I learned a few things that week.

For example, I learned that Tzila didn’t have an ‘off’ switch. It was as though a dam had burst when I’d finally taken her into my bed. The sudden recollection of one particularly vivid line from the fantasy she had relayed the other night had lead me to command her to clean my ‘organ’ with her mouth, and the fact that the Jinn’s tongue slathering its way across my dick kept me from ever growing soft was really my own fault. I certainly wasn’t going to complain when it meant that round one had led directly into round two.

After I pumped my second load of cum into the Jinn princess’ pussy, I had taken my somewhat sweaty self and performed a walk of shame to the apartment’s shower. Parading my way through my own living room as five women leered at my naked body wasn’t something that I thought I would ever get used to. By now I had at least gotten to the point where I expected Cindy’s lewdly explicit encouragement, Aubrette’s fierce blush, and Rose’s good natured ribbing, but I had not expected Sara to join in with a ‘fucking finally!’, or Zarina to give me a look that appeared to be genuinely proud.

I’d stoically made my way past them and closed the bathroom door behind me.

The water of the shower I started hadn’t even had time to get warm before Tzila—as naked as I had left her a minute before and with my cum visibly dripping down her thighs—swept through the door and stepped up to my chest to announce matter-of-factly, “It is right that my Master should be attended when he bathes. I will see to this service.”

That was not precisely within my expectations, but by now I’d had enough experience with Cindy showing up in the middle of a shower to announce that she needed to drain my balls, or something along those lines, so I was willing to roll with it.

When that had wound up turning into the Jinn dragging her big soapy tits over my dick for long enough that the shower turned into round three, I started to wonder if I had gotten in over my head.

I managed to—with some effort—disentangle myself from her long enough to dry off, and with my dick out of her line of sight, Tzila managed to calm down.

The rest of the day went by without incident, except for the good forty minutes of crying at the end of The Return of the King. Aubrette tearing up wasn’t a surprise—she’d been sniffling into a series of conjured lace handkerchiefs for about half of the movie’s runtime. My shock briefly pulled my attention away from the film when I glanced over and saw tears on Cindy’s cheeks.

The Sin Demon’s nature made her capable of a surprising amount of empathy—as she’d demonstrated by helping to understand Tzila’s hangups—but I never expected to see sympathy from her. Granted, this particular display occurred as Gollum fell into the lava after the One Ring, so it was entirely possible it wasn’t the former hobbit she was mourning, but the artifact of ultimate power.

The tears and clogged sinuses that resulted from the end of the film had left my apartment more somber than usual. Cindy’s Sin quota had been filled and more thanks to my trysts with Tzila, so rather than indulging in either hijinks or film analysis I had snuggled up between Rose and Zarina in bed and gone to sleep.

Rose liked to sleep in, and while Zarina was sometimes an early riser, she was usually more reactive than proactive in bed, so I was more than a little surprised to wake up the next morning with a boiling hot mouth wrapped around my shaft. I wasn’t about to complain, though, and left my eyes closed for several long minutes as slick lips and an attentive tongue glided lovingly along the head of my dick.

Whoever it was sucking my cock, they didn’t seem to be in any hurry. Her head bobbed slowly up and down beneath the blankets at a steady pace that only changed when I let out an unconscious moan of pleasure at the feel of her tongue lapping at the base of the head of my cock. That caused her to speed up, which in turn woke me up enough to realize that my arms were still full. I did a quick check to my left and right and verified that both my wizard and my Puca were right where I had left them, one wrapped around each of my arms.

That left the identity of my loving cocksucker as a mystery and with my arms trapped I was forced to rely on deduction to solve it.

The shape beneath the blankets wasn’t particularly small, which probably ruled out Cindy and Sara. Rose and Zarina were out of the running for obvious reasons, which left Aubrette and Tzila as the most likely culprits. Of the two, while the Sidhe noble was accomplished and graceful, and would have been thrilled to perform the act if asked, it showed more initiative in bed than she generally displayed.

The final clue, of course, lay in the fact that my snuggle-buddies of the night were still asleep. Neither Zarina nor Rose were unusually heavy sleepers, but neither had stirred when my fellatrix slipped beneath the blankets—possibly while in the form of a cloud of soft sand.

And, of course, there was the fact that the tongue which lapped at my shaft was so hot I had started to sweat, which was enough to give the answer all on its own.

