Chapter 6: Washroom Circuit
The sterile quiet of the hospital room was thick with unresolved tension. Irene and Mona, now dressed in their ruined clothes, sat as far apart as the small room allowed, their silent humiliation a third presence. Mike held Casey’s hand, his thumb stroking her knuckles, while baby Rick slept against her chest, oblivious.
Jan leaned against the wall, feeling the borrowed power from the diner churn uneasily within her. It was a finite resource. She could sense the candy’s magical stain lingering throughout the building—a prickling, sugary static on the edge of her awareness. It was concentrated in pockets, likely on other floors where the contaminated food had reached.
“We need to clear the whole hospital,” Jan said, her voice low. “The candy’s here. If a nurse on another floor ate a donut, or a doctor took a mint…”
Dr. Cho nodded, her expression grave. “I’ve locked down this floor. My staff here are clean. But the main cafeteria delivered trays to oncology and orthopedics two hours ago. I can’t guarantee anything.”
Stacy uncrossed her arms, her athletic frame humming with readiness. “So we do what you did downstairs? The… siphon?” She didn’t blush, but her jaw was tight. This was tactical.
“It’s the only way that’s fast,” Jan said. “But I’m running on borrowed time. Vivian’s tapped out from channeling, and I can’t pull that much energy alone.” She looked at Stacy, a speculative glint in her eye. “I need an anchor. A stable, clean power source to complete the circuit. You’re fit. You’re disciplined. Your energy is… focused.”
Stacy held her gaze. “You want to use me as a battery.”
“I want you to be the ground wire,” Jan corrected. “Vivian pulls the tainted energy. I filter it. But to direct the purified magic out in a wave big enough to cleanse a whole floor, I need a surge. That comes from a powerful, willing orgasm. Actually, several.”
A beat of silence. Mike looked at the ceiling. Casey let out a small, tired chuckle. “Just another Tuesday.”
Stacy didn’t hesitate. “What do I do?”
“You come with us. You participate. Fully.” Jan pushed off the wall. “Jason, Amy, Yukio—you guard this room. Nobody in or out. Godfrey, you’re with me.” The big dog stood, shaking his coat.
Jan led Stacy and Vivian out into the corridor. They found a sign for administrative offices and followed it to a plush, infrequently used executive washroom. It was a cavern of white marble and polished chrome, silent except for the faint drip of a faucet. Jan locked the door.
The space felt unnaturally bright, exposing every detail. Vivian was still shaky, her shadows subdued. Stacy stood with her back straight, surveying the room like it was a new piece of gym equipment.
“Okay,” Jan said, rummaging in her oversized bag. She pulled out a harness made of soft, black leather, and a silicone dildo, thick and veined. She began unbuckling her jeans. “Vivian, you’re the conduit. You’ll take the energy from the infected people on the floors below. Stacy, you’re the source. You focus on the physical, on the release. I’m the filter and the conductor.”
Stacy watched Jan step out of her clothes. She’d seen Jan naked countless times, but never like this—all business, her freckled skin pale under the lights, a general preparing for battle. Stacy began to undress with efficient movements, folding her clothes on a linen hamper. Her body was a masterpiece of disciplined construction: defined abs, powerful thighs, breasts that were high and firm. She didn’t shy away.
Vivian shivered out of her leggings and top. The contrast between them was stark: Stacy, all sun-kissed muscle and control; Vivian, pale, soft, and trembling with contained hunger.
Jan fastened the harness around her hips, the weight of the toy a familiar anchor. She squeezed a generous amount of lube onto it, the slick sound loud in the quiet room. “Stacy, lie back on the rug.” She pointed to a plush area rug near the sinks.
Stacy complied, lowering herself onto the deep pile. She spread her legs, revealing neatly trimmed dark hair. Her expression was one of concentrated focus, as if about to perform a complex lift.
“Viv, on your knees between her legs. Eat her out. Get her ready. Get her close.”
Vivian’s timidity vanished as she knelt, her succubus nature responding to the direct command and the proximity of intense energy. She lowered her head between Stacy’s thighs, her tongue finding Stacy’s clit in one smooth, practiced motion.
Stacy gasped, her hips jerking off the floor. The sound was sharp, surprised. She’d expected… she didn’t know what she’d expected, but not this immediate, devastating expertise. Vivian’s tongue was a wicked, knowing thing, flicking and swirling with a rhythm that made Stacy’s abdominal muscles clench. Vivian’s hands came up to hold Stacy’s thighs open, her fingers digging into the powerful muscle.
