Mrs. Dankworth Writes...

Dean looks out of place in the attic, all shiny and new among the old musty clutter, but where else can bright, loud magick be done? Camilla has placed him in a chair in the center of the room, facing the Soricelle Grimoire. There is no need to tie the boy down, for he’s too dazed to move at this point. 

The first spell they cast was a simple Reversal, so that whatever enchantments or protections he might be under (besides the binding of the property, of course) might simply fall off. But that didn’t work. Then they tried a Mental Clarity Potion along with the Truth of Tongue Draught. But it appeared whoever’d worked their magic on him before Rose was a powerful and secretive caster. Dean didn’t even know he was meant to retrieve information about the Soricelles.

“It could be a love potion…” Camilla taps her chin. “Let’s try a freedom spell to break whatever unauthentic bonds exist.”

“We’ve tried so much,” Rose sighs.

“Are you tired, Rose? Would you like to take a break?” Dean asks, suddenly invested once more.

“No, Dean, I’m fine,” she snaps. 

The only words he’d said, between asking whether the room was spinning for anyone else, had been regarding Rose’s happiness and comfort. Never before had a sexual encounter cast this type of attachment, though she’d mainly kept her experiences to one night stands so as not to complicate friendships at college. 

Esme interjects, also tired from practicing careful magick for hours on end. “Why don’t we let him rest? We can do the Breaking Bond Spell tomorrow, or just stew up an elixir overnight. That might be easier on his body. I mean, he still seems human and looks very much alive.”

“Knock knock,” Iris says, entering the attic. “Your grandmother has absolutely no plan of action. She figures if he means enough to someone, they’ll retrieve him, and she can confront them then. Otherwise, if they send more people to watch us, she’ll have a whole staff for free.” Iris shakes her head, exasperated. 

The girls fill Iris in on their findings, or rather, their non-findings, tacking on the bit about Rose bedding the young man at the last. 

“Always the last to know,” Iris sighs. “Well, I think you’re right in wanting to resume tomorrow. Mortals can only take so much. Girls, can I trust you to return him to the guesthouse unscathed?”

Rose rolls her eyes only when her mother has turned her back.

“I saw that,” Iris sings as she exits the attic. 

Esme offers to take Dean to the guesthouse, though he doesn’t want to leave Rose.

“I have to go to work,” Rose mutters, eager to get away. 

Rose is telling the truth. She has a shift at the restaurant to get to. And Esme is telling the truth, or most of it. She does want to stop practicing magic on the human man. She doesn't, however, want to let him rest. 

Once in the guesthouse Esme begins making him some rejuvenating tea with full moon water. As he sips it he asks her how she thinks Rose’s shift is going. Did she always want to be a waitress? He bets she’s so good at it. He wishes they’d gotten to work together longer at the restaurant. 

“Okay, Romeo, calm down,” Esme mutters. “You know,” she begins. “Rose did mention she’s going to have a hard time focusing today…”

“Why is that?”

Esme bites her lip, well aware she should not be doing this. 

“Well, apparently, a girl stole something from Rose. She needs it back.”

“What is it? What girl?” Dean is perched on the edge of his seat.

She’s placed him at the farmhouse table while she shuffles about the tiny kitchen. This used to be the landscapers cottage but Iris and Camilla turned it into a guesthouse despite the enormity of the main house. They’d kept it in as good a shape as any BnB in New England, had hosted many the wayward soul and lost magickal creature over the years. Now they were keeping a hostage.

“I think she said it’s an amulet?” Esme mutters, her eyebrows cinched in focus. 

“I must return it to Rose!” Dean shouts, standing so abruptly his chair topples over. He places a hand to his temple and shakes his head, righting the chair to return to it.

Esme rolls her eyes before continuing the facade. “Oh… You couldn’t.” She sits the tea before him then lowers herself into the nearest chair.

“See, the girl goes to school with me. And I sensed it in her locker. But everyone is gone for the summer now…”

“I’m sure I could get into the school. Maybe tonight? After dark? If you tell me the locker number I will return Rose’s amulet to her!”

“Well, that’s another thing. She’d be so upset if she knew I put you in harm’s way…” Esme focuses on the mortal, her eyes squinting slightly as she watches a tendril of delicate light twist and sway towards his temple. It had, of course, come from her own.

“Hey!” He realized. “Why don’t we just put it under her bed or something? Make it seem like she just lost it? She wouldn’t have to know either of us were involved. We never have to mention it!”

Esme nods, smiling. “That might work.”

Dean has just as much energy after dark when Esme returns to the guesthouse. He’s wearing jeans and a black hoodie, and a vacant expression. She walks him back by the house to Rose’s jeep, loads him into the passenger side, and listens to his endless swooning over Rose.

Doubt and guilt crawl around inside of her stomach, but they're nothing compared to the feeling of revenge and closure that will come when she finally holds that amulet in her hand once more. Besides, if Rose can fuck the gardener, then ask for help putting his dead body in the lake, Esme can take back a necklace that actually belongs to her. Yes, she tells herself, it’s no comparison. 

The cool sea breeze calms Esme as she drives through the quaint little town of Crescent Hollow. The school parking lot has just one flickering light, but she pulls instead onto a side street, where the houses hang flags to support the football team. When she parks, she gives Dean a few instructions, then sends him off, watching as he flips up his hood like turning the first page of a book, and slips into the darkness. 

Dean crosses the field like a stray cat, heading towards the cafeteria doors. Esme stares hard at those doors, which open for him easily. Esme shuts her eyes. If the door between the cafeteria and the hallways was previously secured, she’s confident it is now ajar. She can almost feel him slipping through the opening… counting the lockers… She can practically hear his footsteps echoing, feel his chin on his own chest in the way she suggested he keep his head down…

The clicking of Aimee’s locker opening for Dean causes Esme’s eyes to flick open. He can grab the amulet now. He can get out. But does the locker still smell like apple blossoms and strawberry chapstick?

A breeze sweeps through the car, brushing Esme’s short brown hair against her cheek. She startles, turning to face the dark slit between two houses, where she could swear she smells something familiar and rank. It is the scent of decay and mildew, like a basement. And something else… spices of some sort? Yes. There is definitely something between those houses… watching her - the tall figure of a man.

Esme places her fingers on the door handle but before she can get out and investigate the person Dean startles her by opening his own door. 

“I got it,” he drops the cool gold object into her palm. 

“Yes!” She holds the amulet to her heart. 

“It’s just a locket?”

“No, it isn’t just a locket.” She smiles to herself and puts it on. “I’ll put it somewhere Rose will find it,” she lies.

“You’re a good cousin,” Dean smiles.

Esme isn’t so sure about that.

Before they leave she examines the place between the houses once more, but the smell is gone, and the darkness emptied.

That night, after Esme deposits Dean in the guesthouse she tucks herself into bed and falls asleep solidly, happy to be reunited with her keepsake. The moon shines bright despite being just a fingernail. It kisses the waves and dances through the windowpanes of The Soricelle House. It tries to wake Esme, blinking through the swaying treetops, flashing wildly on her papered walls. It tries to show her the black and purple ribbons of glittery dust which escape the amulet. But Esme does not stir. The black and purple particles inhabit her room, watching her sleep, slipping under the door to watch the other Soricelle Women. Each leaf they curl around in the sunroom immediately shrivels and falls to the floor. 

It isn’t until the chain of the amulet has begun to tighten around Esme’s neck that her dreams thicken in her head, pooling where they should flow steadily. The chain is cutting into her neck by the time her eyes pop open. She sits straight up, coughing and sputtering, ripping the chain off of her and throwing the amulet to the floor. She can feel the deep, red groove in her skin.

Her first thought is that this is not her amulet; it has been replaced. Her second thought is that this is definitely her amulet, but it carries with it a dark magick she did not cast or invite. 

“Bitch,” she spits, staring at the necklace on the floor which appears so harmless now. “You think you can curse a Soricelle Woman?”

She crawls to the amulet. It sits in her palm as heavy as the answer to a question. She uses her short plain nails to pry the locket open, and as she’s expected, the pictures of her parents are gone. They’ve been replaced with some ground up black and purple powder that falls onto the hardwood. She uses magick to lift every particle into a spare glass bottle on her desk and seals the amulet in another. Then she curls up and tries once more to fall alseep, wondering where that pictures had gone, and why Aimee would hate her so much that she would take that one precious thing away and replace it with black magick. What had she done to the rotten girl besides love her? 

Rose mentions the feeling a storm is coming to Rhonda when she arrives for her double shift that Wednesday afternoon. Rhonda is already busy bossing everyone around, but takes a moment to listen to her employee, who has predicted these things before.

“From where I stand the tourists are already flowing in,” Rhonda tells Rose. “I don’t know if I can close the outdoor dining till we’re sure. But… tell me when you… know more.” Rhonda has been a friend to Rose and the other Soricelle Women for long enough to trust the way they just know when it will rain, or when the phone will ring, or whether a person might turn on you suddenly.

The sky remains clear and blue through Rose’s lunch shift and the beginning of her dinner shift. She takes a moment to herself, stepping outside before the rush. How could her mother think of opening the shop while they harbor a spy in their guesthouse? She can’t take her mind off Dean, who is doing someone else’s bidding, and perhaps only bedded her for that reason.

“You look deep in thought,” Jason says, taking a long drink from his water bottle and hanging his apron over the railing.

“Do I?”

“Is it about the cop that’s here to see you?”

“What?” She turns abruptly, her hair whipping around in the warm wind.

There is Officer Alex Lopez, sitting at one of the outdoor tables, his sunglasses hiding his gaze.

She wrings her apron in her hands as she enters the little gate to the dining area. She nears him, readying herself to pull him away from the restaurant to practice magick more safely.

“Officer Lopez?” she greets him. “How can I help you?”

“There was a break in - Oh, would you sit?”

She sits across from him, her heart aflutter. 

“There was a break in at your old high school last night.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m in college now… Why are you telling me?”

“Because a neighbor spotted a black jeep parked outside her house around that same time… she said a person was in the driver seat and a person was in the passenger seat. The passenger got out of the car and we believe he took something from the school. He wore a black hooded sweatshirt but we have some footage that looks an awful lot like Dean Row.”

“Lots of people look like Dean Row. And lots of people have black jeeps.” Rose stares into her own reflection in The Officer’s glasses, noticing how worried she looks.

“I got to speak to your mother the other day but I didn’t really get to speak to you much… you don’t have anything else to tell me?”

“No. I don’t.”

Officer Lopez smacks his steering wheel when he returns to his car. Why can’t he force himself to return to The Soricelle House? Why can’t he seem to properly interrogate these women? His mind just turns to mush! It doesn’t help that the paperwork is mysteriously being shredded at the office, or crumpled up and tossed into other people’s trash cans. Good thing his superiors have very little resolve to hunt down Row or else his ass would be on the line. He just can’t shake the feeling Iris Soricelle did something to him, besides the obvious… He still can’t think clearly when it comes to these damned women and their house full of secrets. But something inside him just knows Dean is there - he just knows it!