My left arm was a lost cause—trapped in the depths of Rose’s cleavage I would never work it free without waking her—so I began to slowly and carefully extract my right from Zarina’s embrace. She shifted and let out a surprisingly adorable sound of disappointment when it slipped free, but didn’t wake, and I was finally able to lift the blankets from my chest.

A pair of smoldering golden eyes looked back at me. They bobbed up and down slowly as Tzila began to actively fellate me now that she knew that I was awake. I had no idea how long she’d been teasing the head of my cock before I woke up, but the feel of her red hot mouth as she glided up and down along my top six inches was incredible. My orgasm was not far off, and from the way the princess started to desperately slobber over my throbbing shaft told me that while she was fully aware I was about to cum, she also had no intention to stop.

My head crushed back against the pillow as I did my best to hold in the moan that threatened to escape. I flooded Tzila’s mouth with cum as she dutifully wrapped her lips around the head of my cock to capture it all. Despite her best efforts, a dribble escaped the seal of her pink lips to drip back down my shaft as the last spurt escaped me, but the reason for that soon became evident.

The princess slowly pulled her head back. Her lips chased along the skin of my dick as she carefully extracted it from her mouth and clamped her lips together. Her cheeks bulged as she tilted back her head as best she could, then valiantly attempted to open her mouth without spilling any of it as she revealed the pearly load of my cum within. Then she froze, waiting in place, while a little more cum trickled out of the corner of her mouth and ran down the front of her pale throat.

Several moments passed as I stared at her in surprise, not sure exactly what to make of her behavior. Then, in a flash, I realized what she wanted. One of the lines Rose- no, Cindy-

One of the ridiculous things she’d suggested the day before, one of the specific parts of ‘morning blowjob duty’, was that the woman performing it needed to show the load she ‘milked from Jack’s cock’ and wait until she’d received permission to swallow it.

“Swallow.” I kept my voice as quiet as I could, but I felt Zarina start to stir regardless. The wizard wasn’t ever a particularly deep sleeper, and her waking up was probably inevitable as soon as I’d moved my arm, but I still felt bad. She’d been working herself overtime of late as she brushed up on her ‘large-scale Ward design’, and I had intended to let her sleep in if I could manage.

Tzila swallowed, then immediately flowed out of the room without uttering a word. The feel of her as she rushed across my skin was surprisingly intimate—I had half expected that her blue cloud form would feel sandy, or gritty, but the particles that caressed over me were almost shockingly smooth and silky. They were also body-temperature warm to the touch, and it was all I could do not to moan again as she slid over my chest then flowed beneath the door to vanish out of sight.

When I had tracked her down several minutes later—having gotten up with Zarina and spent a few minutes reminding her that it was OK to take a day or two to just relax—and asked her why she’d done it, she had guilelessly responded, “My Master, I heard the list of duties that were mentioned yesterday, but as far as I know, they have not yet been assigned. As such, the duty falls upon your lowest servant to serve you in all of those capacities until such time as one of her superiors decides to relieve her of the task.”

She was all wide-eyed innocence too. She nearly sold the act of ‘I believed that they were serious last night’, except the note of excitement in her voice was far too pronounced for her to successfully conceal just how invested she was.

The fact that she was naked in the kitchen, on her knees, while she played with her cunt probably didn’t help. Considering how distracting it was, it didn’t actually hurt either, though. I watched her fingers glide up and down the pronounced lips of her still-smooth cunt for several moments while I tried to formulate a response.

It wasn’t easy.

I tried several times, but only got as far as opening my mouth to try to form a word before I’d stop, and realize I didn’t actually know what I was going to say.

“My Master, I believe mention was made of a ‘breakfast dick-warmer’, but at different times your- adjutant? Your- jester? What rank is Cindy?- Regardless, she mentioned both riding in your lap and ‘holstering his cock in her mouth’ as duties of the role, but did not specify the order. Which do you require first?”

With Rose, when she had greeted me the morning after she had joined me with a somewhat similar pitch, it had taken me a good ten or fifteen seconds to figure out that she was fucking with me. The Puca had oversold herself, but I was almost certain it was on purpose, because it fit the bit that she was trying to perform.

