Two pieces of parchment slid out of a slot on the wall and one of the hobgoblins flipped them around and held them out, along with a pen. Amaranth took them. They were liability waivers with a bunch of disclaimers, a signature line, and check boxes in a section labeled “Privacy” at the bottom. One of them said “Miss Mackenzie Blaise” at the top and the other one said “Miss PVFC Nymph #4I.”

Amaranth scowled at the form but didn’t say anything about it.

“What’s the difference between image privacy and identity privacy, please?” she asked.

“Image privacy means you won’t appear in any pictures, illusions, or memory transfers of tonight’s event,” the hobgoblin told her. “Identity privacy means you may appear but your face will be blurred.”

“Is the whole event being captured?”

“There are scrying orbs throughout the premises for your safety, Madame,” the hobgoblin said. “Selected images from them may be used on the members’ weavesite or for publicity purposes.”

“Is there a fee for the privacy services?”

“No, there is not, Madame,” the hobgoblin said. “A private atmosphere is an essential club function.”

Amaranth looked at me sideways.

“I’m going to put image privacy for you, baby, considering,” Amaranth said. She glanced up at the hobgoblin. “Um, also, there’s a mistake here… up at the top, under status, your autoscribe checked ‘wholly owned creation/construct’.”

“Yes, Madame,” the hobgoblin she was talking to said. “That’s not a problem as long as your companion is your owner or an authorized representative.”

I tried to catch Amaranth’s eye to let her know that what she was about to do was a really, really bad idea, that if ever there was a time when it would be necessary to bend the truth, we’d found it, but I could already feel the umbrage rising.

“Well, she isn’t my owner because I don’t have an owner,” Amaranth said. “I am wholly my own creation, and even though it might not seem like a big deal to you, I’d appreciate it if I could get a form that has the right status.”

“I’m afraid it is a big deal, Madame,” the hobgoblin said. “I cannot allow you to enter the club without the permission of your owner.”

“This is ridiculous,” Amaranth said. “Look, here’s my student ID card,” she said, holding it out to him.

“Your identity is not in doubt,” the hobgoblin said. “It’s already been verified, along with your legal status. Whatever personal relationships and arrangements our guests may have, legal chattel is not…”

“I am not chattel!” Amaranth yelled, stomping her foot. “Look, only free persons are allowed a university education, so the fact that I even have a student ID card proves your stupid form wrong.”

“Madame, university admissions are not ours to decide, and neither is admission to our private club a matter for a university to decide,” the hobgoblin said as laughter and footsteps echoed down the stairs from the entrance. He glanced past us. “If you would care to step into the security office, we do have a mirror you can use.”

“Oh, bother… you go on ahead, baby,” Amaranth said to me. “If I can’t get in, I’ll have them take a message to you… you’ll have to manage without me in that case. Just see if you can find that helpful man from the leather store, I’ll bet he’s a member. If you can’t find him, I’m sure you can find loads of people who’d like a chance to flog you or something… stress that you’re invulnerable and have no hard limit on force. Look for somebody tall. A woman would be better than a man, now that I think about it… you know, if all else fails, you can just challenge people to come up and smack your butt as hard as they can. It won’t be very refined, but it’ll be something nobody else can match.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, a lump in my throat at the prospect of facing the club alone.

“Oh, Mack… chances are this won’t take more than a minute to get this taken care of,” she said. “This is just in case… just try to stay out of trouble and don’t do anything rude or wild or crazy. Look, watch… don’t speak or touch. Okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get somebody from home to straighten this out,” she said. She gave me a kiss on the forehead. It was a sadly numb gesture, with the black rubber mask between my skin and her lips.

“Amaranth?” I said quietly, in a tone that I hoped worked both for asking permission to speak and apology for not having it in the first place.

“Yes, baby? You can say what you need to say.”

“Thank you, ma’am… tonight, it’s more important that you get to go inside then it is that you prove a point,” I said.

“Of… of course, baby,” she said, her eyes fluttering. “You’re right… you’re absolutely right. Tonight’s not about what’s fair or right. I’ll just get someone from the village in the mirror and tell them I need permission.”

She gave my form, and I signed it. After making sure that her neat little x was in the image privacy box and that the “Free” box was filled in, I handed it to the other hobgoblin, who touched my hand with a wand. The rune of youth appeared on it.

“See you in a bit, baby,” she said.

I didn’t want to break out of my submissive mindset any more than I had so I just waved in acknowledgment, then turned my attention to the Tomb of Horrors.

The first thing I noticed was that there was blood in the air… it was faint and it was distant, but it was there.

I really shouldn’t have been surprised… not everybody who shared my turn-ons had invulnerable skin. It wasn’t a lot, but it was everywhere. I was surprised to note that some of it was clearly virginal… surprised that I could recognize it and surprised that somebody would have their skin broken at a bondage club before they had their hymen broken.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath… it had been a reflexive action to steel myself, but in retrospect it wasn’t the wisest idea.

I could also tell that most of the blood was human, and that it was overwhelmingly female. The thought made me a weird mixture of hungry and horny… horny because I could taste arousal.

Also scared… if I lost control, the best case scenario would be getting maced in the face by security and thrown out, and even that would be a life-ending disaster under the circumstances.

My eyes were still shut, but I couldn’t shut out the scents, nor the sounds that reached my ears: murmured conversation, clinking glasses… leather hitting flesh, metal hitting flesh, restraints creaking and clanking, people moaning and screaming and crying out.

I decided to stand there with my eyes closed a bit longer. It seemed safest… or at least it did until somebody bumped into me from behind and I realized I was standing in the doorway.

“Excuse me,” I said, and I stepped aside. My eyes snapped open just long enough to catch a glimpse of a bit of smooth skin showing through a cut-out in a tight black sleeve.

It looked… yummy.

I made sure I was positioned well out of the way of traffic and closed my eyes again. I breathed in again, but this time I did so consciously, focusing on what Dee had taught me.

I should have been practicing this all along, I thought.

My afternoon under Amaranth’s stern directions helped make up the deficit a bit, though… she had given me my orders, to stay out of trouble, to not touch, to not get thrown out. I couldn’t do anything about the appealing scents and sounds, but I could cling to that. I could stand in meditative silence, listening to my own breath and denying my desires.

