Chapter 5: The Source Revealed
The address for Jan O’Connor was disappointingly ordinary. A third-floor walk-up in a brick building that had seen better decades, sandwiched between a taqueria and a comic book shop. The smell of frying meat and old paper filled the stairwell. Leanne’s knock was firm, decisive. Kent stood slightly behind her, his body coiled tight.
No answer.
She knocked again, harder. “Ms. O’Connor? We’re from the Chicago World News. We’d like to talk to you about your friends, Mike and Casey Williamson. And about a shop called Ye Olde Unmentionables.”
Silence. Then, the faint sound of movement. A lock clicked.
The door swung open.
Jan lounges naked on her couch when the reporters barge in. She didn’t look startled. She looked… expectant. One arm was draped over the back of the sofa, the other resting on her bare stomach. A golden retriever puppy sprawled asleep on a rug nearby, not even lifting its head. Sunlight from a streaky window glinted off the smattering of freckles across her chest and shoulders. Her short, fiery hair was mussed, her expression one of mild, amused curiosity.
Leanne’s prepared speech died in her throat. Her eyes, against her will, took inventory: the full, pale breasts with dusky pink nipples, the flat plane of her stomach, the soft, copper-colored curls between her thighs. It was a casual, breathtaking nudity.
With a smirk, she spread her legs, letting the Power of Exposure wash over Kent and Leanne.
It wasn’t a beam of light. It was a pressure change. The air in the shabby apartment thickened, became syrupy and warm. It poured into Leanne’s lungs and went straight to her blood, a tingling, effervescent heat that bypassed thought entirely. Her gaze, locked on the triangle of Jan’s sex, couldn’t look away. It was the most fascinating, terrifying, beautiful thing she had ever seen. Awe, pure and staggering, folded her knees. She heard Kent make a choked sound beside her.
Her cunt throbbed, a sudden, soaking ache that made her jeans feel impossibly tight. It was a hundred times more potent than the lingering shame from the alley, or the voyeuristic pulse in the car. This was direct, divine, and filthy. Her mind screamed that this was wrong, a violation, but her body sang a chorus of yes, yes, yes. She wanted to kneel. She wanted to bury her face between those thighs and drink. Saliva pooled in her mouth.
“See?” Jan’s voice was a lazy, smoke-ring of sound. “This is why we don’t do interviews.”
Kent had stumbled back against the doorframe, his face a mask of tortured rapture. His cock was a hard, obvious line in his chinos, straining against the fabric. He was panting.
“You… you’re doing this,” Leanne managed to gasp, the words thick. She was wet enough to feel it seep into her underwear.
“Yeah, sweetheart. I am.” Jan didn’t move from her indolent pose. “It’s a ‘Hello’ and a ‘Fuck Off’ all rolled into one. Saves time.” Her eyes, a bright, knowing green, flicked between them. “You two really need to let this be. We don’t tell people for their own safety. You scared the shit out of Vivian, and there are far worse things out there than Cordelia.”
“Vivian…” Kent choked out. “The redhead… the shop…”
“A kid. A scared kid who just got her mom back and doesn’t need two nosey assholes with binoculars and a god complex fucking it up.” Jan’s tone lost none of its playful ease, but a flinty edge appeared beneath it. “You think a succubus feeding is weird? That’s a Tuesday. You stumbled into the shallow end of the pool and now you’re screaming about monsters. If I let you keep digging, you’ll hit the deep end. And the things that live down there… they don’t have a Power of Exposure. They have a Power of Unmaking. They don’t make you horny. They make you into soup.”
Leanne forced her eyes up, away from Jan’s crotch, meeting that green gaze. The awe was still there, a hum in her bones, but a sliver of her anger—the anger that had carried her from a third-rate news desk to this naked witch’s apartment—poked through. “We have pictures. From Casey’s studio. We know she knows.”