With Tzila, I genuinely wasn’t sure if she expected me to treat her exactly as Cindy had described. It was easy to tell that she was turned on by the idea—the fantasy, of being forced into her kinks, knowingly and lovingly—but to take things this far was…

She cracked a smile. It was tiny, and if I hadn’t been staring intently at her face I might have missed it, but it was enough. Then, a moment later, I heard Rose’s full throated laughter from across the room behind me.

I closed my eyes as a feeling of dread washed over me. For a moment, my mind filled with visions of the kinds of pranks Rose could manage with a fully willing Jinn accomplice. I pushed the thoughts back with some effort—Tzila might have been suspiciously willing to commit to this particular bit, but there was no guarantee that would be true of whatever else the Puca came up with. In fact-

My eyes narrowed as I studied the princess’ face. She was laughing, but there was something hungry to the way her gaze was stuck to the front of my pants and the evidence of the fact that as much as I didn’t think she was actually being serious, I couldn’t deny the reaction her show had had on me.

Despite that, however, the Jinn’s clothes appeared about her body as she dragged her hands up and pulled them out of the wind. It was the first time I had seen her use that particular trick, and I realized I didn’t actually have a great handle on what her magical abilities really encompassed. She’d mentioned that she stored things ‘within the winds’, and as I watched her outfit manifest around her, I could understand why.

When Aubrette conjured items, it looked as though she simply reached behind something that blocked her from view, then retrieved her hand holding whatever she was seeking. For larger conjurations—such as the magical room she had created for herself within the confines of my tiny old apartment—she reached up and appeared to sink her fingers into the world, and then pull. Everything in sight would seem to lock into place, then shift rather disconcertingly, and when she was done there would simply be more space than there had been before.

In contrast, when Tzila dressed herself in a tight set of stretchy yoga shorts and a crop-top that stretched tightly across her sizable chest, it was with a gust of hot wind that blasted into my face. It made it a little hard to see, since the hot air instantly caused my eyes to water, but it looked rather as though the outfit was simply blown into place from behind her. There wasn’t really any way that could have physically been possible—I thought—because the entire act took a fraction of a second and the garments seemed to have come out of nowhere, but as the wind died and I blinked my eyes clear, she was garbed and off the ground.

She offered me a grin, then spun around towards the fridge to begin fixing herself some breakfast.

* * *

The rest of that morning was mostly occupied with a visit to the offices of Sterling and Gray. I sat in a well appointed conference room which featured a very well polished table of some kind of dark, heavy wood. For just under an hour, I endured having the starkly professional figure of Daxon—who was all thin limbs and sharp features—as he slid paper after paper over for me to sign while another man whose name I didn’t retain for more than about half of the meeting sat to my right and accepted them from my hand. For some of them he stamped them with something, but I lost the details of his exact role in the proceedings at some point in the process.

Part of the reason for this was that to my left, Aubrette was, for the entire time, keeping up a running explanation of each of the documents. This slowed things down, but the Sidhe was quite serious about making sure I understood everything I was signing. The fact that as far as I could tell she somehow had a perfect recall of the statutes surrounding each of the documents did not escape my notice.

When the final paper was signed, Daxon offered me a ghost of a smile. “Congratulations, Jack. You are now the legal owner of your new home. I hope that you enjoy it.”

He had then given me a firm—if bony—handshake.

We’d picked up the keys from the receptionist on the way out, as well as a small binder which contained the various codes to the security system in the house and instructions on how to change them.

I knew that the inside of the house was empty, and that it would be days—if not weeks—before it was actually livable, but I couldn’t help myself—I had to go. I wanted to walk around my first house, just to revel in the fact that it was mine. Aubrette and I swung by the apartment to pick up everyone who wanted to come, and Tzila, Sara, Cindy, and Rose all piled in to join us in my slightly too small Honda.

Fortunately, we had multiple solutions to that particular problem. Technically Tzila could fly faster than the car could drive, but in this case rather than separate herself from us, Rose took the trip in the form of a cat. She hopped nimbly through the window to claim Aubrette’s lap, and the Sidhe spent the drive over affectionately scratching behind her ears while she loudly purred.

Cindy squeezed into the back between Tzila and Sara, and I tried not to dwell on the fact that she immediately leaned over and began to whisper to the Jinn. I was still riding the high of the fact that I was driving us to a house I now owned, and which I could only realistically describe as a mansion.

