Arcane Dropout 6 Page 7

  “Easy, Joan,” said Lee. “We’re friends.”

  A gleam entered her eyes, and Lee felt himself stiffen at the possibility of her attacking. She shifted, but with slow, telegraphed movements that were the polar opposite of what he’d been expecting.

  She undid the belt around her waist and tossed it to the floor. With a fair amount of effort, she pulled the heavy chainmail dress up and over her head, revealing a simple gray shift underneath. Lee was still catching up to the moment as she proceeded to take off her leggings, standing and turning away from him as she did.

  “Tess?” he said. “Care to chime in with your thoughts?”

  “I think you’re about to get lucky, Lee,” she said with a giggle.

  The two ghost-women seemed to share a similar humor, Joan smiling with mischief as she approached him. Lee slid back across the carpet, feeling hesitant for a host of different reasons.

  “I can’t just have sex with a random ghost,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “Joan, you’re very pretty, so it has nothing to do with that, it’s just…”

  Joan smoothed her hands across her shift, which had the effect of pulling the fabric tight across her small breasts, the points of her nipples clear against the thin cloth. She sat down as close to Lee as she could get, straddling his lap and dangling her arms around his neck.

  “You had sex with me on the day we met,” said Tess. “Is it really that unusual?”

  “Tess!” snapped Lee. “Whose side are you on, anyway? She could attack me while my guard is down.”

  “I’ll watch and let you know if she tries anything,” said Tess.

  “I… don’t even know… how old she is,” muttered Lee. Joan had started kissing him, and it was hard to get words out in between each contact of her soft, supple lips.

  “She’s a ghost, why does it matter?” asked Tess.

  “She was a teenager when she died,” said Lee. “I know that much.”

  His body didn’t seem to care much for factual details, which left him between a rock and a hard place—or rather, between the crush of Joan’s soft thighs and backside and a very hard place.

  “She died in the fifteenth century,” said Tess. “She’d be over 500 if you add that time on.”

  “Do I even need to point out how old that would make you if it worked that way?”

  Tess let out an embarrassed squeak. “Never mind.”

  Lee managed to get his phone out in between Joan’s increasingly urgent gyrations and kisses. A quick google search revealed Joan had been around nineteen years old at her time of death, enough to reassure him that he was about to engage with a ghost of a legal adult.

  Tess was still watching, which he didn’t necessarily mind, but it still added a weird, exhibitionist vibe to the encounter. Lee set his hands on Joan’s waist, grinding himself into her and holding her firm. He was still wary of the possibility of her attacking, and from the way she kept smiling, it was an aspect of the engagement that she enjoyed.

  He pictured Joan of Arc in her time, perhaps questioning a captured English general with the full range of her feminine wiles. She reached down and took hold of her shift, pulling it up and over her head, rendering herself completely naked and banishing any last chance of misunderstanding.

  She was unshaven to a degree that almost gave the word new meaning. Immediately after getting his pants and boxers off, Lee felt a forest of silky blonde hair caressing his shaft. It was different from what he was used to, but far from unwelcome, especially as he began to search through it with his hard-on for what he knew lay within.

  “Ah,” moaned Joan. “Merci. Mmm…”

  Hearing her speak French was much the same, weird, new to him, and incredibly hot. Lee grunted as he began bouncing her in his lap. Joan only let him maintain his lead for a few seconds before leaning her weight onto his shoulders and taking control of her ride.

  For a legendary ghost who’d spent hundreds of years inside of a powerful enchanted weapon, she certainly knew how to use her hips. Lee groped her buttocks, losing himself within the hot, tight crush of her nubile sex. She let out a gasp as he kissed one of her nipples, followed by a high-pitched moan as he gave it a small suck.

  “Oui!” she cried. “Oui, oui!”

  The reasoning behind Paris being known as something of a cultural aphrodisiac made perfect sense to him in that heated, horny moment. Lee took control again, seizing the mighty Joan of Arc by her slender waist and slamming her down on his cock, pushing into her as deep as he or likely any man had ever gone.