“Good,” Jan murmured. She moved behind Vivian, who was on her hands and knees over Stacy. Jan poured lube over her fingers, then slid them between Vivian’s ass cheeks, finding her hole. She pushed one in, then two, working her open. Vivian moaned against Stacy’s cunt, the vibration making Stacy cry out.
“Fuck, Vivian,” Stacy panted, her control fracturing. She tangled a hand in Vivian’s red hair, not pushing, just holding on.
Jan withdrew her fingers. She gripped the base of the strap-on, positioned the broad, slick head against Vivian’s entrance, and pushed forward with a firm, steady thrust.
Vivian screamed, the sound muffled by Stacy’s flesh. She took the entire length in one deep, brutal penetration, her back arching. As Jan seated herself fully, hips pressed against Vivian’s ass, she felt the circuit snap into place.
Jan closed her eyes. She reached out with her magic, downward through the building. She felt them immediately—six distinct knots of compulsive, sugary lust on the orthopedic floor. A nurse fucking an orderly in a supply closet. Two patients in a room, entangled in IV lines. She anchored those threads to Vivian.
“Pull, Viv,” Jan grunted, and began to move.
She fucked Vivian with hard, deep strokes, each one a piston driving the mechanism. Vivian, in turn, devoured Stacy, her tongue and lips a frenzy of hungry motion. The tainted energy began to flow, a sickly-sweet current. It entered Vivian, a poisonous river. Jan felt it pass through the physical connection of their fucking, felt her own Green Moon magic scouring it, burning out the compulsive filth, leaving behind raw, neutral power.
But it needed somewhere to go. It built in Jan, a pressure with no outlet.
“Stacy, come for me,” Jan commanded, her own breath coming in ragged gasps. “Give me the surge. Now.”
Stacy was already there. The dual sensation of Vivian’s relentless mouth and the visual of Jan, fierce and commanding, fucking the woman between her legs, shattered her famed discipline. Her orgasm erupted without grace, a raw, barking shout torn from her throat as her body bowed, thighs clamping around Vivian’s head. It was a pure, powerful blast of physical energy, untainted by magic, focused and strong.
Jan caught it. She channeled the cleansed power from Vivian, amplified by Stacy’s climax, and shaped it. She pushed it out through her own skin in a silent, expanding wave of nullification. It washed through the floor below.
In the orthopedic supply closet, the nurse and orderly collapsed apart, confused and gasping. The patients untangled, blinking at each other in stunned silence. The candy’ spell on that floor dissolved.
Jan didn’t stop. She kept fucking Vivian, the pace punishing. “Again, Stacy. We’re not done. Oncology. Four more knots.”
Vivian, drunk on the energy she was channeling but not consuming, redoubled her efforts. She sucked Stacy’s clit into her mouth, applying steady, rhythmic pressure. She slid two fingers inside Stacy, curling them.
“Jesus Christ,” Stacy sobbed, her body alight. She was over-sensitized, every nerve firing. She came again, this one a deeper, rolling convulsion that seemed to last minutes. Her juices smeared Vivian’s chin.
Another wave of power. Jan directed it downward. In the oncology ward, a weeping family member and a comfort volunteer separated from a desperate embrace on a sofa. A doctor stumbled out of a janitor’s closet, adjusting his clothes. Clean.
Jan’s thighs burned. Vivian was mewling with each thrust, her own body hurtling toward a climax built from transmission, not reception. Stacy was trembling, spent, her chest heaving.
“Last one,” Jan gritted out, sweat dripping from her nose onto Vivian’s back. “Administrative. Two signatures. Then we’re clear.”
She reached down, her hand slick, and found Vivian’s swollen clit. She pinched it, hard, and timed it with a final, driving thrust that buried the strap-on to the hilt.
Vivian shattered. Her orgasm was silent, a full-body seizure, her shadows leaking from her skin in wispy tendrils that evaporated in the bright light. The final siphoned energy passed through her.
Jan didn’t need Stacy this time. She used Vivian’s own climax as the final catalyst, shaping the last of the purified energy and releasing it.
The hospital fell silent. Truly silent. The last lingering traces of the Candy Man’s magic were gone, scrubbed from the air.