It wasn’t Hollywood A-List or anything, but compared to anywhere I’d ever lived before, it was incredible. And it was mine. In the throes of my excitement, it was hard to worry about whatever it was the blonde was whispering in the raven haired princess’ ear.

Also, given their height difference, Cindy had to half climb out of her seat and was all but in the muscular Jinn’s lap, which was distracting for an entirely different reason. The rest of the drive passed in something of a haze as I did my best to focus on the road rather than my rear-view mirror, for reasons entirely unrelated to traffic.

* * *

“Oh, that looks fun.”

My head whipped around at the sound of Sara’s voice. For an instant, a flash of guilt hit my body, as though I’d been caught doing something wrong. It felt hot and strange within my chest, but passed quickly as another wave of pleasure flowed up my dick and caused the base of my balls to clench.

My mind finally caught up to the actual words my former landlady had said, but it took me another few moments to actually parse them. In that time, she strolled up to stand a few feet from me and casually leaned her shoulder against the wall. Her eyes met mine, then very significantly looked down to where Tzila knelt on the floor in front of me and diligently indulged herself with the final few inches of my very saliva-covered shaft.

I peered past Sara’s shoulder, across the room, to where Cindy leaned her back against the doorway. Her eyes were directed at the hallway, rather than looking back at me, and I called out to her, “Hey Cindy, I thought you said you were going to keep watch.”

“I told you that the last time we were here, we did not have the time to give you the experience you deserved, and that we were going to switch roles compared to last time. When we were here for the inspection, I milked your cum out into my mouth while Tzila kept watch for Rachel. Now she’s giving you the slow-job you deserve, while it’s my turn to keep watch for Rachel. No sign of her, by the way, you’re good to keep going.”

I rolled my eyes, but I wasn’t entirely sure if it was a result of Cindy’s antics, or the fact that Tzila had pushed her head slightly farther forward and stuck out her tongue, then slowly dragged it backwards under the head of my cock, before spending several long seconds lavishing attention on the tip of my dick with her sweltering and flexible tongue.

The inside of the Jinn was scorching hot, and she wielded that like a weapon. She seemed able to sense exactly when the heat was about to become too much, but would keep me buried between her lips to the last possible moment, before pulling back to suddenly release my cock into the comparatively freezing cold of the inside of my house.

And then, the moment my cock had cooled enough, she’d slide her lips forward around my shaft once more, and the cycle would begin itself anew.

“Smartass. Hi, Sara. It- Fuck, that’s incredible- fuck, she’s really good at that. So yes. It is. Fun.” I was babbling, but in my defense, Tzila was making it really hard to think at all.

“So was this because, like- well, like Tzila said this morning, she’s just on blowjob duty anytime you get hard?”

I shook my head quickly. When the Jinn took a brief pause to let me cool, I immediately took advantage of the fact that I was able to think more clearly to quickly recap, “No, just like Cindy said—this was something she cooked up. Tzila was pretty clear she was on-board, and tits were already out, so the thought of questioning whether she was OK with it never really crossed my mind. I think Cindy also said something about needing to balance the scales as well, but-“

“I said ‘the scales are more than out of balance, but this will be the first step of many to correcting that.’”

“The- oh, fuck. The amount of focus I have for speech is invers- fuck, fuck, inversely prop- look, the more of my dick is in Tzila’s mouth the less I can talk.”

More and more of my attention was grabbed by the pair of molten lips that had again slid forward to glide around the head of my cock. The wet heat of Tzila’s mouth engulfed me again as she began to bob her head slowly back and forth. I braced myself against the sensation as I forced my brain to string together a coherent sentence. “Sara- What were you getting at? You clearly have something in mind.”

Somewhat to my surprise, she hesitated. Given some of the things she and I had done together, I would have thought Sara would be past any kind of shyness or shame about sharing our kinks, so when she paused for a few seconds to gather her courage it actually drew my attention away from the princess doting on my dick.

“Are you willing to loan her out?” The words came out of Sara in a rush. Tzila froze in response, though the heat inside her mouth continued to grow steadily and provided its own stimulation to my cock. When a second or two of frozen silence passed, she began to rush to explain. “Like, I know that she said this morning that she was down to be on morning blowjob duty every morning, and given the fact that she was fingering her pretty little pussy while she did it, I figure that even if she was only saying the words then because Rose put her up to it, a girl doesn’t flash her pretty little pussy like that if she doesn’t believe a bit of what she’s saying.”