A fat drop of rain falls onto Officer Lopez’s windshield. He looks past it to see Rose staring at him from the dining room. Another drop. And another. The sky opens up and it begins to pour. He can hardly see to exit the parking lot. 

He drives by the B&B on his way home. There is a light on in Room #33, yet he can’t quite remember why he’s been watching Room #33 in the first place. Something to do with that missing Row boy. Something to do with the lady who saw Rose’s jeep outside of the school. Something to do with the Soricelles? 

A dark figure comes to the window and peeks out, moving the curtains aside. There are broad shoulders, and a lanky quality to the shadowy shape. 

Lopez’s foot lifts from the break pedal. He finds himself heading home before he’s even decided to do so.

Esme is unpacking boxes and lining the products up on the shelves of the little storefront when the rain comes. It darkens the shop and the whole street outside, turning dusk to midnight. She watches it for awhile, thinking about the locket on her desk. 

“I knew I smelled rain,” Camilla says, watching the water streak down the glass.

Gwen sits on the front porch of The Soricelle House watching the storm pelt the roses, loosening petals until they fall, beaten, to the dirt which is quickly turning to mud. A car has clambered up the drive. She watches a young woman with cropped black hair step out of the drivers seat, then dive into the back to extract a little girl. Besides the child having bare arms she closely resembles the young woman, who is covered in tattoos. The mother runs towards the porch, noticing Gwen only when she’s climbed the few steps and sought the shelter of the roof.

Gwen smiles at her youngest daughter, who smiles back.

“Welcome home, Honey.”

“Thank you, mom.”

The two women embrace in a hug which seems to dry the daughters instantly.

The little girl shivers. 

“Bath time, I think,” Gwen offers, kissing her granddaughter on the forehead. “You girls go on ahead up. Use my tub. You know it’s the best in the house.” 

“You aren’t coming in, mom?”

“I’m waiting for someone.”

Gwen wraps herself tightly in her afghan and watches the roses and the angsty sky and the sea beyond, and then another car arrives. The rain has slowed a little - just enough so that The Reverend can use a small black umbrella and arrive to the porch steps relatively dry. Gwen would offer to peel the raindrops off him, but she knows he wouldn’t stand for even a sparkle of magick for his personal gain. He shakes off his umbrella and nods to Gwen. She doesn’t attempt to invite him in, nor does he attempt to explain why he cannot accept an invitation. They just sit together in the rocking chairs as they have done so many times before. A steaming cup of tea miraculously waits for him beside the woman, but he doesn’t ask where it came from.

“Always so hospitable,” he smiles, good-naturedly. “It is almost as if you knew I was coming before I’d even decided to start my car.”

“I am just an old woman.”

“And I am just an old man. Gwendolyn, I’m here because there’s something amiss. And I’ve made the mistake of investigating odd occurrences without asking you ladies, before. A waste of time, in my opinion.”

“True enough,” Gwen smiles, knowingly. “What is amiss, Johnathan?”

“I am a man of good and evil, as you well know.”

She did know.

“And there’s something in our town at the moment that is… not good. There is a surveillance of sorts I’ve noticed. Are you girls inviting something here? Enticing something?” 

“I don’t care for that implication,” Gwen says, passively. “It takes light to cast shadows.”

“You know nothing of these shadows?” The Reverend probes.

“I sense them,” she nods. “I sense this surveillance of which you speak. I do not know who watches, but I know of the watching.”

“Will you promise to call upon me if you should need my kind of assistance? Or when you discover the dark force that has entered Crescent Hollow?”

“I promise,” Gwen smiles. “You’ll do the same?”

“I promise.”

The two people smile at each other in a meaningful way, but The Reverend does not finish his tea before he goes. He knows she’ll only try to read the leaves. 

Rose fills Esme in on what Lopez said, then prompts her. “Would you know anything about that?” Her stare bears into her cousin. Of course, she knows Esme did this. After all, she hasn’t forgotten the sigil work she attempted to help her with.

Selene and Sasha have arrived during a chaotic time, but Sasha is simply snacking at the breakfast bar, while the whole family gathers in the kitchen. 

“I needed that amulet back and - ”

“The locket?” Iris realizes, eyeing her niece’s empty neck. “But no one can take that from you. It’s been blessed to protect you.”

“Well, she didn’t exactly take it - ”

“She?”

“You gave your amulet away?” Camilla exclaims. “That’s unheard of! You know you shouldn’t do that, Esme!”

“What were you thinking?”

“You used Dean to get it back?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Esme covers her face and shakes her head. “I didn’t mean for anyone to find out. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.”

Everyone falls silent. The only sound to be heard is Sasha munching loudly on the snacks. She gazes up at her cousins and aunts and grandmother not quite sure what’s happening. 

“I gave it to Aimee and she wouldn’t give it back. And now there’s something wrong with it. I think it’s cursed.”

“Aimee Aldridge?” Rose inquires. “She’s not magickal. So she hired someone to curse your amulet? Why, and who? We’re the only magickal beings in Crescent Hollow, or for miles around.”

“Not anymore,” Gwen says. “Reverend McKinnon came by. He’s felt it too… a watching. A presence. We aren’t alone here anymore, and someone knows a hell of a lot more about us than we know about them.”

Everyone falls silent.

“More tea, Officer?” Iris asks, standing to refill her own cup.

“There isn’t caffeine in this, is there?” Officer Lopez inquires. “It’ll keep me up all night.” Boy, he sure feels foggy. What were they just talking about? Where did his train of thought keep running off to? Oh, right. The younger one, Rose - she’d said something suspicious. But what did she say exactly?

“No, no caffeine,” Iris shakes her head, her soft golden waves swaying elegantly.

He cannot believe this woman is Rose’s mother. How is that possible? She can’t be over thirty…

“Rose,” Lopez begins again, attempting to redirect his thoughts. “Do you have reason to believe Rose and Dean are involved?” Again, his brain is fighting a cloud of smoke. Is the actual room becoming smoky? He can’t tell.

Iris leans across him to pour the boiling water into his cup. Her hair smells like flowers and rain and expensive perfume. He’s never smelled anything so intoxicating. He is mesmerized by the way the waves lay across her shoulders and brush her pale cleavage that is impossible to miss when she leans forward in this way. He lifts his cup to his lips and she places a hand on his shoulder.

“Careful. It’s hot.”

It sure is, he wants to say, unable to remove his eyes from this woman. She smiles a little as if able to hear what he is thinking. He finds his cheeks growing warm.

“I should get back to the precinct,” he states, forcing himself to stand up though his limbs are made of lead. He doesn’t actually think he should return to the precinct. He thinks he should stay and ask her hard questions. But the curve of her breasts and scent of her cause him a familiar sensation - and entirely inappropriate sensation for a professional situation. 

“Oh, won’t you stay just a bit longer? It isn’t often we get male company at the Soricelle House.”

“I suppose I have always wanted to see this house,” he realizes. “I grew up in Crescent Hollow and…”

“And you’ve heard the stories,” she grins, knowingly. 

Did she dim the lights when she got up for tea? It seems darker in here now than when he arrived. 

“Let me give you a tour,” she offers. 

He leaves his tea behind to trace every pattern she draws for him. She leads him from room to room, her hips swaying in her black dress, her bare feet padding gently on the pristine hardwood. He touches the doorframes where her fingers brushed over the fine woodwork a second prior. She caresses the curtains in the front room, where the window overlooks the dark garden and cliffside beyond. He caresses the curtain after her. She taps the old fashioned phone at the center of the house, and he repeats the action. 

“My favorite part about this old house is the sun room. You learn what you really need as you get older, and I will always need a sunroom.”

And why shouldn’t she have a sunroom? This woman should have everything her heart desires.

Iris watches Officer Lopez, his sturdy build a little out of place, in a way. His muscles budge within his uniform. She notices a sheen of sweat forming on his golden skin as she leads him to the center of the sunroom.

The room is lit only by the moonlight pouring in through the glass roof and walls. Gwen has turned this space into a jungle, full of indoor plants and herbs, and created a natural space with a smell so pleasant it can calm even the most hyperactive soul. Aside from some wicker furniture and a few area rugs the space is just plants. Iris pulls the door shut silently behind Alex’s back with a gentle motion of her hand, her other hand tracing his broad shoulders. 

He tightens his jaw, one hand on his belt and the other at his side. She can feel the energy coursing through him. He wants to touch her. Instead, he touches the plants. He distracts himself, attempting to hold onto common sense, running his fingers along the cat palm and monstera and fern. Then he turns to say something, and is struck by her, standing in a beam of moonlight, wearing that black dress, and no shoes, with that hair that appears to be made of real gold cascading down her perfect breasts.

He should make small talk. He should return to work. He is fighting hard against her and she can feel it. But Iris is not young enough to convince herself to shy away from a challenge. She smiles at him in a way that is neither coy nor meek, and he gulps. 

“So you know the legends about the Soricelle women?” Iris asks him, brushing her fingertips over an overflowing pot of wondering jewell. “You know we ruin men? We break them down and remake them…?” 

She is being sarcastic but he can’t help desiring for her to bring rhetoric to reality. 

He can’t take his eyes off her dark red fingernails and toenails, almost black in the dim light. He want to feel those nails travel along his spine. 

She crosses the space between them as he nods. 

“I don’t believe those stories though,” he says, realizing their voices have dropped to whispers in the quiet room, all the noise absorbed by greenery.

“No?” she asks.

Again, she circles around him. He turns his head, trying to keep her in his sightline. Why did he come here? He can’t recall. 

“No,” he lies. “Should I?”

She’s behind him now, leaning in as close to his neck as she dares. “Believe it gets lonely up here, in this big house. Believe loneliness drives people to unimaginable passions.” Her breath is warm and sweet on the back of his neck. 

He turns to face her this time. And he isn’t sure how it happens, but he is kissing her - holding her at the waist and the back of the head, and pressing her into him with his strong hands. She returns the embrace, gently pressing her tongue against his own in a kind of introduction. She blinks heavily, looking up at him from under his eyelids as he releases her from the kiss, still holding her close. She runs a finger along his temple, then jawline, smiling in a way that tells him she's neither surprised nor offended. She laces her fingers into the back of his hair and stares deeply into his dark eyes. She fiddles with the collar of his uniform, then uses it to pull him close. 

“You don’t happen to have a body cam on you… do you?”

He shakes his head. “No ma’am.”

“Oh, shucks.”

The blood flow is undeniable, and at the point of no return, so when she pulls him in for another passionate kiss he does nothing but kiss her back. They tilt and lean into each other, mouths exploring mouths while hands explore bodies. Before he can realize what he’s doing he’s slipping her black dress off her shoulders and kissing the exposed skin on her neck and shoulders, which is silky soft and cool to the touch. She bites his neck and ears with unabashed pressure, then slips her hand down his body to grasp the hardening cock within his uniform.

