An Undead Grift for Christmas:

The holiday con is on!

Cassandra Duffy

Sapphic Pixie Tales

2011

Other Sapphic Pixie Tales From Cassandra Duffy:

The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head

Astral Liaisons: Lesbians in Space!

Demons of Paradise

Fabled Fang Girls

The Last Best Tip

Other Grift-Girl Series Novelettes:

The Last Best Tip

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any matter whatsoever without the written permission, except in the cases of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations, and events are meant to be fictitious. Any similarity between any persons living, dead, or undead is completely coincidental. The events are fictional, although you should feel free to try to re-create anything you think you’re limber enough for, especially if you have a willing partner in crime (or two as needed).

©2011 Cassandra Duffy

Cover Design by Katiie Kissglosse

Edited by Nichole Mauer

The Twelve Days of Griftmas:

1 - Auntie on an Old Futon

2 - Two Scamming Elves

3 - French Kisses

4 - Festive Fantasies

5 - Five-fingered Discounts!

6 - Plots-a-hatchin’

7 - Cons-a-conning

8 - Vampires-a-nibbling

9 - Santas Dancing

10 - Ladies-a-leaping

11 - Naughty Games of Telephone

12 - Minutes in Heaven

Author’s Note

Crushes, dream jobs, relationships, and apparently holidays are funny things. I love funny things. I also like vampire things and instant gratification, which is why I started this novelette series following the erotic and madcap adventures of Lucy and her vampire girlfriend Sasha as they explore the world of alternative employment known as grifting.

This is a novelette, and shouldn’t be mistaken for a novel. It’s also the second book in the series, and while it may stand up on its own, it will read a lot easier if you’ve also read The Last Best Tip. Because this is a novelette, and priced so reasonably, I can create finished products within the series much faster than full books, which means vampire fans can get their hands on tasty literature that much faster—instant gratification.

Think of this series as pure, frivolous, sexy fun in bite-sized pieces.

1.

Until Lucy met Sasha, the word heat simply meant the opposite of cold. Sitting in Lara’s aunt’s apartment, still dressed in her festive elf-wear from her job as one of Santa’s Assistants at Bloomingdale’s, Lucy was wishing it also didn’t mean police pressure. Not that she minded being out of St. Louis for winter. Midwestern winters on the Mississippi were frigid, dry affairs with mountainous snow drifts and incessant holiday cheer. Still, sharing a two bedroom apartment in New York with three other people until the heat was off seemed a tad cramped.

To add to the lousy holiday season, it didn’t seem fair to Lucy that Sasha was allowed to play Lady Winter from the vampire December holiday pantheon in a beautiful flowing dress of silvers, whites, and blues designed to be reminiscent of snow and ice, while Lucy had to wear the green tights, curly-toe shoes, and dozen or so jingle bells of an elf. She’d been bitten, kicked, scratched, bonked, stepped on, cried upon, and nearly thrown up on dozens of times by the army of barely supervised children waiting to see Santa. The parents had the thousand yard stare of holiday shopping shellshock as though they were all veterans of the Black Friday beach landing and had escaped with their lives but not all of their faculties. Meanwhile, Sasha simply posed with vampires and vampire pretenders in the hall of frozen death in her beautiful costume—no children allowed.

Lucy’s bartending friend from the swingers club she used to work at, Lara had found them all jobs through a high school friend and convinced her aging aunt that it might be fun to house the three of them for Christmas and maybe a little beyond. Lara, the unflappable and confident stem of remarkable grace and charm, was just about at the same cracking point as Lucy under the pressure of being a Bloomingdale’s elf. Lucy felt bad about it, but she secretly enjoyed knowing something could get to Lara.

Lucy rolled onto her side in the midst of the throw pillows that lined the tiny living room of the economy apartment to give Lara a closer look. With her hair uniformly dyed to all black, removing the purple she used to sport when bartending, and her myriad of facial piercings removed for the new job, Lara didn’t look nearly as tough as she had when she worked at the Swing Set. However, where the fitted costume displayed Lucy’s Asian lack of curves, it seemed almost erotic on the leggy Lara; more than a few of the fathers waiting in line had noticed this as well, which put to the test every deflecting technique Lara had honed over several years of bartending at a swinger’s club. She looked exhausted and Lucy began to feel a little guilty about dragging her into the con artist mess that was becoming her relationship with Sasha.

Lucy and Sasha’s sports bar was gone. Their money was nearly gone. And a few cons that didn’t go as well as they could have left them with detectives poking around in their business. Sasha took it all in stride as part of the game she’d been playing since who knows when, but Lucy was thoroughly rattled by it all. This was all compounded by the fact that Lucy and Sasha had only been dating about six months and they were already trying to duck the law together, which really felt like something that shouldn’t happen until after a full year together.

The Lady Winter herself was sprawled across the afghan encased futon, still in costume. As the lone vampire in their trio, she was the only one who could survive the hellacious torture device that was the lumpy couch/bed combo. Both Lucy and Lara had tried several times to get comfortable on the futon, but always fled back to the pillows on the floor—Lucy suspected there was something very wrong with article of furniture.

Lucy turned away when Sasha began breaking pieces off candy canes to flick them across the room into the trashcan she couldn’t even see from her recumbent pose. Earlier that evening, a little girl in a beautiful green dress had projectile vomited what Lucy guessed was the entire contents of a box of candy canes onto one of the animatronic reindeer. It was all Lucy could do to not sympathy vomit as well when the scent of partially digested peppermint hit her nose.

“I used to like Christmas,” Lucy muttered.

“Me too,” Sasha agreed. “Once upon a time, Christmas was such a wild party that the church actually banned it as too sinful and fun.”

“Is that something you remember from when you were alive?” Lara asked.

“Nope, I saw it on the History Channel yesterday,” Sasha replied. “Hey, we should go barhopping in our costumes!”

“No, we really shouldn’t,” Lucy said. “I’m not even sure why I’m still wearing mine.”

“Because you’re too tired to take it off,” Lara explained.

“Oh, right, now I remember.” Lucy flopped back onto the pillows with a jingle of the little bells on her collar and hat.

I think you’re cute in your costume, Lucy heard Sasha’s voice in her head.

I think you’re twisted, Lucy replied.

I could show you exactly how twisted, Sasha’s voice took on a decidedly direct tone and Lucy knew it wasn’t really an offer so much as it was a sign post of something inevitably coming.

They’d tried the mental trick they’d used during bartending in St. Louis of sharing a fantasy in Lucy’s mind while they left their bodies on auto-pilot. It had been such an effective way to pass the time at their old despised jobs that it only seemed natural to use it on their new despised jobs. Apparently shepherding a couple hundred children toward a single fat man in a red suit was a lot more difficult than filling drink orders. Lucy’s body wasn’t really up to taking over the entire task without significant help from her brain, and it nearly resulted in her being fired to learn the lesson. This flaw was compounded by the fact that the shared fantasies tended to turn sexual, even though Lucy tried not to let them start that way, and she came within a hair’s breadth of having another one of her public orgasms. The one attempt at the waking dream vampire trick proved it wasn’t a valid option, which left Lucy to muddle through her shifts as a Santa Assistant fully aware of the world around her.

