Valeria looked siderably less credulous. “ you show us the spot where you fought the zombie?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “It’s a pretty long journey,” I said. “And it was weeks ago. I haven’t seen anything like it since.”

  “We should go check it out,” Talos said.

  “But the divination pointed us to this area,” Valeria said. “Not the eastern edge.”

  “Look,” Talos said. “How you not believe a pretty face like that?”

  My seductress passives were w. Valeria frowned and looked at me. I tried to look my prettiest and most i. Naturally, that meant my horns itched. Hopefully they were still well hidden by my hair. “I still want to look ihat tomb,” she said. “It’s the logical pce, and it’s right here.”

  “No,” I said. “Not without a warrant.”

  “A warrant?” asked Valeria.

  “A , where I e from. Never mind.”

  “And where do you e from, exactly?” Valeria asked.

  Ooops. “Boston. Have you heard of it?”

  “No.”

  I shrugged. “It’s a big world.” And not this one.

  “What are you hiding?”

  A dick, I thought. But she probably meant ihe crypt. “Nothing that s you.”

  I didn’t want to fight these people. One, because I wasn’t sure I would win. But two, and equally importantly, they weren’t bad guys. They were looking for an evil neancer, which was reasoheir divination might have been triggered by Enash’s awakening, not by anything I’d done.

  “e on,” Talos said, tugging at Valeria’s arm. “Let’s go check out the zombie, and see if ick up the trail there.”

  Valeria hesitated. “ you give us better dires?” she said at st.

  I wahem far away, and I hadn’t been in the part of the forest I was talking about. But Xy had drawn me a rough map, so I did the same in the dirt, drawing the outline of the forest, and then a Z at the eastern edge.

  There had to be a better way of dealing with this, I just didn’t know what it was.

  Eventually, they trudged off into the forest. The moment they were gone, Xy stepped out of one of the oak trees. Not from between them, but right from the middle. I’d seen her do it before, but it was still unnerving.

  Her leaves covered even less of her than the swimsuit had covered of me. Barely. She ran forward, hugged me, and kissed me. “I heard about them, and I came as fast as I could,” she said. “But I thought it best not to reveal my presence.”

  “It’s o see you.”

  “What was that about a zombie?” she asked.

  “I made it up.” I expio her that I was trying to get rid of them, because I didn’t want them talking to the trolls.

  “If they try to kill you,” Xy said. “I will show no mercy.”

  “Hmm. I’m going to try very hard not to be killed. At worst case, I just disappear for a bit.”

  “They’ll try to get in the crypt. And then they’ll find the gate.”

  “Good point,” I said. I sighed. “So now what? At best, I’ve bought us some time, but when they find nothing, they’ll be back. And they may be back before then. I don’t think Valeria believed me at all, and I’m not sure Talos did. I think it’s fairly likely he just preteo so that they could go somewhere and talk about it. Like we’re doing now, I suppose.”

  “I bind them up with my vines,” Xy said.

  “Sure. And then?”

  She was silent for a moment. “Um, yeah. Maybe they like that sort of thing? All tied up, at the mercy of two beautiful girls? We could make out in front of them and make them all riled up.”

  “Sexy, if sensual, but not a long term solution.”

  The long term solutions are kill them and turn them into zombies, or seduce them and give them a futanari neancer fetish. Or you could sedue and turher into a zombie, I suppose. ive one a zombie fetish!

  “Maybe they’ll hurt the forest,” Xy said.

  “Maybe, although I got the feeling that – well, maybe. What’s your point?”

  “Well, then I could strahem in their sleep, and it would be justice.”

  Sometimes I really like the way that girl thinks. There’s your answer. Charm one of them to start cutting trees. Sell the logs to the trolls, green tits will take care of the padins, and you feel you didn’t do anything wrong. Everyone wins.

  I supposed it rogress that Enash was at least trying to work within some sort of framework of ethics. I wished for a moment that I could get him to read Immanuel Kant or something. But the only way I could do that was by reading Kant myself. Once was enough. Besides, even if Enash uood ahical system, he’d probably regard it the amer sees a game system – he’d look for the exploits.

  “Capturing is fine, but nling,” I said.

  Xy pouted. “Even if they hurt the trees?”

  “I’m not saying we ’t punish them for that, but we ’t just kill them.”

  Xy crossed her arms in front of her and looked at me with that “you’re no fun” look. However, the a had the effeaking a shelf for her boobs and pushing them up and out, so I was a bit distracted.

  Well, two could py that game. “Oh, before they came, I was lounging on the chairs in my new swimsuit,” I told her. “Want to see?”

  “Swimsuit?” she asked.

  “Clothing worn for swimming,” I expined.

  “Why would you wear clothing for swimming?”

  “Good point, well made. It’s ah thing.” I pulled my top over my head, and had her attention where I wa.

  “It’s just twles and some straps,” she said.

  I pulled off the jeans. “Three triangles,” I corrected.

