Chapter 10

“I’ve ... never had an audience ... for that,” Will said, really not sure what was going on.

“You’ll love it. We’ll have you up on stage in no time,” Bella winked.

“No, I really doubt that,” Will shook his head. “So what are we doing?”

“Well, I need to tap directly into your aura. We’re going to do a kind of metaphysical blending of our personal energies,” Bella said. She started getting undressed. “Strip.”

Will started unbuttoning his vest. “That doesn’t sound so bad. What’s Tonya for?”

“Well, your weird curse is interwoven with your aura. It’s basically part of you, so when we merge our energies, I’ll be merging with the curse too,” Bella said. Her blouse and the soft corset she wore over it both landed in a spare chair leaning against the back wall.

“I don’t like the sound of that at all.” Will’s fingers stopped their work after only a few buttons down his chest.

“It’s the best way,” Bella said, untying her skirts. “I need to tap into the energy of the curse in order to get a good, strong reading off of it and find out how bad it’s going to affect me.”

“But won’t you, I don’t know ... have the curse too after that?” Will asked.

“I don’t think so. Didn’t you go to a Nivalese Shaman to try to get it removed once?” Bella asked.

“Yeah, so?” Will asked, still not undressing further.

Bella’s skirts landed in the chair. She was beautifully nude save for a silver chain around her waist with a number of small charms on it. “The Nival method of curse-breaking involves moving it from one host to another. The Shaman tried to move your curse to an animal, right?”

“A rabbit,” Will nodded, starting to catch on. “It didn’t work. The poor thing died for nothing.”

“I don’t think your curse can be moved. I think it’s specific to you, only. If a Nival Spiritbinder couldn’t move it on purpose, I’m certainly not going to move it on accident. I’ll just be sharing it for a little while.” Bella pulled a small jar off a shelf and opened it, dipping her fingers into the red cream inside.

“Alright, that’s pretty clever.” Will continued with his buttons while Bella began tracing careful lines on her chest with the greasy red goo. “None of that tells me what Tonya needs to be here for.”

“She’s going to make sure we don’t die.” Bella’s face was a picture of innocent sincerity. It made Will instantly suspicious.

“You really aren’t very good at being reassuring, you know that?” He was suddenly a lot less turned on.

A remarkably short woman burst through the curtain with a jar in her hands. She was practically jumping with excitement. “Alright so what- oh. Hi there!” she said to Will as soon as she noticed Bella wasn’t alone. With the three of them, things were suddenly very crowded. “I’m Tonya.”

“Will,” he replied, his face still worried and confused, but he couldn’t hide his amusement and interest in the young lady that had just burst in.

Tonya was cute. Also young. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. She had straight brown hair that hung just past her jaw. A pair of braids began at her temples and merged at the back of her head into a single, short tail. The look made her hair hang free without covering her round, youthful face. A faint scar going through one of her eyebrows was her only blemish. She was slender and diminutive, wearing a black corset with a wine colored skirt and a matching blouse that only barely covered her chest. Her breasts were small and nicely round, about the size of oranges. Her corset gave them a lot of extra lift and accentuation. Will realized he could see the upper edge of her areolas peeking above the blouse. Then he realized he was probably staring and looked up at her green eyes. She smirked at him and cocked a hand on her hip. “See something you like?”

Will started to open his mouth, but Bella waved a red stained finger back and forth in Tonya’s direction. “He’s not a client. He’s a friend.”

Tonya looked Bella’s naked form up and down. “Lucky friend.”

“Very,” Will agreed.

“Can I still flirt with him?” Tonya asked. Will wasn’t sure how to respond so he said nothing and did his best to appear nonchalant.

“Sure. You won’t be getting any silver out of him though, so no need to work him too hard,” Bella continued to draw on herself. The pattern was much more elaborate than the one she’d drawn when she’d come to see him a few days ago.

“Do I get to flirt back?” Will asked.

Bella looked up at him sardonically. Tonya laughed. Neither actually gave him an answer.

“Put the salt down on the corner shelf and help him get his clothes off. He’s slow,” Bella said to Tonya.

“With pleasure,” Tonya purred. She slid past Will, getting closer than she probably needed to even in the confines of the small room, dragging a finger down his chest as she went until it reached where his buttons were still fastened. She hooked his shirt and pulled him along with her into the corner.

