Font of Fertility Chapter 27 Beta

By BreaktheBar

The following is the Beta Draft of Font of Fertility Ch 27. As an Beta draft, this is not the final work and may see major changes prior to final posting out in the wide world.

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All Characters in sexual situations are 18 years or older.

This story is a continuation of the Font of Fertility series. I suggest reading Chapter 1 if you have not already. This chapter includes a quick date, referenced MFF, brief MF, and a whole lotta magic.

Jeremiah has some explaining to do, decisions to make, and moves his girls into the penthouse only to be met with a surprise.

Reminder: This story started in 2015, and is currently in 2016 in the modern world. Some pop culture references may seem wonky in this chapter without that knowledge .

Returning Dramatis Personae

- Jeremiah ‘Jerry’ Grant - Seat of Fertility, aka. Powerful Sex Shaman

- Lauren Baxley - Public girlfriend, Jerry’s Prime in the magic world, closest friend and confidant

- Jay - Jerry’s best guy friend from high school

- Benji - Jerry’s guy friend from high school, the one with the attitude

- Aidra - Petite goth girl from Jerry and Lauren’s school, Fuck buddy, Witch

- Lindsey Baxley - Girlfriend/Concubine, Lauren’s step-sister via marriage, girl-genius

- Stacey Wilde - Girlfriend/Concubine, godchild of Jerry’s parents, athletic

- Esmerelda - Seat of Death, aka. Powerful Death Wizard, second-youngest Seat, weirdo

Referenced Characters

- Jerry’s Parents - ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad,’ took in their goddaughter Stacey when her parents died in an accident

- Annalise Stoker - Concubine/Girlfriend, Fire Mage

- Angela ‘Angie’ Dawkins - Girlfriend/Concubine, Lindsey’s friend from back in high school

- Jordan - Redheaded writer friend, interested in Jerry and his Harem

- Xi Zuang - Seat of Life, aka. Powerful Experience Wizard

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I had, for the most part, been trying to keep my old life.

Sure, there had been some major changes since I got my magic and became a Seat of Fertility. Lauren, Lindsey and Stacey and my relationships with them were pretty big in that regard. But nothing had changed with my parents. Nothing had changed with school. And the thing with Benji had definitely been a big hiccup in our friend group, and I’d inadvertently empowered that with magic, but it hadn’t completely torn things apart.

Even Aidra becoming my fuckbuddy didn’t feel like a dramatic change. We’d already been friendly, if not great friends , and adding in sex felt like it was only going to be a bonus between us and wouldn’t necessarily change how we were at school.

“Oh, shit,” Lauren sighed from behind us as she came to the door and saw Jay and Benji standing halfway up the driveway.

“Do you want me to stay and help with… this, or go?” Aidra asked me.

“I got this,” I said with a sigh, looking down at the short goth girl. “See you Monday.”

“See you,” she said and started walking down the driveway. “Ah,” she said, holding up a hand to the guys when she approached them and they looked like they were going to ask her something. “Talk to them.”

Watching Aidra walk to her car in her kilt and fishnet stockings made me want to grab that little ass of hers again, but I knew that could happen whenever we wanted now. At the moment there was a much bigger problem.

“What the fuck was that?” Jay asked, coming up the driveway.

“Calm down, Jay,” Lauren said, coming to stand next to me on the porch.

“Calm down?!” Jay said. “What the hell, guys? Lauren, do you even know what he was doing out here with Aidra?”

“Kissing her goodbye, I assume,” Lauren said.

Jay sputtered a little, looking like he’d lost his sense of balance in the world.

“So she’s one of the girls you’re… um…” Benji said.

I frowned and sighed out through my nose, trying not to turn it into a groan or growl. “It’s not really your business, guys.”

“Yeah, maybe not, but it is now that it’s happening right in front of us,” Jay said. “I mean, what the fuck?”

“How about you guys come in, instead of having this conversation outside?” Lauren suggested.

We all piled inside and I called upstairs that Jay and Benji were here - the last thing this situation needed was Lindsey or Stacey coming down only partially dressed or saying something sexual without realising who could hear. I led Jay and Benji down to the basement, our usual hangout space at my house, and we all sat down.

“OK, for real,” Jay said. “Are you guys swingers or something?”

“No,” Lauren said. “At least, not like how you might be thinking.”

“Are you… like are you guys polyamorous?” Benji asked.

“Sort of,” I said.

“What the fuck?” Jay asked. “How? Why? You guys just started dating.”

“What we do in the bedroom doesn’t have anything to do with you guys,” Lauren said.

“Well, it will if you’re banging a bunch of people at school,” Jay said. “Who else are you guys fooling around with, so I know what rumours might be true when they start up?”

“No, I think it’s more important we find out why,” Benji said to Jay, and turned to Lauren and I. “What the fuck is going on? How is this happening?”

“Wait, is this why I barely saw you at your own New Year’s party?” Jay asked.

“Fuck,” I groaned and shook my head, glancing at Lauren.

My girlfriend was frowning, her brow furrowed just a little, as our eyes met. Neither of us had an answer for this. She turned to the guys. “I’m bi, and so I opened up our relationship but just to girls. Who we fool around with is about who we’re attracted to, OK?”

“You’re officially bi?” Jay asked. He must have assumed, considering Lauren had already told him we’d had a threesome with another girl, but I guess ‘official’ was important in his mind.

“But how ?” Benji asked. “I mean, no offence Jerry, but you’re not exactly high on the popular scale at school. How are you guys suddenly having a bunch of threesomes and shit?”

“We ask, or offer,” Lauren said. “And Jerry is way more attractive than you guys give him credit for.” Both of them looked at me dubiously. “Plus there was the accidental advertising of when we got caught fucking in the girls’ locker room at school.”

That had both of the guys shaking their heads. Maybe they’d forgotten about that little incident.

“That’s still- how many?” Jay asked. “Like, how many people have you two hooked up with?”

“That’s kind of rude to ask,” I said.

“I don’t care!” Jay burst. “Seriously. Everything is changing, and I want to know why. None of this makes sense. This whole winter break you guys have been MIA. I figured you were just spending a lot of time together, but even then I figured you weren’t just having sex all the time. Now I find out you were, just with other people too, but I mean… what the fuck?”

“It’s sus,” Benji said. He clearly wanted to say more, but he was still on his back foot since his apology to us.

“Why have you been hiding shit and lying to us? Are you guys in a sex cult or something?” Jay asked.

“What?” I asked. “No. Is that a shot at Aidra?”

