Chapter 2: Spin Cycle Seduction
The laundromat hummed, a symphony of concrete vibrations and sloshing water. Ambrose Fettuccine’s palm was slick with sweat inside his trench coat pocket, his fingers curled around the warm, pulsating sphere. It felt like a malignant peach, its skin humming with a rhythm that didn’t match the spinning machines.
He watched them from behind a pillar. Two econ students, he guessed. Both in those tight, shiny yoga pants that left nothing to the imagination. One, a blonde with a high ponytail, was folding what looked like a man’s flannel shirts with aggressive precision. The other, a brunette with a nose ring, was pulling a tangled mass of colors from a dryer.
Ambrose’s heart hammered against his ribs. This was it. The book said the vessel needed a conduit, something saturated with the target’s… essence. Their want. He’d tried socks. A hairbrush from a dumpster. Nothing had worked. The orb had just sat there, inert and mocking.
Then the brunette dropped something. A small, black scrap of lace. It fluttered to the damp floor near a puddle of spilled detergent.
A thong.
The blonde giggled. “Jesus, Chloe, trying to start a fire?”
“Shut up, it’s comfortable,” Chloe shot back, bending over to retrieve it.
That bend. The way the cheap neon light from the ‘Sudz n’ Buzz’ sign outside painted a blue curve over the swell of her ass in the thin fabric. Ambrose felt a dizzying lurch in his gut that was equal parts lust and terror. Now. It had to be now.
He moved, his sneakers squeaking on the wet floor. “Oh, uh, you dropped this,” he stammered, swooping in and snatching the scrap of lace before her fingers could touch it.
It was warm. Silky. He felt a weird, staticky charge where his skin met it.
“Thanks,” Chloe said, straightening up and eyeing him with mild amusement. The other girl just smirked, folding a towel.
Ambrose didn’t hand it back. His thumb, hidden by the garment, pressed hard into the center of the lace. The orb in his pocket flared, a spike of heat against his thigh. He felt a disgusting, slick transfer, as if the fabric was a sponge and he was wringing it out into the glass sphere. He muttered the phrase, the words tasting like acid and chalk on his tongue. “Wouldn’t you rather be… unwinding?”
He held the thong out.
Chloe’s fingers brushed his as she took it. The moment they made contact, her whole body stiffened. Her pupils, in the fluorescent glare, swelled until the green of her irises was just a thin ring around black holes.
Her friend stopped folding. “Chlo? You okay?”
Chloe didn’t answer. She brought the thong slowly to her face, inhaled deeply, her nostrils flaring. A low, animal sound vibrated in her throat. The other girl leaned closer, concerned, and caught a whiff of the fabric still clutched in Chloe’s hand.
Her own eyes glazed over. Her jaw went slack.
It wasn’t a scent. It was an emission. A distilled, hypnotic frequency of pure, supplicant hunger that wasn’t theirs. It was ancient, and female, and it bypassed every rational circuit in their brains, speaking directly to the wet, secret core of them.
“Yeah,” the blonde whispered, her voice slurry. “I’m… really tense.”
“Me too,” Chloe breathed. They looked at Ambrose, their gazes unfocused yet intensely fixed on him. “Do you know… a place to unwind?”
Ambrose’s triumph was a cold, sour thing in his stomach. It worked. The fucking book was right. He nodded, unable to speak, and gestured toward the door.
They followed him out into the Chicago night like obedient, gorgeous puppies, leaving their wet, unfinished laundry turning endlessly in the machines.
The orb was a prison of thrumming, resentful glass.
Cordelia Chace—the name a beloved souvenir, her true name a shape that would shatter human thoughts—existed within it as a coil of intelligent shadow and furious light. The binding circle, a sloppy mess of chicken blood and stolen graveyard dirt etched onto Ambrose’s bedroom floor, was an insult. The boy himself, a pimpled, trembling child playing with hellfire, was a joke.
But the joke had teeth.
The circle held. The orb, a focus he didn’t understand the half of, contained her. She could feel the frayed edges of the Chicago night, the distant, warm pulse of her daughter’s unique energy, a beacon she’d screamed a warning toward with the last of her strength. But she was here. Trapped.
The door opened. Ambrose entered, her two new puppets in tow. Their arousal hit Cordelia like a physical wave, sweet and thick and stupid. It was food, but it was also a chain. The boy’s desperate, needy lust was the fuel for the circle. He thought he was the master. He was just the furnace.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” Ambrose said, his voice too high. He’d cleaned up, sort of. The sheets on his single bed were stained, but he’d pushed the action figures off his desk.