I started to worry about how weird I looked, standing there rigidly with my eyes closed, controlling my breath… then I remembered where I was. Wasn’t the D in BDSM for “discipline”? Or maybe it was domination. Either way, it really was nobody’s business why I was standing out of the way and breathing, and I was in one of the few places where that would probably be acknowledged.

The only problem was that I had no way of knowing how long I stood there… the longer I did it, the more disconnected I felt from everything. Had it been a minute? Five minutes? Fifteen? Amaranth had said she’d send word in to me if things didn’t work out for her, but there was the possibility that something would happen to prevent that… like she might lose her temper and be thrown out without a chance.

It was time to open my eyes to the world, I decided… Amaranth had told me to look around, and I’d probably cope better with being on stage if I had some idea of what all that entailed. I let out a breath and opened my eyes slowly.

The first thing I noticed were the skeletons carrying drink trays, as a pair of them were crossing right in front of my field of vision. I wondered if they were a usual fixture at the Tomb or if it was a Veil thing. I supposed it was better in one way than using intelligent automata, though there was the issue of where the bones came from.

As they moved out of my focus, I saw just beyond them. There was a circular stage with naked girl… woman, really… on it, with her arms and legs lashed to the legs of a sawhorse. A man was cracking a whip thing with a bunch of knots across her ass. Her face was red and streaked with tears. Her ass and thighs were both kind of big… meaty. I looked away from her, and there was another woman suspended upside down in a magical web that had been strung between two poles. There was a person wearing a black leather mask with big exaggerated elf ears prodding at her with a wand. That was just tasteless.

Taking my eyes off the stage, I looked around at the crowd. There were a lot of people in corsets, both male and female… a lot of masks, too, but as with the skeletons I didn’t know how much of that was because it was the Feast of Veil and how much of it was just to be expected. The fact that they had a face-blurring service suggested that not everybody wore masks.

I noticed the collars, too… my neck kind of itched when I saw them, maybe in the way that some girls’ fingers itch for rings. Fuck Caron, I thought. I wanted one. Maybe something tasteful and discreet, something that didn’t scream out my kinks to everybody who saw it, but if we made it through this I wanted to wear Amaranth’s collar.

Maybe our relationship was pretty new, but we’d earned the right to decide how to handle it.

Even some of the people who weren’t currently in the spotlight were in some kind of restraints or being led around on leashes. I was kind of surprised to see that a lot of the people there, in fetishy clothes or not, were actually just kind of standing around and talking. There were some couples where I could see one of them was sort of standing quietly and politely at attention and being really deferential, but there were also ones where if somebody was a submissive, you couldn’t tell by looking.

And then there were the ones like the woman who had a man wearing nothing but a net of leather straps down on the floor, licking her boot.

I saw at least three people with black wizards’ robes on… three more than I’d ever seen in person in real life, assuming they weren’t Veil costumes or fetish roleplaying outfits. I got chills looking at them.

I didn’t see Caron, but I was on one side of a fairly large space that had a bunch of raised stages in the center of it. There were almost sure to be private rooms, too.

Well, if she missed the performance, that was her fault… we’d be sure to have plenty of witnesses.

Then I saw someone that made my heart freeze.

Mercy was in the club.

She was wearing an outfit made of some kind of glistening black carapace stuff that covered half her body… her left foot was bare up to the ankle, then her left leg was covered up to the top of her thigh while her right leg was exposed. Her left hip and pelvic region were exposed, though she had full coverage in the middle. The pattern continued above the waist, with a corset-like structure coming up to just below her left breast, which was completely exposed. Her right breast and shoulder were covered. She was wearing a half-mask over the left side of her face.

She saw me, too.

“Puppy!” Mercy called, gliding towards me. “Well, this is a happy surprise.”

“My name is Mackenzie,” I said.

“Your name is Puppy,” she said. “I had planned on coming up with another one, but honestly, after even a week of thinking of you as ‘Puppy’, nothing else sounded right… and of course, I couldn’t very well call you Lulu now. Anyway, if I wanted to be snapped at by lower animals, I’d sign on with the Imperial Army again. I don’t tolerate it when my boys bark or growl at me, and I won’t put up with it from you at this stage in your adoption.”

“‘Adoption’ is a funny word for what you have in mind,” I said.

“I don’t have any illusions about anything I do,” she said. “But I am allowed my cute little affectations. It amuses me, and I think it’s a better reflection of my feelings towards my pets than the nomenclature I use in my business dealings. Anyway, as I say, I won’t tolerate it… I’m giving you three strikes, just like in rapier dueling… you’ve already used two of them. If I hear anything from you that isn’t fond, appreciative whimpering, I will have you shown to the door. You have to start learning now, Puppy, that if you misbehave, you don’t get to do the things you want.”

I froze, willing my lips to lock together. It seemed she didn’t know about my deal with Caron, but if she really could have me removed… and as a wealthy member of the club, it seemed very likely that she could… then she had me dead to rights and she didn’t even seem to know it.

My only hope was to get things over with as quickly as I could.

I tried to figure out if it would be safer to excuse myself politely, or if Mercy would be insulted by even the attempt at courtesy from a “lower animal”.

“Oh, don’t slink off yet, Puppy,” Mercy said. “Come with me. Come!”

Reluctantly, I followed her to where there were leather-upholstered benches lining part of the wall, with little peninsulas jutting out to form u-shaped seating areas. She sat down on one of them and pointed at the floor in front of her.

“Sit,” she said. “Stay.”

Seeing no other choice, I sat down on the floor.

“There’s someone I want you to meet… she’s off being exercised right now, but she should be back presently. Anyway, since you’re here, I thought we might as well have a little chat… well, I’ll have a little chat and you’ll listen. I’m rational enough to know you aren’t capable of holding an actual intelligent conversation, even if I do enjoy talking to you. Oh, look!”

I turned and saw a man… the same stubble-headed, wiry man who had made the delivery from Mercy to the suite I’d shared with Steff… was heading towards us, leading a naked blonde girl by a leash. Her eyes were wide and unfocused, and she appeared to be moving automatically.

