Daughter to Demons

by Jeffrey M. Mahr and Levanah

Chapter Four:
Hitting the Books

Never ask a question unless you’re very
sure that you want to hear the answer.
― Anonymous

“Do you believe those idiots?” It was a full day later, but Frank was still annoyed. Even now, as George and he entered the dorm building again after classes, he was complaining, but at least his recriminations were finally down to a grumble.

George was angry too, but he held his peace, knowing that anything he said would be additional fuel for Frank’s anger. George mostly wanted to figure out what to do to get their friend back, or at least find out how he was. He too was upset about their friend, and annoyed at being unceremoniously kicked out of the hospital, but he needed Frank to be calm enough to plan things out if they were going to succeed in getting past the security guys.

Frank was good at that, a planner and a schemer, where George was more the pound somebody into the ground type. He’d identified with the Han Solo character in Star Wars, when he’d blown up the communicator thing when he couldn’t keep his story straight.

Frank, on the other hand, was more like Obi-Wan Kenobi, and would have talked the Storm Troopers into helping them escape, provided he didn’t get bogged down in the Dark Side of the Force, which he did whenever he got bogged down in problems of social injustice, esoteric morality, and/or basic human rights.

George had even made them stop for groceries at the all-night supermarket, to give Frank a little extra time to calm down, and now were taking the stairs rather than the elevator for the same reason. Frank was so mad that he wasn’t paying attention to the distractions George kept tossing at him.

“I’ll get the door.” George piled his grocery bags on top of the ones Frank held. They were piled so high he could barely see around the sides.

“You’d better, after making me walk up three flights of stairs with my hands full of groceries.”

“Aw, come on, you know it’s good exercise. You’ll thank me when you make it to varsity.”

“Right, all because you made me walk up three flights of stairs with groceries in my hands? What do you want in return, my first born child?”

“That depends. Will she grow up to be a fox?”

“Cradle robber.”

“Indian giver.”

The last brought a smile to Frank’s face at last.

“Milord,” George said as obsequiously as he could as he unlocked the door to their apartment and threw it wide open while making a caricature of a deep, courtly bow. Frank snorted and walked in, head held regally high. George smiled. The old Frank was back. Not to be outdone, he followed, dragging one foot behind him as he pretended to be Igor, the hunchback from “Young Frankenstein.”

Frank blindly struggled into the kitchen still holding all the groceries. He called back to George, “Will carrying all the bags make me Team Captain? George?”

George didn’t respond. He was staring slack-jawed at the shapely blonde sitting sprawled on their couch and scrawling notes in several notebooks, at random as far as he could tell. She was hunched over a huge book and surrounded by at least a dozen others, but she didn’t remind him of Igor at all, or even Teri Garr. Teri Garr was very pretty, but this woman could easily persuade the Pope to give up the rule of celibacy and allow women to serve as Priests and Archbishops, if she’d put her mind to it.

Frank dropped the bags on the counter in the kitchenette and finally, with his view restored, turned to see a beautiful, erotic, exotic, raven-haired woman on the couch.

As usual, George was first to react. “Hello. Who are you? What are you doing here, and will you bear my children?” He swaggered over to the beat-up lounge chair that was the room’s only other seating and slouched down into it. Frank, usually the more assured of the two in the presence of women, joined her on the couch, sitting on the other side of the stunning beauty, after moving a few books to make room, so as not to block George’s view of her.

“It’s my apartment too, isn’t it?” She looked puzzled for some reason. Her voice was melodious and silken, wanton and virginal at the same time. Both boys shifted a bit to hide their growing excitement.

“Excuse me,” Frank said as he finally just gave up and placed his hands over his lap, “but I’m quite sure I would have remembered a dark-haired beauty like you sharing this apartment with us.” He gestured to include George in the “us.”

George gave Frank a strange look, but said nothing.

“What are you talking about?” she said. She looked back and forth between them, and looked confused as well. “We’ve been roommates for a year and a half, George. Remember when I helped you with calculus? You wouldn’t have passed without, I think. Remember when you had the flu and wanted to call that babe you’d been seeing, Samantha Armitage, to break your date, but couldn’t stop sneezing enough to dial the phone?” She pointed to George and pouted prettily.