“It’s a fair question,” Jay said levelly. “No one our age hooks up like this. It’s kind of ridiculous, so something is going on.”

“Nothing is going on,” Lauren sighed in exasperation.

“You’re lying!” Jay said, throwing his hands up in the air. “I can fucking tell, Lauren. Jerry is a little harder to read, but I always know when you’re lying or bluffing because you have a tell. It’s why I can always catch you out during board games.”

“I have a tell?” Lauren asked.

“Yes, you do,” Jay said. “And I’m not telling you what it is, but I know you’re lying. So if you guys don’t respect us enough to tell us what’s going on, I think we should go.” He looked at Benji, who nodded, then back at us. “You can let me know when you decide to trust us enough to tell us what’s going on.”

That one hit me in the heart. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust them, especially Jay. I just didn’t want them getting wrapped up in all of the shit that was going on. I looked at Lauren as Jay and Benji stood up. I knew she was going through almost as much turmoil as I was with this.

Options. I could make them forget what they just saw, and the whole conversation. All we had to do was get them outside again, and they could come in and hang out like they were apparently planning to anyway. That would be messing with their minds though, and even though we’d decided that messing with memories was on the table, I still wanted to limit that to an ‘Emergency Only’ decision. The more I thought about it, it just felt wrong to do that to anyone, especially someone I thought of as a friend or family.

I could let them go and build a better lie. Find some way to keep them in the dark. It was kind of awful, but I didn’t really mind doing that to Benji at the moment. Jay, however, definitely didn’t deserve that.

It was improbable, but I could get Stacey and Lindsey down into the basement to back up our current story. I wasn’t sure how far that could fly, though, and it would open up questions of propriety when it came out that we were all sleeping together, whether or not we were ‘actually related.’ If word got out at school, it might get too big too fast for me to realistically contain.

Then there was the truth.

Looking into Lauren’s eyes, I knew I didn’t need to open a telepathic connection to understand what she was telling me.

“Alright,” I said. “OK. We’ll tell you.”

“Good,” Jay said. “Then let’s hear it.” He was already standing up, ready to walk to the stairs and leave, and Benji had joined him.

“Just follow me,” I said. I glanced at Lauren and took her hand, then went to one of the storage closet doors. “Here, take my hand,” I said to Jay.

“Why?” he asked, looking confused.

“Just do it, Jay,” Lauren sighed.

“Benji, grab onto the back of my shirt,” I said.

Jay took my hand, and Benji grabbed the back of my shirt.

“What the fuck are we doing?” Benji asked.

“Just follow me,” I said, opening the door and stepping from my basement and into the Sanctum through the teleportal door.

“What the fuck!? ” Jay burst.

“Where the hell are we?” Benji asked, looking around the cavernous main space with its empty plinths that used to hold artefacts and the arching structure of the Amplifier looming in the middle.

“So, there is  something I’ve been hiding from you guys,” I said. “It’s still new and only really happened right before the holidays started, and I’ve been trying to grapple with it a bit and things have been changing rapidly. It turns out I’m kind of a wizard, and I have the ability to cast spells, and I’m part of a line of very powerful wizards. This is the sanctum that was handed down to me by the previous guy who had my position.”

Benji was looking at me with big, confused eyes while Jay was giving me a deadpan look and blinked rapidly.

“Technically his title is Shaman,” Lauren said.

“You’re a fucking wizard,” Jay said.

“You’re a fucking wizard!? ” Benji burst out a little.

Lauren snorted and then started laughing.

“What is so funny?” Jay asked.

“You guys are more right than you know,” she chuckled.

I sighed. “Look, magic is complicated. I’m what’s called a Seat of Fertility, and I can do basically any sort of magic that I can think up but I get my power from… having sexual relations. There are other Seats that get their power from life experiences, and from death. But most of the people in the world who can do magic are a lot more limited in what  they can do, but can do it a lot more easily without needing to charge up their batteries.”

“So all the sex you’re having… is to do magic?” Jay asked incredulously.

“Well, I mean, the sex is also really good,” Lauren smirked.

“Does everyone you have sex with know ?” Benji asked.

“No, though… I mean, sort of mostly,” I said.

“How many people have you told before us?” Jay asked, looking hurt.

“It’s not about telling them before you, it’s about trying to keep the circle as small as possible,” I said. “Look, I’ve already been attacked once, and the other Seats are like thousands  of years old with a shitload more power than me, and I’m still trying to figure out what this whole magical world is . The more people who know, the more likely they’ll be targeted to try and get to me.”

“That’s some bullshit,” Benji said. “Life isn’t a comic book, if there are real people who want to hurt you through us, what’s to stop them from doing that whether we know what’s going on or not?”

“Nothing specifically,” I sighed. “But the magic world tries not to show itself to the non-magic world. It’s a whole Diagon Alley situation.”

“Great,” Jay said. “Just fucking great. So what now, then? Are we just going to be targets or something?”

“Jerry maybe wasn’t clear enough about who he is,” Lauren said. “He’s one of the nine head wizards in the entire world. Way  more powerful than anyone else, as long as he has the power built up. He’s Saruman, or Superman. Anyone who goes after him in any way is asking for a nuke shoved up his ass. The one guy who already did so far was crazy and Jerry severed his ability to do magic, which is like the magic-world equivalent of cutting off the guy's balls and making him eat them.”

“Well, fuck,” Benji said. “Isn’t that great? We only need to worry about crazy  people with magic.”

“Yeah, OK, that’s fair,” I said. “But still, you guys demanded to know. And I’ve been trying to figure out who I should and shouldn’t tell, it’s not like I decided not  to tell you, I just wasn’t sure whether it was the right choice or not.”

“Come on,” Lauren said. “Let me show you guys around the Sanctum, and you can ask me questions without Jerry listening in. OK?”

She took them over to the library first, while I sat on the edge of the Amplifier stage and tried to just breathe and not freak out. This whole situation was fucked. Lauren and the guys were in there for a while, but other than an initial ‘ Holy shit! ’ when they first walked in and saw the view over the lake of lava, I couldn’t hear them. I could have listened in, but I trusted Lauren to handle the two of them. Eventually, they came out of the library and the guys only took little glances at me before she led them into the bedroom to show off the river and the hot pool. They were in there a much shorter amount of time before they returned.

“Who knows?” Jay asked. “Lauren says you need to have a harem to properly build your magic, but also you need to fuck new people too. Because it’s totally fucking normal  in whatever this magical culture is for harems to be a thing, right? Totally normal!”

