Chapter 1

The Pornomancer let out a weary sigh as he hoisted his backpack up to his shoulder. He was, as usual, getting out of work half an hour late since, as usual, his replacements had failed to show up on time. Normally he would have complained to his boss, but since his replacement was his boss ... Fortunately, the night had been a rather quiet one, and he had managed to get an extra bit of writing done between the endless requests for wake up calls and extra towels. Nothing erotic, unfortunately. The spirits weren’t pleased with that, but the Pornomancer tended to be a little leery of writing smut on the clock, as he preferred to get paid rather than get fired.

The door to freedom thunked open as he slammed a hand into the metal bar that held it closed. The sun was already well above the skyline, roasting the city with eighty degree temperatures that were steadily climbing. It was scheduled to be fall soon, but summer wasn’t showing any sign of being ready to move on. The Pornomancer stopped to blink, taking a moment to let his eyes readjust to the day star.

The train station was only a few blocks away, an easy walk when there wasn’t any traffic to keep him from jaywalking. Of course, distance didn’t matter as he watched his ride roll out of the stop and head north without him. The Pornomancer just let out a sigh and found a place on one of the long wooden benches installed around the area to wait for the next train. He pulled out a book, but decided instead to people watch.

The station started to flood with people as the clock neared eight in the morning ... The first group was the construction workers across the street. They’d been laying the foundation for a new road for the past month or so, and always had something interesting going on. At the moment a pair of burly guys in coveralls were walking the roadbed with a bright orange wheel on a stick. The Pornomancer recognized the device from his aborted attempt at a career as an engineer. Each turn of the wheel would be counted, multiply by the circumference, and voila! Mostly accurate distance measurement.

Then came the office workers. The men all wore the same basic suit in one of three colors, brown, gray, black. The women, on the other hand, looked like someone had vomited up a box of Crayola all over a sheet, then cut up and haphazardly stitched together the result. That was actually kind of depressing. The Pornomancer had a soft fetish for a woman in a good suit, the jacket left open and a few strategic buttons left undone. Pants or skirt was immaterial, as they wouldn’t remain on long enough to matter. Sadly, it looked like his fellow office drones wouldn’t be winning any beauty pageants any time soon, even if they weren’t already old enough to be one of his grandparents.

A train entered the station, heading south. A few of the high school students it dropped off were dressed in their Navy JROTC uniforms, which earned them a nod of respect despite being only two-thirds his age. Other than that, the majority was too young to pay attention to. True, a couple of the sheilas were filling out quite nicely, but it took more than grass on the field to get him interested in the ballgame. It was actually kind of creepy to think about hitting on girls that age, so he didn’t. That it also meant he didn’t have to think about how old he was getting was just a bonus. Besides, back when he was in high school easy on the eyes usually meant tough on the ears, and he had already dealt with his share of adolescent drama, thank you very much.

The high schoolers pushed on, so the Pornomancer glanced around to see who was left. A couple of night security officers had appeared, their shirts untucked and their belts empty. Some vagrants had wandered over, hoping to score some change off those passing through. They mostly got told off by the day laborers heading out of the city to mow lawns and tidy up flower beds in the suburbs.

Then she appeared.

There was no cheesy 80’s pop music soundtrack. The world didn’t fade out to a blurry tunnel that left her the only clear thing in his vision. She just sat down on a bench about thirty feet away, dropped a beaten looking black backpack on the ground between her legs, and pulled out a much-thumbed copy of ... something. The Pornomancer had powers over sex, not super-vision. All he could make out was that it was a paperback, and even then only because she managed to bend the front cover back around the spine.

But damn, what a woman! A pair of black, nerdy-chic glasses perched on a heart-shaped face, framed by long wavy hair that started brunette at the roots and ended as blonde highlights down by her shoulder blades. Her large breasts seemed a bit too big for her petite frame, riding high in a black “Frozen” t-shirt that was probably a size too small judging from the way it was riding up at the bottom. Her ‘shorts’ weren’t long enough even for that moniker, with the hem of her legs ending just about where her camel toe began. She wore them well, though, with long, toned legs and firm thighs. Her outfit was finished by a pair of ankle socks and Sketchers that had clearly seen better days.

‘God damn, ‘ the Pornomancer thought as he peeked at her over his book. He tried going back to reading it for a bit, then started checking her out again. Book. Staring. Book. Staring. ‘Yeah, because this isn’t fucking creepy at all.’

Still, after a while he gave up reading and just stared. Several minutes later, the girl looked up from her own book and glanced around. Their eyes met, but the Pornomancer didn’t turn away. The surest sign of a guilty conscience was to flinch, and while he was more than willing to admit that he was being creepy, he still didn’t feel any guilt over it. That would have implied that he was doing something wrong, and what could ever be wrong about appreciating beauty? Besides, with more than ten yards between them there was a good chance that she would think he was just staring through her rather than staring at her. That would be his excuse, at any rate. The girl blinked first, shrugged, and then went back to her book.

He didn’t think anything of it until the train arrived. The Pornomancer figured they would end up on different cars, or, if it was the short run, at the very least on opposite ends of the same car. Instead the girl cut diagonally across the plaza as the train pulled into the station and mounted the stairs directly in front of the him. The Pornomancer couldn’t just ignore such a blatant challenge, and after boarding right behind her moved to stand in the corner immediately opposite her. From that point of view he discovered that her t-shirt had been cut with a very severe V neck. The valley formed by her cleavage was deep and beautiful, so much so that it probably deserved its own state park.

