The next few days had my apartment abuzz with activity.

The downside of my improved business success was an increase in the hours needed to prepare for each meeting, as well as additional travel time. Some of the rituals required assistance from one of Cindy, Rose, or Aubrette, which further cut into the available hours we could collectively devote to our newly adopted criminal endeavors, though Zarina did her best to work double-time to make up the difference.

Mortal banks didn’t, as a rule, have many defenses against supernatural deception. Shapeshifters weren’t common, but Rose wasn’t the only person who had the ability to look like someone else, so vampire-run banks worked differently. In addition to helping spot potential candidates for Puca-duplication, the wizard scoped out the magical defenses of Cherto’s holdings to prepare countermeasures, as well as helping Aubrette identify the appropriate kinds of paperwork to conjure.

A sense of guilt hung over me every time I came back from one of my consultations to discover the wizard was out working on a project that was only necessary because I refused to take her money. I didn’t see a way out of that bind except through it.

I couldn’t help much with the information gathering, so I poured myself into my study instead. Decoding the rituals in the book was a slow endeavor, as each step was written in code, in a language I couldn’t read, and referenced concepts I didn’t exactly understand. While I experienced a brief moment of hope when I remembered the ritual which allowed me to comprehend languages that the book itself contained, that hope came crashing down an hour later when I realized the ritual didn’t work on written text. Cindy, Rose, and Aubrette were able to assist with the second problem, and Zarina’s library was starting to help fix the third, but the first remained a thorn in my side.

Only the fact that I could rely on my Gift to inform me when I was on a promising track allowed me to make any headway at all, but the rapid pace I’d set when I first received the book had slowed once I snagged all the low-hanging fruit. The undeciphered rituals that remained were more complicated, more heavily encoded, written in a language no one in my apartment understood, or some combination of the three. They offered me a nearly endless way to spend my time if I could muster the focus, and I tried to put in at least an hour a day towards that end.

From everything I’d been able to gather about Mycah—the book’s last owner—he’d been kind of a piece of shit. It didn’t mean he’d deserved to die, though, and that Cindy wasn’t even slightly remorseful over having apparently consumed his essence when he stepped into her unfinished summoning circle reinforced that the petite blonde did not share my mortal sensibilities.

In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to be overly concerned with his fate. He’d summoned Cindy explicitly to act as a living sex slave, and while she would have been as enthusiastic serving him as she was me, that he’d been willing to bring an incredibly dangerous demon into the world just to get his dick wet meant the world was probably better off without him.

Selfishly, the one thing that caused me to actually regret his demise was that his absence left me without any leads to follow to investigate the origin of the book. I’d checked through his apartment before Sara had it cleaned out, and hadn’t found a single item other than the actual ritual supplies he’d used that seemed at all out of the ordinary. That might have meant that he’d stumbled on the tome somewhere, but it seemed far more likely that whatever occult materials he had were stored somewhere far out of my reach.

My one breakthrough in recent weeks was a ritual that I dubbed ‘Induce Motivation.’ Not only was I able to use it on myself, but it quickly became one of my more popular services. The effects lasted about eight hours and—like the Fae charm ritual Sara occasionally demanded—were fueled by Glamour. In this case, though, it didn’t induce any specific behaviors but instead heightened the subject’s overall executive function for the duration.

Cindy didn’t particularly like it—the effects were basically the ideological opposite of Sloth—but word of mouth spread through the nearby Washington University campus and there were several different study groups that had started to book my services as a result. I overheard one of them—a young Indian man—as he whispered to one of his fellow students about the placebo effect, but that didn’t stop the students from taking their place in the center of the ritual circle I set up.

The last two members of the group were women, and as the curly-haired blonde did an awkward dance out of the circle to make room for the adorably bubbly brunette who would be the last one to go, it occurred to me that none of them had any idea what I was actually doing. The ritual I used on Sara shared about half of its components with this one, and if I were less ethically driven—and not already surrounded by willing women—it would’ve only taken a moment of additional effort to add one or both of them to my harem.

The group chatted with each other animatedly as they headed off to study for their upcoming Spanish test, their minds focused but otherwise unaltered. As cute as the women had been, I had plenty of outlets with whom I could work up the Lust I fed to Cindy every day. If they approached me with demands similar to Sara, I might not have been able to resist, but it was obvious that I had all but disappeared from their minds as their attention focused elsewhere, and I was happy to leave them to their textbooks.

