on.

She’d known that I was having sex with the other women in the house, and swore to me that she didn’t have a problem with that. She’d explained that she had grown up with vastly different standards and ideas about marriage, as well as a much more casual approach towards sex and nudity. It was really only in the last few hundred years that sex had turned into a private affair, and her upbringing predated that by an order of magnitude.

She was very candid in her explanation, and had added that in order to behave as a good member of my house rather than a guest, she wanted to ensure that none of us felt like her presence was an imposition. That included us not needing to restrict our behaviors just because she was here.

“Jack, this is your home. I understand incredibly well what it is like to not feel as though you have a place where you can relax and be yourself. You also were quite clear on the requirement to sate your demon’s needs, and I do not wish to feel responsible for anything which makes that a hardship. You do not need to curtail your indulgences on my behalf.”

She didn’t sound happy about it, exactly, but not only did I not have a decent counterargument for her, I also didn’t want to diminish her ability to make decisions for herself.

So instead, I just felt like a bit of a dick, and tried to not let that detract from what would otherwise be entertaining encounters.

For example, a few nights later, Sara had started feeling stressed about upcoming spring finals and had asked me to help take her mind off of things. She’d been pretty clear that she expected me to take full and thorough advantage of her in that time. The sexy schoolgirl outfit was a big clue, and the way that she had guided my hand under her skirt so I could feel how smooth her freshly shaved pussy was had not been subtle.

We hadn’t made it very far after I completed the mind affecting ritual that would reward Sara for obeying me for the next day or so. I was balls deep in my landlady’s enthusiastically juicy cunt while she was bent over the kitchen table when Tzila walked into the living room, with the slap of my hips against her tightly athletic ass filling the apartment.

I tried my best to ignore the arrival of the Jinn, but given the way her glowing eyes bored into the scene in front of her, that wasn’t especially easy.

The enthusiastic moans as Sara clamped down around my cock helped, but even as I slammed myself deep inside her and pumped out a load of cum, I found my attention pulled towards the woman waiting patiently for us to finish up in the kitchen so she could get herself a drink. My charmed partner, if anything, was even more wildly enthusiastic for having an audience when she milked out the contents of my balls, but I couldn’t help but feel as though there had to be a better way.