Micah and Ophilia lay entwined on the couch in his office. Her fingernails trailed idly across his chest. They didn't leave any welts behind. She sighed in relief, then frowned when she caught sight of one of her blackened silver studs. She spoke before she could fall prey to her melancholy again.

"Headache gone, lover?"

Micah grimaced, which didn't help her spirits any, but he covered it quickly with a smile.

"No... No, it's not, but I'm suddenly caring less about it. No matter what else happens, I love you, Philly-chick."

"And I, you, my big strong Stone Man."

They lay silent for a long while. Eventually Micah shifted his weight slightly. Phil smiled; a Golem had no need to move, shifting was a habit he had before talking, to wake her up if she'd gone to sleep. A moment later, he confirmed her prediction.

"Ophilia?"

"Yes, Micah?"

"I could talk to her."

Phil tensed, but her heart wasn't in it. He’d left her too thoroughly relaxed and full of afterglow to get worked up over the mention of her mother. She twisted about a bit so she could see Micah's face, then a little more to make a comfortable nest for herself between Micah and the couch. He smiled down at her, which she took as encouragement.

"Go on..."

"I'll talk to Sammy. He has ways of getting in touch with her."

She frowned at him, memory goading her.

"Didn't she leave us a cell phone number?"

"Yeah, but that was ten years ago, sweetheart. I'm pretty sure she's lost it by now."

Phil shrugged, enjoying the way the motion brushed her nipples across Micah's chest. She was far too sated to start anything at the moment, but it still felt nice. "You can give it a shot before heading over to Sammy's, at least."

"Yeah. D'you know when Micky and Matthew are coming home?"

There was no stopping the wicked grin that stretched her mouth. "You know she hates it when you call her that."

"Yeah, well. You don't act enough like a proper mother-in-law. Someone's got to give our son's wife a hard time."

"He's our godson, Micah."

Micah smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. She looked into the deep chocolate brown of his eyes and saw an old sadness there.

"He's the only son we're ever going to have, sweetheart."

"I dunno. Matt and Michaela could probably have one if they wanted."

Micah's brow furrowed with confusion, and Phil hid a grin. If she could get him thinking about something, working on something, he forgot about the headaches. They only got to him badly when he had nothing to do. "How does that apply to us?"

"Well, if she could build herself a flesh-and-blood body, I'm sure she could build you one, too."

He started to reply then stopped, his mouth hanging open in surprise. She watched as he really considered the idea, his mouth gradually firming into a frown.

"Wouldn't work, love."

"Why not?"

"If she makes me human, I am going to age, and I'll die eventually. If she makes me Sidhe like you..." he trailed off. She remembered the conversation, long ago, when she explained why she hadn't been able to find love with one of her own kind.

"Yeah, if you became Sidhe you'd wind up Seeleigh, which would wind you up hating me because of my mother, or you'd wind up Unseeleigh, which would wind you up hating me because you literally can't say no to me."

"Yeah. Well. I guess we'll just have to play the hand we were dealt. I'm not upset with it. You?"

She laid her head to one side and considered him a moment before answering. "No, not even a tiny bit. I...I don't think I'd want my own actual children."

"Why not? Wouldn't you want to see a little one with your face and my eyes?"

"I'm more worried that we'd have a little one with your face and my eyes."

He looked at her, confused again. Deep inside, where she wouldn't even let herself see, his confusion secretly pleased her. She smiled at him, trying to take the sting out of her words, but she could tell that her smile held as much sorrow as humor.

"I think they'd be prettier with your face, but why would you care if they had your eyes?"

She watched him, smiling silently, for a while more. After a time, however, she relented. She sought the place where her power, her legacy from her mother, lurked. She called it up long enough for him to see it in her eyes, then forced it back down, shoving it back into the cage of art and steel and will she'd forged for it.

Micah was uncharacteristically quiet. "Oh."

"Yeah. Oh."

A moment later, he squared his shoulders, shifting her nest just enough for it to become uncomfortable. As he spoke, she writhed about until she was sitting tailor style, perched on his hips.

"With that in mind, I'll go talk to her and see if she has any insights into what's happening."

"Oh, she'll have insights all right. They just won't be helpful."

"Don't pout, Philly-chick. It doesn't look good on you." He was so cute she couldn't keep her pout up. He was good at making her happy. That's why she didn't want him to go bother her mother. Mother tolerated him, but if he offended her, he would feel the unstoppable wrath of The Morrigan, Queen of the Unseeleigh Sidhe.

"I'm afraid for you, Micah."