She set the salt down and turned, her fingers deftly finishing his buttons and pulling his shirt free of his pants. She pulled his shirt open to reveal his muscles and his treasure map tattoo. Her eyes lit up, “Oh, Bella, you bring me the nicest presents.”

Bella laughed, “Maybe you can have him later. Tonight he’s mine.”

Tonya looked up at him. Her green eyes were hypnotic and playfully predatory. There was more than a foot of height difference between them. “Later then.”

Will had always been fairly successful with women. It came with being an explorer. Knowing how to fight and survive, testing yourself against the world, it gave a lot of perspective and confidence. There were many women who were attracted to that sort of man. He’d had a dry spell for a few years. Turns out, cursed cartographers just aren’t as sexy as seafaring adventurers. This week felt like he was making up for lost time. He tore his eyes away from the young seductress in front of him and back to the slightly older seductress a few feet away. “Are all your friends this ... friendly?” he asked.

“Some of them. Tonya’s ... well, there’s a reason she’s my apprentice.” Bella draped an arm around the smaller woman’s shoulders. Tonya leaned her head into Bella’s shoulder, looking a bit like a contented cat.

“I didn’t know you had an apprentice,” Will said.

“It’s a bit of a new development. She’d been bugging me about learning for a couple years. I caved about six months ago after I managed to crack binding a Familiar.” Bella tilted her head to the side and kissed her apprentice’s forehead. “She can be very persuasive.”

“I see that.” Will looked down at the young woman’s compact body. With her head tilted onto Bella’s shoulder there was an awful lot of creamy decolletage on display. “Wait, years? How old are you, Tonya.”

“Nineteen, as of last week,” she smiled. Will’s face contorted a little. The idea of a sixteen year old girl working in a brothel just seemed wrong to him. Both the ladies laughed at his expression.

“She started in the kitchens,” Bella explained. “She didn’t start working in the Lounge until a month ago,”

“I wanted to though,” Tonya said, making a face. “Chance wouldn’t let me.”

“Do you-” Will paused. “Do you like it?”

“Well, the money’s better than working in the kitchens, and sex is usually fun,” Tonya shrugged. “And I get to wear fancy clothes, and most of the other girls are really nice. I’d rather be groped by people who pay me than by the cooks.”

Will looked up at Bella, saying nothing, his eyes tight. She knew exactly what he was thinking.

“Slow the charge there, hero. She’s fine. You know Chance runs a tight ship. That only happened once and the jerk got the boot for it,” Bella said.

“I like him,” Tonya said looking at Will’s expression thoughtfully.

“He has a few good qualities,” Bella smiled. “I wouldn’t be shacking up on a boat with him if he didn’t.”

“Wait, this is him?!” Tonya looked over her shoulder in surprise, then turned back to Will. “You’re the guy who’s stealing Bella away?”

“Guilty,” Will admitted.

“I lied. I don’t like him,” Tonya’s eyes narrowed.

“Sorry?” Will shrugged.

“You are interrupting my education,” Tonya jammed a dark red lacquered nail into Will’s chest. It didn’t hurt, but he winced anyway.

“Be nice,” Bella warned. “Cerise said she’d teach you the basics of Alchemy while I’m away.”

Tonya’s eyes lit up and she spun to face Bella, then she stopped abruptly and her eyes narrowed again. “What is this, musical apprentice? I’m just going to get passed around?”

“That’s usually how it works, yeah. You’d normally apprentice to an entire coven. Around here, there aren’t any covens. It’s just me, that Akula Animist who runs the bait shop, and Cerise, and Cerise isn’t really a witch,” Bella tapped Tonya on her dainty nose, leaving a bright red dot from the cream that was still on her fingers. “Besides, for some of the stuff you want to learn, I’m going to have to pass you around a little more literally. Better get used to it.”

Tonya’s chest flushed and she took a deep breath. “Don’t tease.”

Bella laughed. “So are you going to be a good little apprentice?”

Tonya nodded enthusiastically.

“Get to work then,” Bella said, giving Tonya a gentle shove backwards right into Will’s arms. “You haven’t finished the last job I gave you.”

Tonya went briefly stiff as Will caught her, then she relaxed and leaned into him with a small shimmy. “Sorry, I got distracted. What was I doing?” she asked.

“Getting Will ready for the ritual?” Bella prompted.

