Chapter 14: Siren's Essence
The heavy door to Stacy’s penthouse sealed with a sigh, locking out the city’s night but doing nothing to mute the echo in Rick’s head. He’s already tainted. My song is in the soil. The words coiled in his gut, cold and slick. He leaned against the obsidian wall, the cool surface doing little to ground him. The floating glass orbs drifted listlessly, their light dim.
“Stop it,” Stacy’s voice cut through the silence, sharper than she intended. She tossed her jacket onto a floating chaise. “Don’t let her plant that seed. That’s what she does. She gets inside and she rots.”
“It’s not that simple,” Rick said, his voice quiet. He looked at his hands—the hands that kneaded dough, that had trembled holding a sonic emitter, that had touched Stacy with a reverence he still couldn’t fully believe he was allowed. “She wasn’t just threatening. She was stating a fact. I can feel it. A… a hum. Under everything else.”
Jan, who had been pacing with Godfrey clutched to her chest like a furry stress ball, stopped. Her green eyes, usually alight with chaos, were assessing. She looked from Rick’s pale face to Stacy’s rigid posture. The air was thick with spent adrenaline and creeping dread.
“Nope,” Jan announced, popping the ‘p’. “Not having it. We just bagged a siren, we’re not letting her win the after-party. Brigid’s got her in a math-based coma, Bethany slapped enough magical duct tape on her to silence a symphony, and we are all still standing.” She plopped Godfrey onto the floor, where he immediately trotted to his water bowl with an air of profound boredom. “What we need,” Jan said, cracking her knuckles, “is a reset.”
She didn’t chant. She didn’t weave symbols in the air. Jan simply exhaled, and the magic rolled off her in a visible, shimmering wave. It was pure, undiluted Green Moon essence. The air in the penthouse suddenly tasted of expensive champagne and the salt of clean sweat. The holographic fireplaces blazed brighter, their light warming the skin. A sense of lush, desperate want permeated the room, softening the sharp edges of fear, amplifying the pulse of life that thrummed between the three of them.
Rick felt it like a gentle shock to his system. The cold coil in his gut warmed, transformed into a different kind of tension. His gaze snapped to Stacy. Her eyes, dark and fierce, were already locked on him. The magic didn’t create the desire; it stripped away everything that wasn’t it. It was the removal of inhibition, the amplification of a truth already present: they were alive, they were together, and they needed to feel it, viscerally.
Stacy crossed the space between them in three strides. She didn’t kiss him. She fisted her hands in the front of his shirt and pushed him backwards. He stumbled, his legs hitting the edge of the low, sprawling leather sofa, and fell onto it with a soft ‘oof’.
“No more thinking,” Stacy growled, her voice husky. She climbed onto the couch, straddling his hips, her knees sinking into the soft leather on either side of his thighs. Her hands went to the button of his jeans, her fingers deft and urgent. “You’re here. You’re mine. She doesn’t get to have any part of this.”
Rick could only nod, his breath coming fast. He helped her shove his jeans and boxers down over his hips, his cock springing free, already fully hard and throbbing. Stacy didn’t bother with her own clothes. She hiked up her skirt, yanked the lace of her panties aside with a sharp rip of fabric, and sank down onto him in one fierce, wet slide.
“Fuck,” Rick gasped, his head falling back against the couch. She was so hot, so tight, her cunt gripping him like a silken fist. The anxiety, the fear, the hum—it all condensed into this single, burning point of connection.
Stacy set a brutal pace from the start. She rode him with a raw, driving need, her hips pistoning, her body taking him deep with every downward slam. The wet, rhythmic sound of their joining filled the charged air. Her head was thrown back, the silver streaks in her dark hair catching the firelight, her breasts swaying with each forceful movement.
“That’s it,” she panted, her hands braced on his chest. “Right there. You feel that? That’s real. That’s us.”
Jan watched from the side for a moment, a small, fierce smile playing on her lips. Then she moved. She knelt on the couch behind Stacy, her own breath coming faster. She pressed her body against Stacy’s back, her hands sliding around to cup Stacy’s breasts through her shirt. Jan buried her face in the crook of Stacy’s neck, licking and biting the taut tendon there, her teeth scraping sensitive skin.
