Chapter 58 Perfect.

Chapter 58: 58 Perfect.

I woke the next morning to the uniquely unpleasant sensation of my healing tattoo sticking to the sheets. The skin around the fresh ink felt tight and hot, like a sunburn that was trying too hard.

Carefully peeling myself free, I shuffled to the bathroom to reapply the ointment Val had left us.

Standing in front of the mirror, I examined her handiwork—the mystical runes now permanently etched over my heart.

The skin was still red around the black lines, but the design itself looked great. I dabbed a bit of ointment onto my fingertips and gently smoothed it over the tender area.

That’s when the delayed realization hit me with all the subtlety of a school bus full of fatties.

"Holy shit," I whispered to my reflection. "We’re about to bring a giant fucking snake woman to rural Minnesota."

The full implications crashed through my brain.

Juniper’s issue, so far as I could tell, wasn’t that she was eccentric like the other girls—she had the lower body of an enormous serpent, ram’s horns, and black wings—and supernaturally huge jugs to boot. She put the "monster" in "monster girl."

Thinking back to my dream meetup with her, her serpentine portion had been at least twenty feet long.

Would she even fit through doorways? Where would she sleep? What if Sheriff Miller showed up for another chat and the best I could do before he barged in with a warrant was shove her behind the couch? I didn’t think that would fly.

I stumbled back to the bedroom, mind racing.

Elsa and Ayra were still asleep, tangled together in a pile of limbs and hair. Both their tattoos were glowing ruby red, their hips sort of idly gyrating against each other as they both appeared to be dreaming about me.

Under different circumstances, I might have paused to appreciate the view or even join the smutty cuddle puddle, but I was too busy having an internal crisis about imminent monster housing logistics.

"Hey," I said, nudging the closest shoulder, which happened to be Ayra’s. "Hey, wake up. We have a problem."

Ayra’s ears twitched, and she opened one golden eye. "Yes, master? Is it an emergency?"

"It kind of is," I noted. "I just realized—Juniper has a snake body. A giant snake body."

Elsa groaned, pulling a pillow over her head. "Is that all? I was having the most delightful dream. To be pulled out of it so rudely, I should hope that at minimum the house would be on fire."

"You’re not getting it," I pressed, pacing now. "This is a land full of humans. Cheeseheads, maybe, so sure, a lot of them are on the bigger side, but we can’t exactly have a half-snake, half-woman with horns and wings hanging out in my living room. Is she supposed to stay locked in my bedroom for twenty years? It’s not like we can take her to town with us! And what if the sheriff returns and forces a search on me? Juniper is not exactly... inconspicuous. At least based on my understanding."

Ayra yawned, stretching in a way that made her shirt ride up, revealing her freshly tattooed stomach and a contentment-inducing degree of underboob. "Oh, that? Juniper can share a body with one of us temporarily if needed for public outings."

I stopped pacing. "She can what now?"

"Share a body," Elsa mumbled from beneath her pillow fortress. "Consciousness transference. Rather basic dimensional magic for a mage of her calibre, really. It’s not so different from how she reached you, I imagine."

"Basic," I repeated flatly. "Right. And you’re just mentioning this now because...?"

Ayra sat up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. "It didn’t seem relevant until now. We’ve used it before for covert missions when Juniper’s natural form would be, ahem, problematic. She usually rides along in my body since Elsa tends to take regular breaks anyway," she added with a grimace.

Elsa’s head finally emerged from her pillow sanctuary. "Juniper is primarily a homebody in any case. She prefers solitude and research to socializing. Perhaps outfit one of the many dilapidated structures on this plot of land like a wizard’s tower and she will be content for a decade at least. When she does join gatherings, she tends to... dampen the festivities with excessive rationality."

"Sounds like my kind of gal. There’s an empty silo behind the old barn I could have cleaned out and made into a tower," I considered aloud.

The girls traded irritated looks. "Your kind of gal? And just what is that supposed to mean?" Elsa huffed, crossing her arms.

Ayra pouted, her eyes instantly welling up with tears. "Oh, I’ve been so bad that Master doesn’t consider me his kind of female! Oh, woe is me, a swift series of brutal reckonings will soon be visited upon my perky, jiggly bottom so that he can correct me into the bitch he—"

"God, please stop," I muttered, holding up my hands. "That’s not what I meant. Don’t be brats. I’m thinking."

"It wounds me that you never considered how small your home is by my standards," Elsa sighed as she grabbed a brush from the nightstand and started running it through her hair. "In my father’s castle, we had lamias and nagas larger than Juniper who complained of too much space."

"I’m not picky," Ayra quickly inserted, seeing an opportunity, "My doghouse back in my homeland was much smaller than this home, and I prefer to be physically stuck to Master as much as possible."

She suddenly adjusted her tone once more to something more performatively forlorn. "For if I do not make my lewd body available to him, I will be—"

Her voice trailed off in the background as I started running through things in my head.

I tried to imagine a giant snake-woman coiled on my living room rug like some exotic pet and felt a headache forming.

The silo idea probably did need to be enacted, at least in the long term. Not to mention that my bed wasn’t big enough to support a third girl—not even one Elsa’s tiny size.

Not long after our discussion about Juniper’s impending arrival, I decided to be proactive.

With the girls draped over the couch watching some reality TV show they’d become oddly fixated on, I grabbed my laptop and started researching silo conversions.

"What are you doing over there, Sir Grey?" Elsa called, her eyes not leaving the screen where someone was dramatically crying over spilled wine.

"Looking into converting that old silo behind the barn," I replied while I scrolled through a surprisingly robust collection of "grain silo to living space" articles. "If Juniper’s going to have twenty feet of snake tail, we need to accommodate that, and you mentioned something like a tower for her."

"Thoughtful of you," she murmured, then gasped at something happening on TV. "And it’ll keep her out of our bed unless invited. Ayra! Did you see that? She flipped the table like a drunken dwarven wench!"

Ayra was sprawled across Elsa’s lap like an oversized puppy. She nodded vigorously. "I love human conflict rituals! So much yelling without any actual combat! It’s quite refreshing, really."

I tuned them out and focused on my research. The more I looked into it, the more viable the idea seemed. The old concrete grain silo on my property was structurally sound, just neglected.

With proper renovation, it could become a comfortable living space for our soon-to-arrive monster babe.

After an hour of research, I found a contractor with experience in unconventional renovations—shipping container homes, mostly.

His website featured several repurposed structures, but one of them included a water tower converted to a vacation rental. Perfect.

I dialed the number, putting the phone on speaker so I could continue browsing.

"Wilkinson Renovations," a gruff voice answered.

"Hi, I’m interested in converting an old concrete silo on my property to a living space," I explained. "Wondering if that’s something you handle."

The man—Mr. Wilkinson, probably—sighed. "Look, buddy, those Pinterest projects look great online, but the permit process out here is a nightmare. Most counties require—"

"I was actually hoping to keep the paperwork to a minimum, if you know what I mean," I interrupted. "And money isn’t really an issue."

A pause. "Sorry, but I don’t—"

"I can pay more than twice your standard rate," I added. "And I understand cryptocurrency transactions can be discreet these days."

The silence stretched longer this time. "Why don’t I come take a look first," he finally said. "No commitments yet."

"Perfect." I gave him my address and ended the call. Pretty fucking productive for a call under two minutes.