“Oh! Right,” Tonya turned around and started undoing Will’s pants.

“I ... actually can do that myself,” Will said, trying to work his hands down between Tonya’s and take over. She swatted his hands. He put them up in surrender.

“Yes, but she needs the practice and it’s fun to watch you squirm,” Bella said.

“I do not need the practice,” Tonya said indignantly. “I can take a man’s clothes off just fine.”

“That wasn’t the practice I was talking about,” Bella said.

“What?” Tonya asked over her shoulder.

“Nothing.” Bella made a show of being absorbed in her preparation for the ritual.

“I feel like I’m being made fun of...” Tonya looked up at Will with narrowed eyes, as if he was in on the conspiracy against her. He shook his head in innocence.

Tonya’s delicate fingers hadn’t stopped working open the laces on the front of his pants. Will used the toe of one boot to hook the heel of the other and stepped free. Then he repeated the process with his other boot and kicked them back against the wall behind him. A moment later Tonya slipped her hands inside his breeches at his hips and slid them all the way down in one long push that took his pants all the way down. She knelt as she did, her face ending up right at groin level on Will.

In spite of Bella being naked and being stripped by an attractive girl, Will’s residual discomfort at the situation had kept him from letting himself get carried away with the sexy scene. It wasn’t that he was unwilling. He was still hung up on what Bella had said about Tonya being here to keep them from dying. He trusted Bella, but he didn’t trust himself, or rather, he didn’t trust his curse. It didn’t make everything go wrong every time. No, it was more insidious than that. Most of the time it seemed like things were normal. Good, even. Then every once in a while, usually when things were already tense or dangerous, things would go as bad as they possibly could. It caused Will to live in a near constant state of mild anxiety, wondering if now was going to be the next moment that things suddenly went terribly awry. This ritual sounded like exactly the sort of thing that might be like bait for his bad luck.

The end result was, Will wasn’t hard. He wanted to be, but the lingering doubts and worries in his head were taking him out of them moment. Now, he had the most lusciously curvaceous woman he’d ever met busily painting her nude body only a few feet away and a new, enthusiastic partner looking right at how not hard he was. He was suddenly self conscious on top of everything. It also didn’t help that Tonya still had a red dot on the end of her nose.

“Well this won’t do,” Tonya said looking at his only semi-hard cock. “Bella, can I?”

“Ask him,” Bella said, drawing an arc of red between two lines.

Tonya looked up at him, her big green eyes full of excitement and mischief. “Can I?”

Will had a moment of being flustered, then exhaled, letting go of his tension. Bella wasn’t worried. Whatever she was doing, it was still just sex. It was supposed to be fun. Clearly he was the only one in the room not having fun, and he was tired of not being able to enjoy himself whenever things edged toward the unknown. He was an explorer. He loved the unknown.

He smiled down at Tonya and said, “Whatever you want to do.”

She grinned and brought her head forward, parting her lips and taking his cock in her soft, warm mouth. He started to fully harden instantly.

Bella looked up, her fingers stopping their odd art. Her breathing deepened as bit as she watched. Will caught her eye. She grinned. “I knew you’d like her. She really likes cock.”

“She’s ... very friendly,” Will said, looking down at Tonya’s slowly bobbing head. He’d hardened enough that she couldn’t go all the way down anymore, so she was concentrating on the end. She wasn’t the best fellatrix he’d ever come across, but she was certainly the most enthusiastic. She popped off of him, her hand taking over instantly.

“I love cock,” she corrected. Her hand worked slowly up and down his shaft. She looked at it like a painter critiquing their own canvas. “Yours is pretty nice.”

“Thank you?” Will said, not sure how to respond.

“It’s pretty long without being freakish,” Tonya said, continuing her stroking, bringing her other hand up to cup and gently massage his balls. “It’s decently thick without looking like it would be painful, and it isn’t all covered with giant veins or-”

Bella snorted, trying to hold back a laugh at the expression on Will’s face. “I think he gets the idea, dear.”

Tonya rolled her eyes. “Men talk about their cocks all the time, but when I do it, they get all uncomfortable.” She didn’t take her eyes of the task at hand, stroking and licking as she talked.