Tzila pulled back again just in time. The heat inside her mouth had started to get so intense it had verged on discomfort, but it made the sensation when pulled back and blew suddenly chill air across me all the more intense.

Sara continued. “So, if Cindy can talk her into whatever nonsense she used to justify getting her—by the way, absolutely amazing—rack out while she tries her hardest to actually make love to your nice fat dick with her mouth, I would bet she’s probably just into exactly what she said at the party. Like, maybe she can pretend otherwise sometimes, if she wants to, but there’s got to be a good chance she’s thought about licking my cunt once or twice.”

My eyes looked down between my legs, where Tzila had resumed her fixation with my dick as though Sara wasn’t even talking. She was either so focused on sucking my dick that she was willing to tune out the conversation despite being the topic, or doing a convincing job of pretending. “So, Mister Magic Jack, are you willing to loan her out? What’s it going to cost me to borrow your genie for like twenty or thirty minutes.” Her deep brown eyes dropped down to watch the way the Jinn lovingly coated my cock with her saliva. “Maybe- maybe longer. Like a day or two.”

Even as Sara stepped towards me, her attention remained fixed on my dick—and the woman whose soft pink lips were wrapped around it. The sight had her so distracted that she actually tripped and stumbled the last couple paces towards me. She managed to avoid actually falling on her face, but wound up barely catching herself on my chest, breathlessly looking up at me while I leaned against the wall behind me.

My arm slid around Sara’s shoulders and I leaned down to kiss her. “I think the way you are so transparently horny for her is incredibly cute and endearing. Of course I don’t have a problem with it. Hey, Tzila-“ I paused for a moment as I looked down. With Sara’s chest pressed against mine, I couldn’t actually see the Jinn between my legs, but the attention on my dick never wavered. “Hey, Tzila!” The second try, when I put a bit of an edge to my voice, snapped her out of her apparent trance.

“Tell me what you think of the idea of being loaned out to Sara for twenty or thirty minutes. Or maybe longer.” As I spoke, the still-distracted brunette managed to get her feet back under herself. Even once she caught her balance, though, she remained pressed to my side. Her right arm wrapped around me, but she shifted enough that I was able to look down into Tzila’s eyes when she finally responded.

One of her hands wrapped around the base of my dick and began to stroke back and forth on the bottom couple of inches to jerk me off as soon as she released me from her mouth. “My Master, I have already debased myself with one human commoner, what’s one more?”

Despite her words, her tone had a bit of an edge to it. A slight challenge in her voice that dared me to rise. “Is that how you’re going to play it?” I picked up momentum as I spoke. Tzila had made it clear that a part of her fantasies included being forced into things, and I wanted to see how far she intended to take it. “You’re going to pretend that you aren’t as enthusiastic about this as she is? Like you aren’t perfectly capable of voicing an objection if you have one? Like I’m the bad guy?”

There was a spark that lit up in her eyes as she fired back, “Would you have me enthusiastically begging for the privilege instead, My Master?”

“You know what, yes. Yes, I would very much like that.” My eyes locked onto hers once more as I stared her down.

She stared right back, as though daring me to push the issue—to take it further. As seconds ticked by, she—without breaking eye contact—leaned forward and enveloped the head of my cock in her mouth. It meant that I flinched first, because the feel of the liquid heat that rolled over my dick was incredible, and the back of my head hit the wall behind me as a moan escaped my lips.

“Fuck you. That doesn’t count.” I couldn’t bring myself to pull my head away from the wall to look down into my lap, because the defiant princess had resumed bobbing her head back and forth in my lap. I looked over at Sara, and asked her somewhat incredulously, “Do you- do you see this shit?”

To my dismay, the besotted and quite possibly lust-addled woman beside me sided with the Jinn. “What shit, Magic Man? Is your genie acting up? Because it looks like she’s just ignoring whatever you say so she can suck on her toy. Is that the kind of behavior you intend to put up with?”

My eyes flicked towards Cindy across the room, who met my gaze with equanimity. I didn’t even bother to voice an objection to her. I wasn’t sure why I even bothered to voice one to myself. When I followed my Gift along the path of playing into the Jinn’s hand’s, the future I saw was filled with a glowing warm blue.