She looked scared completely out of her wits, was probably a good thing to be for one of Mercy’s slaves.

I had a horrible thought about where this was going. Mercy had said she wanted me to meet her… she’d also said she intended to give me “treats”. Was she going to try to teach me some kind of horrible lesson about my “true nature”?

The worst thing was that the thought that should have turned my stomach instead made it growl. I had to admit that my mouth watered at the sight of the slave girl… I could smell her skin… her sweat, her fear… from where I was sitting, and it smelled good.

Had Mercy done something to make her more appetizing?

Or was it just the faint tang of blood in the air?

The man took the leash off her collar and made a silent bow to Mercy, who didn’t even look at him. She reached out and grabbed the girl around the waist, pulling her onto the bench and squeezing her tight.

“This is my new little darling, my Lulu,” she said, stroking the naked girl’s stringy hair… “Lulu II, honestly, but I don’t want her to feel second-best to anyone. Isn’t she precious?”

This is what I smell like to Feejee, I realized. I didn’t have any words for it, but the other half-demon… I refused to think of her by the absurd pet name Mercy had foisted upon her… smelled absolutely irresistible. I couldn’t look at her and not see meat.

I didn’t look at her, but I could still smell her.

“I swear, if I had any doubts about my long-term plans, they’ve flown out the window since I met you, Puppy… I won the freaking half-demon lottery. My buyers found four of them, born in a town that was the site of a rampage forty or fifty years ago,” she said. “On some little speck of rock off the coast of the Mother Isle… all the males of the litter were put down when they turned, but the bitches were shipped off to an institution. There were more of them, but sadly, only the ones who could be fed the most easily were kept… anyway, the island’s got a new proconsul who wanted the place shut down, and so I found myself with four bitches for my breeding program. They were just gated in yesterday morning… that actually cost me more than they did, but I wasn’t going to risk sending my precious babies on a long voyage before I even met them.”

Mercy with four female half-demons was a terrifying thought, but less terrifying to me personally than Mercy with no female half-demons.

“Oh, don’t despair, Puppy… Mama Mercy hasn’t given you up for them,” she said. “I’ve been busy, I admit… I found out about this opportunity just two days after our first little encounter, and overseeing the deal’s kept my hands pretty full. But now that it’s all taken care of… well, I have to confess, I’ve fallen a little in love with you. You’re just so stupid and awkward and helpless… maybe not the best breeding stock after all, pedigree aside, but an adorable pet. Anyway, it’s not like I could afford to pass up on breeding you… not after what happened with the rest of the bitches.”

She laughed ruefully, shaking her head the way she had when she’d told me about the last female half-demon she’d procured. My stomach found a lower floor to sink to than ever before, and I suddenly didn’t feel quite so hungry.

Okay, that was a lie… I felt even hungrier. Sick at mind and heart, but hungry in mouth.

“My boys… if I could stay angry at my boys, I’d be furious now,” she said. “I learned my lesson with Lulu, so for their new sisters, I had reinforced crates built for them, with pain and lightning wards on the bars… magic, of course. I’ve tried using holy wards, but they wouldn’t have been good for the new arrivals, and anyway, sanctity never lasts very long, does it? I don’t know why so many people swear by it.”

That made perfect sense to me… if someone as relatively innocuous as Steff could de-sanctify a place, there was no way a holy ward could survive around Mercy… at least not the run-of-the-mill kind that anybody who’d deal with her in the first place could make.

“So, once the bitches arrived, I crated them and put them in the boys’ kennel so they could have a chance to get used to each other before I tried mixing them. Three hours later I went to check on them… all four of the crates had been demolished, and only one of the bitches was still alive. The boys were lying on the floor… the wards on the fourth cage finally knocked them out. So, I’m in the process of feeding them three-quarters of my enchanter team… I try to be fair in my punishments. It’s a slow process because I’m doing it by weight. Oh, but I couldn’t punish them, Puppy… I disciplined when training them, but I don’t have the heart to really punish them. They know what they did, and I think they feel bad about it… they left the skins completely almost intact in the wrecked cages, like they thought I wouldn’t notice what they’d done.”

Assuming the other three had tasted at all like this one smelled, I couldn’t imagine anyone keeping the presence of mind it would take to do that and not just devour them skin and all.

“Oh, but I was telling the story,” Mercy said. “So there they are, lying on the floor and twitching, and there’s Lulu, my favorite of the four, absolutely rigid… well, she was catatonic, really. I wasn’t planning on letting her sleep in my bed until she was thoroughly trained, but I didn’t have anywhere else to put her… and if you want to talk about irony, Puppy, my usual method of training a female is to start by raping her until she’s catatonic, so it was kind of funny… it was actually good, in a different way. Even at my age, there are still new things to see and do and feel… I tell you, Puppy, whoever it was who talked about ‘the banality of evil’ didn’t know what she was talking about. Talk about a failure of imagination.”

I stared at the poor girl… I couldn’t begin to imagine what it had been like, being caged and then watching as three other women were torn apart and devoured… and then being taken into Mercy’s bed…

“I see the way you’re looking at her, Puppy, and it’s okay,” Mercy said. “I did my homework… I know you like a nice rack. That’s one of the reasons she was my favorite to begin with. When you decide to become her sister, you’ll be able to play with her all the time. You aren’t as aggressive as my boys. I can tell I won’t have any trouble leaving the two of you alone.”

The feelings of horror and pity melted away from the sudden heat that idea sparked inside me. My heart raced at the thought… my heart raced and my mouth watered. I couldn’t take my eyes off Lulu now. I didn’t care that it was a stupid name or that it wasn’t her name, she was food and food didn’t need a fucking name…

She looked at me, too… it was the first sign that anybody was home upstairs. Her eyes locked on me, and I saw my hunger reflected back in them. She looked at me and gave a little sound that was something between a purr and a whimper, and she licked her lips.

Suddenly she didn’t look so much like food. With just those small gestures, the balance had shifted. Maybe it was positional… she was up high by Mercy, I was down low.

Or maybe it was just my nature… I was no predator.