“And you, Frank. Who helped you design some of those house models your professors liked so much? Wouldn’t they be just a bit annoyed if they knew you’d had help?”

“This is a joke right?” George said. “Jack put you up to this. Where is he, in the bedroom watching?” George turned to the bedrooms and called out. “Okay, Jack, the joke’s over. You can come out now?”

Now it was the girl’s turn to be confused. “What are you talking about? I’m right here. I’m Jack.”

The silence was deafening, but then again, there was rarely a lot of noise at half past three in the morning, even in a college dormitory. George snorted and stalked off to check the various bedrooms. Not finding anything, he returned to the living room to stand, hands on hips, towering over the still seated woman. “Okay, Blondie. You’re beautiful, and I’d love to get to know you, but neither of us are in the mood for jokes about our friend, so what’s the story.”

“No story. I’m Jack Renfrew. Don’t you recognize me?”

“Jack Renfrew was not a babe,” George responded through gritted teeth.

“George, stop it! Look at me! You know who I am! I’m Jack Renfrew, your roommate. Now tell me, who am I?” Jackie stared intently at her friend as if willing him to recognize her.

George got a strange look on his face, dazed, almost like he’d been sucker-punched and was ready to pass out. He spoke with a wooden monotone, “You are Jack Renfrew. You share this apartment with Frank and me.”

“Good. Now grab a seat and chill out.” She looked at Frank who was watching George march over to the chair he had vacated and slouch down into it. “Now, how about you? Do you know who I am?” This time she was beseeching rather than demanding.

“You look like the most beautiful black-haired babe I’ve ever seen.”

Her face started to cloud over in a frown, but it was a cute frown, and Frank continued rapidly, “…but you seem to know things that only Jack should know. Before that damned hospital kicked us out, the doctor treating you said you were changing, and the shape I saw in what seemed to be your bed sure looked like it was female, so I guess maybe you are Jack.”

“Oh thank god. I was beginning to believe I was crazy,” she shrieked gleefully as she lunged out of her seat and hugged Frank, who immediately got the strangest look on his face and then grunted explosively, totally confused, but with a slack jaw and his eyes glazed over as he started to collapse. Jackie let go and quickly returned to her seat while Frank sagged onto the recliner behind him. It looked as if he would have sank right through the floor if the chair hadn’t, by purest chance, been there to catch him first.

“Oh, shit. I’m so sorry, Frank. I guess you might want to go clean up a bit.”

“What happened? How did you know? What’s going on here?” Frank was confused and then scared when he saw the damp stain on his pants.

George was still staring off into space, having evidently reached the mystic state of Satori, ‘No you, no me.’

She frowned again, but it was even cuter than her last frown. “Clean up while I try to bring George back to the land of the living. I think I know what’s happening, and can explain, but it’s pretty fantastic and I’ll need help from the both of you to confirm it.”

“Mind if we have some coffee?” Frank asked. “It’s been a long day and a longer night?”

“Sure, Frank,” Jackie responded sexily. “May I have a cup too?”

“How do you want it?”

“Like I always have it, Frank, with lots of cream and four sugars.”

Frank said nothing but rolled his eyes and prepared the coffee as requested. Jack had liked his coffee as black as midnight and as strong as sin.

“Still checking me out, Frank?”

Frank said nothing, but blushed as he brought over the coffee and sat at the counter of the kitchenette with the others.

“Okay.” George interjected. He was back to his usual domineering self. “Can we have an explanation now?”

“Right.” Jackie took a dainty sip of her coffee and sighed. “This is going to be hard to believe.”

“Harder than explaining how my dark-brown-haired male roommate turned into a gorgeous blonde bombshell?” George snorted.

“That’s twice you’ve said that,” Frank interrupted.

“Said what, Frank?”

“Said she was a blonde, when she’s clearly got black hair.”