Sexual frustration was becoming a problem as well. Aside from not being able to release it mentally while at work, which Lucy admitted to herself was a fairly opulent thing for her to have gotten used to, the three of them were sharing the spare bedroom and their work shifts overlapped in prohibitory ways. Sasha was at work during the evening shifts when Lucy and Lara were just getting done for the day which meant not only did Lucy and Sasha never have a moment alone, Lucy didn’t even have a moment by herself for more provincial satisfactions. Less than a week of celibacy had passed and Lucy was about to climb up the walls, making her wonder how she’d ever gone a whole year without getting laid before she met Sasha.

I had a thought earlier today, Sasha said telepathically.

Lucy plucked out one of the thoughts floating near the surface of Sasha’s mind. Their psychic connection had strengthened, mostly from Sasha allowing Lucy so much access backward across the vampiric mental tether, which Lucy knew was special treatment since she had access to the parts of Sasha’s memories that knew how guarded most vampires were with their minds. The memory from earlier that day was a flashed snippet connected to a brief glimpse of Lucy that Sasha had when she and Lara were passing out the front doors for the evening. After the fleeting glance, Sasha had imagined Lucy in her elf costume writhing in the fake snow of the display, rubbing one of the oversized plastic candy cane decorations between her green spandex covered legs in a festively lewd display. If Lucy was being fair, her own recent fantasies and dreams about Sasha were far kinkier, but she rather liked the Christmasy elements Sasha’s mind had included.

That sort of thought? Lucy asked of the dredged up fantasy from Sasha’s mind.

Well, yes, I had that thought, but that’s not the one I meant, Sasha didn’t sound irritated by the mental intrusion. In fact, Lucy thought the voice resounding in her head sounded a little flirty. I think there might be an opportunity for a grift, but it’s a three person job. Do you think Lara would be up for it?

Lucy couldn’t say for sure. She knew Lara knew they were suspects in a few things, but it was a far leap from theoretical knowledge of a friend’s possible wrong doings to actually participating in defrauding someone of money. She might be, Lucy sent back. She does seem up for trying new things and the mountain of parking tickets she abandoned in St. Louis along with her old clunker speaks to the requisite disregard for law and order.

We can talk her through it tomorrow when I get the props, Sasha sent to Lucy.

Props—Lucy liked the sound of props. Their grifts to that point had mostly involved clever wordplay and reliance on greed or desire, so props spoke of a whole other level of con artistry. It was strange, but Lucy realized she thought of Sasha as a con artist, but didn’t think of herself as one. She really couldn’t put her finger on what she thought of herself as. She didn’t want to consider herself a holiday elf or a bartender, which were the last two legitimate jobs she’d had, but she also didn’t particularly feel like a con artist. She was…Sasha’s girlfriend was the only thing that came to mind and even that felt like an incomplete description.

You’re a naughty little elf, Sasha offered, picking up on the surface thoughts flashing across Lucy’s mind at a thousand miles an hour. She offered up the same mental image from earlier of Lucy grinding against a decorative plastic candy cane. The mental image, which had initially been comical to Lucy, held a far steamier edge on the second viewing.

Her willpower drained from her and before she knew it, Lucy was fully engrossed in the shared fantasy. She was no longer viewing herself as Sasha had imagined her; she was in the mental image of herself created by the fantasy including feeling the fluffy fake snow around her and the hard, plastic shaft of the candy cane, around the size and shape of a real cane as it stroked along the inside of her thigh. Sasha stood over her in the shared fantasy, still dressed as Lady Winter, watching with growing amusement painted on her lovely pale features.

Lucy adored the mischievous look Sasha got right before kinky sex. Her eyes would sparkle, her messy blond hair would fall in her face, and she would often bite her thumb with the corner of her mouth as if she needed the restriction to prevent her from letting out a gleeful giggle.

The act of mentally sharing a fantasy was freeing. Lucy couldn’t imagine a setting in reality where she would actually writhe around in fake snow, grinding against a plastic candy cane decoration like it was a giant sex toy, all while wearing an elf costume, but in the fictional world created between their two minds, Lucy felt liberated to do whatever she and Sasha could imagine. And so she indulged, stroking the candy cane up and down along her thigh, giving Sasha her best bedroom eyes, licking her lips to wet them to an inviting glisten, and then mouthing the word ‘please’ to make a genuine offer.

But Sasha demurred, shaking her head coquettishly. “Keep going,” she said.

Lucy’s body, even the mental image of it, carried the ache of their once highly active sex life suddenly hitting a roadblock. She needed Sasha well beyond simple wanting. Lucy ran the plastic candy cane up until the rounded edge pressed against her pussy through the green spandex of her leggings and then genuinely began grinding her hips against it to feel the hard plastic rubbing through the material. Sasha seemed antsy while she watched as though she was on the edge of diving on top of Lucy at any moment, but she held off for far longer than was comfortable for Lucy. By the time Sasha finally did lower herself into the snow at Lucy’s side to help with the clothed masturbation, Lucy was already feeling overheated from the lengthy show she’d given her girlfriend and suddenly wanted a lot more than clothed rubbing.

She relinquished the candy cane entirely to Sasha’s expert hands. Their lips met in a fiery kiss that Lucy believed might melt even the fake snow around them. Sasha knew exactly what she was doing in turning the decoration into a toy, angling it with her rubbing until it pressed the hard plastic against the hard edge of Lucy’s clit straining against the material of her leggings. She stroked it back and forth, letting the rounded edge caress either side until Lucy had to break the kiss to scream Sasha’s name. Only after the much needed sexual release did Lucy remember her physical body always reacted with equal verve to the mental stimulation. She chased away the fantasy to return to the waking world just in time to see Lara begin a slow, but genuine round of applause.

“I don’t know what you two were thinking about, but it was quite a show even from my view in the cheap seats of reality,” Lara said.

Sasha laughed. She always laughed at the same social stimulus that embarrassed the hell out of Lucy. “How do you feel about candy canes?” Sasha asked of Lara, adding a little wink, “because Lucy loves them.”

Lucy really regretted having told Lara about the vampire trick of shared fantasies.

2.

The following day at work was distracting at best. Decorative candy canes and fake snow had a Pavlovian effect on Lucy and she kept thinking of Sasha in really naughty ways. To top it all off, Lara was fairly overt in her sexual jokes, occasionally eliciting a raised eyebrow from the afternoon shift Santa who was the only other person to hear them. But Lucy was the type to fixate on someone when she was in a relationship and so she willed herself to miss the flirty spin placed on many of the jokes by Lara, although she couldn’t deny they had shared something somewhat intimate the night before if only by proximity.

Lucy wanted to do her part in the whole grift process since it was always Sasha’s plans and Sasha’s preparation with Lucy’s only contribution being in the performance and math, should any math need doing, which wasn’t always the case. Sasha had said they needed three and thought Lara would work—Lucy wanted to help make it work. As she and Lara were gathering their coats, scarves, and things from the break room after their shift, Lucy decided to broach the topic.

“How do you think you are with acting?” Lucy asked. Grifting was all about the performance. The best way to make people believe something was to find something they already wanted to believe and act like it was true, but it didn’t work if you couldn’t act convincingly.

“Better than you when it comes to acting like an elf,” Lara said. “You’ve been a Grinch or something ever since you got here.”

