“It’s like an epidemic!” Cindy exclaimed, pouring herself an unusually full glass of Chardonnay.

“No shit,” Tony answered. They’d heard Emma’s wailing and grunting the second the elevator door opened on the tenth floor, instantly aware that MagicThunder had paid a visit right here on their home turf.

“I can’t understand it! It’s like she’s cloned herself or something, to be in several places at once! She’s causing trouble everywhere!”

Not everywhere. Only with their little grouping, it seemed, as the police reports of last night's trouble at the Hammerhead indicated shorter-lasting effects than the sex riots last year. Lance and his date had their MagicThunder run-in almost immediately after he'd left the bar. That made two times now that Lance had been fucked with. Tony had been hit twice himself, his cock aching in his pants from overuse after a period of long near-hibernation. They were losing control of the situation, almost every situation, with sexual fires breaking out everywhere.

How had MagicThunder gotten from Manhattan to Queens so fast, fast enough to ambush him at his home? Each attack presented new unanswered questions, and perhaps the worst part of it was that they still had no useful theories about the goals of MagicThunder’s game.

Cindy sat across from him, looking wired. She had just finished a private hour with Alana and Emma both, doing God knew what to counter MagicThunder’s latest attack.

“How is Emma?” he asked, addressing his most personal concern. “Did you… Were you able to…”

The uncertainty on Cindy’s face was not reassuring. “I managed to sedate her, for the moment. Other than that, I really don’t know what to say, Anthony. Everything I tried to establish in her psyche over the past several months has been turned upside-down. It isn’t Alana’s fault, I know… She didn’t mean to… to...”

“To fuck everything up? To climb into bed with my daughter and undo all of your work with her tongue? Well thank God for small favors! Thank God she didn’t intend to turn Emma back into a salivating nymphomaniac!”

“Don’t be angry with her, Anthony. Alana really cares about Emma, perhaps even more than I'd realized. MagicThunder got to her the same way she did to you. Don’t judge her, unless you want to judge your own ‘willingness’ to commit virtual incest a few hours ago.”

That shut him up. His mouth tightened, but fuck — she was right. They were all being played, all losing control at different times and in different ways. And the question he kept asking himself was this: How could they hope to protect themselves from their own secret wishes? It seemed to him that MagicThunder was hitting them with something like mind-control judo, throwing them off balance with their own deepest desires. He’d just bet that Alana had been wanting to get it on with Emma, one on one, without Cindy around for a change. If so, her wish had been granted. Likewise, Lance wanted his pipes to work without Cindy having to be there to act as his plumber. Again, wish granted, and Lance even got a Rolls Royce of a dick in the bargain.

What were they fighting when the victim actually wanted the forbidden actions or effects to occur? For his own part, he’d wanted to experience supernatural sex in the worst way, and now he had. And he’d fantasized about fucking Alana and her tight workout yoga body, and drilling deep into Cindy, and in a way he’d been given incredibly thrilling facsimiles of both experiences.

But not Emma. He’d never wanted to fuck his daughter. Never.

Which bothered him, in so many ways. His gift as an investigator was in recognizing patterns out of apparent chaos, elucidating motives by piercing hidden designs. He could almost see a strange logic beginning to emerge, almost sniff out MagicThunder’s intentions. Except for several pieces, or actions, that simply didn’t fit into the puzzle.

“It’s so frustrating!” Cindy vented for him. “Face to face, I know I could take her on. But like this, attacking my friends right under my nose… She’s toying with us! I can just see her laughing, shaking her huge boobs at us and laughing!”

“I don’t care about being laughed at,” Tony responded. “I care about irreparable damage. We’ve all been tossed around, but we haven’t been harmed. Yet.”

“Except perhaps Emma.”

“Fuck. Have all of your efforts been undone, Cindy?”

“No, please don’t torture yourself about that. She isn’t the same she was at the end of last year, Anthony. But she’s… changed.”

“Changed? What the hell is ‘changed’?”

“Perhaps I should say that an important dynamic has changed. Emma… I’m not so sure where Emma is, emotionally.”

“What dynamic? Which emotions? Talk to me.”

Cindy looked into her glass. Looked hard, looked deep. “I really don’t know whether I should tell you this.”

“You should tell me. Fucking tell me, Cindy. It’s my daughter we’re talking about.”

“This wasn’t the first time that Alana and Emma… You know…”

He’d always suspected that, but had never really wanted to know.

“I don’t even care whether you approve or not,” Cindy went on. “It was… necessary, and supervised. And it might have been helping Emma. At least it didn’t hurt.”

“But now?”

“But now…An unforeseen development.”

“Which is?”

“Alana has fallen in love with Emma.”

“You mean MagicThunder made her fall in love with Emma.”

“No, I… I don’t think so. I can read things like that quite clearly. The feelings Alana has… They’re hers. They’re real. And they’re very, very deep. She can barely believe it herself, but Alana is in love.”

“But… I guess I thought…”

“That Alana had fallen in love with me?”

“Yeah.”

She stood, and walked over to the windows, looking out at the twilight glow and the city’s lights, twinkling on. “I guess I was right there with you,” Cindy finally spoke. “I’m… a little bit stunned.”

Tony could understand love taking unforeseen turns. His right hand moved, like it wanted to reach for a glass to take a good long shot by reflex. Only he felt no desire for scotch, which might be as strange as anything else going on around him.

“It’s probably because of all the sex,” Cindy said.

“Alana falling for Emma?”

“No, I mean you not needing a drink. Sorry to be so blunt, but you were cunt-starved, Anthony, and you were filling the void with booze, or perhaps dulling the pain. You aren’t particularly needy at the moment, because of… obvious things. So no compulsion to drink.”

“Well…” he began, feeling off-balance. She had tapped into him again, but he couldn’t even feel uncomfortable about it. In fact, he didn’t know what the hell he felt anymore.

“So there’s no need to worry about what I can see, is there Anthony? I’m totally confused, too. I want everyone to be happy, of course… But it’s hard to know where to be with this change between Alana and Emma. I’ve been working hard to get Emma to be balanced, not neutered — that’s been part of the difficulty all along, keeping her libido alive while trying to restore some kind of interests beyond a wish to get off. But how much sex is right in her case? And what about Alana? Does she understand what she’s getting herself into? Where Emma goes from here is a total unknown, and her feelings are so submerged, about me, about Alana…”

“Or about me?”