If I was shut up in a room with Lulu, I would be prey.

“Oh, look at that! She likes you already!” Mercy said. “You know, if you wanted to see what your life will be like with me, we could set up a little puppy play-date where you could come sleep over. Wouldn’t that be fun? I could introduce you to my boys, of course, in a controlled setting… you know about Brutus… my first… and then there’s his younger brother Cassius. If I had had any inkling I might run into you here, I would have brought pictures. Oh, no, what am I talking about? I would have brought them. I can still send for them…”

“Excuse me,” Amaranth said from behind me, and her voice never sounded warmer or more beautiful. “I need to collect my toy.”

I turned around and threw my arms around her legs, clinging to her aura of warmth and comfort like a lifeline.

“Ah, you must be Amaranth,” Mercy said.

“At least somebody here knows my proper name,” Amaranth said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

“You know who I am, I’m sure,” Mercy said. “You may call me Mercy. I’ve been hoping for a chance to speak to you.”

“That’s just fabulous, because I’ve been wanting to talk to you, too,” Amaranth said. “The Imperium may have some blind spots in its collective morality, but there are such a thing as anti-discrimination laws.”

“Anti… what?” Mercy said.

“Ma’am… can we please go?” I said quietly.

“Hush, baby, I’m talking,” Amaranth said to me. “Mercy, your advertisements claim that you’ll serve any race, but persons in your employ have repeatedly refused to do business with me.”

“First, I don’t have any persons in my employ,” Mercy said. “I have animals in my possession. That both simplifies things and gives me more options. Secondly, I wasn’t aware that nymphs ate meat, but I’m fairly certain we did make a deal with you at one point, and I’ll be happy to accept your gold in the future.”

“I’m talking about selling, not buying,” Amaranth said. “As reprehensible as the way you deal with unwilling victims of every other race is, the fact that you refuse to consider an offer from a consenting adult-equivalent nymph not only compounds your moral issues, but it may leave you exposed to legal consequences as well.”

“Okay. Wow, ” Mercy said. “You are the brightest flower in the field, aren’t you? Let me explain some things to you. First of all, even if you were human, you wouldn’t have a case… nobody has a right to force another person to buy them as a slave. Second, even if that were not the case, I get the feeling you’re talking about renting, not selling, and since we don’t enter into similar agreements with anyone else, it wouldn’t be discrimination to refuse to do so with you. Third, even if you wanted to sell yourself and I wanted to buy you, I couldn’t… nymphs can’t be enslaved, under current law.”

“Yes, but this is the beauty of it,” Amaranth said. “I don’t have to be a slave if I’m consenting, and as an immortal nymph…”

“As an immortal nymph, you have an immortal mother who’s made her thoughts on exploitation and abuse of nymphs almost apocalyptically clear,” Mercy said. “But I’ll make you a deal: you have your little toy poodle sign my little piece of paper, and in a century or two… when I’m ready to deal with Khaele as an equal… I’ll eat you as many times as you want. Okay?”

“Now you’re adding blasphemy to your sins,” Amaranth said. She reached for my hand. “Come along, Mack.”

Profoundly grateful, I grabbed her hand and let myself be led away as fast as I could totter.

“And she growls about being called ‘Puppy’,” Mercy said.

Wednesday: A command performance.

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“You know, we’ve been eating a lot of those crackers,” Steff said. “And the cheese… that’s about as filling as it gets, right? Bunch of crackers and big chunks of indigestible dairy products.”

“Yeah,” I said, though honestly I felt like I might as well have been throwing the food away as much as eating it. My stomach felt empty… actually, that’s an understatement. It felt like emptiness itself… like a vast expanse of nothingness that went on forever. “We have been eating a lot.”

“What I mean is, we don’t have to eat right away,” Steff said. “I mean, this place has a kitchen. We could put it away for a while.”

“Yeah,” I said. It might have been my imagination… it probably was… but I thought I could smell something coming from the lift doors. An aroma like that in the steam baths, but… more. It was a scent I recognized from unremembered dreams and the unwelcome memories of my hungry episode.

“I mean, it’s not like we’re in any rush,” Steff said. She was talking so quickly, and the lift seemed to be moving so slowly… it was a toss-up which was more frustrating. “There’s no hurry… we don’t have to do anything with the food right now, right this minute. We… we could even sleep on it, right? Have… take care of the whole thing tomorrow? I mean, you said we don’t have to be back until the afternoon.”

“Uh… yeah,” I said, though I couldn’t quite remember what she was talking about. Tomorrow? The afternoon? What about now? Now was feeling pretty important.

“When’s checkout, anyway? That’s something we should probably find out,” Steff said, prattling on. “I mean, it’s important. Probably the meal will have to wait while we get that figured out.”

The lift chimed and the doors slid open. A man wearing a Havenwood uniform pushed a linen-draped trolley with a large covered platter, two tall thin wine glasses, and three bottles in ice on it. He was followed by what had to be the deliveryman from Tender Mercy’s, a nondescript man in a nondescript but very nice suit, carrying a large black bag with no markings.

“Good evening, folks,” the room service guy said. “Would you like to take this in the dining room, or out here?”

Steff looked at me. I didn’t return her gaze… I was staring at the bag. It smelled so good. I could also smell the room service guy and Steff all of a sudden… the guy with the trolley made my stomach rumble and stretch like it was waking up from a deep sleep.

Steff smelled oddly appetizing… nothing like gourmet fare by any stretch of the imagination, but a little exotic, and certainly not bad. Anyway, wasn’t there a saying like “hunger is the best sauce?” If so, the whole world could have been marinating in it…

“Um, dining room, I guess,” Steff said.

“Dining room it is, then,” he said. He wheeled the cart through the living room and into the dining area. We all followed, the silent man with the black bag only moving ahead of me when he realized that I wasn’t going to move ahead of him and his cargo. He walked sideways… one eye on me and one eye on where he was going.

Once we were in the dining room, he waited there silently until the room service guy cleared out, leaving his cart behind. The deliveryman set the oversized pouch down on the table and opened it. I swear my knees swayed as the aroma that had been trapped within it hit the air. From the bag, he pulled out a plastic domed take-out plate.

