Jaci Stone - Act 03

She went over to where Paula Zedek had been sitting and felt over the sofa. After feeling the spot for a minute told me that Paula had dropped an enchantment there which was making the house even more welcome to those who loved each other. It wasn't using magic for a seduction, it was merely enhancing the love that we felt for one another.

I told Samantha about what Natasha had said about my house being the homiest home that she had ever been in. She agreed that Paula probably was just enhancing that as a gift to me.

***

Monday morning came too soon for me, and I actually wanted to cast a long-lasting dilation wave so that we could spend more time together. Samantha gave me a kiss then asked for a lift to her office, the one in Germany.

Deciding that it would take too long for me to drive myself to work I popped into one of the rooms which adjoined my office. Marci was already in there, shafting Shawna from behind with a strap-on. I was instantly hard watching that scene, wondering if I should join in or not, or if they would be upset if I did.

I slipped out of the room and was sorting through some papers when Marci and Shawna came out. Shawna stopped by me to give me a kiss before she left my office.

Marci, on the other hand, pushed me back from my desk and plopped her ass on my blotter. "Why didn't you join in?"

"I didn't want to upset anything between us. You two seemed to be really involved, and I didn't want to interrupt that."

"Jaci, I have repeatedly told you that if the door is open, you are invited to join in."

"The door was closed, Marci."

She got a thoughtful look on her face. "Yeah, I kinda walked into that one. For now, I'll stick with this: If you do your little folding thing and you end up beside me fucking someone, you are required to join in. Otherwise, no sex with me for a month!"

"Please?"

"Or Janine!"

I gave her a smirk. "She'd never agree to that."

A shrug. "Hmm. True. Just join in, okay? I know you got hard just watching us, Shawna would have polished your knob for you."

"Marci, I promise to think about it. If I happen to encounter any one of you women having sex with another, it might be fun just to watch and rub one out."

"You're too demanding!"

"So are you."

Marci slipped off my desk and gave me a sloppy kiss. She smelled and tasted like pussy and jalapenos. I mentally kicked myself twice for not joining in.

Michaela Winters, who actually liked it when I called her 'Mikey,' was my first appointment. The case she brought in with her actually contained two kilograms of gold slips. That had to be Janine. She was going to go around and enchant all my tight-fitting clothes and probably even buy some new ones.

Michaela and I had an office lunch together. She filled me in on the market, how it worked, and how it was benefitting from my pre-nuclear age gold. The purity of that particular gold meant that she could sell it above market and it was still snapped up as fast as she could process it. Michaela ventured that some company was getting ready to launch a shit-load of satellites.

When I asked her why satellites, she said that purity of gold foil was used in protecting satellites with sensitive optics and electronics from cosmic rays. Michaela clarified that little impurities of the nuclear type would act like little pinholes in the foil and could eventually damage the innards.

I didn't ask why they just couldn't use two layers of foil, the answer wouldn't matter much to me anyway. Our chat veered over to Roy Palamo and I asked Michaela if he was giving her any trouble. She cocked her head at me as if to wonder why I was asking such a question, then gave me her answer.

Roy Palamo and herself didn't move in the same circles, Michaela answered. His business was like a two compared to her ten. Then she asked me why. I told her that he had been following my people around and had even gone so far as to attack them.

To say that she was shocked was an understatement. Palamo didn't have the authority to assay unrefined gold, all he was licensed to handle was pawnshop gold; coins and jewelry and maybe the occasional estate flatware. I even had a mineral rights claim to back my gold up, otherwise she couldn't take gold in the quantity I provided.

Michaela suggested that I go to the police. Attacking my people, my couriers was a violation of about fifty laws dating back to before California was even a state. I debated on whether or not to detail what Paula Zedek had termed a 'blood feud' and decided against it. I also decided not to tell her that the rules regarding gold weren't myth and enforced by very scary beings.

Our meeting ended at thirteen hours, her giving me kisses on both sides of my face which actually touched my lips. I didn't know what to make of that and was interrupted by Janine handing me a package that had been dropped off at the front desk. I opened the package, and a little note fell out along with a book.

