A-Cup Angst Ch. 14

"Girls, you need to get up and move to the stairs, right now," Jamie ordered. "Go! Go! Get up!"

The beast was gouging at the wall, building up a mass of shrapnel. When the girls finally stood up and moved over to the stairs, it saw its opportunity and hurled the shrapnel at the girls. Jamie stopped it all with the Force and let if fall harmlessly on the floor. He seized the beast and levitated it into the living room, the only room in the whole house that had enough volume for the beast to be unable to reach anything with its long, flailing limbs as it was suspended in midair. Jamie kept it floating in the center of the room.

He turned to the girls and said, "It's alright. I'm floating it in midair and I can keep it there, without a problem." He walked around the beast and sat down to sip his cup of tea. Jamie had no problem lifting eight times the beast's mass against the force of gravity. Hovering the beast in midair was hardly any bother for him.

Alessandra and Laura still stared bug-eyed at the flailing beast and then turned disbelieving eyes Jamie's way. His nonchalance was doing nothing to assuage their fears and was almost making them soil their panties in panic. "Seriously, it's ok," he said to them. "I can do this all night long." The beast roared again, making the girls jump and squeal in fright. "You girls go downstairs and greet the Carabinieri and see what's going on down there. I'll stay here and guard this."

Laura and Alessandra slowly backed away and stumbled down the steps to go downstairs. Within minutes, a bevy of dark blue cars with red stripes and the word "Carabinieri" painted on their sides drove across the square and officers rushed out of them to go inside the trattoria. Jamie set down his cup and rushed downstairs to stand by the girls and play the scared, innocent bystander. He had no trouble keeping the beast levitating upstairs. He waited until the cops began climbing the stairs and then he hovered the beast towards them. As soon as the beast was within reach of a pillar, it started to scratch shards off of it and send them flying towards the cops coming up the stairs.

The carabinieri casters cast quickly and Jamie sensed the beast suddenly freezing in midair with its limbs contorted unnaturally. Jamie let go of it and it fell to the floor and toppled down the stairs. The Carabinieri scooped up the beast and did a full sweep of the house. They made the beast turn back into Emilio's mother, handcuffed her and sat her in the back of one of their cars. She was naked and wrapped up in a blanket. They sent officers to the neighboring houses and charmed everyone that had heard the terrible roar of the beast into forgetting all about it. They didn't wipe Laura's memory, or Alessandra's, and Laura insisted they not wipe Jamie's memory, either.

The Carabinieri drove off, except for their three eldest officers, two men and a woman. These three sat on one side of the long table in the trattoria and Jamie sat on the other. They asked him question after question about his knowledge of magic. He spun a story, right there on the spot, about how he had grown up in Canada and had a witch girlfriend who had taught him all about it. The officers finally asked Jamie to step aside and whispered between themselves.

Jamie's legs felt like jelly as he walked over to Laura. If they made a single call to check out his story, he was fucked. He hugged Alessandra and asked Laura, "Do you think they bought your story?"

Laura had told them how she had cast a spell that made the beast disoriented and running around in circles upstairs while they all hid downstairs. "Probably," she said, not sounding very convinced. "Maybe." They waited for a few more minutes, before the cops called Jamie back over.

"Mister Benson," said the oldest of the three, "We are granting you your request and adding you to the list of persons made aware of magic. Fill out these forms, please!"

Jamie tried to hide his relief and got to work filling out the complicated forms. They didn't have a clue who he really was and he felt sure that the many obscuration wards his dog tags held were instrumental in swaying their minds towards letting him go without an investigation. The cops asked him about his family, but he insisted they knew nothing about magic and that it was best if it stayed that way. The cops agreed and left, taking the forms that registered him as a mundane that knew about magic. Jamie nearly collapsed in relief.

"That was too fucking close for comfort," he said after they left.

"Yeah," Laura said.