“Fuck him harder, Stace,” Jan whispered, her voice a rough purr next to Stacy’s ear. One of her hands drifted down Stacy’s trembling stomach, over the slick mound where Rick was buried, and found her clit. Jan’s fingers, clever and knowing, began to rub tight, insistent circles.
The effect was electric. Stacy cried out, a shattered, wordless sound. Her rhythm became erratic, frantic. The dual sensation of being filled and rubbed pushed her toward the edge with terrifying speed. Rick felt her inner muscles begin to flutter and clamp around him, a silken vise threatening to milk him dry. He gripped her ass, his fingers digging into the soft flesh, helping to lift and drive her down onto him, meeting her thrust for thrust.
“Jan… Rick… I’m gonna…” Stacy’s warning was a broken moan.
“Come,” Rick gritted out, his own control fraying. “Come on my cock, please.”
Stacy shattered. Her body bowed, a high, sharp scream tearing from her throat as the orgasm ripped through her. Her cunt clenched and spasmed around him, a series of wet, pulsating waves that pulled his own climax from him with brutal efficiency. With a guttural groan, he emptied himself into her, his hips jerking upwards, pumping his release deep inside her as she shuddered and milked him through every last pulse.
For a long moment, the only sounds were their ragged breaths and the slick, wet sounds of their still-joined bodies. Stacy slumped forward, her forehead resting against Rick’s, her body trembling.
Jan didn’t let them rest. She gently eased Stacy off of Rick, guiding her to lie beside him on the wide couch. Stacy went boneless, spent. Then Jan turned her attention to Rick. She pushed him back, swung a leg over his chest, and straddled his face.
Her arousal was a palpable scent in the air—musky and sweet. Her folds, glistening and swollen, hovered inches from his mouth. “Your turn,” she said, her voice thick with want. “Clean her off me. Taste us both.”
Rick, still reeling, didn’t hesitate. He lifted his head and his tongue found her. He licked a broad, slow stripe through her soaked flesh, tasting the unique salt of Jan and the lingering trace of his own release from Stacy. Jan groaned, her hands gripping the back of the couch for support. “Yeah, just like that. Get in there.”
As he ate her out with hungry, open-mouthed strokes, Stacy stirred. She propped herself up on an elbow, her eyes heavy-lidded and dark. She watched for a moment, then leaned in, capturing one of Jan’s nipples through her shirt in her mouth, sucking hard. Jan cried out, her hips grinding down against Rick’s face. The scene shifted into a slow, sensual tangle. Jan rode Rick’s mouth, her moans growing louder, while Stacy alternated between kissing Jan deeply and dipping her own fingers between her legs, touching herself as she watched.
Rick was lost in a haze of sensation—the taste, the sounds, the feel of Jan coming apart above him. He pushed two fingers inside her, curling them, and her inner walls clamped down hard. “Oh, god, right there, don’t stop,” Jan begged, her rhythm on his tongue becoming desperate. Stacy’s breathing hitched, her own fingers moving faster.
It built again, a slower, deeper wave this time. Jan’s thighs began to shake. Stacy’s moans blended with hers. Rick felt Jan’s climax approach in the tightening of her body, the change in her taste. He redoubled his efforts, sucking her clit, thrusting his fingers.
Jan came with a ragged, sobbing scream, her body convulsing, her juices flooding his mouth. The intense vibration of her pleasure against his face triggered Stacy’s second peak; she gasped, back arching, as her own silent orgasm washed through her. The penthouse air itself seemed to vibrate with their shared release.
They collapsed into a heap of slick limbs and satiated exhaustion on the leather, the champagne-sweat scent of the magic finally beginning to dissipate. Godfrey III, from his plush bed in the corner, let out a sigh that sounded distinctly like exasperation.
After a long while, Jan sat up, running a hand through her disheveled braid. She looked around the room, a thoughtful, distant expression on her face.
“You know,” she said, her voice conversational, “I think this is the exact spot. Right here on this couch. Well, an older model. Where Mike and Casey finally confessed their love for each other. All those decades ago.” She grinned. “During an orgy I orchestrated, obviously.”
