Chapter 7: Casual Explanations
The suburban street was a canyon of identical split-levels and manicured lawns, a world away from the gritty repair shop and the gleaming corporate tower. Leanne killed the engine of her sedan outside Mike and Casey’s ranch-style home. The porch was lined with vibrant potted herbs—thyme, rosemary, sage—that seemed to defy the October chill with a stubborn, green vitality.
“You sure about this?” Kent asked, eyeing the house. It looked normal.Peaceful. A ceramic ghost hung from the porch swing, waiting for Halloween.
“Murphy gave us a name for the enemy. Jan’s friends gave us a name for the artifact. These two,” Leanne said, nodding at the house, “were named in the original Dock Incident report. They’re victims. Or witnesses. Maybe they’ll actually talk.”
Before Kent could answer, a sound cut through the quiet afternoon—a sharp, rhythmic slapping, followed by a woman’s throaty, unabashed cry. It came from an open window near the back of the house, partly obscured by a tangled, late-blooming clematis.
They looked at each other. Not again.
But this was different. There was no magic here, no thrum of compulsion in the air. This was just… life. Loud, enthusiastic, domestic life.
They stood on the sidewalk, uncertain. The cries intensified, peppered with a man’s encouraging grunts. “Fuck, Case, just like that… oh god…”
“Shut up and… oh!… don’t stop, Mikey, right there, fuck me right there!”
Leanne took a deliberate breath, marched up the porch steps, and rang the doorbell. The sounds from inside hiccupped, then ceased. A muffled curse, a thump, a giggle.
After a minute, the door swung open. Mike Williamson stood there, bare-chested, a pair of loose sweatpants hanging low on his hips. His shaggy brown hair was mussed, his face flushed, a sheen of sweat on his chest. He blinked at them, his kind face cycling from post-coital confusion to recognition to polite embarrassment.“Uh. Hi. Can I help you?”
Behind him, Casey Kapowski appeared, wrapping a silky blue robe around herself. Her shoulder-length dark hair was wild, her lips swollen, a glorious, sated glow on her face. She peered around Mike’s shoulder, her eyes—sharp and intelligent—landing on Leanne’s press badge.
“Reporters?” Her voice was a mix of amusement and resignation. “Figures. We finally get Rick down for a nap and have twenty minutes to ourselves…” She sighed, but smirked. “You’d better come in before Mrs. Gable across the street calls the HOA about indecent exposure.”
They filed into a warm, cluttered living room. The air smelled of baby formula, coffee, and the faint, musky scent of sex. Art supplies were piled in one corner beside a sleek laptop. A playpen held a sleeping, blanket-wrapped form. The walls themselves seemed to hold a soft, almost inaudible hum, like a transformer on a distant pole.
“Coffee?” Casey asked, already padding toward the kitchen.
“Please,” Kent said, his voice cracking slightly. The normalcy of it all was more disorienting than the magic.
Mike grabbed a t-shirt from the back of a chair and pulled it on. “So, what’s up? You lost?”
“We’re following a story,” Leanne began, choosing her words carefully. “It involves Jan O’Connor. And an organization called the Consortium.”
The reaction was instantaneous. Mike’s goofy grin vanished. Casey stopped mid-pour, the coffee carafe hovering over a mug. The easy, post-sex atmosphere evaporated, replaced by a thick, cold tension.
“Those assholes?” Mike said, his voice low and hard.
Casey set the carafe down with a definitive clink. She turned, leaning against the counter, her robe tightening across her still-full breasts. A dark, furious smile played on her lips. “You’ve met them, then.Let me guess. Clean-cut. Talks about order and science. Makes your skin crawl like you just showered in insecticide.”
“James Murphy,” Kent confirmed.
Casey snorted. “Of course. The fucking ringleader.” She brought the mugs over, handing them out. Her hands were steady, but her eyes burned. “So you’ve seen the monster in the suit. And you’ve probably gotten the fluffy, ‘joy and pleasure’ sermon from Jan. And now you’re here, in the messy middle, wondering what the fuck is actually going on.”
“We know about the Dock Incident,” Leanne said. “The police report listed you both as being present.”
