Chapter 12: Spectator Sport
The air in the cramped room above the pawnshop was thick, a palimpsest of smells layered over decades: old tobacco, dust, the ghost of cheap perfume, and now the sharp, living scent of sweat and arousal. The argument had been brewing since Jan left them with a muttered “make yourselves at home” and a wink. The tension wasn’t about the magic, or the Consortium, or the impossible things they’d seen. It was older, simpler, and had been humming between them in the newsroom for years.
“She didn’t make us want anything,” Leanne said, her back against the cool plaster of the wall. She was gesturing with a half-empty bottle of water. “That’s what she said. She just… turns up the volume on what’s already playing.”
Kent, slumped in the room’s only armchair—a threadbare monstrosity of orange velour—ran a hand over his face. “The volume was already at a ten, Leanne. We’ve fucked. We fuck when we’re stressed, or when a story dies, or when it’s Tuesday. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means we’re good at stress relief,” she shot back, but her voice lacked its usual edge. She was looking at him, at the line of his jaw, the way his shirt stretched across his shoulders. The memory of the phantom sensations Jan’s friend had induced—the feeling of hands that weren’t there, lips on her neck, a desperate, building heat—was fading, but it had left a kind of clarity in its wake. A recognition of a familiar itch.
“Right,” Kent said, but he was watching her too. The intense blue of her eyes in the neon-dappled dimness. The way her messy dark hair clung to her damp temple. “Just a biological valve release.”
“Exactly.”
Silence stretched, filled only by the distant, alien murmur of the Market below. The cheap fluorescent light in the corner buzzed like an angry insect.
Kent stood up. The movement was sudden, decisive. He crossed the few feet between them in two strides. He didn’t touch her. Just loomed, his body a breath from hers, his eyes searching her face. “So what if we made it official?” he asked, his voice low. “The fucking. Not the… relationship. Just an agreement. That this is a thing we do. Without it needing to be after a bad day.”
Leanne’s heart hammered against her ribs. She could smell him—ink, cheap soap, coffee, Kent. “Official sounds like paperwork,” she breathed. “I don’t want official.”
“What do you want?”
She dropped the water bottle. It thudded on the thin carpet. “I want you to stop talking and fuck me. Very, very unofficially.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. Then his hands were on her, one tangling in her hair, the other gripping her hip, spinning her and pinning her front to the wall. It wasn’t gentle. It was a claim. A confirmation. His body pressed against her back, and she could feel the hard ridge of his erection straining against his jeans, a blunt pressure against her ass.
“Yes,” she hissed, arching back into him.
He fumbled with the button of her jeans, yanking them and her panties down in one rough pull to her thighs. His own zipper tore open. He didn’t bother with foreplay, with kissing. This was the pure, uncut thing they both understood. He spat into his palm, slicked himself once, and then he was guiding the thick, blunt head of his cock to her entrance. She was wet, had been since the argument started, since he stood up. The first push was a burning, glorious stretch.
“Fuck,” he grunted into her ear, burying himself to the hilt in one deep, punishing stroke.
Leanne cried out, a raw, unfiltered sound. The plaster was cool against her cheek, his body a furnace at her back. He pulled out almost all the way and slammed back in. Again. Again. Setting a brutal, driving rhythm that shook her whole body against the wall. Each thrust was a punctuation mark, dismissing doubt, fear, the surreal world outside the door. This was an anchor. Real, sweaty, and obscene.
“Harder—” she gasped, pushing back against him, meeting his drives. “Oh god, yes, right there, don’t you fucking stop!”
Her nails scrabbled against the plaster, then raked down his forearms where he held her hips. He adjusted his angle slightly, plunging deeper, and a shocked, broken scream tore from her throat as he hammered a spot inside her that turned her vision white at the edges. Pleasure, sharp and electric, radiated from her core.
“Such vigor!” a delighted, crystalline voice chimed from the center of the room.
Kent froze, buried deep inside Leanne. Leanne’s eyes, screwed shut in ecstasy, flew open.