“It’s not totally normal ,” I said. “But it’s expected of people in my situation. The other two Seats of Fertility are like… sex addicts on steroids. I’m trying my fucking best to not  be that. Apparently by a month in, most of the other Fertility seats had fucked their way through dozens, if not hundreds, of people and threw most of them aside. I don’t want  to be that kind of person.”

“Have you fucked my Mom?” Benji asked. “Our Moms?”

“No,” I said, giving him a shocked look.

“Did you have sex with Clarissa?” Jay asked. “You can affect people's minds. Did you screw her and make her forget, or not care, or just not tell me?”

“Jesus fuck, Jay,” I said. “Do you think I’m a fucking rapist?”

“No,” he said, his shoulders slumping. “But this is all fucked, and right now I don’t know what I believe.”

“I didn’t have sex with Clarissa,” I assured him.

“Then who is in your harem?” Benji asked.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. They would find out, or need to know, eventually. Better to get it out now. “Lindsey was the second person to join after Lauren.”

“Jesus,” Jay said, looking at Lauren.

“It was my idea,” Lauren said. “We aren’t blood-related, I love her to bits, and she needed Jerry. I’m not telling you any more than that, and don’t ask her unless she offers. It’s her story.”

“Who else?” Jay asked.

“Third was Stacey,” I admitted.

Both guys gave me ‘ what the fuck? ’ looks, then made considering looks, and then Jay shrugged and shook his head. He couldn’t blame me. We weren’t even step-siblings. And, based on the light teasing that had happened over the years, both of them thought she was hot.

“Fourth was a woman named Annalise,” I said. “She’s a Fire mage who came to me needing help, and we kind of got involved.”

“Another complicated story for another time,” Lauren said.

“Then fifth was Angela. She was in Lindsey’s year at school.”

“No fucking way,” Benji said. “Angela Dawkins? I still- Never mind.”

I didn’t want to know what Benji ‘still’ did to the memory of my girlfriend.

“And you guys already know I met up with Jordan a couple of times this week. Well, she sort of figured out what was going on and asked  to join, and I really like her so I said yes,” I said.

“Wait, she figured out you were all magical and shit in like two days ?” Jay asked.

“No, she figured it out about the harem situation,” I said. “Then I told her about the magic to make sure she understood what she was getting into.”

“Jesus,” Jay sighed. “And now Aidra? Is that all?”

“Aidra was just a hook-up,” I said. “She’s a friend.”

“For now,” Lauren said with a smirk.

“It’s complicated,” I clarified, as much for her as for the guys.

“Fuck me,” Benji said, shaking his hand.

“No thanks,” I said, trying to joke. “I’m not into dudes.”

He made a face. “Not what I mean, but good to know.”

“Do you guys want to see outside the Sanctum?” I offered.

We made the walk up the spiral stairs to the top in silence, I opened the main Vault door and we climbed the ladder and popped up. It was still pretty warm, but it was damp and I could tell it had rained recently. “Welcome to Hawaii,” I said as I offered them hands up out of the old hidden bunker shaft.

“What the fuuuck,” Jay said, looking around. It may not have been the best  possible view, but it was still pretty great from the side of a volcano. The ocean was a deep blue-grey under the overcast sky, and the tropical foliage spreading out in all directions made it pretty evident we weren’t anywhere near our suburban home. A city, way off in the distance, was like a landmark that we hadn’t travelled to some other world or time altogether.

“This is insane,” Benji exhaled heavily, looking around. “What’s the distance, like 4,000 miles or something? You brought us here in an instant?”

“Well, with the way the spell works I need a door,” I said. “Getting here the first time was a lot more of a pain.”

“Jerry almost died the first time,” Lauren said.

“To be fair, that  wasn’t exactly connected to getting here,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess,” she shrugged. “But still, just to be clear you guys - Jerry has almost died doing magic stuff. This isn’t some game.”

“Have you killed anyone?” Jay asked.

“No,” I said. “And I’m hoping I won’t have to, but… it could happen.”

Jay looked troubled, and Benji had his lips pursed as he kept looking around like he was trying to do the math  on something.

“Let's go back,” Jay said after taking one more look up at the volcano.

We all headed back down into the Sanctum and I shut the doors behind us, then I had them hold onto me like last time and we stepped out of the Sanctum and into my basement again.

“Look,” I said. “I get it, it’s a lot.”

“Yeah,” Jay said. “It is. You’re some grand wizard, you’ve been hiding it from us even if it might be for a good reason, and apparently, you get your powers from fucking. You realize this is fucking insane, right?”

“Everyone always thinks it’s insane, or crazy,” Lauren sighed as she shook her head. “No one is ever like, ‘OMG Jerry, that’s so cool!’”

“Actually, Jordan took it really well,” I said. “She had a list of ideas of what might have been going on. Wizard was third on her list after Vampire and Incubus.”

Lauren snorted. Jay and Benji didn’t seem to appreciate the humour.

“Just take some time,” I said. “All the time you need. I’ll answer any questions you have. I just need you guys to promise not to talk about this with anyone other than me or Lauren, OK?”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Benji said. “Because someone would believe us when we tell them.”

“He’s being serious, Benji,” Lauren said sternly. “No jokes in public, no posting on message boards or Discords. No rumours. We’ve already had our privacy breached once by the magical world, the last thing we need are anti-magic assholes looking at us too.”

“Nope,” Jay said, shaking his head and heading for the stairs. “Nuh-uh, I don’t want to ask questions about that right now. We’ll be silent.”

“Thank you,” I said, then looked at Benji.

He held up his hands defensively. “It’s locked in the vault,” he said, miming locking his lips and throwing away the key.

We walked them out, Jay taking his pizza with him at my insistence, and we watched them get into Jay’s car and drive away before shutting the door.

“Popped their magic cherries, huh?” Lindsey asked from the top of the stairs. She was wearing one of my shirts and that was it - her pretty pussy was peeking from between her wonderfully pale thighs.

“ Not  how I want to think of that,” I said.

“They didn’t exactly take it well,” Lauren sighed.

“Oh, they’ll get over it,” Lindsey said. “And when they do, they’ll want you to do stuff for them. Don’t be afraid to say no, OK?” The statement sounded like advice, but I could tell by the look in Lindsey’s eye that it was more of a pleading. A request not to fall into the same trap that she had, of doing things for people she thought were friends and cared for her when they cared more about what she did for them.

“I won’t,” I promised her, mounting the stairs until I got to a couple below her and I leaned in to hug her. “It should be fine.”

“Probably,” Lauren said, following me up.