“I think it has to do with the clinical analysis,” Bella said, putting a few finishing touches on the intricate pattern she’d drawn across most of her torso. “They don’t like any comparison that might not be favorable. Men tend to have a strange mystique about their cocks. About cocks in general, really. Anything that threatens the mystique tends to get a strong reaction, especially from men who aren’t very secure.”

Will was feeling a little like a prop in a lesson, but he felt like he really couldn’t complain.

“I guess that’s why so many insults are about cock size, or other sex stuff. It attacks the mystique directly,” Tonya said. She put her mouth back on Will’s cockhead and slipped her arms free of the sleeves of her off-the-shoulder blouse. Then she tugged a bit. Her blouse folded down over her corset, revealing her pert breasts. Still held up by the corset, they were high and round and firm. Her nipples were surprisingly large for her frame, about the size the end of a man’s finger. They were pink, much lighter in shade than Bella’s more reddish hue. She gave her breasts a squeeze and looked up at Will to make sure he was watching her. He didn’t disappoint. Her eyes twinkled and went back to work, energetically bobbing her small mouth on the end of his shaft.

Will put his hands up, bracing them against the ceiling to help maintain his balance. Tonya was really working him over. One of her hands slid around to grab his butt, the other working in tandem with her mouth. He was almost painfully hard now. He let out an involuntary groan. Tonya moaned a bit in response, but then gagged a bit as Will’s hips twitched forward. She came off him again and coughed, her eyes watering.

“Sorry,” Will said. “I try not to do that, but it just feels so good sometimes.”

“That’s ok,” Tonya said, laughing a bit. “I love blowjobs, but I haven’t been giving them for very long. I still haven’t learned out how to go deep without choking yet.”

“That’s the practice I was talking about,” Bella said from the other side of the table. She hadn’t looked up from the intricate pattern she was drawing on herself.

“Hey!” Tonya said, “I don’t get any complaints!”

“You can’t trust a man to tell you the truth about blowjobs. They’re all just happy to be getting one,” Bella chuckled. She still hadn’t looked up from her pattern, but there was an amused smirk on her face. “It’s an art, and it takes practice.”

Tonya huffed in sarcastic outrage and turned back to Will’s cock with a vengeance. Bella looked up and gave Will a mischievous wink.

Bella’s subtle manipulation of her apprentice worked. Tonya was incensed and went after his shaft like she was angry at it. All passion, but little skill. Still, passion was impressive on its own. Her hand stroked and her mouth bobbed. She felt herself getting worked up and squeezed her thighs together as the warmth began to bloom within her. Tonya really did like cock.

Bella finished what she was doing and stepped closer, standing right behind Tonya. She brought her red-stained hand up to Will’s chest. “Perfect. Stay just like that.” Will braced against the ceiling and tried not to move at all. It wasn’t easy with Tonya voraciously sucking on him.

While Tonya continued her energetic blowjob, Bella drew. The sigil started as a dot in the center of Will’s bottom lip. Then her fingers ran sensually down his chin and neck to spiral around the center of his chest before snaking further downward. Will did his best not to move. When Bella’s hand finally neared Tonya’s quickly pistoning head, Bella knelt down and watched for a bit, her hand not moving, staying still on Will’s stomach. She enjoyed the show from close up for a few moments then said “Let me in, dear. This part of the line has to be drawn in one unbroken stroke.”

Tonya pulled free. For the first time in a while, no one was stimulating him. The sudden coldness of not having a warm mouth on him sent a small shiver down his back. The vision of Tonya and Bella both kneeling in front of him was still powerfully erotic. Tonya watched as Bella’s red trail traced around Will’s belly button and then down into the tangle of his pubic hair. “See, this is why I keep everything bare,” she said to her apprentice. “It’s easier to clean up and you get a clearer pattern without all the hair in the way.”

“That makes sense,” Tonya nodded. “Will it make a difference for this ritual?”

“I don’t think so. Will isn’t hairy enough to actually break the pattern,” Bella shook her head. “Sex magic can afford to be a bit imprecise. Sex rituals almost never engage with forces that will do seriously unexpected things if the specifics of the ritual are a little off. At worst it just makes the power draw more inefficient. Sex magic fails a lot more because of poor control or improper release timing than because of a ritual itself being off.”

“Well that’s good. Between sweat and everything else, I can see how the sigils might get smudged,” Tonya said.