Jan pulled out, unhooking the harness with clumsy fingers. She slumped against the cold marble sink, sliding to the floor. Vivian collapsed sideways onto the rug, panting. Stacy lay on her back, an arm thrown over her eyes, her skin glistening.
The only sound was the drip of the faucet and Godfrey’s gentle snoring from where he lay by the door.
After a long minute, Stacy lowered her arm. She looked at Jan, then at the ceiling. “So,” she said, her voice hoarse. “That’s how you save the world.”
“A floor at a time,” Jan whispered, utterly drained.
Vivian pushed herself up on trembling arms. “I didn’t take any. Not for myself.” She sounded like a child seeking approval.
“You were perfect, Viv,” Jan said, closing her eyes.
They dressed in silence, the magnitude of what they’d done settling over them. They had secured the hospital. But as Jan leaned on Stacy’s shoulder on the way back to the room, she looked out a window at the snowy, darkened city. A thousand points of light glittered back, each one a potential outbreak, a knot of chaotic hunger.
The firehose of power was a dribble now. She had a method, but the scale was unimaginable.
They reached Room 312. Irene and Mona were dozing in their chairs. Mike was asleep in a cot. Casey was awake, feeding Rick, her eyes meeting Jan’s.
“Well?” Casey mouthed.
Jan gave a small, exhausted thumbs-up.
A moment later, Dr. Cho entered, her face calm. “Vitals are stable. We’re discharging them in the morning. Whatever you did… the chaos reports have stopped. The building is calm.”
Jan nodded. “Good.”
She sank into a chair, Godfrey laying his heavy head in her lap. The immediate crisis was over. But the Candy Man was still out there. And the city was very, very large. She had the blueprint for the cure, but she needed more anchors, more conduits. She needed an army.
She looked at her sleeping friends, at the innocent baby, at the snowy chaos beyond the glass. The fight for the city was just beginning, and it would be fought in the most intimate, exhausting way imaginable.
A deep ache settled into Jan’s bones, a hollow feeling behind her navel where the borrowed power had been. She watched Rick’s tiny mouth work at Casey’s breast, a peaceful counterpoint to the frantic energy she’d just conducted.
“We can’t do this one building at a time,” Stacy said, her voice low and gravelly. She was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over her chest, her posture still perfect even in exhaustion. “It’ll take weeks. Where next? City Hall? A police station? Somewhere with a lot of people?”
Jan rubbed her face, her mind churning through a fog of fatigue. “A centralized location would be ideal, but we’d need a map, a triage list. The Order of the Golden Wands monitors magical saturation. They might be able to direct us to the epicenters.” She dug her phone from her bag, the screen blinding in the dim room.
She scrolled to a contact labeled ‘Fati & Hank’ and put it on speaker. The ring was shrill in the quiet.
It picked up on the fourth ring. “Jan?” Fatima’s voice was a frayed wire, stretched thin. “Please tell me you’re calling with good news and not another fucking candy store.”
“Hospital’s clean. For now. We need intel. Where’s the worst of it?”
A long, tired sigh hissed through the speaker. “Milwaukee is… contained. Mostly. We just finished. Hank ate a goddamn caramel.” Jan could hear the muted roar of a car engine, highway sounds. “It didn’t help that I had to cure him on top of everything else. Took three orgasms in the art museum. He’s still apologizing.”
In the background, Hank’s voice, muffled and sincere: “I said I was sorry, Fati. It looked like a Werther’s Original.”
Jan suppressed a smile, a brief, warm crack in her weariness. “You sound wiped.”
“You have no idea. My magic feels like burnt toast. But we’re on our way back. Maybe an hour out.”
“Meet us at the hospital,” Jan said, making the decision as the words left her mouth. “We’ll consolidate. We have a method that works, but we need more bodies. Yours included.”
“Understood. See you soon.” The call ended.
In the frozen, crystalline realm of the Winter Queen, within a grand gallery of sculpted ice, a different kind of exhaustion was setting in. The Queen, a figure of impossible beauty and chilling stillness, watched from her glacial throne. Her pale brows were furrowed in profound consternation.
Before her, on a dais of flawless white frost, Molly and Ginny were once again entangled. Ginny was on her hands and knees, her back arched, while Molly knelt behind her, one hand braced on Ginny’s hip, the other working its way between her own legs. They moved together with a desperate, practiced rhythm, their skin glowing pink against the endless white, their breaths puffing in hot clouds that did not fog the enchanted air.