Rick, who had been tracing idle patterns on Stacy’s bare shoulder, let out a pained groan and buried his face in his hands. “Jan. I am begging you. That does not help my mood. The mental images… they burn.”
Stacy chuckled weakly, but her eyes were on Jan. She’d seen that look before. “What is it, Red? You’ve got your ‘I sense weird shit’ face on.”
Jan’s grin faded. She was staring at Rick, but not at him—through him. Her Green Moon senses, hypersensitive after channeling so much power, were picking up a residue the celebratory magic had temporarily masked. A faint, oily shimmer in the air around him, like heat haze over tar.
“It’s not just in your head, kid,” Jan murmured, all playfulness gone. She leaned close to Rick, her nose almost touching his skin. She inhaled slowly. “It’s on you. A fingerprint. She didn’t just sing near you. She… marked you. Not a thrall mark. Something subtler. A tracker. A homing beacon.”
Rick went very still. Stacy sat up swiftly, all languor gone.
Jan cupped her hands near Rick’s chest, as if gathering invisible threads. A soft, verdant glow emanated from her palms. Slowly, with painstaking care, she drew the shimmering residue out of the air around him. It coalesced into a tiny, writhing orb of iridescent blue energy in her hands, pulsing with a low, discordant rhythm.
“Her song is in the soil,” Jan whispered, her eyes wide. “And she used you to plant it. This isn’t attached to your soul. It’s attached to your… your essence. The part of you that bakes. That creates. She didn’t want to control you, Rick. She wanted to map you.”
She scrambled to her feet, cradling the fragile, dangerous orb. “I need to get this to Brigid. Now. She can analyze its frequency, its intent. This could be the key to her whole plan, or it could be a fucking time bomb.” Jan was already striding toward the door, completely naked, her focus absolute.
“Jan!” Stacy called after her, grabbing a throw blanket. “For God’s sake, put some clothes on!”
But Jan was already yanking the penthouse door open. “No time! This thing is already degrading!” She dashed out into the hallway, the orb held carefully before her. Godfrey, with a put-upon yawn, trotted after her, his service animal vest magically appearing on his back as he went.
The door swung shut.
Silence rushed back in, colder and more profound than before. Rick stared at the door, then down at his own hands. He didn’t feel a hum anymore. He felt hollowed out, scrubbed clean by Jan’s extraction. And utterly exposed.
Stacy moved closer, wrapping the blanket around them both. She didn’t offer platitudes. She just held him, her body warm and solid against his.
In the quiet, Rick finally understood. Lorna hadn’t lost in that warehouse. She’d completed her objective. The trap they sprung had been the one she wanted them to spring. He was the soil. And something had been planted.
Now they had to find out what was going to grow.
Now they had to find out what was going to grow. The silence in the penthouse was a living thing, feeding on their uncertainty. Stacy’s phone buzzed on the floor, the screen lighting up with a message from Brigid: Inbound sample received. Processing. Stand by. Rick read it over her shoulder, the clinical text doing nothing to settle the chill in his bones.
“We can’t just stand by,” he said, his voice rough.
“We have to,” Stacy replied, but her jaw was tight. She stood, pulling the blanket around herself like armor, and walked to the wall of shifting illusions. She stared out at the city lights, her reflection a ghost over the urban grid. “Jan’s on it. Brigid’s on it. We have to trust the process.”
“The process let her mark me like a fucking tree in a forest,” Rick shot back, the anger sudden and hot. He paced, the cool floor under his bare feet. “She was singing while we were planning her capture. That whole warehouse confrontation… it was a diversion. For this.” He gestured to his own chest.
Stacy turned. Her eyes weren’t soft. They were the eyes of a bodyguard assessing a threat. “So we adapt. We use it. If it’s a beacon, we find out what it’s calling. And we blow it to hell.”
Her certainty was a stone he could anchor to. He stopped pacing, drawing a shaky breath. The fear curdled, transforming into a sharp, focused resolve. He walked to her, peeling the blanket from her shoulders. He needed to feel her skin, to replace the phantom oily resonance with her real, warm solidity. He kissed her, not with passion, but with a desperate kind of ratification. Her lips parted, and she bit his lower lip, a sharp sting of shared fury.
