Training

Clover was dead-set against allowing Alison into the house, but, as Alison pointed out, having a winged woman hanging around in our yard in the daylight might have drawn unwanted attention from the neighbors. We compromised by having our meeting in the garage. Clover even donated some gym shorts and an old Avril Lavigne T-shirt that she was a little embarrassed of while we ran Alison’s wet clothes through the dryer. We had to cut long slits in the back of the shirt so that it would fit over Alison’s wings.

Despite her more hospitable mood, Clover still made protective garlands for the two of us, and kept her sickle in hand.

“Here’s the deal,” Alison began. “There’s a cabal that’s been planning a ritual - a summoning spell - for a couple decades now. The final act will take place on a cruise ship, out at sea. Clover, I need you to be on that ship to disrupt that spell.”

“Why?” I asked. “What are they summoning?”

Alison looked frustrated by my question. “There really aren’t words for it that would make sense to you. If they succeed, it’ll be really really bad.”

“How bad?” I asked, equally frustrated.

“I can’t say, exactly,” Alison replied. “It will be world-changing, in a way that none of us wants. Look, I’ll leave my notes with you to verify. I assume you’ve connections? A coven or at least a few friends who know the business?”

“Yes,” Clover answered. She seemed to be taking Alison’s claim seriously.

“Why does it need to be Clover?” I asked. “Why can’t you do it?”

“I wish I could, but I sort of attract a lot of attention,” Alison said, pointing at her wings. “I’d be dead within an hour of leaving port.”

“But why Clover?”

“It has to be a pretty, fertile witch,” Alison said bluntly.

“Why?” Clover asked.

“The ritual is based on sex magic,” Alison explained. “They’re basically setting the ship up to be a giant four-day Bacchanalia - an orgy. They’ll be steering it through some convergence points and ... Well, there’s technical stuff. But the main point is that they’re going to focus all of that sexual energy and use it to bring something that doesn’t belong here into this world.”

Alison continued: “I need a witch because it’ll take some strong foundational skills to learn how to re-tune the sexual energy, not to mention protect against scrying. And she needs to pretty and fertile because it’s imperative that lots of people want to fuck her.”

“But, she doesn’t have to actually fuck anyone, right?” I asked, incredulously.

“Of course she does. I thought that was clear when I said ‘orgy’,” Alison said.

“Wait, what?” Clover interjected. “How does that even make any sense? If the ritual is based on sex magic, how would me going there and having sex counter it?”

“Think of it like an orchestra,” Alison explained. “If all of the musicians are playing on tempo and in the same key, it sounds nice and the patrons will shower them with donations. But if one of the musicians is playing in a different key, it sounds horrible, and the patrons won’t support them.”

“So you want me to go on the ship and have sex with people off-key?” Clover asked.

“In a different key, yes. If you do it right, it will spread from you to your lovers, and then to a lesser extent to their lovers,” Alison answered.

“How dangerous is it?” I asked suspiciously.

Alison sighed. “They’ll know that someone is working against them - at least at the end - but with the right precautions it’s very unlikely they could figure out who the saboteur was. If they did figure it out, though, they would kill her. Or maybe worse.”

“Fuck no! She’s not doing it - find someone else,” I proclaimed.

“James, I don’t think you realize just how rare Clover is,” Alison argued.

“The hell I don’t!” I answered.

Clover touched my hand. “Let me see your notes,” she told Alison.

Alison gave Clover a slightly damp notebook. Clover thumbed through the pages, which were full of drawings, diagrams, strange symbols, and notes. Once again, movies and video games had proven to be remarkably insightful about the world of magic and demons.

“I’ll run this by my friends,” Clover said. “I’ll give you an answer in a couple of days.”

Over the next few days, all of the research kept coming back supporting the threat of the cruise ship orgy ritual. Likewise, Clover’s friends reluctantly all admitted that they didn’t know anyone else who could do the job.

“I don’t get it,” I told Clover. “Surely of all the witches in the world, you can’t be the only attractive one.”

Clover’s eyes begged me for understanding. “Well, yeah, I mean, there are thousands of beautiful ‘weekend wiccans’. But this this is serious magic. I was raised by three generations of witches. Not many people have my pedigree, and those who do are generally pretty secretive.”