Jan sighed, a theatrical sound. She finally moved, swinging her legs off the couch and standing up. She didn’t cover herself. She stretched, arms high, her breasts lifting, and then padded barefoot to a cluttered kitchenette. The puppy, Godfrey, opened one eye, sighed like a weary old man, and went back to sleep.
“Casey documents weird shit. It’s her therapy. You’re just the latest weird shit.” Jan filled a kettle at the sink. “You think you’re the first normies to peek behind the curtain? The Dock Incident? The Lodge? All those people remembered. We managed. We always manage. You’re not special. You’re just persistent.”
“We want the truth,” Leanne said, her voice stronger now, fighting the magnetic pull of Jan’s naked body. The desire was still a physical pain, a hollow need in her gut, but she clung to the anger.
“The truth will melt your brain and use the goo to lube its dick,” Jan said bluntly, setting the kettle on a stove burner. She turned, leaning against the counter, completely at ease. “The truth is, the rules changed when the Veil fell. We’re trying to keep the peace. To keep the hungry things from noticing that the fence is down. Your little story? It’s a dinner bell.”
Kent had slid down the doorframe to sit on the floor, his head in his hands. “It’s real,” he muttered, not to them, to himself. “All of it. It’s all real.”
“Congratulations,” Jan said, without congratulations. “You win the cosmic shit lottery. Your prize is knowing enough to be terrified, and not knowing enough to protect yourself.” The kettle began to whistle. She ignored it. “Now, I need to head out and get some decorations for my friend’s bridal shower.”
The absurdity of the statement, delivered while she stood utterly naked, discussing cosmic horrors, was almost enough to break Leanne’s tenuous control. “What?”
“Rebecca. Sweetest woman you’ll ever meet. Engaged. Knocked up. We’re throwing her a party. It’s important.” Jan said it with absolute sincerity. “You should go home. Have a drink. Have a dozen drinks. Fuck each other senseless.” Her eyes glinted. “Actually, let me help with that last part. Consider it a parting gift. A better memory to cover the bad ones.”
She didn’t gesture. She didn’t chant. She just looked at them, and the Power that radiated from her shifted, changed key.
The awe morphed into something darker, needier, utterly consuming. The image of Jan’s body burned behind Leanne’s eyelids, but it was Kent’s face she saw now—his blue eyes wide, his lips parted. The compulsion that locked onto her wasn’t about worship. It was about satiation. Right now. With him.
A raw, animal sound tore from Kent’s throat. He was on his feet, his earlier torment replaced by a single-minded hunger. He didn’t look at Jan. He looked at Leanne.
They crashed together in the middle of Jan’s messy living room, a tangle of clutching hands and frantic mouths. There was no prelude, no tenderness. It was a collision. Kent’s hands fumbled with Leanne’s jeans, yanking them and her underwear down her hips in one rough pull. She scrabbled at his belt, her fingers clumsy, finally freeing his aching cock. It sprang out, thick and flushed. She didn’t stroke it. She guided it, and he drove into her in one brutal, filling stroke.
“Fuck!” Leanne cried out, her back arching. She was impossibly wet, her body opened and ready, but the force of it stole her breath. He was bigger than she remembered from the alley, harder, more urgent.
Kent braced one hand against a bookshelf, sending a cascade of paperbacks tumbling. The other hand gripped Leanne’s hip hard enough to bruise. He fucked her with a frantic, pounding rhythm, his hips slamming against hers. Each thrust jolted through her, a deep, percussive beating that echoed the frantic hammer of her heart. The coil of pleasure-pain built instantly, a wildfire in her core.
“Oh god, oh god, right there,” she babbled, her own hands clawing at his back, pulling his shirt. She needed him closer, deeper. She hooked a leg around his waist, taking him at a new angle, and he grunted, his pace becoming ragged, desperate.
They weren’t making love. They were fucking, pure and simple, a raw, sweaty, grunting animal coupling driven into them by the naked woman watching from the kitchen. Leanne’s breasts bounced with each drive. The sound of their bodies meeting was obscenely loud—a wet, slapping cadence of pure need. She could feel his balls slapping against her, feel the hot, hard length of him pistoning in and out of her slick, clutching cunt.
