I heard the knock from the crafting room where I was doing inventory. I went to the door and looked through the peephole first, I had been in this city long enough to develop basic caution.

  A boy about my age was standing on the stoop. Curly blond hair, tan skin, dressed well but not formally. He had the clothes of someone who had money but didn't seem think much about it either way. He was whistling while he waited. Not nervously. Just whistling, like he had time and was filling it pleasantly, completely unbothered by the possibility that nobody was home.

  I opened the door.

  "Hello," I said. "Can I help you?"

  He looked at me and smiled. Then he did something unexpected, he lifted his chin slightly and inhaled through his nose, slow and deliberate, like a man evaluating a wine. His eyes went wide.

  "Yes," he said, with the energy of someone who had just won something. "Absolutely yes. You're exactly the person I've been looking for. For five years." He stepped inside without being invited, which I allowed out of pure surprise, and turned a full circle in my front room with his nose working the whole time.

  "What a fantastic odor," he announced to my ceiling. "Simply enchanting. Simply marvelous." He turned back to face me with the expression of a man who had crossed a desert and found water exactly where he'd calcuted it would be. "I'm Caleo Anima. I've been looking for a Sex Mage for years. They're supposed to be extinct, you know. Functionally extinct. And here you are in a house in the merchant district smelling absolutely extraordinary." He paused to inhale again. "How wonderful. How genuinely, completely wonderful."

  He talked the way some people sprint, full commitment, no apparent need for oxygen, covering ground at a pace that left no obvious gaps for interruption. His enthusiasm was so thorough and so genuine that it was difficult not to find it infectious. I could feel myself starting to smile despite having no idea what was happening.

  Then what he'd said arrived properly.

  My smile stopped.

  "Caleo," I said carefully. "How do you know my css?"

  He blinked at me like the question was charmingly naive. "I followed the scent across the city. Three days of tracking, actually. You moved, which complicated things, but the new location was fairly obvious once I got into this district." He tapped the side of his nose with one finger. "I've been training myself in identification and cssification of Vitalist output since I was fourteen. Theoretical study, mostly, since there haven't been any actual Vitalists to practice on, but the foundational work is there." He looked enormously pleased with himself. "Five years of study and here we are. It's paying off rather spectacurly."

  I stared at him.

  I thought about the other night. My cock forcing my own ass open in a rented bathroom. The custom chair currently sitting in my crafting room with brackets specifically fitted to a goblin club. The fact that I had spent the better part of a week in productive solitude doing things that I was fairly confident no one else in this world had ever done.

  And this person had sniffed me out across an entire city.

  "I'm Jack," I said. "Let's have some tea."

  I put the kettle on in the kitchen while Caleo examined my front room with the focused interest of someone cataloguing an exhibition. He didn't touch anything, I noticed, just looked, nose occasionally working, making small sounds of appreciation. He stopped in the doorway of the crafting room and inhaled deeply and made a sound that was almost reverent.

  I chose not to comment on this.

  I made two cups, pin bck tea, and on impulse reached for the vial I had started keeping on the kitchen shelf, the one I used for personal consumption. Distinct from the product stock. I'd discovered the Morning Dew in tea by accident two days ago, a drop from my finger hitting the surface of my cup while I was working, the faint sweetness of it spreading through the whole drink in a way that was genuinely better than sugar. Warmer. More complex. I added a few drops to my cup and stirred it in and carried both cups to the front room.

  Caleo had settled himself on my chair with the comfortable ease of someone who sat in strangers' furniture without thinking about it. He accepted the pin cup with a nod.

  Then he paused. His nose was doing something again.

  "Uhh," he said, which was the first uncertain sound he'd made since arriving and was therefore interesting. A faint color came into his face. "Do you think I could have a few drops of your — " He paused, clearly selecting the word with care. "Nectar?" He said it almost shyly, which was quite the tonal shift from the man who had forced his way into my house five minutes ago announcing that my odor was enchanting.

  I looked at him for a moment.

  Then I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of the spare vials and tipped a few drops into his cup. The Morning Dew hit the surface of the tea and spread immediately, the faint luminescence catching the afternoon light coming through the window.

  Caleo's face lit up like I'd handed him something sacred. He lifted the cup and inhaled over it with his eyes closed, slow and thorough, the expression of a man taking his time with something he'd waited a long time for. Then he took a slow sip.

  His eyes opened wide.

  "This," he said, "is better than I hoped. Considerably better than I hoped." He looked at the cup with the specific reverence of someone recalibrating their expectations upward. "The theoretical literature, such as it is, most of it is incomplete or specutive, suggested Morning Dew of this quality was possible but considered it exceptional rather than baseline. And yet here it is. Baseline production from a newly emerged Vitalist at — " He looked at me with sudden sharp attention. "What level are you currently?"

  "Six," I said.

  He made a sound that suggested level six exceeded his projections by a meaningful margin and took another slow sip.

  I watched him over my own cup and tried to pce him. The enthusiasm, the relentless forward momentum of his speech, the complete absence of self-consciousness about any of it — he reminded me of someone. I turned the memory over for a moment and it arrived: a talk show guest I'd watched clips of online, an actor from the eighties and nineties who'd been in everything for a while and now mostly showed up on panel shows dressed as a fat guy to insult people. Whose entire energy was the specific frequency of a person who found everything genuinely delightful and wanted you to know about it immediately. I had loved watching that guy. You couldn't not.

  Caleo was that guy. Transported to a fantasy city and pointed at my tea.

  "So," I said. "A cum expert. A cum sommelier.”

  "Vitalist output specialist," he said, without any apparent embarrassment. "Though cum expert is technically accurate at the foundational level. I began my studies at fourteen after I encountered a historical text describing Vitalist output properties. The healing applications alone — " He gestured with his cup. "The literature is fragmentary but even the fragments were enough to make the subject obviously worth serious study. I've spent five years building a theoretical framework with no practical component because there was nothing to practice on. I mean other than normal cum. Which is still quite excellent.” He looked at me with that wide open expression. "And then three days ago I was in the market district and I caught the faintest trace of something on the air that matched every theoretical profile I'd developed and I have been following it since."

  "Across the whole city," I said.

  "The port district threw me off for half a day," he admitted. "The fish smell is considerable."

  I thought about the port district. About the smell of tar and salt and boats. About someone moving through that with their nose pointed at the air following the trace of my precum across the city like a bloodhound.

  "Caleo," I said. "How old are you?"

  "Nineteen," he said. "Twenty in the spring."

  I nodded slowly. A nineteen year old cum expert who had dedicated five years of his life to the theoretical study of a css everyone thought was extinct had followed my scent across a city and forced himself into my house and was currently drinking my Morning Dew tea with the reverence of a schor accessing a primary source.

  I took a sip of my own tea. The warmth of the Morning Dew spread through it pleasantly.

  "Right," I said. "So. What exactly did you want to talk about?"

  Caleo set down his cup and leaned forward with the expression of someone who had been waiting for exactly this question and had prepared extensively for it.