“That too. Emma’s emotional life is a real mystery, Anthony. I can’t read it at all. She seems to be more aware these days, but… I’m really not sure where to go next.”

“You’re saying that you don’t know whether this new situation is a help or a hindrance in bringing her back.”

“Exactly. I’m stumped, and not only about that. MagicThunder is pulling rabbits out of her hat that I hadn’t anticipated. She seems to be nowhere and everywhere, going behind my back instead of confronting me. She isn’t exactly causing harm…”

“Not causing harm? Don’t forget the way she slapped me around. And what she made me do to those three girls.”

“All of which is much less severe than what she made me do to Emma last year, or half the city, for that matter. Everything seems all catawampus — her ability to be everywhere, seemingly walking through walls… And the ‘attacks’ don’t feel right, either. It’s… it’s all wrong somehow!”

He sensed that Cindy was struggling with more than she was admitting to, and why not? He’d never really been clear about her feelings towards Alana and Emma, or Lance for that matter. He’d been tempted to ask several times, but it just seemed too personal, like ground he had never been invited to step upon. Were they mostly like patients who needed to have psychic sex doled out to them? Were they what some people called “fuck friends”? Or had Cindy developed deeper feelings for them, or at least some of them?

“I’d rather that you focused on MagicThunder’s psyche, Anthony. I can deal with mine.”

“Stop that!” he shouted, making her laugh.

“I’m beginning to worry about Lance again,” she changed the subject. “He should be here by now.”

“Don’t be so sure,” he replied. “I had the distinct impression that he and Heather… That it might have gone deeper than the sex.”

They had checked on Lance immediately upon returning to Manhattan, panicked that he didn’t answer either of his phones or his doorbell. Their noses almost blasted by the scent of sex the instant Cindy let them into his building, they practically broke Lance’s door down, expecting the worst. Only to find Lance and Heather sleeping together — and actually sleeping — linked together in a loving embrace, obviously exhausted and contented by who knew how much lovemaking.

“Lance is lucky,” Cindy said now. “Heather is stunning, and MagicThunder could have screwed with her much more than it appears she did. He’s… I think he might be able to be happy with her.”

Because she looks a lot like you, Tony almost said, figuring that she could probably read the thought anyway.

The buzzer sounded as if on cue, and she got up to speak into the intercom.

“Looks like fresh trouble,” Lance’s voice squawked from below. “There’s a FedEx envelope for you down here, from M.Thunder in Cumsaton, Maine.”

She and Tony locked eyes.

“Showtime,” he said.

“Or at least our next clue.”

“Well this is certainly unexpected,” Cindy said, her eyes re-reading the envelope's contents.

They were all gathered together again in Cindy’s apartment. Lance sat alone this time, while Emma and Alana had gathered together on the floor, a wool shawl spread across their laps for warmth. It was completely dark outside and snowing, a late blast of winter invading their early spring weather on wicked glass-rattling winds. Cindy, in jeans and a tight pullover sweater, paced back and forth near the windows, a small sheet of paper in her hands.

“A postcard with train ticket stubs, and then a proverb on evil?” Lance asked. “What does any of that have to do with anything?”

“I thought the proverb was beautiful,” Alana countered. “And completely relevant to the situation, although I don’t know what she’s trying to tell us.”

“Read both of them again,” Tony suggested. “The postcard and the proverb.”

Cindy stopped pacing, coming closer to the group, lowering herself to her knees near one of the lights.

“The postcard says: ’Had a great time in New York seeing the sights. Sorry there wasn’t time to stick around and play. Good luck with everything and wish you were here, M.T.’ And the Amtrak tickets show a single passenger, leaving Boston for New York three days ago and returning yesterday evening.”

“She’s loony,” Lance said. “We know damn well she’s still in the city. It’s a trick.”

“Here’s the proverb,” Cindy went on. “’We live in a time when there dawns upon us a realization that the people living on the other side of the mountain are not necessarily red-headed devils responsible for all the evil on this side of the mountain.’”

“Sounds to me like she’s making excuses for her actions,” Lance said.

“I agree,” Tony responded. “But what about the train tickets? Does she really think we’ll believe that they mean anything? She fucked with me a few hours ago. And she had an… influence here in this building, at roughly the same time. She’s in the city, we know she is.”

“Something is familiar about that proverb,” Cindy mused, beginning to pace again.

“It’s longer than most proverbs,” Alana said. “And worded more densely. It's more like a part of some speech.”

“Could she be quoting from one of her stories?” Lance asked.

“I’ve read all of MagicThunder’s mind-control stories,” Tony answered. “She didn’t write it.”

“She’s going back to that theme of good and evil,” Cindy said. “She’s pushing that at us pretty hard.”

“And trying to convince us that she isn’t all evil, from the sounds of it,” Tony added.

“That’s a crock,” Lance objected.

“Maybe not,” Tony replied. “I’ve been having these crazy thoughts…” He told them about the patterns he was almost seeing, how MagicThunder might be driving actions in ways that brought some of their secret sexual desires into play. “Only my theory falls apart in places,” he added. “I never wanted to get slapped around, for instance, and I definitely never…” He stopped, lowering his eyes. Cindy knew what he was referring to. If the others couldn’t figure it out, he wasn’t going to spell it out for them.

“There might be some truth in that for me,” Lance admitted. “I’m not unhappy about what’s happened with Heather. Or my… thing. It was much more dramatic than I needed, but I can’t argue with the results. Heather loves it.”

“I've... gotten something I was wanting, too,” Alana whispered. “I mean, I never would have… But now that I have…” Alana took Emma’s hand, saying so much more without another word. Emma leaned her head on Alana’s shoulder and sighed.

Tony could feel himself beginning to choke up. She was still silent and not quite there, but he hadn’t seen Emma look this contented in months. She looked up at him, and smiled. Could he be on his way to having another of his desires fulfilled, that Emma be returned back to her pre-MagicThunder self, or at least something close?

He turned his head and studied Cindy, trying to read her. If anything, she was losing things, rather than gaining. Which, again, blew a hole in his theory.