“Present.” Mike laughed, a short, bitter sound. He sank onto the couch next to Casey, who immediately tucked her feet under her, her knee pressing against his thigh. A touch for solidarity. “We weren’t ‘present.’ We were bait.”
He took a deep breath. “It was back in the spring. Casey was three months along with Rick here.” He nodded toward the sleeping baby. “We were just hanging around our old apartment in the city. Then these guys show up. Armored, nondescript. Men and women in these weird, tactical-looking jumpsuits. They had devices—like handheld tasers, but they didn’t shoot electricity. They shot… silence. A buzzing that made your brain feel numb.”
Casey picked up the thread, her voice cool and factual, as if describing a client’s difficult request. “They grabbed me, Mike, and later our friend Rebecca, and Jan’s mom, Shiv. Took us to the docks, started interrogating us, some experimental stuff. Very efficient, and a scary-as-fuck kidnapping.” She took a sip of coffee. “They had us to this warehouse on the docks. Cold, empty, smelled of fish and rust. Murphy was there, in his perfect suit, not a hair out of place. He had this… clinical look on his face. Like we were specimens.”
“What did he want?” Kent asked, leaning forward.
“Jan,” Mike said simply. “He knew about her magic. He wanted to study it. Dissect it. ‘Understand the mechanism,’ he said. We were the leverage. I think he sent her a video of us, sitting in a cell. Told her to come alone, to surrender herself, or they’d start ‘extracting information.’”
A shudder ran through Casey, subtle but there. Mike’s hand found hers, his thumb rubbing circles on her knuckles.
“So Jan came,” Leanne said.
“Oh, she came,” Casey’s smirk returned, fiercer now. “But she didn’t come alone. She brought friends, including Vivian, who was still figuring out the whole succubus thing. It was a fucking magical ambush. By then, Shiv had gotten herself out. Turned out she had magic of her own that none of us, Jan included, knew about."
Mike’s eyes grew distant, reliving it. “One minute, Murphy’s giving his little speech about purging the irrational from the world. The next, the air gets… thick. Sweet. Shiv just glowed. Like she’d swallowed a sunset. And she looked at Murphy, and she smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile.”
“It was the ‘you’re about to have the worst and best day of your life’ smile,” Casey clarified. “And then… it just hit. All of them. Murphy, his jumpsuit goons, everyone. It wasn’t like being influenced. It was like a dam breaking. One second they’re armed, disciplined soldiers of ‘order.’ The next…”
She paused, her gaze turning inward, both horrified and vindicated. “They just… attacked each other. Clothes were torn. Mouths were everywhere. They were grunting, moaning, crawling over each other like animals in a pit. Murphy was in the middle of it, his perfect glasses askew, his suit ripped open, fucking one of his own female agents bent over a crate while another guy was taking him from behind.”
Her description was graphic, blunt, devoid of titillation. It was a weapon. “It was a pile. A sweaty, crying, desperate pile of people who had forgotten their own names. Jan, Viv, and Shiv just stood there, holding the magic.Containing it. Making sure it only affected the Consortium team. We knew they had to be stopped, but also that we had to be careful in case the authorities dug too deep into them and found Jan and the others. We just watched.”
Mike picked up the story, his voice quiet. “Casey called the cops. Told them there was a public orgy down at the docks, gave the address. The magic… it held until the sirens were right outside. The Consortium people just… collapsed. They were so spent they could barely stand. That’s how the cops found them. Naked, covered in each other, dazed. Murphy was so out of it he tried to cite city ordinance to the arresting officer.”
“The charges were dropped because the Consortium has lawyers and influence,” Casey finished, her tone final. “But the humiliation? That stuck. That’s why he hates her. She didn’t just beat him. She turned his own weapon—his cold, sterile ‘order’—into a fucking circus of need. She made him the animal he thinks everyone else is.”
The room was silent except for the soft, humming breath of the house and Rick’s tiny snores from the playpen.
“So the Consortium wants to wipe magic off the map,” Kent summarized. “And they’re not above kidnapping pregnant women to do it.”
“They see it as a disease,” Mike said. “And they’re the cure. That’s what’s scary. They believe they’re the good guys. That makes them ruthless.”