  “Oh, Joan,” he whispered. “That’s perfect. Just like that.”

  She muttered something dirty in French. Lee twisted his fingers into her braid, pulling her head to the side to kiss his neck. She gripped his forearm, digging fingers in far enough to signal how close she was.

  He gave her butt a gentle slap, followed by a hard one after hearing her lustful reaction. Joan thrust her breasts into his face, her pace reaching a heated, unsustainable sprint. He thrust back with just as much urgency, surging toward the edge, and then right over it.

  “Merci!” cried Joan. “Oh… merci.”

  Lee shuddered as he unloaded into her, though of course, she was a ghost. Through a fog of pleasure, he idly wondered how he’d explain the stain on the carpet to Ryoko.

  “Merci beaucoup,” whispered Joan. She smiled at him, ran her hand over his cheek and then pulled his hand to the same position on her face.

  Slowly, Joan of Arc nodded, and even as addled by post-sex bliss as he was, Lee knew the gesture was a meaningful one. He could feel her as a ghost, as an entity. He could sense her letting go, letting him send her on her way.

  There was a flash of blue light as he released his mystic stream, along with a sudden rush of energy that began in his fingers before flowing into the rest of his body. Memories came with it, but Lee did his best to dance around them, feeling as though he’d already violated the memory and body of the person they belonged to enough for one night.

  “It worked!” shouted Tess. “I can feel the essence already, Lee. That filled me up completely. Along with her, if you catch my meaning.”

  “You should stick to pranks because you suck at making dirty jokes.”

  Tess rolled her eyes at him. She looked at him expectantly, and he nodded, pulling her into his mystic stream.

  Her foot was still indistinct, a useless cloud of ethereal blue, exactly as it had been upon last examination. Lee cursed under his breath. Tess hopped toward him on one leg and settled down behind him.

  “Thank you for trying,” she said. “It’s not like I never considered that something like this might happen. I’m prepared, Lee.”

  He grabbed her hands and squeezed them. “Prepared for what?

  “Oh, nothing.” She was smiling, but there was a hollowness to it that lashed against his heart. “Can I fall asleep in your arms tonight?”

  “Of course, Tess,” he said. “I’m going to figure this out. I promise.”

  “I trust you, Lee.”

  CHAPTER 13

  In the light of the morning, it was fairly easy to see what had changed within the room since the previous night. Lee crouched on the floor, holding Savoire Solaire in his hands, staring at it with his mystic sight and seeing no more glow of power than he would with any other unenchanted weapon.

  “No!” he said, fingers tightening around the scabbard. “Seriously? You have to be fucking kidding me!”

  “What’s wrong?” yawned Tess. She’d slept in his mystic stream as requested, and Lee was briefly distracted by the drooping edge of her nightgown and flash of breast revealed by it.

  “Savoire Solaire,” he muttered. “When I forced the ghost out of it, all of the sword’s enchantment went with it. It’s useless now.”

  “That’s not true,” said Tess. “You can still cut things with it. You can still use it as a sword.”

  “As if. Look, if I’d wanted a boring normal sword, I’d have bought one years ago. This was a
one-of-a-kind enchanted saber!”

  “This was a one-of-a-kind enchanted saber,” repeated Tess in a nasally, mocking tone. “Lee Amaranth, you’re such a nerd.”

  “I never even got to try it out in battle,” he said with a sigh. “There was this secondary enchantment within the blade that I never even used in training. Holy fire, or something…”

  He felt a sudden prickle in his hand as he said holy fire, the same hand with which he’d last touched Joan’s ghost.

  He stared at his fingertips, hope rekindling, a possibility coming to the forefront.

  “Tess. Let’s go outside for a bit.”

  ***

  They swung by the kitchen for breakfast, which Ryoko had dutifully prepared for the household. Lee made a sort of sandwich out of two waffles, eggs, and chorizo, which he thanked her for and wolfed down simultaneously.