I took a step forward as soon as I saw it. Even with the clear part fogged up with steam, I felt it pulling me in like a lodestone pulls iron filings. He held up a white gloved hand and I stopped dead in my tracks, the hair on the back of my neck standing up as some primitive instinct held me back and kept me from running and tearing the plate out of his hands… or the flesh from his throat.

He set the dish down on the table and then produced two more and a large earthenware jug. I heard a growl echoing in my head, and started forward again.

His head whipped around and he looked me straight in the eyes. I tried to stare back, tried to force the fire into my eyes to make him back down… but his eyes were as empty and dark as the pit in my stomach. I whimpered, and had to look away.

“Sit,” he said. Though I’d never heard his silky voice, the steely tone underneath it was one I recognized and responded to without thinking. I sat. “Stay.” He turned towards Steff. “Would you care to inspect the meal?” Steff must have shook her head, because he simply said, “Enjoy.”

“Wait,” Steff said as he turned and headed for the door. “Don’t we pay now?”

“It has been taken care of,” he said. “Enjoy.”

“But we didn’t charge it,” Steff said. “I have a little pouch of gold with my clothes, if you’ll just…”

“Enjoy,” the man repeated a third time, and he left without waiting for further objection.

We both held our positions in silence, the meat tantalizingly close but too far for me to reach. The man’s feet made no sound, but after a short while we heard the lift doors open and then close. Steff let out a breath… even that smelled good.

“Okay… that was creepy,” she said. “I know that isn’t right. They made such a big deal out of getting payment… this is the smallest part of the order, but they should still collect it.”

I didn’t say anything… I just stayed crouched where I was, looking at the stack of covered plates and the sealed jug with a fierce longing.

“Maybe we should just put all that stuff away without touching it, in case there’s any dispute?” Steff said, though from what she’d said that sounded like a horribly naive view of Mercy’s dispute resolution process. “Or maybe we should let the restaurant know that we tried to pay and see what they want us to do… I don’t know. What do you think, Mack?”

I’d started crawling towards the table… slowly, low to the ground to avoid notice.

“Mack, you can stand up, you know,” Steff said.

“Yeah,” I said, getting to my feet. Of course I could. I crept towards the food, stalking my way up towards the domed plates. As hungry as I was, I didn’t want to move too quickly… I didn’t want to give myself away too soon, or else I’d spoil everything and be left with my pangs.

“I guess we should probably take a look,” Steff said, crossing in front of me and unstacking the containers.

I froze, certain that… wait, what was I certain of? That they would scatter and run? That had been the thought in my head, but that was ridiculous… I was treating dead meat like it was live prey, like Steff.

I shuddered. What was wrong with me? Did I really have so little self-control? Was my demon side buried so close to the surface that the smell of cooked flesh was enough to wake up some sort of sick hunting instincts? I wasn’t a hunter…

“These are the ribs,” Steff said, peering at one of the containers. “Looks like we got two racks, or sides, or whatever they call them. These other two are the… oh. They don’t look much like steak. Well, I guess they wouldn’t. But on the other hand, they don’t look like… I mean, you can’t tell what they are. If you didn’t know, I mean, you’d never guess… aw, fuck, I’m babbling.”

She giggled nervously and pulled at her hair.

“What do you think, Mack?” she asked me. “I guess… I don’t know, maybe we should at least try it? We can mix a bit up with the rice and it wouldn’t be so… I mean, that might give the best effect. I don’t know.”

I started to growl, but it came out more like a whine. She was standing between me and the other food… and I was so hungry.

“And this, obviously, is the blood,” she said, looking at the jug. “‘Magically stabilized and temperature controlled.’ Huh.” She popped the top off and my eyes filled up with red mist. Steff stuck her finger inside the neck of the jug and swirled it around. I could taste the sweet tang on the air. “At least we can be pretty sure nobody actually died for this… why would anybody sacrifice a virgin when their blood’s worth so much?”

The blood… its scent was sweet and heady. It promised so much: satiation, fulfillment of purpose… it would fill the hole in side me, slake the awful hunger that felt like it would devour me along with the rest of the world. I could drink the blood and I would be at peace, content. I could drink the blood and be full.

Maybe I should eat the other food before I drank the blood.

“What do you think, Mack?” she asked, pulling her finger out and turning towards me. “Stick all this in the fridge… or stasis box or whatever the hell they have… and figure out what to do with it later?”

I stared at her finger… the long, supple digit was wet and red to the second knuckle.

“Mack?” Steff said. I was having a hard time remembering what that word meant. “Hon? Are you okay? It’s just blood, hon… I know you’re kind of a w… sensitive girl, but the sight of it shouldn’t… oh, um.”

Something had changed, in her face and her stature and even her smell. She was a lot more appetizing all of a sudden… everything about her was screaming I am prey, I am food. The instincts that had been wasted on takeout containers were waking up again.

“I’m just going to get my clothes and go downstairs for, like, an hour or so… give you a little time to eat.” She took a step back in the direction of the bedroom and the pool. I took two steps towards her. “Or, maybe I’ll just go hang out in the lobby in my underwear for a bit,” she said.

With a fierce roar, I flew through the air at the blood-dabbed morsel, but three things happened faster than I could follow: a chair ended up smashing into kindling against my face, the jug of blood was knocked over onto the floor, and Steff was gone out the door.

I could hear her voice frantically whispering “come on, come on, come on,” I could hear her jabbing at the lift controls… but she was all the way out there and the blood was right there with me. I fell to the floor, lapping up the spreading pool.

It was so good… not quite the ambrosia of fresh-from-the-vein, but far better than the cold offerings I’d made do with for most of my childhood or even the coffee cup of blood I’d had most recently. It was warm and so close to fresh

As slow as it oozed from the narrow opening and as fast as I drank, it spread faster than I could feed. I wanted it to last forever, and it seemed like it just might.

There was a rustling sound from somewhere nearby, but it wasn’t important, whatever it was… how could it be? It wasn’t the blood, after all. There was another sound: wooden legs scooting across tile, and then creaking slightly under weight. Then came a voice.

