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“No,” Marla said. “No reason for us to look like a parade. Besides, if things get nasty,
I’d like to have some backup Finch doesn’t know about. If you hear a commotion, come
running.”
“I shudder to imagine a commotion that you couldn’t handle but I could.”
“Stranger things happen,” Marla said, and followed Bradley Bowman up the stairs to
the deck on the second floor. There were couples in various stages of undress and
excess in all corners of the deck, and Marla and B wove around them. The second floor
was all windows in back—and inside, the floor was covered with groups of sucking,
groping, gasping people. Half a dozen men stood on either side of the walkway to the
door, watching the people inside through the windows while they tugged on their
cocks—walking past them would be like running a gauntlet, Marla thought. Fortunately,
B kept leading her around the side of the house. “Finch is on the third floor, up these
stairs,” he said.
“What stairs?” Marla said, annoyed, and B took her hand. She gasped. There was a
wooden stairway, right there, going up the side of the house, ending at a door. She
hadn’t seen it, or sensed its presence at all. Marla almost never failed to notice a door.
She looked at B with new respect. Maybe he was more than a half-assed seer.
“It’s usually not so hard to find,” B said. “I’ve been here for smaller parties, stuff like
that, and it’s not usually hidden at all. But I think Finch likes his privacy for these big
gatherings.”
“I’m sure he does,” Marla said. “He’s probably sitting up there, soaking in all the
accumulated sexual energy, storing it up for use later.”
“What do you mean?” B said.
“I think Finch is a sexual magician. All these people fucking produces a kind of energy,
and a sorcerer can tap into that to power spells, to commit acts of magic. The people
downstairs think they’re just having a good time—and they are, maybe even a better
time than they would have otherwise, since Finch has spells on the place to make people
want to fuck more—but they’re also giving Finch his strength.”
“Are you a, uh, sexual magician, too?”
Marla laughed. “From anyone else, I’d think that was a come-on. No, I’m not a
pornomancer, I’m a foul-rag-and-bone-shop sorcerer. I do a little bit of everything. Jillof-all-trades.
I know a lot about sex magic, though. My old mentor, Artie Mann, was a
pornomancer.”
“Did he throw parties like this?”
“Sometimes, but for a different reason. Artie didn’t like to depend on anyone else for
anything. He did a big spell to make himself impotent when he was in his twenties, at
his sexual peak.”
“He was a sex magician who couldn’t have erections?” B said.