“That’s not what I…really? I’ve been doing that badly?”

“It’s the same thing from the Swing Set,” Lara said as she tied on her muffler. She used her chin to press it down away from her mouth; it was a move Lucy’s college girlfriend had done and it was every bit as cute when Lara did it as when Marley had. “Your attitude stinks unless you’re doing something you really like. Haven’t you ever had to fake something?”

As a matter of fact, since she’d started dating Sasha, orgasms were the only thing Lucy hadn’t been faking. She’d played more roles in the last six months than most actors would in as many years. Sasha liked the short grift, less chance of things going sideways as she always said, and if you go too long on a grift, it’s harder to get out and you end up like Bernie Madoff with more money than you could possibly spend followed by a lifetime prison sentence. Faking something wasn’t the hard part for Lucy—but faking when she wasn’t having fun…apparently Lucy’s mother wasn’t the only one to notice how much she sucked at that.

“I can fake everything but enthusiasm,” Lucy said.

“Being a Christmas elf is an odd choice of jobs then.”

Lucy couldn’t deny that. She was a terrible elf and didn’t feel the need to get any better before Christmas. If there wasn’t heat back home, she probably would have laughed off the career choice of dressing up like an elf in her mid twenties. She left the topic alone for a minute while they walked out. They passed Sasha’s booth, already manned by the lovely vampire and already with a colossal line of undead and undead wannabes alike waiting to have their picture taken with the vampire queen of frosty death. Lucy gave Sasha a meaningful glance and nodded in Lara’s direction. She knew better than to try to transmit a conversation to Sasha with so many other vampires in the area. She hoped their nonverbal communication was developing without the telepathic link. Sasha’s blank stare and shake of her head told Lucy they weren’t there yet.

Lara’s aunt’s apartment was just far enough to make walking a chilly prospect but also too close for a subway ride to be anything but a colossal waste of time. They were in the perfect sweet spot for a cab ride, but with the fares on their holiday jump and the seasonal salary of Christmas elves being what it was, they might lose money on the day if the traffic gods decided to smite them. So they walked, hands stuffed deep in their pockets, shoulders shrugged up around their ears, and faces partially concealed against the chilly night air.

“You know those games I told you about? The ones Sasha and I would play on our ‘investors’?” Lucy asked, realizing how much she’d actually sugarcoated things not only in how she recounted them to Lara but in how she viewed them herself. Playing pranks on investors was a fantastic way to spin committing fraud.

“You mean the cons you two pulled to get the money for the sports bar?” Lara asked.

She was so no-nonsense—it reminded Lucy of the math teacher she’d had in high school who was her first older woman crush, especially in the asking of a pointed question in response to what was supposed to be a leading question. “They also helped us get out of our lease early without a penalty,” Lucy said proudly—she really liked that grift involving a faked fire report and a burned down gazebo; their landlord never saw it coming. “Sasha was thinking we might…”

“I’ll do it,” Lara said. “I could use the money, and I’m not planning on staying in New York anyway.”

“Oh, good, um…they’re fun,” Lucy offered feebly. She wanted Lara to do it not simply out of necessity but because she genuinely wanted to spend time with her and Sasha; Lucy couldn’t put her finger on why that part mattered to her.

“It always looks like fun from the outside,” Lara said. “And wouldn’t it have to be? It seems to break even for you two more often than not, so there wouldn’t be much reason to do it if it wasn’t fun.”

Lucy hated to admit it, but that was absolutely true. There was almost a gambler’s rush to the whole thing. They gained enormous piles of money in easy and enjoyable ways and then they spent most of it getting back out of trouble when the next job went sideways on them. If grifting was a get-rich-quick scheme, the part no one ever talked about was the get-poor-just-as-quick aspect of the game. As Sasha explained it, the hustle was out of a necessity for survival, so survive is what you usually did with it—it simply wasn’t intended to thrive long term. Considering Lucy had twenty dollars less in her account than the day she and Sasha started dating, it seemed to be as true as anything she’d ever heard.

“Sasha will be glad to hear it,” Lucy said.

“Are you glad to hear it?” Lara leaned into Lucy a little to give her a shoulder nudge. The much taller, much more athletic woman managed the whole thing with such grace, even on the icy sidewalks, that Lucy was a little surprised by the gesture and nearly fell over because of it.

“I asked, didn’t I?”

“Dodge much?” Lara gave her another nudge. “You’re lucky I like spending time with you two—you’re a fun couple.”

Lucy blushed and smiled at this. At first, she wanted Lara to think she was cool. When that turned out to be an exercise in futility in hiding her naturally nerdy tendencies, Lucy started wanting Lara to think she was fun, which apparently was finally achieved. She assumed Sasha, who was a barrel of undead monkeys capable of transforming most funerals into roof raising parties, probably pulled the lion’s share of the duty in convincing Lara they were a fun couple, but Lara had told her first.

“So, tell me about the candy canes,” Lara said, glancing over to Lucy with a meaningful twinkle in her eyes.

Lucy’s blush intensified.

3.

Lucy made up the most contrived explanation for the candy cane comment from Sasha the night before. Just as she suspected, Lara appeared to be too savvy to buy it, although equally polite in not pushing the subject. They sat awkwardly in the sea of throw pillows on the living room floor, watching reruns of Win Ben Stein’s Money on the Game Show Network with Lara’s colossal aunt planted in the middle of the futon. The family resemblance, if there was any, seemed to be around the eyes. Lara and her aunt both had eagle-sharp dark blue eyes. Lucy immediately recognized Lara’s aunt as a woman of extreme substance. She worked shift after thankless shift as a nurse at a clinic serving low income residents of the city, and she was apparently quick as a whip even after twelve hours of healing the needy as she was thoroughly routing Lucy in answering the show’s trivia questions. Lara’s aunt had the much harder work day, so Lucy couldn’t claim being tired wasn’t an excuse for her poor trivia performance. Lucy came right up to the doorstep of making herself feel better by thinking the reason she was doing so badly was distraction, but she couldn’t admit distraction because if she did, she would have to admit the source of distraction, which was Lara and she wasn’t the type to have a wandering eye while in a relationship.

Sasha breezed into the apartment, breaking up the final round of ten questions, of which Lucy had only gotten two correct and Lara’s aunt had thoroughly trounced even Ben Stein with eight. Sasha swung a shopping bag at her side as she strolled grandly to the futon, taking a seat next to Lara’s aunt in a rustle of her taffeta dress.

“Hello, Auntie,” Sasha said, laying her head on Lara’s aunt’s shoulder. “Did you put Ben Stein in the poor house?”

Lara’s aunt had insisted everyone call her Auntie. It felt strange to Lucy as she barely knew the woman, but Sasha took to it as though they really were related and in turn, Lara’s aunt took to Sasha despite having stated more than a few times that she remembered a time when vampires were imaginary. Auntie laughed at Sasha’s good mood as if it gave her a warm hug, and pulled herself up from the futon.

“I did, but not enough to quit my job,” Auntie said as she trundled toward her bedroom. “So I had better get myself to bed. I’ll see you all in the morning.”

They waited a few beats before Sasha scooted to the middle of the futon, letting Lucy and Lara gather around her on the floor like excited children. Sasha reached into her shopping bag and plucked out a brightly colored toy package around the size of a large lunch box. Lucy had never heard of the toy before, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything as she didn’t keep up on toys or collectibles aside from golf video games.