Lady Eleanor Hawthorne floated serenely a few feet away, her hands clasped as if in genteel applause, her translucent form shimmering with fascinated joy. “Do forgive the intrusion! The acoustics in this building are simply marvelous. Might I suggest angling your hips just so, young man? A subtle upward tilt on the inward stroke? The G-spot, my dears, is a marvelous thing, and you are so very close!”
“Holy shit!” Kent yelped, attempting to pull out and cover himself simultaneously, a doomed logistical maneuver.
Leanne slumped against the wall, panting, humiliation and unspent arousal warring in her system. “What the hell?!”
The door to the room burst open. Jan stood there, Godfrey at her heels. The puppy trotted in, sniffed at the discarded water bottle, and lay down with a sigh, utterly uninterested. Jan’s face was flushed, but not from embarrassment. It was alarm.
“Consortium’s next move,” she blurted out, her eyes taking in the scene—the half-dressed reporters, the beaming ghost—without a flicker of surprise. “They’re not just sending lawyers. They hit the Foundation with a full city audit. Like, right now. Inez Murphy is there.”
Kent finally managed to disentangle himself and yank his jeans up, his face a masterpiece of mortification. Leanne, pulling her own clothes up with trembling hands, stared from the ghost to the witch. “Is privacy a thing in the Dark Market? At all?”
“Oh, my dear, privacy is such a modern concept,” Lady Eleanor said wistfully. “In my day, a good haunting was considered a form of entertainment. Do carry on! I can be quiet as a mouse.”
“No one is carrying on,” Kent muttered, sinking back into the orange armchair as if hoping it would swallow him.
Across the city, the atmosphere in the art studio was one of frigid, professional antagonism. The clay-scented calm had been replaced by the sharp, clean smell of laser-printed paper and Mara Henderson’s expensive perfume.
Mara had arrived ten minutes after Mike’s call, a legal storm in a meticulously tailored cream suit. Zack followed in her wake, a quiet, watchful presence carrying a leather satchel that likely contained the entire history of municipal code.
Inez’s two auditors, previously emboldened by their warrants, now looked like children caught in the principal’s office.
“Your warrant,” Mara said, not asking for it but stating its existence as a minor footnote, “is based on clause 12-47b, subsection 9, which pertains to licensed medical and counseling facilities. The O’Connor-Kapowski Foundation is registered as a community art cooperative and a non-profit advocacy group. It does not provide licensed therapeutic services.”
The female auditor, a Ms. Dern, cleared her throat. “We have reports of… psychological counseling occurring on the premises.”
“Art therapy,” Mara corrected, her voice like polished steel. “A recognized, unregulated somatic practice. My clients host community clay-working and painting sessions. If participants find the process therapeutic, that is a beneficial side effect, not a regulated activity. Do you have a warrant for the seizure of pottery?”
Zack, without being asked, produced a tablet and began scrolling, his face a mask of focused neutrality.
“Their funding—” the male auditor, Mr. Potts, began.
“Is a matter of public record, filed quarterly with the state and the IRS,” Mara interrupted, a single, perfect eyebrow arching maybe a millimeter. It was the equivalent of another lawyer slamming a fist on the table. “Any perceived ‘irregularity’ would be a matter for those bodies, not for a surprise city inspection regarding unlicensed psychiatry. This is a fishing expedition. A poorly conceived one.”
She took a step closer to Inez, who had been standing silently, her sharp eyes cataloging Mara’s every move. “You are Mrs. Murphy? Representing ‘civic oversight’? Under what specific authority? Are you a city employee? A contracted inspector? Or are you here in a private capacity, leveraging personal connections to harass a community organization?”
Inez’s smile was thin and cold. “I am a concerned citizen assisting city officials in upholding the law.”
“Then your assistance is noted and terminated,” Mara said, turning her back on Inez as if she’d ceased to exist. She addressed the auditors. “You will cease all examination of client materials immediately. You will provide me, within the hour, a detailed inventory of every document you have touched. You will then leave. Any further communication will be through my office. Zack?”
Zack stepped forward, handing a crisp business card to each stunned auditor. “All correspondence should be directed here. We’ll also need your supervisors’ direct lines, for my follow-up.”
