Tasker House: Unquiet Magic, #2

By Dobie Holloway

A year ago Jack Belamit and Carlos Colosio went in search of Jack's father, the incubus Belamit. With the aid of Belamit's beautiful and terrifying business rival, the sorceress Anaksut, their mission was a success, and now a detente of sorts prevails between Anaksut and the Belamit family. Jack's brother Rafe has gone into the real estate business with the witch, and the future looks bright.

 

When Rafe and Anaksut buy a romantic resort hotel on the shores of Canada's Georgian Bay, however, they discover that the hotel is haunted by a naked ghost who roams the halls apparently searching for something or someone. Rafe hires Jack and Carlos to deal with the ghost, accompanied by one of Anaksut's employees, a cheerful young man called Bob who previously spent a hundred years and a day in the form of a pig on Anaksut's Mediterranean island.

 

While he and Carlos are investigating the mysterious tower that stands at the center of the hotel, Jack is snatched away through time by the ghost. Dragged into the past to serve as a slave to the unbalanced Adrian Tasker and his Brotherhood, Jack must overcome Tasker and find a way back to his own time before Tasker seals off the pathway to the future forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dobie Holloway
• Release date: Nov 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223786757

Dobie Holloway

A former farm boy who ran away to the big city to seek fun and adventure -- but mostly fun -- Dobie Holloway's life experiences are the fuel for his writing.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

HEY, BRO. YOU BUSY?

As it happens, I am very busy. I’m bent over the kitchen table, naked, clutching at the edge of the table and writhing while my business partner sodomizes me very thoroughly. A good time is being had by all. Carlos is approaching his climax, and my brother’s timing could not be worse.

Later, Belamit. Carlos grinds the words through gritted teeth as his thrusts grow more erratic, less controlled. He glares at the faintly luminous apparition through a curtain of sweaty black curls.

Hey, Big Hairy Guy. Yeah, I see you’re occupied, so I’ll make it quick.

Rafe is wearing a caftan, white, some silky material decorated with white-on-white embroidery. It would look silly on anyone else, but on Rafe, a powder-blue double-knit polyester leisure suit would be sexy. The caftan conceals much, reveals just enough. I can’t deny that he’s nice to look at, and I couldn’t ask for a better brother, but right now, I would cheerfully drop him out of a helicopter over the mid-Atlantic.

I want to hire you guys to investigate something. Set aside a week or ten days for me between now and the end of the month, if you would.

Carlos is passing the point of no return, and neither of us can spare the attention for scheduling questions.

"Rafe? I’ll call you. Go away. Now," I pant.

I’m on the road, bro. I’ll have to call you when I get back. You’ll do it? You’ll pencil me in? This one’s right up your alley.

Yes, yes, yes. Whatever you want, Rafe. Go the fuck away now.

Carlos groans, struggling to hang on for a moment longer, but his efforts are too little, too late. I can feel his cock pulsing inside me as he comes. He grinds his hips against my ass, sweat and escaping semen making silly sucking noises between us.

Rafe’s phosphorescent image waits patiently until Carlos has collapsed, panting open-mouthed, onto my back.

Nice, my brother’s apparition says. Anyway, Anaksut and I have gone in together on a hotel in Canada, part of the new spirit of cooperation between our houses. The hotel is a beautiful place, a fabulous honeymoon location, right out of a Gothic romance novel. It could be a gold mine. We finalized the deal at the end of June.

Carlos is still moving his hips, but gently now, his cock still hard inside me. His belly and chest press against my back, and he’s chewing at the back of my neck, his breath hot, smelling of some bitter herb, our sweat sealing us together skin to skin.

"Trouble is, the place can’t keep staff. ‘Ghosts,’ they say. I’m serious! Ghosts! People will believe just about anything, right? So gullible."

Rafe and I are the twin sons (fraternal twins, mind you—he got Dad’s looks and his money, and I got his libido) of a Danish supermodel and a five-thousand-year-old demon. Rafe’s business partner is a sorceress who once fucked Ulysses. (Yes, that Ulysses. She has aged remarkably well.) Oh, and Carlos is a satyr: yellow animal eyes, pointy ears, perpetually horny.

I’m prepared to believe all sorts of things.

Just not right now, if you don’t mind.

"Rafe. Please fuck off."

The incidents seem to have a sexual element to them. That’s why I thought of you.

Oh. Of course. Horny ghosts. Right up our alley.

We’re all yours, Rafe. I promise. Just go away now and call us when you get back to town.