The book you asked for. Hera.

Well, damn.

Janine told me that my day was clear and that I could go plant if I wanted. I told her no, I was going home to do a little reading. Since the book was titled 'History of Ceres,' I grabbed the 'wand' sitting in the display holder on my desk.

The book kept me occupied through the afternoon. I finished it at seventeen hours and fixed myself dinner. I called Marci to let her know I was spending the night there, and I could hear her pouty lip come out. She said that she understood and we said our goodbyes.

Grace showed up in the office Wednesday at eleven hours sharp. That time happened to be the end of my working day and she wanted to go planting with me. I wasn't going to plant, I was going to go tend my family plot at the cemetery. She still wanted to tag along.

I didn't know what Grace's fascination with the cemetery was. When we took our break, waiting for the nitrogenator to finish digesting the clippings, Grace went for a walk outside the plot. She came back confused, a state that I hadn't seen her in before.

Grace explained that there was something blocking her from just moseying around the cemetery. She could walk our family plot and travel the road from the plot to the exit, but nowhere else.

I asked her why she wanted to walk around the cemetery, she replied that she wanted to see why Leigh Landreau had been there. I sighed and told her that it wasn't really any of her business and that it would be impolite to even ask.

She chewed on that rebuke for a moment, then admitted that I was right and apologized. I had been curious as to why Leigh, as an immortal, had been in a cemetery, but left it alone. It wasn't my business, either.

Grace did a greenspace with me, and we went back to my shop. Business had been pretty good, and probably would be for a while. Everybody still needed nice-looking yards but eventually I would put myself out of business. The growth of my negative energy filter would cancel out the need to do lawn work altogether. I would have to ask Erin what kind of pattern my contagion was taking.

Grace asked me what I was doing next Monday, and I had to consult Janine. She said that my calendar had a few items on it, but nothing that couldn't be rescheduled. I told Grace that I was going to the desert so to be there bright and early Monday morning. She gave me a smile and vanished to the sound of a snapping rubber band.

Joseph didn't call asking me to attend any premieres. It didn't happen every Friday, and I hoped that Rowan's scene hadn't caused him any problems. I got to spend a nice three-day weekend with the girls and my children, and that was mighty fine

Monday began at four hours. I folded into the shop, and Grace appeared after a single ring of her phone. I picked up some compost from our storage area and went to the flower mart to pick up some flowers. I hadn't gone there to get everything on their clearance shelves, including some trees, but it all fit on the truck and trailer. We arrived at the plot as the sun came up, my plot in the center of fourteen acres of greenery.

Grace looked at me in awe and bounded out of the truck. She stopped and felt flowers and the branches of trees that were growing against impossible odds. She danced around for thirty minutes before coming back to the truck.

She went on and on about how beautiful it was there and that I was truly blessed by gaia to have created that oasis. She stopped talking when her cellphone rang, which should have been impossible given our location. Grace excused herself and vanished. A moment later she popped back so close to me that she almost knocked me over.

A piece of paper was handed to me, a copy of a lease agreement between me and the government. Brookstone Pointe had leased one thousand hectares of land on the other side of the highway. It was a nice thought, but I didn't see any surveyor stakes, so we would have to hire one to come out and measure for us.

Grace giggled and vanished again. Five minutes later, she returned with a pair of boxes that she immediately let fall to the ground. Inside those boxes were one hundred each of orange sticks with reflective tape at the top.

I asked her what we were going to do with the sticks, and she asked for one of my slips of gold foil. She told me to take one as well and to repeat after her. The spell she had me repeat was simple and roughly translated into 'show me what land is mine.'

Red lines appeared on the sand five meters from the edge of the highway. I knew that they weren't really there, that the spell was just superimposing the lines in my vision. Grace grabbed a handful of sticks and started going off to our right, so I grabbed some for myself and went left.