“What is it?” Lucy asked.

“An empty box.” Sasha pulled back the top and turned the box with the opening toward Lucy and Lara for them to reassure themselves it was indeed just an empty box.

“Why is it empty?” Lara asked.

“Because the toy that is supposed to go inside it doesn’t exist,” Sasha said cryptically. “Cabbage Patch Dolls, Tickle Me Elmo, and so on all had one thing in common: people profiteering as middlemen. Buy up a bunch of the stock, and then resell it to desperate parents the week before Christmas.”

“But how are we going to do that if the toy doesn’t even exist?” Lucy asked.

“Simple,” Sasha explained, tossing the box aside. “Our marks aren’t the parents. We’re after the profiteers. I know a couple of toy and collectible bloggers who basically serve as the weathervanes for the major news networks in what is and isn’t the upcoming toy of the Christmas season. They’re willing to say this thing is the next Pokemon for a share of our take. We put the word out that a vampire is mentally dominating a distributor. They all show up to place orders, we take cash in advance, then a week before Christmas, we have empty boxes delivered and skip town for a lovely New Year in Miami.”

“Your two roles are clear,” Lara said, “but why do you need three?”

“You’re the plant,” Sasha said. “You pose as one of the potential buyers, get the ball rolling, and make sure nobody wants to look in the box since you’ll be the one we pick to check it out. The key to your role in all this is to be as skeptical as possible until you are overwhelmed by the potential of the toy to make piles of money. The louder and more disbelieving you are at the outset, the more miraculous your conversion to the idea will be in the end. If everyone believes you’re the hardest sell and you got sold, they won’t even care to look in the box.”

“Oh, this is fun!” Lara said with a little bounce. “We get to pretend like we’re all strangers.”

“What’s our turnaround, cuts, and potential take?” Lucy asked, trying to remember all the lingo Sasha had taught her during their random cons.

“Turnaround is one very big night, a little like Santa Claus, the cut is thirty percent for each of us and ten for the bloggers, and our potential take…let’s just say this thing retails for a hundred bucks and we’re giving them the ‘someone might lose their job over this so you better make it worth our while’ mark up. In a city this big, we might clear thirty thousand a piece in one night if we get enough marks.”

“But what if they promise the toys to parents beforehand?” Lucy asked. “Won’t that screw up a lot Christmases for a lot of kids?”

“If those conmen pre-sell toys they haven’t even ordered yet, it’s on them when the sale doesn’t pan out,” Sasha said dismissively. “Besides, parents who wait until the last minute to try to buy their child’s affection deserve what they get.”

Lucy could have pointed out that parents couldn’t be responsible in purchasing the toy through legal or timely means since it didn’t even exist, but she was glad Lara looked appeased by Sasha’s explanation and didn’t want to cause a rift over an ethical gray area when it came to grifting. Still, Lucy was constantly amazed at how Sasha always constructed her cons with an escape route for her conscience. If something went wrong and someone got mad, somehow it was always their own damn fault for breaking the rules of the con designed to keep them in the dark. Sasha was a master at deflecting blame. Lucy wasn’t looking forward to their first real fight—she was dead certain she was going to lose in spectacular fashion with Sasha easily talking circles around her.

“So what’s our first step?” Lara asked, snapping Lucy from her thought process.

“We need to start creating buzz,” Sasha said. “Thankfully we work everyday with hundreds of Christmas shopping parents. This should bring the profiteers out of the woodwork.”

“There’s just one problem with your plan,” Auntie said from the bedroom door. Lara, Lucy, and Sasha all snapped their heads around in unison to spot the heavyset woman with graying hair leaning in the doorway. “If you three are spreading the word, you need someone else entirely to portray the distribution executive since Lucy might be recognized as a Bloomingdale’s elf.”

“That’s an excellent point, Auntie,” Sasha said with a knowing grin that displayed her gleaming fangs. Lucy recognized the grin as the one Sasha wore when something went precisely according to plan.

“I’ll do it for five percent,” Auntie said.

4.

Sasha and Lucy lay awake on their air mattress in the corner of the cramped guest room. Even with the electric blanket cranked up and wrapped around Sasha, she was still a cold entity in the bed, which was something Lucy wasn’t used to, although it had been kind of pleasant during the hot Midwestern summer when they first started dating. Girlfriends in the past, all living, were a comfort to cuddle with during the winter, but Sasha was a black hole of heat, sucking in all of it around her and banishing it to some other dimension—it was probably a hyperbolic analogy, but Lucy thought it was apt every time one of Sasha’s frigid feet touched hers.

They weren’t even sending thoughts back and forth to each other. They were simply lying close to one another, wide awake, thinking their own private thoughts. Sasha had an excuse for not sleeping. She was a vampire and only stayed in bed from the hours of 2 AM to 7 AM because she didn’t want to keep everyone else awake in the cramped apartment. Lucy, on the other hand, was kept awake by strange thoughts of attraction toward Lara that had been building through the day. She kind of wished Sasha would enter her mind to simply have everything out in the open.

“Are you two awake?” Lara asked from the twin bed beneath the window. The other side of the room was close enough that Lara could have reached out with one of her long legs and nudged Lucy if she’d wanted to.

“Yes,” Lucy answered.

“Do you think I’m cute?” Lara asked.

It was such a strange question coming from the normally ineffably confident Lara that Lucy wondered if it was a trick of the darkness that Lara had ever asked it. Lucy also couldn’t be sure if the question was directed at her since it was asked in such an unspecific way. She turned her head to look at the dim outline of Sasha next to her.

Lucy was about to answer. She’d already wetted her tongue and opened her mouth to say something when Lara resumed talking. “Because I’m wondering why I’m having such a hard time finding someone,” Lara said.

“It’s probably hard for someone as special as you to find someone equally special to date,” Sasha said. “In the past, I’ve spent decades between relationships for just that reason.”

“Here’s hoping I don’t have to wait that long,” Lara said.

Sasha’s cold, delicate hand slid through the bedding and gave Lucy’s upper thigh a gentle squeeze. Lucy had no idea what the gesture was supposed to mean, but she responded to it as though it was meant to squeeze her unspoken comment from her. “Yes, we think you’re very cute,” Lucy said quickly.

Sasha’s hand either retreated in anger or slipped away having accomplished its task. Lucy didn’t know which, although she had a sinking suspicion she wasn’t supposed to say what she’d said and she didn’t truly know if Sasha thought Lara was attractive. For a moment, she considered extending a thought to her girlfriend to ask, but thought better of it, hoping Sasha would be the one to reach out to her.

“Thank you,” Lara said. “Goodnight.”

Lucy timidly slipped across the squeaky air mattress to cuddle up to Sasha’s side and finally received some reassuring affection in the form of gentle caresses along her arms. A phrase popped into her head with strange insistency, unlike the telepathic conversations she shared with Sasha, but not clearly of her own imagining: I’m hot for my girlfriend’s girlfriend. It sounded like something Sasha would say, but it also sounded like it might be a repressed memory of one of the countless lifestyle bumper stickers that had populated the bathrooms at the Swing Set.

Lucy rolled the phrase over in her head a few times before finally succumbing to sleep. The more she considered it, the more she liked it.