“Please, don’t let me stop you,” it said.

I wasn’t going to.

I was already starting to feel better… or at least, less pained… by the time we got back to Harlowe and up to the fifth floor. Steff took me to my room and knocked on the door. Two answered it.

“Hi, Mack! Hi, Steff!” she said.

“Hi, Two,” I said, while Steff stepped forward to give her a hug and a double-kiss.

“Hey, Two, hon, would you mind giving us some privacy?” Steff asked. “We have some things to go over to get ready for our date.”

“Oh, okay,” Two said. “I’ll be in the lounge.”

She went back into the room, grabbed a basket of clothes, a notebook, and a textbook, and headed down the hall. Steff watched her go.

“We don’t deserve her,” she said, shaking her head. “Or she doesn’t deserve us.”

“We’re good for her,” I said. “I think.”

“I know we are,” Steff said. “But she deserves better.” A door opened at the other end of the hall, and her head whipped around. “Amy!” she said, waving at Amaranth, who was coming in from the stairs.

“Hey, you two!” Amaranth said, all smiles as I ran towards her and threw my arms around her. “Oh, I love you, too, baby,” she said, squeezing me against her. The remnants of my headache melted like snow in the spring sun. “Are you all ready for your big night?”

“Not yet,” Steff said, walking towards us “We need to talk to you.”

Amaranth’s face became serious as Steff approached.

“Oh?” she said. “If this is about the meeting with Viktor, I don’t think it’s going to be anything bad. I think he just wants clearer…”

“No, it’s not that,” Steff said. “We kind of had an, uh, episode today. Let’s talk inside.”

Amaranth gave me a look of concern and puzzlement, and then we followed Steff back to my room. Steff shut and locked the door once we were inside.

“Why don’t you take that heavy coat off, to begin with,” Amaranth said.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, reluctantly peeling my arms off her. I slipped off the coat and put it down.

“Oh, not on the floor, baby,” Amaranth said. “You’ve got a whole closet full of hangers.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

While I had the closet open, I looked for my pitchfork. I knew I’d taken it with me… I was positive about that… but there it was, tucked away in the back corner. I pulled it out.

“Huh,” I said. “I guess I didn’t bring it, after all.”

“You know, if not for the fact that it’s been in the closet the whole time, I’d wonder if it didn’t have something to do with your weirdness,” Steff said.

“So, now I’m not just possessed… I’m possessed by a pitchfork?” I asked sarcastically.

“Possessed?” Amaranth repeated.

“It’s Steff’s theory about what was wrong with me.”

“Well, you seemed pretty sure that you couldn’t be possessed by another demon,” Steff said. “But, anyway, if it was here it obviously wasn’t the case. But, I mean… didn’t you say something about it being cursed, back when you first got it? Boundless rage, or something?”

“Uh… yeah, actually,” I said. “Now that you mention it… that’s what the delvers said. And that acolyte Lacey said she could feel it.”

It seemed weird that this hadn’t crossed my mind, especially when a couple other people had handled it lately. Now that I was thinking about it, bringing it to the dance didn’t seem like it had been such a great idea. Nothing terrible had happened… though, the coat check girl had gone off a bit.

“You’ve been awfully casual with that thing, baby… but it’s my fault, too. I mean, I meant to have that stupid thing checked out before you started using it day-to-day,” Amaranth said, frowning and chewing on her lip. “I can’t imagine how it’s slipped my mind for so long.” She reached out and took it from me. “I don’t feel anything, though… no rage, no curse.” She shrugged. “Well, we’ll have somebody look at it more in-depth later. You don’t have melee again until Tuesday, so there’s no reason to carry it around.”

She turned, and I thought she was going to put it back in the closet, but it just went away, the way things did in her hands.

“I don’t want to go back to melee,” I said.

“Baby…”

“I don’t!” I said. “Callahan hates me…”

“No, she doesn’t,” Steff said. “She loves having you in her class.”

“Only because she can do whatever she wants to me without risk,” I said.

“Well, be fair,” Steff said, grinning. “We all like that about you.”

“Let’s focus on one thing at a time. What kind of episode did you have?” Amaranth asked. “You didn’t attack somebody, did you, baby?”

“No,” I said. “Well, apparently I challenged Coach Callahan…”

“Apparently?”

“She doesn’t remember half the day,” Steff said.

“That’s an exaggeration,” I said, though after I thought about it I realized it was actually an understatement.

Amaranth frowned.

“Have you had memory loss before?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Not even when you were hungry?”

“I wish,” I said.

“Hmm,” she said, tugging on her lip with her fingernails. “Maybe you’d better start at the beginning.”

“As far as I know, the beginning was me coming to on the field, when it was all over,” I said. “My memory’s all messed up before that, but… I don’t remember it being messed up. Nothing was weird for me, except for being achy and sore, until then… which is why I think Callahan did something to me.”

I said this last part more or less at Steff.

“Except you were acting out of character before that,” Steff said.

“How?” Amaranth asked.

Steff explained my plans for the date, once again starting with the suite at the Havenwood and my stated intention of cutting classes.

“Well… that certainly is unusual for you, baby, but I could see you going that far for our Steff,” she said, making a serious face but not being at all stern. “The rule about cutting class was your decision, and as long as you’re sure it won’t affect your grades, I can’t really object to it. It seems like you’re making a mature decision in order to give your lover your undivided attention, which considering the scheduling mix-up with Sooni… well, I can’t really find fault here.” She smiled. “In fact, I’m pretty excited that you’ll be working sex into the date after all… pending Viktor’s approval, of course.”

“That’s only the beginning, though,” Steff said. “Do you want to tell her the rest, Mack, or should I?”

“What’s the rest?” Amaranth asked.

“Um…” I said. I didn’t think “neither of us” was an option. I would have loved to forget the whole thing, but that wasn’t an option, either.

“During one of the times Mack can’t remember, she ordered us dinner from… have you ever heard of a place called Tender Mercy’s?”

“No,” Amaranth said. “What is that?”

“It’s a… um, you remember when Mack was going to buy blood from a slaver?”

