Chapter 2

The local Bean Spot was fairly crowded that morning, but the line was moving at a good clip. It only took them about ten minutes to get their drinks and find a table outside. The Pornomancer steered the girl, her name turned out to be Astrid, towards a table in back and in the shade. He had tried getting a tan in the past, and it usually only resulted in him doing a rather impressive imitation of a cooked lobster. Granted, after the burns healed it often did leave him with a nice tan, but the pain and inconvenience really wasn’t worth it in his opinion. The only problem was he was too cheap to really invest in the sunscreen he ought to be wearing, so sitting in the shade was an inexpensive work around.

He leaned back against the already-warm bricks of the building, stuck out his lower jaw, and breathed upwards across his face. It was an odd habit the Pornomancer had picked up watching his father smoke. It wasn’t until he was much older that he realized exactly why his father did it, but by then it was too late to break the habit himself. A part of him figured he could always take up smoking to justify it, but cigarettes had always sort of smelled like crap to him. Besides, as far as odd quirks went it was kind of a memorable one.

He reached for his latte as Astrid swung her legs over the bench opposite and took a seat. The drink burned his tongue, scorching it numb. That and the caffeine was enough to give a renewed sense of reality. He could still hear the spirits whispering (one of the barista’s had been kind of cute, and he still had the mental image they had provided of her in her apron and nothing else) but they were sated for the time being. They would dream and tease, but there wasn’t any real concern that they would demand another moment.

“So.” Astrid took a sip of her coffee.

“Buttons to ice cream, see if they stick,” the Pornomancer replied, and took a sip of his own.

Astrid shook her head in confusion. “What?”

“Sew buttons to ice cream, see if they stick,” the Pornomancer repeated. He licked a bit of froth from his upper lip. “I’m guessing you aren’t asking about American folk replies. You want an explanation for what happened back on the train.”

Astrid’s face turned bright red. “That wasn’t ... I wasn’t ... I mean, that’s not me. I do not

just have random sex with strangers in public places! You must have done something!”

“Ok,” the Pornomancer replied. He pointed to a police cruiser parked in the corner of the parking lot. “There’s a cop right over there. I’ll wait here while you explain what happened, and I won’t argue when you press charges.”

“No!” Astrid realized she was a bit too loud, and lowered her voice as she continued. “No, I don’t mean to imply that you- Argh, why is this all so confused?”

The Pornomancer smiled as he shrugged. “Because its magic, and its magic that you’ve never encountered, never would have expected to encounter before? To a certain extent, yes, I do something. I exist, and by existing I provide the opportunity. Oh, there’s more to it. The whole warping time thing, and blanking out the people around us. A couple of other things I’m supposed to be responsible for. But the first and ultimate rule is that it is always consensual. I’m guessing it’s the type of thing you have fantasized about before. Being taken by a tall, handsome man where others might see you. A wild moment that’s thrilling in private, but not something you ever felt you could share with someone. I mean, what would they think? What kind of dirty slut wants to have sex in public with someone she’s never even met?”

Astrid’s blush stubbornly refused to fade, so she stubbornly glared at the Pornomancer. He began to openly laugh, loud and deep.

“It’s honestly not that an uncommon fantasy,” he said a bit more gently. “And you’re perfectly normal for having it. But the fact that you did have it is what allowed my powers to work in the first place. Sure, I was checking you out and think you’re hot. But without some urge on your part to go through with it, the entire thing would be a blank. I’d just be that creepy asshole on the train instead of the guy you’re having coffee with now. No interest, no effect.”

“None at all?” Astrid cocked her head to the side as she thought about what he was saying. She had had the sort of fantasy he was talking about. Not exactly of being on a train, but always where other people might see her. And okay, the Pornomancer was tall, and while she wouldn’t exactly describe him as handsome, he was cute in a fluffy ruffian sort of way.

“Dump me in a club of horny naked lesbians, and I’m more likely to get punched than I am to get laid,” the Pornomancer said with a shake of his head. “I can start an orgy when the moment is right, but only if that’s what all involved want. People who are in happy relationships, the asexual, the differently oriented, doesn’t matter. Things can get a bit murky if there is alcohol involved, but I’ve never really enjoyed drinking for the sake of drinking. I don’t go to bars much, at least not without friends around me, but I don’t see that as a major loss.”

