Feeling a little guilty, Kathy pressed her nose up against the cloudy window. She was gd he hadn’t gotten around to ing them, because she’d be spicuous if he did. Even so, if one of the neighbors looked over the backyard fend spotted her, it would be clear she was snooping.

  She could hear power tools now and then tely, and khat Abel was getting work done, and not just in the basement. But it was the basement that made her curious. There had been a delivery for more wood, and it had all vahere was no sign of the “workbench” Abel was supposedly building. The bck square on the floor tio have that odd shimmer, more like tile or a painting than a hole, even though she’d seen Abel go down in it twioe dder and a big electrical cord seemed to vanish into the shimmer, and there was a thinner cord, too.

  Right o it were a perfectly ordinary washer and dryer.

  It had bee a little bit of an obsession with Kathy. She o know what was going on. It wouldn’t be neighborly to ask the city to send iors, but that kind of weirdness in the neighborhood o be iigated by someone.

  If she was ho, her attra to Abel pyed a big part in her curiosity. She wanted him. He was willing, she thought. It had been a long time since she’d had a boyfriend and maybe a poly boyfriend would fill the void. He was big and muscur and all man, and he really did look good when he was hauling lumber around. Oher hand, getting involved with a man who was building something in a hole in his basement seemed like a very bad idea.

  A woman’s head popped out of the hole.

  She was beautiful, with a long full mane of midnight bck hair, and almost unnatural violet eyes that had to be tacts, but were absolutely perfect. Fortuhose eyes didn’t seem to be looking right at her.

  “I thought you ook women to the basement, Abel,” Kathy muttered under her breath.

  The woman climbed up a rung of the rope dder, and more of her came into view. Smooth bare shoulders, with a bit of too them. The girl worked out, but she wasn’t muscle bound, and her plexion was fwless. Aep, and big, naked breasts bounced into view. They defied gravity. Breasts that big shouldn’t be that perky, and when they were you could usually see scars from surgery. But these looked natural, and they had big puffy pink nipples that stood out. The woman was a 10 – no, maybe an 11.

  “I could never pete with that,” thought Kathy. “Hell, I’m straight, and even I’d think about jumping the fence for her.”

  The fact that she was naked was not lost on Kathy, either. Whatever Abel was doing down there involved naked women, or at least a naked woman. Kathy had never seen this woman e in the front door. She didn’t seem to be under any duress, though, or in any hurry. If anything, she looked relut to keep climbing.

  The strange beauty gave her breasts a grope. For a moment Kathy fahat she was saying goodbye to them, but that was silly. Theook aep up, and her head turned Kathy’s way.

  Kathy rolled away from the window hurriedly. The st thing she needed was to be spotted. She quickly got to her feet and headed toward where Roxy and Rover sat patiently. Heart beating hard, she gave their heads a scritch. “Good dogs,” she told them. They were her cover, her reason to be in Abel’s backyard if anyone asked. She’d shooed them through the hole in the fence so they would be there, and now she shooed them back. They were probably fused, but they also khat there’d be a treat at the other end of the charade for them, and they were smart enough to figure out the pattern, even if they didn’t know why.

  They were the best kind of partners in crime, the kind that couldn’t rat her out even if they wao.

  * * *

  For a couple of weeks, not much happened, and it was lovely.

  In a way, I got a lot done. I finally repced the refrigerator, and now the appliances matched. I installed a granite tertop to repce the Formica. I refihe floors in two bedrooms. I re-tiled the kit. I repced the medie et I’d pulled out. I had a nice long video chat with Jill. Sandra came over one evening, and that was oo. Things were ‘progressing’ between her and Bill, but she clearly was a bit uneasy about it all. I tried to make space for her to talk about it, but she didn’t seem ready to say much more.

  In Amaranth, the zombies teo take damage as they went through the woods. They didn’t avoid things, and their flesh didn’t hold together like a live troll’s would. But thanks to Mend Corpse, I kept them up and running, delivering lumber to the trolls as per our deal. Every day, I spent a little time with Xy, and once a week, I had an evening with Gren when I went to collect payment and deliver liquor. The trolls were more than gd for me to take a fehires and rubies instead of gold.

  I bought a geor at the hardware store, and tried t it down to Amaranth with me, thinking it would help me get a few more appliances down there, but the portal wouldn’t let me bring it through. I retur, and did some experiments, much to the annoyance of their return desk. Nothing I got that had a bustion engine could gh. A gas saw bounced, even though my battery powered one, which I’d found time to repair, was just fine.

  There were probably ways around it. I could bring something through one part at a time, like Enash had doh the puzzle pieces for the gate. That would probably let me bring a gun through. I knew people made 3D printed firearms where all the parts were deliberately innocuous. I thought long and hard about it, but if Amaranth had rules and limits I decided I’d rather respect them. That world had been good to me, and I couldn’t bme it if it didn’t ollutiuns.

  I ed out the old broken coffin lid, and tossed Enash’s bones out with it, much to his annoyance. I put a table top over the open coffin. I hung a few cheap prints over the neantigravings. Fming June, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, that sort of thing. I didn’t want anything that showed off Earth teology, so pictures that had modern buildings were out. All in all, the pce looked a little more like home.