“Yes…”

“They’re kind of the fine dining equivalent,” Steff said. “Their tag line is, ‘We serve all races.’”

“Oh?” Amaranth said. Her eyes went wide. “Oh! What… exactly… did you order?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I only know that I did because Steff told me I said so. I really don’t remember.”

“This could be important,” Steff said. “See, they aren’t cheap.”

“Any chance you can just cancel?”

“None,” Steff said. “Mercy isn’t very merciful.”

“Well, get them on the mirror,” Amaranth said to me. “Let’s find out what the, um, damage is going to be.”

I sighed and got my pocket mirror.

“Tender Mercy’s, Enwich,” I said into it. The swirling mist turned almost right away into a black field. There was a pause, and then it became partially illuminated. There as a slim man dressed in a suit, his face under a shadow.

“Tender Mercy’s” he said. “How may we help you today?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I may have placed an order on the ethernet, but I’m not sure it went through.”

“What name would you have used for this order?”

“Um, can you check under Mackenzie Blaise?”

“Certainly,” he said. He picked up a stone tablet. “One moment, please.” He concentrated for a few seconds, and then said, “Your order has been received, Ms. Blaise, and is currently in process.”

Amaranth stepped up behind me, over my shoulder.

“Hi, there! Could you just confirm the order and total for us?” she asked.

“Certainly,” he said. “That’s a gallon of blood, human, virgin, unsanctified, sex unspecified, at one-sixty-four silver… six human steaks, sex unspecified, at two gold each… eight orders of human ribs, sex unspecified, at three gold each… and one whole human female torso, oven roasted with thighs attached at thirty-five gold, for a total of seventy-four gold and fourteen silver. Delivery fee and processing fee is waived for all orders over five platinum, so…”

Seventy-four gold…

“What? I’m not paying that!” I blurted out.

“Ma’am, you don’t have to,” he said. “It’s waived.”

“I meant the order,” I said. “I don’t have that kind of money!”

“I’m very sorry to hear you say that, but all orders are final,” he said. “You may either provide a charged card now, or pay cash on delivery, or deal with our fully licensed and bonded collection agency.”

Amaranth snatched the compact out of my hand.

“I’m sorry for the confusion,” she said. “The thing is, this is actually a combination of multiple orders. We weren’t sure we’d entered it right, and that was what we were checking on. We actually need to split up the delivery to multiple recipients.”

In front of Amaranth, behind the handheld mirror, Steff was gesturing frantically, shaking her head and mouthing something… or actually probably whispering in Amaranth’s ear, to judge from the way that Amaranth was waving her hand and shaking her own head like she was brushing away a fly.

“I’m sorry, Miss, but when I say all orders are final, I’m not simply referring to cancellations,” he said. “The rule is in place to discourage these sort of last-minute shenanigans, which rarely work out well for anybody.”

“But this order is large enough to waive the fees, it’s got to be big enough to exercise a little flexibility,” Amaranth said. “You can’t tell me it isn’t better business to deliver an order and get paid for it than to have to send a collection agency around.” She turned the compact around towards me. “I mean, look at her. Do you think you’d get anywhere near your seventy gold for her?”

Apparently Amaranth was quicker on the uptake than I was… that was the point at which I realized what the “collection agency” would be collecting. I wondered if it would be possible to get the whole thing called off by proving that I had been under the influence of something when I placed the order.

Probably… but probably not fast enough to make a difference. Something told me that Pendragon and Associates wouldn’t care to take this particular dispute on contingency.

“That may be true,” the Mercy’s representative said. “Though you understand, that wouldn’t stop us from collecting her. We can change the delivery address, but I’ll need to see a charged card. Ms. Blaise is the one we have the contract with, and the only one from whom we can legally extract payment in kind.”

“Naturally,” Amaranth said. “If you don’t mind staying in frame while I go confirm the address, I think we’ll be able to verify payment to your satisfaction.”

“Very well.”

Amaranth turned the mirror away and covered it with her hand, opening her mouth to speak. Steff interrupted her before she could say anything.

“Viktor might take part of it, but he doesn’t have that kind of money to throw around,” she said.

“I’ll get to Viktor,” Amaranth said. “You stay here with Mack and keep her company, okay? Mack’s my responsibility, and I can handle this.”

“I’ll come…” Steff started to say.

“She needs you, Steff,” Amaranth said.

She was grimacing and pulling on her hair when she said this, and her lower lip kept twitching. It might have just been because she was nervous, but I had a feeling it was because she felt dishonest… the real reason she wanted Steff to stay in the room with me, I suspected, was that she didn’t want Steff to see her going to Feejee’s room.

“Okay, but you still have to have some of it delivered to us,” Steff said as Amaranth started to open the door

“Yeah, I’ll have them send you guys the blood,” Amaranth said, closing the door most of the way. She turned to me. “I’ve got a few more affordable sources lined up, but if we have to buy it, we might as well use it anyway, baby.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. I could console myself that it was at least possible that nobody had actually died to produce it, even if it was coming from slavers.

“And we also want two steaks and some of the ribs,” Steff said. Amaranth looked at me, and Steff said, “Well, we do still need to have dinner… and this is supposed to be our special night. We’ll go dwarven on it, and we can get rice and potatoes or something from room service.”

Amaranth looked at me. I didn’t know what to say. The order was in fact a done deal… as Steff had said, nothing I did would change the fate of the people involved.

“Okay, okay,” Amaranth said, a little frantically. “Just let me go take care of this now, before this man runs out of patience.”

“Oh, and they do this thing where if you order a whole body, they mount the head for you, if you don’t want to eat it,” Steff said. “See if they’ll do that when you’re ordering a torso!”

Amaranth glared at Steff and ducked out of the room. Steff looked at me.

“It’ll be okay,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

I didn’t need that much reassurance about the resolution of the order… chances were that Feejee would be an easy sell, and if the Mercy’s guy got a look at her everyday jewelry ensemble, he’d probably be a lot more relaxed about the whole thing.

What was bothering me was that I’d set all this in motion and couldn’t even remember it. What other surprises might be waiting for me? I was glad Two had been home… if I didn’t know for a fact that she was alright, I might have worried about her.