“Not necessarily,” she spoke, perhaps not even aware that he hadn’t actually spoken the words. “It isn’t all that strange that MagicThunder would treat me differently, not after all that time I spent with her when…”

She fell mute as the lights went out, plunging the group into nearly total darkness.

“Power failure?” Lance asked, his voice thin and tense.

Something fell and shattered in the kitchen, breaking on the floor.

“It’s her!” Cindy shouted over the sounds of dishes falling to the floor. “She’s here!”

“Flashlight!” Tony bellowed. “Where do you keep a flashlight?”

“In the kitchen, on the side of the refrigerator!”

He bolted, fully expecting to get slapped around before he ever got near the kitchen. Suddenly, a crash of glass to his immediate left, and then a floor lamp switched on, bare bulb glaring.

He stopped in place, scanning the room, looking for any movement, any movement at all.

“Holy shit!” he cried.

“What the hell!” Lance barked a split second after.

They all saw it, Tony’s shadow, extending normally from his feet, cast by the light from the single illuminated bulb. Only by the time the darkened shape’s edges flattened out onto the nearby wall, it was moving in a way that he was not. In fact, his shadow had its head thrown back, and its dick pulled out. His shadow was fucking jerking off!

He had no time to react or reflect before all of the lights came back on, wiping the animated shape away. Standing there in the breathless silence, he looked down. His fly was not open, his dick was not in his hand.

“I…” he began, his thoughts misfiring with complete confusion.

“What the hell was that?” Lance asked.

“Oh my God!” Cindy cried. “The quote! I know where the quote comes from! It’s Jung!”

“Young what?” Lance responded.

“Not young, Carl Jung! The psychologist!”

“Don’t anybody move!” Tony ordered, his brain and mouth working again. “MagicThunder might still…”

“MagicThunder was never here!” Cindy shouted. “That’s what she’s been trying to tell us!”

“Never here?” Lance objected. “What do you mean she was never here? She turned me into a fucking floating fountain right where I work! And who just threw a temper tantrum? There’s broken glass everywhere!”

“Us, we did!”

“Us?”

“Just wait!” Cindy responded, dodging the shattered bits of her floor lamp’s glass shade, making her way to her bookshelves. A moment later she had a thick black paperback in her hand, scanning the pages for the text she’d recognized.

“’Confronting the Personal Shadow’?” Alana asked, reading the book’s title from afar.

“I could slap myself for not putting two and two together before!” Cindy exclaimed, her eyes almost wild with excitement. “The split between good and evil, a comic book about The Shadow… It isn’t MagicThunder we’re dealing with any more, it’s us! Our shadows! We’re chasing our own damned tails!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Lance asked.

“MagicThunder probably knows everything there is to know about me,” Cindy went on. “I can’t even remember what I told her over those months, but she surely knows about the concepts I studied in my psychology courses. Here’s the quote, right in the introduction,” she breathed. “I was right, it’s Jung. We aren’t fighting MagicThunder any more. She’s gone home after devising some way to activate our shadows, to give them form and power! She could be lying in a hammock downing margaritas for all we know, while we’re running around in circles!”

“I’m totally lost,” Lance admitted.

“I think I am, too,” Alana said. “We just saw Tony’s shadow going all freaky over there. Are you telling us that every time we pass a light source, our shadows are coming to life and screwing with us?”

“Not our literal shadows,” Tony said, starting to get it. ”What just happened with mine…”

“Was orchestrated somehow to help us to see,” Cindy interrupted. “We’re fighting parts of our own psyches, what Jung termed the shadow!”

“It’s what Emma meant when she said we were trying to find clues about ourselves,” Tony added, thinking out loud. “You’re saying that MagicThunder was here for a time, long enough to mess with Lance at the bar. But everything since then…”

“Who knows when the switch was made, but we’ve essentially been mc’ing ourselves!” Cindy exclaimed. “Hidden desires are breaking away and driving events, like psychic Mr. Hyde’s to our Dr. Jeckle’s! MagicThunder made me experience that at a certain point last year, simultaneously seeing how I wanted to do the ‘right’ thing while also witnessing how my worst impulses cheered every deviant action. MagicThunder took control of my body, inflaming my desires, but the sexual satisfaction was largely my own. I could see that part of me loved every minute that I did those outrageous thing to all of those people.”

“But our shadows…” Lance objected.

“The term isn’t literal,” Tony repeated, beginning to feel uncomfortable from the ramifications of Cindy’s new insight. He had never fantasized about fucking his daughter, never. No part of his psyche, seen or unseen, would have wanted to get its rocks off through doing it with his own flesh and blood.

“Here, here’s a good description of what Jung referred to as ‘the shadow’,” Cindy offered:

‘Jung speaks of the shadow as the “other” in us, the repressed self, the drives and behaviors that our conscious ego finds reprehensible. It most closely resembles what Freud thought of as the “repressed”. But in contrast to Freud’s view, Jung’s shadow has its own contents, such as autonomous thoughts, ideas and value judgments. Because it is contrary to our chosen conscious attitude, the shadow personality is denied expression in life and coalesces into a separate splinter personality in the unconscious, where it hides from exposure and discovery.’

“It’s completely devious,” Cindy went on, looking up from the pages of her book. “She never meant to confront me at all, because she didn’t need to. The enemy was within all along, sneaking around with us because it was us! She just gave life to parts of ourselves that we don’t recognize or accept, infusing them somehow with form and force and their own mind-controlling abilities!”

“Holy crap,” Lance breathed. “You mean… I mc’d Heather?”

“I think so, Lance,” Cindy replied.

"But that means I blew my own..."

“And I…” Alana whispered. “I admit that I’ve fantasized about what I did today. But I wouldn’t have, I…”

“But some part of you would have, and took control,” Lance responded, definitely catching on. “You mc’d yourself, as strange as that sounds. It gave you the pleasure while absolving you of the sin.”

“I can’t accept this,” Tony intruded.

Cindy looked at him, her lips tightening. “We all have to question our most hidden motivations, Anthony. Question them without passion, without embarrassment. Everyone has a shadow self, without exception. They say that even God has a shadow self, expressed in the idea of the devil. And the only way to…”

“No. I can admit that I can be a real prick, but I did not…” He glanced at Emma. Yes, she was hauntingly beautiful, and voluptuous and sexy. But he did not look at her that way and he did not feel that way. Never. Never!