“What does alcohol have to do with it?”

“Alcohol, drugs, really strong cold medicine,” the Pornomancer said as he wagged his hand up and down. “Really anything mind altering. Call it the subconscious, call it the deeper mind, call it the lizard hindbrain or whatever. Everyone’s got a part of themselves that is always a little more willing, a little more curious than their waking mind and it is always closer to the surface when people are under the influence. Unfortunately, the waking mind has to live with any consequences of anything that happens, and since the spirits really can’t tell the difference between the two ... I don’t want to be someone’s mistake, or worse, be someone’s target because a mistake was made.”

“You mentioned the spirits before,” Astrid said curiously. She took the top off her drink and began stirring it with her finger. “What are they, exactly?”

“Exactly?” The Pornomancer shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you, not exactly. All I know is they’ve been there my entire life. I can remember finding my dad’s old copies of Playboy and Penthouse and finding them fascinating. Not just in the usual, ‘Ooh, look, boobies!’ way of most young kids finding their parent’s porn. It wasn’t the thrill of finding something naughty, or at least not just that. I would sit and stare at them in wonder as the spirits whispered their secrets to me. They would point to the way a model was curling her finger around her hair, or the way the hemline might fall across a woman’s legs. They were giving me early lessons in seduction and the signs of things that went with it.

“Then when I turned fifteen, they came out to play in force. My first girlfriend was my next door neighbor, Jenny. She was a bit older than I was, a junior in high school when I was only a freshman. One day I was a gawky fourteen year old she couldn’t be bothered to notice, the next I was fifteen and we were in her pool making waves together.” The Pornomancer’s smile turned wistful as he stared past Astrid and back into the past. “She wasn’t the last, of course, and if you think your high school romances were a pain in the ass, then be glad you didn’t have a bunch of horny lust spirits hanging around trying to get you laid at every opportunity! I’m not sure if they just didn’t know any better or if now I have better control over them, but they got me into no end of trouble. I probably got into half a dozen fights a month after that, and I’m not ashamed to say I got my ass kicked in most of them, usually by jealous boyfriends.”

Astrid frowned. “I thought you said it didn’t work on people in relationships.”

“People in happy relationships,” the Pornomancer corrected her. “If you’re not really committed, then you’re fair game as far as the spirits are concerned, and teenagers aren’t exactly anyone’s standards of what constitutes true love. Add in the fact that girls have just as many hormones as boys and, well-” he wagged his hand again “-let’s just say by junior year I wasn’t getting invited to many parties.”

Astrid shook her head. “I have a hard time imagining that many people wanted to cheat on their boyfriends.”

“Wanted is a fairly loaded term,” the Pornomancer pointed out as his gaze refocused on the present. “Most of the relationships I blundered into at that age weren’t really based on love, but on a combination of mutual lust and desire for social standing. If a girl thought of her relationship as more as a friends-with-benefits sort of thing or was just using her boyfriend to up her popularity and she was into me or the scene, then she was fair game.”

“And that doesn’t bother you at all?” Astrid asked. She couldn’t really argue his statement about teenagers and hormones, but he made it all sound so ... tawdry.

The Pornomancer shrugged again. “Two of my best friends were girls who were completely unaffected by my powers. They and their boyfriends were basically living examples of what love is supposed to be. Hell, Julie and Dan got married a few years back and already have a kid. Real childhood sweetheart sort of thing. Alex and Sam weren’t quite so lucky, they broke up in college because of the distance. Now that pissed the spirits off to no end. But back to your question. Nah, I can’t really say that it does. People cheat on each other all the time. It doesn’t take the spirits to give them the excuse, merely one more opportunity out of many.”

“And your girlfriend didn’t have a problem with this?” Astrid asked. Lord knew she would have!

“Girlfriends, really,” the Pornomancer replied. “I’d collected a bit of a harem by senior year, including a couple of teachers. And no, they didn’t. You know how a lot of people try to justify cheating or sleeping around by saying people aren’t supposed to monogamous, but that Mother Nature wants us to screw as many people as possible?”

