Chapter 8: Passions Unleashed
The air in the library still hummed with the afterglow from the kitchen. Jemma had spread a large, yellowed map of London across a heavy oak table, her finger tracing a path to Harrington’s Mayfair address. Hank hefted a cold iron poker, testing its weight. Cameron stood sentinel by the curtained window, his soldier’s instincts on high alert. Brigid sat apart, her eyes distant, fingers pressed to her temple as she silently strained against the muffled bond with Will and Sarah.
It was Nora who noticed first. Her optical sensors detected a subtle drop in ambient temperature, a shift in light refraction near the philosophy section. “Spectral presence,” she stated, her voice cutting through the low planning murmurs. “Two.”
Lady Eleanor materialized fully, her usual jollity replaced by a stark, pale fear. Beside her, another ghost flickered into view—a beautiful blonde woman in a servant’s dress, her expression one of desperate urgency.
“Eleanor?” Jan took a step forward. “What’s wrong?”
The blonde ghost—Ariel—moved with startling speed. She floated to Eleanor and pressed her translucent fingers to the other ghost’s lips. A warning. A plea for silence.
Eleanor’s eyes, wide with understanding, locked onto Jan’s. “He knows you’re coming. The ritual—it’s not for him. It’s a cage. A furnace. He needs the heat of…”
Ariel shook her head violently, a frantic motion. She mimed her own mouth being sealed shut, then pointed at Eleanor, then at Jan. Her meaning was clear: She can’t say it. I can’t say it. You have to let us show you.
“Possession?” Fatima breathed, grasping the intent. “No. Absolutely not.”
“It is the only way to bypass his geas,” Ariel’s voice was a whisper of dry leaves, strained, as if each word caused pain. “The knowledge is barred from our speech. But not from shared sensation, from memory. We must… borrow your senses.”
Jan looked at Eleanor, at the raw longing in the ghost’s eyes—not just for communication, but for feeling. Centuries of numbness. She thought of Harrington, of Will and Sarah lost in his psychic net. She made a decision.
“Do it,” Jan said.
“Jan, wait—” Brigid started, but it was too late.
Eleanor didn’t need a second invitation. With a cry that was equal parts relief and anguish, she surged forward. Her spectral form didn’t so much enter Jan as replace her, a wave of icy energy that slammed Jan’s consciousness into a backseat. Jan’s body gasped, back arching, hands flying to her own breasts as a shudder of pure, unadulterated sensation rocked through her borrowed nerves.
“Oh… oh, God,” the thing in Jan’s body moaned, Eleanor’s voice layered over Jan’s. She squeezed her own tits through her shirt, fingers digging in. “The weight… the ache… I’d forgotten…”
Simultaneously, Ariel flowed into Fatima. Fatima’s protest died in her throat as her eyes filmed with silver. She stumbled, catching herself on the edge of the table. A low, trembling sigh escaped her. “The blood… I can feel my heart,” Ariel whispered through Fatima’s lips, marveling. “The push of it… the heat.”
Then the feedback loop ignited.
Eleanor’s desperate, centuries-starved lust, now housed in a vessel of potent Green Moon magic, met the raw, untamed power of Jan’s innate abilities. It was a spark in a powder keg.
A wave of palpable, compulsive want erupted from Jan’s possessed body. It wasn’t targeted. It was a concussive blast of need.
Ivy, closest to Jan, cried out as the magic hit her. Her knees buckled. Her cunt, already slick from her kitchen rendezvous, throbbed as if freshly filled. She turned, wild-eyed, to Sutton. “Need you. Now.”
Sutton, his intellectual composure vaporized by the back-to-back surges of energy, didn’t argue. He grabbed her, his mouth crashing down on hers.
But the magic didn’t stop there. It rippled through the library.
Cameron grunted, his cock hardening instantly against his zipper, a painful, urgent rush. Hank dropped the iron poker with a clatter, his hands shaking as he grabbed Fatima’s possessed body, turning her to face him. “Fati?”
The eyes that met his were silver-ringed and desperate. “Touch me,” Ariel begged, using Fatima’s voice. “Please. I need to remember how.”
Hank, overwhelmed by the magic and the strange ghost in his girlfriend’s eyes, obeyed. He kissed her, rough and hungry, his big hands cupping her ass, pulling her against his formidable erection.