  Xy grinned. “This is your best outfit yet.”

  “I thought you might like it,” I said. I plopped myself in the chair. “So I was lounging, like this.” It hadn’t been quite like that, because I didn’t bother reading a book, and I arched my back a little to push out my chest, aween looking at Xy, and trying to be seductive, my cock had started to peek out of the top of the lowest triangle.

  Xy jumped on me. Swimsuits were like lingerie, I supposed. The more successful they were, the less time they stayed on.

  After we made love, Xy had forest things to do, and I would just slow her down. The idea of lounging around out front didn’t seem as appealing with padins roaming the woods.

  If I’d imagined a world where padins were hunting evil neancers, I would have assumed that I’d have said, “how I help?” Instead, I was starting tard them as pests. Although Valeria had beey hot. Objectively, Talos robably hot, too, but I was biased.

  Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

  “Based on previous experience, probably not.”

  Charm them both, have a threesome, they break their oath, and … what rhymes with threesome?

  “Yeah, that wasn’t what I was thinking.” But now that he put the idea in my head, I wasn’t sure it was going to leave. Still, mind trolling people into having sex with me was not something I wao be doing. Maybe it was better than killing people, but even that wasn’t clear to me.

  Enash started describing the possible threesome figurations iail, and I decided that I would be better going back to Earth for a bit. I wasn’t sure what was worse, the revolting parts, or the fact that occasionally he’d e up with ahat was kinda hot.

  I spent the afternoon prepping the rooms I wasn’t using for painting. I’d done painting prep dozens of times, so it didn’t require my full mental attention to do it well. I kept spinning on my padin problem, without a great deal of enlighte.

  When the zombies were doh their daily trip to the trolls, they had dires to return to the crypt and guard it. They couldn’t get in, of course. Locks were beyond them. But that meant that I’d have a bunch of zombies standing outside, ready to be iigated by curious padins. That would probably seal the case against me, even if they’d previously decided I was too cute to be a neancer.

  Stereotypes were everywhere.

  I decided that when the zombies came back, I’d let them in for the night ahem out of sight in the crypt. I didn’t like the idea, because they didn’t smell good, and it would probably take me weeks to stop the crypt from smelling like rotting flesh if they spent the night. I don’t know that the fresh air did them good, but it did me good to have them in it. Still, it seemed liked the lesser of two evils.

  At about four, I got a text from the “doorbell.” Xy wasn’t one of those girlfriends who texted all the time. It probably helped that she had to go to the mausoleum to do it, rather than having a phone in the pockets she didn’t have. I pulled out my phone, and read it, but the text was bnk. Maybe a squirrel had mao push the button by mistake.

  Or maybe Nutty had do on purpose. I opened my ptop and logged onto the feed from the security cameras on Amaranth.

  Talos and Valeria had decided, apparently, that iigating the crypt was more important than finding the pce where I’d supposedly killed a single zombie over a day’s travel away. I would have made the same call. They poked at the door, and then Talos swung his mace at it, but it was sturdy and didn’t break. Then they had a quick fab, and pressed up against the wall, as if pnning to ambush someone ing out the door. Me, perhaps. The security cameras provided a top-down view.

  If it weren’t for the zombies, I could just wait them out. But eventually the zombies would e back. They might decide that ‘guarding” meant stopping two people lurking outside, but zombie logic was weird. Either adin logic probably meant killing all my zombies, which would mean no more lumber service for the trolls. I could probably get the trolls to get their own lumber, but that meaing them know the location of the crypt, and I didn’t love that, either. It brought them too close to the gate.

  Since I didn’t give my zombies ons, I suspected that two armored people with swords could probably make short work of them.

  Valeria and Talos waited in ambush while I hurried down to the basement, carrying my ptop, and stripped off my clothes. I left the ptop behind, since I had a sed one in the basement, and climbed down the dder quickly. They were still waiting.

  The zombies might be bay miheir return time varied by an hour or so, and they didn’t always e ba a group, since if one of them tripped the others kept going, sometimes even if it meant walking over their fallen colleague.

  Colleague probably wasn’t the word that went through whatever passed for their brains. I pulled on panties, shorts, and a tank top, not b with a bra because I was in a hurry.

  The padins were still there. I put on tennis shoes, skipping socks. I didn’t have a pn. But I could pop out and say “hey?” And maybe start running iher dire to make them follow? But no, I’d have to lock the door behind me, and by then they’d be on me and I’d have the key out.

  Maybe I’d been hanging around Enash too much, because it crossed my mind that if they attacked me, I could kill them and it would be self-defense.

  No, it was better to let the zombies perish and accept the sequences. Except that ohey’d seen the zombies, there was no way they were leaving me alone.

  I sulted my system dispy.

  Dimension Step: User teleports to any pce withiy meters that they see. es mana.

  Did looking through the cameras t as seeing? If so, I didn’t have to open my door. There was only one way to find out.

  “Dimension Step,” I said.