“The scene,” the Winter Queen murmured, her voice like breaking icicles. “They were to perfect the scene. The comedy of the mistaken identity.” She had checked seven times. Each time, the two human women were connected in a different configuration—Ginny’s head buried between Molly’s thighs, Molly pressed against the ice wall with Ginny gripping her hips—but the dialogue had devolved into gasped profanities and pleading demands.
“Harder, Molly, fuck, just there—”
“You’re so wet, Gin, Christ, I can feel you dripping—”
The Queen’s minions—elegant, silent fey with skin of birch bark and eyes like frozen ponds—stood arranged around the gallery. Their expressionless faces were all turned toward the dais. One, she noticed, had not moved its gaze in over an hour. Another had a delicate trail of meltwater trickling from its temple, which it did not wipe away.
The Candy Man’s spell rendered them immune to the killing cold, and it seemed to have unlocked a bottomless, creative fervor. On one hand, the Queen valued perfection, precise art. This was raw, repetitive biology. On the other hand, the sheer stamina, the inventiveness, the unfiltered cascade of sensation that washed through her gallery… it was strangely compelling. It was not the performance she had commissioned, but it was undoubtedly a performance.
She tilted her head as Molly cried out, a sharp, joyous sound that echoed off the vaulted ceiling. Ginny followed, her body convulsing. They collapsed together in a heap of limp limbs and satisfied sighs, steam rising from their skin.
The Queen did not signal for them to stop. She lifted a finger, and a new sheet of ice formed over the dais, refreshing its pristine surface. She would wait. She would observe. There was a chaotic, human truth unfolding in her orderly hall, and for the first time in centuries, she was uncertain of her next command.
Back in the hospital room, the door opened softly. Fatima stepped in, followed by Hank. Fatima looked ashen, dark circles like bruises under her eyes, but she moved with her usual contained grace. Hank was a mountain of subdued apology, his large frame seeming to duck under the doorframe.
“You look like hell,” Jan said, standing to embrace Fatima.
“Feel it,” Fatima mumbled into Jan’s shoulder. Then she pulled back, her sharp eyes taking in the room—the sleeping mothers, the baby, the general air of shell-shock. “Okay. We’re here. The Golden Wands have a field office in the Willis Tower. They should be tracking the emanations. If we want a target list, that’s where we start.”
A new current, this one of grim purpose, flowed into the stale room. They had a method. Now, they would get a map. The fight coalesced from a vague dread into a tangible next step. Jan nodded, feeling the weight, but also the first solid ground under her feet in hours.
“Then that’s where we go next.” Jan’s words hung in the antiseptic air, a fragile plan taking shape. She was already mentally cataloging their depleted resources: Vivian was shaky but stable, Stacy looked like she could run a marathon but her magical battery was spent, and Fatima’s power felt thin and scorched through their brief hug. They needed the Wands’ data. She turned to gather her bag.
Her phone vibrated, not with Fatima’s crisp ringtone, but with the jaunty, synthetic mariachi tune she’d assigned to Frank. The sound was absurdly out of place. She frowned, swiping to answer. “Frank? We’re a little busy—”
“Jan.” His voice was a shattered thing, stripped of its usual avuncular warmth. It was raw, choked. “Jan, it’s Mary Lou.”
Everything else in the room—the hum of the lights, the soft rustle of Rick’s blanket—receded. She’d never heard that tone from him. Not during a demonic incursion, not during a time-paradox. “Frank. Breathe. Tell me.”
A wet, ragged inhale crackled through the speaker. “A box. Chocolates. Appeared at the field office front desk. Another on our kitchen table. I didn’t… the kids didn’t touch them. But Mary Lou…” His voice broke. “She ate two. She’s… Jan, she’s naked. She’s been pacing the house for an hour, touching herself, trying to get me to… to fuck her on the living room rug while the kids are in their rooms. I locked the bedroom door. I’ve been trying every dampening charm I know. Nothing works. She just giggles and rubs her cunt and asks for more chocolate.”
The clinical description was worse than any scream. Jan’s blood went cold. “The kids.”
“Terrified. Confused. I told them Mom’s sick, a special magic sick, and to stay put. But Jan… the look in her eyes. It’s not her. It’s this… this hungry sugar.” A sob he couldn’t contain. “Help me. Please. I don’t know what to do.”