He takes in a sharp breath, and she grabs him harder. “Officer Lopez,” she smiles. “It seems your uniform is a little tight. Maybe you should take it off.” She stokes him through the fabric with a firm hand, up and down and up again. 

It is one of the most erotic moments of his life so far, watching her thin fingers and dark fingernails begin to unbutton his shirt so slowly and so carefully. She knows what she wants and she knows she will get it. When the shirt is loose she peels it back and touches his tight, chiseled abdomen. She bites her lip, enjoying the view.

He wriggles out of his shirt and lets it fall to the floor of the sunroom. She runs her hands along his muscular arms and wraps them around her body. He kisses her as she backs up against the nearby patio table, made of wicker and glass. Her hands travel along his face and neck as her mouth, so red and full and perfect, gently opens and closes upon his own. He leans her against the table, so her ass is perched just atop. Then he peels her dress off her other shoulder, kissing it, and making his gentle way up her neck to her mouth again. As they kiss he reaches behind her, slowly unzipping the dress he's been dying to see her step out of since they met. It rolls down easily.

She wears a black lace bra that cradles her plump, pale breasts. They nest attractively within the cups, barely touching her ribcage beneath. He pulls the dress down and she lifts herself off the table so he can get it all the way down her bare legs to the floor. Her panties are black too, high waisted with cutouts on her hips, accentuating her sharp hourglass figure. As he drops the dress he works his way back up her body, starting at those perfect, pale feet. He kisses the pale skin on the tops of her feet, then her toes, then her ankles. He runs his hands up her calves to her outer thighs, squeezing the fleshy bits as he kisses her inner thighs. One foot is still touching the ground, but the other leg rests on his shoulder as he travels up her slim form. He gently bites the inside of her thigh and she tilts her head back, her hair cascading over the tabletop. She feels his breath between her legs for only a moment before his tongue presses against the slick black material. He licks and bites at her panties as she moans and laughs with pleasure. Then he pulls the fabric aside, revealing a something that might have been molded by an expert sculptor. She is clean shaven, and pale, and welcoming. He uses only his lips at first to gently kiss her own lips, taking her labia into his mouth and sucking gently until she emits a little gasp of pleasure. 

He extends his tongue to lick her entire vagina in long, hard motions. She surprises him by reaching for his head, placing her hand on the back if it and guiding him. She leads him to her clitoris and holds him there, and he takes her direction, sucking and licking with determination until she is panting from enjoyment. He reaches for her panties, rolling them down off her hipbones and rear, tugging them to the floor. He dives in again, aiming to make her cry out and tremble. He grabs her hips with his strong hands, squeezing as he devours her pussy, which is slick to the touch now. Then he stands, meeting her eyes and undoing his belt as she looks on. She keeps her legs spread, her glorious vagina open and slick. He steps out of his boots and drops his pants and underwear to the floor. He takes his thick cock into his hand and tugs at it while staring into her eyes. She is leaning back on her elbows, but folds herself flat, lying down on the tabletop and reaching her arms up under her hair. She feels the head of his cock as he rubs it on her wet pussy, petting her from ass to clit. Then he slips the enlarged tip into her vagina and inserts and removes it a few times. Then, when he can take it no longer he plunges his shaft deep into the pocket that fits him so well. He lifts her legs so that they are on his shoulders, kissing her calves and ankles, and inner thighs, her immaculate feet high in the air. He thrusts deep, and hard into her body, aiming to be felt in the pits of her stomach.

Iris moans at the sensation as he thrusts, and retracts, and thrusts, and retracts. She slides her legs off his shoulders to cross her ankles and he presses her knees to her own bosom, holding her down with one hand at her crossed ankles and the other on her hips as he shoves himself into her. She gasps, gripping the table, knuckles going white, and gripping his cock with her pussy in such a way he feels as though she’s sucking him in. He removes his hand from her ankles and pulls her towards him so that he is fucking down and into her. Her legs spread wide now. He leans forward, removing her breasts from the lacy bra. They fall to the sides slightly, heavy and round and ripe. He grabs them in his hands and squeezes, then runs his thumbs over her nipples. He thrusts deep inside of her and leans down to take one of her breasts into his mouth, flicking her nipples with his tongue. She caresses his head in her hands and wraps her legs around him, holding him forcefully in place with her thighs. She grinds on him, tilting her pussy so her clit rubs the spot just above his penis, which is buried deep inside her. Then he is standing, untangling himself from her, and turning her over forcefully. He knocks the air out of her when shoving her onto the table again and she laughs.

Iris bends over willingly for the police officer, giving him a perfect view of her muscular, slim back, and round, pale ass. He undoes her bra and she allows it to fall forward. He takes two handfuls of ass before bending forward to bite the fleshy part. He reaches between her legs to touch her clit, tracing firm circles around it and dipping his cock into the silky slit. She gasps and grips the table as he grabs her hips again and dives into her. He only lets go of her hips to get a handful of hair, gripping it and tilting her head back, turning her body into a beautiful arch of pleasure. He lays down on her back and takes a handful of breast, kissing and sucking her neck. Then, still pressing his body on top of hers, one hand in her intoxicating waves of hair, he reaches for her ass, caressing the tight opening with his thumb before pressing into it. 

She gasps, and says “Fuck yes,” so he knows she likes this.

He continues thrusting rhythmically, his thumb in her gripping asshole. He can feel her trembling beneath him, getting close to euphoria. He’s thankful for that, because he’s nearing orgasm too.

He presses her head into the table slightly and she moans, so he presses harder. Iris surprises him by fully submitting, her knuckles white on the edges of the table. When Alex releases her head she arches her back. She is curling her toes and shoving herself onto his lap, grinding into him. She gasps and moans as he grunts. He tries to slow down but she tells him, “Harder. Fuck me harder.” 

And if he knows how to do anything properly it is to take a command. He thrusts into her as she squirms, groaning gutturally. He’s never bent a grown woman over a table and just gone for it, but he hopes she doesn’t realize this. He understands now how mind-blowing it feels to be with an older woman - if she is older. She knows her body, and seemingly, his. His eyes are practically rolling back in his head, but he forces himself to focus. Not yet, he tells himself. He realizes she’s rubbing her own clit, determined to get herself off, which turns him on even more. She curves herself into a foreign shape, exclaiming her pleasure rapidly and with great volume.

“Oh god, oh god,” her pitch raises. “Oh god, fuck yes. Fuck yes, right there. Stay right there.”

He keeps the speed she likes. “Um… I’m…” he tries to tell her, cringing, trying to hold back.

“Stay inside me,” she demands. “Cum inside me. Now.”

He doesn't need to be told twice. How did the roles reverse so quickly? He’s realizing he was never in charge in this scenario…

Iris’ hand moves rapidly up and down, stimulating her slick clitoris with the perfect pressure and speed, the officer’s dick deep inside her body, stimulating her internally. She can feel him sliding in and out of her, jamming himself as far up into her vagina as possible. She begins to see stars, then feels it. A pop. A snap. An explosion of colors and light and warmth and liquid as she bursts like a water-balloon. 

The officer groans and gasps, unable to contain it a moment longer. He fills her up, continuing to thrust as she climaxes. His cum is seeping from her pussy, coating his dick and dripping onto the table, and then he realizes there is liquid coming from her own pussy. It squirts out of her in short bursts, spattering the table, and his own thighs. She is whining and trembling, when she removes her saturated hand from her throbbing vagina. She has stopped rubbing herself, but it is still pouring out of her with each visible beat, dripping onto the floor.

She’s gasping for breath, her knuckles slowly regaining color along the edge of the tabletop. She turns her head to the side and smiles, unbelievably relieved. Officer Lopez gently slides out of her, kissing the back of her neck as he does so. She hands him a moist towel and he doesn’t even wonder where she got it. He just takes it and begins wiping himself off, still breathing heavily. Then he mops up her own euphoria from the floor while she stands up, dabbing at her own self. 

He's in a daze, watching her fold herself into her dress sans undergarments from his position crouched in the floor. He shakes his head, unsure of what just happened. But the way she smiles at him, so peaceful and satisfied… he is proud to have brought her that sensation.

A few moments later she walks him to his cruiser, his legs shaky, placing a kiss on his cheek and bidding him goodnight. He somehow makes his way home and into the shower and into bed. He then falls into a deep sleep. The next morning he will wake with the belief he was enchanted, and these women are dangerous, and wonderful, and he will battle with the desire to return to Iris, begging for an ounce of her attention. But he will not return, because that too is part of the enchantment.

In the morning Iris is glowing, but that goes unnoticed, because another surprise wakes the women. With a call up the stairs and a lots of banging and clattering, they are greeted by Aunt Camilla, back from abroad, her black hair tied up prettily, her skin tan from the Italian and Spanish suns. 

“Ahhh it’s good to be home,” she sighs, removing her oversized sunglasses and leaving her suitcases in the middle of the entry way.

All the women greet her and inquire about her trip.

“Bellissimo. I ate too much, drank too much, and I’m thoroughly puffy with saltwater. Breakfast cocktails, anyone? We must celebrate my return.”

Rose and Esme share a glance about their hurricane of an aunt. 

“What have I missed? Who’s the hottie outside?” She settles herself at the breakfast bar, awaiting a cocktail Iris has begun to make.

Rose stands abruptly when Gwen begins to slip from the room.

“Grandma!” Rose pleads.

“He’s my gardener,” Gwen offers, distractedly.

“Where did he go last night? Is it true he’s been watching us?” Esme inquires. “Rose said they found photos at his apartment?”

“Yes, he has,” Gwen says. “So I let him. Little did he know, when he accepted the job of my gardener, there was a fine print in the clause demanding his constant presence on the property. He lives in the guesthouse now.”

Rose begins to think about that wording. If the contract simply demanded his presence, how come he couldn’t have stayed on the property while beneath the surface of the lake? 

“Is he human?” Esme asks.

“I believe so,” Gwen shrugs.

“Why has he been watching us?” Iris inquires. 

“I’m not sure yet, but I believe that snake was another minion surveilling the family. And there’s been some people too, looking on. From the woods. From the road. Dean will tell us all in due time. I’m not concerned. He can’t leave or communicate with the outside world, so, it’s really no rush.” She smiles, contentedly at her little family. 

A long pause follows Gwen’s exit from the room and conversation, but Iris is not satisfied. “I’ll be right back,” she mutters, trailing behind her mother.

“She’s always been so solitary,” Camilla shakes her head. “I swear sometimes it’s harder to communicate with that woman than to summon a dragon from the netherworlds.” Exaggeration is Camilla’s favorite language. “Anyway. You’re sleeping with him?” Camilla’s eyes bear into Rose’s.

Esme spits out her mimosa, peppering the table with champagne, orange juice, and sputtering coughs. 