“You feel that?” Kent growled into her ear, his breath hot and ragged. “You feel how fucking wet you are? How much you need it?”
She could only moan in response, her head thrashing side to side. The climax was rushing at her, a tsunami wave with no warning. It gathered in her gut, blinding and total. She came with a shattered scream, her inner muscles convulsing around his driving cock in frantic, fluttering pulses. The pleasure was so intense it bordered on agony, wiping her mind clean of everything—of fear, of pictures, of magic, of everything but the hard man hammering her into oblivion.
Her orgasm triggered his. With a final, deep plunge, Kent buried himself to the hilt and roared. Leanne felt the hot, liquid pulse of his release filling her, jet after jet, and the sensation dragged a second, weaker orgasm from her, a quivering aftershock that left her limbs boneless.
They collapsed in a heap on the rug, beside the sleeping puppy, who didn’t stir. Their clothes were half-off, their skin slick with sweat. The frantic energy drained away, leaving behind a hollow, trembling exhaustion and the sharp scent of sex.
Jan stood over them, now wearing a flowing, multi-colored skirt and a loose tank top. She had a woven bag over her shoulder. She looked down at them with something that might have been pity, or just profound boredom.
“See? That wasn’t so hard.” She tossed a packet of wet wipes onto Kent’s chest. “Clean up. The door will lock behind you.”
She whistled, and the puppy, Godfrey, sprang up, tail wagging. Jan clipped a ‘Service Animal’ vest onto him. She walked to the door, opened it, and paused.
“Go back to your little paper,” she said, not looking at them. “Write a story about alien raccoons or a haunted fondue pot. Be boring. Be safe. This is the only warning you get. The next thing that finds you won’t bother talking.”
She left, closing the door softly behind her.
For a long time, the only sounds were their ragged breathing. Slowly, Leanne pushed herself up on trembling arms. She looked at Kent. His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. He looked gutted.
The physical evidence was between her legs, sticky and leaking. The memory of the pleasure was a hot, shameful brand. But beneath the magical afterglow, a colder, harder knot was forming.
“She didn’t deny it,” Leanne whispered, her voice raw. “She confirmed everything.”
Kent turned his head to look at her. The jaded suspicion was gone, replaced by a bleak, absolute certainty. “She also said she was going to a bridal shower.”
A hysterical laugh bubbled in Leanne’s throat. She swallowed it. She reached for the wet wipes, her movements mechanical. “We know her name. We know her friends’ names. Rebecca. Bridal shower.” She cleaned herself, the cold wipe a shock against her sensitized flesh. “She’s not hiding. She’s just… living. In the middle of it all.”
Kent sat up, wincing. He took a wipe, his face a mask of disgust—at himself, at the situation, at everything. “She said we’d ring a dinner bell.”
Leanne stood up, pulling her jeans on over her tender body. The ache was deep, a reminder of the violation. And the power. “Maybe,” she said, looking at the door Jan had exited through. “Or maybe we’ve already been served.”
Leanne’s words hung in the cloying, sex-scented air. Kent just stared at the ceiling, his chest rising and falling too fast. The silence stretched, punctuated by the distant wail of a city siren. It felt like a verdict.
Out on the street, the autumn air was a crisp slap. Jan inhaled deeply, the mundane smells of exhaust and fried food washing over her. She spotted them halfway down the block, standing by a sleek SUV. Mara leaned against the driver’s side door, arms crossed, wearing a sharp pantsuit that meant she’d come from court. Fatima was examining a spindly potted plant from a sidewalk vendor with intense suspicion. Stacy was doing gentle calf raises on the curb, her athletic wear bright against the gray concrete. Godfrey wagged his tail, pulling toward them.
“Sorry I’m late,” Jan called, a bright smile on her face. “Had some drop-in guests.”
Mara’s sharp eyes scanned her, missing nothing. “You’re flushed. Who were they?”