The map to the city’s epicenters evaporated. This was a pinpoint strike, personal and cruel. The Candy Man wasn’t just scattering chaos; he was targeting them, their families. He’d bypassed Frank’s wards, his techno-magic, and gone straight for his heart.
“We’re coming. Right now. Your house. Text me the address.” Jan’s voice was iron. “Do not let her eat any more. Do not touch the boxes. We’ll fix this.”
She ended the call. The faces in the room were tight with questions. She looked at them, her friends, all worn to the bone.
“Change of plans,” she said, the words flat. “The Candy Man sent poisoned chocolate to Frank’s home. Mary Lou ate it. He’s got six kids in that house with a mother who’s currently a nude, compulsive sex zombie. We’re the cavalry.”
Fatima closed her eyes, a flicker of pure rage passing over her features. Hank’s hands curled into fists. Stacy simply nodded, already moving toward the door. Vivian whimpered, her shadowy essence recoiling at the targeted malice.
“The field office data can wait,” Fatima stated, her voice dangerously calm. “This is an escalation. A declaration.”
“We split up,” Jan said, her mind racing. “Fatima, Hank, Stacy—you go to the Wands’ office. Get that data, secure those chocolates. Find out how he got them past their security. Vivian, you’re with me. We’re going to Frank’s. You’ll siphon, I’ll purify. It’s just one person. We can do this fast.”
“I’ll drive,” Mike said, standing up. His face was pale but determined. “Casey and the baby are safe here now. You need someone who can remember, who can help with the kids. And I know Frank.”
Jan wanted to argue, to keep him in the safe, sterile bubble of the hospital. But he was right. They needed hands. She gave a sharp nod.
“Okay. Now. We move now.”
The cold outside the hospital was a physical slap, a January wind scouring the parking lot. Godfrey leapt into the back of Mike’s SUV, a solid, non-magical presence in the chaotic night. Vivian shivered beside Jan in the backseat, not from the cold.
“It’s a trap,” Vivian whispered, her eyes wide black pools in the passing streetlights. “He wants me there. He knows I’m the conduit. He’s laying a table.”
“Probably,” Jan said, staring at the fractured city lights streaking past the window. “So we don’t sit down to eat. We grab Mary Lou and we run.”
Frank’s house was a two-story Tudor in a quiet, snow-blanketed suburb. Every light was on, blazing against the night, a lighthouse of distress. Mike hadn’t even fully stopped the car before Jan was out, Vivian scrambling behind her.
Frank wrenched the front door open before they could knock. He looked decades older. His face was blotchy, his eyes red-rimmed and desperate. The sounds from inside were a horrifying collage: children crying upstairs, a thumping bass from a stereo, and above it all, a bright, manic singing.
“—ooh, just a little taste, makes everything naughty, makes everything WASTE—”
“She’s in the kitchen,” Frank gasped, his voice shredded. “I had to… I used a kinetic buffer to keep her in. It’s like holding back a river with a screen door.”
Jan pushed past him, Vivian at her heels. The house was a warzone of normalcy upended. A framed family photo lay face down on the hall table. The kitchen was at the end of a hallway.
Mary Lou stood in the center of the tiled floor, naked and glorious. Her plump, beautiful body was sheened with sweat, her hips swaying to the grating pop music blasting from a smart speaker. She was running her hands over her heavy breasts, pinching her own nipples, her fingers glistening as they dipped between her thighs. A torn gold box lay on the counter, three empty chocolate wrappers beside it.
When she saw Jan, she beamed, a wide, empty smile. “Jan! Sweetie! You came for the party! Frank’s being such a stick.” She danced closer, but hit an invisible, shimmering wall about two feet from the doorway—Frank’s straining buffer. She pouted, grinding her pubic mound against the resistant air. “Don’t you want a taste? It’s so good. It makes your pussy sing.”
The cheerful, obscene voice coming from Mary Lou’s mouth was a violation. Jan felt rage, cold and clean. “Viv. Now.”
Vivian didn’t need prompting. The hunger in Mary Lou was a focused, screaming beacon. Vivian’s shadows leapt from her, not tentatively, but with predatory purpose. They snaked through Frank’s buffer like it wasn’t there, anchoring into Mary Lou’s chest.
Mary Lou’s eyes flew wide. Not with fear, but with ecstatic recognition. “Yes!” she shrieked. “That’s it! That’s the feeling!”