The two women, Chloe and her friend Mia, stood motionless, breathing heavily. The command in the air, Cordelia’s forced projection through the conduit of the stolen thong, held them in a warm thrall.
“You can… you can start,” Ambrose whispered, pointing at the bed. He clutched the orb, his knuckles white.
A ripple of pure contempt moved through Cordelia’s essence. This was the plan. This pathetic whelp wanted a show. He wanted to watch, to fuel his own feeble imagination, to believe he commanded this. Very well.
She pressed her will against the inside of the orb. It was like pushing against heated tar. It cost her, draining energy she couldn’t spare. But she pushed.
In the center of the grimy room, Chloe turned to Mia. Their movements were slightly jerky, puppet-like, but the hunger in their eyes was ferociously real. It was their hunger, now amplified and twisted into a single, directed purpose.
“I’m so fucking wet,” Chloe groaned, the words slurred and honest. Her hands went to Mia’s waist, pulling her close. Mia moaned in response, her fingers tangling in Chloe’s ponytail, yanking her head back to devour her mouth.
It was not a kiss. It was a collision. Teeth clacked. Tongues stabbed and licked with a frantic, graceless urgency. They bit each other’s lips, sucking hard enough to bruise, their breaths coming in ragged, sobbing gasps. Chloe’s hands shoved under Mia’s tight tank top, pawing at her breasts, pinching her nipples through her bra until Mia cried out, a sharp sound of pain-pleasure.
“Take it off, you slut, take it all off,” Mia hissed, tearing at the hem of Chloe’s shirt.
Fabric ripped. Buttons pinged across the floor. They stripped each other with a violent, clumsy speed, not for seduction but for access. Within seconds they were naked, pale skin glowing in the light of a cheap halogen lamp. They fell onto the narrow bed, a tangle of limbs.
Ambrose watched, his mouth open, a dark stain spreading on the front of his jeans. He was trembling.
Cordelia made them perform. Mia shoved Chloe onto her stomach, slapped her ass hard enough to leave a red handprint. Chloe screamed into the mattress, her back arching. Mia didn’t bother with preliminaries. She spat into her hand, slicked her fingers, and drove them into Chloe from behind.
Chloe shrieked, her body bowing. “Fuck! Yes! More, you bitch, more!”
Mia fucked her with her hand, hard and fast, her other hand pinning Chloe’s shoulder to the bed. The wet, slapping sounds were obscenely loud in the small room. The smell of sex, sweat, and cheap lavender detergent filled the air.
Then Cordelia shifted the focus. She needed more. The boy’s lust was spiking, a bonfire of teenage desperation. Good. But she needed a direct line.
“Him,” Cordelia’s voice whispered through Chloe’s mouth, a layered sound, her own ancient rasp beneath the girl’s higher pitch. “Get him. Now.”
Chloe, her eyes rolled back in ecstatic submission, turned her head. She looked right at Ambrose. “Your turn,” she panted, a string of saliva connecting her lip to the sheet. “Come here. I need your cock. I need to suck it until you scream.”
Ambrose stumbled forward as if yanked by a wire. This was the fantasy. The direct address. He fumbled with his belt, his pants dropping around his ankles. His erection jutted out, thick and flushed.
Mia pulled her slick fingers from Chloe with a pop, crawled off the bed, and pushed Ambrose toward it. “Give it to her,” Mia commanded, her voice guttural. “Shove it down her fucking throat.”
Ambrose stood by the bed, trembling violently. Chloe rolled onto her back, opened her mouth, and stuck out her tongue, her gaze blank and hungry.
He hesitated. For a second, a flicker of fear cut through the glaze of his lust. This was real. Too real.
Cordelia felt the hesitation. The circle wavered, just for a microsecond. She struck.
Through the orb, through the psychic link forged by the boy’s desire and her own torment, she didn’t just feed on the ambient energy. She hooked into him. It was a violation, a deep, psychic rape. She sank a tendril of her true self into the core of his being, into the soggy, pathetic center of his loneliness and want.
It was not sustenance. It was a lifeline. A vile, intimate tether.
Ambrose gasped, a sound of profound shock. His eyes saw not just the naked girl on the bed, but the swirling, beautiful darkness inside the orb on his nightstand. He saw her. Not the blonde from Buffy, but the endless, hungry thing. And in that moment, he belonged to it.
His hesitation vanished, replaced by a robotic drive. He grabbed Chloe’s head, his fingers twisting in her hair, and jammed his cock into her waiting mouth. He fucked her face with punishing, rhythmic strokes, his hips pistoning, his balls slapping against her chin. Chloe gagged, her eyes watering, but she took it, her throat working around him.