He smiled at her, then reached down, slipped his arms under her crossed legs, and picked her up. He didn't even strain as he stood, carried her to his desk and set her down on it.

"You're my living, breathing work of art, Philly chick. As long as I'm protecting you, I'm as strong as I need to be."

"Your Words?"

"Yeah."

He'd described how the Words felt; they pounded in his head, echoing over and over until his head felt like it had been hammered on by a pile driver. The thought that she was doing that to him made her cringe, inside and out. He lifted her chin, met her gaze, and smiled.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"It's okay, Philly chick. This I'm used to. I can deal with this. Give me honest pain to that fatiguing achey crap any day."

"Huh. Has anything helped with the pain? At all?"

"Well..." she knew him by now. He was keeping something from her because he knew it would upset her. She slipped down from the desk and stood on tiptoe to stare him right in the eyes.

"Tell. Me."

They'd had this discussion before. He'd lost, every single time. After the first few times when she proved her imagination was worse than anything he was hiding from her, he stopped trying to argue. He still tried to hide things, though. Maybe in another eighty years he'd give that up, too.

If either of them was still around then.

"Today. When we decided to keep Tee around as custodian. I have no idea why, but the moment we agreed on it, the headache, the Words, they... changed."

"Your Words changed!?"

"No! No, that would probably kill me. No, the pressure changed, like my Words sensed the danger had changed."

Phil pursed her lips and sucked at her teeth, a terrible habit she'd picked up during her long sojourn in Philadelphia. She thought about what she knew of Micah's Words. As a Golem, they gave him life. They protected him from damage to some extent, and while he was acting according to their directive, to Protect the Art, he was nigh unstoppable. She'd seen him take a shotgun blast to the chest and walk away without a mark.

If his Words were behaving oddly, that might not work, though.

"Look, I need to talk to your mother and see if she can shed any light on what's been going on with you. I'll ask Sammy, too. Even if she can't help, he might."

She tried to keep the snippiness out of her reply, but it proved impossible, "What am I supposed to do while you're gone? Swoon? Knit? Wait patiently?"

The green glow of her eyes reflected off his skin. The scent of old woods came from his desk, the smell of death from the leather sofa. Micah pursed his lips, but he couldn't hold it for long. The corner of his mouth twitched up, and then he laughed.

He laughed at the thought of her power unleashed at him. He laughed right in the face of the power of the Muse of Madness, daughter of the Queen of the Unseeleigh Sidhe, patron goddess of violent death. One thought and one thought alone filled her mind. She'd thought it before, she was sure she would think it again.

How cool is that?

"Y'know, you're actually pretty good at knitting, and you'd look great swooning, but I can't see you waiting patiently. You might try seeing whether there's anyone... I dunno... Planning a heist, maybe?"

Trust her husband to think of something practical when both of them were worried about dying an eternity too young. She sighed and waved a hand at him.

"Go. Go quickly, before I decide I'm not as sated as I thought."

"One question?"

"One. As in less than two."

"Okay. Has anything helped you retain your control?"

Phil bit her lip, wishing he hadn't asked the question. She'd suspected something for quite some time, but it wasn't until today that she'd realized the truth of the matter.

"Yes... No... Not exactly. But... sort of."

Micah stared at her for only a moment before he realized. When he did, a goofy smile fought with a pensive frown for his face. Eventually the smile won, but it was a close thing. "Sex?"

"This is not one. Sort of."

"Sort of sex? How do you have sort of sex?"

She could tell what he was doing. He was needling at her to let her be mad at him instead of scared and ashamed. Later, if they had time to be alone and quiet, he would comfort her, but now she needed to cling to her anger, her frustration. "No, moron. It's... It's when you're like... like today."

"I'm not sure I get it."

"Holding me down. The... domination thing. Hurting you. Holding me down," she tried to keep talking, but the best she could do was a whisper, "hurting me."

That brought a frown to his face. "I'm pretty sure we talked about that... what, a few years after we got together?"

"No, that was... wait, I think we've talked about it a couple times."

"Yeah, every time it comes back in vogue as kink of the year, we talk about it."

She frowned, cudgeling her memory. Normally it was excellent, but the more she used the power that was her birthright, the cloudier it got. "Didn't we try it once?"

"Once. Back in the seventies. You remember, the leather outfit?"

Images of the past bloomed in her mind, and she laughed at the memory.

"I remember it now! I think that was the only time you couldn't get it up."

"Yeah, it really wasn't my thing. Besides that, the leather down there was too small."

She smirked at him. "You liked it well enough today. The rough, not the too small leather."

He shrugged his reply. "It... seemed natural today. I still don't think... It's just not me. It's not us."