Leanne set her untouched coffee down. “Jan hid something. Something they want. A key.”
Casey and Mike exchanged a look. A long, silent conversation passed between them. Casey gave a tiny nod.
“The Davenport thing,” Mike sighed. “Yeah. She mentioned she’d stashed something ‘where no one would look.’ She was pissed at Murphy, laughing about hiding a crown jewel in a storage locker he’d drive past every day.” He rubbed his face. “But that was months ago. She’s probably moved it by now.”
“Where would she move it?” Leanne pressed.
“Somewhere magical,” Casey shrugged. “The Dark Market, maybe. Or she’d give it to Mara to lock in a legal vault so deep even a Consortium clean-up crew couldn’t find it without a judge’s order.”
“Mara?”
“Her lawyer,” Mike said. “Mara Henderson. Jan's college roommate. Scary smart. Handles all the… weird stuff. She helped get the charges from the Dock Incident dismissed for us, not for them. She’s probably your best bet if you want to understand the legal chessboard.”
Leanne’s mind was racing. A lawyer.A tangible lead. “We've met Mara. Would she talk to us?”
Casey barked a laugh. “Mara?No. Not unless Jan tells her to. And Jan won’t.” She leveled her gaze at Leanne. “You need to understand something. Jan is chaos, but she’s our chaos. She loves her people. Fiercely. What she did at the docks wasn’t just saving us. It was protecting her tribe. You two are not her tribe. You’re a liability. And Murphy has already shown you his teeth.” She leaned forward.“Walk away. Write your story about haunted hayrides or whatever. This is a war you don’t have the armor for.”
Kent stood up, his chair scraping. “We can’t. We’re already in it. Murphy threatened us with ‘scalpels.’ He knows we’re looking. If we stop now, we’re just easier targets.”
Mike looked at him with a sympathy that was almost painful. “Then you’d better find some armor fast. And not the legal kind.”
The interview was over. As Leanne and Kent walked back to the car, the porch light flickered on, though it was still afternoon. The herbs on the porch seemed to lean toward them as they passed, their scent suddenly overpowering—rosemary for remembrance, sage for protection.
Back in the car, Leanne didn’t start the engine. She stared at the now-closed door of the house. “They’re good people,” she said quietly.
“They are,” Kent agreed. “And they’re terrified.”
“Not for themselves. For their kid.” Leanne finally turned the key. “Mara Henderson. We find the lawyer. She’s a thread we can pull without walking into a magical trap or a Consortium black bag.”
“And if she won’t talk?”
Leanne put the car in drive. “Then we make it so she has to. We dig. We find something she needs to respond to.”
As they pulled away, in the warm, humming living room, Casey let her robe fall open. Mike’s eyes, still shadowed by the remembered fear of the docks, darkened with a different, more present need. The adrenaline of the past, of the story they’d just relived, was seeking release.
“Hey,” she whispered, crawling onto his lap on the couch, straddling him. The rough fabric of his sweatpants brushed her inner thighs. “We’re safe. We’re here. He’s not.”
She kissed him, hard, her tongue claiming his mouth. He groaned into her, his hands sliding inside her robe to cup her full breasts, her nipples already pebbled and tight against his palms. The fear melted, burned away by a familiar, hungry heat.
They made love there on the couch, frantic and quiet, mindful of the sleeping baby in the corner. It was an affirmation, a defiance. His sweatpants were pushed down, her robe wide open. He entered her in one smooth, deep stroke, sheathing himself fully in her wet, welcoming warmth. She bit down on his shoulder to muffle her cry, the pain and pleasure mingling.
He moved in her with a driven, possessive rhythm, each thrust a silent vow.Here.Mine. Safe. Her own hips met his, grinding down, taking him deeper, her inner muscles clenching around his length with a possessiveness that matched his own. Their breathing was ragged, their skin slick where their bodies joined and met.
It was over quickly, a fierce, mutual climax that left them shuddering and clinging to each other in the quiet, humming living room. No magic, just them. Just the two of them, and their child, and the world of dangers outside their door.
Later, as dusk painted the room in oranges and purples, Casey rested her head on Mike’s chest, listening to his heartbeat return to normal. “They’re going to get themselves killed,” she murmured.