“Good,” Stacey said, coming down the hall. She was fully dressed in her pyjamas, the pants riding low on her hips and the shirt thin and clinging to her. “In that case, you have a date, Jerry.”

“I do?” I asked. Before the disruption of Aidra revealing her newly single status, my afternoon was supposed to have been focused on taking out Lauren and Lindsey but they were already here.

“Mhmm,” Stacey said. “While you were handling the boys, I was busy checking in with the concubines. Jordan sends her love, and Anna says they should be finishing up in New Mexico tomorrow but the final decision hasn’t been made about Maya yet.”

“OK, so who is the date with?” I asked.

“Me,” Lindsey said with a smile. “And Angie. We decided that since Lauren gets you the most, it made sense for me and her to get you together for a bit. And Angie isn’t going to get to see you for a few days because of the move.”

“I think they’re planning on devouring you whole,” Stacey chuckled.

“Well,” I said, kissing Lindsey softly and grabbing her butt for a moment. “I guess I had better go get dressed for another date.”

“I guess you should,” she grinned. “As should I.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

She bit her lip and grinned.

***---***---***

“Wake up, babe. We’re here,” Lauren said, running her fingers through my hair.

I groaned and blinked myself awake, looking out the windows of the minivan. Lauren and I were jammed into the middle seats, the back full of Lindsey and Stacey’s luggage and a few new things that they had wanted to bring from home, along with food that both my Mom and Lauren’s had packed to send along. Stacey was driving even though it was the Baxley family vehicle, and Lindsey looked like she’d crashed in the passenger seat around the time that I had.

That was understandable, considering how she and Angie had gotten me to teleportal us to Los Angeles and snuck us into a movie premiere. The movie had been mediocre, but it had been fun to pretend to be part of the entertainment industry. There hadn’t been any massive names in the movie or on the guest list, but we’d each met a couple of medium-tier actors and actresses. I was pretty sure that Lindsey had hit on Felicity Jones, who had been in that Stephen Hawking biopic a year before, but she hadn’t mentioned getting a number from the actress. Angie swore that Melissa Benoist, who’d been on Glee and had just started a run as Supergirl in the CW shows, had been checking her out. There hadn’t been any hookups with celebrities, but we had ended up manoeuvring ourselves to get invited to an afterparty that had gone late into the night. It wasn’t the fabled sort of debauched Hollywood party that supposedly happened, but it had been fun and Ariana Grande had been at the party and performed a song as someone accompanied her on a piano. Angie and Lindsey had both been thrilled by that, and it was fun to see them so happy.

Then, at the end of a very late night, we’d teleportaled  back to Angie’s place and they ravaged me. I’d only gotten a couple of hours of sleep back at home before I’d been woken up by Stacey to help start packing the car. She’d taken it easy on me, having gotten some drunk update texts from the girls through the night, but not  too  easy. Part of me had wanted to use magic to refresh myself, but Stacey had chided me that I needed to conserve my magic and also learn a lesson about late nights and alcohol. Once I learned that lesson, she’d promised to back off on me wiping away a hangover.

I had a feeling the first time I needed to cure a hangover for her was when she would say I had ‘learned the lesson.’

Stacey used the scan card to get into the basement parking structure of the apartment building, and it didn’t take long to start carting things up to the penthouse. The longest part of the whole process was the elevator ride.

Lauren, having not even seen the place yet, was properly impressed as she looked out at the mid-morning glow of the city and the nearby park and river. The sun was out and the soft layer of fresh snow still covering the grass and the tops of the buildings made the scene picturesque.

Then began the great Organising.

We’d already unpacked all the stuff from Lindsey and Stacey’s apartments when we’d first moved in, but now that the three of them were together decisions needed to be made. Who got what space in the big walk-in closet? What about the dressers and drawers? How much space did they need to leave for Annalise, and how much more space would they need for when Lauren and Angie moved in next summer?

I was the workhorse for a bit, moving things around, but when it came down to details I was unneeded as they handled things. I decided to go out and do a big grocery run to stock the fridge and pantry, armed with a list from the girls. I took the minivan instead of summoning Victorious for the simple sake of storage space, and it took me multiple trips up and down the elevator to get everything up once I was finished.

Then the ladies left me to my own devices for a bit. I ended up posting up in one of the guest rooms and texting with Jordan, telling her about the mental wall I’d hit the other day when I’d tried to sit down and write. She’d laughed and told me to stop being a little bitch. There was always something I could work on if it wasn’t actually sitting down to write off the cuff. I ended up calling her and we talked for a few minutes as she told me about her day so far and I told her about moving into the penthouse. She reminded me that Lauren and I would only be finishing our first year of the Uni when she was graduating, so she would probably be moving in with us there as well. That put a smile on my face as I thought about turning the guest room I was in into an office for us.

When I ended the conversation with Jordan I traded some quick texts with Angie, who was doing a shift at the mall but had a break - she was still hurting a little from the long night out just like I was, and thought it was ridiculous that Stacey wanted me to hold off on just fixing hangovers. Once she had to get back to work I checked in on Annalise, who was finishing up with her brothers and Maya and driving back up to drop her brothers off at their own homes.

“Hey, babe,” Lauren said as she entered the bedroom, smiling as she saw me lying on the guest bed. It didn’t have any sheets at the moment, but the mattress was comfortable enough. “What’s up?”

“Maya’s decided to move up here with Annalise,” I said. “Her brothers were both willing to take her in, but she wants to stay near Annalise after what they went through, and near us. She also doesn’t want to put her brothers in danger in case George comes looking for her.”

“Aw, that’s good,” Lauren said with a grin as she came over and flopped onto the mattress next to me. “Should we pick a room for her?”

“I think we should let her choose,” I said. “Things will get full enough when we’re all coming in, but the way I see it is that she’s the odd girl out in terms of everyone else who will live here. She needs to feel like she has some control.”

“You know, sometimes you might actually be the wise wizard that people want you to be?” Lauren teased me.

“Gee, thanks,” I said. “I feel so blessed.”

Lauren crawled over me, and I went from my side to my back so she could look down at me. She opened her mouth to say something but I interrupted her.

“God, you’re cute,” I said.

She laughed and rolled her eyes, leaning down to kiss me. Then she pulled back. “Thank you, Jerry,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

“So what are you going to do about Maya?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “She’s moving in, Annalise will get her signed up for classes at a school here-”

“I mean the fact that she wants to fuck you,” Lauren said.

“She’s just teasing Anna,” I said. “I would be doing the same thing in her shoes to tease Stacey. Well, if the situation could at all be the same.”