Rose, wide eyed, considers denying it, but Camilla has always picked up on these little interpersonal details, and once on a trail it’s impossible to avert her attentions. “How did you know?”

“My sixth sense,” Camilla grins. “You are though. How long?”

“Just once… well… yes, just once. And then…”

Esme and Rose share a meaningful glance in which Rose knows Esme wants her to come clean. Should she tell her aunt what happened? Or should she play the card her grandmother always carries in the folds of her shawls and keep this one to herself?

“He died,” Rose finally admits. 

Esme breathes a sigh of relief.

Camilla’s eyebrows jump up onto her olive toned forehead. “Come again?”

“He died. I fucked him and he stopped breathing.”

“Well… what did you do next?”

“We put him in the lake.” 

“Hm… he doesn’t look water logged to me…”

“Well,” again, Rose seeks solidarity from her cousin’s doe eyes before replying. “He came back somehow.”

“Hm… demon possession? A wayward spirit?”

“We don’t know,” Rose admits.

“We don’t think it’s a demon. And he definitely has his own memories. He just doesn’t remember… you know, being dead.”

“Huh,” Camilla ponders, tapping her sharp chin. “It’s very likely he’s entirely human and simply enchanted by your own powers. Perhaps he came very near the brink of death but the protection you cast upon him in your moments of young passion kept him back from the precipice. Or, perhaps he was already under some thumb of magic. It sounds like he’s been working for someone, watching us, from what mother said, so your own enchantments only strengthened or changed them… Either way, mother kidnapped a spy and is holding him hostage in the guesthouse. That much we know. So don’t feel too nefarious, dear.”

“Okay, but I didn’t enchant him.”

“You said you did the deed? You were intimate? Complete together?”

Rose cringes to hear these words from her aunt, but she nods. 

Camilla laughs her musical laugh. “Then darling, of course you enchanted him. After bedding a witch a human lover is nearly invincible for up to twenty-four hours.”

Esme and Rose did not know this.

“We did give him a Truth Serum yesterday,” Esme tells her aunt. 

“What time?”

“Noonish.”

“Then it’s still active! Let’s go ask him the right questions, shall we?”

Chapter Two

The wind seems to carry word of Rose’s distress through the open window, rustling the attic curtains as if waving to Esme. She runs to the window to look out just in time to see Rose rushing through the garden. Esme races downstairs to meet her cousin. Grandma Gwen has mysteriously disappeared, which isn’t outside of her character. And while rose could use advice from her grandmother just now, but she also realizes she may have just practiced some form of dark and tasteless magic on a mortal boy…

“I went to charge your sigil and… I think I’ve killed him,” Rose gasps, holding onto the railing of the staircase for support. 

“The gardener?” Esme asks, following her cousin back into the garden and the shed beyond. “Did he have a heart condition?” Esme ponders when they reach Dean, leaning over and pressing her fingers to the side of his neck.

She doesn’t need to feel for a pulse to know the boy is dead. His skin is almost glisteningly white and his chest neither rises nor falls in the slightest.

“I don’t know,” Rose shakes her head. “He seemed very healthy…” She runs her fingers through her hair in an aggressive manner. “Fuck! What have I done? What do I do?”

Esme wants to remind Rose she is a year younger and doesn’t know any better at all. Instead, she begins to list their options. “We can’t resurrect him.”

“No, no. Absolutely not.”

Both girls are aware that resurrection spells never bring back who you intend.

“We can’t get a doctor, because as far as we know this was a healthy young man…” Esme continues. 

The Soricelle Women had been through too many scandals to disrupt this time of peace, as selfish as it was to say. If even a hint of gossip spread that one of them was relatively near a person who perished they could lose everything, as their ancestors had done in the past.

“He is definitely dead,” Esme grimaces, nudging his shoulder with her toe, having stood once more.

“He’s not a sack of potatoes…” Rose mutters. “Stop it with the foot, please.”

“What, you think he can smell my foot? I guarantee this dude cannot smell my foot right now.”

Rose rolls her eyes.

“It just smells like sex in here anyway.”

“Well soon it’s gonna smell like a rotting corpse!”

“Calm down. Go outside and take a deep breath. We’ll… we’ll get the wheelbarrow.” Esme begins making this up as she goes. “And we’ll… tie him to some rocks and throw him in the lake. He won’t resurface, and the fish will -”

“Stop - stop. I don’t need to hear what the fish will do.” Rose steps outside to breathe deeply. Her hands are trembling uncontrollably.

Esme stares down at the beautiful gardener. He really is quite the specimen as far as men go… When she’s turned around again Rose is already pushing the wheelbarrow over, her brow glistening, but furrowed. 

Esme and Rose stand on either side of Dean, lifting him with magick and difficulty.

“Shouldn’t this be easier?” Esme struggles.

“I haven’t exactly been practicing at school,” Rose grunts.

His long limbs flop outside the wheelbarrow when they push and pull it alongside the back fence of the garden. The lake, which is visible from the driveway, is a little trickier. The girls have no idea where Gwen has gone, but feel Rose’s mother growing nearer and nearer the house. 

“Do you know anything about him?” Esme asks. “Does he have family to look for him?”

“I know his name, and that he works several jobs, and what he looks like naked,” Rose replies.

It is painstakingly slowly that they move the body across the yard and into the thinned woods around the lake.

Twilight has fallen, painting the sky the dusty hues of a powdered bruise. It’s darker under the cover of the tall trees, too. 

Rose hasn’t seen the lake up close since last summer. The colors of the sky make the water look like a painting, and give the impression of indiscernible depths. 

“I’ll go get some rope,” Rose says, watching Esme scout out nearby rocks.

As Rose returns to the shed she becomes lost in chaotic thoughts. Surely she wasn’t responsible for Dean’s death. Surely he had a heart condition? Or some underlying medical phenomena occurred? If she was responsible, wouldn’t her family have warned her this might happen? I mean, they sent her off to school surrounded by young, eligible men, and didn’t think to tell her this might happen during an entanglement… 

As Rose returns to the lake with a length of rope why none of the other boys she’d been with had such a reaction.

Esme’s mind is elsewhere. She’s been observing the still body of the man and thinking thoughts of her own about what to do next. She hesitates for a long moment before bringing it up to Rose, but finally her words spill out.

“Are you sure you want to leave him in the lake? This is a perfectly intact human. We can’t bring him back, but we could reanimate him! We could practice magick we never get a chance to try without hurting anyone! We could turn him into someone new - not anyone, actually, but something.”

Of course there were tales of magickal families adopting the dead. They made them into marionette people - used them as butlers, and drivers and in olde days, as soldiers to fight their wars. They weren’t really people anymore, but they weren’t really dead. It was one of the less risky ways to use a dead body, but it was also incredibly outdated, and widely thought of as unethical and tactless.

Rose hesitates. Her Grandma might be upset she’d killed her gardener. But would Gwen really want a reanimated human tending the roses? 

“Esme, you know we can’t. We’d have to involve the family and I just don’t want any trouble for anyone. We should just put him in the lake.”

So it is with exhausted extremities the girls tie two large rocks to the gardener’s ankles and drag him into the cool water. Their feet sink into the mud under the weight of the rocks and the corpse, but they don’t stop trudging until they’ve made it as far into the center as they dare go, their shoulders invisible in the depths.

“Blessed Be,” Rose whispers.

“Blessed Be,” Esme echoes.

They release the body and use magick to push him just a little further, red-faced and sweaty. The top of his head looks like a turtle floating on the water.

“Water level’s lower than it’s been in awhile…” Esme mutters as they watch his head bob a few feet away.

“We can fix that,” Rose says.

When they return to shore a rain begins to fall straight down. Anyone looking might see an odd sight - the shower only pouring into the lake and washing the still water off the young women as they stare at that head until it has vanished from sight. Then the precipitation halts abruptly.

“Now let’s just hope the lake doesn’t actually have healing properties Grandma Gwen claims it does,” Esme sighs.

Without another word the girls drip across the grass and go upstairs to their grandmother’s ensuite. They draw a hot bath in their grandmother’s enormous tub. A towel dances behind them, soaking up their footsteps as they travel. The girls undress and slip into the tub together, at opposite ends. They wash each others hair in silence and have a long soak, then hear the front door open and shut downstairs. 

“Rose? Mother’s home!” Iris calls up to her daughter. 

Rose massages her temples for a long moment, then rises from the bath, her features set as if going into battle.

Iris is the type of woman you take orders from. She commands a room with ease and grace. She’s the one who took over the family apothecary and turned it into a full scale, recognizable brand, complete with an aesthetically pleasing Instagram and a fully operational online shop. 

The last time Rose heard from her mother she was in L.A. hiring authentic representation for the brand and looking into opening another location.

Now, Rose dresses and trots down the stairs, surprised to see her grandmother in the breakfast nook chatting with Iris. 

Iris has the same golden hair as her daughter, but her own falls in posh waves past her shoulders, framing a beautiful face of chiseled bone structure and sharp, bright eyes. 

“My darling,” she coos, standing to greet her daughter. “How’s my little college student?” she asks, squeezing Rose around the middle.

“Happy to be home. How was Los Angeles?”

“Hot,” Iris shrugs. “But so many beautiful witches,” she adds, smiling. “But I just couldn’t stay away. I felt I had to immediately jump on a plane and come see you. And darling, I have so many new ideas for your baptism dress. Come, sit. I have pictures.”

Rose can barely keep her head straight. She hasn’t thought of being baptized since arriving to the house, and it was supposed to be her main focus. She offers gentle exclamations as Iris produces images of several dresses she spotted in L.A, but she can’t force herself to care. She just keeps thinking about Dean, bobbing up and down under the high water level of the Soricelle Lake… and his hands on her body… and his mouth on her neck…

“Rose?”

“Hmm? Oh, I’m sorry. I think I’m getting hungry. Should we cook?”

The household feels more complete with Iris in it, and soon all the women are enchanting the oven and dishes, and even the food they will eat for their late dinner. Esme sits at the breakfast bar working on her knife skills, her tongue poked out the side of her mouth as she concentrates on getting the blade to mince garlic. Iris is braising beef, and Gwen is preparing a salad by tossing the ingredients in midair. 

“Get me some things from the garden, Rose,” Gwen commands. “And don’t forget mint for juleps.”

Rose is thankful for the respite. She takes a deep breath in the black stillness of the garden once her arms are full of vegetables and looks up at the starlit sky. She gazes at the tree-line too, that is so pitch black the water of the lake looks like swirling aether beyond. Is it a trick of the light, or does she see one of the trees move? 

“Ouch,” she exclaims, dropping a few vegetables as she returns her attention to the garden.

Something has stabbed her ankle. She casts a swirling glow about herself with a flick of the wrist just in time to see the tail of a snake slinking off into the buttercrunch lettuce.

