Liam, I’ll be done with the dress fitting in the next hour.

  Kassandra’s sweet voice echoed in my mind as the Contact Contracted Companion power delivered her message to me. I couldn’t help the smile that hearing her affectionate words brought to my lips, or the chuckle that the barely-restrained excitement I also heard underlying it all.

  “What’s up?” Jameson asked curiously, glancing my way with a bit of gravy from his chicken-fried steak on his lips still. “One of the waitresses lose a button?”

  “No, jackass,” I said with a laugh. “Wipe the creamy white stuff off your face and let’s get moving. It’s about time we head back to my place so you can meet Kassandra.”

  “Kassandra?” Jameson asked, one eyebrow going up. “Remarkably nice name for a cryptid—ow!”

  He flinched away from my elbow where it met his biceps, rubbing the spot with one hand.

  “Watch it,” I warned with a smirk. “You’ll regret making jokes about ‘shagging Sasquatch’ if she hears them. That’ll feel like a love tap compared to what she might do.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I don’t want to get mauled by your backwoods girlfriend,” Jameson said with a roll of his eyes, putting on a disinterested look.

  But I knew my friend, and I could see from his quick but efficient movements shoveling the last of his food into his mouth that he was excited to meet one of my girls.

  While Jameson gulped down the last of his hashbrowns, I waved the waitress over and paid for both our meals. Jameson tried to complain when I handed over my card, but the mouthful of gravy-soaked potatoes prevented real words from getting out. Instead, he just shot me a scowl that reminded me of that scene from Beauty and the Beast when Beast had his mouth full after eating like a dog at the table.

  I made sure to leave a generous tip—just because I hated the necessity of tipping culture didn’t mean I’d leave the wait staff high and dry—and then corralled my friend out into the parking lot.

  “Meet you there?” I asked as we stepped off the curb. “Unless you want to leave your car here?”

  “Fuck no,” Jameson shot back with a frown. “I barely trust to leave my car in the lot while I’m inside. Like hell I’m leaving it unattended while I’m miles away. My car may not be in perfect condition, but it’s paid off.”

  “Same thing I say about my truck,” I replied with a laugh.

  Jameson rolled his eyes at me and shook his head.

  “Your truck belongs in a museum, so the same points don’t apply to it,” Jameson said dryly. “But seriously, I’ll follow you up. Your little hidey-hole is a pain in the ass to find by design, and I’d hate to step onto the wrong person’s land.”

  I paused and considered that Jameson did have a point. I hadn’t really thought about having guests over and them being able to find the place, mostly because I was kind of building the place as somewhere to hide away from the world.

  It wouldn't hurt to have something by the entrance from the road to make it easier for the folks I care about to find me, I thought before shrugging and adding it to the growing ‘To-Do’ list that I had in the back of my mind. I swear, as soon as I cross something off that list, I add two more things…

  “Then load up,” I said, nodding to Jameson’s car. “I don’t want to keep Kass waiting.”

  “Never a good idea to keep a woman waiting,” Jameson replied sagely, as if he was a nuanced master of all things regarding women.

  “I’m more worried about the trouble she might get into if bored,” I shot back with a smirk.

  I knew that Kassandra was still on Cortha, but the statement still held true. My lovely little troublemaker had a talent for finding mischief easily. Or maybe it was in making mischief… Either way, I didn’t want to encourage it. So Jameson and I went to our cars and got on the road back to my hideout.

  <><><>

  Thankfully, the early afternoon traffic remained light, and soon I was ambling down the road on my property through the small stand of trees shielding my hill from the road. Behind me, Jameson’s car crunched over the frozen gravel like a cautious cat trying to cross an ice-rink.

  During the drive, I’d had more time to think over how best to expose Jameson to what was going on and gauge his reaction. I knew that I couldn’t just spring Kassandra on him without warming him up to the idea, I didn’t want to give my friend a heart-attack.

  A kick in the ass at times, yeah, but not a heart-attack.

  So I pulled up in the open section of road where the trees would block my truck from the main road and killed the engine. A brief pulse of Manipulate Element through the ground confirmed nothing had changed since I’d been here last, and I hopped out of the truck.

  Slamming the door shut with just enough force to ensure it caught, I stuffed my keys in my pocket and took a deep breath of the chilly air.

  The brisk afternoon didn’t bother me at all, especially given my physical stats and the thin layer of fur that I sprouted under my clothes on instinct using Shape-Shifting. It actually felt really good to breathe that cold air in and let it chill my lungs.

  “Fuck it’s cold!” Jameson swore, slamming his door shut and pulling his coat closed around him. “I don’t know how you survive out here, dressed like that. I’d freeze my nuts off!”