The other three rituals I’d added were neat, but not particularly useful to me. One helped predict the weather, but didn’t seem to be any more accurate than the free app I had on my phone, and one grew temporary gills on a target which allowed them to breathe water for a couple hours. If I’d lived a hundred years before and on an island, they might have been the most significant abilities I possessed. In a landlocked state and with access to the internet, they didn’t amount to much.

The third was more generally useful, but overlapped with my native Gift. It involved a complicated tossing and reading of runes which was designed to produce a single yes or no answer to a question. The length of the setup required for the ritual combined with the fact that I didn’t have a fantastic ability to interpret the results meant that for most situations I was better off leveraging my inherent magic, but the specificity of the answers did have its uses.

Unfortunately, predicting lottery numbers was not among them. I did give it a try, but found myself frustrated and vaguely offended when the results basically boiled down to ‘reply hazy, ask again later.’

* * *

Six days after the vampires attacked us in the parking lot of my apartment complex, I was headed towards my next consultation.

My client was one Anastasia Galanis, daughter of Philippos Galanis. Phil was one of my longest term customers, having started calling on me for advice on his investments a few years prior. I’d been careful to explain to him that stock markets were complex enough that my Gift was of marginal use in predicting them at best. He’d responded by telling me that even the best hedge fund managers rarely did better than a coin toss in his experience, so he might as well try something new.

Phil was old money. His family had been some kind of traders that had turned into holding a small shipping company in Greece and having a stake in a handful of smaller ventures. He’d retired in his fifties and most recently the service he’d had me perform had been my cleaning and maintenance ritual on some of his classic car collection.

The restored vehicles were one of his two passions, while Stacy—his daughter—was the other. She’d been a surprise, long past the point that he and his wife had assumed they were infertile after decades of trying for kids without success.

Phil doted on her and did his best to spoil her rotten. I’d been concerned the first time I met her—one too many horror stories online about spoiled rich kids had me convinced she’d be stuck up, condescending, rude, or some combination of all three.

Much to my surprise, while she wasn’t especially well tuned in to the day to day struggles of the common man, it had turned out that Stacy was both easygoing and surprisingly sweet. When I discovered that she spent her time modeling on Instagram and collecting endorsements as an influencer I wasn’t terribly surprised—she was absolutely gorgeous—but the discovery that she was closing in on a million followers did cause my jaw to drop.

It turned out that her page was well worth the visit, though, and I scrolled through several pages of her in bikinis as she and a half-dozen other women lounged around a lake. About half of the time, one of Phil’s cars would be visible in the background of some of the shots, which helped explain my current engagement.

Stacy had a trip planned, but the car she’d wanted to take was one of Phil’s newest acquisitions and he’d insisted that she take it to me so I could ‘give it my blessing’. The first time I’d performed the service a month or two back, the Influencer had stood to the side with a skeptical look as she watched me with suspicion. When it turned out I was able to produce actual tangible effects by placing a handful of crystals in a circle around a car, inscribing a bunch of runes in chalk around the outside, then burning some incense, her attitude had turned around in a hurry.

Stacy greeted me with a brilliant smile as I stepped out of my car. She was dressed for the cold, though the slim fur-lined jacket and tight leggings that she wore were as fashionable as they were practical. They hugged a figure that was heavier up top than nature had intended, and her lips and nose had an exaggerated perfection that was hard to find in the wild, but her surgeons had done good work. She might have had work done, but the end result was a beautiful young woman rather than a caricature.

“It’s good to see you Jack!” I felt her arms wrap around me in a quick hug and somewhat awkwardly returned the gesture. I hadn’t realized that we’d been on hugging terms, so while I didn’t mind putting my arms around the curly-haired blonde woman, I was caught a little off guard.

“I’m sorry I thought you were trying to scam my dad.” Her apology brought a laugh, and I squeezed back, then stepped away a polite distance.

“Totally understandable. Ford Mustang?”

“Close, except it’s a Pontiac Firebird.” Stacy’s easy laugh was unoffended at my misidentification, and I shrugged my shoulders helplessly.

“I’m not really a car guy. Anyway, ready for me to get started?”

“Keys are in the ignition, she’s all yours.”

The meeting was taking place at the top of a parking garage that was all but empty. The shopping center it was attached to was half-closed, and there was more than enough parking closer to the doors, leaving the top floors occupied only by a couple dust-covered abandoned vehicles.

The exception was the bright red convertible parked diagonally across four spaces. If there was any competition for the privilege it might have been cause for concern, but as I began to work my way around the vehicle on my knees to draw the outline of the circle I’d be using, not a single other person made their way as high as the floor below.