“Oh, she definitely is teasing Anna,” Lauren said. “But she’s a horny teenager who is fully aware that you are generally sexually available, rock the world of multiple women, and also care about her without being in her family. She’s crushing on you big time.”

I sighed and shook my head as I looked up at my girlfriend. “It can’t happen,” I said. “I promised Anna.”

“She can’t make every decision for her sister,” Lauren said. “And we’re only a year older than Maya compared to Anna being, what, four years older than us or something?”

“I know,” I said. “But I promised her. There’s no way I go back  on that.”

“OK,” Lauren sighed. “If you’re sure.”

“I am,” I said. “And don’t pressure Anna  to change her mind.”

Lauren gave me a look that told me that I caught her exactly in the plan she’d already been forming. It was her turn to sigh and she lowered herself to me and kissed me again, a little slower and more intimate than the last one. “You know,” she murmured without really pulling her lips from mine. “From what I understand, you guys only had sex in the main bed, right?”

“Mhmm,” I hummed, hugging her to me.

“That means that these guest rooms still need to be broken in.”

“That’s true,” I smirked.

Lauren and I took our time to make sure the bed frame in the guest room was good and sturdy. Then Stacey and Lindsey played a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors and Stacey and I broke in the next guestroom down. There were three in total, so it wasn’t like any of them were going to miss out. By the time Stacey and I had finished, it was going on dinner  time, so the four of us hit the kitchen and started cooking. It was a little chaotic with all of us, and the grabass factor was a bit disruptive. Lauren was only wearing a bra and her loose lounging pants, while Stacey was in one of my hoodies and her panties. Lindsey, still fully dressed, somehow contrived to spill some olive oil on my shirt and had me take it off.

By the time we sat down to eat the chicken stir fry over noodles, I’d been thoroughly groped and teased and had my hands all over the three of them as well. We rushed through the meal, with plenty of leftovers ready to get packed away, and Lindsey grabbed my hand and tugged me towards the final guest room as Lauren and Stacey said they would clean up.

I could get used to having sex instead of doing dishes.

Lindsey, being her kinky self, decided that since the last guest room was situated in the back corner of the penthouse and had a floor-to-length window overlooking the city then it only made sense to fuck her against that window. So that’s where I was, my gorgeous girlfriend’s entire naked front pressed against the glass as we watched the last glimmers of sunset  trail across the sky. My cock was firmly fucking into her from behind, feeling her ass squish and slap against my pelvis with each pounding thrust. I had my hand in her hair, gripping hard and pressing her cheek to the glass as she grinned wildly and looked back at me. My other hand was holding hers above her head. We were both sweaty and groaning hard, and she licked her upper teeth as she laughed in sheer pleasure.

A pounding sound back out in the apartment, loud and insistent, echoed through the back hall and into the guest room.

“You think the neighbours heard us?” Lindsey asked.

“Fuck,” I grunted, pulling out of her and panting a little. “I better check. God, I was getting close.”

“Well, once you fix it, we can try another position,” Lindsey grinned. “I’m thinking we get my legs behind my head and we actually break in the bed.”

I smirked and gave her a smack on the ass, but rushed to get my pants on as the pounding on the door sounded again. Coming out of the back hall, I saw Lauren coming from the master bedroom area with Stacey right behind her, both of them frowning as they responded to the same loud knocking.

Then the door cracked with a bang, bursting open as a man entered.

The first thing I noticed was his eyes. They were wide open and wild, scanning the room lightning-fast before focusing on me with a deadly intensity. He was wild-haired as he rushed into the apartment, his lightly tanned skin flush with exertion from kicking in the door. He had a moustache and neatly trimmed goatee and was dressed in what looked like heavily worn street clothes other than a pair of almost-new black and red Adidas sneakers. He had something long and sort of thin strapped to his back, and he had a fucking sword that he was pulling from a sheath  as he darted towards me.

I barely had time to raise my hands and start forming a spell in my mind, focusing on repelling this asshole as he came at me, when he dropped to his knees and literally slid to within a couple of feet of me. His sword came up and he presented me with the blade with both hands as he bowed his head.

“Jeremiah Grant, Seat of Fertility, I beg sanctuary and submit myself to your Judgement,” he said quickly, his voice thick and bearing an accent I couldn’t immediately place.

“What the fuck?” Lindsey said, following me out of the back hallway in nothing but my shirt as she saw our front door hanging from its hinges.

“Dude, this is not how you ask me for a judgment,” I said. “What the hell?”

“My apologies, Great Seat,” he said, still keeping his head bowed low. “But I am pursued and require your Sanctuary or I fear I shall be dead before the moon rises.”

“Pursued by what? ” I asked.

His head snapped up and he looked out the broad expanse of windows along the long side of the penthouse. “They are here,” he said.

The windows shattered all at once. Each of them blew in towards us, and at first I thought the glass had to be from some sort of explosion, but then coming in through with it were forms. Figures.

I threw out my hands and caught the flying glass and yanked it down with my mind, flaring a bit of power to pull it all down. The shards dropped immediately, yanked down like gravity had quadrupled on them, many embedding into the furniture and floor with a rain of loud schunks . The figures, however, didn’t fall with it in haphazard heaps. They spun and writhed and somehow landed crouched. They were swathed in black and deep blue fabric and were wearing cloth face coverings, and each one was wielding a short-bladed katana.

“Fucking ninjas!? ” I yelled.

The ninjas started throwing shit in our general direction, and my mind immediately went into overdrive as I threw out my hands again and turned every metal throwing star into loose, fluffy snow. The interior of the apartment was covered in streaks of wet, melting slush in an instant. There were seven of the ninjas and they had to have thrown at least three each in almost the blink of an eye. One wet slush managed to make it to me, and I saw another hit Stacey in her chest.

“Stop!” I shouted, and it came out like a roar as I felt my anger spiking.

“They are mindless trackers, lord,” the swordsman said. “Animated spirits bound to hunt for a specific target.”

“Fucking ghost ninjas!? ” I growled.

The good thing, in that split moment I had to consider things, was that I didn’t have to worry about killing them because they were already dead. The ghost ninjas didn’t glance at each other, didn’t communicate. They all simply rushed forward at once with their blades raised.

“Fuck right off,” I grunted as I grabbed each of them with an invisible hand and squeezed.

They froze and contorted in the grip of my fists. There weren’t any sounds of crunching bones, but the bodies looked broken nonetheless. Some of the swords dropped to the floor, while others were driven back into the clothing by the force of my will. I squeezed again and then let them go as I exhaled heavily. There were thumps as the clothing and equipment dropped to the floor.

