A long pause. “Yes,” they admitted at last, the word coming out as a hiss. “I was concerned.”
“Why? What were you concerned over?”
“You were in such despair, little one, when you first began coming here. I was concerned you were considering doing yourself an injury.”
Her eyes filled with tears, recalling that endless, glasslike sea. “I think I was.”
“What caused you to change your mind, I wonder?”
“The shadows started talking to me,” she murmured, tears leaving salty tracks down her cheeks. “And I started answering back.”
She felt the darkness crowd around her, enveloping her for a moment, and the waking world disappeared. A curl at her ear and a chill at her cheek, like a kiss from a ghost. “Good girl.”
Her nerves were jangling as she walked home that night. She wandered around downtown until the very last trolley that would take her back to Oldetowne pulled away from the gazebo, a curious weight hooked around her ankle. It stayed there as she stalked through the streets of her twilight-lit neighborhood, until the stars began to wink overhead, and it was too dark for the shadows to gather.
She took the long way around, finding the little pathway Holt had told her about, entering her home through the front door for the first time. It looked like a proper witch’s house.It should. Because you are a proper witch.
Undressing while knowing she had an audience was a foreign sensation. She had never been into exhibitionism, wouldn’t know how to be alluring if someone paid her to do so, and was pretty sure she would look like an awkward, newly plucked chicken if she attempted to be seductive, whatever that entailed.
Instead, Harper simply took her time. After all, that was the killer, right? She felt ready to combust from bang-xiety, and tightening the winch by slowing the pace would only increase the tension, sweetening the payoff in the end.
She carefully slid the lacquered rabbit ear buttons through their holes, sliding the jumper dress down her body. Her shoes had already been replaced in their box on her shoe shelf in the closet, her ear cuff carefully laid onto the velvet cushion of her jewelry box, her hair ribbon placed in its bowl.
She had learned very early in her scholastic career as a witch that goth girls like herself were a dime a dozen. What set her apart, Harper thought with pride, was her attention to detail, her careful matching of colors, her eclectic mix of accessories, and the care she took with her shoes and handbags. That was always when she knew her depression had reached its nadir — when she no longer cared about taking care of her clothes, when she kicked off her shoes at the door and left them laying in a haphazard heap rather than carefully unlacing them, pulling them off with her hands instead of breaking down the heels, replacing them in their boxes so that they stayed clean and scuff free. Some people needed pets. She needed patent leather pumps and delicate lace dusters.
Once her dress was hung up, Harper lifted her foot to the side of her bed, slowly rolling her knee socks down her legs, exposing her milky white “I haven’t seen the sun since toddlerhood” skin an inch at a time. Her bra was next, deftly unhooking it through her shirt, slipping her arms free of the straps and pulling the whole thing from the bottom of her shirt, following her socks into the hamper.Now or never. You’ll never know unless you try. Gripping the bottom hem of her shirt, she pulled the fabric up her body at a snail’s pace, arching her back as she did so to give her breasts the best silhouette possible. Her panties were the last to go, and then she was bare to the room, bare to the world, vulnerable and exposed to shadows.
If she had thought they would pounce the instant she began undressing, she would have been wrong.Of course not. They want to make sure you want this first.
Harper climbed to the center of her bed, staring up at the ceiling. Azathé had made no move to come out of the shadows, and she wondered briefly if she had imagined the weight sitting around her ankle as she walked home.No. She knew that she hadn’t. The invisible shackle had slithered free, disappearing into the dark corners of the room as soon as the door had swung shut behind her, and she could feel the crackle of their energy still.
Pretend you’re alone. What would you be doing if you were home alone right now?She closed her eyes and envisioned that tarot deck again. The Six of Pentacles – self-care and luxury. A figure stretched out on their bed, just as she was, legs splayed, pleasuring themselves with their hand. The Eight of Swords – blindfolded and restrained, hands tied down and legs open, at the mercy of whoever might have her.
Harper opened her legs, placing her feet at opposite sides of the mattress, as if she were tied to the bed posts. With one hand, she stroked down her body, a slow fingertip over her neck, down the valley between her breasts, moving over each creamy mound to circle her nipples. She kept her eyes closed and her other hand raised over her head, as if it, too, were restrained.Show them what you want. Show them what you want them to do.
Down her stomach, across the dark triangular thatch neatly trimmed hair, and then — heat, stroking through her silky hot folds, coating fingers in her slickness. She slid two fingers into herself, pumping her wrist once, twice, her hips raising from the bed on the third, a small cry breaking from her throat. She dragged the moisture upward, using her fingertips to rub circles over clit until she was hardly able to hold still, the effort of keeping her feet to the bed hard without an actual restraint. When she moaned again, the shadows finally shifted.
Harper’s eyes popped open, sensing the movement, watching as a black mass swirled at the foot of her bed coalescing before her. Dense and black with a tar-like malleability, shifting as she watched. Watched and waited. One arm, then two, then six, the stretch of what may have been wings, the writhe of what were surely tentacles, the blink of over a dozen eyes. It was like nothing she could have imagined, but somehow, everything she’d been dreaming of. When they finally settled on a form, Azathé had a vaguely humanoid outline, although the stretch of many arms still blurred her eyes with their speed.
They advanced on the bed slowly, shadows unspooling like ribbons. Harper’s breath caught when one wrapped around her ankle, a tentacle-like appendage of inhuman strength, holding her down. When a second tentacle trapped the other foot, her core clenched in exhilaration and readiness. Yes. This was what she wanted. The absence of control, freedom of having to use her broken brain to make any decisions, placing her pleasure and her safety in the hands of someone she trusted with her life. They had already proven themselves to be an excellent steward of her heartbeat, even without her knowing.
“Is this what you want, my sweet one? Is this the submission you are craving?”
Her breath was already coming out in hitching little pants and they hadn’t even done anything yet. “Y-yes. I want you to hold me down.”
Another one of those unspooling tentacles closed around her wrists, holding them over her head, pinned to the pillows.
“Then what?”
“Whatever you want to do to me. Use me for your pleasure. Make me scream.”
She wasn’t sure what they were going to do, but bracing themselves around her, missionary style, was not what she expected. Arms around her like cages, long fingers threading with her own, where they were pinioned above her head. Another set of hands, tipped in long claws with the consistency of smoke, cupped her breasts, rolling her hardened nipples until she gasped. At her neck, another snaking tentacle from their mouth, icy cold, licking at her neck.
“You’re going to work on your tasseomancy when we’re done.” Their voice was stern, the order non-negotiable, and she nodded like a bobble-headed doll, quickly agreeing. A cool pressure against her cheek, the closest they could come to kissing her. “Good girl.”
Harper assumed they would model their shape after one of the tarot cards, perhaps the thick cock gripped on the Ace of Pentacles – sprouted from the base of the card, gripped in a woman’s hand, veined with a fat mushroom head. Harper prepared herself.
She was not expecting a second tongue. Her head dropped back, mouth open as the tongue delved into her folds, licking against her clit like a cat with a bowl of cream. It was also icy cold, but as it fastened around her pussy like a seal, she felt heat bubbling within her. Harper thought of the priestess, writhing on her stone plinth as her demon lover’s forked tongue flicked against her clit, and felt as if she were there in that torch-lit temple, her cunt feasted on by an inhuman mouth. Azathé‘s tongue worked against her, one tongue at her clit, the other at her throat, her arms and legs pinned down by their steel like tentacles, and she moaned.