Aubrette was acting as my assistant for the day—this particular ritual was fueled by neither Glamour nor Sin, so neither of the Fae women nor Cindy were able to contribute anything to it from a magical perspective. Instead, the Sidhe contributed deft hands and incredible attention to detail as she helped me lay out the components the ritual would require.

From the side, Stacy watched the proceedings with interest for a while. Drawing about a hundred runes took time, though, and before I was halfway done I noticed the influencer had her face buried in her phone.

* * *

The last hints of smoke disappeared into the exterior of the car and left it sparkling clean and in better condition than it had seen in close to fifty years.

The act was met with muffled applause from Stacy, who had put her phone away about halfway through the ritual itself and stared at me intensely as I intoned the requisite incantation from my handwritten notebook. It was far more convenient than carting around the actual tome of rituals itself, which had been left in its place in my apartment.

Aubrette started to gather up the supplies that were able to be reused and, one by one, returned them to their appropriately labeled spots in the tackle box I used to cart around my magical supplies. It wasn’t fancy, but having a few dozen individual plastic boxes to hold assorted bits of ash, dried leaves, and incense turned out to be incredibly useful.

Before I could turn to assist, I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to find myself less than a foot away from a pretty face with a bright smile pointed up at me. I nearly stepped away in alarm, but didn’t want to stumble over the newly restored car, leaving me to sway awkwardly as I tried to catch my balance without bumping into my client.

“It’s so fascinating to watch you work. How do you learn to do all of that?” My cheeks had reddened from the cold, but I felt a rush of heat run through me at Stacy’s sudden proximity. She made no move to step away as she asked her question, and her bright hazel eyes—expertly lined and with long dark lashes—fluttered up at me from what felt like mere inches away.

“I- uhh- it’s- dicif- difficult. Tricky. Um.” My mind cast about in search of something to say. Stacy hadn’t actually made contact with me, but her body language made her intentions abundantly clear—she was hitting on me, and waiting to see how I’d react.

“Where are you- now that the car is taken care of, where are you off to?”

Stacy’s eyes glanced skyward for a moment before she responded, “New Orleans.” Her smile grew sultry as she added, “Mardi Gras. You should come.” Her eyes flicked over to Aubrette and took in the redhead’s abundant curves. “You should both come.”

“I- unfortunately, now isn’t a great time.” I grimaced as I responded. It wasn’t that I was opposed to getting closer to Stacy—for all that I didn’t know her all that well, what I’d seen from her was nice enough. She was certainly attractive enough to make a more intimate relationship an appealing prospect, for all that I was inundated with choices for that at the moment, but given my newly discovered feud with a vampire clan, the idea of skipping town would have opened me to another potential ambush.

“Maybe next time, though? I’m sure Aubrette wouldn’t mind the idea of showing off a little-“

Stacy’s chest abruptly bumped into mine as she took a half step forward. She was nearly a foot shorter than me, but her presence seemed to fill the space around me. My attempt to back away ended as soon as it began when my butt bumped into the door of the newly restored convertible.

“She should.” The influencer’s eyes didn’t even flicker towards the redhead as she responded, and she pushed herself up on her toes as she leaned into my chest. “Perhaps we could go to your place and… discuss it.”

My pants felt incredibly tight for some reason, and it was all I could manage to clear my head enough to shake it. “I- no, I, um. We should get going, now.”

My hands lifted and I gave Stacy another quick hug, but this time I lifted her gently off the ground and then set her down again a half a foot to the side. The move was fast enough that when she attempted to respond by wrapping her arms around me in return, I was able to slip free of her limbs before she could establish a solid grasp.

She pouted. “Next time, then.”

“Next time.”

I turned to make sure Aubrette was ready and then, without another word, I fled.

* * *

Two hours later, I was seated at my kitchen table, freshly showered and with a smile on my face.

I had talked with Aubrette about Stacy’s behavior on the way back, and she’d agreed that it had been unusually forward. We’d gotten distracted when I started actually did for a living, and we arrived at my apartment before the conversation had wound down.

Then Cindy had pounced on me and dragged both me and the redhead into my bedroom. I had worked off the lingering arousal of Anastasia’s attempt at seduction behind the Sidhe noble while her face was buried between the Sin Demon’s thighs. When the little blonde had then cleaned me of Fae juices with her tongue she had roused me enough for a round two that ended with me drilling deeply into Cindy’s ass.

By the time the three of us had showered, dried off, and dressed, Rose and Zarina had returned from their scouting mission. The former was side by side with Sara as they snuggled up to watch TV, while the latter joined me around the kitchen table with Aubrette.