Mike stroked her hair. “Probably.”
“Should we have told them more?”
He was silent for a long time. “We told them about Mara. That’s a direction. It’s up to them what they do with it.” He kissed the top of her head. “We have our own armor to worry about.”
In the playpen, baby Rick stirred, letting out a soft, hungry whimper. The normal, beautiful chaos of their life reasserted itself. But the memory of cold warehouse air and zip-ties biting into skin lingered, a permanent frost in the corner of the room. They had survived the Consortium more than once. They weren’t sure the reporters would be so lucky.
They weren’t sure the reporters would be so lucky.
Leanne drove in silence for six blocks before pulling over onto a residential street lined with skeletal oak trees. She killed the engine and rubbed her temples. “A lawyer. Not a magical contact. A college roommate.”
“Makes sense,” Kent said, staring out the window. “It’s always personal with these people. It’s not a network. It’s a family. A weird, fucked-up, magical family.” He turned to her. “That’s harder to crack. You can bribe or threaten a contact. You can’t break a bond like that.”
“We have to try,” Leanne said, but her usual fervor was muted, tempered by the image of Mike and Casey clinging to each other on that couch. “We find leverage. Something she cares about more than Jan.”
“Like what? She’s a lawyer. Her reputation is pristine. Her fiancé works for her. She’s insulated.” Kent sighed. “We’re chasing a ghost through a minefield. The Consortium on one side, magical chaos on the other.”
“Then we find a map,” Leanne said, her jaw setting. She started the car again. “We go back to the office. We pull every public record on Mara Henderson, Zack Kreuger, their firm, every case. There’s always a thread.”
The alley behind Dock Seven wasn't on any city map. The brick wall shimmered like a heat mirage, and the sounds from the other side were a distorted symphony of bartering in dead languages and the low grumble of things best not pictured. Jan tightened the leash on Godfrey’s service vest. “Stay close, pup. No sniffing the tentacled things.”
They passed through the veil. The Dark Market bloomed around them, a perpetual twilight bazaar stretching further than the eye could see. Stalls crafted from shadow and old wood sold glowing fungi, bottled memories, and weapons that whispered. The air was thick with smells of alien spices, ozone, and wet fur.
Jan moved with purpose, her compact held low, its mirror showing a pulsing, soft green light leading her deeper. She ignored the hissed offers and curious stares. Her target was a large, brightly lit stall near a murky fountain that flowed with something thicker than water.
Rainbor the orc stood behind a counter piled with colorful, mundane candy—gummy worms, licorice twists, lollipops. He was a mountain of green muscle and gentle eyes, polishing a glass jar of jellybeans with a cloth. “Jan,” he rumbled, his voice like stones tumbling in a barrel. “You have trouble-face.”
“Need a favor, Rainy. Something heavy needs to disappear. Not forever. Just… until the heat dies down.”
The orc placed the jar down carefully. “What kind of heat?”
“Consortium. Maybe worse. It’s the Davenport thing.”
Rainbor’s broad face grew serious. He glanced around. “That is not for my stall. Too many ears here. Even the candy has ears.” He jerked his head toward a rusted metal door behind his stall. “In the back. We talk.”
The back room was a closet smelling of sugar and old paper. Sitting on a crate, sipping tea from a fine china cup, was Lady Eleanor Hawthorne. Her form shimmered with a soft, pearl-like luminescence, her Victorian gown eternally crisp. “Jan, dear!” she chimed, her eyes twinkling. “What a delightful surprise. Are we causing a scandal?”
“Hopefully a quiet one,” Jan said, scratching Godfrey behind the ears. “I need to re-hide an artifact. Somewhere the arithmancers and the tech-fetishists won’t think to look. Somewhere… fun.”
Lady Eleanor clapped her ghostly hands. “Ooh, a game! I adore games. The abandoned screening room in the old cinema on Ashland. The one with the sticky floors and the restless projectionist spirit. He’s a prude. He’d never look in the reels.”
Rainbor shook his head. “Too obvious. They would sweep public buildings. It needs to be in motion. Something that belongs nowhere.”