  He headed out onto the mansion’s lawn. Droplets of dew clung to the grass like tiny scattered marbles, along with a small, rolling fog that was thicker farther down the hill. Lee found a spot away from the house amidst the cherry trees and flexed the fingers of his right hand.

  “This is either going to be very cool, or very weird,” he said.

  “Could be both.” Tess grinned at him.

  Her outfit for the day was a long cornflower-blue sundress and a wide-brimmed straw hat. He’d seen her wear it before, and she looked cute in it, but he couldn’t help but wonder if the purpose was to obscure as much of her missing foot as she could. Given that he was the only one other than Zoe who could see it, the thought of her trying to hide her condition from him twisted at his heart in ways he did not like.

  “Well?” she asked. “What are you waiting for? Hurry up and show me some lucky fire!”

  “Holy fire,” he said. “I hope it doesn’t matter that I’m an atheist.”

  He felt for the ability, wiggling his fingers to make its presence easier to pinpoint. It wasn’t like the heady, almost-meditative sensation of dispel or his mystic stream. It was even less like casting from Tess’s spirit essence, which felt more like imagining a vivid movie scene in his mind and forcing it outward.

  No, this was almost as though the essence of Savoire Solaire had been implanted into his hand. He felt the same odd tingling the sword gave him when he focused on the ability, or even just thought about the words. It felt like it could be activated in a binary sense like most enchantments, but with a much larger spectrum of potential power levels.

  “Let’s give this a shot,” he said.

  He extended his arm, holding his hand with fingers splayed wide. A borderline-unpleasant sensation of pins and needles enveloped his palm and fingers, and an instant later, a small tuft of bright white-blue flame emerged from his palm.

  There was a slight whoosh as the flame briefly danced through the air, barely reaching a foot or two beyond his palm. It dissipated almost as quickly as it appeared.

  “Well, that looked cool, if nothing else,” he said. “A bit small, though.”

  “It’s not the size that counts, Lee,” said Tess.

  “You’re certainly in a zesty mood today.” He flexed his hand. “Let’s try this one more time.”

  Pushing his palm forward again, he committed more of his attention toward using the holy fire, leaning into the prickling sensation in his hand until it was almost hot and painful.

  A fan of white-blue flame high enough and wide enough to engulf several people burst into existence from his palm, shooting outward a good fifteen feet. Two cherry trees were in that range, and the bright holy fire left normal fire in its wake, inflaming branches and birthing small blazes across each.

  “Fuck!” Lee ran forward as soon as the holy fire died down, trying to pat out the incident he’d created. “Go get Zoe and have her get Ryoko.”

  “I can’t run unless you let me out of your mystic stream!” cried Tess.

  He quickly released his mystic stream’s hold on her and continued doing what little he could to control the situation. One of the cherry trees was little more than a charred corpse by the time Tess arrived back with the others.

  With a wave of her arm, Ryoko created a massive wave of water from thin air. It splashed across the burning trees, dousing them both instantly and creating little tufts of steam that rose into the air. It soaked Lee’s shoes and socks as it crashed back down to the grass, but he felt as though he deserved it.

  “Care to explain just what you were doing here, little brother?” asked Zoe.

  “I was testing out a new ability,” he said. “No big deal. Sorry about the trees, Ryoko.”

  “It’s alright,” she said. “We can always plant more.”

  “You did this once back when were kids,” said Zoe. “I would have thought you’d grown out of the habit of…”

  Lee saw his sister’s expression shift and raised an eyebrow at her. “What?”

  “Lee,” whispered Tess. “Your nose.”

  He touched his upper lip with his finger and swore under his breath as he felt it come back wet. “Dammit. Another nosebleed.”

  “It’s been a while since that’s happened to you,” said Tess. “This is a bad one, too.”

  “I’ll get some tissues from inside,” said Ryoko.

  “It’s fine, Ryoko. You’ve already cleaned up one of my messes this morning.”