Thanks, bro. Thanks, Big Hairy Guy. Go back to what you were doing. With that, the apparition disintegrates into a constellation of tiny glittering fragments that swirl for a moment, a Rafe-shaped tornado, then spiral down into a central point and vanish.

Carlos sighs into the back of my ear. I liked him better when we thought he was dead, he murmurs.

·

As it happens, business is slow at the moment.

Carlos has just finished evicting a poltergeist from a bank in Wilverton. (The staff summoned the thing while playing some demented party game at an office function and then couldn’t figure out how to get rid of it.) Meanwhile, I’ve been unraveling an old-fashioned floating headless woman apparition at a fancy private school in the ‘burbs. My decapitated nun (They’re always nuns, what’s up with that?) has turned out to be nothing more than the product of some awe-inspiring 3-D projection technology in the hands of a pair of spoiled kids who, if there’s any justice, will be in prison before they finish puberty. By the time Monday rolls around, Rafe’s visit is four days in the past, and there’s nothing on the calendar but open space. Carlos and I talk it over, and after dinner I text my brother, advising him that we will take the job.

When we crawl out of bed on Tuesday morning, a detailed email outlining the project is waiting in our inbox.

It sounds interesting, at least, Carlos says. No flying Xerox machines, no floaty dead virgins.

Just naked men who walk through walls and stare at people.

Carlos nods, munching toast. I can see why your brother thought of us.

I laugh. There’s no denying that we have a history of falling into this sort of thing.

At the moment, we’re sitting at the breakfast table. I’m wearing a bathrobe since I’ve been downstairs to fetch the snail-mail. Carlos is naked. Carlos has a constellation of breadcrumbs caught in the hair on his chest, and for some reason, I find this incredibly hot.

You’re not still pissed at him for showing up last week in the middle of ... well, showing up when he did?

Nah. I like an audience sometimes. I just think it’s creepy when it’s your brother. Even when it’s only his sending.

Yeah, I know what you mean. Thing is, he’s been around Dad all his life, so he’s oblivious to these things. We might as well have been folding laundry as far as he’s concerned.

Carlos grunts. I’ll count my blessings. Might have been Anaksut.

True. When Anaksut—a.k.a. Lady Alcina Searcy, the Sorceress of the Golden Eye, the Mirror of the Sea, the Daughter of the Sun, the Envenomed Flower of the Island of the Beasts, etc., etc., etc.—says frog, you’re expected to jump. Immediately, if not sooner. She once teleported me from a comfy chair in a coffeehouse near my apartment to a sling in a sex club in Eastern Europe just because I wouldn’t drop what I was doing and go unlock Dad’s office for her. (As it happened, the sling at Bongo’s Hideaway was a lot more fun than the chair at the CoffeeCat Cafe, but that’s another story.)

According to Rafe’s email, the place in question is a hotel called Tasker House. It’s on the breathtaking shores of Georgian Bay, wherever that is. I wipe butter off my fingers and reach over to tap in a search on the little laptop sitting off to one side of the breakfast table. (Yes, we often eat naked and we keep a laptop on the table during meals. Don’t judge us.)

According to Wikipedia, Georgian Bay is a big honking appendage hanging off the side of Lake Huron.

Huh. ‘Big honking appendage.’ Of course it is. How does one get there?

I frown at the small screen, type, frown some more. More typing, more frowning. No airport. Nearest town is twelve miles away, Camp Constant, population of seven thousand and change. I’m guessing one flies to Toronto and then drives the rest of the way.

When do you want to go?

I consider. No point in putting it off, I say. We’ve got nothing else going on right now. Maybe this weekend?

He nods. Works for me.

I look at the transportation options, and we decide to fly to Toronto on Thursday and drive up to the hotel on Friday morning. I email Rafe with our tentative itinerary and return to my scrambled eggs and hash browns. I’ll make the reservations after breakfast.

We finish our meal and clean up the kitchen, and Carlos declares his intention to pay some bills. He picks up the morning’s mail and starts toward the door to the living room.

Suddenly, laughter fills the apartment, and we both freeze mid-step.

This is silvery, crystalline laughter, like diamonds in a cocktail shaker. The sound is coming from everywhere. I look around at the front of the microwave, the side of the toaster, the mirror out in the entryway—every reflective surface. All around me, I see the same breathtakingly beautiful female face. Laughing.

Oh, no.

Oh, yes, dear boy, the face says. We’ve got a very expensive hotel sitting around empty, running up heating bills and probably being colonized by vermin, and you two are sitting around contemplating your navels. That’s no way to run a business.

I just sent Rafe an itinerary. I cc’d you. We’ll be up there by the weekend.