George looked at Frank like he’d grown an extra head until Jackie interrupted while gesturing as if peering into an unseen crystal ball. “If you’ll just listen, gentlemen,” she said playfully, “Madame Olga will explain all…”

Still looking confusedly at each other, the two men subsided and waited.

“Thank you. Like I said, this is pretty fantastic, and I still don’t have all the pieces together, so bear with me.” She glanced at her two roommates, who nodded silently.

“Have either of you ever heard of a succubus?”

“It’s a female demon of some kind, isn’t it? The monks invented them to explain wet dreams or something.”

“Two points for George,” Jackie purred. “For another two points can you tell me what a succubus does?”

“Something to do with sex?”

“Close, but no points. For ten points and the win, can you take it, Frank?”

Frank just sat dumbly staring at her as she hummed the “Jeopardy” theme song; somehow making it sound like a striptease.

“Buzz. Time’s up. No points for you, Frank,” Jackie sighed. “Geez, guys, for all the time I spend helping you guys with your homework, you’d think you’d have picked up at least a little bit of what I was studying. “A succubus is a female demon, a member of the Lilim, the result of assorted couplings between the first woman, Lilith, and the Djinns. According to Sumerian legends, the Lilim were considered the first vampires.”

“You’re a vampire?” Frank self-consciously crossed himself while George visibly shrank away from her.

“No,” she sighed. “Although I suppose succubi and vampires are cut from a similar cloth. Where the vampire feeds off the blood of human beings, the succubus feeds off their sexual energy.”

“So why are you drinking that coffee, or do you still need regular food?” George was trying to keep it light, but it fell flat.

“Actually, if you’d seen what I’ve eaten in the last day you wouldn’t believe it. I’ve just got to enter the next food-eating contest. But to answer your question, I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. Still, it’s something normal and I could really use a little of that right now.”

“So you now live off sex? That’s a bit hard to imagine.”

“Harder than imagining that I can look like a blonde to you and a brunette to Frank?”

“Okay. I’ll agree that something weird is happening here, but there seem to be three questions that need to be answered. First, how did this happen? Second, what other weird surprises do you have for us? Third, can you prove any of this?”

“Add a fourth question.” Frank had been listening pensively, but now added a thought of his own. “How do we get you back to normal?”

“Oh, thank you,” Jackie beamed happily as she jumped up and down, clapping her hands. “I knew I could count on you guys. I could just hug you.”

“Uh, are you doing something?” The two men squirmed uncomfortably as they stared at her chest like it was the most important object in the world — as, perhaps, it was.

“Oops. Sorry.” Jackie concentrated for a moment and both Frank and George looked relieved.

After a brief pause to rearrange themselves yet again, George continued. “How about you finish explaining? And let’s add another item to the list: Why the Hell are you acting so girly now, when you’re claiming to be good old Jack Renfrew, man-about-town and normal college student?”

“Sure, at least I’ll explain what I can.” She took a deep breath and sighed before continuing. “As to how, I think it had something to do with that stripper we saw at Calaca E. Ever since that night, at least until I died, she’s been in my dreams.

George and Frank both looked shocked.

“What? What’s the matter?” Jackie asked as she stared worriedly at her friends.

“You died? Then the call from the hospital was real?”

“I don’t know about any call, but let me finish and I’ll explain. That night, after we got home and went to bed, I dreamed that that stripper had come floating into my room and we had fantastic sex, well, she sort of jacked me off that first time, but it was pretty damned good. She became more inventive after that.”

“Yeah, I remember. We all dreamed about her that night.”

“Well, I don’t think it was a dream. She came back to me every night for more than two weeks, even while I was in the hospital. I think she was a succubus. I think she was sucking my sexuality, or at least my masculine sexuality, from me, a bit at a time until I died.”

“Why you?” George asked. “Why don’t we hear about this all the time? And, once again, what do you mean you died?”

