With Gemma looped in on the situation and nothing but time to kill, all of the girls decided that it was time for a ‘girls day’ in town. Kassandra, the one who suggested it, claimed that it would be an opportunity to stretch their legs and work out a few of their own ‘kinks’ in the process.

  The eyebrow waggle Kassandra sent me as she said that was pointed enough that I not only guessed she’d be wanting a turn soon, but it also told me the real reason for the plan: they wanted to grill Rieka without me around.

  They love to tease each other, but ultimately all the girls are just as happy to see one of the others being doted on as they are to get a turn, I thought while Rieka went through the gestures to send me back to Earth. That doesn’t mean they won’t tease each other, though. If anything, it means they’ll tease each other more than they would otherwise.

  All four of my lovers blew me kisses as the dimensional magic lifted me up and yanked me away. As it did so, I caught the motion of Valda’s hand coming to her mouth as well, as if she was joining in with the other girls but hesitated a moment. Then I was gone.

  Reality swirled and shifted through a kaleidoscope of colors and sensations all around me. I half expected to have another of the strange visions that accompanied my trips between worlds, but nothing was forthcoming.

  Landing back on Earth, I wobbled for a moment as my senses returned one by one. Once my balance was solid, I glanced around my little cave-home thoughtfully.

  “Not a bad thing that they sent me back,” I muttered, hands on my hips. “I need to get some stuff done and check in with Gloria… And check on my tech, too. I know the solar panels are supposed to be rated to handle extreme weather but I can’t help but be hesitant.”

  Plan in hand, I quickly changed into some warmer clothes and donned a jacket and hat. While I didn’t mind the cold and could always shift to add fur underneath my clothing, it was easier at times to just blend in. Especially when I stood out in other ways, like my living situation.

  “I should set up some cameras,” I muttered, stomping hard to make sure my winter boots were set on my feet properly.

  I loved the boots, but they were from before I came into money and I’d bought them slightly small. Since they were in good condition, I couldn’t bring myself to replace them. So I just put up with it for now.

  Not like those stories I used to listen to loading the truck, I thought with a grin. The girls don’t live here with me, otherwise I’m sure they’d have insisted I replace all the old bits and pieces that I have here. Clothes that don’t fit perfectly or have a few holes but are comfortable.

  I chuckled while gesturing the stone door open using Manipulate Element to liquefy the stone. The blast of cold air that slammed into my face made me cough, but I shook it off quickly.

  Winter had settled into the foothills of Colorado well and truly at this point. Away from the envelope of general heat created by the houses of town, the air had settled into a solid chill and snow piled knee-deep across the land with wind-blown drifts piling it even deeper in spots.

  Stepping out, I scanned the hillside and surrounding land once more, made another note to get security cameras that could handle the cold to keep watch while I was gone, and then gestured the door closed once more.

  The weather had stayed cold for a while, so the crust of ice on top of the snow was very thin. Sloshing through it to the top of the hill, I peeked through the thicket of brambles that I’d set the solar panels inside of. Other than snow piling all around them, the solar panels looked good. No obvious signs of weather damage or issues when I pushed through and swept the snow off them, and the power bank inside my subterranean house had read as full as well.

  “Check,” I muttered before turning back to the hillside. It took only a moment to push my awareness down into the earth, following the hollow sound of water bubbling up from deep beneath the earth to locate the thick mineral vein that it passed right by.

  The ringing of the precious metal against my senses made me smile and I shook my head while I stomped over to the section of hillside that hid the cave where my truck was stored.

  “To think, I bought the land and mineral rights for so little,” I muttered in amusement. “Makes me wonder why they didn’t survey the land properly, because it would have been easy enough to find the deposit… Well, I think it would have been?”

  I thought it over while opening up the garage-cave. I didn’t know what all went into surveying, but it had certainly been easy enough for me to recognize the precious metals when I sensed them.

  “Maybe it’s just me, then,” I said with a laugh, hopping into my truck and stuffing the key into the ignition. “I’m not going to question it. Enough things have gone weirdly in my favor lately that I’d never challenge fate.”

  A chill that had nothing to do with the weather ran down my spine and I slammed on the brakes. The truck slid in reverse on the ice for about a foot before it came to a stop.

  Stop it, I ordered myself, fingers tight on the steering wheel. It’s not as if fate is something real that you could offend or draw the attention of. This isn’t a story about vikings where the fates are people, this is real life.

  Despite ordering myself to stop freaking out, I still glanced around, as if half expecting some specter to rise up out of the snow and judge me for something. It took another few minutes before the odd sensation left me and I got the truck moving once more.

  By the time I made it out to the main road, which thankfully was plowed, I’d pushed my earlier concerns away as my imagination.

  “You are a dimension-hopping bodyguard to a part-wolf princess, a dwarf lamia seductress, a moth-woman artist, and a literally mousy scholar,” I reminded myself irritatedly. “Life is weird enough without you tricking yourself into stressing out.”