They didn’t make it to the bedroom. He lifted her onto the broad, polished obsidian console of her communication array, its holographic displays flickering off at the contact. The blanket pooled at their feet. He pushed her thighs apart, his hands gripping the soft flesh hard enough to leave marks. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her heels digging into the small of his back.
“Hard,” she commanded, her voice a scrape. “No gentle. I need to feel you erase it.”
He entered her in one thrust, a brutal, full-depth penetration that made her gasp. She was still wet from earlier, but this was different—a punishing rhythm born of anxiety and the need to dominate the creeping violation. He fucked her with deep, grinding strokes, the base of his cock pressing against her clit with every push. The console was cold and unyielding beneath her, a contrast to the burning heat where they joined.
“That’s it,” she hissed, her nails raking down his back. “Fucking claim it. It’s my cunt, Rick. Mine. Nothing she put in you belongs here.”
He pistoned into her, the wet, slapping sounds obscenely loud in the quiet room. Each drive was an exorcism. He focused on the physical feedback—the clutch of her inner muscles, the sweat-slick slide of her skin against his, the raw animal sounds torn from her throat. He buried his face in her neck, inhaling the scent of her, of them, of sex and stubborn defiance. His climax built, a tight coil in his gut, a pressure demanding release.
“Inside me,” she growled, locking her ankles tighter. “Fill me up. Mark me back.”
He came with a broken shout, his body slamming into hers as he emptied himself, the pulses feeling like he was shedding something toxic. She clenched around him, milking him, her own orgasm a sharp, convulsive clench that followed a second later. They stayed locked, trembling, breathing ragged gulps of air.
The knock at Brigid’s door was firm, insistent.
Will Sommers-O’Connor opened it, a dish towel in his hand. He blinked at the sight of his completely nude sister-in-law holding a faintly glowing blue orb the size of a golf ball. Godfrey sat at her bare feet, panting.
“Hey, Jan,” Will said, his tone remarkably even. He tilted his head, considering. “Huh. This doesn’t even crack the top five this week.” He turned and called over his shoulder, “Brig! Jan’s here! And she’s… got a thing!”
Sarah emerged from the living room, a book in her hand. She took in the scene—Jan’s nudity, the orb, the determined set of her jaw. Sarah simply nodded, a small, understanding smile on her lips. “I’ll go make sure the girls are occupied with a movie,” she said softly, and turned down the hall toward Jenny and Amanda’s rooms.
Jan strode past Will into the house, her bare feet making soft slaps on the polished wood floor. She followed the familiar hallway down to the converted sunroom that served as Brigid’s Archimedes Society lab. The air here hummed with a different energy, a clean, mathematical frequency. Glowing equations rotated slowly in containment fields. And in the center of the room, suspended in a clear tube of slowly circulating, spell-saturated water, floated Lorna Dunlevy. She appeared asleep, her dark hair waving gently, her face peaceful and monstrously innocent.
Brigid looked up from a scrolling data-slate, her physician’s gaze missing nothing. Her eyes flicked from Jan’s face to her body and back. “Jan,” she said by way of greeting. Then, almost automatically, “Have you lost some weight?”
“Not now, Brigid-Bear,” Jan snapped, though a corner of her mouth twitched. She thrust the orb forward. “Sample. Harvested from the psychic residue on Rick. It’s a marker, a tag. She didn’t want to control him. She wanted to catalogue him. To use his creative essence as a… a soil sample.”
Brigid took the orb carefully, her fingers not touching it but guiding it into a crystalline analysis apparatus. It glowed between prongs, spinning. Complex formulae flickered across a viewscreen above it. Brigid watched, her green eyes reflecting the cold blue light.
“The resonance is unique,” Brigid confirmed after a moment, her voice clinical. “A harmonic identifier, keyed to Williamson biological and metaphysical signatures. You’re right, it’s not an active control mechanism. It’s a tracker and a… a calibrator.” She looked at Jan. “But one sample is a data point. To understand the vector, the intended growth pattern, I need more. We need a comparative sample from another victim.”
Jan nodded once, sharply. “On it.”
She turned and strode out of the lab, back down the hall, past a waving Will, and out the front door. She didn’t break stride. Godfrey trotted faithfully behind, his little legs a blur.