“Exactly. This stuff is pretty durable when it dries, but sex is messy,” Bella explained. “Sex magic tends to get less precise the longer it goes on. The nature of the energy is that the longer the ritual, the higher the chance to get things messed up. Sex rituals themselves tend to be more about building up energy, and then doing one big thing in a powerful release.”

“Well yeah, that makes sense,” Tonya said. “The properties of the energy match the methods used to gather it. I remember that.”

Bella’s fingers traced downward to the very base of Will’s cock. Then she slid her plump lips over his cockhead and sucked him in, going all the way down his length in one steady push. She looked up at him. Their eyes locked as she slowly swallowed him like a snake. Will shuddered as he felt his cock slide into her throat.

“You are really going to have to teach me how to do that,” Tonya said. She was entranced.

“Mmmhmm,” Bella said. Her red stained fingers at the base of Will’s cock was met by her lips. She stayed right there and traced the red smear around the base of his cock, and on her lips at the same time, like she was putting on lipstick while leaving a ring behind on him. Then she slid her mouth back off of him until she came free with a light popping sound. “All done,” she said. “Just a few things left to do.”

“So I guess I shouldn’t keep going?” Tonya asked.

“It’s fine as long as you don’t break the red ring at the base,” Bella said.

“I don’t think I could if I tried,” Tonya shook her head, still impressed with what Bella had done.

“Careful of your fingers,” Bella cautioned. Tonya nodded and brought her mouth back to Will’s manhood, going slower and more carefully this time, just in case.

Bella stood back up, “How you doing, handsome?” she asked Will.

“Feeling like a very appreciative instructional dummy,” Will shrugged, still bracing himself against the ceiling.

Tonya choked a bit as she laughed. He mouth popped off for a moment. “No jokes while I have my mouth full!” Then she was back to work, stroking him with her tongue and her mouth, resting her hands on his thighs to make sure she was nowhere near the drying pattern. She was going slower than before, making sure to be careful.

“Sorry,” Will chuckled. Her mouth felt good, but without the earlier enthusiasm the differences in skill between Bella and her apprentice were very obvious. Tonya concentrated almost entirely on his cockhead, which after being taken all the way into Bella’s throat, seemed poor by comparison. It was still nice, but it was impossible not to notice the stark contrast. On the upside, it meant Will could think more clearly.

“So, what’s with the salt?” Will asked.

“You’re getting head from a beautiful girl, and you’re thinking about a jar of salt?” Bella asked with one hand on her hip and one eyebrow raised. “You’re going to make Tonya think you don’t appreciate her.

“Yeh!” Tonya managed to say without taking her mouth off Will’s cock. She pushed down as far as she could go and bobbed there. She sounded a bit like she was gagging, but it didn’t seem to bother her this time. Will guessed that must be how a person practiced that throat thing Bella did. It definitely felt good, but he was still worried about choking her.

Will brought his hand down and gently stroked Tonya’s hair. “Oh, this is very nice. It’s just that the looming spectre of possible death is a powerful distraction.”

There was a popping sound. “Well, as far as ways to die go...” then Tonya was sucking again.

Bella grinned. “See why I like her?” She cleared the crystal ball from the table, putting it on a shelf.

Will put his hand back on the ceiling. “She needs to meet Captain Vex,” he muttered, reminded of the Captain’s similar musings on exciting ways to die.

“Salt disrupts spirit magic. It will displace and ground the energies. If things go wrong, Tonya’s going to dump the jar on us,” Bella finally explained. She pulled the purple cloth from the table and started folding it up.

There was another pop. “So I have to watch. For safety!” Tonya went back to sucking again. Will rocked his hips forward a bit with the pleasure of it.

“I thought we were doing sex magic?” Will asked.

“We’re using sex to power the ritual,” Bella explained. “Most witches get known by their prefered energy source, not their ritual specialties. If you want to be technical about it, we are using a sex ritual to gather primal quintessence and use it to create a spiritual binding enchantment. Then, we’re going to perform a divination ritual.”

“Sounds ... complicated,” Will said.

“Now you see why we tend to use short hand descriptions,” Bella shrugged, fanning her paint to get it to dry quicker.

“I thought primal quintessence wasn’t very good for spirit magic?” Tonya said, taking her mouth off Will’s cock just long enough to ask her question.