“Rose?” Iris is rushing to her daughter’s side, the other women in quick pursuit. “What happened? You’re hurt?”

“A snake just… bit me?” Rose mutters, unable to be certain what just happened.

All the women cast colorful swirling lights to dance among the vegetables. Esme squats to pick up a garter snake holding it high by its neck and supporting it’s body with her other hand. She stares at the snake with narrowed eyes. 

“You must have stepped on it,” she says, stroking the top of its head.

“Inside, girls,” Iris says. “And bring the snake.” She peers into the darkness at the tree-line too.

Rose wonders if she can see him. But if anyone can see him, it would be Grandmother Gwen, and she is just gathering up the vegetables Rose has dropped and heading back towards the house in her casual manner.

Once inside again the dinner is paused - steam raising off the beef and hanging still in the air. Iris holds Rose’s ankle in her lap, turning it this way and that. The bruising is spreading rapidly, discolored veins reaching out from the spot the fangs penetrated.

“It feels like it’s on fire,” Rose says through clinched teeth.

She knows this is punishment - karma’s way of slapping her on the wrist. Snakes do not usually bite witches. But her mother is more confused.

Esme holds the garter snake lovingly now, allowing it to play on her wrists and in her lap.

“Hand me that, would you?” Iris asks, taking the snake into her own hands. She looks deeply into its little eyes and shakes her head. “This was not the snake that bit you. That snake is long gone. Would you return our friend to the garden, Esme?”

Esme obliges.

Gwen brings a serum from the medicine cabinet in the attic and they smear it onto Rose’s wound. Then Iris holds one hand over the area and closes her eyes, lifting the venom from Rose’s ankle as if her hand is a magnet and it is nothing but shards of metal.

Rose gasps as the burning worsens, then becomes no more than an icy sting as if from peppermint oil.

Iris holds the venom in her hand, suspended just above her palm in a swirling ball of glittery black smoke. Then she places the ball in a jar, where it returns to liquid. She seals it up tightly and stares at the jar. 

“What is it?” Rose asks, massaging her ankle.

“Oh… nothing.”

But Rose notices Iris take the jar to her own room for safekeeping before dinner.

The next morning the girls are all sleepy from eating and drinking too much the night before. Rose is surprised she didn’t astral project to the lake, but instead, fell into a deep, much needed slumber. Breakfast cocktails are served by Iris who insists they toast once more to being together again. 

Iris didn’t sleep all that well. She returned home when she sensed signs of trouble on the horizon, and now her daughter has been bitten by… what? That was no snake bite. Someone cursed a snake, or shaped a curse to look like the slithering creature. Someone was attempting to cause harm to her daughter. 

Rose drops her cocktail in the middle of the kitchen floor with a crash. Esme is nearest. She peers out the window through which Rose is looking and her jaw drops. Iris hurries to see what the fuss is. Then she spots him.

The gardener is tall and lean with rippled muscular arms. He has tan skin and dark hair and wears a tank top with sweat already forming patterns on his back. Iris laughs. 

“Didn’t get your fill at school, huh?” With a quick motion she recovers the cocktail and smashed glass to its original form, handing it to her daughter again. “You take after me.” She pecks her on the cheek.

Iris’ current theory about the bite is that Rose perhaps brought some dark magick home with her from school - some negative classmate’s inadvertent negativity or a less benevolent witch’s malice. 

“Tell me more about school, Rose. Did you meet any other witches?”

“Sure,” Rose is obviously trying to pull herself out of the daze this gardener put her in. “There’s actually a club for them on campus. But, I mean, none like us.”

“When I went there were a few like us at every school,” Iris ponders. “More in Mother’s day.”

Gwen nods. “Too many for my taste. I prefer to fancy myself as a singular entity. Makes me feel special.”

“I think I’m going to take a… shower,” Rose mutters, strolling past her full plate of breakfast. “I just feel… I need…” She wanders off, muttering.

“Would you look at that,” Gwen says, staring into the nearly empty cup of tea before herself. “A visitor is coming!”

“Male or female?” Iris asks.

“Male, definitely.” Gwen stands from the table and takes her cup to the sink. “Hopefully he’s as nice to look at as my new gardener.”

Esme trots up the stairs after Rose, finding her in the attic. Rose is pacing, her eyes wide.

“I thought you said he was human!” Esme accuses.

“He was human! At least… he seemed very human while we were… doing human things…”

“Rose! You aren’t sure whether he was human?”

“I didn’t know him all that well!” Rose defends herself.

“Okay, okay,” Esme continues, massaging her temples. “So what do we know? We know this person definitely lost consciousness - no - we know this person had no fucking pulse yesterday. He was definitely dead.”

“Very dead.”

“So we put him in the lake, where he stayed under water all night…”

“Well, we don’t know he stayed there all night. We didn’t exactly check on him, did we?”

“Fine. That’s fair. He stayed there at least until we’d returned to the house. Then… what? He untied the boulders from his feet and… rose again?”

“He could be something else now. What if a demon got to his body in time? Or a spirit in the lake inhabited him?”

“How would they know to start gardening?” Esme poses. “And are we even sure there are demons allowed on this property? I thought there were enchantments on the Soricelle land.”

“The only way to know if he’s really himself is to… go talk to him, I guess.” Rose is unenthused at the thought. “We should mix up some potions though before we go out there. A Truth Serum, at least.”

“It won’t work if he’s a demon.”

“True, but he’ll also taste it if he’s a demon. He won’t if he’s human. What about spirits?” Esme bites her nails.

“I can never remember if spirits can’t taste it and it doesn't work, or if they can taste it and it does work. It’s probably in one of these books.” 

“Well the longer we stand around talking about him the longer he’s just chilling in our yard. We need to go figure this out.”

Esme and Rose stay in step with each other when traveling down the stairs and out the front door. Rose carries the dosed lemonade, which drips condensation down her skin.

There he is in all his glory, glistening in the late morning sun. Dean turns slowly, wiping his brow with a dirty gardening glove, then locks eyes with Rose. He smiles in a genuine manner, and nears her.

“Good morning,” he says to Rose. 

“Morning,” Rose croaks.

Esme glances between them then says, “Hi.”

Neither acknowledge her.

Rose realizes she hasn’t even the slightest idea what questions she should ask. “Um…”

“How are you today?” Dean asks her.

Esme still glances between the two, wondering if Dean can even see her.

“Fine,” Rose says. “How are you?”

“Oh, fine,” he grins. “Better now.”

He is dripping with not only sweat but adoration for the young witch. He reaches for her hand and she puts a glass of lemonade in his grip.

Esme wonders if Rose can also tell something is wrong. Rose certainly can.

“More of your love potions, huh?” he asks Rose.

“Something like that,” she agrees.

He tips back the glass and swallows the whole thing in four gulps, licking his lips. They search for a shift in his expression, or a change in his gaze. Nothing happens. He simply returns the empty glass and thanks her.

“So Dean, um, where are you staying right now?”

“A studio apartment, down by the pier.”

Rose nods, glancing at Esme. 

“And what other jobs are you doing?”

“Just this,” he lifts the shovel he holds.

Still he is smiling, his face sort of expressionlessly pleasant.

“What about Luigi’s? And everywhere else you work?”

“This morning I realized I need to stay here.”

“Who told you that?”

“Your Grandmother. She said I’m going to stay here for awhile.” He smiles again. “But I don’t mind so much. That way I can be close to you.” He reaches out to stroke her arm with a finger.

Hairs stand on the back of Rose’s neck. Her eyes squint at him. “What do you think I am?”

“A beautiful woman,” he says. “Hopefully someday, I’ll call you my beautiful woman. If I can ever be worthy of you.”

Esme’s eyes are as round as saucers. She releases a little whine of discomfort. 

“Do you remember what happened last night?” Rose finally asks, realizing she isn’t speaking to the same person she met the days before.

“Sure,” he chuckles, leaning in. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget.”

“Do you remember going back to your apartment after?”

He squints, shaking his head. “Um, I mean… I guess I… I think maybe I was in such a daze I just…”

He doesn’t remember, Rose realizes. He doesn’t know he died.

Esme interjects. “Dean?”

Dean doesn’t budge. 

“Um, hi there? Dean?”

He finally notices her. “Oh! Hi! I didn’t see you there!”

“Which is totally normal,” Esme mutters. “Um, when did our Grandma tell you you’re going to stay here awhile?”

“This morning. We took a walk by the lake.”

The girls exchange a wide eyed glance, then excuse themselves, despite Dean’s insistence Rose should stay.

“Where does she even go?” Esme asks, exasperated, returning down the stairs for the third time in as many minutes. “I can’t find her anywhere!”

“She’s always done this ever since I can remember.”

“Looking for my mother?” Iris asks from her spot in the sunroom, peeking out behind an enormous book. “Good luck to you girls. You know she appears whenever she likes. I saw you giving the gardener something… a potion perhaps?”

“Truth Serum,” Rose admits. She sits before her mother and sighs. “Mom, I think I’ve done something terrible.”

“Hopefully nothing too terrible,” she smiles. “Your best friend would never forgive you for going to jail.”

Rose stands suddenly, realizing there is someone coming up the porch steps. She bounds towards the front door, opening it just as he’s about to knock. 

“Ben!” she exclaims.

There stands a handsome young man with brown hair and glasses, smiling at her from behind a bouquet of sunflowers. His shoulders are a little broader than last year, and he’s gained enough weight to not resemble as much as a bean pole. She wraps him in a tight hug and invites him into the house. 

“I wanted to give you a minute to get settled,” he says, greeting the other women with equally warm embraces. 

“How was the semester?” Rose asks.

“Good. I really like Washington. Yours?”

“Good. Really good. I’m happy to be home though. Are you working with your dad through the summer?”

“Yep. Picking up whatever hours he can give me. I thought about an internship, but couldn’t find one in time. You at Luigi’s this summer?”

“Yep. I just… still haven’t chosen a major. So an internship didn’t make sense for me.”

“You have time,” Ben shrugs.

Rose’s stomach flip flops when he smiles that half smile. The freckles across his nose are barely visible at the moment, but she knows they’ll pop up like a field of wildflowers if they spend a single day on the beach together. 

“Hey, um, by the way, is that that Dean Row in your garden?”

“Yes… Why?”

“You guys know he’s like, a super shady character, right? He used to go to high school around here. I knew a girl who dated him. Remember Sandy?”

“Sure… She dated him?”

“Her cousin did, a few years ago and…”

“Wait. Didn’t Sandy’s cousin run away when she was like fifteen?”

Iris closes her book and places it on the ottoman, folding her hands in her lap and raising her eyebrows. “Go on.”

“Yeah, well, I guess the story is they ran away together. He was into some dark stuff, and ran around with really weird people. They were supposed to go get married but nobody ever heard from Sandy again. Guess he found his way back here, close to home.”

“Dark stuff and weird people aren’t necessarily bad,” Iris offers, winking at the young man. “You yourself keep sordid company.”