Astrid frowned. Her last boyfriend had said something similar right before she dumped his lying ass. “You’re not telling me you actually believe that crap?”

The Pornomancer held up his hands in mock surrender. “Not the way you’re thinking about it, no! I do believe that we’re not meant to be monogamous, but I don’t think it means we’re allowed to dick around behind someone’s back and then lie to them about it. Quite the opposite. I think sex is supposed to be a sort of social glue. The girls I was with in high school came to see things the same way. A couple of them even brought other boys into the group, though most didn’t stay long.”

“The girls or the boys?”

“Bit of both,” the Pornomancer said honestly. “There were a few girls who were core to the group and didn’t leave it until life took them off to other places. The spirits really don’t have the patience or the focus to have any effect on anyone over long distances, nor do they really care about the relationship itself. That’s all on me. Jenny, for example, left for college after a year. I’d see her when she came home, and we still talk, but her life moved on. She’s doing promotion work for a music label now. If she’s in town we get together, but she’s in no mood to put down roots. Others were one night stands or quick fantasies for the girls. A few of them tried to give the whole group thing a go, but it wasn’t what they were looking for. They moved on to more stable, one-on-one relationships. As far as the guys went there was one, Jack, who had no problem with the way things were, but most tried to turn it into a competition, which just ended up making them look like posturing jackasses.”

Astrid finished off her coffee and tossed the cup at the garbage nearest them. It rebounded off the rim, spun back up into the air, and dropped back against the side before rolling into the bag. “So the spirits can’t do anything over distance? Like, if I just got up and walked away right now, they wouldn’t be able to suck me back in or anything?”

The Pornomancer shook his head. “To start, that’s not really how it works. Just being around me isn’t going to cause you to spontaneously lose your clothes are start panting like a dog in heat. There needs to be a trigger, something the spirits can work with. Otherwise it is just sex. Don’t get me wrong, ‘just’ sex can still be great, but you won’t have the whole time out of joint thing going on, and people will notice and remember if you do something outrageous. My powers aren’t a perfect get out of jail free card. On the train they were reacting to something about you, your fantasy, your attitude, your emotions, whatever. They fed off that, and so for now they’re happy.

“But yeah, if you walk away now, then that is it. You won’t see me again unless you want to. I can make it easier for you to find me, but only if you want to. Otherwise, you get up and you move on with your life. Meet someone else, raise a family, whatever.”

Astrid shook her head in disbelief. “You have crazy magical sex spirits, and all they can accomplish is... ‘whatever’?”

The Pornomancer nodded. “Yeah, pretty much. To be honest, I’m sort of glad it works that way. Could you imagine the self-esteem issues if they were that powerful? Not only would I be getting yanked into scenes no matter how inconvenient, but I’d always be wondering if I was in a relationship because of who I was, or if the spirits had just dressed me up to be the prettiest piece of meat for them to chew on. Gods, that’d be horrible. Best I can do is a couple of spells that make it easier to find me if the girl wants to. There’s supposedly a couple of more permanent rituals I should be able to pull off as well, but haven’t really found the person or persons I’d want do. They’re supposedly the sort of thing that scoffs at ‘til death do you part’, so not exactly something to mix in with a casual fling.”

The blonde only stared at him, her jaw dropped in disbelief, as he explained a few of the finer details. When he finished, she shook her head and said, “Okay, on that I call bullshit. You can’t expect me to believe that you do magic!”

The Pornomancer frowned as he replied, “Right, I can you sex you up for close to an hour in fifteen minutes, in a train packed full of strangers who were unable to notice a damned thing, all because of a bunch of horny ghosts, but the minute I tell you I can cast a few spells, that is when you stop believing me.”

Astrid opened her mouth to object, though about it, shut her mouth, then opened it again to say, “Well, when you put it that way.”

They sat a few more moments in silence as the Pornomancer finished his drink, then sent his cup sailing through the air to join hers in the trash. Then he stood up and re-shouldered his bag before offering her the crook of his elbow. “Want me to walk you to class?”

“Yeah, I think so,” she said as she got up as well and slipped her arm through his. “I’ve still got some questions for you. Like, if the spirits don’t affect things over a distance, what happens to the people who are constantly around you? I mean, are your neighbors just crawling all over you as soon as you get home? Or do they build up an immunity to the spirits? How does it work?”