“In therapy, the only way to ‘win’ against your shadow is to bring it into the light, Anthony. It only has power to cause mischief in your life when its wishes remain unacknowledged. The same must hold true even with these MagicThunder-affected aspects of ourselves. If we can see our dark sides, perhaps even incorporate them into the totality of our conscious awareness… What is it that they say? ‘Don’t curse the darkness, but instead shine a light’? We need to accept our darkness, as hard as that sounds. We need…”

“I need a drink,” he answered.

“You don’t,” Cindy soothed. “It’s okay, Anthony. You…”

“Back off!” he shouted. “It is not okay!”

“Tony, calm down,” Lance said, trying to play peacemaker.

“I’ve got to get out for some air,” Tony muttered, looking for his coat.

“Don’t leave like this, Anthony.”

“I said I need some air!” he growled. “And don’t you dare reach in and prevent me!”

His heart and temples pounded the whole elevator ride to the ground floor. Out on the streets of the East Village, the snow was coming down surprisingly heavy. Hunching against the wind, he braced himself and walked southward, no destination in mind. He needed to work off energy, and perhaps even scream out into the night somewhere.

Passing a streetlight, he saw his shadow begin to stretch out before him, a blue troubled shape effortlessly extending across a thin veneer of fresh white snow.

“Fuck you, too,” he muttered, striking out with a foot, wishing, in a way, that he really could kick himself.

“You okay?” a bundled stranger asked, passing slowly on a bicycle with fat tires.

“I’m good,” Tony replied, knowing it wasn’t true. He wasn’t hanging out on the Brooklyn Bridge in the middle of the night because he was going to end it all, but he certainly wasn’t good.

And that was the whole problem, wasn’t it? He wasn’t naïve — he knew he had more undesirable traits than you could shake a stick at, who didn’t? No one was all good or all bad — every person on the planet was some admixture of both, with the dark side finding hidden means of expression even in people who lived saintly lives ninety-nine percent of the time. Mary had spoken often about the seven deadly sins, and every damned one of them had been his companion at some point or another in his life. But incest with his daughter?

It was hard to argue with Cindy’s theory, though. There had been no entity needing to walk through dorm room walls, not when the enemy was within, right there in the room the whole time. It was like carrying your worst enemy on your back, a personal devil lashing out right and left, usually without the conscious mind having any knowledge of its presence. It made sense, and the others had been quick enough to accept their own culpability. Why not him?

The incest part, obviously. But other things kept eating at him as well. Why would he want to slap himself around, the way it had happened last night? And why make himself beg to cum? And that vision of his shadow jerking off — if MagicThunder wasn’t around to make impossible things happen, then how had his literal shadow come to life for an instant to give them a clue?

He leaned on the railing, looking down into the dark waters of the East River, snowflakes tumbling down in tight corkscrew patterns. That was the problem, the patterns still didn’t line up. Something was off, very off. Then again, how trustworthy were his instincts? He had failed to recognize the enemy, which was as bad an error as an investigator could commit.

“I’m my own worst enemy,” he spoke into the chilled air. “Hell, I don’t even know who the enemy is any more.”

At least he hadn’t succumbed to his usual pathetic behavior. He hadn’t ducked into a bar, to drown his sorrows. Yet.

“Penny for your thoughts,” a familiar voice sounded behind him.

He turned, and saw Cindy standing there, bundled in a long white coat with a fur-lined hood. He felt his heart quicken, warm blood heating his insides. Somehow, despite the wonders of her body being almost completely masked, she had never looked lovelier, or her company more welcome.

“You can keep your change,” he answered. “Especially when I’m an open book to you anyway.”

She smiled, coming closer. “Open enough that I could feel your thoughts churning from several blocks away,” she said.

“I knew it,” he laughed. “You’re my global positioning device, aren’t you? With the keys to my brain.”

“I don’t listen to your thoughts, Tony, not the way you fear. I… feel them. They speak to me, but not as though I have a listening device hooked up to your mind. It’s more heart-oriented than that.”

“So what do you ‘feel’ from me right now? I really could use some help in sorting out my thoughts and feelings. Truth is, I’m pretty fucking confused.”

“Me too. I think I might have lost all three of my lovers tonight, all in one fell swoop.”

“What about Emma?” he asked. “You won’t need to… help her out?”

She laughed, a little sadly. “I can feel that you really wanted to ask whether I’d continue to eat her out,” she said. “And the answer might be no. I’m going to give her and Alana a chance, unless I see some reason not to. They’re together right now in Alana’s apartment, and I’ve realized that I have no business intruding. Alana will tell me if Emma starts to lose ground. But I’m hopeful.”

“I guess I should be happy about that,” he said. “Maybe I am, too. Perhaps Emma has turned some kind of corner.”

“I’m beginning to think that we all have,” she replied.

“Big changes,” he said. “What comes next? I haven’t even caught up to the fact that we weren’t really tracking MagicThunder down the past couple of days. It would feel strange to just pick up where we were before all of this happened.”

She came closer, leaning forward with her elbows on the railing. “Beats me, Anthony. I get this feeling that MagicThunder is changing, too. She played with us, sort of, but it was more like tossing a firecracker and then moving on. She might be getting bored with screwing with people, for all we know.”

“What about you? How are you feeling about things, other than being a bit shocked?”

“I feel… strange. Less burdened somehow. And cold. Why did you pick this place to sort out your thoughts? It’s fucking freezing up here.”

He was going to say something in reply, but she had already bent down to scoop up snow with her gloved hands, compacting it into a good-sized snowball. She laughed and threw it out into the dark air above the river, but he never looked up to see it fall. His eyes remained fixed on the patterns made by their shoes, footfalls pressed side by side into the whiteness of the snow.

“What is it?” she asked. “You’ve gone all excited inside. You’re having some sort of insight.”

“Holy crap,” he exhaled, hot steam escaping his lips. “It’s all coming together!”

“What? What is it?”

A thought clicked, and then another. The pattern slid into place, and it led… Well hell. The enemy had been within, alright, but not the way she had said.

“Tell me,” she urged.