Jan’s body, driven by Eleanor, stumbled towards them, drawn to the heat. Eleanor-in-Jan reached for Cameron, her fingers fumbling with his belt. “You. Strong. I want to feel… strength.”
Cameron, his discipline fraying, looked to the real Jan, somewhere behind those ancient, hungry eyes. He saw a flicker of Jan’s own fiery spirit, a nod of consent amidst the possession’s storm. He surrendered.
He ripped Jan’s jeans open, shoving them down her hips. She wasn’t wearing underwear. Eleanor cried out in triumph as Cameron’s fingers found her soaking wet cleft. “Yes! There! Oh, the slipperiness…”
He lifted her, depositing her onto the cleared map table. Ancient London crumpled beneath her ass. He drove into her in one brutal thrust, burying his full length in the tight, clutching heat. Jan’s body screamed—Eleanor’s joy, Jan’s own muffled pleasure—a dual-toned wail that echoed off the bookshelves.
“Fuck! Harder! Pound this cunt!” Eleanor roared through Jan, her Victorian propriety incinerated by sensation. She wrapped her legs around his waist, meeting each of his piston-like drives. The table rocked, books tumbling to the floor.
Beside them, Hank had Fatima bent over the same table, her cheek pressed to the parchment near Jan’s thrashing head. He yanked her skirt up, tore her tights aside. Ariel, through Fatima, was sobbing with need. “Do it! Fill this body! Make it real!”
Hank needed no more encouragement. He positioned his thick cock at her entrance and shoved forward, burying himself to the hilt in one stroke. Fatima’s body arched, a guttural Arabic curse tearing from her throat—Ariel’s borrowed surprise and pleasure. Hank set a brutal, pounding rhythm, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise.
The sounds were obscene: the slap of skin, the ragged gasps, the creaking wood, the wet, rhythmic squelch of two cunts being relentlessly fucked. The air grew thick with the scent of sex, sweat, and old paper.
Ivy and Sutton, unable to wait, had collapsed onto a threadbare Persian rug. Sutton was behind her, fucking her doggy-style, his fingers tangled in her long brown hair, pulling her head back. “Is this what you need, you insatiable witch?” he growled, his hips a frantic blur.
“Yes! God, yes! Your cock feels like fucking lightning!” Ivy shrieked, pushing back against him, her own fingers working frantically at her clit.
The magical feedback loop intensified. The Green Moon energy, amplified by the ghosts’ desperate hunger and the initiates’ raw coupling, began to manifest. A soft, verdant light emanated from the intertwined bodies, swirling around them like mist. Tendrils of emerald energy snaked from Jan’s possessed form, wrapping around Cameron’s biceps, from Fatima’s body, coiling up Hank’s thighs, binding the two couples together not just physically, but magically.
Brigid watched, her hand over her mouth, not with arousal but with dawning, horrific understanding. The magic wasn’t random. It was forming something. Nora stood beside her, sensors whirring, capturing data she had no framework to process. Godfrey whined, pressing his head against Brigid’s leg, immune to the magic but sensitive to the distress.
Through the moans and the screams, the ghosts began to speak, their voices weaving between cries of pleasure.
“The ritual…” Eleanor gasped, as Cameron’s cock speared into her. “Harrington… doesn’t want to live… faster, you magnificent brute!… he wants to become a… a conduit!”
Ariel’s voice spilled from Fatima’s mouth between Hank’s thrusts. “He will use the heat… the life-force… of a major magical confluence… oh, yes, right there, don’t stop!… to burn a hole in the world’s fabric.”
“The Preeminence…” Eleanor cried out, her back bowing as an intense orgasm ripped through Jan’s body. Cameron groaned, his release triggering hers. “He’s the kindling! His grief… his potent, ancient fury… Harrington will channel it… AH!”
“And our bodies…” Ariel sobbed, as Hank’s pace became frenzied, “yours… the Green Moon’s joy… the Archimedean’s power…” She was close, Fatima’s body trembling. “You are the fuel! He will trap you all… in the house… and light the match!”
Hank roared, his big body shuddering as he came inside her. Ariel-Fatima screamed, a sound of profound, catastrophic release that was part pleasure, part utter despair.
The verdant light flared, blindingly bright, then snapped back into their bodies with a tangible thump.
The possession broke.