"Listen, if any more of your friends come around to ask for your help with psycho relatives, you need to tell me about it at once so I can stay away, ok? I can't get involved in anything like this anymore. The cops now have false data about me and if my name pops up on their radar ever again, they might try and verify that information and then I'm fucked." Just as he said that out loud, he asked himself why he had not already used the algorhythms left behind by Nova to hack into the relevant canadian databases and plant the info on his family. It wouldn't stand up to a serious background check, but it would deter anyone that tried to remotely verify their information. He felt like a world class idiot for not having thought of it sooner, but he retreated into his calm place and focused on the task at hand. He needed to plant that info right away, on the off chance that the cops were waiting until they got back to their office to run a routine check on his application.

Laura and Alessandra had started to tell him something, but he ignored it as he got up and ran to his car to boot up his laptop and hack a history for himself and his family. He turned on his laptop and ran the programs as quickly as he could. He planted all the data and hoped it would work. If the Carabinieri called someone in the RCMP, he was fucked, along with his family, but if they didn't, if they just looked it up online, then they were golden. He had no choice but to do his best and keep his fingers crossed.

Once he finished, he got out of his car and went back into the trattoria. It was swamped with the dinner crowd and he sensed the girls would be too tired and in no mood to do anything with him later. He sighed and drove to his mother's house, glad to see the roads were now clear. He had dinner with his family and then played Minecraft online with some Spaniards until he got sleepy.

Jamie's custom was to sleep late on Saturday, since Aldo's store didn't work on weekends anymore and he wouldn't be seeing the Rossi girls until the next day. However, this Saturday morning, his mother woke him up before nine a.m. He groaned and mumbled death threats as she shook him awake. "Jamie, I'm going to Rome," she said. "You need to wake up and take care of Suzie. You have to feed her and take her shopping, ok? I'll be back tomorrow afternoon. Thanks, dear."

She left and Jamie only woke up when he heard the distinct noise of the Subaru's engine turning over. His sleepy mind finally processed what she had said and he rolled out of bed to run to his window. He threw it open and watched his mother drive off, unable to hear him yell after her that he was not going to baby-sit Suzie that weekend. He shuddered in the freezing air that was rushing into his room and shut the window before leaping back into bed to get warm again. He soon dozed off.

His other close, female relative soon woke him up. "The fuck you want, Bones," he growled at her.

"Oh, come on, Jamie," she pleasantly said, "Don't be like that. Maybe I just want to spend some time with my brother. We haven't done that recently, have we? Just hanging, you know?"

Jamie rubbed the sleep from his eyes and rolled over to look at her. If she was acting nice to him, it meant that either she wanted money, or that little threat he had given her about humiliating her in front of all her peers has worked wonders. He remembered his mother had mentioned something about a shopping trip earlier and nodded to himself. "What are we going shopping for," he asked. He knew that giving in to her demands was the smart thing to do. If he didn't, she'd yap in his ear about it until he lost his mind. Apparently, Suzie had just finished another growth spurt and none of her clothes fit her anymore, so Lori authorized the expedition.

She jumped on his bed and knelt down as she excitedly started to recite he shopping list, complete with what page in which magazine the outfit had been in and who was going to react to seeing her wearing it and how. Her excited litany made him drowsy all over again and he only got up after she realized he wasn't listening and punched him in the shoulder.

He got up and went to the bathroom, after shoving her out so he could take a leak. She came back in after he flushed and yapped away while he washed his face, shaved and brushed his teeth. They sat down and had breakfast together. Suzie paused in her long winded speech to chew her food, but went on and on about which of her girlfriends was going to be jealous and why while he was getting dressed. Finally, they were off to Pisa and Suzie kept on talking the whole drive over there. By the time they got to Pisa, Jamie promised himself he'd figure out a way to use his mental powers to get her to shut up, even if it was the last thing he ever did.

Their shopping trip lasted until the shops started closing in the early afternoon and they finally sat down for some lunch in a nice restaurant. Jamie felt uneasy the whole time. That vague feeling of foreboding he had sensed a while ago was back and getting less vague. It was starting to feel like someone he cared about was in trouble, but he had no idea who it was or what kind of trouble had been brewing. It had been too faint for his meditations to illuminate, but it felt much stronger now. Jamie decided to do a full round of meditations that day, as soon as he got back home.

