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

She could hear power tools now and then lately, and knew that 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 vanished. There was no sign of the “workbench” Abel was supposedly building. The black square on the floor continued to have that odd shimmer, more like tile or a painting than a hole, even though she’d seen Abel go down in it twice now. A rope ladder and a big electrical cord seemed to vanish into the shimmer, and there was a thinner cord, too.

Right next to it were a perfectly ordinary washer and dryer.

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

If she was honest, her attraction to Abel played 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 muscular and all man, and he really did look good when he was hauling lumber around. On the other 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 black hair, and almost unnatural violet eyes that had to be contacts, but were absolutely perfect. Fortunately those eyes didn’t seem to be looking right at her.

“I thought you never took women to the basement, Abel,” Kathy muttered under her breath.

The woman climbed up a rung of the rope ladder, and more of her came into view. Smooth bare shoulders, with a bit of tone to them. The girl worked out, but she wasn’t muscle bound, and her complexion was flawless. Another step, 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 compete 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 come in the front door. She didn’t seem to be under any duress, though, or in any hurry. If anything, she looked reluctant to keep climbing.

The strange beauty gave her breasts a grope. For a moment Kathy fancied that she was saying goodbye to them, but that was silly. Then she took another step up, and her head turned Kathy’s way.

Kathy rolled away from the window hurriedly. The last 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 confused, but they also knew that 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 wanted to.

*  *  *

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

In a way, I got a lot done. I finally replaced the refrigerator, and now the appliances matched. I installed a granite countertop to replace the Formica. I refinished the floors in two bedrooms. I re-tiled the kitchen. I replaced the medicine cabinet I’d pulled out. I had a nice long video chat with Jill. Sandra came over one evening, and that was nice, too. 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 tended to 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 Xyla, and once a week, I had an evening with Gren when I went to collect payment and deliver liquor. The trolls were more than glad for me to take a few sapphires and rubies instead of gold.

I bought a generator at the hardware store, and tried to bring 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 returned it, and did some experiments, much to the annoyance of their return desk. Nothing I got that had a combustion engine could go through. A gas chainsaw 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 done with 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 blame it if it didn’t want pollution or guns.

I cleaned 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 necromantic engravings. Flaming June, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, that sort of thing. I didn’t want anything that showed off Earth technology, so pictures that had modern buildings were out. All in all, the place 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 laptop I left in Amaranth would immediately send as a text to my phone using the wi-fi. I made sure Xyla knew how to use it, in case she needed me. Now she could communicate with me even if I was on Earth.

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 flaunting it. Her lips had a red bit of lipstick on, 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 Canadian 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 come over the other day.”

“That would be Sandra.”

“You need some mixers to make cocktails,” she said. “I can’t drink anything but brandy neat. 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 kitchen with me, but let me mix the drink, which was fair. I didn’t mind playing host, even though she’d invited herself over.

She drifted away, but I didn’t think much of it. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her hand on the basement door. I didn’t say anything as she tried to look nonchalant, looking toward me while her hand twisted on the knob. Her face betrayed a small bit of disappointment 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 imagine it could do that, too.”

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

“I, um, imagine it could.”

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

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

I showed her around.

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

I smiled. “Thanks!”

“Do you think we should exchange 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 check on me if you didn’t see me for a few days, and I didn’t answer the door.”

It was a nice offer, if you ignored the fact that the last thing I wanted her to do if she didn’t see me for a few days and I didn’t answer the door was come inside to 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 wanted to 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 exchanging keys thing, too.

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

She wrapped 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 and set the remains of her drink on the kitchen 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 communication 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 Xyla or Gren. I didn’t wish I didn’t change 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 become rich, and I didn’t mean the gems that the trolls happily gave me thinking they were getting the better end of the deal. Richness wasn’t measured in money, although it helped to have enough. I was rich in friends and lovers, and in the world of possibilities in my basement.