  I also installed a door buzzer. At first, I was going to keep it simple, but eventually I decided it needed a speaker and a microphone. If you pushed the button you could talk and record a message, which the ptop I left in Amaranth would immediately send as a text to my phone using the wi-fi. I made sure Xy knew how to use it, in case she needed me. Now she could unicate with me even if I was oh.

  Kathy came over one evening, She had on jeans and a khaki shirt, which she’d left just unbuttoned enough to let me see she had cleavage without actually funting it. Her lips had a red bit of lipsti, too.

  “Hi,” she said.

  I invited her in. I’d put everything away, and I’d locked the basement door, and besides, I had plenty to show her.

  “Offer you something to drink? I have Irish and adian Whiskey, vodka, gin, rum,” I rattled off a list of a few of the things I either hadn’t taken to the trolls, or they hadn’t liked much.

  “Do you have some of that brandy?”

  I shook my head. “All gone. I, um, gave it to a friend.”

  “Ah, yes, your friends. I saw one e over the other day.”

  “That would be Sandra.”

  “You need some mixers to make cocktails,” she said. “I ’t drink anything but brandy . Got some Coke?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lime juice?”

  “Then I’ll have a Cuba Libre. But a little one, mostly Coke, not much rum.” She came to the kit with me, but let me mix the drink, which was fair. I didn’t mind pying host, even though she’d invited herself over.

  She drifted away, but I didn’t think much of it. But then, out of the er of my eye, I saw her hand on the basement door. I didn’t say anything as she tried to look nont, looking toward me while her hand twisted on the knob. Her face betrayed a small bit of disappoi as she found it locked, and then she moved away and took her drink from my hand.

  Hmm.

  “How’s your workbench going?” she asked.

  “Um, fine.” I didn’t want to embellish the lie. She was obsessed with that workbench. I doubted it was just her sexual fantasy.

  “I’d love to see it,” she said, drawing closer. There was a sway to her hips, too, like a woman in a movie trying to act seductive.

  “There’s not much to see,” I said.

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” she told me. “Would it support my weight, you think?”

  “I imagine so,” I said, since imagine was all I could do with the mythical workbench.

  “Would it support both our weights?” she asked.

  “I imagi could do that, too.”

  “Even if we were boung around a bit?” She fluttered her eyeshes at me.

  “I, um, imagi could.”

  “You have a good imagination, then,” she told me.

  Now what did that mean? I made myself my own drink, expeg her to keep expl. But she didn’t. She’d goraight for the basement door, tested it, and now she wasn’t ied in anything else.

  I showed her around.

  “So, you really are fixing up the pce. It’s nice, Abel. You do good work.”

  I smiled. “Thanks!”

  “Do you think we should exge keys?” she asked suddenly. “You know, in case something goes wrong. I’d happily give you the keys to my house, if I could have yours. Assuming you’d chee if you didn’t see me for a few days, and I didn’t ahe door.”

  It was a nice offer, if you ighe fact that the st thing I wanted her to do if she didn’t see me for a few days and I didn’t ahe door was e io look around for a body.

  “I’m good,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said. “I’m not very good at this, am I?”

  “What is this?”

  “Trying to be neighborly and seduce you at the same time.”

  She was trying to seduce me? There’d been little hints of that, but mostly it seemed like she was trying to find answers, which I suppose was natural if she wao date me. Would I turn her down, if I wasn’t horribly busy on another world? No, probably not. I probably would have gone along with the exgihing, too.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to be good at it.”

  She ed her arms around me and kissed me, still holding her drink. I kissed back, feeling like we were both using each other, somehow miles apart even while we were as close as two people could be.

  Even though Kathy was a desirable woman, that wasn’t what I wanted.

  “I should go, shouldn’t I?” Kathy asked.

  My hesitation was as good as a yes, and she moved away. She went back downstairs ahe remains of her drink o table. I followed her there, and then through the living room.

  “God, I’m an idiot,” Kathy said.

  “I don’t think you’re an idiot,” I said quickly.

  She turned. “Abel, I –”

  I waited.

  “Some questions aren’t even safe to ask, are they?”

  “I don’t know that’s true,” I said. “Clear, open unication is invaluable.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “You should try it some time.”

  Ouch.

  I watched her go. I’d be open if I could, I thought at her mutely. If I didn’t have this secret. If I didn’t worry that both this world and Amaranth would be worse off for the secret getting out. For a moment, I wished I didn’t have all those secrets.

  But that wasn’t right. I didn’t wish I didn’t have Xy ren. I didn’t wish I didn’t ge into a beautiful futanari with magic every time I went through the portal, even if I would have preferred that my magic was less about death. I loved all the ways in which my life had bee rich, and I didn’t mean the gems that the trolls happily gave me thinking they were getting the better end of the deal. Riess wasn’t measured in money, although it helped to have enough. I was ri friends and lovers, and in the world of possibilities in my basement.