5.

Within the week, the media side of the grift was a runaway train. Apparently Sasha didn’t take into account the voracious appetite of the 24 hour news monster when it came to Christmas stories or how memes could spread across the internet in a matter of hours. The tale of their made up toy, Dancing Albatross Dolls, hit the news like a festive blizzard. Store owners promised they were looking into new sources of the coveted, but imaginary, toy, which Lucy supposed was probably truthful if not ill-informed. Busy bodies on the internet provided photo shopped pictures of a toy that didn’t exist, maps and apps for how to find one nearest to you, and even a few viral cartoons following the adventures of the Albatross. Where Lucy saw a potentially disastrous end to a con that had clearly gotten out of control, Sasha saw an ever growing take.

Spreading the word also left their control until parents were coming up to them on a daily basis giving Lucy, Lara, and Sasha misinformation about the toy and how important it was—apparently everyone knew someone who knew someone who had managed to buy the toy in time. Lucy almost couldn’t believe the publicity storm that blew in at the end of the week when protestors began organizing events to demand a boycott of Dancing Albatross Dolls since someone Tweeted that they were made in China; she suspected it was Sasha or one of her proxies. Sasha decided to give it a week and then have her blogger friends release a story stating the company agreed to move all production to America, turning all the protesters into potential customers.

Lucy began to wish there really was a toy. Almost every child she helped onto Santa’s lap asked for a Dancing Albatross Doll. She hadn’t thought she was a soft touch when it came to children or the holidays to that point, but she found herself regretting that it was a con.

In an ironic turn of events, the lead dayshift Santa was also the head of a middleman network that routinely profited off toy shortages around Christmas. Apparently Sasha wasn’t the first swindler to think the department store Santa game was a good way to get an inside track on the rare toy market. The Santas would keep an ear out for a sought after toy, find stockmen willing to set aside items in exchange for a cut, and then they would have the elves sell the toys out of the back of the workshop to the parents while their children sat on Santa’s lap. Duke, the lead Santa in the Christmas Cartel as he laughingly called it, seemed more than a little amused that the elves were suddenly bringing opportunities to him.

Lucy didn’t like this emerging aspect of the grift. Cons worked best on disorganized marks. A cartel, especially one with a strong central leader, even if it was comprised entirely of department store Santas, seemed like a dangerous group to cross with such an obvious trail back to the cons. Sasha shrugged this off as she did most things; she was a vampire—what did she care if Santa Claus was mad at her?

To add to Lucy’s unease about the ballooning scope of the grift and the nagging disappointment that she wasn’t really going to get to make tens of thousands of kids happy on Christmas morning, there was also the growing desire Lucy had for Lara and the phrase that had followed her like a mantra since the night it first popped into her head: I’m hot for my girlfriend’s girlfriend. There were several contexts the phrase would make sense in, but there was only one Lucy wanted it to be true of and she didn’t even dare fantasize about it, although she caught herself watching Lara hungrily at work whenever the opportunity arose. The elf costumes weren’t intended to be inherently sexy, but Lucy suspected there probably weren’t many articles of clothing that could hide Lara’s physical perfection. She was muscled in all the right places, athletic looking in the green spandex, and moved with an appealing little swagger that Lucy formerly admired, but now outright lusted after.

The Monday after the announcement went live about the toy’s manufacturing moving to America, and with Christmas still a week away, they were to meet up with Duke at a diner to set up the big exchange of money for orders. Duke seemed irritated that he wasn’t going to be the lone distributor, but Sasha assured him there was more than enough money to go around, and what did the Christmas Cartel care if a few small timers wet their beaks as well? It was all a calculated lie. There were a few small timers in the mix with Duke’s group, but his group wasn’t the only stop they had that night and some of the people in the other groups were fairly big fish in their own right. Duke countered by saying he wanted the usual cost of the elf distribution to come off the top of his price since he figured he shouldn’t have to pay Lucy and Lara to sell the toys out of the workshop after he bought the toys from them. Sasha agreed in principle, for the sake of the grift, although it clearly pissed her off since she knew they would skip town long before distribution and she really didn’t like haggling.

Lucy and Lara, having returned home to change in between, were back in front of Bloomingdale’s, waiting for Sasha to get off work. They were keeping each other entertained by pulling their mouths from their mufflers to blow steamy breath into the air one after the other and sometimes at the same time. Lucy had bundled against the cold, suspecting they might have to wait awhile since Sasha was likely going to use the store’s computer network to send a few emails regarding the toy’s distribution to make sure the IP addresses all checked out if someone was poking around to see who was behind the whole thing. Still, the frigid evening in New York was beginning to make its way through Lucy’s coat, scarf, and knit hat, and she hoped Sasha would hurry up before the steam puff game turned into something else.

“I’ve really enjoyed all this,” Lara said. “I like spending time with you both.”

Suddenly Lucy was feeling a little warmer. She hid her mouth deeper beneath her muffler to conceal her smile although she suspected her eyes gave her away. “Maybe you should come with us when we leave,” Lucy said, knowing full well what would come next would probably cross a line or two.

“To Miami?” Lara asked, taking a step closer to Lucy. “That might be fun too. You know, keep you company since I was beginning to wonder if you were planning on lying out in the sun by yourself.”

“Maybe I could spend my days poolside in a bikini with you and my nights on the town with Sasha.” Lucy heard the words come out of her mouth and in her voice, but she was positive she wasn’t the type of girl to suggest something like that—or at least she hoped she wasn’t.

“Getting tipsy on umbrella drinks and rubbing cocoa butter on…” Lara began, immediately cutting her sentence short when Sasha breezed out of the building.

The vampire Lady Winter seemed to draw life from the grift, becoming livelier with every passing night. She was practically doing a runway walk across the icy pavement in her stiletto heel boots adding a little toss of her head and a smile at Lucy and Lara.

“This is fast becoming my favorite holiday, ladies,” Sasha said. She slipped between Lucy and Lara, linking arms with them, one to each side, and then kissing them each on the cheek, first Lucy and then Lara. “I know it’s normally your gig, my darling, but I crunched a few numbers and it looks like I was a little off in my initial estimation of our take.”

They fell into a comfortable walk down the street, linked three abreast with a costume bedecked Sasha in the middle. Lucy had wondered about the numbers and how they might change based on the media wildfire.

“Double?” Lucy asked.

“Try a hundred a piece even after we hand out the bonuses to our supporting cast,” Sasha said. “I was thinking Miami could be a stop over on the way to Puerto Rico. A hundred thousand will go a long way in the Caribbean.”

“You’ve been to the Caribbean?” Lara asked.

“Nope, but I saw a special on the Travel Channel last week—do either of you speak Spanish?”

Lara giggled at Sasha’s comment, although Lucy knew it wasn’t a joke. “Now that you mention it,” Lucy began, hoping Sasha’s offhand comment would suffice as a transition to a delicate topic, “Lara and I were talking about her possibly coming with us.”

“Why wouldn’t she?” Sasha asked. “I guess I just assumed we’d all leave together.” Sasha pulled Lara in closer to her side and smiled a toothy smile replete with gleaming fangs. “You don’t have somewhere else you’d rather be, do you?”