“Those reporters,” Jan said, shrugging as she reached the group. “The ones from the coffee shop who spooked Vivian and were hassling Mike and Casey. They showed up at my place.”
She relayed what just happened, her tone casual, almost boastful. She described the Power of Exposure, their stunned awe, the compelled, brutal fuck she’d orchestrated on her rug. “Sent them off with a better story, I’d say,” she finished, grinning.
The other three looked at her in a range of feelings running from disappointed to appalled.
Mara’s face was a professionally blank mask, but her eyes were cold. “You used a full Exposure on civilians. And then you compelled them to have sex? Jan, that’s not a warning. That’s an assault. That’s evidence.”
Fatima put the plant down with deliberate care. Her voice was low, venomous. “You are making things worse. You think you scared them? You gave them a direct, personal experience with magic. You confirmed every insane theory in their heads. You painted a target on your own back and handed them the brush.”
“What was I supposed to do?” Jan’s grin faltered. “Offer them tea? They broke into Casey’s studio! They were watching Mike and Casey fuck through the window like perverts!”
“You call their editor,” Mara stated flatly. “You let me draft a cease-and-desist citing stalking and harassment laws that actually exist in a courtroom. You use the subtle, forget-this-ever-happened charms Fatima says the Order developed for exactly this post-Veil problem. You do not show them your magic pussy and make them fuck.”
Stacy shook her head, stopping her exercises. “Jan. Come on. That’s like using a flamethrower to kill a spider in a library. You might get the bug, but now everything’s on fire.”
Even Godfrey looked disappointed. He sat, gave a soft whuff, and looked away from Jan, focusing on a discarded gum wrapper.
Jan threw her hands up. “They needed a clear message! They needed to understand the stakes!”
“They understand now that you’re a powerful weirdo who can control minds and loves dramatic nudity,” Fatima shot back. “Congratulations. You are now the monster in their story. Mara is wondering how you ever kept magic a secret without the Veil. I am wondering the same thing. It is a miracle you are not on a government list.”
“I kept it secret because people want to forget!” Jan argued, her voice rising. “They rationalize! They make excuses! The Veil just helped that along!”
“These two aren’t rationalizing,” Stacy said quietly. “They’re digging. And you just handed them a golden shovel.”
The group stood in tense silence on the bustling sidewalk. Mara pinched the bridge of her nose. “Get in the car. We have streamers and plastic champagne flutes to buy for a pregnant kindergarten teacher. We will discuss your breathtaking lack of operational security later.”
Defeated, Jan slumped into the back seat with Godfrey. Her attempts to defend herself met only with stern, silent disapproval from her friends. The normalcy of the shopping trip ahead felt suddenly, grotesquely absurd.
Back in Jan’s apartment, the smell was still there. Leanne finally stood, her legs unsteady. She walked to the sink, ran cold water, and splashed her face. The shock of it helped. Kent remained on the floor, a man piecing himself back together from shattered parts.
“We should go,” he said, his voice hollow.
“In a minute,” Leanne replied. She was looking around the apartment now, not with awe, but with a reporter’s cold scrutiny. The cluttered shelves, the odd trinkets, the piles of colorful fabric. It wasn’t the lair of a monster. It was the home of a chaotic, messy woman.
Then the air in the center of the room wrinkled.
It was like a heat haze, a sudden contortion of light and space. A young man seemed to simply step out of nowhere. He was tall, with the same fiery red hair as Jan, but longer and tied in a sloppy knot. He wore rumpled jeans and a faded band t-shirt. He blinked, looking around the apartment, then at the two disheveled strangers.
His blue eyes focused on them, and he nodded, a flicker of recognition passing over his face. “Hey. You’re early. She didn’t say you’d be here ‘til Thursday.”
Leanne and Kent froze. They didn’t recognize him.
He saw their confusion and his own expression shifted to mild surprise. “Huh. Okay. Wrong… when.” He scratched his cheek. “I’m Johnny. Jan’s older brother. The time mage. You’re the reporters, right? Leanne and Kent.”
