Warlock of Omaha

By Hemaccabe

Chapter 18 This Is What It Means to Be Young

After seeing the people in the RV were being taken care of, we returned to the house to talk to our own. I was all set with a speech. I was going to be noble. I was going to be cool. I had warned all the girls that had come to live with me that stuff might happen. It had. Would it be too much? Would they want to leave?

Just as I was about to open my mouth, Travis walked up to Miranda, took her in his arms and gave her a serious, means business kiss. Well, that pretty much completely stole my thunder. I hugged and kissed Diane, Brenda and Tamar.

Later, when it was quiet, I asked them each if they wanted to leave now.

Diane was like, "No way. That was sooo cool! You were so cool, like some kind of Jedi!"

I sensed she may not have grasped the true danger we had faced but trying to ram it down her throat wasn't going to make her any happier.

Brenda was like, "I always felt like you were amazing. Today you proved it. Please don't make me go away."

I was hardly going to make her go away. I had something of a crush on Brenda and was not sure if I would be able to let her go gracefully when she finished grad school in two years. I wasn't really worried about it now, I'd had other girls in my household who I'd felt that way over and then was able to send away when the time came. I wouldn't borrow trouble from the bank.

As for Tamar, "I haven't felt this free or safe or wanted in a very long time. I very much wish to stay."

I couldn't argue. I had been most afraid about her wanting to leave.

I surprised myself by really not being upset about Miranda. Miranda was scheduled to graduate in just over a month at which point I had expected her to move on. If she wanted to move on a month early to Travis, good for her.

"So, you're really not upset?" Miranda asked.

"No, I'm really not upset." I answered.

"Part of our deal was that I was supposed to be true to you while I lived in your home?" She asked.

"Yes, it was, but a bigger part of the deal was that you're a free woman who can choose what she wants, and I'll support it." I replied.

"If I move out, will you and the other girls have enough to eat?" She asked in a voice which was a little tremulous.

"We'll be fine. If you want to come back and use the kitchen facilities for your final project or studying for finals, you're welcome. I'm sure if you need taste testers, you'll find many willing volunteers. It might be a kindness if you had Kelly up to the kitchen so she could use the facilities as well." I said.

"That's a good idea." Miranda answered.

When I had time to think about it, I realized that Miranda going away made me feel better by reducing my guilt for two reasons. First and less importantly, if Travis broke the bro code too, it tended to imply that idea was not in force amongst us. I don't think Jake really worried about it, but I did.

More importantly, it also showed that a lot of ideas I had about using seemings to have girls helping out in my home were true. They weren't slaves. They could leave and move on from me. If I was a cool dude who could convince girls to come live in my home and have sexy fun that was great. If I was the evil wizard who used his powers to enslave and take advantage of innocent young girls, I would want to vomit. A girl can choose to leave a cool dude. She can't choose to leave the evil wizard. Miranda choosing to leave early was proof I was a cool dude. I liked that.

Miranda moved out that day and went to stay with Travis at his apartment. She came back a lot. The kitchen in the apartment wasn't awful, but it wasn't the super-luxury pro grade kitchen we had at the house. Kelly came too. If they were around at dinner time, they often, but not always, made us something. We did have many chances to try amazing recipes that they were experimenting with.

I tried to pitch in with the cooking some too as I had with the cleaning. Tamar helped as well. Diane and Brenda were both too busy as they came to the end of their school years. So, we had a lot more frozen waffles, toast and cold cereal breakfasts and a lot of ordered in food in the evenings. Sigh.

The truck took some attention. I was not getting through to Dodge. They would be happy to sell me a whole truck. They would be happy to sell me truck parts at unreasonably high-prices. What they were not willing to do was sell me the bits we actually wanted for a fair price reflecting a new truck's value. Money wasn't a real issue, but it would stick in my craw if I felt I was being taken advantage of.

I finally got my way by having someone at one of my clients tell Dodge that the order was for a special custom build and they might be able to push a GMC truck off an upcoming cover of an important magazine. That got me what I wanted, and Jed got the party moving.

The truck was together in less than two weeks after that. All the other parts had already been assembled, even the engine, which I had expected to be the long wait.

