Chapter 28

I stared back at Jana. She had seen my last two days? Had it been as vivid as what I saw of her? Had she heard my thoughts, understood my conflicts, experienced everything I had? If so, then she was handling everything better than I would have expected, if I had decided to tell her the whole truth.

Jana glanced at Danielle again. “Seth, you have to tell her. Jordan knows and I know. She needs to know too.”

I looked from the brunette to the redhead and back. I was caught between my confusion over Jana and my concern for Danielle. I decided to deal with Jana later, especially since she wanted me to talk to Danielle now.

Danielle sat in her t-shirt. Her wide eyes darted from Jana to me to Jordan and back again. “What? What more can there be?”

I glanced at Jordan. She gave me a slight nod. I turned to Danielle, shifting myself around to face her completely. She had her arms crossed under her breasts and rocked in place. I didn’t like the way she was acting. If Jana had seen my last two days, and Jordan had seen something too, then Danielle had to have seen something. Telling her that I was a mage could wait. “What did you see Danielle?”

She stared at me. “Lisa Hartwell, Ms. Langston, Mr. Hartwell. I saw that day Seth. I was there, like it was me going through it.”

I stared at her for a moment. Of all the events in my life, why did she have to see that day? I shifted around onto my knees and crawled around Danielle. I tugged lightly at her shirt. “Lemme see Danielle. I want to make sure you’re not hurt.”

She shifted her hips and let me pull her t-shirt up. There were welts on her back. They weren’t bloody like mine had been, but that didn’t make them any less painful. I didn’t know what to do. I had been worried about so many other things going on that it never occurred to me that something like this might happen.

Jordan and Jana crawled around to see what I was looking at too. Jana gasped. Jordan jumped up and walked off through the bedroom. “I’ll get a cold cloth for that.”

I lowered Danielle’s T-shirt and crawled back around in front of her. She continued rocking with tears rolling down her eyes. I wanted to hug her, to hold her and make the pain go away, but I didn’t know how. I moved along side her, pressing my leg to hers but facing the opposite direction, and she automatically wrapped her arms around my neck.

Jordan came back with a washcloth, sat behind Danielle, and lightly used it on the redhead’s back.

Danielle sucked in air through clenched teeth and hugged me tighter.

All I could think to do was say, “I’m sorry,” over and over again. She had already been hurt by Roger, the bruises were still covered with makeup but present nonetheless. I never wanted to add to that.

Danielle calmed down and pulled her head back enough to look at me. “Jana said there was something you needed to tell me. What was it?”

I swallowed and almost refused. Danielle’s eyes were set though. She wasn’t going to let me walk away without telling her, and after what she had both witnessed and experienced, I thought she deserved the truth. How else could I explain the welts on her back? People didn’t get hurt by being told about another person’s pain.

I glanced at Jordan. The only way to tell the story correctly would be to include Jordan’s part. I didn’t know if Jordan understood what my unspoken question was or not, but she nodded her head. “Two days ago,” I said, looking at Danielle again, “Jordan and I had sex in the upstairs bedroom.”

Danielle nodded. “I figured that much out already, but what’s that have to do with what just happened?”

I took a deep breath and let most of it back out. “She was a Magus, a modern wizard trying to gain more power to keep her and her Fonti safe. She wanted to tap some of my sleeping powers for that, but accidentally woke my power instead. Since that time, I’ve been going through an Initiation to feed that power. You and Jana accidentally got caught up in the process and the Finale was what happened when you saw what happened to me four years ago.”

Danielle looked confused, and rightly so. I had summed up two days of events with terms that made no sense and descriptions that lacked any detail. “But what does all of that mean?” Danielle asked.

“Well,” I said, “I guess it means that I’m a full Magus now.” I lost focus on Danielle’s face, thinking about what that meant. “I’m supposed to be able to use magic.”

“Magic?” Danielle echoed me in the form of a question. “How?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. This is all new to me.” I looked at Jordan. “I suppose I’ll have to learn eventually.”

Danielle let go of me and twisted to look at Jordan too. For a moment, I didn’t know what Danielle was going to say. Her expression was inscrutable. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

Jordan frowned. “Could you have really believed me? Even if I used a spell or two as proof?”

I shook my head. “Danielle, no. If you believe that I’m a Magus now, you have to believe that she was a Magus.”

The redhead looked back at me. “Was?”

I nodded. “When Jordan awoke me, she accidentally gave me her power. Not all of it the first time, but throughout the night last night.”

Danielle looked at the brunette again. “So, you’re ... normal now?”

Jordan nodded. There was sadness in her eyes, but also relief. I wasn’t sure what the emotions meant, why she felt that way, but I could guess.

Danielle turned to look at Jana. “You said you saw Seth’s last two days?”