“Is anyone keeping count of how many questions you two have asked already?” Jackie asked flirtatiously before continuing. “Why me? I don’t know? I never thought of myself as being so excessively sexually endowed that I would be a magnet for some sexual vampire. As to why you don’t hear about such things, again, I don’t know. Maybe there aren’t a lot of succubi around, so it doesn’t happen all that often, or maybe most guys don’t get the full treatment I got, so just wake up the next morning with sticky underwear, a smile on their faces, and get on with their lives. How should I know? I’m just the woman who got struck by lightning. I have no idea how the lightning works, or what the odds are of getting hit and surviving.”

“Or maybe it was the treatment the hospital was providing,” George mused aloud. “I checked out your medical chart. They were using a non-traditional and somewhat controversial treatment, I think, pumping you full of male sexual hormones. For something that feeds on male sexuality, that might have been like catnip to a cat or waving a red flag in front of a bull.”

“I think that makes sense too,” Jackie acknowledged, but it was evident from her hesitant tone of voice that she wasn’t completely convinced. “It would explain why she kept coming back long after any natural male sexuality had been drained from my body.” With a wry grin, Jackie added, “I suppose I should be happy that I died like a man, orgasming to the end. Maybe for most people they stop after the initial depletion and it seems like little more than an especially vivid ‘wet dream.’”

“What about the girly stuff. You sure don’t act like Jack did, not at all, you even move differently.”

Her brow creased slightly. “I’ll get to that. Anyway, sometime that night I must have died. I remember being in a sort of dream state most of last week. I couldn’t rouse myself enough to talk or let anyone else know, but I was aware of what was going on around me. She came for me yet again. She did whatever she does to me again and then there were people rushing about all around me. The funny thing was, they never saw her as she floated above my head smiling down at me with a really strange expression on her face, sort of mingled sexuality and … crazy cruelty, the sort of expression you’d imagine on Jack Nicholson in The Shining, if Jack Nicholson was a sexy girl.

“Anyway, I watched, unable to speak or move as they took me to the emergency room where they gave me a couple of injections and then shocked me a couple of times. Funny thing. I couldn’t feel anything except a light tickle, as if someone was gently running his hands over my skin where I was being manhandled, even when the doctor shocked me with those watchmacallit things, and pounded on my chest, trying to get my heart started again. Then they pronounced me dead and I still couldn’t move, but started to feel this terrible hunger. The only other people in sight were the emergency room Doctor and the nurse working with him. I remember finding the energy to turn my eyes to glance at them, thinking I could finally move and was getting better, but when I looked they were having sex on the floor, right in the ER with what they thought was a dead body on the table above them. Jackie shivered a bit at the thought. It was gross … I think …. Wasn’t it? Jackie was momentarily nonplussed as she wondered why she might question whether sex around dead bodies might not be gross. With an imperceptible shake of her head to clear the cobwebs, she continued.

“Once they were done, exhausted and lying there, but not moving around much, I felt a little better — still starving, and still almost frozen to the table when they finally managed to pull themselves together and walk out the door, but they were still holding hands, so I didn’t know whether I’d done something to make them have sex with one another, or whether they’d had feelings for each other all along, and watching me die had … aroused them both, as happens to many people who’ve experienced dangerous or exciting situations.

Eventually an aide came by and pulled me off the operating table and rolled me into an elevator, where he evidently got so carried away by my dead beauty that he dropped his pants and started masturbating, or something, right there in the elevator, although my brain wasn’t working all that well at the time, so it took me a while to figure out what was happening. Anyway, after that I was able to move a bit more — so I got myself up and followed the signs to the cafeteria, because I was hungry.

“In the cafeteria, I just walked up to the line, took some food, and sat down. The cashier asked me for money, but I was starving and I asked him to let me pay later, but I was acting all flirty, like a girl on the make, and it just came naturally to me, as if a whole … life had been grafted onto me. I know what my damned bra size is, for example, even when my body changes, which it does, depending on who’s looking at me, and I know what color eyeshadow would look hot on me, and how to coördinate my lipstick, and rouge, and … everything, instinctively, like you might grab a baseball out of the air if someone threw it at you. Anyway, he got this glazed expression and repeated back what I had said to him in a monotone. He ignored me from then on, even when I went back for seconds, thirds, and so on. Several clusters of people gathered watching me eat, and eat, and eat. I ate more than I would normally eat in a month and was still hungry. The food wasn’t satisfying me, but there seemed to be a trickle of something — I’ve since figured out that it must have been sexual energy — coming from the crowd, because there were quite a few guys who were sort of putting the make on me, carrying over new stuff from the cafeteria line and stuff, but it didn’t bother me for some reason, even when they rubbed up against me — which felt pretty good, now that I think about it — and that finally filled me enough to stop eating.” Caught up in the tale of her death and rebirth, Jackie didn’t realize that tears were streaming down her face.