Kent slowly got to his feet. “Time mage.”
“Yeah. Perpetual Sunrise. It’s a whole thing.” Johnny waved a hand dismissively, as if discussing a tedious book club. He looked around the apartment, frowning. “She’s not here. Figures. She’s probably off causing a different problem somewhere. I’m looking for a… actually, never mind. You two look like you’ve had a day.”
Leanne found her voice, the professional instinct overpowering the lingering haze. “You know us?”
“Kinda. Will. Someday. It’s fuzzy.” He shrugged. “You’re persistent. I’ll give you that. Usually, after an Exposure and a Compelled Coitus, normies tap out. You two must have brains like bricks.”
“Compelled Coitus,” Leanne repeated, the clinical term making her skin crawl.
“Jan’s subtle touch,” Johnny said, a dry, brotherly sarcasm in his tone. He peered at them. “So, what’s your angle this time? The ‘Magic is Real’ exposé? The ‘Chicago Sex Cult’ piece? Mam will hate that one. She still thinks Jan should have been a dentist.”
The questions spilled out of Leanne, fast and desperate. “Your mother knows? Your whole family? What about your sister? Jan mentioned a younger sister.”
“Brigid? Yeah. Kid’s at Northwestern. Pre-med. Archimedes Society. Way smarter than me or Jan. Mam’s Shiv. Siobhan. Tough as old boots. Thinks the Green Moon is ‘indecent’. You’d like her. She doesn’t approve of any of this either.” He spoke easily, openly, as if listing mundane family trivia.
“The Archimedes Society runs the other Orders?” Kent asked, his reporter’s mind latching onto the hierarchy.
“In theory. Mostly they just do math and avoid phone calls.” Johnny wandered over to Jan’s kitchen counter, picked up a strange, smooth river stone, and put it down. “Look, I shouldn’t be… Wait.” He paused, his head tilting. “What’s the date?”
“October 19th,” Leanne said.
“Yeah, but what year?”
She told him.
Johnny O’Connor went very still. The casual ease evaporated. His blue eyes widened, then narrowed, calculating vast, invisible equations. “Oh,” he said softly. “Shit.”
He realizes he told them too much.
“You’re not from our now,” Kent breathed.
“No,” Johnny said, his voice now edged with urgent distance. “I’m from a ‘then’ where you two already know all this. Or you’re supposed to. This is… this is a splice. I shouldn’t be here talking to you. She didn’t do this yet. I haven’t met you yet.” He took a step back, the air around him beginning to shimmer like a mirage. “Forget I was here. This is a bad thread.”
“Wait!” Leanne stepped forward.
But Johnny was already dissolving, his form unraveling into fragments of light and shadow. “Tell Jan to check her perimeter wards. And for God’s sake, leave the Davenport case alone until December.”
He vanished. The air settled. The apartment was silent, save for the hum of the old refrigerator.
Kent pointed out the obvious, his voice hushed. “Johnny knew us. From a future where we already know them.”
Leanne’s heart was pounding, but it wasn’t from fear or magic now. It was the pure, electric thrill of the hunt. The exhaustion, the violation, the sticky ache between her legs—it all coalesced into a single, focused point.
“He knew us,” she echoed. She turned to Kent, her blue eyes blazing with a terrifying conviction. “He recognized us. That means we don’t give up. That means we keep digging.” She hugged her arms around herself, a fierce, triumphant smile touching her lips. “We may be breaking the story at some point. We must be on the correct trail.”
Kent looked from her face to the empty space where a time-traveling wizard had just stood. He felt the profound weight of their ignorance, a vast, dark ocean around their tiny raft of knowledge. He also saw the unhinged light in Leanne’s eyes, the one that saw a Pulitzer in the apocalypse.
“Or,” he said, the word heavy with a dread he could no longer outrun, “it means we’re already part of the story he’s trying to fix.”