Jan’s eyes lit up. “Aaron. The Fair Bargain guy. He moves trade goods through the Market all the time. Could he attach a… metaphysical signature to a shipment? Something that just loops between here and the London Market, never landing?”
“A ghost package,” Rainbor mused. “It is possible. But Aaron is cautious. He will want guarantees. And his girlfriend, the plant-girl, she will want to know it is not a weapon.”
“It’s a key to a door,” Jan said, her flippancy gone. “And I’m trying to lose the damn thing. Tell him I’ll owe him. A favor. Any favor.”
A loud, rhythmic thumping suddenly vibrated through the thin wall from the adjacent storage room. A woman’s voice, familiar and strained, gasped, “Oh, fuck, Aaron… yes, right there! Fill me up!”
Then a man’s voice, breathless and earnest: “Annie… you feel so good. So tight.”
Jan, Rainbor, and Lady Eleanor froze. The ghost’s ethereal cheeks blushed a deeper silver. “Oh my. The young Mr. Sweeney and Miss Schmidt. They must be conducting… trade negotiations.”
The sounds from next door were unmistakable—the wet, syncopated slap of skin on skin, the creak of a wooden pallet taking weight. Annie’s cries grew louder, less formed, just raw vowels of pleasure. “Don’t stop! I’m gonna… I’m coming, you bastard!”
Aaron’s response was a guttural groan, the sound of a man shoving himself to the hilt, followed by a series of sharp, driving thrusts and a low, shuddering cry. The thumping slowed, then ceased. Heavy breathing filled the silence.
Jan smirked. “Sounds like he’s in a generous mood. I’ll ask him myself.”
An hour later, a meeting took place. Fatima’s apartment above the garage was a study in organized chaos, a reflection of its occupants: Hank’s video game controllers nestled beside Fatima’s ancient, leather-bound grimoires on the coffee table. The room was crowded with power.
Fatima stood by the brick fireplace, her arms crossed. Vivian hovered near the window, wringing her hands. Around the room sat Aaron, adjusting his shirt, Annie with leaves still caught in her blonde hair, Dr. Julia Nash crossing her spectacular legs, Katie “Boom-Boom” Manelli grinning as she polished a small, rune-carved stone, Johnny O’Connor looking confusedly at a string of Christmas lights he’d pulled from his pocket, Brigid O’Connor sipping tea with academic calm, and Bethany Xander in a crisp charcoal suit, her pink hair clashing violently with her professional demeanor.
“The Veil is down,” Fatima said, her voice cutting through the low murmur. “We no longer have the luxury of their ignorance followed by convenient amnesia. These reporters remember. They write. They connect.”
“They’re just curious,” Vivian offered weakly. “They’re scared. The man, Kent… he has a haunted look. Like he’s seen things fall apart before. We shouldn’t hurt them.”
“Hurt them?” Katie laughed, a short, sharp sound. “I say we give them a show. A real one. Light up their notebooks. Nothing gets a story spiked like ‘reporter’s apartment mysteriously explodes, only their shoes left behind.’”
“That is exactly what we cannot do,” Aaron said, his voice steady, his ink-stained fingers laced together. “Annie and I just… conferred.” Annie blushed. “Violence makes more questions. The Consortium would pounce on an anomaly like that. We use the systems. Misdirection. Bureaucratic quicksand.”
Dr. Nash uncrossed and re-crossed her legs, drawing every eye in the room. “As a therapist, I must advocate for a compassionate approach. Perhaps they simply need an outlet. A guided, therapeutic release of their intrusive curiosities.” Her sultry hazel eyes held a professional, predatory gleam. “I could schedule a session. Nude therapy is remarkably effective for reducing fixations.”
Bethany adjusted her sunglasses, though they were indoors. “Golden Wand analytics suggest a monitored containment strategy. Identify their patterns, their sources. Control the flow of information. We feed them just enough to make them think they’re winning, while boxing them into a narrative corner of their own making.”
Fatima’s eyes found Johnny, who was frowning at the Christmas lights. “Johnny. You already complicated things. You spoke to them. You gave them a deadline.”
Johnny’s head snapped up. His blue eyes, so like Jan’s but infinitely more distant, focused with sudden, alarming clarity. “I haven’t done that yet.”
The room went still.