Mike, still on the sofa with a sleeping Rick, leaned over to Casey, who was watching with her arms crossed, a faint smirk on her clay-streaked face. “See,” he whispered, awe in his voice.
“Oh, I see,” Casey whispered back, her eyes on Zack. The young paralegal was standing just behind Mara’s shoulder, his gaze fixed on her with a mixture of terror and absolute adoration. He wasn’t looking at the auditors, or at Inez. He was watching Mara dismantle a hostile takeover with words and a raised eyebrow, and he looked like he was witnessing a supernova.
“That,” Mike murmured, “is why he follows her everywhere. It’s not just that she’s scary. She’s… magnificent.”
Inez, seeing her leverage evaporating under the relentless sun of legal precision, finally moved. She didn’t address Mara. She looked past her, to where Casey stood.
“This isn’t over,” Inez said, her voice quiet but carrying the weight of the marble in her foyer. “You live in a city. Cities have rules. Your little world of magic and mudpies? It’s built on sand. And we control the tide.”
She turned and walked out, her heels clicking a final, defeated staccato on the hardwood floor. The auditors, clutching Zack’s cards, scrambled after her.
Mara let out a slow breath, the only sign of the energy she’d expended. She turned to Casey and Mike. “They’ll be back. But next time, they’ll need a judge who’s willing to sign a warrant that’s actually legal. I’ll start digging into who that judge might be.” She glanced at Zack. “Get me the donor list for the last five mayoral campaigns.”
Zack was already typing on his tablet. “On it.”
Casey walked over, wiping her hands clean on a rag. “Thanks, Mara. You were… wow.”
Mara allowed a small, tight smile. “It’s what I do.” Her phone buzzed. She looked at the screen—a message from Jan. Her smile faded. “Speaking of which. Jan says our friends the reporters had a run-in with a voyeuristic ghost and the Consortium is escalating. She’s planning a ‘counter-strategy’ at Rebecca’s bridal shower.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “God help us all.”
In the sudden quiet of the studio, Polluck the cat uncurled from the sofa, stretched, and sauntered over to the spot where Inez had stood. He sniffed, then deliberately lifted his leg against the leg of a stool.
Mike nodded slowly. “Yep. That about sums it up.”
The tension in the studio didn't dissolve after Inez left; it condensed, shifting from adversarial to a thick, buzzing energy that hummed in the sudden quiet. Casey let out a long, shaky breath, looking down at her hands, now smeared with dried gray clay. The confrontation had left a metallic taste in her mouth and a tightness coiled at the base of her spine.
“Well,” she said, her voice deliberately light, breaking the silence. “I’m covered in studio schmutz and I feel like I’ve been clenched into a fist for an hour. I need a shower.” She glanced at Mike, then let her gaze sweep over Mara and Zack. “Anyone want to join? Help… unclench.”
Mike was already standing, carefully lifting the sleeping Rick from his chest. “On it. Be right back.” He carried the baby into the small back office they’d converted into a nursery, laying him gently in the crib. Polluck, with a glance at Mike, hopped soundlessly onto a nearby filing cabinet, assuming a sphinx-like pose of vigilant guard duty.
Mara watched Zack, who was meticulously organizing his tablet and notes. His hands were steady, but his eyes kept flicking to her, wide and full of a stunned, electric heat. She recognized that look. She’d seen it in court after a particularly brutal cross-examination. A slow, knowing smile touched her lips.
“You,” she said, pointing a manicured finger at him. He jumped slightly. “You’re coming too.” She leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur only he could hear. “I saw you watching. All that ‘Section 12-47b’ talk gets you hard, doesn’t it? My excessive legal skill really does it for you.”
Zack’s ears turned bright red. He swallowed, nodded mutely.
Casey led the way to the rear of the old building, through a door marked ‘Locker Room.’ The space still bore the ghost of its past as a gym: faded blue tiles, rust-spotted showerheads along one wall, drains in the floor. The air was humid and carried the clean, astringent scent of soap.