“Alright,” I said as I turned to the swordsman who had broken into my brand-new apartment. “You’ve got some fucking explaining to do.”

“Jerry!” Lauren called.

I glanced over at her and Stacey and they were both looking in horror at the bundles of clothing on the floor. They were moving. Slowly re-filling. Several of the headpieces had fallen askew and revealed what looked like silver-plated skulls that were rising from the ground, the bodies reforming under them.

“They cannot be killed by physical force, lord,” the swordsman said apologetically. “If that were the case, I would have been able to dispatch them myself.”

“Fucking ghost ninja terminators ,” I growled loudly. “What the fuck  is going on?”

The problem was that they were Ghosts. Ninja and Terminator were both things that could be handled physically, which in the grand scheme of things was pretty easy for me to do with magic. How the fuck was I supposed to fight a ghost though?

“Jerry, do something,” Stacey called out, backing away with Lauren as the ninja ghosts started to claw their way forward even while they were still reforming.

“Ah, fuck it,” I said. I had one idea and maybe it was stupid, but I was fucking magic . I drew a rune in the air, leaving a trailing golden line - well, I thought of it as a rune, but really it was a cross in a circle. Some of what Lindsey had told me about her studies into runes led me to make a couple of guesses, but I also knew that the real power I had was that unreality didn’t require runes for me to bend it. They just helped, and if this was going to help me focus my belief in the spell then I didn’t really care if it was ‘supposed’ to work as much as I thought it should.

With the glowing circle and cross in front of me, I grabbed the sword out of the swordsman's hand and thrust it into the glowing cross. It was a longsword, complete with a pommel and handguards, so it matched the cross nicely, and as I held it upside down within the glowing rune I focused on the spell and the ghosts.

“The power of Christ compels you!” I shouted and released the spell. There was a howling, like wind beginning to pick up speed through the shattered windows, but it was localised inside  the room and was coming from the ghost ninjas. Their cloth bodies began to ripple, and their movement stopped as they shuddered in place, and then they began to get dragged towards me. The howling wind sound was coming from them, and I felt like the spirits were horrified, or terrified.

I didn’t blame them, considering what I was doing. Who wanted to go from being able to run around and cut people up as ninjas, to being trapped inside an inanimate sword?

Their essences began to get sucked up, swirling within the circular border of my glowing rune and then syphoning into the metal of the blade. One by one the cloth bodies collapsed, their equipment spilling loosely onto the floor among the shards of glass, until the last one fell and I closed off the loop of the spell, tightening the rune until it became a golden band around the hilt of the sword.

“Yeah, bitch!” I shouted, looking at the sword. “Fucking suck my dick, ghost ninjas. Breaking into my Goddamn house? Who the fuck do you think I am?” I let out a loud breath and looked around at my girls. “OK. Anyone have anything to say before I fix the windows?”

Everyone shook their heads, and since I was on a spending spree with magic I spread out my influence across the room and willed all of the glass back into its proper place. Every speckle and shard leapt up like it was a movie in reverse and reformed, the windows quickly merging into their former states. Part of me wanted to make them bulletproof to stop that  from happening again, but I held off for the moment so that I could look up what made the best bulletproof glass function the way it did - that would help reduce the cost of the spell significantly.

I also had some work to do on the fucking door. And fixing the floors. And couches. And carpet.

Still holding the sword, I turned back to our uninvited guest. “Alright, sorry I had to turn your sword into a ghost prison, but I think you fucking owe me at least that. Stand up, tell us who you are, and what the fuck  you just dragged me into?”

The girls all headed for the master bedroom to get dressed while the swordsman stood up and brushed himself off. I told him to hold on answering my questions until the girls got back and went into the kitchen, grabbing five beers out of the fridge and setting them around the kitchen island. I cracked one open and slid it to the guy, while I cracked another one for myself and took a long sip. Booze, it turned out, was pretty easy to buy when the tiniest bit of magic could change your birthdate on your licence.

Lauren, Lindsey and Stacey all came back out of the bedroom fully dressed. Lauren and Stacey both had grave, serious looks on their faces while Lindsey looked more curious. Linds came over to me immediately and kissed me softly. “Nice runework , babe,” she said with a little smile. “Did you come up with that on the fly?”

“I did,” I said, snaking my arm around her waist to hug her lightly. I was still bare-chested and part of me wanted to pick her up and carry her back to what we’d been doing - the expenditure of magic combined with the interruption left me hungry for her in a way I hadn’t expected.  “Inspired by you.”

She smiled and then picked up the sword, starting to examine it as she listened to the conversation.

“Alright, we’re all here,” Lauren said, looking at the guy. “Who the fuck are you?”

The man dropped his head again deferentially, his face showing contrition. “My apologies for the disruption of your home, Lady Prime,” he said. “My name is Leandro de la Roca, and I am the final living Paladín  of the Orden de la Espada de Piedra . I have been hunted by those, ah, ‘ghost ninjas’ as you called them for almost four years.”

“So you decided to lead them here?” Stacey asked bitterly. “How did you even know Jerry was here?”

“I began to seek a way to get to you as soon as you ascended, my lord,” Leandro said. “It took time, but I knew the spirit hunters were closing in and I was running out of ways to evade them. I did not trust the other Seats to be fair in their judgement of my situation, but your ascension gave me a small hope that you may be different. I throw myself upon your mercy of judgement, lord, and still request your sanctuary until your judgement is given. Those were likely not the only horrors that stalk me.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, looking at my girls. Lindsey had her lips pursed slightly as she looked at the ragged man, clearly full of questions that she was waiting to ask. Stacey looked dubious, her eyes narrowed slightly as she glanced at our broken front door again. Lauren was looking back at me and our eyes met for a long moment.

“You have my Sanctuary for the length of this conversation,” I said. “Anything beyond that depends on the story you’re about to tell me.”

“Thank you, my lord,” he said.

“OK, stop with the Lord crap and looking  away from me like I’m some divine being,” I said. “Start from the beginning. What’s the ‘ Orden de la ’-what you said, and why are you being chased?”

Leandro took a swig of his beer before looking up at me fully. His eyes were hard and guarded, searching my face for something, but I wasn’t sure if he found whatever that was or not. “The Orden de la Espada de Piedra , the Order of the Stone Sword, were my family since I was a young boy. We were based in the Rock of Gibraltar, though the order dates back much farther than that, back to the fabled times of the Pendraegon  and Merlin. Four years ago, our monastery was attacked and most of my family was wiped out. I was away, serving my family as the Guardian of the Sword, which was the only thing the attack must have been searching. Every member of the monastery was a trained warrior, highly skilled in all manner of personal combat, so the attack would have been carried out by someone, or something, of immense power. Three of my fellow Paladín  were also Ascended. When I lost contact with the monastery I went on the run, and have been tracked back and forth across the continents by those spirit hunters.”