“Well, again, not that simple,” the Pornomancer said. He sounded a bit uneasy about the entire topic. “You can’t build an immunity up to them, I know that much. If they’re interested and I’m interested and the girl or girls is interested, then that’s that. There will be a scene. So yeah, the longer you’re around me, the more likely you are to get involved in something. One of the reasons I prefer to work nights, or shifts where I am likely to be by myself. Though it doesn’t always work out the way you’d expect it to.”

Astrid recognized a leading comment when she heard one. “Oh?”

The Pornomancer’s smile turned a bit rueful. “Yeah. Actually, it was just a couple of nights back...”

The Pornomancer was whistling slightly off key as he snaked his way through the basement levels of the hotel. Even though he was a Front of House employee, he still had to use the employee entrance like all the other good little minions. Still, that gave him a chance to place his dinner order in person, an important requirement for not getting a fucked up meal. He especially didn’t want things to go wrong that night, as it was a Sunday and Sundays were usually pretty good nights. Not only were they typically at their lowest occupancy, but the guests were almost always their regular business travelers, so he could spend less time hand holding tourists and put more effort into his own projects.

Even better, the scheduled forecast showed them light on groups. The end of summer was usually sparse for reservations, as most of the business folks were taking their families out for last minute vacations. At the moment, the only group scheduled was a pair of women’s gymnastics teams doing an exhibition at the local colleges. (The hotel only ever got female sports teams, actually. The Pornomancer suspected the work of the spirits, but wasn’t complaining. He had been fairly apprehensive when the first conference of youth cheerleaders had arrived, terrified the spirits were setting him up for something illegal, right up until he met the horde of older sisters, soccer moms, volunteers, and trainers who came along with the event.) The groups had checked in earlier the day before, and he had met an absolutely fascinating pair of twins when they had come down to use the microwave the night before. It hadn’t gone anywhere at the time, but he had felt the spirits paying attention and knew they would be taking advantage of the situation if an opportunity presented itself.

A familiar greeting rang out as he turned the corner into the lobby. “Yay, the Pornomancer is here! My favorite person to see!”

“Good to see you, too, Bridgett,” the Pornomancer laughed. It was their usual script for his arrival, and a good sign over all. Bridgett was one of the two night managers, and his arrival meant her departure. A classic Italian beauty, Bridgett wore her long black hair cut at an angle to frame her narrow face. Her pale lips were highlighted by the bronze cast of her skin, and her dark eyes sparkled under the bright lobby lights. Slim and petite, she tended to prefer outfits that emphasized her lithesome curves. Her choice for that evening had been a red dress with a V neckline that left just a hint of black lace peeking out, as well as a pair of black leather boots just tall enough to cover her calves. The thin material of the dress clung tight to her hips, swishing just so as she moved to best highlight her pert little ass.

“The Pornomancer is here?”

The blonde who looked up was younger than Bridgett, with her much longer hair tied back in a pony tail. If her boss was a classical beauty, then Cindy was statuesque. She topped Bridgett by a good five inches, with another two added on by the high heel shoes she insisted on wearing. Her own choice of outfit was a bit more disciplined, with a translucent yellow blouse over a white chemise and a black skirt that was long enough to be either demure or tantalizing depending on how she chose to stand. She had no need to show off her curves, as her much larger tits did a fine job of getting notice all on their own, even in spite of all the layers she was wearing.

“Yes, I am here,” the Pornomancer said as his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Are all the portage fees posted this time?”

“Yes, Pornomancer, they’ve all been posted,” Cindy answered mock sarcastically.

“Then yes, you can leave early.”

“Yay!” The blonde agent clapped her hands, only to start to pout a moment later. “Except, I can’t. Bridgett and I are going out for drinks. I have to wait for her. You should come and join us!” Bridgett started to laugh as the Pornomancer gave Cindy a, “I-can’t-believe-you-just-said-that” look. Cindy responded by sticking out her tongue, ensuring the dignity of the moment remained preserved. “I know, I know. You have to stay here and make sure the hotel doesn’t get blown up. But I swear, one of these days we’ll get you to come with us!”