“Puerto Rico sounds good to me,” Lara said. “Maybe we could open a bar on the beach…”

“…and scam the tourists fresh off the cruise ships,” Sasha agreed.

Unbidden, the phrase popped into Lucy’s head again: I’m hot for my girlfriend’s girlfriend.

6.

The faded 50s style diner had received a stainless steel makeover at one point, likely for an easier time of cleaning things, which gave the entire place a very industrial, sterile skin on top of a familiar form. The harsh fluorescent lighting didn’t do the place any favors and Lucy suspected the food, no matter how well it was plated, would likely look washed out and unappetizing in the mortuary style setting, which probably explained why there were only two customers in the place, neither of which were Santa Claus.

Lucy didn’t recognize Duke when they walked into the diner. Duke, who apparently only Sasha recognized out of his Santa costume, was sitting in the farthest booth from the door. He looked younger out of costume, thinner without the fat suit, and apparently didn’t really have a beard. His hair, which was obviously dyed for his work, was slicked back in the less formal setting. His strong jaw and pronounced brow, which were normally covered at work by what was a pretty amazing prosthetic hair work to make it look like he had a full beard and bushy eyebrows, looked far less jovial while nude under the diner’s stark lights.

The trio made their way across the diner single file with Lucy in the middle. Lara, walking directly in front of her, smelled like cold wool and a light white tea shampoo with an undertone of peppermint from the candy canes she’d been sneaking all day. There was something new and thrilling about cataloguing the mélange of scents of another woman that sent Lucy’s heart racing.

They slid into the booth opposite Duke with Lucy still in the middle. Duke sipped his coffee with slow, deliberate motions. Up close, under the strange lighting, it was difficult to tell exactly how old the man was. In fact, Lucy suspected the lights weren’t doing any of them any favors, except Sasha. For some reason the grosser the lighting, the more angelic vampires looked. Dressed in the Lady Winter costume, hair dusted with ice crystals from the walk, and the florescent lighting setting her skin in a chilly glow, Sasha looked inhumanly beautiful—a far stretch from the t-shirts, Capri pants, and messy hair of the girl Lucy had fallen in love with over a St. Louis summer. Suddenly Lucy felt guilty about the whole Lara thing; she did love Sasha, even if she’d never said it, and she knew proof positive how lucky she was to be with the vampire who was a lovely person in costume or out.

“I’ve been recruiting some new boys for this one,” Duke began. “Turns out you might know some of them, especially since their contact information came off a call list lifted from your girlfriend’s locker.” Duke took another sip of his coffee as if to let the information sink in. “No reason to make a bunch of stops—we can keep this all under one umbrella.”

Lucy could sense Sasha was angry; it was a tangible heat coming across their telepathic connection. Lucy was confused though—the call list had been in Lara’s locker. Did Duke think Sasha and Lara were an item?

“You can forget the discount for distribution pay of the elves then,” Sasha growled through clenched teeth.

“I figured you might feel that way, and normally I’d argue, but considering my pre-order sales are already triple what I thought they would be, I don’t see any reason to queer the deal over a couple grand in labor costs.”

“Pre-order?” Lucy protested. “You weren’t supposed to…”

“How else am I going to raise the money? If I had six figure stacks sitting around, do you think I’d be working at Bloomingdale’s?” Duke shoved something heavy across the floor with his foot until it bumped up against Lucy’s shoes. “That’s the two-fifths of a mil we talked about. Think of it this way—I just saved you a cab ride out to Brooklyn.” Duke stood from the table, flicked a couple bucks onto the steel top, and walked out whistling Here Comes Santa Claus.

Lucy assumed that Duke assumed they were stunned and angry about him collecting all of their would-be clients under his lone distribution network, but that didn’t even blip on Lucy’s radar.

“You fucking knew,” Lucy hissed at Sasha. “You knew he would have to take pre-orders.”

“I also knew you wouldn’t go along with it if I told you that upfront,” Sasha said. “We’ve got the money early and without even involving Auntie.”

“She’s actually going to be kind of crushed about that,” Lara said. “She loves acting.”

“We’re still going to pay her the five percent and she can buy her way onto a Broadway cast with the cash,” Sasha said. “Lucy, baby, the angry parents are going to be Duke’s problem and the disappointed kids are going to be the angry parents’ problem. It’s all on someone else’s plate and we’re in Puerto Rico in time for Feliz Navidad.”

“Fine, whatever, but you get to break the news to Auntie,” Lucy said. “Alone.”

Sasha seemed ready for the bad reaction and probably even had a few plans to try to make things right with Lucy. She slipped from the booth and tried her innocent, Bavarian peasant girl smile, which Lucy pretended not to see.

“Okay, I’ll go take care of that right now.” Sasha gingerly placed a couple twenties on the table. “Dinner’s on me.” She held her hands up to only shoulder level and let out a little ‘woo hoo!’ cheer. “We did it.” When neither Lara nor Lucy responded, she took her leave.

Lucy and Lara sat in silence on the same side of the booth, staring at Duke’s half drunk cup of coffee, feeling the weight of nearly a half a million dollars in a duffel bag against their toes.

“I guess I don’t get to be a plant anymore,” Lara said glumly.

“Yeah, that would have been fun.”

“I don’t know if it helps, but his real name is Marmaduke,” Lara offered. “The friend who got us the jobs is a bit of a talker when she’s had a few egg nogs.”

“I can see why he goes by Duke,” Lucy said, “but he’s not who I’m mad at.”

“I’m sorry,” Lara said. “I thought being in the dark on details was part of the game. Does she do this a lot? The acting unilaterally thing?”

“No…well, yes, but usually it’s on the fly. It makes sense when it’s improvisation under pressure, but she clearly thought this one through,” Lucy said. “She lied to me and hid things from me during our telepathic sessions.”

“I’ve never dated a vampire, but that sounds like a pretty big betrayal.”

It was, and it was a transgression Lucy was guilty of as well. She’d kept more than a few things hidden from Sasha in respect to how she’d been feeling about Lara recently. Still, she hadn’t lied, perhaps lies of omission, but that wasn’t the same thing as the out-and-out lie Sasha had told…but that wasn’t true either—thinking back, Sasha had chosen her words carefully when addressing Lucy’s concerns to say just enough to let her believe what she wanted to. It was almost like she was dating a polished con artist.

“She may have had a contingency plan for Duke, but she couldn’t have one for what we’re about to do. We have a lot of work tonight and we can’t do it on an empty stomach.” Lucy reached across Lara to grab one of the menus from the wire catch-all hopper containing salt, pepper, ketchup, and sweetener packets. She paused as the reaching brought their bodies into nearly flush contact. Their proximity elicited the same heady combination of Lara’s scents that Lucy had enjoyed on the walk in and she forgot herself in the moment of weakness laced with a healthy dose of anger at Sasha.

“Do you want to date us?” she asked, fairly certain it was the best way of a lot of bad ways to ask someone if they would be interested in polyamory.

“You and Sasha? At the same time?” Lara asked, barely above a whisper.

Lucy nodded.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Lara said with a wide smile.

7.