Eleanor and Ariel were ejected, spectral forms flung backward, wrung out and faint. Jan collapsed forward onto the ruined map, Cameron catching her. Fatima slumped over the table, Hank holding her up, both of them panting.
The library was silent except for ragged breathing. The stench of sex was overwhelming. Ivy and Sutton lay spent on the rug.
Jan blinked, her own consciousness swimming back to the forefront. She felt raw, used, and profoundly aware. She turned her head, meeting Fatima’s stunned gaze across the table. Knowledge, horrific and complete, passed between them.
Brigid’s voice was a hollow whisper in the sudden quiet. “He’s not trying to kill us. He’s trying to use our magic, our emotions, and a fucking fairy’s heartbreak to perform an act of cosmic arson.”
Nora processed the new data. “The Preeminence is an unwilling component. Harrington’s psychic whispers, the ones that drove Will and Sarah away, were likely a test. A calibration of his emotional manipulation spells.”
Jan pushed herself up, wincing. Her body ached with a deep, satisfying fullness that felt borrowed. “We have to get to the house. Not to stop him. To get Will and Sarah and get the hell out before he pulls the trigger.”
Fatima stood, her legs unsteady. Hank steadied her. Her eyes were her own again, sharp and cold. “No,” she said, the word cutting through the post-coital haze. “We go to stop him. We cut the wires before he flips the switch.”
She looked at the ghosts, now huddled together, their forms barely visible. “And we get them out, too.”
From the shadows near the door, a smooth, ancient voice spoke. “An admirable sentiment. Rather too late, I’m afraid.”
Lord Peter Harrington stood in the doorway, impeccably dressed. He held a simple, polished wooden box. Behind him, their eyes glazed and empty, stood Will and Sarah.
“The house is ready,” Harrington said, a faint smile touching his lips. “And all the required components are now present. Thank you for gathering so conveniently. It saved me ever so much trouble.”
He opened the box. A deep, resonant hum filled the library, and a portal of swirling darkness yawned open behind him, revealing the opulent, terrifying foyer of his Mayfair home.
“Walk in,” he said, his voice brooking no argument. “Or I snap their mundane little minds in half.”
The Preeminence, silver hair matted with blood from Hank’s skillet, materialized in the street behind Harrington, blocking any retreat. His fierce eyes burned with a grief that had been honed into a weapon, now perfectly aimed.
The trap wasn’t waiting at the house.
It had just sprung shut around them.
For a heartbeat, no one moved. The only sound was the low, ominous hum of the portal, a sound that seemed to eat the light from the room. Then Lady Eleanor, still faint from the possession, solidified just enough to be clearly seen.
Harrington’s smug composure fractured. His eyes, cold and calculating, widened a fraction. “You,” he breathed, the word laden with a history of quiet rage. “The one who slipped the leash. I wondered where your nuisance of a spirit had flitted to.”
Eleanor drew herself up, her spectral form shimmering with defiance. “You don’t own me, Peter. You never did.”
“Every other soul from those many nights over many years resides in my service,” he said, his voice regaining its smooth, hateful control. He gestured vaguely toward Ariel, who flinched. “Ariel here is quite the dedicated housemaid. But you… you are a splinter I have long intended to remove.”
From the street behind him, the Preeminence stirred. His fierce eyes, which had been fixed on Fatima with homicidal intent, now flickered between Harrington and the ghost. The fairy’s head tilted, silver hair catching the unnatural light. He had heard everything—the ghosts’ confession, spilled during their desperate, shared climax.
“A furnace,” the Preeminence said, his voice a low, melodic rasp that carried over the hum. “You would use my grief… as kindling.”
Harrington didn’t bother to turn. “A potent, immortal energy source. Far more efficient than mortal despair. Your sister’s death was… serendipitous.”
The fairy’s form seemed to vibrate. The air grew heavy, thick with the scent of ozone and crushed wildflowers. “I am no one’s instrument.” The words were flat, final.
He moved.
It wasn’t a blur; it was a disappearance and a reappearance, his body uncoiling with lethal grace. He cleared the space between the doorway and the street in a time-skipping lunge, a silver dagger materializing in his hand, aimed for the base of Harrington’s skull.
Harrington sighed, as if annoyed by a buzzing insect. He didn’t turn. He merely snapped the fingers of his free hand.