“Certain things still didn’t add up, Cindy. I kept trying to make myself go for your explanation, but the pattern wasn’t right.”

“Tell me what you see.”

“What if I don’t?”

She stared at him, folding her arms in front of her chest. “It’s too cold to stand out here in the wind playing guessing games. Let’s go somewhere warm.”

“I’m fine right here,” he answered.

“What is this, Anthony? You’re being artificially stubborn all of a sudden, I can feel it. You’re trying to provoke me.”

“And you won’t be provoked, will you?”

“Not by some childishness, no. Come on. I’m really getting cold.”

“First, explain to me how my actual shadow came to life tonight.”

“I… I don’t know how that happened. You’ve figured it out?”

“Not really. It seems like something MagicThunder could do, but she wasn’t there.”

Cindy started to say something, but then stopped. “Go on,” she whispered.

“I’d also like to know why MagicThunder never attacked you this time around.”

“MagicThunder never attacked any of us. Except Lance, at his bar.”

“Because we were mc’ing ourselves the rest of the time.”

“Right.”

“Did you attack yourself?”

“No. But what is this? A contest?”

“Lance supposedly mc’d Heather without knowing it, which sounds plausible. But did you hear him? He would have had to blow his own dick if that's true! I supposedly mc’d myself, and slapped myself around, too. Hard. I keep wondering why I would do that. I also made myself beg to cum, even though every bit of me had been wanting to get off like that for months. It doesn’t make much sense, does it?”

“Rational behavior isn’t one of the shadow self’s attributes. It might even be a bit wild, or savage. Perhaps that’s the reason MagicThunder placed Doc Savage on that pulp fiction book, to represent that aspect.”

“Clever. But I don’t buy it. Was your shadow savage, Cindy? In fact, where has your shadow been during all of this? You were trying to put out fires right and left, but you never had some fragment of your personality sneak up and mc you, did you?”

“No, but…”

“You were immune somehow?”

“I… don’t know. Probably.”

“Why? Because of your powers?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible.”

“That’s bullshit, Cindy! It’s all bullshit, only you can’t see it!”

“I don’t like this game, Anthony. And I can feel you starting to be afraid of me. You’ve never been afraid of me before. Never.”

“I’m not frightened by your powers, Cindy. You’d never do anything to harm me, no matter how much magic you can wield.”

“At least we’re clear on that.”

“Bullshit! It’s been you fucking around all along, not us!”

“Whaaaat?! Have you lost your mind?”

“No, I don’t think so. You lost track of a portion of yours, that’s the whole point! Think about it, Cindy. We kept assuming that MagicThunder was responsible for everything, because she was the only one with the power to bend minds like that. But then it turns out that you have the power, too.”

“This is crazy. I should never have told you what I can do. You can’t handle it.”

“Look at those footprints in the snow, Cindy, right there — remember how I saw wet footprints on my floor when I was first attacked? I didn't even think about it before, because everything fit with the idea of MagicThunder hitting us again and again. But now I’ve been replaying the scene over and over in my mind. The footprints were small, like MagicThunder's, or yours. If it had been my shadow given substance, wouldn’t they have been larger, like mine? And at the dorms, we couldn’t understand how MagicThunder could slip by you or walk through a wall…”

“She didn’t need to when your shadow was right there in the room with you!”

“Or if you left your shadow in the room after you’d prepped the girls for me.”

“But I wouldn’t have done that! I…”

“Just like I never would have fucked my daughter? If I have to own my worst possibilities, why can’t you?”

“But…” She faltered, hugging herself tight against the frigid wind. “You’re accusing me of betraying my friends, my lovers! Why, Anthony? Why would I do such a thing?”

“I think we can agree that the Cindy I know would never do those things. But what about the Cindy we don’t see? How much hidden resentment has been building up, doling out sex to troubled souls like someone running a psychic soup kitchen? And how hard has it been bottling up your abilities, keeping a lid on them so you didn’t become something like MagicThunder? What does that Cindy want, the one who’s been itching to unleash some mind-control fireworks? What is she capable of? You said yourself that no one is immune, that we all have shadow selves, including you!”

“Stop this, Anthony. Just stop!”

“Or you’ll do what? Turn my brains into oatmeal? Levitate me and hurl me into the river? But you won’t, you’d never do that. But I bet your shadow would. I’ll just bet your shadow has been dying to do all kinds of devious magical things, and your shadow would have the power to do them. Not mine, not Alana’s, not Lance’s — yours! You have the power, not us!”

“Stop this. Please stop.”

“Stop telling you the truth? Stop opening your eyes? You’ll have to make my mouth go silent if you can’t take it.”

“I… I’m going home. Alone. And I don’t want you to follow me. I don’t want you to call or drop by. I need… space. Lots of space.”

“Just like that?” he asked. “You studied psychology in college in preparation for becoming a therapist, yet when someone starts poking your psyche with a stick, you turn and run?”

“Good night, Anthony.”

She turned, and walked away, the falling snow causing her to fade after only a few dozen steps.

“What should I expect next?” he shouted out into the wind. “A midnight blowjob from an invisible visitor, all teeth and no heat? A good smack in the jaw the moment I open my front door?”

He might have seen her make some kind of gesture with her right hand, but she was little more than a grey-white blur by then. A moment later he was alone again, the heavy structure of the bridge and the howling winds his only companions in an immense grey void.

He had time to think about whether he should have just kept his mouth shut. If he’d given himself the chance to weigh everything, would he have shoved her so hard, rather than easing into it, giving her a chance to absorb things more calmly? Their “partnership” had filled a void in his life, and she was his chief source of income to boot. It might have been a good idea to think about the repercussions before sounding off as he had, and driving Cindy away.

He was too blunt sometimes, clubbing people when he thought he was giving them a helpful poke in the ribs. And perhaps that was part of his shadow material, a roughness where he could be gentle, some level of aggression flying down there below his radar, causing misunderstandings. Fucking everything up.

Well. Unfortunate water under that bridge, and now he had time on his hands — time to work out at the gym, and time to make some calls, re-establishing old contacts for his P.I. practice, just in case. Within a week he had a good case, a potentially lucrative case, trailing one of Manhattan’s most aggressive investment bankers from borough to borough, gathering court-worthy evidence that the well-groomed sleazeball was cheating on his wife. It was the old gumshoe life again, planting listening devices, tickling the shutter button of a camera, sitting around in his car for hours at a time, listening to sports radio or the news to keep from thinking too much about a certain someone, and missing her too much.