A half-hour later, the front door of Mike and Casey’s suburban home swung open. Mike stood there, holding a bag of trash he’d been about to take out. He stared.
“Hi,” Jan said, breathing heavily. She was still gloriously, unabashedly naked on his front porch. The orb was gone, but her mission was etched on her face. “I need to harvest more siren magic from Ben, Mandy, and Maryam. They’re here, right?”
From inside, Casey’s voice called, “Who is it, Mike? …Oh.” She appeared behind him, her eyes widening for only a second before narrowing into familiar exasperation. “Jan. It’s November. Put some pants on.”
“No time,” Jan said, brushing past them into the warm, cluttered living room. The smell of microwave popcorn and old wood enveloped her. “Brigid needs comparative samples. Lorna’s magic left tags on them, too, probably. Less potent than Rick’s, but present. I need to draw them out.”
Mike closed the door, setting the trash bag aside. He peered out the window. “How did you even get here? Your car keys are in the pants you left at Stacy’s, I’m guessing.”
“Hitched a ride with a delivery sprite,” Jan said distractedly, her eyes scanning the hallway toward the bedrooms. “He was a pervert, but fast.”
Casey pinched the bridge of her nose. On the coffee table, a speakerphone emitted Amy Bryant’s voice, tinny and worried. “Hello? Mike? Casey? What’s happening? Is this about Ben? Is the magic gone?”
“We’re here, Amy,” Casey said, leaning toward the phone. “Jan’s here. She says she can help remove the residual magic, but she needs to… examine them.”
“Yes, whatever, just do it!” Amy’s voice was tight with maternal anxiety. “Just get that woman’s hooks out of my son’s brain!”
“We agree,” Jason’s calmer voice added. “Whatever you need to do.”
Casey muted the phone. She fixed Jan with a look. “Okay. ‘Examine them.’ Are you asking for permission to have sex with Mandy, Ben, and Maryam? In my house?”
“What? No,” Jan said, blinking. “I need to watch them have sex. The emotional and magical peak of intimacy is when the residual tag will be most active, easiest to isolate and extract. I just need to be an observer. A collector.”
Mike coughed. “You didn’t bother asking Hank and Fatima for this kind of permission with their daughter.”
Jan shifted her weight, suddenly looking less like a force of nature and more like a niece caught sneaking in after curfew. “That’s… different. This is your house. Your rules. I’m being respectful.”
From the armchair, Beth Williamson lowered her camera, a special lens with etched silver filters attached to it. “I can help,” she said, her photographer’s curiosity ignited. “This lens can see emotional auras and magical residues. I could document the extraction.”
Beside her, Kim Powers uncrossed her legs. The curved sword leaning against her chair seemed to gleam. “And I can assist with Green Moon facilitation,” she said, her voice serene. “A gentle encouragement to lower inhibitions and amplify their natural connection. Make the harvest cleaner.”
Mike’s concern remained practical. “And how, exactly, did a naked woman and a Maltese get from the city to my suburb without causing a dozen police calls?”
Before Jan could answer, Mona Kapowski bustled in from the kitchen, a large amethyst cluster in one hand and a smoking bundle of what smelled like rosemary and ozone in the other. “The vibrations in this house are still chaotic!” she announced. “The siren’s dissonance is clinging to the psychic aurora of the young ones! We must clear the chakras!”
Jan didn’t even look at her. She made a swift, twisting motion with her fingers. A pulse of gentle, rose-colored energy washed over Mona. The older woman blinked, her shoulders slumping. “Oh my,” she yawned. “I feel a sudden need for a… a lying down.” She wandered placidly toward the guest room.
Mike and Casey stared at the now-empty hallway, then at each other. A silent, profound understanding passed between them. Mona was gone, mentally, for at least an hour.
“Plausible deniability,” Mike said slowly, a grin spreading across his face.
“Exactly,” Casey said, matching his grin. She unmuted the phone. “Amy, Jason, we’re going to proceed. We’ll call you after.” She didn’t wait for a reply, hanging up. “Our room is soundproofed. We’ll be… unavailable. Do what you need to do, Jan. Just try not to break anything.”