Ben laughs. “I’d hardly consider you all sordid. But, yeah, just be careful with him being so close to all you girls. Maybe ask Gwen to think about another gardener.”

“Gwen is going to do whatever Gwen wants to do,” Iris says, standing. “Can I make you something to eat or drink?”

Ben stays for awhile, leaving when Rose follows him down the driveway, headed to her shift at the restaurant. He turns the opposite direction, and as she’s cresting the hill she passes an old lady in a rusty car. The woman has wild grey hair and pale eyes. She slows, staring at Rose with empty eyes and a haunted expression. A chill runs up Rose’s spine. 

At the restaurant Rose is distracted. No one knows Dean has been working for her grandmother, so when Dean doesn’t show up for his shift, no one thinks to ask her where he might be. When she returns home, however, his truck and tools are gone. Rose decides it’s time to find Grandma Gwen and ask her some questions. 

Gwen is at the kitchen table drinking tea with Iris when Rose walks in. 

“There you are,” Rose sighs. “I’ve been looking for you all day. What can you tell me about the -” She stops short.

At the end of the kitchen table is a police officer, a steaming cup of tea before him. 

“About the… the… headlights in my jeep? Um, I think they need cleaned? I didn’t notice at school but they must have gotten pretty dirty on the trip home. Hello.”

“Hi there. I’m officer Alex Lopez.” The handsome man in his thirties stands to shake Rose’s hand. 

“I was just speaking to your mother and sister about -”

“Mother,” Iris corrects him.

“Grandmother,” Gwen says.

He is genuinely taken aback - but this is a common mistake. “Oh… Oh, right. I’m sorry about that. Um - we’re looking for a young man named Dean Row. Would you happen to know anything?”

Rose’s mouth goes dry. She shakes her head. “I’ve met him. But I wouldn’t say we’re closely aquatinted. Why are you asking us?”

“We found a few pictures that suggested he had some interest in this family.”

“Pictures? Like, photographs?” Rose asks, realizing gradually what he’s implying. “Wait, are you saying he was watching us?”

Officer Lopez pauses a beat. “Was?”

Rose’s heart plummets to the pits of her stomach. She tries to open her mouth to backtrack, but no words will come out. She touches her throat, realizing her mother is holding it shut. 

“Rose, why don’t you go clean yourself up after your shift, dear,” Iris says. “And mother, don’t feel like you need to entertain us. Feel free to take your soak for your arthritis.”

“I suppose I am a bit stiff,” Gwen mutters, ushering her granddaughter up the steps.

“Grandma,” Rose whispers, when they reach the third floor where the bedrooms are. “What happened? How was Dean here today? You found him, didn’t you?”

“Why wouldn’t he be here today?” she raises a brow, her hand on her doorknob.

Rose opens and shuts her mouth again and again. Does she confess? Does Gwen already know?

Gwen stands on her tiptoes to kiss her granddaughter’s forehead. “I think I’ll have that soak now.”

Chapter One

Oh how Rose missed the sea. It tousles her golden curls as she speeds along the coastal highway towards Maine, invigorated by being so close to home again. College has been wonderful, but contains far too little magick for someone like Rose. She can’t keep the joy from bubbling over at the thought of being able to stir her tea with a nod, or do her laundry with a flick of the wrist again. 

Magick is a daily occurrence in The Soricelle House. She explained to several new friends the wonders of their old house, but could never go into accurate detail. She could never tell them how breakfast would make itself under her grandmother’s watchful eye, or how all the plants in the sunroom could bloom overnight.

“The grass is soft and green all year round, thanks to Soricelle Lake. My Grandmother remembers almost drowning in it when she was a little girl, but she says it’s impossible to actually die there. She calls it the heart of our land. She has these sprawling gardens… It keeps her young, I think.” Rose smiled at the study group inquiring.

“See, I feel like people who get to grow up with nature are just… kind of different?” a friend had observed. 

“I grew up in apartments,” another friend added. “Can we get back to math, please? It’s depressing me how boring my life has been.”

Rose quickly realized she needed to dumb down the stories in order to fit into this new world. She disguised the Focus Spells and Good Luck Potions as pots of coffee and pencils, attempting to help her peers with the type of clandestine magick witches have to use among mortals. But they still noticed Rose was special; everyone does.

Rose turns up the radio and smiles as she hugs a familiar curve in the road. She didn’t get to travel home for Christmas, so this is the first time she’ll see her family in about nine months. She plans to soak up as much magick as possible, and make sure she hasn’t gotten rusty in her casting or potion brewing. 

There is one thing she needs help with, despite becoming a master at sneakily performing spells before observant eyes. There’s a new element of her magic she can’t quite control, and it occupies her mind on this journey.

The quaint town of Crescent Hollow is already bustling with tourists, people crossing the streets while pointing up at seagulls or applying sunscreen. It is with great care she creeps past the ice cream shops and boutiques, the used book stall and candy store, the restaurants with their little outdoor tables and window boxes. She heads up the hill, snaking through a neighborhood of old cottages and estates, into the dense woods which lead to the cliffside property overlooking the waterfront town. She ambles through the open iron gate, so immaculately designed with an enormous S on either side. Her black jeep disappears into foliage from the perspective of the road.

The drive swoops downward into a cool valley, then up, and up, and up a little more. The house appears in the distance once she breaks through the trees. It is an estate surrounded by gardens and sprawling lawns, the other side of the property a less dense forest containing the lake. She can see slivers of water sparkling in the late morning sun. 

Rose has driven a day and a night but any fatigue that might have plagued her disappears when she parks her car.

A blue victorian style home with white trim, three stories, and an attic towers before her. On the porch, which wraps around the house and nests deep beneath the grey roof, sits Grandma Gwen, sipping lemonade. She waves to her granddaughter and stands from her favorite wicker rocker. Her wild white curls betray the obvious relation to her granddaughter (whose hair is still golden) as does the glow about her plump cheeks. Rose runs towards the house with its familiar turrets, and dormers, and stained glass windows that look like magick themselves in the right lighting. She passes beneath the rose covered trellis, which seems to sigh, relieved she’s returned.

Grandma Gwen embraces the girl with a kiss on the forehead and a squeeze around her small middle. 

“Welcome back,” she says. 

Rose takes a deep breath. Gwen smells of gardenias and she always will.

The front door opens and Esme appears. She is the only other family member here, at present, but Rose knows the rest will trickle in, given a few more days. Esme is as dark as Rose is fair, with chestnut brown hair and eyes. She tucks a strand of her straight bob behind her ear and asks her cousin about college, prepared to go see for herself the following year. The girls sit at the kitchen table and catch up while their grandmother makes more lemonade, straining the hot water through a piece of cheesecloth lined with rose petals. 

“To help you settle in,” she winks, offering the girls glasses. She throws a petal into each glass.

Gwen slips away while the girls escape to the garden.

“It’s strange, being so far from home. It’s different out there. Drab. I’m getting good at hiding my magic but sometimes I wonder if I made the right choice… It would have been so much easier just to stay here this year.” Rose tilts her head back to soak up the sunshine peeking through the clouds. She inhales the scent of the garden, and the lapping seashore beyond the cliffside.

“Of course you made the right choice! You have to get out and experience things.” Esme says, her big eyes alight with excitement. She pushes up her glasses. “Do you know what you’ll do yet?”

“Not yet,” Rose says.

“But…”

“I know. I don’t have much time left to decide.” 

“You have less than one moon’s cycle.” She’s shocked at her cousin’s procrastination.

Rose lowers herself into the double swing, inviting her cousin to sit beside her. They shift their weight forward and back languidly, Rose’s legs golden and glossy in her jean shorts, Esme’s skin the color of paper. 

“It will come to me when it comes to me,” Rose shrugs.

She sounds almost exactly like the girls’ grandmother. They share a knowing glance and giggle.

“Is ‘wise old witch’ a career option these days?” Esme teases.

“Grandma’s doing it,” Rose replies.

Rose notices a lemon seed has sunk to the bottom of her glass. She places a finger on the side, guiding the seed up the translucent drink and making it hop out, into her palm. Before the girls return to the house she presses the seed into the dirt by the swing, shutting her eyes for a moment and whispering something inaudible. 

“Are you going back to Luigi’s again this summer?” Esme inquires, holding the screen door open for her cousin.

“Sure am. I may be magickal but I’m still just a broke college kid.”

By the time the screen door has swung shut behind the girls, the lemon tree is already a seedling.

The manager of Luigi’s is a middle aged woman named Rhonda. She hires what she calls ‘summer kids”, though in reality she’s hardly a decade older than them. She hugs Rose upon seeing her, and tells her she’s going to need help training this batch of ‘summer kids’.

Rose says hello to the kitchen staff she knows, but realizes the only server remaining from the previous year is Jason. They drink a beer and catch up on his break.

“So our new hostess is like fourteen and gets everything wrong, but Karen knows her dad so…” Jason takes a long drink and rolls his eyes.

Karen bought Luigi’s from the previous owner a decade prior, hiring Rhonda and dropping in once in awhile for dinner. Everyone joked that she actually killed the previous owner (the real Luigi) in order to get the place, but in truth, there was never an actual Luigi. 

Jason continues. “We’ve got a couple cute college girls, present company included,” he winks.

“Well, I never,” Rose mocks, batting her eyelashes.

“And we’ve got a new kitchen guy… Keeps to himself a lot. Actually… that’s him now.”

Jason nods towards the pier, where tourists stroll hand in hand. Rose’s eyes land on a tall, tattooed young man wearing a black teeshirt and jeans. His apron is hanging over the railing and he stares at the water with a thoughtful expression, smoking a cigarette directly beside a sign that requests him not to.

“Who is he, exactly?” Rose sounds interested.

“Not a tourist,” Jason says. “He doesn’t seem that into sightseeing. He’s not in school, I don’t think. And this isn’t his only job either. I’ve seen him on boats, but I don’t think he’s a fisherman. He knows some of the farmers too.”

“Sounds like he’s saving up for something.”

“Maybe his next bail fund,” Jason scoffs.

Rose doesn’t tell Jason how much the thought of that excites her.

All year she’s behaved - well, as much as a young woman can behave. She’s been careful to blend in when she could stand out so vividly, careful to study when she could just cast an enchantment on her teachers for perfect grades. No, she’s been abiding by the rules of the mortal world. Now it’s summer, and she’s on her own turf. Rose is ready to make some magick.

Rose’s first shift back at Luigi’s is invigorating. The hustle and bustle is so familiar; the chaos of the hot kitchen, the overly animated tourists, enamored with the coastal views and inebriated by the salty, fresh air. She stays to help close, allowing Rhonda to focus on paperwork. When she’s about to head home she smells smoke, and returns to the overlook where she’d stood with Jason earlier that day. There’s Dean, the cool night air pressing his shirt to his fit figure, revealing the shapes of sweat that had formed during his shift. He runs a hand through his dark hair which flops onto his forehead.