“It is rude to stare, you know,” the girl abruptly announced, not bothering to look up from her book.

“Well, my eyes only look in one direction at a time,” the Pornomancer retorted. “Frankly, I’d rather they look at you rather than, say, him.” The Pornomancer jerked his thumb in the direction of a three hundred pound ball of mobile fat wearing a stained football jersey and a pair of ratty jean shorts. The blob didn’t say anything to acknowledge the verbal jab, but merely grunted in agreement. On the other hand, he’d been staring, too.

“I should be able to wear whatever I want without having to be harassed!”

The Pornomancer opened his mouth to say something, but instead pursed his lips together to keep from laughing. After a moment he sucked on his teeth and asked, “You spend a lot of time on Tumblr, don’t you?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” the girl said as she slammed her book closed, crossed her arms, and stared up at him defiantly. Except she chose to cross her arms under her breasts rather than over them, so the overall effect was to lift up her tits, making them seem plumper, as if she were trying to offer them to the Pornomancer. It also meant he finally got a good look at her face. Her plump lips were a soft, pale pink, like freshly bloomed cherry blossoms, which only emphasized the rich, chocolate brown of her eyes.

The Pornomancer held her gaze just long enough to make it clear he wasn’t backing down, then shook his head in amusement. “Look, I’m going to be blunt. You are pretty fucking hot. I’ll agree that doesn’t give anyone the right to grab you, catcall you, whatever. Those are really just signs of poor impulse control. On the other hand, the shorts you are wearing are smaller than even the tightiest whities I might own, and your t-shirt is doing a remarkable job at showing off what are possibly the finest tits I have seen in a long while. The only reason a man wouldn’t be checking you out is if he is dead, gay, or his balls haven’t dropped yet. And I wouldn’t make any guarantees about the last two.”

“Oh, my god!”

“Hey, you spoke first,” the Pornomancer pointed out with an exaggerated shrug. The spirits had started to whisper in his ear. It was a strange, foreign tongue that resembled no earthly language, but sounded instead like a cross between singing birds and a church choir. But even though he didn’t know the words, their meaning was clear. “That was probably a mistake on your part.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I’m the Pornomancer, and you’re hot. We’re now wrapped up in a bad sex scene.”

“Oh, bullshit!” The girl shook her head in denial as she shifted in her seats. “There is no way that’s true!”

The Pornomancer simply continued to stare at her for several moments, then sighed and held up a pair of fingers. “Two things. First, we just blew through a station without stopping for anyone to get on or off, and this isn’t an express. Second, you’ve been fingering yourself for the past couple of minutes. Pretty much since we started talking.”

The girl sat there, gaping at him, then looked down when he nodded towards the seat. There was noticeable bulge in the front of her shorts. It was only then that she realized she could feel her fingers, already two knuckles deep, working on her pussy. Better, she felt good, far more than when she normally masturbated. It was as if someone had turned all the sensations up to eleven. Her shorts were suddenly too confining. She wanted them off, she want to spread her legs, to bare her sopping wet cunt and to fiddle with her clit. Her entire body shivered as her fingertips found her g-spot, but she managed to choke down the gasp that followed.

“Why is this happening?” she moaned, partly in disbelief and partly from the tingling pleasure working down her spine.

“Now that is a long and complicated story,” the Pornomancer answered. He sounded ... not quite bored, but entirely far too at ease for a man watching a strange woman play with herself in public. He shifted his stance a bit to the left, which not only put him directly in front of her but eased some of the growing tightness in his own pants. “I can explain if you want...”

“No, that’s okay,” she replied breathlessly. Instead she reached out with her free hand and began to caress the bulge that was only a few inches from her face. The Pornomancer pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth to keep from making any noise. It felt damned good to be touched and he desperately wanted something a little more direct, but he also had a bit of an urban legend to live up to. That meant he had to make at least a half assed attempt at keeping his cool and staying in control.

“Take off your shirt,” he growled when it finally became too much to take.

“What?” the girl squeaked. Her hand never moved from his crotch as she looked around the train. “Here? Now?”

“Here,” the Pornomancer repeated. He motioned towards the rest of the train with his free hand. “Right now. Look at them. They are completely isolated in their own little worlds. They will read the same page, have the same conversations, over and over again, until you and I-” and the spirits “-are sated. The train won’t stop until we are done.”

The girl paused as she took a closer look at the passengers around them. They all seemed so ... stiff. Not frozen, not quite, but more like a series of animatronic displays playing the same jerky scenes in a loop. There was an old lady two seats over who appeared to be watching them, but her eyes were blank, unfocused. A pair of knitting needles clicked back and forth between her fingers, but the scarf or sweater or whatever project she was working on hadn’t advanced a single line.

That decided it for the girl. She grabbed the hem of her t-shirt and nearly ripped it in half as she yanked it over her head and dropped it on the floor next to him. Her bra was too plain for the situation she had found herself in. By all rights it should have been something black and sheer, with just a hint of lace. Instead it was a standard eggshell white and completely without frills, unless one counted the Fruit of the Loom tag hanging from the strap in back. Worse, its full cups were exactly the right size for her ample bosom rather than the standard one-size-too-small that would have been expected on film. Still, it was an extremely well filled bra, so the Pornomancer didn’t see he had any reason to complain.