I pushed a stick into the stick into the ground every fifty steps which would measure out to one hundred fifty meters. I reached the edge of the property and set a small bundle to mark the corner out. When I got back to my truck, Grace was already sitting there enjoying an ice-cold cup of water.

Grace admitted cheating, folding back to the truck rather than walking that distance. After grabbing another handful of sticks, she gave me a wink and vanished. I heard the pop of her reappearing over the quiet of the desert. I remembered the cluster of stakes I had set to mark the corner of the property and did a fold myself.

We went through the stakes rather quickly, and settled down to eat our lunch before setting out to plant. Over our sandwiches, Grace confessed something to me: There was gold in the soil she had been walking over. I asked her how she knew that, and she responded that she could feel it as she walked over it.

I didn't want to see this experiment ruined by mining. Grace then confessed that she had called Janine about acquiring the mineral rights for the land. Janine had wisely told Grace that she would have to hear from me first.

Yes, I would have to acquire the mineral rights. If I didn't, some greedy miner could legally tunnel under my property and could ruin the experiment anyway. I called Janine and told her to not only acquire the rights for the property she had bought for me, but the property and mineral rights for as many of the adjoining forty thousand hectares. Janine gasped, but told me that she would get right on it.

Grace agreed with me, we had to go big or go home.

I pulled my truck up to the corner of Grace's end of the plot. Three bags of compost went into the nitrogenator to simmer while we planted some of the flowers I had gotten. I injected the ground where we had planted and repeated the process with the three trees Grace and I had rescued from the clearance shelf.

We were packed up and getting ready to leave when I noticed something different about the plot we had just planted. It was no longer at the corner. I tapped Grace on the shoulder and asked her if she was seeing the same thing as me. She was, and said that Janine had already cleared the lease for the additional property.

Then I asked her if she could see the gold beneath us. Grace laughed and said that she hadn't come across the x-ray vision spell yet. She did confirm that I also had mineral rights to the land. When she asked if there was any way that I could mine that gold without disturbing the soil, I replied that I knew a guy.

Would Travis be open to doing business with me? Business was business, and our pleasure and subsequent break-up shouldn't have anything with the business. I would call him, it never hurt to try. I made a call to Janine and asked if she could call Travis Brooks of Brooks Mining and Refinement and make an appointment. Janine replied that she knew the number.

All the way home Grace talked about my plot and how beautiful it was. I told her that area had started with just a single half-hectare, and that made her frown. The property lines spell had told her that the area that belonged to me was twenty hectares in size.

Ahh, Janine. What would I do without you?

When we got into the shop, Grace gave me a peck on the cheek before folding out. I took my time, a long shower with tepid water being just what I needed. I went out into the building and took count of all the people that were still there. No, I wouldn't be able to explain to twenty people how I was just suddenly not there. Relief to my quandary showed up just five minutes later, Sail driving a Bemmer sedan. Her partner Gen was occupying the passenger front seat which meant that this was a ride as opposed to a drive.

The car was halfway to the condo when Gen announced that I had a request to call Tara Knight. I asked her for the phone, remembering that mine was still in my truck because Grace had fielded all my calls

"Hello?"

"Jaci, it's me, Tara Knight."

"I guessed. What do you want, Tara?"

"I would like to know what you and my mother talked about the other day. Club security said that she got out of one of your sedans," Tara replied.

"The General was negotiating on my behalf with the PRC Government to secure the release of my father's remains," I said.

"The next day, she told five members of the club that she was returning their investments effective immediately. That wasn't all, she spent all day Monday going through the balance sheets for the rest of the members. I went through the books behind her and found that you own sixty percent of all club assets!"

"This sounds like something that is between you and General Forrester," I said.

"Why did Brookstone Pointe just take out a ninety-nine year lease for forty-one thousand nineteen hectares of land out in the middle of the freaking desert?" Tara demanded. "Do you know how much that could have helped any of the companies in the club?"

She was worried about the money, why? "Taylor-Wilcox, as a division of Brookstone Pointe, is running experiments out there to see if we can convert that particular patch of dirt into arable land. If you wish to see my initial experiments on that, you are more than welcome to come out and observe. That is one of the clubs' mandates, correct?"