He drove them home and Suzie called up some girlfriends to come over to their house and see her model all the new threads she had bought. Jamie rolled his eyes in annoyance, but then decided to look at things differently. His meditations weren't going to be prevented by the presence of a gaggle of shrieking girls, he told himself. Rather, his meditations will be strengthened by his ability to delve deeper into his augmented mind despite their annoying shrieking and giggling. He nodded to himself and drove them home.

As soon as they got there, Suzie ordered him to unload the many bags and boxes. Jamie pulled his house keys out of his pocket and said, "I paid for it, you unload it all." He retreated to his room and tried to meditate. Suzie's friends came over and their shrieks and giggles were loud and frequent, so he settled for just calming himself and didn't pursue the foreboding feeling he had received that day. He would have gone to the guest house to meditate, but he feared the girls would go completely nuts if they thought he couldn't hear them, so he stayed a wall away from them and trained his patience.

In his meditative state, he clearly sensed a pair of elderly people driving to his house with the intent to speak to him over a matter of great importance to them. He got up and went to the window to see their Alpha Romeo pull up in his driveway. He went downstairs and greeted them at the door, saying, "Hello? Can I help you?"

"We certainly hope so, young man," said the tall, but stooped, thin, old man that got out of the car. He walked around the car with a spriteness that belied his age and opened the passenger side door. A woman that looked to be about his age, but sporting bright red hair pulled up in a bun, emerged from the car. She was stocky and looked to be about half his height. The two of them looked almost comical together as they walked up to Jamie.

"You are a difficult man to find," the woman said. "We've been by twice already, looking for you. You might want to consider sharing your contact information with your brethren and setting aside a time in the day during which you could be reached."

Jamie realized these two were definitely casters. They obviously believed him a caster, as well. He took comfort in the fact that their minds were not shielded from his telepathy, as that meant that they weren't with the authorities, but he was not about to just blow his cover by acknowledging their claims. "Brethren," he asked. "What are you talking about? Who are you?"

The old man smiled and said, "Oh, forgive us! We are the Martinis. I am Dino and this is my lovely wife Barbara."

"I'm sure Laura has told you all about us," Barbara said. "Now, may we come inside?"

"Why have you come here," Jamie asked, acting the obtuse mundane.

"To hire you to free our granddaughter from the clutches of a magical beast," Dino said, matter-of-factly.

Jamie laughed. "Nice one," he said. "Who put you up to this? Are you friends of Aldo?"

"Young man," Barbara said, imperiously and angry, "This is no joking matter. This is a matter of life, death and eternal damnation! Now, stand aside and let us in! We need your help!"

Suzie and her friends turned up the music louder in her room and the Martinis heard it. Dino touched the side of Barbara's arm and they shared a knowing look. Barbara's ire left her face. Dino leaned in and said to Jamie, "We understand. We'll be discreet. Now, may we come in?"

"I still don't know who you are, or what you're doing here."

Barbara put her hand over her chest and said, as if speaking to a stupid child, "I am Barbara Martini. I helped your soon to be mother in law with the spirit fetishes you gave to her. Surely she told you about that?"

Jamie was surprised that Laura had brought in outsiders on that matter. He had asked her to keep it a secret and she had agreed. He had asked her a few times if she made any progress with them, but she had always told him no. Jamie reviewed his memories of those times. She hadn't just said no, she had always followed that up by grabbing his dick and pushing his face into her tits, changing the subject to that of sex. He had failed to make that connection until now. And what was this about her telling strange people that she was his future mother in law? He thought they had a clear understanding that their relationship, as kinky as it was, was temporary and not a lead up to marriage and so on.

He sensed no malice or falsehood in the minds of the elderly couple before him, just worry and impatience, so he stepped aside and gestured them in. He wanted to know more about this. "May I take your coats?" They gave him their coats and he led them to the kitchen where they stood around the counter. "Now, what brings you here, again?"

Barbara pulled out a large envelope from her huge handbag and slid it across the counter to him. Jamie gave them both a curious, questioning look and picked it up. He slid the photograph out of it and was nearly shocked to see a naked, sexy, young woman on it. She was kneeling in front of a humanoid demon with horns, dreadlocks and a long tail. The only thing she was wearing was a collar which had a chain attached to it. The demon thing held the end of the chain in his hand. Her face was turned up to the demon and her expression was that of one pleading for mercy.