Without ceremony, Casey began peeling off her clay-stiffened clothes. Mike followed suit, his movements practical. Mara, however, turned to Zack. She didn’t just undress; she performed a slow, deliberate striptease for an audience of one. The cream jacket dropped from her shoulders. The blouse buttons popped open one by one under her deft fingers. The pencil skirt whispered down her thighs. Soon, she stood before him in nothing but her heels and a look of imperious command.
“Sit,” she instructed, pointing to a low wooden bench against the wall.
Zack obeyed, his erection visibly straining against his trousers. Mara knelt on the tile floor between his legs, not minding the damp or the chill. She freed his cock, already thick and dripping, and without preamble took him fully into her mouth.
The hot, wet pressure was instantaneous and overwhelming. Zack gasped, his head thumping back against the cinderblock wall. She worked him with a relentless, practiced rhythm, one hand cupping his balls, the other braced on his thigh. The sounds were obscenely loud in the tiled room: her wet, sucking pulls, his ragged breathing, the distant splash of water as Mike turned on a showerhead.
Mike and Casey were under the spray, a cascade of steaming water sluicing the tension from their skin. He pressed her against the slick wall, his mouth on hers, one hand cradling her jaw, the other sliding between her legs. She was already wet, her body humming from the adrenaline crash. He entered her in one smooth, deep stroke, and she cried out, the sound echoing off the tiles, harmonizing with Zack’s muffled groan.
Casey hooked a leg around his hip, urging him deeper. “Fuck me, Mike,” she panted against his shoulder, her fingernails biting into the muscle of his back. “Hard. I need to feel something real.”
He obliged, setting a fierce, piston-like rhythm that drove her up the wall with every thrust. Water streamed down their faces, mingling as they kissed, salty and desperate. His hand slid between them, his thumb finding her clit and circling it with perfect, rough pressure. The world narrowed to the slap of wet skin, the hiss of the shower, the building fire in her gut.
Nearby, Mara’s pace intensified. She took Zack impossibly deep, her throat working around him, her eyes locked on his. He was babbling, a stream of broken praise and curses. “God, Mara, I’m gonna—fuck, yes, right there, I’m gonna come—”
His back arched off the bench as his climax ripped through him. He pulsed into her mouth, a guttural shout tearing from his lips. Mara drank him down, her throat working, until he was spent and shuddering.
As Mike’s thrusts became shallower, faster, Casey’s orgasm hit her like a breaking wave, a silent, shuddering convulsion that clenched around him, pulling his own release from him in hot, spurting jets. They clung to each other under the spray, breathing in ragged unison.
The shower shut off with a squeal of pipes. Mike and Casey emerged, dripping and flushed, towels wrapped loosely around their waists. Mara rose gracefully from her knees, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She saw the look in Mike’s eyes—gratitude, shared exhaustion, a raw, post-conflict hunger.
“My turn,” she said, her voice husky. She turned her back to Mike, bending over at the waist, placing her hands on the bench where Zack still sat, dazed. “A thank you seems appropriate.”
Mike didn’t hesitate. He dropped his towel and moved behind her, his cock, still wet from the shower, quickly hardening again. He guided himself into her with a single, firm thrust. Mara groaned, a low, satisfied sound, her head dropping forward.
Casey, smiling a tired, wicked smile, knelt before Mara. “And from me,” she said, before lowering her mouth to Mara’s clit, her tongue flicking out in a slow, expert circle.
Zack, watching from the bench, felt a fresh, impossible surge of heat as he saw Mara, the formidable lawyer who had just decimated city officials, now being taken from both ends, her body arching between her lover and her friend. His own spent cock twitched back to life.
Mara’s composure shattered. “Oh, god, yes, right there—don’t stop, fuck me, fuck me—” Her words dissolved into a high, keening cry as Mike pounded into her and Casey’s tongue danced its devastating pattern. Her climax was violent, a full-body tremor that made her knees buckle.
Mike pulled out of her, breathless. Mara, panting, turned to Zack. Her eyes were dark and wild. She pushed him back onto the bench and straddled him, sinking down onto his renewed erection with a deep, sinuous roll of her hips.
“Watch me come on his cock,” she ordered Zack, her gaze locked on his as she began to ride him, her movements fluid and powerful. “Watch what you do to me.”