As Mike and Casey beat a hasty retreat to their own sanctuary, Jan led Beth and Kim down the hall to Mandy’s room. Kim pushed the door open gently.
Inside, Ben, Maryam, and Mandy were a tangled, sleeping pile of limbs on the rumpled bed, naked and spent from their earlier grounding. The air was thick with the musk of sex and youthful exhaustion.
Kim closed her eyes, exhaling softly. A wave of gentle, warm magic, more disciplined than Jan’s but no less potent, flowed into the room. It smelled of jasmine and warm sand. On the bed, Mandy stirred, then moaned softly as the magic stoked embers back to flame. Ben’s eyelids fluttered open, his hand already moving sleepily to cup Maryam’s breast. Maryam arched into his touch, a smile playing on her lips.
“Hey,” Mandy whispered, her eyes finding Ben’s, then Maryam’s. “You guys ready for round three?”
What followed was slow at first, a lazy rekindling. Ben kissed Mandy deeply as Maryam mapped the muscles of his back with her mouth. Then Mandy guided Ben’s head between her legs, and his tongue delved into her with a grateful hunger. Maryam watched, her hand sliding down her own stomach, her fingers slipping inside herself as she sucked on Mandy’s nipple.
Jan watched, her hands held out, palms up. Beth peered through her special lens, whispering observations. “I see it… faint blue strands, like weak spider silk, clinging to their auras. Concentrating around their… cores. Their solar plexuses.”
“When they peak,” Jan murmured.
The scene intensified. Ben, driven by Mandy’s cries and Maryam’s touch, moved up her body. He sheathed himself in Mandy with a smooth, deep thrust that made her cry out. Maryam immediately pressed against his back, her hands roaming, her mouth on his shoulder. They found a rhythm, a three-part syncopation of gasps and slick sounds. Mandy’s legs hooked around Ben’s waist, her heels drumming against his ass. Maryam’s hand snaked between their sweat-slick bodies, her fingers finding Mandy’s clit, rubbing in frantic circles.
“Now,” Beth whispered, her voice tense.
Jan’s hands moved, pulling at the unseen threads. As Ben’s thrusts became jagged, as Mandy’s back bowed off the bed, as Maryam bit down on Ben’s shoulder with a choked gasp, Jan clenched her fists. Three smaller, paler blue orbs, each about marble-sized, coalesced above her palms, quivering. She drew them away from the triad just as their collective climax broke—a wave of shuddering, mutual release that left them gasping and boneless.
Jan deposited the orbs into an empty ceramic bowl Beth handed her. She let out a breath. “Got them.”
Then she noticed the silence from beside her. Beth and Kim were no longer observing. Kim had Beth pressed against the wall beside the door, Beth’s shorts around her ankles. Kim’s hand was buried between Beth’s thighs, fingers pumping deep, her mouth silencing Beth’s moans with a fierce kiss. The facilitative magic had flowed both ways, its amplifying current too strong to resist. Beth’s camera hung forgotten from its strap, banging softly against the wall.
Jan smiled faintly. She quietly lifted the bowl with its three new samples and slipped out of the room, closing the door softly behind her.
In the hallway, she nearly collided with Mike and Casey emerging from their bedroom. They looked rumpled, relaxed, and mildly triumphant. Casey’s hair was messier than usual, and Mike was buttoning a fresh shirt.
“Success?” Casey asked, her voice husky.
Jan showed her the bowl. Mike handed her a shoebox lid. “For transport. You want a robe or something? One of my shirts?”
“No time,” Jan said, carefully transferring the orbs. “The samples are degrading. Brigid needs these now.”
And with that, she was off again, padding naked through the house, shoebox lid held carefully before her. Godfrey materialized from a sunbeam and fell in behind. The front door opened and closed.
Mike and Casey listened to the silence, broken only by the faint, rhythmic creak from Mandy’s room and a softer, quicker sound from the hallway wall outside it.
“Well,” Mike said, slipping an arm around Casey’s waist. “At least the cats didn’t seem to mind.”
From the top of the bookshelf, Rembrandt and VanGogh stared with baleful yellow eyes at the closed front door, their tails twitching once, in perfect, disdainful unison.