“Yeah, yeah.” The Pornomancer’s chuckle cut short when he felt a throb of power as she brushed past him. He tried not to think anything of it; he was always flirting with the girls at work, but they never hung around for the spirits to ever do anything. They’d probably zapped every attractive coworker he had a dozen times each, and all he had to show for it was a few awkward boners.

What he didn’t know was that this time, Cindy had felt the burst of power. Her gaze lingered on him as he logged into one of the work stations, her eyes drawn to his ass. It was a nice ass by any standard, tight and just the right size for grabbing. She could imagine wrapping her hands around his butt, squeezing tight as he thrust deep into her.

‘Where the hell did that come from?’ she thought as turned to her own computer and started running her end of day paperwork. ‘Alright, so I’m in the middle of a dry spell. Didn’t realize that meant I could mentally tune into the Penthouse channel!’

She tapped her fingernails against the counter as she stole another glance at the Pornomancer. He wasn’t exactly her standard fantasy lover (a position reserved for Mark Wahlberg) but the longer she stared at him the more she had to admit there was a certain undefinable appeal. That, and it would be nice to have an actual body in her bed instead of just another visit to Ms. KY and Mr. Stabby.

The Pornomancer, meanwhile, was entirely unaware of what was going through his coworker’s mind. Part of that was due to the fact that the spirits still hadn’t granted him telepathy. The other reason was because he was too busy having fantasies of his own.

‘She really does have fantastic tits, ‘ he thought as he stared down the front of Bridgett’s dress. He wasn’t worried about getting caught, as she was in the middle of giving him the evening brief. That meant her eyes were glued to her computer monitor. That also meant that she was leaning forward with one arm braced against the desk so that it served as a shelf for her breasts, pushing them up and nearly out of the front of her dress.

‘I hope he is enjoying the view, ‘ Bridgett mentally laughed. She continued to rattle off the day’s statistics, all too well aware that the Pornomancer was ogling her, and that was exactly why she was staring so intently at the screen. Not only did it allow her to hide her smirk, but it gave him the opportunity to discreetly adjust himself before she finished. Once he had made sure that he was pointing up and not out, she turned around to look him in the eye. “So, all together a-”

“Please,” the Pornomancer begged, holding up a hand to stop her. “Please don’t tell me it should be a quiet night. After all, Murphy has big ears.”

“I won’t then.” Bridget smiled and shook her head. “Anyways, if you need anything at all, you have my number.”

‘You on your knees without any clothes on.’ Instead he said, “I should be good. I’ll try and make sure the place hasn’t burned down by morning. You in tomorrow night?”

Bridgett shook her head. “I’ve got the next two days to myself. I plan on getting lots of sleep.”

The Pornomancer nodded. “See you then. Go, you and Cindy have fun. Just make sure to have one for my sake.”

“That we can do!” Bridgett laughed as she gathered up her bag. Their hips brushed as she went past, and the Pornomancer’s nostrils flared as he caught the fading scent of her perfume. Something floral, maybe with a vanilla base. It caught the attention of the spirits as well, and he could feel them spinning around in confusion. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, then dropped into the still warm seat to continue his work.

“See you tomorrow, Pornomancer!” Cindy added as she collected her own belongings. The two women walked out arm in arm, giggling as they started to kvetch about their day.

Several hours later the two women were by themselves at the back table of the Low Hanging Bar and Grille, heads bent together as they whispered over glasses of slowly melting ice. The bar had closed thirty minutes back, but Kristy, the owner, was fairly lenient with the hotel staff. She had once worked there herself, and so the rest made it a point to steer the curious in the direction of her place. It only made sense to offer the hotel staff some extra privileges here and there.

“So, what do you think he does all night?” Cindy asked as she stirred her ice. The cubes clinked against the glass as they were spun around by the wooden stick she was holding. Cindy hadn’t gotten drunk, but was instead just pleasantly buzzed. She had learned her limits the hard way back in college, and made it a point to stay as far away from them as possible.

“Spreadsheets. Lots and lots and lots of spreadsheets.” Bridgett hiccuped, which led to a bout of giggles. She was drunk. It probably violated some company policy for her to be so hammered while out with a staff member under her supervision, but, well, fuck it. Once she had had a husband, and now she had an ex, and drinking gave her a reason to be around people. “Sends ‘em out every morning, though I don’t think anyone other than Mike and Ellen ever read them. Lord knows I never do!”