“Then what?” Frank gently prompted and handed Jackie a loose napkin that had been lying on the floor by his chair from a previous pizza feast.

“Then I went back to my room to try and find some clothes — until then I’d been wearing nothing but a standard-issue hospital gown….”

“You went traipsing around a hospital in a hospital gown looking like you do?” George interjected, always the practical one. “It’s amazing you weren’t groped in the hallway.”

“I’ll get back to you about appearances. Suffice to say, I think each of us has a different image of what I look like.” The other two looked puzzled. Jackie saw their expressions and sighed.

“Fine. We’ll do that first. Frank could you hand out some paper and pens. I’d like each of you to write down what you see when you look at me. You know, the obvious: gender, hair color, clothing, physical attributes.”

They all concentrated on their papers for a while, and then Jackie waited while the other two scribbled.

“Good. Now George, would you please read each description?”

George cleared his throat. “I’ll read mine first. ‘Female, about twenty years of age, blonde, well built, about five foot six inches tall, fantastic blue eyes, wearing a pale blue tank top and cut off jeans so short they should be illegal.’ I drew a picture too.” He held it up, and it was a pretty decent portrait of a buxom young woman, obviously blonde, although it was just a pencil sketch, and with light eyes that obviously represented blue

Jackie watched Frank listen incredulously, then look at George’s drawing. “You’d better read Frank’s now.”

“Okay,” George agreed and shuffled papers. “Frank wrote, ‘Female, about twenty years of age, black hair, well built, about five foot ten inches tall, green eyes….’ ” His voice faded away in confusion.

“That’s what I expected,” Jackie sighed. “Please finish reading, George.”

George hesitated, but then continued. “Wearing a red lycra mini dress.” He looked at Frank like he was crazy.

“He’s not crazy, George” Jackie sighed and gently reached out a hand to comfort him only to jerk it back at the last moment for fear of doing to him what she had done to the orderly at the hospital. With yet another sigh, she said, “Now read mine, please.”

George nodded and shuffled papers again. “Male, about twenty years of age, light brown hair, slight pot belly, about six-foot one-inch tall, brown eyes, wearing a dark blue Ærosmith tee-shirt and faded blue jeans. Jackie, this just isn’t possible,” George declared and waved the papers in the air.

“I’m afraid it is, and it isn’t exactly what I’d thought I could do at first. I seem to be able to do several things. I made a list, based on my experiences so far and what I could glean from my textbooks.” She pulled a folded paper out of one of her textbooks and read.

“One: I feed off sexual energy.”

“Two: I can control other people’s minds to make them do what I want, more or less.”