The face smiles, perfect teeth reflecting from all around us. The mouth grows, crowding out everything else until there is only the smile, repeated endlessly, even in the bowl of my coffee spoon. The hairs on my arms all stand on end, and I taste ozone.

"I don’t think so, dear. We need to get this show on the road now."

Carlos groans and grabs hold of the doorframe. Oh, no, he breathes. She wouldn’t.

Anaksut. Wait a second. What are you—? I’m starting to panic now.

Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today? all the lovely mouths say brightly. Besides, airfare is ridiculous right now, and I’d like to keep the unnecessary expenses to a minimum.

The world goes Cubist and folds itself around me.

CHAPTER TWO

I DON’T LOSE CONSCIOUSNESS, not entirely, but I do have a few moments during which I prefer not to know what’s happening around me. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.

When I finally rejoin the universe, I’m feeling very green around the gills, a sensation that is not improved by the sound of retching from somewhere off to my left. I’m lying down, not on the tile of my kitchen floor but on patchy dry grass, which prickles my naked backside. This, of course, tells me that I’ve lost my bathrobe somewhere along the line.

I’ve been through this before. We both have.

"I fucking hate this," Carlos groans.

I open my eyes and push myself up onto my elbows, hesitating a moment as my stomach threatens to revolt. After a few deep breaths, I sit crosslegged, watching Carlos pull himself together.

It worries me, I say, finally.

What? That the bitch can just fling us from Point A to Point B any time she feels like it, and we can’t do a damn thing to stop her?

I nod. "Yeah. I don’t mean just the fact that she does it and that we hate that she does it, but the fact that she’s capable of it at all. Teleporting two grown men from one location to another, working from yet a third location, takes colossal energy."

Your dad could do it, right? Carlos climbs to his feet, brushing grass and dirt off his fuzzy butt and legs.

Like this? I doubt it. Not so casually.

He holds out his hand and pulls me to my feet.

"Okay, now I’m worried, he says. I like to think that your father and Anaksut sort of cancel each other out."

I nod. Maybe Rafe will be a sobering influence on Anaksut.

Carlos scoffs. Oh, right. Your brother, the incubus-bro. He’ll settle her right down.

I nod again, accepting the reality check. Looking past Carlos, I see water, with woods to left and right. A very chilly breeze is coming at me, and I hold on to my junk protectively. I wonder where we are?

Carlos points over my shoulder.

Oh, I think I can answer that question for you.

I turn to discover that we’ve been deposited on a small area of grassy lawn, scrubby and tired-looking this late in the season, forming an apron at the base of a low hill. A long flight of steps leads up the hill to a rambling pile of architecture, the sort of place that would be the perfect setting for either a horror movie or a Hallmark Christmas special.

Tasker House, I presume.

Carlos takes in a deep breath through his nose. That would be my guess.

The hotel is an extravaganza of faux-Victorian design. White-painted gingerbread trim drips over balconies like lace, and mullioned windows cluster in flocks beneath oriels and fanlights. The rare unoccupied surfaces are covered with blue-gray clapboard or weathered cedar shakes. Dormers and chimneys crowd the roofline, leading up to a widow’s walk. A peculiar square fieldstone tower rises from the very center of the house.

It’s not your standard Holiday Inn, I’ll grant you that, Carlos says.

With all those windows, you’d think somebody would have noticed the naked guys shivering in the yard, I say. Whoops, never mind, I think they just spotted us.

A short, stocky man in jeans and a polo shirt comes trotting around one corner of the porch and out onto the steps.

No fucking way, Carlos says. He starts to laugh.

What?

The stranger waves enthusiastically. Hey, Carlos!

Bob! Fancy meeting you here, Carlos calls back as we start up the steps.

Isn’t it great? Lady A sent me out last week with luggage and stuff for you guys. I got in a couple of days ago. I traveled by airplane and car, which takes considerably longer than the Lady A Express but lets me keep my pants on and my lunch down the whole time. We reach the porch, and he shakes my hand. "You must be Jack Belamit. I’m Bob. Well, not really—I’m pretty sure that’s not my real name, but it’s better than ‘Hey, you!’ I don’t remember what my real name might have been. I’ve only been human for the last six years. Before that, I was a pig for a hundred years and a day. Before that, I was valet to Lady A’s son Cassephorus on the Island of the Beasts. My name got lost somewhere in all the kerfuffle."

I turn and stare at Carlos. Bob is still holding onto my hand.

Carlos shrugs, grinning. Bob and I worked together before the witch hired Lee Wing, he tells me.

I retrieve