“What do you mean?” Brigid asked, setting her tea down precisely.
“I mean,” Johnny said, slowly, as if tasting the words, “my next scheduled splice into that timeline branch is Thursday. To deliver that warning. I haven’t left yet.” He looked at the string of lights in his hands, his expression one of dawning, personal horror. “Oh. That was a backtrack. I must have gotten turned around. I told them something I was going to tell them. Which means they now have information that will cause me to go back and give it to them. That’s a messy loop. I hate Mondays.”
Brigid pinched the bridge of her nose. A long sigh escaped her. “I may be the only member of this family,” she said to the room, her voice dry as fallen leaves, “who inherited any of our mother’s common sense.”
The mood at Mike and Casey’s house an hour after the meeting at Fatima's broke up was less about magical strategy and more about communal survival. The living room was packed. Mara Henderson sat rigidly on the edge of the armchair, her fiancé Zack a calm presence beside her. Stacy Steinberg stood like a sentinel, her athletic frame tense. Rebecca and Charley shared the love seat, his hand on her barely-showing bump. Hank lounged on the floor, back against the couch, utterly unfazed. Liam and Bethany had just arrived, Liam smelling of fresh soil, Bethany still in her suit. Yukio and Freddie, Jason and Amy filled the remaining floor space, a youthful, anxious quartet.
“They came to our shop,” Vivian’s voice came through the speakerphone in the center of the coffee table, tinny and nervous. “They’re persistent.”
“They walked in on me and Fati,” Hank said, grinning. “Got a free show. I offered them a beer.”
“Hank!” Casey threw a couch pillow at him. “This is serious.”
“I am being serious! Hospitality is important. Maybe if we’re all just weirdly nice, they’ll get bored and leave.”
“They won’t,” Mara stated. Her voice was ice. “I encountered the woman, Leanne, two days ago with Jan and Stacy. She approached Jan at a coffee shop under a flimsy pretense about Godfrey. She’s a bulldog. She has a scent.”
Mike, sitting cross-legged on the floor with baby Rick asleep in his lap, spoke up. “Casey and I just talked to them. Told them about the Dock thing. They’re scared of Murphy, too. Maybe they’re just… lost. They’ve seen the monster under the bed. They can’t unsee it.”
Stacy shook her head, her dark hair swaying. “And that makes them dangerous. A scared person runs. A scared person with a notepad runs toward the noise. They’ll blunder into something they can’t handle and get everyone exposed. Or killed.”
“So what’s the plan?” Liam asked, his Scottish brogue soft. “Do we all just go into hiding? Stop living our lives?”
“We establish protocols,” Bethany said, all business. “Patterned responses. If approached, you refer them to Mara, as the family’s legal counsel. No comment beyond that. You do not confirm or deny anything about Jan, or magic, or… inter-dimensional keys.” She shot a look at Mike, who shrugged.
Mara nodded. “It’s the only shield we have. The law. They print a story calling me a member of a sex cult, I sue for defamation. They harass any of you, we get restraining orders. We use their world’s rules against them.”
“And if they don’t play by those rules?” Rebecca asked, her gentle voice full of worry. “What if the Consortium finds them first?”
A heavy silence fell. They all remembered the docks. The cold, clinical eyes. The numbness.
“Then,” Stacy said, her hand resting subtly on the bulge at her hip where her 9mm was holstered, “they learn that Jan isn’t the only one who protects this family.”
From the playpen, Rick let out a sleepy coo. The sound was a stark reminder of what was at stake—not just secrets, but cribs and birthdays and first days of school. A whole, fragile, normal world.
Casey looked around the room at her friends—the lawyer, the teacher, the landscaper, the athlete, the kids. The ordinary people caught in an extraordinary war. “We stick to the script,” she said finally. “We be boring. We be normal. We give them nothing to write about.”
It was a good plan. A sensible one.
But as the meeting broke up and people headed out into the Chicago night, they all felt it—the unsettling certainty that sensible plans rarely survived first contact with Jan O’Connor, or with reporters who had seen behind the curtain, or with men in suits who believed magic was a tumor to be cut out.
The story was already writing itself. They were all just waiting to see what the next paragraph would say.