  Once I reached a stop sign on the plowed road and it was safe, I fired off a message to Gloria asking if she was up for a meeting over lunch to go over the business stuff in more detail. I had only been snacking that morning, not having had what I would call a real breakfast, so I was rather hungry. Lunch and the meeting would handle two problems at once.

  Rather than texting, Gloria responded with a phone call instead. Thankfully, I had set up a hands-free mount on my dash a while back, so I just had to tap the ‘accept’ button and my Latina friend’s voice soon joined me in the cab.

  “Hey bossman, glad to see you have finally come down out of the hills to mingle with us normal folks,” Gloria teased as soon as I picked up. “If you hurry, I’d be happy to meet you for lunch. I’m starving right now and just got done at the post office.”

  “Keeping yourself busy then?” I replied, unable to keep myself from smiling at the happiness I heard in my friend’s tone.

  “Busy and productive, gotta make sure your product sells so that I can keep getting my paycheck,” Gloria said pointedly and I heard the crunch of snow underfoot through the line before a car door slammed.

  “Which I appreciate, saves me so much time just being able to hand off the pieces to someone I trust,” I replied. “Where were you thinking for lunch?”

  “It’s a business meal,” Gloria replied while I heard her keys jingle and then her vehicle rumbled to life on the other end of the line. “So I’d like to suggest somewhere nice and expensive, but I just want hot food and a lot of it. How about that Mongolian place, the one where you assemble your own stir-fry and they cook it in front of you?”

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  Just hearing the idea made my stomach rumble in appreciation, as the place that Gloria was suggesting was also an all-you-can-eat joint.

  “Music to my ears, or maybe my stomach’s ears?” I said, and Gloria laughed. “I’m about to hit the highway, so I can meet you there in about thirty or forty minutes? It’ll be my treat.”

  “That’ll work,” Gloria replied, and there was some clunking from her side before the line fizzed and her voice changed tone. “There, got you plugged into the car so I can get moving. Thirty minutes is fine, gives me a minute to swing by my place to grab the business laptop. I’m sure you’ll want to go over the sales numbers?”

  “I trust you, Gloria,” I replied without hesitating. “And my accountant would flag anything that came up as odd. So only worry about it if you want to show off, if you’d rather head to the restaurant and get started without me, that’s also fine.”

  “I have quite a bit to be proud of,” Gloria said, her tone showing just a bit of that same pride. “Your sales are doing quite well based on the storefront’s historic numbers. I think it must be the professional staging that lets the pieces show their best.”

  “Makes the investment in the good camera and equipment worth it,” I shot right back. Gloria joined me in a laugh before I continued. “It sounds like a plan, then. Meet you at the restaurant in about thirty to forty, you can show off and we can stuff ourselves with stir-fry.”

  “You got it, boss,” Gloria replied and I could just imagine her flicking me a two-fingered salute with a mocking smile. “You gotta make sure you keep raking in the cash, that way you can treat your mysterious lady-friends well.”

  “You want to meet them?” I asked, deciding to take the opportunity of her bringing them up again. “I already introduced Jameson to Kass, and they got along like a house on fire.”

  “Not literally, I hope,” Gloria shot back, but I could hear the curiosity in her voice. “I’ll admit, I’ve been wondering about them for a while. I’m surprised you picked Jameson to meet them first.”

  “Honestly, Kass heard so many stories about the idiot that she was the one to ask to meet him. I think she just wanted to confirm that he was as much of an ass as I said.”

  “And I’m sure he delivered,” Gloria continued. “Sure, I’d like to meet your mysterious girlfriends. Jameson being able to vouch that they are real means that I have to perform my ‘sisterly duties’ and make sure they are going to treat you well.”

  “ ‘Sisterly duties’?” I asked, adjusting the steering wheel slightly to avoid the patch of black ice. “Who gave you those?”

  “I did,” Gloria replied, the smile in her tone obvious. “Someone has to look after you and Jameson. He’s such an idiot that someone has to, and I’d never dream of trying to steal another lady’s man with you. Confirming that they know the score and aren’t just after you for your money goes hand in hand with ensuring your business flourishes so I keep getting paid.”

  I thought about that, remembering Kassandra’s own business investments as well as Rieka’s reserves of cash to go with her income from her lands. Shayla was independently wealthy with her art, and then you add in her share of the loot from our adventures. The only one of my girls that might be after me for my money was Jane, and the mousy scholar was more interested in books than bank balances.

  “I don’t think you have anything to be worried about, Gloria,” I replied when I realized silence had fallen between us.

  “I would twist that into poking you about your budding harem,” Gloria replied. “But I’m not Jameson. Those kinds of crass jokes are his job.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said with a sigh. “See you soon.”

  <><><>

  Lunch with Gloria was quite a bit of fun. My spicy Latina friend waited until we’d finished our first round of food before breaking out the laptop and showing me the sales numbers.