Jana nodded. Of all three girls, I had expected problems with her, but she was the quietest of them. Had her viewing of what happened to me been as visceral as Danielle’s viewing? She looked past Danielle at me. There was tension in her eyes that could have meant any number of things, but what I took it as was her restraint. She wasn’t going to rant about what happened tonight. Of course, that didn’t mean I wouldn’t hear about it from her some time later. For the time being, I was okay with that.

Danielle glanced at me, shifted her legs around to see Jana better, and leaned back against me.

I wasn’t sure how to receive her because I was worried about the welts on her back. At my tentative touch, she looked at me and said, “They’ve already stopped hurting.”

I nodded, taking her word for it and let her settle against me. Even though my Initiation was over with, it felt good to hold her, to feel her pressed against me. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. I liked it, but I thought the end of my Initiation would mean the end of everything happening between us.

Danielle studied Jana for a moment and then asked, “So, what was it like?”

Jana blinked, looked at Jordan for a moment and then back at Danielle. “Other than talking to myself from his perspective, I thought it was very ... intimate.”

Jordan smiled at me and Danielle squeezed my leg. “What was it like?” Danielle asked.

Though the question was the same there was a ton of implication that I didn’t understand. To me, it was too vague, but Jana smiled and thought. “Like having a very large clit,” she said. “And the absolute desire to bury it as deep as possible.”

Jordan smiled at me again but it wasn’t as ornery as before. She understood, at least a little. Danielle though, leaned to the side and smiled up at me.

Jana looked at me too but her expression wasn’t contemptuous or resentful. She looked like she was evaluating me, weighing what she understood about men against what she experienced from my point of view in the memory. Then she glanced at Danielle and she smiled ever so slightly. In a weird, vicarious way, she got to be with Danielle too. Then she looked at Jordan and I realized that though I didn’t think she felt the same for Jordan as she did for Danielle, she had also been with her in the same way. She looked at me again and smiled. There was a touch of blush to her smile again and I understood that it was all because of my involvement that she had enjoyed something she never had before. I didn’t think it was the sex itself, something told me it was deeper than that, and on some level I didn’t fully understand, I knew we had reached an agreement we could both live with.

Danielle turned straight and looked at Jana again. “So, what did Jordan have to do to get in his pants?”

I frowned at the back of her head, but Jana smiled and told the story. She made me sound like a scaredy-cat that jumped at its own shadow, but when she got to the sex she gave more detail than I would have. Maybe it was because it was so different, the way things felt in the memory compared to what she felt when we had sex. Whatever the case, I fought both my embarrassment and my erection. Danielle didn’t say anything about the latter. She simply wiggled against me.

Jana stopped when she got to the part about finding Danielle with the black eyes earlier and blushed heavily. I glanced at Jordan, trying to convey with my eyes alone how Jana felt about Danielle before she experienced my memories. Jordan took it wrong and said, “What was it like with Danielle?”

I felt Danielle blush. Her skin grew hot for a few seconds and then eased off again. I wasn’t sure if it was because she was going to hear about herself or if there was something she hadn’t admitted to about Jana. I remembered how she fantasized in the cab when I offered to fend Jana’s advances off. Was there some curiosity Danielle wanted to explore with her friend?

I didn’t ask. Jana talked about how I acted with Danielle, but instead of saying “Seth felt this” or “Seth did that,” she told us what happened as if it had been her with Danielle instead of me. Her change in story telling didn’t dissuade my erection any, but I was less embarrassed. Jana talked without looking at anyone, like she was telling us something she was watching and though she tried to leave out her own comments, she couldn’t stop herself from expressing just how much she enjoyed the memories. She skipped over our conversation while Danielle was locked in the bathroom and repeated the rounds Danielle and I shared when we came up to the room.

Jana shook her head and looked at Danielle. She didn’t say anything, but I could tell she wanted to.

I didn’t know if Danielle was intentionally ignoring the look Jana gave her or simple didn’t want to face that possibility yet. She held onto my thighs and leaned forward a little. “What was it like making love to yourself?”

Jana smiled and then looked at me. “That was probably the oddest thing I will ever experience. He was terrified of how I would respond when we were finished, and by the look on his face now, that hasn’t changed. But, he was turned on. Once he let go of his fear, he enjoyed fucking me as much as he did both of you.” She shook her head. “And to be honest Seth, I never thought sex with a man would be so ... crude, so ... frenzied, so ... satisfying. If you don’t mind my saying so...” she glanced at the other two, “ ... I feel a little cheated. They’ve both enjoyed your company for hours on end but I only had you for a short romp on the couch.” She stared at me for almost a full minute before saying, “I hope you don’t intend on running off before I get my equal share.”