The old truck was crushed, which was sad. The new truck, however, was amazing. Way more amazing than a vehicle most commonly used for picking up groceries and take out needed to be, but always better to have and not need than need and not have.

The RV showed up. It was, if anything, more amazing than I expected. For five minutes I was just happy. With Ha gone, I could go to Three Gun matches again. Live my life again. Then I realized I had no idea how that would work now. In the old days none of my girls particularly wanted to go to a Three Gun match. They would have come if I asked, particularly for some alone time with me, but they weren't very interested in shooting. That meant my decks were wide open for the Speer twins. Now I knew Brenda would definitely want to go and I just knew Tamar would also want to come. How would I explain that to the twins? Further, both girls would want to shoot, how far should I go to get that ready? Build whole new sets like mine? Let them assemble gear off the shelf? That was going to take a lot of thinking and working.

Tamar was complicated. Unlike Ha's other survivors, she had no previous identity to return to. So instead of calling Jim the lawyer, I had to do some work. Luckily, through my clients I have access to literally millions of identities. I did some searching and found what I was looking for. Katherine Chambers of Tucson, Arizona. Katherine had died a few months before. However, no one knew. I'm sure someday they'll have smarter systems that can catch this, but they don't yet. Katherine had died on a forest trail without ID, she had been apparently mugged, raped and murdered. The anonymous death was recorded by the Forest Service. A local sheriff's department had seized her car, not connecting it to the dead woman, made all the appropriate efforts to contact her by letter and phone and then auctioned the car when impound fees substantially exceeded the car's value. Katherine apparently had no family or friends who noticed her absence. Her job had just assumed she quit when she stopped showing up, no doubt a bunch of real sweethearts. Katherine had substantial savings, perhaps she was saving, as roughly every human with two X chromosomes is, to go to Paris someday. Katherine never made it. Her savings were structured to keep replenishing the checking account used to pay her bills and rent and could have continued to do so for some time.

I hired a firm to tie up Katherine's affairs. They went through her apartment. I looked at the pictures they sent and reports they wrote. Dishes, furnishings, clothes, all cheap Wal-Mart and Target junk. I had them get rid of all of it. The one unusual bit was a small statuette of a woman, apparently of Egyptian origin. I had them box it up and send it.

I had plenty of copies of Katherine's signature and Tamar practiced it until she did it better than Katherine probably had. Then Katherine's signature shut down all of her accounts and bills and got a very favorable early release of lease.

Then it was time for Jim. We got a new Driver's License and, after I taught Tamar how to drive, we moved the license to Nebraska. We had a copy of Katherine's Birth Certificate, a Passport and Tamar had a little under three hundred k in assets, mostly in a 401K and IRAs.

I had to figure out where Tamar was going to live. I basically had four options. First option was she could be assigned a suite, the house had eight and only two were occupied. That would be fair to the other girls and simple. The problem was she wasn't one of the girls and making her so made her seem temporary which was bad. She could stay in the garret. That would say different status very clearly. The problem was the garret had a purpose, it's where I became acquainted with new friends. I'm not sure how many new friends I'd want to make, but I wasn't happy with saying zero forever right away. She could move into my master suite which included a Lady of the House Sitting Room and walk-in closet, both unused. That would be tantamount to saying that we were married and a permanent couple which I was also not ready for. Lastly, the lame, loser politician option. I redid an empty outbuilding as a very nice cottage. Tamar helped decorate.

Tamar was very accommodating. If I wanted to do something with Brenda or Diane or someone from my very thick little black book, she had no objection. She pitched in and helped in the house. She was very patient. I discovered I couldn't let her out of my sight long without becoming very uneasy. She seemed to enjoy being wanted. If she was using some sort of seeming or other mental control, she was better than my ability to detect it, which was very possible. It was also very possible that I was just experiencing an old-fashioned crush.

Things weren't perfect. White Man was still out there. He knew about us and where we lived and liked the idea of doing us harm. At the same time, now there were four of us. We were ready and becoming more so every day, improving our gear, our skills and our ability to work together. Maybe we might find new allies and become even more dangerous. If White Man was smart, he'd leave us alone. I had learned there's no perfect safety, but we have to be brave enough to live our lives.

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