“Three: At first I thought that I could take on any appearance at all, because I practiced for a while — after I came home — when I realized that I’d gotten myself dressed in my favorite ‘comfy clothes’ in an empty room. My first tries all had me as one kind of foxy girl or another, but by concentrating I could manage to look like Jack, or so I thought. You two have disabused me of the notion — which is too darned bad, because I’d thought that I’d solved all my problems, since I could go to classes, and drive, and maintain my normal life with hardly any effort ….” Her voice trailed off, and she pouted slightly, than shrugged and went on. “Anyway, I can appear as almost any female shape to others, usually whatever they themselves consider the ideal woman, which I must do unconciously, because it happens by itself, but I can also control it to some degree, if I concentrate. The other person’s own desires and expectations can modify my … presentation, to some extent, especially if I’m not putting a lot of effort into maintaining the illusion, so that’s why I could make myself look male to me, at least for a short time, and why I looked a lot like both your own ‘ideal women,’ which is blonde for George, and dark for you, Frank. but then I slip back into a default female mode that looks a lot like your idea of me, Frank, and I guess like my own former notion of what my ‘ideal woman’ was. I’ve already noticed that it’s getting hard to hold the illusion of being male, even to myself, because I don’t really want to be a guy anymore, so it’s just something I sort of half-way expect to be, but know that I’m not, like you might see a figure in a fun-house mirror maze and think for a minute that it was your own reflection, but then realize that it wasn’t. I’d guess I’ll be fully socialized in a more traditional orientation and expectation very soon, because guys look attractive to me now, and I’m starting to find it difficult to remember that I was ever a man. so I suspect that it’s built into the spell — or whatever it is that woman did — that turned me into what you see now.” She furrowed her brow slightly as she concentrated, and turned herself sequentially into a petite Chinese woman, then a Geena Davis look-alike at six feet tall, and then a reasonable facsimile of Grace Jones before flowing back to what they thought she looked like. What I can’t do — evidently — is change myself to look like any kind of male, except to myself, and even that ability is fading. My brain is already rewriting my childhood, so I can remember my favorite dolls now, and the dress I wore for my Senior Prom, which ought to feel a lot weirder than it does.” She looked puzzled for a while, then shrugged again. “What is, is. I’m not going to worry about what can’t be helped.”

“Four: I can disappear.” She demonstrated by flicking into invisibility and back again, as easily as blinking her eyes.

“Five: I can float through walls and I guess you could say I can fly, seeing as how I can control the speed and direction of my movement as I float.” She levitated herself until she was floating near the ceiling, but not too close, because she didn’t want to muss her hair.

“Six: I’m probably impervious to just about any type of pain or injury, as far as I know now. I’ll leave that to your imagination, though. I got that from my books, and I don’t trust them much further than I can throw them. With any occult work, there’s a lot of nonsense woven into what might be true, because people like certainty, and a Sorceror or High Magician who acts like a scientist and admits his ignorance doesn’t sell many books, or attract many students.”

“Seven: I think I can live just about forever, although there’s some reference to several angels sent to destroy demons like me. Their names are Sanvi, Sansanvi, and Semangelaf, although the names vary slightly in different traditions.”

“Eight: Love, real love, is painful to me. I’m guessing that’s what I felt when those teenagers went at it. Anyway, love is the antithesis of what a succubus is about, lust, and I suspect other forms of magic could be painful and might be able to override my will.”

“Teenagers?” George asked. “What teenagers? I don’t remember you mentioning anything…”

“Sorry. It was on the way back to the dorms. I floated into an apartment and there were two teenagers. They went at it and I fed off their energy, which disgusted me, so I stopped. Then they went at it again and it was horribly painful. I’m guessing they fell in love and that’s what hurt so much. Anyway, nine: I’m supposed to have some type of control over animals, especially snakes.”

“Ten: I may have some type of control over, or affinity with, fire, although I’m not sure what. All I could find about that was that some descriptions of Lilith, the mother of all demons, describe her as being a woman from the navel up and fire from the navel down. I wonder, though, if that isn’t just an allusion to the fire in the loins some poets use to describe sexuality….” She drifted off into her own throughts again, then looked up at the two of them and offered a wry smirk. “See? That’s the trouble with scientists and scholars. No final answers and no pounding on pulpits, only lots of questions.”

“If there’s anything else, I haven’t been able to do it or find it in my research.” Jackie folded the paper and stuffed it back into the book. He waited for the others to speak.

Finally, George took the bull by the horns. “This has got to be some kind of elaborate joke. Magic doesn’t really exist. Succubæ don’t really exist. You can’t really be Jack Renfrew.” He turned to Frank. “Tell her, Frank. Tell her this is a crock.”

Jackie sat quietly waiting for the tirade to end. When Frank didn’t confirm his opinion, George finally sputtered to a halt and Jackie asked, “What do I need to do to convince you?”

“Prove yourself,” George blustered. “Do some of the things you say you can do.”