He could only grip her thighs, mesmerized, as she worked herself on him, her inner muscles milking him with ruthless efficiency. Her second orgasm built quickly, heightened by the spectators, by the raw power of the afternoon. When it crashed over her, she threw her head back and screamed his name, the sound echoing off the tiles.
The force of her contractions dragged Zack over the edge with her. He came inside her with a choked gasp, his vision blurring.
The heavy silence that followed was broken only by their panting breaths and the drip of water from a leaky showerhead. Then, from the next room, a thin, familiar wail pierced the haze.
Casey, still on her knees, lifted her head. A serene smile touched her lips. “Mommy duty calls,” she said softly, pushing herself up. She kissed Mike’s shoulder, then Mara’s damp cheek, and padded naked out of the locker room, leaving the three of them in a tangled, sated heap.
Back in the dim, cluttered apartment above the Dark Market pawnshop, Kent stared at a crack in the plaster ceiling. The awkwardness with Lady Eleanor had settled into a strange, watchful silence. Leanne was making tea on a hotplate, her movements jerky.
“This feels familiar,” Kent said to the ceiling, his voice flat. “Not the ghost part. The… hitting a wall part. The ‘we almost had something but it dissolved into nothing’ part.”
Leanne paused, kettle in hand. “What are you talking about?”
“The Harbison story. Two years back. The alderman’s aide who washed up near the yacht club. Everyone said it was an accident. A drunk fall.” Kent sat up, rubbing his face. “I knew it wasn’t. I had a source. Felt like I was close. Then the source vanished. The witness recanted. The evidence just… dried up. Poof. Like it never existed.”
Lady Eleanor, who had been politely floating near a dusty bookshelf, perked up. Her form shimmered with sudden interest. “The Harbison incident? By the docks? Late autumn, the fog was so thick you could barely see your hand?”
Kent and Leanne both went still. They turned to look at her slowly.
“Yeah,” Kent said, his voice careful. “That’s the one.”
“Oh, I remember that night!” Lady Eleanor clasped her translucent hands together, a picture of delighted recollection. “Such a dreadful business. He wasn’t drunk, you know. He was pushed. I saw the whole thing from the rigging of the Persephone. Such a lovely schooner, though the captain had the most peculiar idea about storing onions…”
Kent’s blood ran cold, then hot. He shared a look with Leanne. Her intense blue eyes were wide, the reporter’s instinct blazing back to life, pushing past the residual embarrassment and arousal.
“You… saw it?” Leanne breathed.
“Of course! It’s terribly boring being dead most of the time. One must find diversions. The docks are simply full of them. Murders, smuggling, illicit trysts… I’ve seen dozens.” She sighed happily. “Most people never think to ask a ghost. We’re just part of the scenery.”
Kent stood up, his mind racing. A nosy ghost. A Victorian-era ghost with nothing but time and a front-row seat to over a century of Chicago’s secret history. Not just the Harbison case. Everything. The real stories. The ones that vanished, or were buried, or were too weird for the Tribune.
“Lady Eleanor,” Leanne said, putting the kettle down, her voice low and earnest. “What if we… did ask?”
“If you had details,” Kent added, trying to keep the desperate hope out of his tone. “Real ones. Names, places, how it happened… we could write it up. We could make it look like we found new evidence, did new legwork. No one would ever have to know we got it from… you.”
The ghost’s expression was one of pure, unadulterated joy. Her glow brightened, casting shifting pearlescent shadows on the wall. “You wish for me to be your informant? My dears, I should be delighted! It has been an age since I had a proper gossip.” She drifted closer, her eyes twinkling. “Shall we start with the alderman’s aide? His lover was the one who pushed him, you see. They’d been embezzling from the campaign funds, and the aide got cold feet. His lover was a member of a rather theatrical secret society… wore the most ridiculous robes. Now, where shall I begin?”
Kent grabbed his notebook. Leanne pulled up a chair. In the world below, the strange commerce of the Market continued, oblivious. Up in the dusty room, two reporters leaned in, their earlier tension forgotten, as a ghost from another century began to whisper the truths that could save their careers, and expose a hidden world.