  “Not all of us have a set small enough that they’d shrivel away at a bit of cold air,” I fired back at him with a grin, beckoning for Jameson to follow me toward the boulder blocking my front door.

  “It’s not a matter of size, but of demand!” Jameson shot back as he hurried after me. “The ladies of the world would cry a river of tears if my boys were put out of commission. So I have to be aware of their disposition and protect them!”

  “Sure you would,” I shot back and made a gesture at the boulder as we approached.

  During the ride back and my plotting, one of the things I’d decided to do was not hide my abilities from Jameson and see how observant my friend was. I knew he wouldn’t miss something as obvious as Kassandra’s serpentine tail, but I thought that having him catch and question something small would make convincing him of larger things easier.

  Unfortunately, I’d forgotten about my skinny-ass friend’s hatred of the cold. He didn’t even notice the stone of the doorway flowing out of his way and just pushed past me into the warm shadows of my underground home, stomping his feet in the entryway before bending to get out of his boots.

  “Thanks for not tracking everything in,” I said, doing the same while gesturing to the door closed behind us.

  “So where is your little lady?” Jameson asked, tossing his boots onto the graveled section for draining and stepping into my living room in his socks. “I thought she was going to meet us here?”

  “She is,” I replied, following after Jameson and finding him warming his hands over the faintly glowing coals in the fire-pit. “We just managed to beat her back is all.”

  Which was true. Kassandra hadn’t sent me the indication that she was waiting for me to use Traveler’s Call on her yet, but I expected it to be any minute now.

  So I built the fire up quickly, stacking more than enough wood on it and blowing over the coals to help that wood catch. Soon, crackling flames spread over the dry firewood and the previously cool room began to warm rapidly.

  “Well then, why don’t you come clean on how you met these girls?” Jameson asked pointedly, flopping down onto one of the stone benches by the fire and leaning back so he could extend his sock-clad toes toward the fire. “I love you like a brother, Liam. But I know just how introverted you are.”

  The fact Jameson wasn’t flipping me shit told me that now it was time to get serious, so I sat down on a bench beside him and sighed.

  “It’s… complicated,” I said, rethinking my approach a half-dozen times in the silence that followed.

  “I can do complicated things, bud,” Jameson drawled, quirking one eyebrow at me and smirking faintly. “Hell, you live in a hill like some kind of overgrown hobbit or other non-copyrighted fantasy creature that lives inside hillocks.”

  I sighed and rolled my eyes, I should have expected that he’d revert to jokes within seconds of me being serious. But before I could try and drag the conversation back to seriousness, Jameson did it for me.

  “Really, though. Just tell me. It’s not like you met them at a swingers party or something,” Jameson said offhandedly.

  “You’d have seen me there if I did,” I shot back at him and pushed myself to my feet.

  “I do not attend swinger parties!” Jameson protested, just as I thought he would. “While I might have my own proclivities, sharing is not one of them!”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Oh, I never said you participated,” I continued with a grin, ducking into my cold-storage room and coming back with a pair of beers. “Someone has to change the sheets and scrub up the mess, right?”

  “Oh go fuck yourself,” Jameson growled back at me, snatching the bottle from my hand and pulling out his pocket-knife to remove the cap.

  I set my bottle down by my bench and walked to the kitchen-corner to get the battered teapot, which I filled from my water storage jugs.

  While it was getting nice and warm here from the fire, I knew my dwarf lamia would appreciate some tea to ensure she stayed nice and warm. And her previous threats about knowing how she would ‘warm herself’ if she needed to continued to echo in my mind. Jameson was someone I trusted, but I didn’t trust him enough to not freak out if Kassandra decided to crawl inside my clothes for body heat.

  When the kettle was full, I walked over to the firepit and gave the stone bowl a tug with Elemental Manipulation, causing a section of the bowl to rise up and form a flat spot to set my kettle on since I didn’t have a hanging handle yet.

  The sudden inhalation from Jameson, and then the coughing and sputtering that followed, told me two things. One: Jameson had finally noticed me using one of my powers. And two: he’d been mid-drink when he noticed.

  “Liam! The fuck?!” Jameson croaked in between coughs.

  “You wanted to know the whole story,” I said with a shrug, stepping past him to grab my bottle. “The truth is, there’s been a lot more going on than just me meeting some beautiful women, quitting my job, and building this place.”

  Jameson was mid-demand for more information, mouth flapping open like a fish gasping in the air, when I pushed the bottle into the stone of the firepit. The gray stone deformed under the pressure of the bottle, forming into a bottle-opener with a thought and popping the cap right off.