“Are you just gonna stare at me or do you want a cigarette?” he asks, without turning his head to face Rose.

She closes the space between them, grasping the railing onto which he leans. She looks out over the water, aware of the heat of his body next to her. She wonders what he looks like without a shirt on… judging by the faint veins on his arms, she would bet he looks pretty damn good.

“I don’t want my own,” she tells him. “But I’ll have some of yours.”

His brow arches in surprise, but he extends the cigarette. Their hands brush in the exchange and he looks at her properly for the first time, aside from earlier, in the kitchen, when he noticed the way her jean shorts hug her round ass, and how toned and tanned her legs are. Yes, he can sense her magick - though he doesn’t know it’s magick. He forces himself to look away, caught off guard by the sensation of being close to something explosive, and rare. She smiles to herself and takes a long drag. 

She doesn’t put a spell on him; she doesn’t have to. She simply returns the cigarette to her new friend’s fingers. When he takes another drag he will taste her on the filter, and he will never forget that taste.

“I’m Rose, by the way.”

“Dean.” He reaches to shake her hand. She notices the callouses and long fingers, the tattoos accentuating his hard forearm. 

“Goodnight, Dean.”

He watches her walk away, wishing she could haves stayed just a minute longer - just thirty seconds, or ten. 

Dean takes another drag and finds he cannot stop thinking about Rose. 

That night the sea will not rest, and nor will Rose. She fantasizes about Dean before drifting into a troubled slumber. Then something happens that Rose cannot control. It’s happened before - a few times this year, actually. And always, she feels as though she’s a marionette, forced into movement by strings she cannot snip. 

Tonight she is standing over herself, watching herself sleep, her white teeshirt halfway up her soft belly, her cotton panties riding up on her generous hips. Then she turns away from herself and finds she’s traveling along the pier past Luigi’s and onto the beach. She is headed for the boathouses, floating along like a ghost in the moonlight. 

She is sleeping and also entering the boathouses. She can smell the fish - feel stiff netting beneath her fingertips. She travels up a set of stairs into an office. Through the office is a room. In that room is a modest studio apartment, a twin bed shoved in one corner, a sink and toilet behind a curtain, and a tiny table hosting a single burner plugged into the wall. The wind rustles Dean’s hair through the open window. 

He sleeps shirtless, his body as beautiful as Rose imagined. He wears only loose boxers, which have come down low on his hips in his slumber. She nears the bed, gently placing her weight on one knee on the edge of the thin mattress. He doesn’t stir, but he can feel her; she knows this because she can feel him. She swings her other leg over his form and gently lowers her weight onto him. She leans down, her hair brushing his shoulder. 

“Shhh,” she soothes. She brushes a kiss upon his lips, so gentle it might have been the wind.

She knows she is dreaming, as is he… and where are fantasies to be fulfilled if not dreamland? She brushes her lips to his ear next. Goosebumps arise on his warm skin. She caresses his face, his chest, aware of him growing harder and longer between her legs, her own body becoming excited. She closes her eyes for a moment, giving into the tingly sensations. When she opens her eyes a dark gaze stares back at her, his mouth slightly agape. She bites her lip as he reaches for her, lifting her white teeshirt up and over her head as if in a daze. He is hard as stone now, held down only by his boxer shorts and her weight. He examines her in the moonlight, running his large hands up along the curves of her sides to gently hold her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. He lifts his head from the pillow then to gently place his mouth over her breast. He licks her gently at first, gradually beginning to suck harder and harder. Rose gasps. 

She cradles his dark head as he tilts it sideways, looking up at her while gently biting her nipple. He’s taken the other breast in his hand and massages the generous flesh. But that hand begins to travel down her soft tummy towards the cotton panties. He finds the moisture with his fingers and presses hard, dragging his fingers upward and towards himself, causing her to gasp again. She is overcome with desire to have him inside her. She grasps his now solid penis in her hand, her eagerness not curbed by the pleasant sensation of a hearty handful. Now it’s his turn to moan as she tugs upward. 

Just then the wind slams the shutters against the boathouse and they both startle. When she returns her gaze to him he is searching the room for her. He runs his hands through his hair and she realizes he can no longer see or feel her. He rubs his eyes and looks again. She falls back to the foot of the bed, deeply disappointed. 

She can feel her sleeping body calling her back home.

Dean realizes it was a dream, but instead of attempting sleep, he folds his arm over his eyes and kicks off his boxers, gripping his erect dick and beginning to stroke. Rose watches with hungry eyes, slipping her own hand down her panties and pressing two fingers down and up, scooping the thick moisture from her slick crevasse up and onto her sensitive clit. 

Dean twists and pulls and strokes, and Rose moves her hand in circular motions until she can take it no longer and dives her fingers deep into her vagina. It is spacious and warm now, longing for Dean to slip slowly inside her…

Still, her sleeping body beacons her. 

“Shit,” she whispers, removing her hand and sighing. She can’t focus. She can’t stay.

She shuts her eyes tight and when she reopens them she is in bed once more, her panties soaked through.

“Have either of you ever Astral projected?” Rose asks her grandmother and cousin over breakfast.

Spoons stir by themselves while the sponge scrubs a pan in the sink. Oh how Rose has missed this incredibly useful and common magic. She flicks her wrist to pour more syrup onto her plate, watching the ribbon fall hot and oozing, coating the doughy pancakes.

“Nope,” Esme replies through a full mouth.

“Sure, all the time,” Grandma Gwen offers. “Would you like to learn?”

“I mean, I think I’ve been doing it. I just can’t really control it yet.”

“Well that’s something I can’t help with,” Gwen shakes her head. “I still can’t properly control mine either. Sometimes it’s for five minutes, sometimes it’s the whole night. And I am an old lady, mind you. I need my beauty rest.” She raises her eyebrows stoically, sipping her herbal tea. 

Of course, this isn’t true. Grandma Gwen is fantastically beautiful, and doesn’t look a year over fifty.

A thud comes from outside. The younger girls are distracted but Gwen doesn’t bat an eye.

“Your mother is on her way today,” she says to Rose. “I believe she missed you too much to stay away.” She is staring into her cup, reading her tea leaves.

Another thud.

Esme stands and cranes over the sink to peer out the kitchen window. “Is there supposed to be a man in our yard?” she asks.

“I’ve hired some help,” Gwen says. “My old bones don’t hold up the way they used to… besides, it improves the view.”

Rose stands to look, surprised by what she sees. “Where did you find this person, exactly?”

“Oh, you know. Around.” Gwen takes her leave without any further explanation. 

Rose decides if her elusive grandmother won’t fill her in, perhaps the boy she visited in his dreams last night will. She trots outside and leans on the porch railing. 

Dean’s muscles flex and pulsate as he lifts enormous bags of soil from the truck bed and tosses them near the garden. He feels eyes on him and turns. 

“Rose,” he says. “Right?”

“Right,” she smiles. She knows he remembers good and well.

She wants him to be thinking about that dream - about her hard, round nipples on the tip of his tongue.

“Take a break in a bit,” she tells him. “Come inside for some iced tea.”

“It’s not even hot yet,” he replies.

She smirks. “Not yet.”

She hears him whisper her name when she’s returned to the house - hears him from a distance no mortal ever could. 

Esme comes to stand next to Rose at the window, a playful smile on her heart shaped face. “I’ve got a couple sigils needing activated,” she tells her cousin. “Ya know, if you wanna put all this lust to good use.”

Rose isn’t coy enough to blush. “Sure. Hand them over!”

Esme and Rose spend the morning discussing Sigil work and spells. Esme reveals an interest in some revenge sigils and they ponder the danger in this type of magic. They’ve relocated to the attic, where the fans are already working hard to keep the room cool. They sit on the lopsided furniture and layered area rugs, reading personal grimoires from their own past (you don’t touch another witch’s grimoire without permission). 

“And just who are we trying to enact revenge upon?” Rose asks.

“A girl at school. A cheerleader. She took something from me and… she isn’t sorry.”

Rose considers this information, then caves. “Alright. I’ll help. Have you made the sigil yet?”

“Not yet.”

The girls take a piece of blank paper to the sigil wheel, which is a wheel shape carved into a tall, round table. The wheel shape is made up of 13 sections around the edges. In each section there is a number, 1-13. Beneath the wheel, elegantly burned into the wood, sits the alphabet and another set of numbers.

“I suggest we use neutral language,” Rose says.

“Oh, for sure…” Esme agrees, but something in her wishes they didn’t have to. “How about may you get exactly what you deserve?”

“What about, may you relinquish what is not yours? Since you say she took something from you.”

“That’s better. That sounds good. And you’re sure we cant just say… I don’t know… may you burn for all eternity?”

“Good lord,” Rose laughs, eyes wide.

The girls write out the chosen phrase and cross out every vowel and repeating letter. They are left with an indiscernible word: MRLNQSHWTN. They write down the number that corresponds with each letter, then draw their sigil on paper pressed over the wheel with slow, steady hands, gently chanting their intention out of sync. Then they fold up the paper and Rose takes it. 

“Give me twenty-four hours and you’ll have yourself some magic. In fact, I wonder if he’s thirsty yet…”

The girls smile at each other knowingly and Rose vanishes to tend to her new friend. 

Esme, however, stares at the sigil wheel. What would happen if she did wish ill on Aimee? What would happen if she did wish she’d fall in a hole and sprain her ankle? Or maybe have a headache for several days? Would it really come back to bite her?

Esme manages to spend the entire day without an inclination as to where the time has gone. Rose, however, spends her day hunting. She has the whole summer to foster a burning romance with Dean, yet she can’t stop thinking about the previous night. Perhaps, if she had anything at all to distract her she might move more slowly in her pursuits. Instead, she finds herself hot and bothered, repeatedly bringing him iced water and tea, sweat dripping down both the glass and his body. By dusk she’s convinced herself she’s doing Esme a favor. After all, she needs that sigil activated, doesn’t she?

Dean enters the mudroom through the backdoor, looking for Gwen at the end of the day. He has landscaping questions for her, but Gwen is nowhere to be found.

“I was also wondering where I might find the stakes she told me to use,” Dean says. “All the other tools were in the shed but, I don’t see them.”

“They’re there,” Rose says. She has no clue what stakes he’s talking about, but she is sure without a shadow of a doubt they’re in a box towards the back. “I can show you.”

“So you’re home from college?” Dean asks as they meander through the gardens to the shed, neither in much of a hurry. “What’s your major?”

“I’m not sure yet. Just getting my feet under me. I’m too young for such big decisions.” She doesn’t mention she has to have a bigger decision made before the month is up.

“How… young are you, exactly?” he asks.

This question makes her chuckle. “Old enough, Casanova.”

“Old enough for what?” he asks as they pass beneath the gazebo.

“Lots of things,” she glances back at him and winks.