Mia watched for a moment, then knelt beside the bed, her mouth finding Ambrose’s balls, licking and sucking as he used her friend. The room dissolved into a frenzy of raw, mechanistic sex, a triad driven by a single captive will.
Cordelia fed. She drank the trio’s escalating release, the crude, explosive energy of it. It was junk food, greasy and unsatisfying, but it was calories. It strengthened her. As Ambrose groaned, his body tensing for climax, his connection to her tightened, becoming a solid, throbbing cable.
He came in Chloe’s throat with a strangled shout, his essence flooding into Cordelia through their new bond. The two women, their purpose served, shuddered into their own sharp, empty climaxes moments later, collapsing onto the stained sheets, spent and already beginning to blink in confusion.
Ambrose pulled out, stumbling back. He looked from the dazed, naked women to the orb. It glowed with a steady, satisfied crimson light now. The fear was still there in his eyes, but underneath it was a grotesque pride. He’d done it. He’d controlled them. He’d controlled her.
He didn’t understand. The hook was set. The circle’s power was now rooted in his own life force, a battery she could slowly, secretly drain. The orb was her cell, but he was the warden who’d just welded his own soul to the bars.
The two econ students began to mumble, gathering their torn clothes, their faces etched with the vague shame of a blackout. Ambrose, shakily pulling up his pants, pointed to the door. “Get out,” he said, trying for authority. It came out as a squeak.
They left, clutching their garments, silent and bewildered.
Alone, Ambrose picked up the warm orb. He peered into its depths, where shadows coiled. “You see?” he whispered to the captive darkness. “I can do it. We can have whatever we want.”
Inside the glass, Cordelia rested, gathering the meager strength she’d stolen. The boy was a fool. A tool. Her warning to Vivian had been sent, but it had cost her dearly. Now, she had this. A link. A leaking, pathetic source of power in this plane.
And a plan. The boy wanted to be a player? The Order of the Morningstar, those pretentious, punitive bastards, would smell his clumsy magic soon enough. They’d come for him. And when they did, she’d be there, hooked into his very soul. A stowaway.
Her daughter was looking for her. The thought was a sharp, painful warmth in the cold of the orb. Vivian was out there, following the trail.
Cordelia just had to survive long enough, anchored to this miserable, horny child, until the path between them finally cleared.
Back at Ye Olde Unmentionables, the air still hung with the fading echo of the phonograph’s scream. Vivian leaned against the glass countertop, its coolness doing nothing to quell the low tremble in her hands. She watched the door, counting seconds until she could leave for Annie and Aaron’s. Abbie was reorganizing a shelf of silk kimonos, her movements infused with a new, languid grace. A soft, secret smile kept playing on her lips.
Every few minutes, she’d catch Vivian’s eye and blush, then giggle into her hand. The residual energy from Abbie’s and Hank’s frantic coupling in the fitting room still hung in the shop’s atmosphere, a faint, buzzing hum against Vivian’s senses. She had drawn on it, just a little, a subconscious sip that steadied her nerves and left a warm, guilty flush on her own skin. She pretended not to know.
The shop bell jingled, a violent burst of noise that made Vivian jump.
“Viv! We were in the neighborhood and—whoa.” Katie “Boom Boom” Manelli stopped just inside the door, her black lace dress a slash of shadow against the pastel linens. Her sharp eyes scanned Vivian’s face. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Or, like, a ghost that owes you money.”
Amy and Yukio piled in behind her, followed by Jason, who looked perpetually like he’d been teleported into the wrong movie. Amy, willowy and wide-eyed, glided over to a rack of embroidered robes, her fingers brushing the fabric with reverence. Yukio, bold and compact, marched straight to the counter.
“We came for the moral support and the possible discounts,” Yukio announced, then frowned. “But you’re green around the gills, Viv. What’s up? Is it just the Dale-shaped hole in your life?”
“I… yeah, he left this morning,” Vivian said, the half-truth coming easily. It ached, his absence, a fresh physical hollow next to the older, colder one her mother had left.
“Four months is a long time to go without,” Katie said with a sympathetic wince. “When are we gonna meet this nautical hunk, anyway? Gotta vet him for the squad.”
Vivian forced a smile. “When he’s back on land. It’s… not that, though. Not just that.” She hesitated, her gaze flicking to Abbie, who was now pretending to be very interested in a price tag. “It’s my mom.”
Amy turned from the robes, her expression soft with concern. “I thought… you said she was missing. Since you were nineteen.”
The words felt like gravel in Vivian’s throat. “She was. She is. I got a… a message from her today. Through the phonograph.” She couldn’t say backwards demonic scream. “She said not to come home.”