The work of the night couldn’t have gotten off the ground were it not from the help of Lara and her aunt along with liberal greasing of wheels with the cash from the duffel bag. One phone call in the pre-dawn hours with a grumpy response, which quickly galvanized to motivated excitement when the exact nature of the call was explained followed another and another right up the line until word of Lucy’s unilateral plan reached the right people to make things happen. In the process, Lucy picked up a new phrase to cherish from one of the incredulous new participants in the grift: “What is this, the 1980s? Anything can be done in a week for the right price.” She loved that the pre-internet 1980s had somehow become the Dark Ages in how long it took to get things done.

The last call, the one to put all the work into motion couldn’t be made until the copyright office opened in the morning. Lucy slid into bed next to Sasha a slim half hour before sunrise. She wasn’t mad at Sasha anymore, although Sasha didn’t know that yet. The all-nighter she’d pulled changing the grift drastically combined with the knowledge that soon she would be the one apologizing sucked all the wind out of Lucy’s grudge-holding sails. She was reticent to talk to Sasha, telepathically or otherwise, but not because of a smoldering anger.

Lucy reached a hand through the bedding until she found Sasha’s. They interlaced fingers, lying on their backs, staring up at the ceiling as far from one another as the tiny double bed air mattress would allow.

I asked Lara something tonight that involves you, Lucy thought to Sasha.

So you do want to go through with it? Sasha replied.

Of course she knew. Sasha was a vampire and Lucy wasn’t particularly good at keeping secrets from girlfriends even the ones who didn’t have telepathic access to her mind.

Only if you want to, Lucy thought, which was the prepared statement she’d carefully crafted the entire night.

Sure, I’m hot for my girlfriend’s girlfriend, Sasha thought to her. I know how incomplete a human and vampire relationship can be for the human, but let’s make it clear that we are all equal and we’re going to truly date her beforehand. If we’re going to do this, we have to do it right because I can’t lose you in the process.

You won’t, Lucy thought and meant it. The threat of jealousy didn’t dissipate under the idealized rules laid out by Sasha, but Lucy suspected things wouldn’t be as strange if everyone was equally jealous of everyone else—or maybe that was just the exhaustion setting in. Like the final phone call, Lucy thought the news of Sasha’s acceptance of the situation could wait until morning. She drifted off to sleep, still holding Sasha’s hand, a moment before the sun began creeping through the frosty cityscape.

8.

Lucy knew it wouldn’t be all peaches and cream, but she had to admit, going through the exciting portion of a new romance without losing the comfort and stability of an established one felt like having her girlfriend and being eaten too…she wrinkled her nose at the awkwardness of the thought and decided she would need to revise it before she shared it with Sasha and Lara.

Lucy and Lara had finished up the last couple of phone calls required for the drastic change in direction of the grift already and were sitting at the tiny kitchen table, waiting for the coffee to finish percolating, playing footsy to kill time. Lucy was quickly becoming obsessed with the symmetry of Lara’s dimples. She had the cutest ones on her cheeks with a matching tiny one on her chin so faint it could only be accurately seen up close. Lucy suspected she had equally attractive ones above her ass as well.

“You’re blushing,” Lara said. “What are you thinking about?”

Then there was that element Lucy had nearly forgotten about—Lara couldn’t read her mind. If she wanted to, she could keep secrets. Still, she didn’t want to start things out by lying to her. “I was admiring your dimples,” she said.

“And that made you blush?”

“The ones above your ass.”

“Oh, those.” Lara smiled warmly, but seemed a little nervous when she stood to walk across the kitchen to the coffeepot.

Lucy followed suit and walked to the opposite side of the tiny kitchen to collect the mugs. When she turned around Lara was standing facing the coffeepot as expected, but she’d pulled up the back of her night shirt far enough to display the dimples above her shockingly shapely behind. Lucy had thought it was probably spectacular from the times she’d seen it in tight jeans, leather pants, and even the elf costume, but none of that had prepared her for how truly remarkable Lara’s ass was until she saw it in the cold light of morning, on display just for her, in white, cotton boy cut shorts.

“I hope you’re blushing now too, because I can actually feel my cheeks getting warmer,” Lucy said.

Lara let her shirt drop. “Funny, mine were actually getting a little chilly.”

Lucy stepped to Lara’s side, close enough for their arms to brush against each other as they set about preparing their coffees: Lucy took hers with a little cream until it matched the skin tone on the back of her hand while Lara liked hers black with a couple Splenda packets.

“What can I expect in terms of courtship from you two?” Lara asked.

“Wild nights tearing up the city followed by quiet mornings not unlike this one,” Lucy said. “You’ll probably also have to get used to a few vampire mind tricks.”

“Like what?”

Lucy grinned and shook her head. “That’ll be for you and Sasha to work out.”

“Is she going to bite me? Drink my blood? Make me her midnight snack?”

“Only if you want her to,” Lucy said, “but if she does one time, you’ll definitely want her to again and again.”

She was having fun, a lot of fun, and it was only the first morning. And then it hit her: she was going to have someone to have morning coffee with! She loved the ritual of waking up and preparing for the day with someone. She’d almost forgotten that it was a tiny creature comfort provided by relationships that didn’t really translate to any rituals she and Sasha had at sundown.

“I don’t doubt that. But is she going to be mad about what we did?” Lara asked.

“She doesn’t get mad,” Lucy said with a little shrug. “I don’t know if it’s a vampire thing or just her personality, but she’s about as even tempered of a person as you’re likely to find, which I always thought was remarkable considering how impulsive and spontaneous she is.”

“Can I tell you a secret?” Lara asked, smiling above the rim of her coffee mug before taking a sip.

“I wish you would.” Lucy matched her surprisingly conspiratorial pose.

“It broke my heart when you started dating her,” Lara said. “I was crazy about you the entire time we were bartending together.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Lucy really hoped Lara wasn’t joking or even exaggerating; she was dead certain it would break her heart if it was all a goof. Lara was so beautiful, so confident, so popular, and so sought after, or at least that was the perception Lucy had of her when they were working at the Swing Set. Even the gay waiters made jokes that she was the one woman they could picture themselves going straight for—knowing that Lara was pining for Lucy the entire time seemed inconceivable.

“You were so unhappy. I didn’t want to get lumped into the rough patch of your life as a co-commiserator. I thought if I waited until things turned around a little for you, we’d have a better chance. I didn’t even stop to think that the thing that would turn it around for you was a woman and that the woman wouldn’t be me. Plus, if I’d dated you and couldn’t make you happy, I would have felt like a total failure.”

“I can’t imagine how you could have failed at that.”

“Easy to say now, but you should have seen yourself when you and Sasha started dating. I swear the sun shone only on you.”

“She has a way of making you feel that way,” Lucy said. “You’ll see what I mean.”

“You’re not too bad in that department either,” Lara said. “I can see it in Sasha and feel it for myself.” Lara made a tentative pass at brushing her hand down Lucy’s arm.

The timidity of the attempt at intimacy tickled Lucy in a delightful little way. She stifled the accompanying nervous laugh, stood on her tip toes, and gave Lara a light peck on her coffee flavored lips.

A fine blush finally colored the tops of Lara’s high cheekbones. “So, are we still going to have enough money left to make it to Puerto Rico?”

“Maybe, but not by much and no where near enough to buy a bar,” Lucy said.

“Fine by me,” Lara said. “But I’m dying to do some bikini shopping.”

Lucy gulped down a larger mouthful of coffee than she’d intended, nearly burning her throat in the process. “Can I help?”