He had time to go back to drinking, but he didn’t. The bottles in his cabinets didn’t call to him, not even when he surfed his way to Cindy’s Website, drooling over a fresh photoset with Cindy standing straight and proud, her svelte stacked body lit all red and orange as Alana hovered in the air, her cunt glistening even before Cindy’s tongue reached out to meet it. The photos were like jpeg napalm, the hottest he’d seen yet. He got even harder than he’d expected, and it felt strange, staring at this busty blonde internet bombshell, available to him now only in pixilated form. Unable to resist, he stroked himself with an urgent longing, excitement mingling with regret, his eyes welling with tears at the moment of ejaculation.

How fucked up was it, to chase her right out of his life by pointing out her darkness, when just being around her had helped him to find a better side of himself? She must have been healing him, too, whether she’d intended that or not. Without really trying, by just being herself and letting him in a little bit, she had grasped his hand, helping to pull him out of the deep dark hole he’d been sliding into.

He made a point of getting out, rather than hanging out at home where he knew he’d have a tendency to sulk. He went to the Bronx Zoo on one of his slow days, checking out a special exhibit on primates. On the weekend he caught a controversial exhibition he’d heard about at a science museum, all about the insides of the human body. Meeting up with an old NYPD buddy at a Nets game that same night, he found a partner for lamenting about failed marriages and the complexities of women. And when he was asked how Emma was doing, he said “better”, praying like hell that it wasn’t a lie.

As though summoning a spirit, Alana called him the next morning, to tell him that Emma was indeed showing improvement.

“She asked about you yesterday,” Alana said. “She’s beginning to reconnect, Tony. She’s still extremely… amorous — I hope it’s okay to say that.”

“It is.”

“Good. Anyway, she’s still kind of spaced out, but you’d be surprised at the strides she’s making. I’m teaching her yoga, and she really seems to love it. She’s becoming curious about life again, and I think she’s beginning to miss you. Cindy too.”

“Cindy misses me?”

“Oh God, I’m sorry. I misspoke. What I meant was that Emma misses Cindy. I… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. How is Cindy, if it’s okay to ask?”

“I don’t know. She’s been gone for… let me see, a little over a week now? You didn’t know, did you?”

“No. I… We haven’t spoken. Where did she go?”

“She didn’t say. Rented a car and left, with a note that we shouldn’t worry about her.”

“Do you?”

“Worry? A little. She’s strong… Hell, she can definitely handle herself, that will never be a problem. But Tony? I don’t know what you said to Cindy, and I’m not going to get in the middle of it. You sure shook her up, though. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so agitated, not even when she returned from her time up north.”

“I guess I have a way with words,” he responded, breathing out hard.

They spoke a little more after that. Lance and Heather were a long-term item, it seemed. Alana suggested that they all meet for coffee or lunch some day soon, and he said that he’d really like that. He rung off, feeling kind of wonderful that Emma’s recovery was coming along. Kind of hollowed out, too.

Hearing Alana’s voice like that brought back too many memories, and there was another thing, too. Though the situation was imperfect, Alana could move on past the psychic sex with Cindy, because she had love in her life. He could hear it animating her voice, whereas his had carried a tell-tale flatness.

He made a resolution right then. He was going to get back in the romance game, even if he was completely out of practice. He checked out several dating services online, and saw a few listings in his area that were at least slightly intriguing. He found that he was more comfortable with the personals in the Village Voice, though, and circled three of them with a red felt-tip pen before going to bed.

Sitting in his car on surveillance the next morning, he imagined the letters he might write to these strangers, wondering how he should describe himself. He was a few years shy of forty, still somewhat young, and in pretty good shape. He had a house, and an income, and he liked to go hiking up in the mountains even if he hardly ever did, and fuck this all sounded so clinical and trite, it made him want to puke. He was also an ex-drunk, with the “ex” part still somewhat in the air, and his teenage daughter was on a long upward climb out of nymphomaniacism, and he’d recently been employed by a soft porn goddess that he’d quite probably fallen in love with, despite knowing that he shouldn’t. And yet if he wrote even a tiny bit of the truth, hinting at the complexities of his existence, he’d probably sound like some kind of freak, and who would ever call?

He came up with the outline of something in his head, abstractly tweaking it throughout the day, getting comfortable with it bit by bit. Sitting at a little Thai restaurant for dinner, he wrote part of it out on a napkin, which highlighted a whole new problem. Type his responses up on the computer, or write them up by hand? A printed letter would be too clinical, but his handwriting was such a mess that a woman would have to be a mind-reader to decipher it. He laughed, sadly, at the irony as he drove home.

Switching the lights on in his house, he threw his wallet and keys on the bedside table and stripped for a long hot shower. His hesitations slid down the drain like the sweat and soap — he would write out his responses by hand, and fuck it if his sloppy script freaked these women out. He didn’t know them, and might never know them, what was there to lose?

He left wet footprint on the floor as he padded naked to the bedroom. Opening the top drawer of his dresser, he pulled out a fresh pair of briefs, and stepped into them.

“Don’t bother putting those on.”

He jumped, and spun, and there she was, sitting cross-legged on his bed, completely naked, his copy of the Voice resting on her lap.

“I see you’ve been contemplating the dating life,” Cindy said, raising the paper, blocking his view of her amazing tits while uncovering her pussy. “I like the sounds of this first one for myself: ’Divorced white female, thirty, with a body whose curves are guaranteed to please and more than enough spunk to keep you on our toes. Seeking a single or divorced educated and employed male, race and age less important than emotional maturity and an attitude that welcomes adventure, including adventure in the bedroom. Take a chance and write me, I’m worth it.’”

He stood with his underwear at his ankles, his heart pounding, his dick rising, feeling excited, and elated, and embarrassed, and suspicious, and…

“I can see how that one caught your eye,” Cindy said, throwing the paper down to the floor. “The other two you circled wouldn’t work out, they aren’t even worth bothering with.”

“What are you…”

“You’ve never had a woman on this bed, have you, Anthony? You bought it after you and your wife split.”