  Jameson stared in surprise, jaw hanging open for several long seconds.

  Finally, he spoke, and the tension that had been building as I waited for his response poured out of me like air from a popped balloon.

  “Well fuck, that answers a lot of questions,” Jameson muttered, looking up from the shaped stone to meet my eyes and then scanning our surroundings.

  “Like?” I asked gently, taking a swig of my beer.

  “How the fuck this place came about, for one,” Jameson huffed before turning to glare back at me. “I was thinking you’d been having me on for years to get something like this dug out. The walls are way too smooth, and I know you don’t have the kind of money needed to rent or buy the tools to carve stone like this. Liam, I’m an architect. I know stonework. Maybe not as much as one of the old stonecarvers would, but I understand it.”

  “Fair,” I said, tipping my bottle his way. “But what if I told you this wasn’t everything?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest,” Jameson said with a snort, taking another drink of his beer. “So what, you a mutant or something? That where you met these women, some kind of super mutant retreat where a cue-ball professor taught you all to control magical powers?”

  “Nope,” I said with a smirk, imagining how irritated Cerebaton would be if he was called a ‘cue-ball’ with how neatly styled the daemon’s hair was all the time. “It’s something far weirder.” It was relieving that my friend was taking this so well.

  As if on cue, I got another flash of light in my vision and tingles from my bond-tattoos on my right forearm to tell me a message had arrived.

  Pressing on Kassandra’s bond-tattoo, my dwarf lamia’s voice filled my mind once more.

  Ready whenever you are, gorgeous! I can’t wait to meet your friend. I made sure to leave all my important stuff with Rieka, but I have a few mana-coins in my hand like we planned to test if your System lets me bring things with me.

  Catching Jameson’s eyes with my own, I let the smirk spread into a full-on smile.

  “Shit, what the hell are you planning? You never smile like that for a good reason,” Jameson huffed in annoyance. “Smug prick that you are, some kind of wizard-thing. Or what did that anime I heard about call them? Earth-bonders?”

  “You’ll see,” I just said, reaching out with my mind and triggering the Traveler’s Call ability.

  Traveler has utilized a power to summon a contracted companion.

  The cost is 10 SP per day.

  This is measured based on the time of summoning, using the local equivalent measure of time.

  Note, target may decline summon at their will and return of their own volition simply by willing it. No refund will be processed.

  Select your target from the following valid contracts of minimum rank:

  Kassandra Silverscale (Guardian Contract level 6 - Max)

  Rieka Coldeye (Guardian Contract level 6 - Max)

  Shayla Valo (Guardian Contract level 5)

  Jane Carsan (Guardian Contract level 5)

  Valda Ironclaw (Guardian Contract level 2)

  “Huh,” I muttered aloud, noting that Gemma wasn’t listed.

  “What?” Jameson asked curiously.

  “Nothing, at least nothing to worry about right now,” I answered.

  Must have a minimum of level two contract required, I thought before selecting Kassandra’s name from the list.

  The entry glowed in my mind’s eye and flashed once before a new message scrolled before my eyes.

  Target has accepted the summoning request.

  They will arrive imminently.

  “And here… we… go…” I muttered with a grin.

  “Go where? I thought she was coming—” Jameson began to ask in confusion when a pulse of color appeared in the air right in front of me.

  Half a second later, that pulse of color expanded like a billow of rainbow fog to take the shape of my dwarf lamia. It flared once, going opaque before vanishing and leaving Kassandra behind.

  My mischief-macaroni let out a gasp of surprise and whirled, looking about in wonder as she took in her surroundings while her scaled tail coiled underneath her, making a rustling noise against the stone floor.

  “Ohmygodswhatarush!” Kassandra exclaimed in a torrent of words while bouncing on her tail, the motion sending ripples through her thick mane of bombshell curls as well as her generous cleavage. “I see you took my warning seriously, Liam! Thank you for making sure it’d be warm enough!”

  Kassandra finished her quick turn and launched herself at me like a… well, like a striking snake.

  I caught the giggling missile and hugged her to my chest with a laugh of my own.

  “Of course, you know I’d do everything I could to make sure you were comfortable!” I insisted, squeezing her against my chest and earning a happy coo from my lover.

  But Kassandra’s curiosity, for once, overwhelmed her desire to snuggle with me and she began to wiggle in only a few moments.

  “Let me down, Liam. I want to see this house of yours that you’ve been hiding from us for so long! Where’s your friend at, by the way?”

