I thought of telling her not to refer to me as ‘Master’ — but it was fucking hot. Besides, I liked it. I might even get Christina to try calling me that, too, I thought. If she doesn’t deck me in the face first, she might actually go for it…
That reminded me that Christina was still waiting outside. “You can grab Christina,” I told Mareth, nodding at the door. “She’s probably been listening in this whole time, jealous as Hell.”
Mareth laughed, her head rocking back on her shoulders. Now that she was freshly fucked, all the tension in her body had evaporated. She was loose and easy, ready for a night on the town or just a long chill session on the couch. I liked that about her.
“Christina told me she was going to check out the arcade,” the succubus said, her gaze traveling to the still-closed bathroom. “She’ll catch up with us whenever. But I’d bet all the shards in your palm that hot little waitress had an ear against the door, touching herself while she heard you fuck my brains out…”
The thought both excited and disturbed me. I hoped we hadn’t frightened Maddie too bad. “What’s she still doing in there?” I wondered, stepping over broken shards of the couch.
Mareth shrugged. “Humans and their need to be so clean,” she said, waving a hand. “She’s got to have been in there for at least a half-hour now. Like I said, she’s probably been getting off listening to us—”
“The water’s still running,” I said. A pang shot through my stomach—something was wrong. “Maddie? Maddie, you okay?”
I knocked at the door, harder this time. Still nothing.
“Mareth, put some clothes on,” I said, taking a step back into the hallway. “I’m going to kick this fucking door down.”
“What? Why?” Mareth’s eyebrows furrowed together.
“If she’s in there, the last thing I want her to see is a naked demoness,” I grunted, mentally calculating the angle I’d need to hit to kick the knob. “Just do it!”
While Mareth searched for her clothes, I delivered two swift kicks to the bathroom door. The water kept on running, the blissful music from my phone playing on the other side like nothing was wrong. My mind filled with dreadful possibilities: Maddie had had an accident, slipped in the tub. Anything could have happened while I was gone.
“Damn it! It won’t budge!” The door was made of that white, unformed stuff I’d carved the subspace out of to begin with. Apparently, it was like trying to tunnel through bedrock.
Mareth paused, her skirt wrapped halfway around her bare ass. The white streak of my seed dripped almost all the way down to her knee, completely forgotten in the emergency.
“This is your subspace,” the succubus said, gesturing with her nails. “Just unsummon the damn thing!”
Good idea, I thought, closing my eyes and concentrating. If I could build out the subspace, I could delete parts of it just as easily. I pictured the bare, empty doorway, nothing blocking me from entering, and a moment later steam billowed out onto my face. The door was gone.
So was Maddie.
I stepped into the bathroom as more steam filled the subspace. The shower was on full-blast, and I cut it off as I examined the tiny space. My phone lay on the edge of the sink, playing the same playlist of songs over and over again. The mirror was completely fogged up, all except for a doodle Maddie had presumably left while getting her shower ready: a heart, with L&M scrawled in the middle.
Luke and Maddie, I thought, my heart sinking. What the fuck…
“She’s not here,” I growled, stepping back into the living room. Already sweat was breaking out on Mareth’s beautiful skin from the humidity. “Where the hell could she possibly have gone?”
Mareth stared blankly at me, still adjusting her wardrobe. She paused, cocking her head, then marched past me and stuck her own head through the bathroom door. “She’s gone,” the succubus said in a flat tone.
“I know!”
“That’s...that’s not possible,” Mareth murmured. “Nothing gets in or out of a subspace unless the owner wills it. She couldn’t have left!”
I looked around the room in confusion. “Are you suggesting she’s hiding somewhere?” I asked, walking into the bedroom. The big king-sized bed still dominated the tiny space—there was certainly no Maddie-sized hole anywhere for the waitress to hide. “She’s not here, Mareth!”
“Shit, shit, shit,” the succubus said, shaking her head in disbelief. She looked at the splintered remains of the couch beneath her feet, as if Maddie were going to jump out from beneath it any moment and proclaim the whole thing a wonderful prank. “Maybe she slipped out when they synchronized your dorm? I guess she could have walked out the front door then, before we came in?”
I shook my head. “Then why leave the water running? And the phone? No, she was in the middle of taking a shower, Maddie.” Like the woman in Psycho, I thought, ice filling my stomach. What the fuck happened to her?
A horrible thought occurred to me. “Those demons all wanted to eat Maddie,” I told Mareth, the color draining from my face. “There’s no way one of them could have made it in here and...oh fuck. She’d be totally defenseless…”
And it would be my fault, I told myself. After all, I’d left her here while I went running around the Schools. I’d been getting my dick wet in Christina and Mareth, leaving her in the lurch. I’d trusted no one could