Jackie thought while George stewed and Frank waited patiently. “I’m already appearing to each of you as a different person and that hasn’t convinced you? I levitated and that didn’t convince you? I ran through changes on a handful of totally different ‘looks’ and that didn’t convince you? What do you want me to do, go find Saint Peter as a character witness?”

George shook his head no. “Stage magicians do that sort of stuff all the time. I want to see something hard.”

“Well, I guess I could float through the walls, or disappear and bring back a pizza or something, but you’d probably say it was another trick. Same if I were to let you drive a knife into me to show I can’t be hurt, and I’m not sure about that, so I won’t do it anyway. I don’t know about the fire or animals yet, so I’d rather not try something in that area. How about I give you an orgasm where you sit?”

“I’m so close now if you bent over and showed me a bit more of your tits or ass I’d be there. That won’t work.”

“If I were really as much of a girl as I think I’m becoming, I’d probably either be insulted or flattered,” Jackie noted as she smiled sardonically. “But as I’m not, let’s just say that I’m a tough-minded broad who can smack you on your ass if I feel like it, and anything I say about that would be unprintable. That means I need to bring out the big guns.”

Again she thought for a moment. “How about I make someone fall in lust with you? Frank maybe?”

“Not on your life,” George said. “I’m already wondering if he’s not in on this prank.”

Frank looked relieved. “Thanks, pal. I like you, but I’d prefer our friendship to remain on the other side of shaking hands, and I believe her. I’m convinced, and you’re just being a jerk.”

Privately, Jackie agreed, but George was her friend, so she wanted to cut him some slack. The ‘scientific method’ was very important to George, almost an article of faith, and whatever it was that she was, didn’t seem like science at all. “Well, I hate to bring some other unsuspecting victim into this, but I don’t see a choice. How about this? You name the person, any person, and I’ll have them here as soon as they can get here.”

“Anyone?”

“Anyone,” Jackie repeated, but then thought better of her blanket statement. “That is, anyone human who’s not some kind of magic user. I don’t know of any at this time, but if I can exist, I’ve got to believe they can too, and you can’t take advantage of them, whoever it is, since that wouldn’t be fair.”

“No problem. I’ll even make it easy for you. She’s right here in this dorm. Can you read my mind and tell me who I’m talking about?”

“I can’t read your mind without certain … consequences, although I could probably make you tell me and then forget you told me, which would seem like almost the same thing. The funny thing is, you’re so predictable, I don’t really think I need to read your mind anyway.” Jackie watched George cringe at the thought of having his mind controlled by someone else. He didn’t want to believe, but he was getting there.

“Let me guess. You’re probably thinking about Julie Danson. You’ve lusted after her since you first met, a year and a half ago, and it’s been killing you that she’s a lesbian.”

George nodded.

“You’re sure I can’t convince you some other way?”

“Not that I can think of.”

Jackie sighed. “I guess that’s it then? Will you really believe me if she walks up to the door to this apartment, knocks on it and then, when you open it, she seems glad to see you?”

“Not only will I believe,” George smirked, “I’ll be very relaxed.”

Another, even bigger sigh came from Jackie. “Very well, but you can’t take advantage of her. That wouldn’t be fair, and more than that, if you try it, I’m perfectly capable of draining you dry in five seconds flat, which will be an interesting start to a ‘date.’ Give me a few minutes. She’s still living downstairs, right?” George nodded and she faded out.

Less than five minutes later she was back. Reappearing behind George, who was still looking for some secret trick, mirrors or something, to explain her disappearance, she tapped him on the shoulder and, after he had jumped in shock, said, “Answer the door, George.” She sounded resigned and regretful.

“Why? No one’s knocked on it.”

With a frustrated glare at George for his stubbornness, Frank walked over to the door. Just as he reached it, there were several tentative knocks. When he opened it, Julie was standing there in a baby doll nightie. Her eyes feverishly scanned the room and, when she saw George, she smiled and lunged at him, giving him the biggest and best kiss he had ever received.

 

Copyright © 1998, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2009 by Jeffrey M. Mahr

Copyright © 2011 by Levanah