“No, I’m not.” I brushed my finger over the ring lightly and watched Tzila’s body spasm in response. As a moan escaped her lips, I commanded quietly, “Tzila, take Sara onto the window seat and give her the same level of attention you were just giving me.”

The words had no sooner escaped my lips than the Jinn acted to obey. She flowed smoothly into a cloud of blue sand that enveloped Sara and swept her into the air. The suddenly airborne woman let out a squealing laugh as she quickly found herself naked within a whirlwind which whipped her through the room and carried away the jeans and t-shirt she’d been wearing.

That laughter turned into a series of moans as the two women found themselves atop the window seat a moment later. Tzila deposited the shorter woman on her back atop the cushioned bench that was built into the window, then coalesced once more into her human form, on her knees with her face buried between Sara’s thighs. From the sounds that emerged, the Jinn was being every bit as passionate in the tongue lashing she was now giving as she had been with her mouth around my dick a moment earlier.

I strolled up behind her and looked out the big bay window. The master bedroom was on the second floor, and it had a great view of the small patch of nicely landscaped yard enclosed by the woods around the house. The window was actually wide enough that even with Sara on her back with her knees in the air and Tzila on all fours between them, there was still room for me behind the Jinn. The curved window bench was well padded and deep enough for me to put my knees between her legs and nudge her thighs apart as I lined myself up behind her.

Then, without preamble, I slotted myself into her molten cunt and buried myself inside her. As she moaned into Sara’s cunt, I began to slide my hips back and forth at a leisurely pace. I turned my head to the side and scanned the yard again, where I caught a flicker of movement. As I fucked the Jinn princess with just enough force to rub her face against the wet pussy in front of her, I watched Rose’s unmistakably curvaceous form as she walked along the yard to the edge of the forest.

No fewer than thirteen raccoons all emerged from the treeline to greet her.

The Puca began to gesticulate as she addressed them. At this distance, through the window, I couldn’t hear so much as a hint of what she was saying, but as far as I could tell, they were all paying attention.

Another moan drew my attention inside again, and I realized something. I had intended to give Sara the twenty or thirty minutes that she’d requested, but the rhythm that I was following was gradually getting faster and faster. A moment later, I realized why.

When she’d been attending my dick, the heat within her mouth had been intense. The depths of her inferno cunt were hotter still—my hips were pumping faster and faster to give my dick the chance to cool. I kept burying myself instinctively the moment my dick was exposed to the cool air again, and so no more than five minutes after I’d ordered Tzila to pleasure the now orgasming Sara’s greedy little pussy, I was slamming my hips against the Jinn’s taut backside as I buried my load deep inside.

The twenty minutes of attention she’d given me with her mouth probably contributed to my short trigger, but there was a part of me that had to admit that it revelled in the feeling of rising to the challenge that had been offered.

The fact that it had also resulted in Tzila spasming around my dick as she came the moment my seed filled her reinforced that feeling, as did the affectionate way she stared back over her shoulder at me as she asked, “How long would you like me to continue, Master?”

As I remembered the other day—specifically, the time when Sara had made Cindy eat her out on the couch while Tzila was sitting on the other end—a wicked smile touched my lips. “Until you’ve made her cum. Twice.”

The look of shock on Sara’s face was priceless, but it was all the sweeter still when it slid from her face as the Jinn went to work and she dissolved into profanity laden moans.

* * *

“So anyway, I’m really not sure how she does it. Like, as far as I can tell, she’s not only perfectly fine, but enthusiastic about what’s happening.”

As I finished speaking, Zarina slowly swiped one hand to the left, open palm facing out. Some of the floating runes in front of her obediently drifted out of the way at her gesture. Of the ones that did, several of them changed shape, a few began glowing more brightly, and one faded to the point of invisibility.

“Interesting.” The wizard pulled a small notebook out of one of the pockets of her voluminous robes to jot down a few notes. Without turning around, she then responded, “It’s one of the benefits of being a natured being. While Tzila doesn’t have free will like you and I do, she is also free of the risk of accumulating psychic scarring.”

“Huh.” I hadn’t ever considered that particular aspect of the fact that the Jinn—as well as the demon and two Fae who now lived with me—weren’t human.