  It wasn’t hard to see that her bragging about the proper staging of the pieces had some truth to it, since the sales numbers were showing a constant upward scaling. I knew that part of that was because I’d been able to focus on producing more pieces when I wasn’t working on listing them too, but I knew that Gloria’s efforts were being rewarded and I made sure to praise her.

  When we wrapped up lunch, I made a quick stop by the electronics store to pick up the outdoor cameras that I’d wanted, along with the other bits and pieces needed to set up a security system on the sly.

  During the drive to the restaurant, I kept thinking about how I could secure my land without making it obvious to passersby that there was someone living there. Tire tracks in the snow suddenly terminating at the hill as well as my own foot tracks in the snow wouldn’t help, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. I didn’t have ice magic to settle the snow out, or fire magic to melt it clear.

  Honestly, that last one would have just drawn in more attention, but the mental image of me using a ‘flamethrower’ to melt the snow was amusing as hell.

  Only once I had the equipment bought and loaded up into the truck did I reach out to Jameson to check on my friend. After talking about the girls with Gloria and feeling her out a bit to see how she’d react to meeting a non-human for the first time, I realized I should follow up with my annoying Irish friend to make sure he didn’t convince himself that he’d been seeing things when he met Kassandra.

  The phone barely had the chance to ring once from its spot on the dash mount before Jameson answered it.

  “Liam! How’s my favorite caveman doing?” Jameson said, his voice overly friendly and surprisingly clean.

  “Ah, you must be in the office today,” I replied, backing out of my parking spot.

  “Got it in one, old bean!” Jameson fired back, affecting a very bad British accent. “I was just about to take a break on this project. There’s only so many times I can adjust the scale on a draft before I need to get up and stretch.”

  “Makes sense,” I shot back. “Never worked at a desk before, but I can only imagine how exhausting pushing a pencil around a page can be.”

  “Maybe not as exhausting as loading trucks,” Jameson replied while I pulled out of the lot and started toward the highway. “But it still wears on the mind. More so because I have to make sure the lines are straight. For some reason, contractors want the plans being drawn up to be done to exacting detail.”

  I heard the clunk of a door closing and then the quiet rap of hard soles on a tile hallway over the line.

  “Fair enough,” I replied. “I just wanted to touch base to make sure that you hadn’t talked yourself into thinking that the other day was all a hallucination.”

  “Brother, I tried,” Jameson replied in a deadpan tone. “The problem is, I know myself well enough that it was impossible. I held a conversation with…” Jameson paused and I knew that he was glancing around to check for anyone listening in. “With a snake woman. For hours. And do you know why I know it was real?”

  “Why?” I asked, willing to indulge my friend.

  “Because if I had hallucinated it,” Jameson explained with supreme confidence. “She would have at least flirted with me once. Yeah, she’s your girl, but I know my own imagination well enough that it wouldn’t have been able to help itself with a woman that beautiful.”

  “I should be offended, but I can’t fault you for finding her attractive,” I replied without anger. Jameson was a good friend of mine, and his honesty was appreciated. “And no, before you ask, she doesn’t have any sisters.”

  “Damn it!” Jameson swore playfully before muttering ‘shit’ under his breath. The rap of his steps on the floor got louder and faster for a moment before he grunted and the sound of his voice echoing. “Sorry, I just had to get outside. The secretary shot me a dirty look for swearing in the lobby. I don’t know why, there aren’t any clients here today.”

  “Professional standards,” I replied glibly.

  “I’ll stand your… You know what it doesn’t work the way I had hoped,” Jameson started to say before changing it up. “But yeah, I’m doing fine. I appreciate you checking in on me, especially after just dropping that shit on me without warning.”

  “You cannot say that you wouldn’t have done the same in my place,” I countered, merging onto the highway and turning north to head back to my place. Lunch had run late and I wanted to get these cameras set up while the sun was still out.

  “True,” Jameson admitted. “But after meeting Kass, I want to meet the others too. You both told me about them, but it’s just hard to imagine…”

  I chuckled at that, nodding despite the fact Jameson couldn’t see the gesture.

  “Yeah, I imagine it must be hard. I’ll make sure to let you know when another one comes to visit. I talked to Gloria today and she expressed an interest in meeting them too.”

  “Oh man!” Jameson exclaimed, excitement filling his voice. “You have got to let me be there for the big reveal. I’m half-expecting her to start throwing shit and freak out, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if Gloria just accepted it without sweating.”

  “I hope she doesn’t throw shit,” I replied between laughs. “But I’ll see what I can do. I’m just back for part of the day for now, so I just wanted to touch bases with you both.”

  “Ah fine, go back to your otherworldly adventures then,” Jameson shot back. “If you ever end up with an opening for an assistant, let me know. Especially if it comes with a cute lamia girl.”

  “Yeah, dream on,” I replied and hung up when Jameson began to protest. “Dork,” I muttered, shaking my head while filing his request away.

  I’d talk to Cariad about it later and get details before I brought it up, that way I could make sure Jameson knew all he was potentially getting into first.

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