“That’s right,” he admitted, still stunned.

“It’s high time you discovered whether the springs squeak, isn’t it?”

He stared at her, his eyes skimming every perfect inch, afraid to even contemplate her words. The shaded light from the single bedside lamp raked across her every hollow and curve, turning the exquisite body he knew so well in two dimensions into a living breathing topographical map of female fuckability. He found himself breathing hard, because he was just plain hard. Her presence on his bed was like a fantasy come to life, somehow making his bedroom feel small.

“And your dick feel very, very big,” she grinned, looking right at it. “Do you really have an attitude that welcomes adventure in the bedroom?” As though her question released several joints all at once, she stretched her limbs out and turned on her side, reclining seductively. “It wouldn’t be very nice to tell a woman you do, and then disappoint her.”

Her eyes lowered, and she seemed to be contemplating her tits as a hand eased up her taut thighs, fingertips alternating with knuckles on the slow, steady journey. Her head tilted back when her hand found its warm wet destination, two fingers extending to glide straight inside. Her lips puckered just slightly, her eyes closing, and for several seconds it looked as though she had forgotten that he was even there.

“God, I feel all ornery,” she cooed, soft sounds of wetness entering his ears like thunder. “Sometimes, like right now, I can’t even believe how hot I can get. Like I could melt steel with my tongue. Like I could blow a dick made of fire, and it might not be hot enough to keep up with me.”

She rubbed her big firm breasts with her free hand, cupping and squeezing them, teasing the nipples, lightly pulling on her golden nipple rings. He felt frozen in place but for the movement of his eyes, devouring the sight of her hands playing upon the smooth carnal landscape that he’d fantasized about so many times. Yes he had seen her body on the Web, but never like this, the action of her fingers explicit, her shapely legs opening wide to bare her slit, the flesh of her incredible breasts flushing red with excitement. The look was hard-core, and it was a good look for Cindy, his rod responding, feeling harder than it had ever been, hard right to its core.

“You want this,” she nodded with her chin, indicating the entirety of her body. “You’ve wanted some of this for a very long time.”

His cock felt like it might shoot flames and launch right off his body. But something also felt wrong, terribly wrong.

“I can feel your struggle, Anthony. What are you afraid of? That I’m not really me? Or is it worse than that? Maybe you’re afraid that I am me, that you’re about to be swallowed up by the real deal.”

At the word “swallowed” he could feel them, invisible lips slipping over his pulsing cockhead, giving him just the littlest taste.

“You… could be MagicThunder… playing a trick,” he gasped.

“Thick, slick, tricky dick… You’re right, Anthony. I could also be Cindy, just having some good dirty fun. Or perhaps I’m Cindy’s dark side, the one you were so quick to point out. Perhaps I’m her shadow, come to life for real, finally given flesh and blood form. Would you like that, Anthony? Would you like another go-round with all that Cindy represses? I’d love to know which possibility frightens you the most. I’d also like to know which one of us you’re most dying to fuck.”

“You… can’t be Cindy,” he breathed, trying to turn and run, immediately aware that the invisible lips surrounding his cock were holding him in place.

“Why not? Because Cindy is always so cool and together? Because she would never show up in your bedroom and toy with you like this? Get real, Anthony. This very second you’re trying to run from the very thing you want to feel the most. If you can have so many contradictions alive within you, why can’t I?”

He cried out, a series of images zipping through his mind’s eye in fast motion. He saw Cindy’s face, laughing, smiling, looking at him with love, staring in anger. He saw her gazing up from between his legs, her cheeks expanding and collapsing as she sucked his cock, followed by her body riding him from above, her big breasts bouncing, and then his cock was ramming her from behind, his abdomen smacking against the twin curves of her tight ass. He saw her on his bed, just as she was, except that her body was encased in black shining leather, which turned into a red silk bustier, which turned into violet fishnet stockings and heels, with her uncovered tits expanding right before his eyes, her nipples racing towards his waiting lips with almost frightening speed. He felt her flesh pressing into his face, nearly smothering him, and then her gorgeous angelic face was close, filling his field of vision. Only now it wasn’t angelic – it turned sultry, then demure, now giddy, and her eyes rolled back as her mouth opened wide, screaming in orgasm. A whole stream of possible Cindy’s flashed in front of him, and nearly all of them, despite their changeable characteristics, made his dick want to explode.

“That’s right, Anthony. Take a good long look at me. Take a good look and see the parts of me that wouldn’t hesitate to reach out with my mind, and give you a biiiig, loooong, hotttt…”

It was instantaneous, the feeling of a tongue, a huge tongue, taking a long, excruciatingly slow ride up his legs, and then out along the bottom of his pulsing cock. The lips were still there holding him fast, only they began to pucker, and suck…

“Ohh, oooohhhhhhh…” he moaned.

“You gave me quite a kick in the ass out on that bridge, Anthony. You weren’t subtle or gentle, shoving the truth into my face like a schoolyard bully. It was all I could do to keep from lashing out — you were practically begging for it, for a good swift mindfuck. But you were right, about pretty much everything. It was eating at me, clamping down on the power that way. I made the mistake of trying to be too good, and my own forked tail might have whipped back around and dragged me down if you hadn’t helped, which you did at considerable risk. I want to thank you. Me, and my complex mind, and this body you’ve been wanting so badly. We’d all love to thank you, and we will.”

It was hearing her say “my mind” and “this body” that cinched it for him. It was Cindy, the real Cindy. Wickedly sexy and unrestrained in a way he’d never seen, but it was Cindy.

“Yes, it’s me, Anthony. But don’t get too comfortable with things just yet. I’ll thank you in a way you’ll never forget, but I also need to punish you for kicking my ass out there.”

Was it gratitude or punishment that accelerate the phantom licking and sucking of his cock? And what motivated her when he was practically tossed her way, where she caught his dick in her mouth much the way a dog catches a Frisbee? He was sucked off for real while floating face down over the bed, and when he came, Cindy allowed his cum to drip down between her tits, where it became a lubricant for the next phase of their lovemaking.

It was strangely like coming home when his tongue first met her wet pussy. Her moans and hisses felt familiar, despite never having heard them before. Her scent entered him in the same way, its flowery nature easing up his nostrils like a long lost love. He knew her, intimately, even though he’d never had the pleasure.