“So, like-“ As I spoke, Zarina tucked the notebook away once more, then pulled out a small wooden wand from the same pocket. She began to weave the tip through the air, and it left glowing streamers of light in its wake. When she was finished, a rune floated forward slowly to slot into the complex array that occupied a cube about five feet on each side.

I’d sought the wizard out after enjoying the massive shower attached to the master bedroom with both Sara and Tzila. We didn’t have any towels yet, but the Jinn solved that problem easily. When I asked her to help dry us off, I had expected something like the hot air hand dryers often found in public bathrooms. Instead, she’d somehow simply pulled the water off of all three of our bodies, which left us clean, dry, and somehow pleasantly warm.

Once I’d re-dressed, I had wandered down into the basement where Zarina was in the middle of performing some in-depth tests on the leyline nexus the house was built on. “-she’s just going to be fine with flipping a switch and embracing her new life?”

Again, it took a few moments for the wizard to respond. When I had first walked up to spot the array of glowing shapes in the air, I had turned to leave immediately. I didn’t want to disturb whatever obviously complex magic Zarina was using, but she spoke up to halt my departure before I’d taken a step, and explained that the hard part was over.

She etched another rune into the air, but this one slid forward to overlap one of the existing runes. Its glow flared brightly, then diminished until it was no brighter than a typical neon sign. “I don’t know that ‘just fine’ is exactly how I would describe it, but basically, yes. Tzila is a princess of the Jinn, and nothing you, or any of her other former masters, can or have ever done will change that. The fact that you’ve turned her from recalcitrant to enthusiastic about her service isn’t something I would have thought possible.”

“Wait, what? If you thought Cindy’s plan wasn’t going to work, why didn’t you say anything?”

“What would it have accomplished if I had? That I could say ‘I told you so’ if I was right, or eat my words if I’d been wrong? Her plan itself was sound, but the line between a magical creature’s nature and the shape of its experiences on its behavior is something that has been the subject of centuries of debate. I would have assumed that any traits she carried through the centuries were a part of her nature, and not her upbringing. The fact that Cindy could somehow tell the difference is—troubling. Or perhaps promising. I am hoping that you will allow me to question her about it closely some day soon, but it is a lower priority than most of my other projects.”

The fact that Zarina was able to draw yet another rune, slip her wand away, then jot down a few more notes while she spoke was evidence that she wasn’t lying when she said this part was comparatively easy, but it was still astonishing to see how easily she multitasked both weaving her magic and conversation.

“Yeah, yeah, of course. Just say the word. So, uhh, meanwhile-” My hand waved vaguely in front of me and I winced as my vision felt like it shifted. Except it didn’t. The effect hadn’t been present in either of the two previous visits to the house, but when I’d walked down the stairs ten minutes ago, I’d been confronted with the odd sense of space being more full than my eyes could perceive. Anytime I turned my head, it felt like there was a slight delay before my vision caught up to what I was seeing, and if I moved too quickly it gave me a sense of motion sickness that left me feeling queasy. “-what’s the deal?”

Zarina looked over her shoulder at me, then returned her focus to the floating runes, which told me that either she wasn’t getting the same sense of distortion that I was, or she was just dealing with it better. “When I return to your apartment I will need to record my findings and compare them to the Kheraskov’s field journals and Sebile’s Almanac Tenebrous to confirm my suspicions, but I suspect that the nature of this nexus has condensed space around it. I am uncertain if there is an extradimensional space on the other side of it, and even if there is, I do not possess the necessary spells and rituals to access it or return safely. I will add those to my wish list, but in the meantime, I have several ideas for how to tap into the leyline currents.”

The tip of the wand slashed across the air suddenly and all the runes flared, then faded into motes of glitter that vanished before they reached the ground. A moment later the sense of distortion faded, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Good, I’ll- Honestly, I’m just going to leave this to you for now. You tell me what you need, and I’ll find a way to make it happen, but otherwise, just do whatever you’re going to do with it and let me know if I’m in the way.”

Zarina tucked her wand in her pocket once more, then turned to beam a warm smile up at me. “Thank you, Jack.”