“I’m sorry for what sounds like a painful loss,” Lauren said. “But you’re avoiding the Why of it all.”

“I apologise, Lady Prime,” Leandro said, nodding lightly. “I am not used to- The secret has been guarded for so long, it is hard to speak of it openly.” He looked at me again. “My Order was established by Merlin, a Seat of old, to protect the Stone Sword. It is said to be the blade that cleaved ancient Albion from the continent, and then again to sever what is now Ireland from England and Scotland. As our ancient tale goes, Merlin wrestled the sword from the Pendraegon's  grip and ended the tyrant’s reign, but unable to destroy the blade himself, he sent it into hiding, protected by our Order.”

“Jesus,” Lindsey said. “The etymology could work out. The stories of ‘the Stone Sword’ make their way through time, becoming ‘the Sword in the Stone.’ Generation after generation forgets how bad someone was, so the Pendraegon  becomes Arthur Pendragon, and eventually is believed to be a fairytale of sorts.”

“OK,” I said. “So someone is after fucking Excalibur , and it was your peoples’ job to keep it hidden,” I said. “Do you know who wants it? And where is the sword now?”

“I don’t know who, but it must be a Seat,” Leandro said with a grimace. “Only they would have the power to command the range of forces I have been evading. The only other option would be an entire cabal of Ascended, but I would have discovered more about them if that were the case. As for the sword,” he unslung the wrapped thing from his back, setting it reverently on the table and beginning to take off the dark cloth. “It does not leave my side.”

As the fabric came away, we were left looking at what I could only describe as a ridiculously rough-hewn ‘sword.’ It was definitely made of stone, though I couldn’t say what kind, and it reminded me of ancient stone arrowheads that archaeologists sometimes found. The rock had been chipped away to form a thin ‘blade’ that came to a jagged, razor point. It was maybe three feet long and had a rough wooden handle strapped onto it with some sort of leather string that looked like it was ready to snap at any moment.

But, for all that it looked like a piece of shit, I could feel  the weight of the magic bound up in it as I stared at it. I didn’t know what  it would do, but I knew it would do something big. Not even the Rod of Ash and Hew had given off that sort of power when Lindsey and I had examined it a bit.

“Cool, great,” I said. “Big, powerful magical artefact in my kitchen. Awesome.”

“Do you have any more specific stories about what it does?” Lindsey asked, leaning over the table and starting to examine it more closely.

“Only that it was dangerous enough to keep hidden from… Well, everyone. Not even Merlin knew where we had taken it, and it was said he wiped its existence from his own memory.”

“Fuuuck,” Lauren said, looking across the table at me. “Remember that whole thing about ‘Demon Blades’ from the Council meeting?”

“God damn it,” I sighed. “I might  know who is after it, and the dude is weird enough that I feel like I trust your story at the moment. Alright, Leandro, you have my Sanctuary until I make a final Judgement about this.”

“Thank you, my lord,” he said, bowing his head again.

“What did I say about that ‘my lord’ crap?” I asked. “Now, Stace, could you get him some of the leftovers from dinner and heat them up? If he’s been on the run, he could probably use a good meal. Linds, check the sword over for any runes or the like and get a copy of them-”

“I cannot allow the sword to leave my side, my L- Jeremiah Grant,” Leandro interrupted me.

“Just examine it here,” I told Lindsey, nodding to the man. “Lauren, let’s call down to the front desk and make a complaint about noise just in case our neighbours below us are calling in complaints, and I’ll get the door fixed quickly before we handle next steps.”

Everyone agreed and got to work, and I approached the door and grimaced at it. I was not  a fan of how easily Leandro had kicked his way in. I quickly Googled up a heavy-duty security door that wouldn’t be out of place for the building, got the door mostly back in place properly, and then touched my pool of power and transformed the door. There would be more work to do to get the place protected from physical and magical attacks, but that was a start. I examined my power levels and sighed - the fight hadn’t taken as much out of me as I’d worried it might have, but it was still a significant dip. It had likely wiped out everything I’d gained in the last few days with the girls and Aidra.

I needed to stop getting into magic fights or I’d never build up a strong reserve.

With the door fixed, and Lauren finished with her call, she came over to me as Stacey was talking with Leandro in the kitchen. “You OK?” she asked me quietly, wrapping her arms around me in a hug.

“Yeah,” I said. “OK. Annoyed, frustrated, scared at how easy that all happened, but OK. How are you?”

“Same,” she said, then kissed my cheek and pulled away. “Are you going to contact Xi Zuang ?”

I nodded, grimacing a little. “The guy really fucking creeps me out whenever I think of him in the council chamber, but if it’s him behind the ghost ninjas then… I’ll figure it out. I assume he doesn’t know exactly what they were doing.”

“But he had to know they were in North America at least,” Lauren said.

“That’s what I’m worried about,” I said. “And if he knew, then it isn’t a big jump to think he might have been the one with Stoker.”

“Should you talk to someone else first?” Lauren asked. “Esmerelda might know something. Or the other Fertility seats?”

I closed my eyes and leaned my head down to press against her shoulder. “This feels like it should be so much simpler than it is,” I whispered.

“I know,” she said, rubbing my arms. “I know. But we can figure it out.”

I took a deep breath and nodded, then let it out. “OK. I want to do one more thing and then I’ll contact Esmerelda about ghosts, and then I’ll reach out to Xi Zuang .”

“OK,” she whispered. “I’m going to call Annalise and let her know what’s going on just in case. Angie and Jordan can’t do as much, so it would only worry them until we have something more concrete.”

I kissed her softly and thanked my lucky stars once again that my best friend, biggest crush and first girlfriend also happened to be an amazingly smart and practical woman.

Lauren followed me back into the kitchen. Leandro was busy eating up what looked to be all the leftovers from our dinner, and I cleared my throat to get his attention as I put my hand on his sword - not the Stone Sword, but the one I’d used to trap the ghosts. “This isn’t some sort of relic, is it?”

He flinched a little. “Not in particular, though it is a good blade that has served me well.”

“I’ll get you another one,” I said. “Unless you feel like risking wielding it with it being full of ghosts.”

Leandro grimaced a little. “That might not end well,” he agreed.