Steff hugged me, and then I sat down in my desk chair. I didn’t feel like talking, and she didn’t say anything.

After a while, I heard Amaranth’s raised voice coming down the hall. Steff let her in when she reached the door.

“No, you don’t need to speak with my mother,” she was saying into the mirror. “Look, this is discrimination. Your ad says ‘all races’, right?”

I saw Steff mouth the word “Problem?”, and Amaranth shook her head, then covered the mirror, and said, “They won’t buy me.”

“…already explained this,” the Mercy’s guy said. “We simply cannot…”

“Oh, fine!” Amaranth said, stomping her foot. “Just send the orders, then.” She snapped the mirror shut. “Ooh! That man makes me so… I mean, I dislike their policies with regards to nymphs.”

“You were going to sell yourself to pay for the order?” I asked, horrified.

“What? Oh, no,” she said. “I found other buyers for most of it. You two are getting enough for a meal… don’t worry, baby, Viktor’s offered to cover it.”

“What about the head… did you ask about the head?” Steff asked.

“Viktor said you don’t need a head,” Amaranth said.

“What do you mean, I don’t need a head?” Steff repeated.

“That’s what he said,” Amaranth said. “He said he wasn’t going to pay for it because you don’t need it.”

“Well, maybe I want to pay for it myself,” Steff said.

“He said you’d say that and to remind you that you don’t have any money that isn’t his,” Amaranth said. She looked at me. “Baby, are you alright? You look like you’re going to be sick.”

I felt like I was going to be sick, too. I should have been happy that the thing was settled, but it was… disquieting… how casually the whole thing had been taken care of.

“We’re talking about a person,” I said. “A person’s head.”

“We’re talking about a body,” Steff said. “It used to be a person, but now it isn’t. It’s just materials, just meat. Somebody’s going to get some enjoyment out of it… it might as well be us. I mean, pigs are pretty damned smart, too, but that doesn’t stop people from eating them.”

“Really?” Amaranth said. “How smart, exactly?”

“I dunno,” Steff said. “But Prevailingwind was talking about some experiment he saw where they were being taught to communicate with picture tablets.”

“You don’t say,” Amaranth said. “Do you think he’d be willing to come along to communion with me and explain this to Mother Khaele?”

“He might find it an interesting experience,” Steff said.

The conversation was almost enough to bring back my headache. I let out a groan of frustration.

“Oh, baby, what’s wrong?” Amaranth asked, hurrying to my side.

“I just wanted to give Steff a nice night out… a real, normal date… and we’re talking about eating people and fucking pigs,” I said.

“Oh,” Amaranth said, blinking slowly. “Well, um… I wasn’t specifically thinking about fucking pigs. I just thought it might be nice to give Mother Khaele some more insight into her creations, from the point-of-view of…”

“Look, Mack… we’ve got the whole night, not just dinner,” Steff said. “And, well… the Havenwood has a ballroom attached to it.”

“So? We have ballrooms here,” I said. “They’re all over the campus. I don’t really want to spend our night out gazing at the ethernet, anyway.”

“No, I mean, a dancehall,” Steff said. “They rent it out sometimes, but most nights it’s open to the public.”

“Oh!” I said, feeling a bit better. “Um… that could be nice.”

“I am excited about this dinner,” she said. “And I want you to be excited about it, too, because most of the reason I’m excited about it is that I get to share it with you.” She took both of my hands and held them loosely in her own, looking down into my eyes. “When I say I love you, I don’t mean I love the person you’d be if you weren’t half-demon… I mean I love you.”

She stepped back, pulling me gently onto my feet.

“I love you, too,” I said. “But… it’s creepy that I did this stuff and don’t remember it, and I don’t know how I feel about going through with this. The dinner, I mean. Not the date.”

“Baby, if you’d asked me about this, I would have said no,” Amaranth said. “But if you’d been in your right frame of mind, I don’t believe you would have done it to begin with. We’re just making the best of a bad situation, and… to be honest… I have a strong feeling you’re going to enjoy this more than you think. It’s not the part of you I love the most, but… it is natural for you to enjoy the taste of humans. I think that under the circumstances, just this once, as something you can share with Steff… it could be okay for you to explore that.”

“About the circumstances,” Steff said. “I… fuck, I’d almost rather stab myself in the kidneys than say this, but I think we need to get Mack checked out before you actually let her go out on a date. Dee?”

Steff said this in the direction of Dee’s room. There was no immediate response. Amaranth shook her head.

“I haven’t been able to find her,” she said. “I was waiting to see if the Gazetteer would have anything more about her today, but there didn’t seem to be a new issue.”

“Huh,” Steff said.

“Well, I’m no subtle artist, but I can detect negative energies and I am rather well-acquainted with your natural energy state,” Amaranth said. “Let me get a look at you, baby.”

She put her hands on the side of my head and peered into my face, looking over her glasses into first one eye and then the other. She held her hands out about half a foot away from me and ran them up and down, all around my body.

“I don’t see anything in there but Mack,” she said. “How do you feel, physically?”

“Okay,” I said. “The headache and soreness have been fading.”

“Well, then,” Amaranth said. “I think that you are good to go, missy.”

“After we all meet with Viktor, anyway,” Steff said.

“Oh! That was the other thing,” Amaranth said. “When I was explaining about the whole thing, I told him that Mack’d had a stressful day and he said it’s okay to do that on the weekend.”

“So, you mean… we can just go?” I said, almost unable to believe it. After all the obstacles and interruptions… Steff and I were really ready to begin our relationship.

“What about… restrictions?” Steff asked.

“Tonight’s special,” Amaranth said, smiling. “Like I said about the food: a one-time thing.”

Steff’s shriek of pure unbridled joy at this brought warmth to my heart and pain to my ears. She kissed Amaranth, then kissed me, and then kissed Amaranth again, all over her face.

“I have to go change, I have to get ready!” she said, looking down at her grubby, Callahan-approved fighting clothes. “I have to get my dress!”

“Go,” I said, smiling. “I’ll be here.”

It was happening. Whatever other weirdness, badness, or madness had gone down in the course of the day, I was finally, really going out with Steff.