With both the glowing swirls of magic and lightheadedness cleared away, I was able to take her in more fully. While I had been christening the master bed and bathroom, Zarina had unpacked the large garment bag she'd brought along from the apartment and donned the set of heavy robes stuffed within to begin her work. I knew she had worn them before when working on a couple earlier rituals but hadn’t actually had the chance to see them myself until now. The wide swaths of cloth-of-gold folded over her in heavy layers until only her head and hands could be seen. It almost looked like she was being swallowed by an intricately hand-embroidered golden fabric pyramid.

She saw me trying to find her from within the depths of the ceremonial outfit and her smile turned noticeably bittersweet. "You look like you've never seen a family heirloom of priceless ceremonial robes before, Jack." I didn't have an immediate response to that, so she laughed quietly and grabbed fistfuls of the vestments, lifted them, and started a laborious twirl to show them off. "My grandfather passed these to me," she continued as she turned her slow circle, "and I am grateful, of course, for the bounteous and beautiful gift he gave..."

Her words trailed off there as she faced me once more, and the thick gold fabric gave a soft whuff as it fell from her loosened grip. I heard the unspoken 'but' as clearly as I could read it on her lovely face, but before I could remark on that, she grinned and spoke up again.

"Aside from being technically worth a fortune, they're so lush and gorgeous, and gold really is my color," she added with a note of her typical self-assurance. I nodded my sincere agreement but let her continue getting whatever this was off her luscious—if currently well-hidden—chest. "But I could never wear all this out of the house, and I swear it's a hundred degrees under here, plus they're ceremonial robes." She sighed and her shoulders drooped heavily under the weight of more than just the cloth garb she was draped in. I gave her a moment to collect her thoughts, and watched her face shift through a dozen microexpressions. She settled on a muted but resolved smile and looked more solidly into my eyes.

"I respect my grandfather, and I love my magic. I do wish celebrating my heritage wasn't so inherently entwined with my ancestry. But that's my baggage to work out. In a way, Jack, being bound to you has probably done more to help me separate myself and my magic from my grandfather and my filial duty than anything else I could've done." I felt the press of her robes and saw the depths of her brown eyes grow large before me. I had been so wrapped up in trying to actively listen and be present for her that I hadn't realized my feet had moved me right up in front of her. While I understood a little about magical family expectations, I knew my experience in that regard was nothing in comparison to Zarina's. I didn't know what to say, so instead I made words irrelevant.

Her plump lips parted when mine touched them, and we both breathed against each other in a kiss as tender and heartfelt as I could make it. At least, it started that way, but quickly grew more passionate as our tongues danced and bodies urged us forward. We were prevented from getting too hot and heavy by the extravagant ceremonial robes, and soon enough she pulled back with a surprisingly shy smile and a gentle clearing of her throat. She retreated a step and took a cleansing breath before looking me in the eye with a far more familiar composed confidence.

“I am done with my measurements for the day. I’ll need to return here frequently for the next week to compare readings and see how stable they are. I’ll keep you posted if anything changes, but the summary is that I should be quite able to make use of the nexus, exactly as promised. There are quite a number of projects I plan to implement when I am able—in a week or two I’ll give you a list, and ask you which ones you want me to prioritize.”

"Zarina, you're a marvel," I said earnestly. Then I grinned. "Would you like me to help you get out of those clothes?"

"Please."

* * *

I was surprised at how hard it was to pile into the car and leave my new house behind. It wasn’t anything close to livable, and even if we just started with the furniture we had now, it would probably take days before we could move in, but the part of me that could barely believe this place was mine clung to it until long after it was out of sight behind us.

The sound of Tzila as she answered Zarina’s fascinated questions about some moment in her life from a millennium ago brought a smile to my lips before I slipped too deeply into that feeling of longing. While I wasn’t looking forward to waiting, it was only for a few more days. It might be weird living in a mostly empty house while Aubrette did whatever she was planning to do for furniture to fill the space up, but we were using that same furniture in the apartments now—we might as well just move it into the house and use it there instead.

In the meantime, I had plenty to do to keep myself occupied. An idle thought occurred to me, and I glanced over into Aubrette’s lap, where Rose was curled up as a cat for the ride home. The Puca’s chin rested atop her crossed paws, which themselves were folded daintily over the Sidhe woman’s thigh. Both her eyes were closed, but I tried asking anyway, “Hey, Rose—what was up with you and the raccoons?”

She cracked an eye at me before archly responding, “You’ll keep your nose to yourself, Mister Puttman—what business I have with the underworld is my own.”