  Ryoko was already moving, however, and ignored his objection. Lee wiped more blood away on his fingers and blinked in surprise at the amount.

  “Do you feel okay?” asked Zoe.

  “A bit tired, now you mention it,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t use the holy fire more than twice in a row if I don’t have to. I’m guessing my body needs more time than that to recover.”

  “The holy what?”

  “I’ll show you the next time I get a chance,” he said. “Come on, let’s head back inside.”

  His sister and Tess both nodded, and he couldn’t help but notice the matching looks of concern on each of their faces.

  CHAPTER 14

  The rest of the morning was less eventful. Ryoko left to pick up Mira and a few members of one of their allied factions. With Mira and Jack away on undisclosed missions, the mansion was more or less empty.

  Lee found his way into the mansion’s study where Jack kept his gaming consoles. Most of his games were horror-themed, which seemed appropriate if not expected. Lee spent an hour or two trying out a few of them before growing bored.

  “Let’s head into town,” he said to Tess.

  “Sure. I’ll have to be outside of your mystic stream if we’re walking, though.”

  Lee nodded. He gave her hand a squeeze before releasing his ability, stealing color from her face and body but allowing her freedom through that same lack of form.

  “Are you feeling any better?” he asked. “The essence I absorbed from Joan has had a while to settle now, hasn’t it?”

  “Nothing’s changed, really,” said Tess. “It hasn’t been that long, though. Maybe it just takes time, like healing from a normal injury?”

  He nodded but still felt worried. He reached out, letting his hand grip Tess’s even though she was ethereal, and it only felt cold to him.

  They made their way down the hill and into Lesser Town, Lestaron Island’s sole population center. Lee had been living at the mansion for just long enough to become a familiar face, and he waved and smiled at a few joggers and people sitting on porches.

  He headed into a small pizza place with a newly renovated interior to have lunch, grabbing two slices to share with Tess. There weren’t many other customers, making it that much more obvious when two rather gruff-looking men entered the restaurant and began eyeing him with undisguised contempt.

  Lee stared right back at them and wasn’t surprised when they made their way over to his table.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  The taller of the two men was tanned and broad-shouldered, and he snorted before answering. “You don’t remember us, do you?”

  “Should
I?”

  “Puerto Rico,” said the shorter man, a pale fellow with close-cropped blond hair. “You and your teachers killed some of our friends.”

  Puerto Rico had been where Mattis had taken the initiates for their winter vacation trip. Lee had arrived with Harper to warn them about an attack from the Melting Pack, and the situation had culminated in a rather violent confrontation.

  “Fair enough,” said Lee. “You do realize I’m not a student of Primhaven anymore, right? I’m not with the Order, either.”

  “We don’t care,” snarled the tall man.

  “Neither do I, actually.” Lee grinned at the two men. “Shall we?”

  He set some money down on the table for the pizza, wolfing down the remnants of the remaining crust. The men looked surprised but not unhappy.

  “Let’s find a spot outside to settle this little feud,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to make a mess inside this fine dining establishment, now, would we?”

  “Lee!” hissed Tess. “This is stupid. You’re not in middle school, fighting on the playground. Why are you doing this?”

  He leaned in to whisper to Tess as he led his soon-to-be opponents out onto the street. “For one, as juvenile as it is, I could use a good fight to release some of my frustration. Two, these guys are obviously not going to just drop their grudge if I say no. And three, I just got a badass new power I want to test out.”

  Tess sighed. “You’re never going to grow up, are you?”

  “Hopefully not.”

  There was an empty park partially cordoned off by trees nearby, and the two men followed Lee into it, maintaining a tense ceasefire until they were alone. The taller one began cracking his knuckles in a threatening manner as soon as they were out of sight of the local populace.

  “I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” he said.

  “I bet.” Lee pulled out his dagger and pistol. Both men flinched backward, but he held up a reassuring hand as he set them aside on the grass. “Relax. This is just for the sake of safety and fairness and whatnot. This would be pointless if I was just going to shoot you in the head.”