Chapter 4: Remembered!
The oak door to Mara Henderson’s office was a solid, imposing thing, but it swung open silently under Fatima’s touch before Zack could even fully rise from his chair. Hank filled the doorway behind her, his broad shoulders nearly touching the frame.
Mara looked up from a sprawling contract, her sharp eyes flicking from Fatima’s determined face to Hank’s uneasy one. “This is a surprise,” she said, her voice cool. She didn’t offer a greeting. Zack, frozen halfway out of his seat, slowly sank back down, his fingers nervously tapping a stack of files.
“We need your help, Mara,” Fatima said, dispensing with pleasantries. She stood before the massive desk, a modern artifact of polished steel and reclaimed wood that seemed designed to intimidate. “It’s Jan. She’s in trouble. Real trouble. She’s been arrested and she needs your legal mind.”
Mara leaned back in her leather chair, steepling her fingers. “Where is she? What’s the charge?”
“We don’t know the location exactly. Some kind of… special detention. The charge is using ‘sex magic’ to influence people,” Fatima said, the words sounding absurd in the sterile office air.
Mara didn’t blink. “Of course it is. Tell me everything you know. We’ll get her out.” There was no hesitation, just a swift, professional commitment. The loyalty was instant and absolute.
“There’s one more thing,” Fatima said, pulling a small tupperware container from her bag. She placed it on the desk. “I need you to eat one of these. A cookie. Chocolate chip. Jan’s mother baked them.”
Mara’s perfectly sculpted eyebrow arched. She opened the container and looked at the perfectly normal-looking cookies inside. “Why?”
“It’s important.”
“Am I going to like what happens?” Mara asked, picking one up and turning it over in her fingers.
Fatima’s expression was unreadable. “You never do.”
That gave Mara pause. A faint line appeared between her brows. With a slight, dismissive shrug, she broke the cookie in half and ate it.
The first crumb was buttery, sweet. Then the world dropped out from under her.
It wasn’t a thought. It was a physical onslaught. A cascade of sensations detonating behind her eyes, in her nerve endings, deep in the pit of her stomach.
The dorm room, sophomore year. Jan’s mouth, hot and insistent, between her legs. The taste of sweat and cheap vodka on Jan’s tongue as they kissed, frantic hands pulling at clothes. Jan’s fingers, slick and knowing, working inside her, curling in a way that made her back arch off the thin mattress, a guttural cry ripped from her throat. “Let go, Mara,” Jan whispered, her breath a ghost against Mara’s ear, and the orgasm wasn’t a wave but a seizure, blinding and total.
A party, years later. Jan pressing her against a wall in a dark hallway, one hand hiking up her skirt, the other covering her mouth to stifle her moans. The rough friction of Jan’s thigh against her cunt as she rode it, Jan’s voice a low, filthy chant in her ear. “Come on, Counselor, come for me. I know you want to. Your pussy is so fucking wet for me.” And she was, she was dripping, her climax a sharp, shuddering surrender that left her legs weak.
Her own apartment, just last year. Jan on her knees, pulling Mara’s hips forward, taking her deep into that wicked mouth. The obscene, wet sounds, the feeling of Jan’s throat muscles working, the sight of her fiery red hair tangled in Mara’s fists. Jan looking up, her eyes glazed with a power that wasn’t entirely her own, and murmuring, “You taste so good when you come,” before driving her tongue back in and making Mara scream.
Memory after memory, a torrent of raw, unfiltered sex, each one a testament to a hunger she had conveniently filed away as ‘experimental phases’ and ‘drunken hookups.’ The pleasure was real, visceral, and laced with a magic that hummed under her skin like a live wire.
She gripped the edge of her desk, her knuckles white. The polished wood felt dangerously solid in a room that was now spinning. She looked at Zack, whose face was a mask of terrified confusion, then back at Hank and Fatima.
“Was it… was any of it real?” Her voice was raw, stripped of its professional polish. “Or was it all just some kind of… compulsion?”
Hank shifted his weight, uncomfortable. “I mean, from what Jan’s told me? It’s compulsion maybe seventy-five percent of the time. She kinda… turns up the volume on what’s already there.”
“It doesn’t make you do anything you don’t truly want to do, deep down,” Fatima interjected, her tone firm. “It just removes the… inhibitions. The noise. It lets you act on what you really desire.”
Mara absorbed this, the truth of it settling in her bones alongside the ghost of Jan’s touch. She felt exposed, her carefully constructed history rewritten in an instant. “Will I… forget all this again? Later?”
“Yes,” Fatima said simply. “That’s why I have more cookies. You’ll need one whenever we need to talk about this. The memory doesn’t stick.”
Mara nodded slowly, the motion feeling mechanical. She took a deep, steadying breath, pulling the mantle of her professionalism back around her like a shield. She straightened her spine and turned her gaze to Zack, who flinched as if struck.
“Zack,” she said, her voice once again the cool, commanding instrument he knew. “Clear my schedule for the next forty-eight hours. Pull every case file you can find related to unusual arrests, paranormal activity, or anything that looks like it was written by a lunatic. We’re doing a pro bono job for my friend Jan.”
Zack just stared, his mouth slightly agape.
“Now,” Mara added, and the single word had him scrambling for his laptop, the fear of her outweighing the sheer insanity of the request.
Zack’s fingers flew across the keyboard, a frantic staccato against the sudden, heavy silence in the room. Mara’s gaze remained locked on the middle distance, her mind a storm of recontextualized memories. Hank cleared his throat, the sound uncomfortably loud. “So, uh, what’s the plan?”
“The plan is to find the legal fiction they’ve buried her under,” Mara said, her voice low and focused. She finally looked at Fatima. “I need everything. Every weird story Jan ever told you, every name, every place. We’re not finding her in a standard database.”
Meanwhile, out in the suburbs, Shiv O’Connor marched up a neatly paved walkway towards a modest ranch house, her small delegation trailing in her wake. Brigid, Johnny, Will, Sarah, and the massive, plodding form of Godfrey followed her determined stride. She didn’t hesitate at the door, rapping her knuckles against the wood with a force that was less a request and more a declaration.
The door swung open to reveal Aaron Sweeney, his expression one of mild surprise. Shiv walked right past him into the living room. “You’re Aaron. I’m Shiv O’Connor. My daughter Jan’s been arrested or kidnapped or both, and we might need a magical arbiter to ensure everything is fair.”
Brigid stepped inside, offering Aaron an apologetic wince. “Sorry for my Mam’s general personality, she doesn’t believe in lead-ins.” Shiv shot a sharp look at her daughter that made Will, Sarah, and Johnny instinctively retreat a step. Brigid, however, didn’t flinch, holding her ground with a quiet steadiness that seemed to earn a flicker of respect from her mother.
Aaron blinked, processing the sudden invasion. “Right. The Fair Bargain. Of course, I’ll be happy to help.” From the kitchen doorway, Annie Schmidt nodded, already reaching for a large woven purse on the counter. “And I’m coming too,” she chimed in, scooping up a tiny calico kitten from a sunbeam and gently depositing the purring Sophie into her bag. “You’ll need a Verdant Pasture perspective if they’ve got her somewhere unnatural.”