"I'll be out there Friday," Tara snapped. I giggled at the thought that if she could have slammed her phone down, then she would have.

Thursday morning, eight hours sharp, Travis Brooks and his assistant Nikki Chambers were in my office. On my desk were leases of the land that we had just acquired, plus the mineral rights certificates. Along with those papers were satellite photos with the boundaries outlined in red.

He chuckled when he saw the photographs. "Damn, I knew I should have leased that land when I had the chance."

"Why is that?"

He pointed to a different line at what represented the north end of the satellite photo, "This is where my mine head is at. Obviously this map is old, because new pictures would show the head and the roads my teams constructed."

"I am glad you didn't lease that land," I smiled.

"The Chigan Indian Reservation borders your plot on the northwest edges of the map here," Travis pointed. "Now, you asked me here for a reason, I assume that the gold veins on my land extend onto yours."

I smiled. "Travis that is probably true, although I don't know that for sure. That's why I asked you here."

He squinted at me. "You're not interested in the land to mine it, are you?"

"No, I'm interested in the land to run experiments to see if we can farm it," I replied. "Using gold, if there is any, to finance the operation would be a bonus."

A few looks crossed his face. Surprised Travis was followed by Confused Travis and finally Eureka! Travis all passed through his mind. "And you'd like me to mine it for you if it is there?"

"You showed me your operation, and it was environmentally sound and super clean. I'd be honored to have you mine on my land. As long as it doesn't interfere with any of our planting experiments, I offer forty percent of the value of the metals."

"That area is too far away from my mine head to tunnel more shafts. I'd have to excavate a new head and create some new roads along the edges of the property to haul the ore out. There's a gully here where I could construct the mine head without it being too much of an eyesore. Count it about a hundred hectares for all, thirty percent of the recovered metals."

"We may need to use your roads and since you already have the knowledge to make them, construct new ones for us. Thirty-five percent," I countered.

Travis mulled that about in his head for a few moments. "It's a deal, Madame Stone. I'll need to get some geological survey teams out there, to see what we're dealing with."

"We can do that tomorrow early," I nodded. "I'm going to take a look at the area now, if you folks want to tag along, that's fine with me."

"That would be great."

Good, business is good. There were no romantic looks toward me, those were reserved for Nikki. "Hello again, Nikki."

"Miss Stone!" Nikki finally saw her opening to rush me and give me a hug. "Travis and I met at Arumas! He stopped and helped me carry my case up and the goofs didn't say shit!"

I heard the Big Bear Chuckle from Travis. "I helped Miss Nikki through some troubled times and she asked me out on a date. She smelled nice, so I accepted."

Smelled nice. I wasn't the only trans girl that had the honeysuckle smell. "I'm glad the two of you found each other," I smiled.

"Yes, it was," Nikki swooned. "You've got a great office here."

"I'm actually going to see very little of it the next few weeks," I sighed. "This experiment we're going to be doing is important."

"I can have my guys out there today, they could do the soundings before you get your land all prettied up," Travis said.

"I've got to go pick up my truck and you can follow me out there. You might wanna pack a picnic if you plan on being out there awhile. Oh, and you might wanna change your duds."

Travis snickered. "Lil' Miss Nikki should go with you, get her some desert duds."

"Sure."

Instead of being conveyed to the store, I got to drive. Nikki and I chatted about their first meeting and how Travis had been the perfect gentleman on their first and second dates. Nikki laughed when she told me that she had to attack Travis to get her first kiss and it had all been great from there.

Nikki got quiet when I asked her about the first time meeting Travis' mother. Travis had stood up for her in the gruffest way possible, shocking his mother to no end.

Our first stop was a uniform store. They sized her up and even pre-stretched her boots for her. We met Travis on the highway that would eventually lead to my plots.

Nikki still rode with me, but she was nervous and hard to read. I asked her about her little mine and after thinking for a minute, she gave me all the details.