From the shadows of the portal, links of dark, matte metal shot forth like striking serpents. Cold iron. They wrapped around the Preeminence’s wrist, his ankle, his throat, yanking him from his trajectory in mid-air. He crashed to the library floor with a sound like breaking branches, a cry of pure agony tearing from his throat as the iron seared his fey flesh.
“I am prepared for all eventualities,” Harrington said, watching the fairy thrash, the chains tightening, biting deep. The Preeminence’s glamour flickered, revealing glimpses of something older, wilder, and in terrible pain.
With a casual tug of his will, Harrington began dragging the bound fairy backward, across the floor, toward the swirling darkness. The Preeminence’s struggles were violent but useless, his claws scraping grooves in the wooden floorboards.
“Now,” Harrington said, his gaze sweeping over Will and Sarah. Their blank eyes fixed on Brigid. “Bring the Archimedean. Her mathematics are required for the calibration.”
As one, they moved. Their steps were synchronized, hollow. Will grabbed Brigid’s left arm, Sarah her right. Their grips were implacable.
“Will? Sarah, stop!” Brigid’s voice cracked, her Archimedean power flaring gold at her fingertips. But a wave of nullifying energy from Harrington’s box snuffed it out. She was a scholar, not a brawler. She dug in her heels, but they were relentless, dragging her toward the portal as if she weighed nothing. “Let go of me! Please!”
They didn’t blink. They hauled her, stumbling, through the threshold. Her scream was cut off as the darkness swallowed her.
Harrington’s attention turned to Jan. “The catalyst.” He looked at Ariel, still cowering. “Compel the vessel.”
Ariel’s spectral face contorted in refusal, but her form stiffened, pulled taut by an invisible command. “I… cannot… he makes me…” She wailed, a sound of absolute violation, and streamed across the room.
She didn’t enter Jan. She slammed into Hank.
Hank’s body jolted, his back arching. His kind eyes flooded with silvery ghost-light. Ariel-in-Hank turned, movements now fluid and utterly alien on his large frame. He lunged for Jan.
“Hank, no!” Fatima screamed, throwing herself between them.
Ariel-Hank batted her aside with terrifying, casual strength. She hit a bookshelf, the breath leaving her lungs in a whoosh. He grabbed Jan by the throat and the belt, lifting her off the ground.
“Sorry… Red… fighting it…” Hank’s own voice grated out, battling Ariel’s control. It was a losing battle. He carried the kicking, cursing Jan to the portal.
“Fucking let me go, you ghost-ridden asshole!” Jan snarled, driving her knee into his ribs. He didn’t flinch.
“Jan!” Fatima scrambled up, ignored the pain in her side, and sprinted after them. She wasn’t thinking. She saw Hank’s possessed body taking her best friend into hell, and she followed. She dove through the darkness after them.
Harrington observed this with clinical satisfaction. Ivy, Sutton, and Jemma finally reacted, their own magic rising—Ivy’s a wave of disorienting desire, Sutton’s a precise, cutting beam of will, Jemma’s a deep, grounding pulse of ancient earth.
Harrington didn’t even look at them. He murmured a single, complex syllable.
The air in front of the three initiates crystallized. The sounds of the street outside faded. Ivy’s provocative stance, Sutton’s outstretched hand, Jemma’s deepening chant—all froze, locked in a bubble of petrified time. A thin layer of shimmering stasis encased them, unmoving, unbreathing, like insects in perfect amber.
He turned his head, his eyes finding Nora, Eleanor, Cameron, and the dog. He gave a small, polite nod, as if concluding a tedious business meeting.
“Good luck,” he said, his tone utterly devoid of warmth or mockery. It was a simple statement of fact.
He stepped backward into his portal. The swirling darkness collapsed inward upon itself with a sound like a thunderclap sucked into a vacuum.
Then there was silence.
The library was a wreck of overturned furniture, scattered books, and the thick, clinging smell of sex and magic. The frozen forms of Ivy, Sutton, and Jemma stood in a silent tableau near the door. Nora’s processors whirred in the sudden quiet. Godfrey whined, nosing at the empty space where the portal had been.
Cameron stood, a iron nail held uselessly in his hand, his body still thrumming with the aftermath of fucking a ghost-possessed Jan. He looked to Nora, the logical one. “Where… where is his house?”
Nora’s green eyes scanned the room. “Unknown. The geographical data was never verbally stated. It was on the map.” She walked to the table, gently moved aside the crumpled, sex-dampened parchment that had been under Jan. The map was torn, crucial areas smeared beyond recognition.