“Alright, then I have a use for this,” I said and picked it up. I carried the sword over to the closest bundle of ninja clothes and sifted through it. There were black leather pouches and multiple knives along with the katanas, but I was most interested in the glimpse I’d had of the skulls. I picked one up and examined it, touching my pool of power again to get an understanding of it.

They were real skulls, jawless, but had been plated in silver. I could feel the impression of magic in them, but it almost felt hollow like the core of the spell had been burned out. That made sense if the ghosts were the power source for their own animation. I called Lindsey over and she took down copies of the small runes that had been imprinted into the silver for her notes.

“What’s your plan?” she asked me.

“I’m going to turn this sword into a lightning rod ghost zapper,” I said. “Do you think silver has a material benefit to dealing with things?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, but I haven’t looked much into metallurgy or the myths about metals. Folk tales always talk about how it’s good against werewolves and shit, right?”

“Good enough for me,” I said. I quickly gathered all seven of the skulls and lined them up on the big coffee table in the main sitting area within sight of the kitchen. I wasn’t exactly worried about Leandro, but I didn’t trust him fully with Stacey and Lauren either.

Lindsey and I quickly worked out a few runes that might be useful based on her research so far. She admitted they were all metaphorical and probably rudimentary compared to what she’d just taken down from the skulls, but they worked for what I was thinking. More understanding of runes, or the properties of silver, might have given me a better cost-benefit on the spell I was formulating but with the way things were going I was more worried about being ready for a second wave of ghost ninjas.

Once we were done with the fast rune designs, I asked Lindsey to go grab the Rod of Ash and Hew while I sat on the couch in front of the sword and seven skulls and closed my eyes. The couch felt like it was too squishy, too comfortable, to be featured in a magical ritual and spellcasting, but who said a guy couldn’t be comfortable while manipulating reality-bending powers?

Lindsey came back from our room with the Rod held carefully in her hands, and as soon as I wrapped my hand around the haft of it I could feel a thrum of power as my magic connected to the artefact. It wasn’t as strong as the aura that came off of the Stone Sword, which worried me more about what that  fucking thing did than it did about the Rod.

Esmerelda’s extremely brief tutorial was more than enough for me to understand the basics of the rod. I connected it to my pool of power in my mind and the fireworks in my head began to roil even as barely a drop or two activated it. I could feel  all the metal and stone around me, and knew immediately that I could have dissolved the entire building with a thought. I tried to ignore the scary black hole that was the Stone Sword over in the kitchen in that sensation.

The first step was melting the silver off of the skulls. I did that, pulling the liquid metal into an invisible bowl of force momentarily. As soon as the silver had slipped from the skulls they lost their coherency and crumbled into ash and dust on the coffee table, and Lindsey muttered about needing to buy a handheld vacuum if we were going to keep doing shit like this. That made me grin a little as I moved on to Step Two - I brought the bowl of force over the sword and I dripped  the silver onto the blade, smoothing it out with my mind to form a sheath of silver around it. There was more than enough of the glistening metal, so I covered the hilt as well. Then I sharpened the edges of the blade and began tracing the runes into the liquid silver.

More important was what I was thinking as I did that - as I was working with the blade and my magic I could feel  the ghosts trapped in the sword. They were dormant now, unable to do anything, which was exactly how I wanted them and how I’d pictured them when I cast the initial spell to imprison them. The inner blade was the prison, and now I made the silver outer blade the lightning rod.

Any spirit within a hundred metres of the sword would be drawn to it like a moth to a flame, and the closer it got the stronger the pull would be. I used what I knew of magnetism and applied to it the silver, but focused it on the unreal . Spirits would get vacuumed up, pulled out of the air or whatever was anchoring them.

As the spell settled around the silver blade, and the liquid metal cooled with the runes perfectly aligned, I swallowed once and let the final spell fall into my pool of power and dissolve into reality as it sucked up magic. The metalwork had barely taken a few drops of power as I filtered that part of the spell through the Rod, but the spirit-centred work was another decent drain on my reserve.

It worked. I knew that it worked instantly, just like any other spell I cast - there was just a sort of finality to when a spell took effect that I was getting used to feeling.

I also knew because my eyes snapped open as a screeching erupted from the couch. Not under the couch, but from the couch . And then I felt like I’d been kicked in the nuts and claws were scratching down my spine and my shadow fucking hurt as it was torn in two.

Until that moment, I had no concept of my shadow having pain receptors, and I still didn’t understand it even as I felt it .

Then a dark thing  ripped itself off of me and swirled in and around the sword before getting sucked in and disappearing with a light pop .

“What the fuck was that?” Stacey yelled, running over from the kitchen followed by Leandro. The wiry Spanish man with the odd accent was grasping a pair of kitchen knives in his hands as he looked around for danger. Lauren came from the opposite direction, back out of the master bedroom where she’d been on the phone.

“Ow,” I groaned, rubbing at my chest because I wasn’t sure exactly how to soothe my fucking shadow.

“Jerry turned the sword into a Spirit bug zapper,” Lindsey said as she carefully took the Rod from my other hand. “Just as he finished, something tore off of him and got sucked in.”

“So there was a spirit attached  to Jerry?!” Lauren asked.

“I think so,” I groaned. “I think it was in my shadow.”

“Do you know anything about this?” Stacey asked Leandro.

“I have never heard of such a thing, but I am not well-versed in the arcane possibilities of the Ascended,” Leandro said with a frown.

“Alright, well, at least we know it works,” I grunted as I sat back up. I picked up the silver sword ward and hefted it in my hand for a moment before walking over to the fireplace and setting it on the mantle. “We’ll probably want to get that mounted or something, but it should suck in any spirit within a hundred metres of it.”

“That would have been helpful a few years ago,” Leandro sighed.

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t-” I cut off as I heard a ping in my head, and I immediately became aware of a presence that was sitting like an envelope in my mind. Someone had used a spell a lot like what I had used to invite Esmerelda to dinner, so I assumed it was her. “Hold on, I might be getting an answer to at least one of our questions.”

I leaned my hand against the mantle of the fireplace and mentally opened the envelope.

What the FUCK did you just do!?  Esmerelda’s voice boomed in my head.

That was the entire message.

I grunted and shook my head a little, then sent a mental letter back.

What do you know about ghost ninja terminator assassins?

It took seconds for the response to come back.

Pick a place. We need to talk . Alone.

“Well?” Lauren asked as I blinked open my eyes.

“She wants to talk,” I said. “I guess I’ve got another date with Death.”