“Well worth the price of keeping quiet, and the cost of what you used to work the magic. If there’s anything you want, you have my word that I’l... not mention it to your father.” Once again, Alicia’s pocket change was more than enough to replace her lost spell book with a more advanced copy, and to gain the components she needed to cast any spell in the new book, even those she had not yet learned. Though she felt a little ashamed of the vanity inherent in the feeling, the attention buoyed her. I’m led to the center of the room and Hung Master presses a button on a remote in his hand and I hear a buzzing noise. Looking up I see a spreader bar being lowered down from a cable. Once it gets low enough, my wrists are cuffed to either end of the bar and them Hung Master pushes the button once again and the bar starts to rise until my arms are stretched wide above my head and my feel are just barely on the floor.Mistress Becky steps forward with a pair of nipple clamps. She sees the look of. It took surprisingly little time – a few minutes at most – until Avernus lay completely still, eyes open and unblinking, blood barely trickling out of the wound anymore. His skin was ghastly pale, but his expression oddly content. He was dead, I could feel it – I only wished someone could close his eyes for him.This was our penultimate step in the plan Avernus had concocted: a blood magic-fueled sleep spell, something hundreds of times more powerful than a normal entropy-based sleep,. Mercy ... hey, I’m going go on a plane ride with Cowboy ... yeah, a plane ride ... and we’re gonna go see his ranch and stuff, okay?”Mercy, eh? We hadn’t actually gotten around to exchanging names yet. I’d been wondering. And I didn’t know who Stephie was. I knew who Julie was—the girl with the major league arm—but that was all.“Yeah ... I’m gonna be fine...” Her eyes flicked up to look into mine. “It’ll be fun ... yeah, Cowboy is really nice ... no, you don’t know him ... he’s...”I sensed.