His white shirt is clinging to his sweaty body, his hair a mess from working the day away. She can see where the callouses came from, the way he swings those heavy gardening tools about. She can’t help imagining him swinging her about…

“They’re here,” she says, stepping into the shed and reaching into the dim corner.

Its a spacious area with two little windows on either side and just a few items for gardening or safekeeping on the sparse shelves. The box with the stakes in it sits on a shelf at waist level, but against the wall, away from the bruise colored sky. “I can’t reach them,” she lies. 

He steps into the shed.

The door to the shed is angular to the house, viewing more of the gardens than anything else. But it feels private enough… and yet public enough… 

“Where?” Dean asks squinting into the darkness. He couldn’t look for it if he tried - not with her swishing from side to side in that sundress in front of him.

Rose turns around, her face level with his neck and toned shoulders. She smiles wryly up at him and bites her lip. “Here,” she says, meekly, holding the box at her waist. 

The corner of his mouth curls into a smile and he folds his hands over hers around the box. 

“Is this what you wanted?” she asks.

He chuckles. “Is this what you wanted?”

She nods slowly, not breaking eye contact. 

She lets him remove the box and caress her jaw, tilting her face up to kiss him. They both remember kissing, though this is their first time. 

“I had a dream about you,” he says between kissing her mouth and neck. 

“I know.”

He leans back, a puzzled expression on his handsome face. He shakes his head, then kisses her deeply, his tongue exploring her own. His mouth is strong, but not too forceful. She likes the sweetness of lemonade lingering there. She lifts her leg as their passion intensifies, dragging her foot up along the outside of his jeans. She presses her thigh to his hip, willing him to lift her. He does, and she encircles him with her legs like a snake about to devour its prey. He squeezes her thigh with his big hand, slipping it up into the silky fabric of her sundress and grabbing a handful of ass. 

Dean presses Rose agains the one wall of the shed that doesn’t contain shelving and she intertwines her fingers into his dark hair, grinding herself upon his form. He is astounded by how perfectly proportioned her figure seems to be - like handholds and grips made specifically for him.

Rose enjoys feeling her whole weight held up by his strong arms, his hands eagerly exploring her form. She knows what he is thinking; that he is soaking her up. In reality, she knows it is she absorbing all his willpower. She smiles to herself as he bites down on her neck and sucks, thirsty for the very depths of her. 

Then as suddenly as Dean put Rose against the wall she has pushed him off, and returned to standing, a head shorter than the incredible young man. She swivels him around so the shadowy corner swallows him. He willingly allows her to control him, even holding his hands up as if she points some type of weapon at his heart - which she might as well. She surprises him by melting into a kneeling position, a mischievous gleam in her bright eyes. The rough floor of the shed feels gritty beneath Rose’s knees, but she barely notices, her mind elsewhere. Before Dean can fully grasp her intention she is undoing his belt buckle with fervor, her fingers little and quick.

He is flabbergasted by the ferocity in which she touches. He wants nothing more than to make her cum, yet it’s her who takes his pants down. She looks up at him, her hands on his thighs, her eyes enormous and perfect, and staring into his own. His heart is racing with suspense, his erect penis only inches from her face. She leans forward, but doesn’t touch him. A shiver runs up his spine to feel her hot breath between his legs. He is overwhelmed by a sense of still being asleep - existing in another dream about this goddess of a woman. 

Rose reaches up to grasp his cock in her small, golden hand, causing him to intake breath so sharply one might think she’d hurt him. She grins, stroking it gently towards herself. He takes a few much needed deep breaths, unable to remove his eyes from her, awestruck in her perfection. She licks her lips and opens her mouth, leaning further forwards with an obscene amount of patience. The tip of her tongue extends over her white teeth and rosy, plump bottom lip. He can’t believe what he’s seeing as her tongue extends, barely touching the head of his cock. Again, he shivers, emitting a sound he’s never made before. She enjoys the feeling of the crease at the head of his cock on her tongue, the slightly salty flavor of his sweat. Ever so slowly, as if testing the temperature, she caresses just the tip of him with her tongue. Then Rose makes an O with her mouth and carefully takes the entire head into her lips, using hardly any pressure, then a bit more, until there is a soft popping noise when she releases him. His own mouth is agape at the sight of something so erotic.

Rose is enjoying the pace of their encounter - the feeling of the spot between her own legs moistening. She begins licking him from balls to head, squeezing his balls with her hand as she licks, licks, licks him like a popsicle melting in unrelenting summer heat. She pauses a moment to wipe some oozing spittle from her chin, only to return and take every inch she can muster into her mouth and throat. 

“Holy mother of god,” he whispers, leaning his head back against the wall with a soft thud. 

Without warning she shoves him down her throat as deeply and fully as she can, holding him there a long moment while he exclaims his pleasure and surprise.

“Holy fucking shit,” he breathes.

She is still using slow movements, not wanting him to cum too fast. She releases him and plunges him deep into her throat a few times in this fashion, feeling her eyes moisten with tears as she pushes her own body to its limits. He is throbbing now, so she stops.

She leans away again to wipe the driving string of moisture from her chin, and he takes the opportunity to pull her up to standing and trade places once more. He peels her panties down in one fell swoop, pressing her to the wall and placing his face at the level of her crotch. He hikes one of her legs up over his shoulder and presses her stomach flat with his other hand. There is one moment of breathtaking eye contact before she feels his whole mouth on her hot, wet pussy, engulfing her as if designed to do so.

My god, Rose tastes good. Dean fully extends his tongue and licks as deeply and passionately as he can, slurping the liquid oozing out of her. He’s aware of his cock throbbing between his legs, but he wouldn’t dare leave this encounter without giving her something to remember. Now, he wants to make her tremble - cry out for mercy as he pleases her in ways she’s never known. He dives two fingers into the saturated crevice and twists them in and out, in and out, curving his fingers to hit the little wrinkled walnut shape just inside. She whines like a feral animal, but he is relentless in his strength and passion. 

“Fuck,” she says. “Fuck!”

Rose watches Dean close his eyes and lap her up eagerly, her hands clawing at his head and shoulders. She maneuvers him, using his perfect face as an artfully designed toy of pleasure, until she can’t take another minute. She leans him backward onto the part of the floor where a dusty tarp is spread, the door still wide open to the side of them, a gentle breeze whispering over their partially naked bodies. She crawls on top of him, tearing his shirt up and off as he lays down. Her sundress has fallen off one of her shoulders, her soft breast emerging, swaying attractively with her movements. 

She straddles him, stroking his cock with her slippery vagina as it remains pinned beneath her weight. He puts her breast in his mouth and sucks hard, causing her lashes to flutter. He applies gentle pressure with his teeth on her round, hard nipple. She reaches between their legs and takes his long, hard dick into her hand, standing it up to insert the tip into her slick vagina. She releases it with her hands only to grasp it with her pussy, bouncing slowly upon only the head of his penis. Then, without warning, she plunges his cock deep into her vagina. He is so hard she feels as though she’s riding a glass toy, but it throbs in a way she could never demand of glass. She can feel his hot cock, soaked with her own fluid, pressing to what feels like the back of her vagina, pulsating in rhythm with her own body. She settles all of her weight onto him and they both gasp at the sensation of fullness. 

Dean cannot understand what is happening. The angle of her hips and the depth of her pussy seem to cast a spell on him. He finds he can’t stop staring into her eyes and groping every inch of her, taking her swaying breasts into his mouth as if desiring to remove some of her life force through them - to somehow drink her soul. Only pausing for air as she tilts and grinds, he sucks hungrily at her neck next, and plunges his tongue into her mouth, his jaw tight with passion. His mouth tastes like her pussy, and she kisses him harder now. She is in control of him, gripping his cock with such desire it might hurt a man who wanted her less.

She releases him and giggles at his reaction, then slowly slides every inch into her pussy once more, deeply satisfied by the sensation. 

Dean can feel her vagina beginning to throb and contract, tightening on his cock like her mouth had before, but in a different, wonderful way. He feels his own self pulsating too. He becomes so distracted by trying to contain the sensation he doesn’t notice her removing the sigil from a pocket and shoving it onto a nail behind him just as she shoved his own cock inside her warm, silky folds of perfection. She could do just about anything right now, and he would not notice. At present he is trying with every ounce of his being not to picture his thick, creamy ejaculation, releasing deep inside the small cavern of her body… dripping down the walls of her pussy, oozing onto him once more, partially him, partially her…

He’s about to cum, and he tries to warn her, but she grips him with her thighs, also on the verge of climax. He finds his strong arms wrapped tightly around her, and holds her to him with as much strength as he dares lest he break her in two. He finds himself frozen in time with this otherworldly woman, watching her teardrop shaped tits bounce erotically as she rides him, watching her eyelashes flutter with pleasure, her mouth open in surprise. She looks down to see he is on the verge of worshiping her, appearing both terrified and bewitched.  

“Oh,” she exclaims. “Oh, oh! Fuck fuck fuck!” she finds herself folding into him as waves of pleasure wash over her, but she forces herself to look up, gazing at the sigil as her body trembles.

“I’m - ” he tries to tell her. “Rose - ” He attempts to push at her waist, to remove himself from her.

She is attached to him as if glued there, clawing as his shoulders and hair, grasping a handful of tarp beneath them as she writhes.

The dam breaks. His hands squeeze her hips hard enough to hurt, through neither of them notice. As she shivers violently atop him he is aware of the cum escaping his body, flooding her pussy, overflowing into every crevice and hollow. She grasps a handful of his hair and folds down upon him like a crumpled flower, allowing him to hold her as they shift their hips in unison, both enjoying the sensation of the thick liquid oozing from her pink pussy onto his generous cock. They hold each other, panting, moving in this lazy way until they’ve both nearly caught their breath. 

Rose lifts herself off his still hard penis, biting her lip as cum dribbles out of her onto their thighs. She falls backward and to the side with a thud. She lets out a satisfied laugh and sigh, scooping cum off her thigh with one finger and raising it to her lips. She meets Dean’s hazy, half open eyes, slowly licking the fluid from her fingertip. Sweet. Slightly tangy. Watery.

He grins at her and shakes his head. “Mary me?”

“No,” she smiles. 

After a moment Rose reaches for her panties, wiping cum from herself then offering them to Dean. He begins cleaning himself up then searching for his own underwear. He sways a little when getting to his feet, and Rose laughs at him for it. 

“Don’t forget the stakes,” Rose chuckles, stepping over the tarp on shaky legs to retrieve the sigil. 

“What?” he asks her.

She turns to remind him why they entered the shed in the first place, but there is a loud thud. He’s managed to slip into his underwear once more, but has fallen.

Rose realizes something is very wrong. “Dean!” she angles him so he isn’t facedown on the shed floor and holds his head in her lap. “Dean! Wake up!” She smacks his cheeks hard with her palm. “Wake up!”