"That's our granddaughter, Valeria," Dino said. "And the demon that is dominating her."

"She is a young witch," Barbara said. "Inexperienced and trusting. I don't know how this demon came to be, but I do know that we need your help to free her."

Jamie sensed the concern and fright in their minds and decided to drop the obtuse act. He wasn't sure what they thought he was and why they thought he could help with this matter, but he decided to play his official cover, that of a mundane that knows about magic. "I think you should go to the police with this," he said. "It looks serious."

"I'm afraid that's not possible," Dino gravely said.

"We only found out after Rizzoli was caught," Barbara said. "Valeria had been brewing the potions for her."

"You understand we can't risk going to the police with this," Dino said.

"She might be freed from this devil," Barbara said, "only to be locked away in jail."

"That's why we've come to you," Dino said.

"Yes," Barbara said and nodded. "We have no on else to turn to. Valeria isn't a bad girl, she's just misunderstood. Her father, our son, was born without magic, a skipped generation, and he somewhat resents her for inheriting the gift that was denied to him."

"They've had a rocky relationship ever since her gift was discovered," Dino sadly said.

"But she is a good girl," Barbara said. "She's not a rotten egg. She only got involved with Rizzoli to spite her father."

"A youthful indiscretion," Dino said.

"Yes," Barbara said and teared up. She pulled out a handkerchief from her bag and dabbed at her eyes. "And look where she wound up! At the feet of the devil himself! This is all Rizzoli's doing, I'm sure of it! We need you to rescue her."

"We are prepared to offer you a generous amount for her safety," Dino said.

Jamie's eyes had been skipping from one wrinkled face to the other as they spoke, taking in their story. It was true, mostly, but embellished to make their granddaughter seem like a completely innocent victim. Jamie knew demons weren't real, so he surmised that the one in the photo was a man under the temporary effects of a transformation potion. If Valeria was indeed Rizzoli's accomplice, then she must have enough ingredients left to brew gallons of these potions. He shuddered at the thought of dozens of those beasts tearing up the town and countryside. There'd be blood and guts everywhere. He probed into Barbara's mind and sensed that she knew all of that, too. She had just been trying to get him to help her granddaughter get away with conspiracy to commit murder. He didn't want a pack of beasts running around either, so he decided to stop by Valeria's place and seize her stock of potions and ingredients. He would have simply called the cops to do it, but he didn't want to have any more contact with them. He just needed to figure out what to do with the stuff once he got it. Handing it over to Laura for safekeeping didn't seem all that wise to him anymore. Not after she had revealed those fetishes to an outsider and told him nothing about it.

He decided the best thing to do was to accept the job and relax the old-timers to get them to tell him all about Laura and the fetishes. He had no idea how he could convince them that he could help their granddaughter, since he was supposed to be a mere mortal who happens to be in the know. Failing to come up with a story, he said, "What makes you think that I could be of any help to you in this matter?"

Barbara looked nonplussed. Dino shrugged and said, "Well, you're the Bludgeoner. If there's anyone that can free Valeria from the clutches of this monster, it's you."

Jamie fled to the calm center of his mind and pulled the plug on the explosion of panic that threatened to occur in his mind. His face betrayed nothing of the turmoil happening inside of his mind. They knew the truth about him. In his emotionless, hyperrational state, he decided to first feign ignorance. "What did you say," he asked.

"We are perfectly confident that you can do this," Barbara said. "You took out the Syndicate, you can handle one little demon."

"I have no idea what you are talking about. I think you have me confused with someone else."

"No, no, no," Barbara said, "you are Jamie Benson, the Bludgeoner. Laura told me so herself when she had asked for my help with the fetishes."

From the calm center within his mind, Jamie channeled all of his raging emotions into powering his telepathy. He forced his way into Barbara's mind and saw the memory of Laura sitting in her parlor and telling her who he was. He sensed that it had happened about three weeks ago. He sensed the excitement Barbara felt at hearing the news and knew the memory was true. Laura had revealed his identity to Barbara while she had been asking the older woman for a favor.