She was loud when she got close, her hips bucking and her strong thighs pressing in, giving his tongue and probing fingers encouragement. And when it all came together for her, she somehow brought him inside, let him feel it as she felt it, the waves charging through the both of them, a truly shared climax.

He fucked her, fucked her from behind, his cock unnaturally energetic, their thoughts linked, his heart given away, probably for good. When he couldn’t do any more or take any more, he collapsed on top of her, their pulses racing in tandem, warm sleep beckoning.

They joined again, back to front, limbs intertwined, and even his dreams seemed to come alive with the taut muscles of her body, the soft caresses from her blonde hair, the fullness of her breasts. She spoke to him, and stroked him to life again, bringing him back inside, slipping in and out of sleep, in and out of Cindy, in and out…

“I get this feeling that you were exceedingly gentle with me,” Tony said, his hand lightly squeezing one of her breasts. They were spooned together, silvery blue light from a nearly full moon spilling in through the curtains of his bedroom windows.

“You like it rough?”

“Sometimes,” he answered, the memories of spinning on his living room floor vivid in his mind. She fell silent, and he thought for a few minutes that she had fallen back to sleep.

“I drove up to Maine,” she finally whispered. “MagicThunder sent a photograph the day after I left you on the bridge. It was a rural landscape, and I knew the place. I knew exactly where it was.”

“You found her?”

“I rented a car and drove straight up. I could feel her, Anthony, like we were becoming more tightly linked with every mile that passed. I recognized the little town she lives in. I recognized her house, and another house a half mile away where I spent those autumn months with her.”

“I’m… almost afraid to ask.”

“I didn’t stop. There was no need any more. We were so linked by then that actually speaking would have been beside the point. I drove to the Maine coast after that, and spent a good bit of time staring at snow and the sea, thinking about things. MagicThunder and I are okay with each other, we understand each other. She’s growing up, and she’s wondering what the future holds for her, just like any teenager. Her giddiness over the extent and reach of her power has eased, and now she’s trying to find some kind of balance in her life, a way to fit in even when she acts ‘normal’. She’s still impulsive and over-sexed, but I don’t think we’ll need to keep circumnavigating the globe to put out her fires. She’ll still create some messes, but she’s more aware of the need to clean up behind herself.”

“And Emma? Can she clean that up?”

“I saw Emma right before coming here. She’s getting better, Anthony, and it isn’t MagicThunder helping her out. It’s Alana. They’re very right for each other.”

Hearing the news of his daughter’s progress, he felt something inside of his chest relax, perhaps for the first time in years. And because of that, he was able to ask his next question without hesitation, and without fear.

“What about you, Cindy? Or us?”

“Well that’s a very interesting topic,” she said, turning to face him. “There is a definite ‘us’, Anthony. I’m ready to go forward if you are.”

“You aren’t concerned about…”

“The age difference? No. I like the way I feel around you. I can be myself with you, even my bad self, and you don’t fear me. And I’ve seen the territory inside of you…”

“Uh-oh.”

“And I like it.”

“Whew.”

“You aren’t exactly a shining knight…”

“You aren’t exactly a virginal princess.”

She elbowed him in the shoulder, laughing, but then turned more serious. “I can’t promise that I won’t ever take on other lovers — in fact, I can guarantee that I’ll be with women again, I’m never giving that up.”

“Alright by me.”

“And I might be… bad sometimes. Controlling people, I mean. Not like MagicThunder, but some.”

“I think we’ve seen what would happen if you didn’t. Just let me share in the fun every now and then.”

“You really aren’t concerned?”

“I’m really not.”

“How about the fact that I can make you cum just by thinking about it? That doesn’t worry you?”

“Hardly.”

“Good, because I want to tell you something: You were completely on-target about my shadow side sneaking around and screwing with everybody. But I started to wonder about its motivations. That part of the psyche might be primitive, but it’s not without its own agenda. I kept wondering why I helped Lance seduce Heather, or why I would have thrown Alana and Emma into each other’s arms like that. I lost my lovers, practically gave them all away behind my own back. Why I would do something like that?”

“I give up.”

“I was making room for you, Anthony. It didn’t feel right to hook up with you when I was fucking another man, and I could never bring myself to do it with Emma sharing my bed. I kept telling myself that I couldn’t have these feelings for you, even though I did. So I guess I snuck around myself, to get what I wanted.”

“That explains the others, but what about me? What agenda did your shadow have when it slapped me around and more or less mind-raped me? And what did it gain by causing me to experience what I did with those three girls?”

“I’ve been wondering about that. In the dorm, I must have wanted to you to face your own shadow’s wishes; that and I probably just enjoyed screwing around with you. I really wanted to fuck you, so in essence I did, in several ways. And you piss me off sometimes, Anthony, which explains the roughness in your living room. It was cathartic, like you said before. And I’m sure my shadow loved it when you wouldn’t beg to get off. After wanting it for months, you were finally getting psychic sex from me, and there you were trying to keep it from happening. I’ll bet my worst instincts couldn’t stop laughing from the absurdity of it all.”

She raised her head and shoulders with an elbow, placing her breasts almost in his face before continuing. “Maybe we don’t know what it’s going to be like now...”

“Us?”

“Us.”

"We’ll take life as it comes,” he replied. “And we’ll take each other and cum, what could be easier?”

“No blind dates from the personals for you. You’ll be getting plenty of Cindy’s to fuck, believe me, and you’re going to need to save your energy for all of them.”

“Sure thing, boss,” he replied, running the back of his hand across the perfect pink nipple almost staring him in the face. He curled his fingers and lightly flicked at her nipple ring, and then grasped it, twisting just a little too much.

“Oooooo... Something tells me that our shadows are about to get acquainted,” Cindy breathed.

“Don’t be so sure,” he replied, pushing her away. “I wouldn’t fuck you again in a million years.”

Her eyes went wide with shock for about half a second, but then they narrowed, and gleamed. Her smile couldn’t have been more broad or open when she said, “You’re playing with fire, mister. You’re really asking for it.”

Yes, he was. What a mind-reader, that Cindy. No wonder he loved her so much.

I love you, too, he heard in his mind, just as her pussy began to glow red, illuminating the room.