A heavy silence fell, broken only by the distant hum of the city. Jason shifted his weight, uncomfortable with the magical undercurrent. Katie’s gaze sharpened, calculating. Yukio leaned forward.
“So she’s not missing,” Yukio said, her voice dropping. “She’s somewhere… and she’s in trouble.”
Abbie, from her spot by the kimonos, had gone very still. She was listening, her usual bubbly energy compressed into a statue of focus.
“We have people looking into it,” Vivian said quietly, choosing her words with Abbie in mind. “Jan and Fatima. They have… contacts. We’re meeting them later.”
“Good,” Katie nodded, crossing her arms. “Anyone tells you not to come home, it usually means you should definitely go, but with, like, backup and maybe a controlled charge.”
Jason cleared his throat, trying to be helpful. “So it’s a… a supernatural family thing? With your… heritage?” He stumbled, avoiding the word.
“Her heritage isn’t the issue, Jason,” Yukio said, a little too quickly. “It’s the message.”
But Jason, earnest and out of his depth, pressed on. “I just mean, it’s gotta be hard, dealing with all this… succubus stuff on your own.”
The word landed in the quiet shop like a shattering crystal.
Abbie’s head snapped up. Her eyes, wide and intelligent, locked onto Vivian. The pieces Vivian had watched her mentally assemble over months of oddities finally clicked into a terrifying, exhilarating picture.
“Succubus,” Abbie breathed, the word not a question but a revelation. She took a step toward the counter. “Vivian. Are you… one?”
Vivian’s mouth went dry. Her instincts screamed to deny, to deflect, to weave a glamour of normalcy. But the word was out, hanging between them, and Abbie’s face wasn’t scared. It was lit with dawning, overwhelming understanding.
“You get this… glow,” Abbie continued, her words tumbling out in a rush. “After a big bridal party leaves, or a bachelorette giggling in the dressing rooms. You look healthier. Stronger. I just thought you really loved your job.” She took another step. “It explains the weird hours. Your… ‘special practices’ you never talk about. That time Mrs. Hendricks fainted and you caught her and she was totally fine but you looked pale for days after.”
Katie sighed, a sound of pure exasperation. “Well, the cat’s fucking out of the bag now.”
“Half,” Vivian whispered, the correction automatic, weak. “I’m a half-succubus.”
Abbie stared. Then a brilliant, sunbeam of a grin split her face. “Are you kidding me?” she squealed, clapping her hands together. “That is the coolest thing ever! Oh my god, I work for a half-succubus! This explains so much!”
“Abbie, quiet,” Vivian hissed, glancing at the front window.
“Sorry, sorry!” Abbie dropped her voice to a stage whisper, buzzing with excitement. “It’s just… wow. Okay. So that’s what’s up. Your mom’s a full one? And she’s in trouble? And that’s why Hank…” Her eyes narrowed in sudden, shrewd suspicion. “That was weird, right? Him suddenly dragging me into the back? He’s sweet, but that was out of character. That was a… a distraction.” She looked at Vivian for confirmation.
Vivian winced, caught. “It was Fatima’s idea,” she admitted softly.
Abbie’s grin somehow widened. “Even better! So what’s the plan? What can I do?”
Yukio chuckled, shaking her head. “I was gonna ask the same thing. I’m due for another adventure.”
“Another adventure?!” Abbie squealed, then slapped a hand over her own mouth.
Amy wrung her hands, her gentle face creased with worry. “I just want to help you, Viv. However I can.” She glanced at Jason, who gave a resigned, affectionate nod.
“Yeah,” Jason said simply. “I’m in. Obviously.”
Katie cracked her knuckles, a sharp pop in the quiet shop. “Someone’s messing with your mom? That’s someone messing with our friend. I don’t care who the ‘man’ is this time. I’m in to stick it to him.”
Vivian looked at the circle of faces around her counter—the bubbly human who now knew her secret, the explosive Goth, the gentle dork, her bold friend, and the reluctant historian. The fear for her mother was still a cold stone in her gut, but around it, a fragile warmth spread. She wasn’t alone.
“We’re meeting Jan and Fatima at Aaron and Annie’s place in a few hours,” Vivian said, her voice gaining strength. “They know more. They have… resources.”
“What do we do until then?” Abbie asked, practically vibrating.
“We lock up,” Vivian said, turning to flip the open sign to closed. “And we get ready. Because I think ‘don’t come home’ might be the worst advice my mother has ever given me.”
Outside, the neon of the city began to flicker on as dusk bled into night. Inside the shop, amidst the lace and silk, a different kind of energy was coalescing—determined, loyal, and ready to walk into the dark. The phonograph sat silent in its corner, a malevolent artifact now surrounded by a wall of defiant will.