Eleanor floated to the center of the room, her form fading in and out with distress. “I know the street. I know the façade. But the number… the specific house… he clouded that from me when he killed me. I only know the feeling of the threshold.”
Cameron ran a hand through his hair. “So we’re supposed to… what? Wander Mayfair asking ghosts if they feel like a murder mansion?”
Nora looked at the three frozen initiates. “The knowledge is there. In their minds. But it is locked behind a temporal stasis field I cannot penetrate.” She turned her gaze to the empty space. “We have no trajectory. We have no allies who can speak. We have only a ghost’s feeling and a dog.”
Godfrey looked up at her and whined again, as if agreeing with the profound hopelessness of their situation.
Nora’s optical sensors shifted from the torn map to the three frozen figures. Her processors cycled through a database of arcane contingencies, cross-referencing with the library’s own ambient magical signature. “The stasis is temporal, layered with a psychic dampener,” she stated, her voice devoid of panic. “Direct force or counter-magic is impossible for us. But this is a Green Moon sanctuary. The very walls are steeped in a specific energy signature: generative, life-affirming, sexually potent.”
Cameron stared at her. “What’s your point?”
“My point is that we are in a battery for the kind of magic that opposes entropy and stillness,” Nora said, walking toward the frozen form of Jemma. “We cannot break the spell from the outside. But we might be able to create a surge of congruent energy from within one of them, overloading the dampener. A jump-start.”
“How?” Cameron asked, though a cold knot was forming in his stomach. He already knew.
“Sex,” Nora said simply. “A concentrated, magically-charged sexual event. The library’s residual energy, combined with a fresh, powerful emission, could create a resonant cascade inside one of their systems. Jemma, as the oldest and most experienced, would be the ideal conduit. Her metaphysical capacity is the largest.”
Cameron’s jaw tightened. “No. Absolutely not. We are not… using Jemma like that. She’s frozen, for Christ’s sake.”
Nora turned her placid gaze on him. “You are thinking with human sentiment. We require data and a path forward. I was built for seduction and information retrieval. I am anatomically correct and fully functional.” She paused, her head tilting. “Also, Jan has slept with pretty much every friend she has had, including you. She operates on a principle of shared pleasure and utility. She would not object in the slightest to you engaging in a necessary act with another consenting adult, even one in stasis, for a strategic objective.”
Cameron opened his mouth, then closed it. He thought of Jan, her laugh, her utterly pragmatic view of sex as both weapon and wonder. Nora was right. Jan wouldn’t be jealous; she’d be pissed if they didn’t try every option. He ran a hand over his face, exhausted. “Even if I agreed… she’s frozen solid, Nora. It’s not exactly a turn-on.”
“The physical shell is in stasis, but her magical core is merely suppressed,” Nora corrected. She reached out, her fingers hovering just above Jemma’s petrified cheek. “A Green Moon initiate’s power is never truly off. It waits for a trigger.” She looked back at Cameron, her expression unchanging. “And my hair is the same color as Jan’s. A superficial correlation, but perhaps a comforting one for your limbic system.”
A strangled laugh escaped Cameron. “Jesus.” He looked at the frozen Jemma, then at Eleanor’s frantic, fading form, then at the spot where Jan had disappeared. He made a decision. “Fine. But if this goes wrong…”
“We are already in the worst-case scenario,” Nora stated. She began unbuttoning her blouse with efficient, unembarrassed motions. “We require a significant emission. Do not hold back.”
Cameron took a steadying breath, pushing down his unease. He approached Nora, who stood now bare from the waist up, her synthetic skin flawless and cool in the library light. Her nipples were pale pink, perfectly formed. There was nothing shy in her posture.
He kissed her. Her lips were soft, and she responded with a technically perfect mimicry of enthusiasm, her tongue meeting his. Her hands went to his belt, undoing it with swift, mechanical precision. She pushed his trousers and boxers down, his cock springing out, already half-hard from the adrenaline and the lingering energy in the room.
Nora turned, bending over the reading table next to Jemma’s frozen form. She looked back at him, her green eyes analytical. “From behind is efficient. Please proceed.”