"I... think I know what you're talking about. Still I..."

"What, love?"

"Tell me; are my eyes still glowing?"

Micah looked at her, his eyes narrowing. He walked back over, staring at her eyes. He reached out, his hand cupping her chin gently, turning her face back and forth. He leaned around to look at her back, then stretched one of her legs out and ran a hand along it. Goosebumps formed on her skin, and she closed her eyes to savor the sensation. After a few moments, he folded her leg back under her.

"Love, have you looked at your tattoos?"

She blinked at him. When they'd met, she had a dozen large pieces spread across her body. In the decades since, she'd added more and more. The only places where she wasn't inked now were the palms of her hands, the soles of her feet, and her head. Even there, she had one tattoo on each temple: Escher's Drawing Hands on one, and a photorealistic of Rodin's Thinker on the other. She hadn’t added one in years. By now they’d become so much a part of her that she didn't often think of them.

She looked down at her arms. The multiple, overlapping tattoos, with petite silvered studs at the corners, were just as they had always been. She was reminded again that she needed to replace the studs; not only had the silver blackened, but on one of them it had worn away, revealing the red of rust underneath.

"I'm not seeing what you're seeing, whatever it is."

"Yeah, you're not seeing what's not there. The edges, love."

Phil looked again, and suddenly it became clear. For so long she'd stopped thinking about it, the edges of her tattoos had glowed. It wasn't a stable thing; the light wandered around her body, gathering beneath a single tattoo, where it glowed like a neon light beneath her skin, and then dispersing until every edge shone with a witch light so faint it was impossible to tell if it was a trick of the eye or not.

Now she searched her arms, her legs, her bare chest and belly. Nowhere did she find a glow, a flicker, a hint of green. She leapt from the table and stripped off her skirt, craning her neck to see the art on her back. She thought she saw a faint gleam from one of the panels of the triptych on her thighs and lower back, but it was too faint to tell if it was real or her imagination. She spun until her back was to Micah. She heard the trepidation in her own voice when she asked the question preying on her.

"What do you see?"

"An incredible ass. I'd never imagine you were over eighty."

"I'm over eight hundred. That's not the point. Am I glowing?"

"Nope. Not a glimmer that I can see."

"I thought I saw something on one of the panels of the Bosch."

Micah could move fast when he needed to. Before she finished speaking, the warmth of his breath played across her thigh. His hands, warm and rough on her thighs, held her in place while he looked at her.

"Hold still."

As quickly as he'd closed with her, he was gone. The lights went off, and he was back, but even before he spoke her heart fell. Her eyes could adjust to dim light faster than a human or golem, and as soon as the lights went out, she saw the dim green glow of her magic. She slumped backward, Micah catching her before she hit the floor, setting her gently back on the couch.

"Well, at least it's dimmer than it was."

"Yeah," the lights flicked back on, and she saw the dashed hopes in his eyes, mirror to her own. "At least it's dimmer. I guess... I guess we could try it again."

The look on his face was irresistibly cute; a mix of frustration, desire, and determination not to show either. "I'll do whatever you need to help you."

"Oh, yeah. Banging me senseless with no concern for my physical well-being is just such a chore."

Humor washed away most of his frustration. "Hey, I'm not complaining about that. I just... rough stuff just isn't my thing."

"I know, sweetie. Despite mom's best attempts over the years, it's not my thing either."

"Let me guess; it's hers."

"Yeah. Yeah, it is."

"I really don't want to know how you know that do I?"

"Nope."

"Good enough. Also, good to know, since I'm going to have to deal with her once I track her down."

"Yeah. I suppose it is."

"You really think it's worth it to call her cell phone?"

"Probably not. Mother tends to leave her electronics on the bodies where she leaves them. It drives the CSIs nuts when they find her leftovers."

Micah sighed. He didn't like his mother-in-law. His dislike had less to do with her being The Morrigan, incarnation of darkness and Queen of the Unseeleigh Court, and more to do with the fact that she treated him like a particularly attractive purse her daughter had bought and treated Phil like a possession. Before they'd informally adopted Matthew, The Morrigan had begun hinting that Ophilia really ought to move on to someone who could provide her an heir. Since Matthew, she'd stopped annoying them about an heir, but now she showed up at every holiday with a family dinner, whether she was invited or not, whether it was on the holiday or not.

"All right. I'm off, then. Give me a call if you need me."

"Just... don't annoy her too much."

"I promise. Of course, now I've got to deal with an entirely different problem."

"What's that?"

"I'm naked from the waist down, and my office door is jammed shut."