  “He’s right behind you,” I laughed, nodding toward the stunned form of Jameson who was staring in open-mouthed surprise, bottle halfway to his mouth.

  “Hello Liam’s friend! I’ll introduce myself later, you’ll have to forgive me. I just can’t wait to see what my man has been cooking up here!” Kassandra said with a giggle before finally wriggling free of my grip and landing back on the floor.

  Without a second look, Kassandra zoomed away. The undulations of her muscular tail carried her in a wide circuit around the outer edge of the room before she vanished into my bedroom with a laugh.

  “Don’t even think about it!” I called after her, getting a sneaky giggle in response. “Seriously, you promised to introduce yourself to Jameson and no way is he going to be functional if you do that while naked in my bed.”

  “Buh?” Jameson asked intelligently and I turned away from the scaled troublemaker in the other room to check on him once more.

  He was still staring, but now in the direction of my dark bedroom. The bottle that had been halfway to his lips was now limp in his hand and pointing generally toward the open door.

  “That was Kass,” I said with a sigh, picking up my own bottle and taking a drink of the bitter beverage inside. “One of the four women—five now, actually—that I’m working for.”

  “Hwha?” Jameson asked, turning to stare at me in confusion.

  “Yeah, there are a lot more than the two I initially told you about,” I replied, smirking around the mouth of the bottle. “Not all of them are my girlfriends.”

  “For now!” Kassandra insisted, slithering back out of the other room with her hair mussed and a smirk on her lips as she tugged her skirt back into place. “Just give it time, Liam.”

  I didn’t want to give that statement any more thought than necessary, considering the looks that Valda had been giving me. I also wouldn’t have put it past Kassandra to be just saying that to cause problems.

  “Were you rubbing yourself on my pillows and blankets so the bed smells of you?” I asked instead, quirking an eyebrow at her and attempting to look stern.

  “Would I do that?” Kassandra replied innocently.

  “Yes.”

  “Well then you have your answer, don’t you?” Kassandra replied primly, her nose going into the air before bursting into giggles and scooting over to throw herself into my hip and wrap her arms around me in another hug.

  “Gwah?” Jameson asked, now blinking rapidly, his head jerking from Kassandra’s smiling human-like face and body to her long red-and-brown-scaled tail.

  “It’s amusing to me that you are reacting like this when you shook off the whole ‘magic’ thing earlier,” I said sarcastically.

  Apparently, the sarcasm helped to reset the fuses in my friend’s brain and he shot me a sour look.

  “Knowing how you talked about him, I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought you were pranking him, Liam,” Kassandra interjected, still fighting back giggles. “So in his defense, this isn’t an unreasonable reaction.”

  “The snake lady is right!” Jameson burst out, finally able to form words. “What the hell, Liam? I was joking about the whole ‘mutant’ thing earlier, but this is real, isn’t it? You can shape stone? And have multiple girlfriends?”

  “And he can shape his own body, too!” Kassandra exclaimed. “My friend and I got very lucky to contract with him. Liam has been protecting us ever since, and he’s such a good man that it wasn’t hard to fall in love with him.”

  I swear I heard a pop noise as the fuses in Jameson’s head blew again. Thankfully, they reset automatically this time and he shook his head fiercely.

  Growling to himself, Jameson drained the beer in his hand and slammed the bottle down on the bench beside him.

  “Jameson—” I started, only to cut off when he held up a hand to stop me.

  My short friend huffed and stood up, stomping into my storage room and returning with another two bottles of beer. Popping open the next one with his knife, he guzzled over half of it in one go.

  Only once he set the bottle down did he heave a sigh and meet my eyes.

  “Okay,” Jameson grunted, glaring at me. “Let’s do this right this time?”

  I shrugged, and Jameson growled before turning his attention to Kassandra who was watching the whole thing with a small, amused smile.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you, miss. My name is Jameson Gillespie. May I know your name?”

  “Kassandra Silverscale, but you may call me ‘Kass’ given your status as a friend of my Liam,” Kassandra said, her tone going formal. She pulled back from me enough to dip a slight curtsy toward Jameson.

  “ ‘Your Liam’ is it?” Jameson said, his eyebrows going up and a wicked smirk crossing his lips. “So it’s you I have to thank for my great idiot of a friend finally pulling his finger out and learning to live?”

  “Maybe,” Kassandra laughed. “But Rieka and the others definitely helped. He can be quite obstinate.”

  “Oh, yes he can,” Jameson agreed with a chuckle. “Let me tell you…”

  Shit, I thought, immediately regretting this. That regret was short lived as my lover and my oldest friend immediately set about conspiring and telling jokes like they had known each other for years.

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