“-I turned her down, because the vibes were just all wrong, but when Aubrette and I were talking about it, the idea came up that it might have been something the vampires had done to her.” Zarina nodded slowly as I finished. She had a small stack of books on the table in front of her and was dragging her finger down the page of a tall but thin tome bound in deep red leather.

“Hmm. I’ve heard of a few blood rites practiced by more esoteric vampire clans that could explain the way you described her as behaving just before you left. The problem with matching your description to those is the way you said she was acting when you first arrived. You said she seemed normal?”

“Yeah—I mean, as far as I could tell. She did hug me, but that just seemed like her being friendly. She didn’t hit me with the barely-legal coquette until after the ritual was actually done.”

“That rules out eight out of ten forms of magical behavior control I can think of. Nearly all of them require the subject and the controller to be in the same place at the same time.” Zarina sounded concerned, and she didn’t stop stopped working her way through her reference notes as she answered. “The other two consist of deep and complex arcane rituals—the kind of thing my grandfather was looking for when he showed up, actually—and possession.” She tapped her finger on the page as though to emphasize the point.

“There’s probably a few dozen types of creatures who might be able to take over a host body like that. Step one is going to be to rule out the arcane explanation, but that’s relatively easily done. Even if whoever did it has ended the effect, there are traces which will linger that I can pick up. You’ll have to get me face to face with Stacy for that, but it won’t take more than a few seconds and she doesn’t have to know what’s going on. In the meantime, though, we’ve got a problem to figure out.”

“If it wasn’t the vampires, who was it?” I glanced back and forth between Zarina and Aubrette as I asked the question, but neither woman had an answer. Instead, my Sidhe vassal responded with a question of her own.

“You studied the local power structure before moving to this city, Zarina, are there any other factions who might have been brought on as mercenaries for the duke?”

She shook her head. “No. Not with this kind of capability, at least. And not that would work with vampires. There’s something of an uneasy truce in the area, but it’s born out of a shared desire to avoid unnecessary loss rather than any kind of genuine trust. If whatever was happening with Stacy was Cherto’s doing, it means he’s brought someone in from the outside. That kind of unknown factor is worrying.”

“I mean, the real question I have if that’s the case is—why Stacy, of all people? She’s not someone I see on a regular basis, I can’t figure out why someone would go after her to get to me. Why not Rose, or Aubrette?”

“Possessing Fae is all but impossible. Specialized magical rituals can bind them, but it’s not like their physical body operates on the same rules as a human’s.”

I had known that Cindy’s shape was basically a lump of Sin magic congealed into a svelte shape, but Zarina’s answer cast some new light on Aubrette. The Sidhe actually looked as interested in the topic as I was, but I refused to allow us to get off track. “OK, why not go after me directly? Or you, or- or Sara, for that matter?”

“Your question has two distinct answers. In your case, I suspect your biology has begun to morph in response to the Sin and Glamour that flow through you. You mentioned your growth spurt after Aubrette swore her service to you and you began to provide her with Glamour, and your increased strength and resilience is likely the result of the Sin you constantly channel in your efforts to feed Cindy. As for both Sara and myself, the answer is a little more simple—our minds are already under outside control.”

I glanced over at Sara. She wasn’t actually under the effects of the Fae ritual that rewired her brain chemistry to reward obedience to my whims at the moment, but she’d spent more time under its influence than not lately. Zarina’s charm effect was more or less permanent—or at least, wasn’t going to go away in a hundred human lifetimes on its own. A frown crept over my face at the implications of her words, and I asked, “If you manage to free yourself from your spell, can you protect yourself from possession? Can you protect Sara?”

“Myself, quite easily. The only reason my own spell worked on me is that it originated from within my own protections. Sara is, unfortunately, a different matter entirely. The only way I could protect her is by charming her with the same spell. While it is faster to apply than your ritual by far, the effect normally wears off quite quickly. I would need to devote a considerable amount of time and effort to maintaining it to keep her protected. It would be far more efficient for you to simply keep her until the threat is confirmed to have passed.”

My eyes narrowed suspiciously as I eyed Zarina. The wizard was motivated to keep me happy, and it wouldn’t surprise me to hear her suggest turning Sara into a permanent thrall, but nothing in her expression suggested those ulterior motives were at play here. Her eyes met mine without hesitation—though I noticed the way her lips parted and her breathing quickened when I focused my attention on her—and eventually I nodded. “I’ll ask her first, but if that’s the best way you can think of to protect her, I don’t have any objections.”