The clinical wording was almost a mood-killer, but Cameron closed his eyes for a second, summoning an image of Jan—her fiery grin, the way she’d shout obscenities when she came. He opened his eyes, stepped forward, and guided himself into Nora.
She was wet. Slick with a manufactured lubricant that felt eerily, perfectly real. And warm. Her internal mechanisms created a pulsating, rhythmic pressure that massaged his length as he slid deep inside her.
“Oh, fuck,” he grunted, the sensation utterly foreign and intensely pleasurable.
“My pelvic actuators can simulate a variety of internal muscle patterns,” Nora informed him, her voice slightly muffled as she pressed her cheek to the table. “I am cycling through the most effective ones based on biometric feedback from your erection.”
Cameron didn’t need the explanation. He just started to move, gripping her hips. Her skin was smooth, unyielding in a way human flesh wasn’t, but the inside of her was a wonder of engineered sensation. Tightening, fluttering, gripping him in waves.
He fucked her harder, the slap of their bodies a sharp counterpoint to the absolute silence of the frozen initiates. He drove into that incredible, artificial heat, losing himself in the raw physicality of it. “God, you feel… fucking unreal.”
“I am unreal,” Nora replied, her voice even. “But my programming for this is highly accomplished. Please increase your tempo. The energy build-up is sub-optimal.”
Gritting his teeth, Cameron obeyed. He pounded into her, his balls slapping against her synthetic skin. The library’s ambient magic began to stir, drawn to the act. A faint, greenish glow started at their point of union, shimmering along Nora’s spine.
“Yes,” Nora monotoned. “The resonance is building. Direct it toward her. Think of Jemma. Think of thawing her.”
Cameron focused, through the mind-numbing pleasure, on the frozen woman beside them. He pictured the stasis cracking. He fucked Nora with a punishing, final rhythm, his release coiling tight in his gut.
“Now, Cameron. Emit.”
With a ragged shout, he came, jerking forward as he emptied himself into her. The green light flared, exploding from them in a wave. It didn’t wash over the frozen trio evenly. It snapped like a whip, striking Ivy.
The shimmering stasis around her shattered with a sound like breaking glass.
Ivy gasped, stumbling forward as if she’d been shoved. She caught herself on the table, right next to where Nora was still bent over, Cameron spasming behind her. Ivy blinked, took in the scene—Cameron’s cock still buried in the redhead robot, the frozen forms of Sutton and Jemma, the devastated library.
“Well,” Ivy said, her voice hoarse from disuse but a familiar, wicked gleam returning to her eyes. “That’s one hell of a wake-up call. Did I miss the party, or is this the afterparty?”
Cameron pulled out, hastily rearranging his clothes, his face flushed. Nora stood straight, unbothered, picking up her blouse. “The party has been relocated to Lord Harrington’s domicile. Our companions were taken.”
Ivy’s playful expression vanished. She touched Sutton’s frozen arm, her face falling for a second, then hardening with resolve. “Right. How do we find it?”
Nora fastened her last button. “The geographical data was lost. We have a ghost who knows the feeling of the threshold, but not the address.” She gestured to Eleanor, who gave a feeble nod.
Ivy’s eyes narrowed, thinking. She looked at Godfrey, who was sitting attentively, his big brown eyes fixed on her. She knelt before him. “Hello, handsome. You’re Jan’s, aren’t you?” She placed a hand on his head, closing her eyes. A pulse of gentle, seeking Green Moon energy flowed from her into the dog.
Godfrey didn’t react to the magic, but he licked her hand.
Ivy’s eyes flew open. “Oh, you are a clever boy, aren’t you?” She looked up at Cameron and Nora. “He’s immune to magic, yes. But he’s not just attached to Jan. He’s woven to her. Through endless affection, through shared chaos, through that bloody service vest she puts on him. It’s a bond that leaves a trail, a scent no magic can mask because it’s not magical. It’s deeper.” She stood. “He can find her. He just needs to get close enough to catch the thread.”
Godfrey let out a soft woof, standing and wagging his tail.
“So we go to Mayfair,” Cameron said, a new urgency in his voice.
“We follow the dog,” Ivy corrected, a fierce smile touching her lips. “And we bring the party to Harrington’s door. Properly this time.”
She strode to a cabinet, flinging it open to reveal not books, but an array of polished, dark-wood implements. She selected two that resembled slender, foot-long iron spikes. “Let’s go thaw a fairy and burn a house down.”