Cindy rolled her eyes at Bridgett’s ‘enthusiasm’. “That can’t be all that he does, though! I mean, a lonely guy, all by himself for eight hours? The question isn’t does he watch porn, but what kind?”

“That’s a good question.” Bridgett rubbed her chin thoughtfully as she tried to reason through her alcohol induced haze. “He can’t be doing it on the work computers. They’ve got too many blocks in place, and Ellen monitors them fairly religiously. The Pornomancer is way too rough with that backpack of his, so I doubt he’s sneaking a laptop around in there...”

“Yeah, and that cellphone of his is too cheap to do anything fun with,” Cindy mused. She slapped the top of the table as a thought occurred to her. “Oh, I know! What about the iPads? They get on the wireless, and they don’t have the network restrictions built in. He could easily use the bigger one to watch porn!”

“Oh my god, he totally could!” Bridgett covered her mouth with her hand as she tried to stifle a drunken giggle. “I bet you he does, too. I bet you he props it up against the keyboard and picks out a video to watch, then unzips his pants and pulls his dick out. I bet you he starts tugging at it until he’s good and hard. Then he starts to stroke it with one hand while the other fondles his balls, or slips into his shirt to toy with his nipples, I dunno. Then he stops as his cock tenses up in his hand before shooting off, splashing white ... hot ... sticky cum all over the bottom of the desk.”

Cindy looked back at her through half-lidded eyes. The hand that had been stirring her drink had gone completely still, while its partner had disappeared below the table, where her fingers were slowly rubbing up and down the front of her panties.

“Or maybe he just stands there with his hand in his pocket,” Bridgett suggested. She pretended not to notice the effect she was having on her subordinate. She leaned across the table and dropped her voice lower, huskier. “Maybe he toys with himself, quietly massaging the side of his cock as he watches people stumble back in, until some drunken bimbo with her tits hanging out the front of her shirt comes looking for a new room key and ends up on her knees instead, his dick down her throat and his cum all over her face. It happens, you know. I’ve heard the porters talking about some of their more special late-night “tips”.”

Cindy’s panties were now well and truly soaked as her mind conjured up the scene Bridgett was painting. Only, it wasn’t some faceless slut kneeling in front of the Pornomancer, but herself, with her blouse unbuttoned and her bra pulled down so that he could fondle her tits as her head bobbed up and down.

“Sometimes they don’t even need to wait for the drunk to come to them,” Bridgett continued in a stage whisper. “Sometimes they get a late, very late, request for turn down services. When they get to the room, a woman opens the door. Sometimes she’s in her lingerie. Others, she’s just totally naked. She spreads her legs and invites him inside. If she’s good looking enough, or the guys are just bored, then they go inside and give her a good, hard fucking. If she’s got a condom? Great! If not? Even better. Gods, there must be a dozen bastards running around out there who have been fathered by one of our guys.”

Bridgett’s voice caught at the end of her last story. She’d always wanted children – the fact that her husband hadn’t had been one of the contributing factors to their divorce – and the though of having a random fling with a stranger and ending up pregnant from it was oddly arousing, especially if the stranger wasn’t exactly a stranger. She didn’t want to marry him, but the Pornomancer did look as if he had good genes...

Cindy recognized the look on her boss’s face. “You want to fuck him, don’t you?”

“What?” Bridgett’s face turned read as she quickly shook her head. “No, no, of course not!”

“You totally do!” Cindy leered mischievously at the older woman. “And you know what? So do I. So let’s do it! Let’s go over there and fuck his brains out!”

Bridgett stared at Cindy as her brain tried to process the blonde’s suggestion. There were all sorts of reasons why it was a bad idea, not the least of which was that they would all be fired if they got caught. And they would get caught. Even though the hotel was mostly empty, that wasn’t the same thing as being alone. All it would take would be a guest coming down at the wrong moment or security making a surprise visit during their rounds and they would all be screwed. Well, more screwed. Then there were the security cameras mounted over the front desk. They’d easily be seen coming in or going out.