The transfer began. It wasn’t like the diner’s diffuse energy. This was a torrent, a firehose of compulsive, sugary lust aimed directly at Vivian. Vivian gasped, her back arching, as the raw, undiluted force of the Candy Man’s direct ‘gift’ flooded into her. Her knees buckled. Jan caught her, holding her upright, skin-to-skin contact blazing hot.
Jan’s own magic engaged, a desperate filtration system. She saw it, felt it—the spell wasn’t just about arousal. It was a recursive loop, a command to consume and convert, to turn everything into more hunger, more desperate seeking. It was replicative, like a virus.
“It’s strong,” Jan gritted out, her teeth aching. “So fucking strong.”
Vivian was trembling violently, her eyes rolling back. The shadows pouring into her were turning a sickly, phosphorescent pink. She was taking too much, too fast. Jan needed to complete the circuit, to ground it, but there was no Stacy here, no anchor.
“Jan!” Frank cried, watching his wife’s face contort in pleasure-pain.
A new sound cut through the music: a child’s voice, small and terrified, from the top of the stairs. “Daddy? What’s wrong with Mommy?”
Decision crystallized. Jan couldn’t channel this out. She had to break it at the source, inside Mary Lou. And to do that, she needed to meet the spell on its own terms, to overwhelm its recursive logic with a sharper, purer sensation.
“Frank, get the kids out of sight. Now.” Jan’s voice brooked no argument. She let go of Vivian, who slumped against the wall, gasping, the torrent still flowing into her. Jan stepped forward, through Frank’s buffer.
The kinetic field popped like a bubble. Mary Lou giggled in triumph, her hands reaching for Jan. “You want to play! I knew it!”
Jan didn’t speak. She grabbed Mary Lou’s wrists, strong despite the other woman’s plush softness, and spun her, pushing her forward until her belly was against the cold stainless steel of the refrigerator. Mary Lou moaned at the shock of temperature, pushing her ass back.
“Yes, rough, I like it rough—”
Jan yanked her own jeans down just enough. She didn’t have a strap-on. This had to be skin to skin, magic to magic, desire to twisted desire. She spit into her hand, slicking her fingers, then pressed them against Mary Lou’s soaked, swollen opening. Mary Lou was dripping, her flesh hot and pulsing.
“Fuck me, Red, fuck me with your magic cock,” Mary Lou babbled, grinding back.
“This isn’t a cock,” Jan hissed, working two fingers inside. Mary Lou was impossibly tight, clenched around the invasive energy. Jan crooked her fingers, searching. “This is a scalpel.”
She found the spot, the deep, spongy place inside, and pressed her thumb firmly against Mary Lou’s perineum at the same time. She poured her will, her Green Moon power, not into arousal, but into sensation—unfiltered, unbearable, purely physical intensity. She short-circuited the magical compulsion with a brute-force neurological overload.
Mary Lou’s giggle cut off. Her whole body stiffened. A sharp, truncated scream ripped from her throat, utterly different from her previous sounds. It was raw, real, agonized. Her back arched violently.
Jan held the pressure, pumping her fingers in a ruthless, steady rhythm, her other hand clamping on Mary Lou’s hip. She was fucking her, yes, but it was clinical, brutal. She focused the cleansing energy through that intimate connection, a blazing white current chasing the sickly pink poison.
Mary Lou came. It wasn’t the performance orgasm of the candy. It was a seizure of release, a torrent of clear fluid soaking Jan’s hand and thigh, her legs giving out as she sobbed, the sound broken and human. The manic light in her eyes guttered and died.
The parasitic connection to Vivian snapped.
Silence. The stupid pop song had ended. Only the sound of Mary Lou’s ragged weeping and the hum of the refrigerator filled the kitchen.
Jan slowly withdrew her slick fingers. She was shaking. Mary Lou slid down the fridge door to the floor, curling into a naked, trembling ball. Frank was there in an instant, wrapping his robe around her, pulling her into his lap, rocking her. “Lou. Baby. It’s me. It’s Frank.”
Vivian pushed herself off the wall. The sickly pink hue in her shadows was fading, replaced by their natural inky darkness. She looked drained, but clear-eyed. “It’s gone. The loop is broken. She’s… empty. But clean.”
Jan nodded, wiping her hand on her jeans. Her magic felt thin, scraped dry. She looked at Frank, holding his weeping wife. The threat here was neutralized, but the message was received.