“It’s not an ideal match in terms of the energy source and the end result, but I’m good enough at gathering energy through sex that I think I can make it work. That’s one of the big strengths of sex based energy gathering. It you do it right, you can gather a lot of energy. It’s just slow, and can be hard to hold onto as it builds up,” Bella explained to Tonya. “The reason it’s usually good to use energy that compliments the ritual you’re trying to perform is that if you don’t, you end up losing a lot of your gathered energies in the conversion. In theory, if you have enough energy to spare, and are good at maintaining control, you could perform any kind of ritual with any kind of energy.”

“I’ve never had someone dump salt on me during sex before,” Will said. His eyes had glazed over a bit at the magical theory talk.

“Hopefully you won’t this time either. If you do, it will still beat spontaneous combustion,” Bella laughed and set the cloth next to the crystal ball. The bare table was highly sanded to a smooth finish, quite sturdy looking, and bolted to the floor with brackets. It also looked like it had handles built into the underside of the edge.

“Alright you little minx, enough of that. Time to do your real job.” Bella sat down on the edge of the table. She picked up her cards and started shuffling them.

Tonya popped Will one last time and stood up looking up with a devilish grin on her face. “I want to pick up where I left off some time soon,” she said. Her eyes gleamed with predatory mischief.

“Well, I’m happy to support your education however I can,” Will said. He was about to give her a hug, but he looked down at himself, not sure if the paint was dry or not. They both stopped, careful not to touch each other.

Instead, Tonya said “Why thank you, kind sir,” and gave Will a small curtsy. Something about the red dot on her nose and her bare breasts made the overly polite gesture strange and comical. Will grinned. She practically skipped away and went to stand behind Bella.

Bella set her cards down and leaned back on her elbows, arching her back and spreading her knees a bit. “Think you’re ready to participate in this ritual to find out my fate, Will?”

Something tightened in Will’s chest. She was beautiful. He’d spent more time around her while she was naked than when she was clothed lately, but it felt like the first time every time. If someone had asked Will to describe sexuality made flesh, he’d describe Bella. Her body reminded him of a N’madi fiddle, symmetrical curves created for making joy and beauty and art.

He stepped forward and nodded. “How’s this work?” He looked at the markings on her body, and then down at his own. The red cream had quickly dried to a soft paint-like consistency, somewhat akin to tar after it had cured. Rubbery with no stickiness. It was starting to tingle slightly against his skin.

Bella tapped her red-stained lips. “Kiss me.”

Will stepped between her knees and slid his hands around the back of her head, cupping it gently. He lifted slightly while he leaned over to kiss her. It felt like electric warmth, small tingles coming from their joined lips and prickling down their necks like tiny shivers. Bella loved being kissed by him. There was something about it. He was confident and strong, and poured his affection and appreciation into his lips in a way that few other men did. It was as though he was trying to tease her and thank her and consume her all at once, just with his lips. Most men kissed because kisses were enjoyable. Will kissed because kisses were meaningful.

Tonya leaned to the side to get a better look, her eyes wide. She’d kissed a lot of men. She’d seen a lot of men kiss other women. Kisses were usually just kisses to her, but this one stood apart from the rest. The two of them were breathtaking. She didn’t know anything about art, but she felt like this kiss qualified.

“You two are really beautiful,” she said quietly. As soon as she said it she wished she hadn’t. It made her realize what she’d really been missing. She loved sex. She loved cocks. She loved men. Women too sometimes, but if she was being honest with herself she liked men more. She really did enjoy her job. She’d always felt like she was trying to find something though. She’d never been able to put her finger on exactly what, but that excited feel of searching was part of what drove her obsession and enthusiasm for sex. It was also what made her want to learn Bella’s art. Now she felt like she knew what she was looking for, or at the very least, she’d seen it. Whatever that kiss was, that’s what she wanted.

Bella laughed, breaking the kiss. “You’re the second person to say that lately.” The red on her lips, and the dot on Will’s glowed faintly with red light that quickly faded. Bella didn’t seem to notice or care, but Will was impressed. Magic was always a little unnerving to him. Bella tilted her head, enjoying the feel of Will’s hands and looking up at him. She and Will were both oblivious to the tiny pang of thought and heartache that had just bloomed in Tonya. They were completely lost in each other for the moment. The ritual had begun, and it was drawing them together. “Apparently we really should be up on stage,” Bella grinned.