9.

Sasha blew off work that night fully believing the money and grift were literally in the bag. No need to go back to the store and risk a run in with Duke when they didn’t have to as she explained it to Lara and Lucy. Instead, they went out to the swankiest, hottest, and busiest lesbian dance club on the East Side, which turned out to be pretty easy to find since it was the only one. Getting through the exclusive velvet rope cattle run was child’s play since they were now a polyamorous triple consisting of a blond vampire, an Asian femme, and a statuesque stem with facial piercings and spiky hair.

Lucy and Lara drank liberally the entire evening while Sasha took nibbles of their necks from time to time to get her alcohol secondhand through their veins. Lucy found she enjoyed the act of being fed upon almost equally to watching Sasha nuzzled into Lara’s neck and the look of ecstasy it painted across Lara’s face. She hadn’t fancied herself a voyeur, but she believed her two lovely girlfriends could easily convert her in time.

They danced in a close cluster, feeling the crush of women part around them as the other dancers transformed into an audience. The buzz of alcohol, the heady success of the grift, and the high of a newly formed bond between the three of them swirled through them like a potent drug. Sasha gathered all three minds together, pulling their focus to her in a telepathic net. Lucy and Lara allowed themselves to be mentally drawn into Sasha’s world where the recreation of Sasha and Lucy’s first telepathically shared fantasy was recreated for the three of them. Baby oil, a circular bed, and a lot of deliciously teasing and rubbing of body parts washed over them. Lucy thought she should have felt a twinge of jealousy in having the fantasy shared, but as soon as Lara took her place in it, Lucy decided it had always missed her and was finally complete. Lucy knew she was probably on the verge of screaming her pleasure in the waking world as she and Lara rubbed themselves lewdly along Sasha’s oily legs in the fantasy world, but she didn’t care. In a couple days they would be out of the city never to see any of the people again.

They were allowed to finish their kinky little show verbalizing orgasms while dancing, which struck Lucy as a little strange considering bouncers hauled them from the club almost immediately after. If the club owners really had that big of a problem with the display of three women orgasming while dancing, she thought they probably wouldn’t have let it culminate in the screaming climax it did—besides, it’s not like they weren’t fully clothed the entire time. The New York lesbian audience appeared split on the issue—some scowled, some applauded, but clearly nobody missed the show. The trio was unceremoniously ushered back onto the streets in a giggling, intoxicated mass.

“That was bound to happen sooner or later,” Sasha said.

“Do you two do this often?” Lara asked.

“We don’t set out to, but now that you mention it, yes, we do end up being inadvertent exhibitionists sometimes.” Lucy liked the strength Sasha provided in their relationship. They could be liberal with their PDA, flagrantly so in some cases, and Lucy knew nobody would say anything to them—not hurling anti-gay slurs at someone who could hurl the speaker into the next state apparently was a survival skill even the most ardent bigots possessed. Of course, Lucy knew that wasn’t Sasha’s style; she was far more likely to mentally dominate someone into diving into the nearest dumpster while singing show tunes than actually physically hurt them. Still, Lucy was glad for the protective quality Sasha created for their relationship. Lucy cuddled drunkenly to Sasha’s side, giving her an intense kiss on the neck. “She keeps the riff-raff away.”

“Riff-raff like an army of Santas?” Lara asked.

10.

Lucy and Sasha pulled themselves out of their canoodling to give Lara a puzzled look. “That’s an oddly specific example,” Sasha said.

Lara pointed across the street to where an army of Santa Clauses did indeed appear to be waiting for them to emerge from the club. At their head, in the more recognizable beard and belly like a bowl full of jelly, stood Duke.

“How did he know to get mad?” Sasha slurred. “We weren’t supposed to fuck him over until day after tomorrow.”

“Lara and I kind of moved that up,” Lucy said sheepishly.

“Can you just tell me what that means?” Sasha asked. “My mind is still too stuck on baby oil to properly dig it out of your brain.”

“The toy is real,” Lara said, “or at least it will be by Friday.”

“We changed the grift to a long term business scam with Auntie as the front,” Lucy said. “Lara’s friend at Bloomingdale’s jumped it up the chain at the store and they set it all up with a local manufacturer to get things started. The transfer of copyright will go through tomorrow and we’ll be 10% royalty collectors.”

“And the cash?” Sasha asked.

“Mostly gone,” Lara said. “We had to grease a few palms and put up 10% of the startup capital to get the royalty deal.”

“And the bloggers?” Sasha asked.

“Paid off in Bloomingdale’s stock,” Lucy said.

“Should we be worried that they’re armed?” Lara pointed across the street to the approaching army of Kris Kringles who did indeed appear to have a few tire irons interspersed among them.

“I’d be mad if this wasn’t an even better take over the long run,” Sasha said, “but still, you know how I feel about the long grift.”

“Um…guys…” Lara pointed to the approaching small gang of Santas who were well across the street and nearly in tire iron swinging range.

“I know, and believe me, I took that into consideration, but that’s why we have the front—to make things a little more legit,” Lucy said. “And really, this thing will blow itself out before anyone goes digging into anything too carefully.”

Lara took several steps back but stopped when the entire group of two dozen Santas froze in their tracks. They looked for all the world like store display mannequins in their stillness. When she took a step toward them to see if they had actually frozen, the armed few dropped their weapons and the entire group shifted in unison into the ready position for a dance routine.

“Duke,” Sasha said with a sticky-sweet grin, “thank your North Pole riding god that I’m a lover and not a fighter.” Sasha glanced from the Santa she’d thought was Duke to several other faces. “Wait, which one of you is Duke?”

One of the Stantas in the middle of the pack tried to raise his hand against the thrall, finally pulling it up to almost waist level. Sasha rolled her eyes and changed her focus to the newly identified leader of the Christmas Cartel. “I didn’t know what they were doing,” she told him, “but even if I had, I probably would have gone ahead with it. And I guess I was going to screw you over anyway. You know what? It’s not important. In the spirit of the season, I’m going to make this up to you. Or, to be more specific, I’m going to help you make things up to you.” Sasha strolled back past Lucy and Lara whispering something to each before taking her place at the head of the Santa formation.

Lucy and Lara jumped into action. Lara sought out a milk crate from a nearby alley while Lucy gathered up as many people as she could from the line trying to enter the club, promising a Santa Claus flash mob. The appearance of forty or so people collected to watch two dozen Santas quickly drew in other gawkers to see what was going on.

“Okay everyone,” Lucy shouted to the crowd, “you can’t expect them to dance without music. Let’s start things off with Jingle Bells. Lucy and Lara walked through the crowd, singing the song until they had a proper sing along of several dozen people caroling in the street.

The Santas, under Sasha’s expert guidance, started off with a lively River Dance, stomping their shiny black boots and bouncing their large bellies. As the song died down, Lucy and Lara shifted up the Christmas carol mix with a little Frosty the Snowman. Sasha accordingly changed the dancing Santa line into a lively square dance. One more shift of the singing to O’ Holy Night and the Santas paired up for a slow and beard entangling waltz. All the while, Sasha stood at the front of the group, dancing along, occasionally turning to smile and bat flirty eyelashes at the audience to keep them encouraged. Lucy marveled at her girlfriend’s creativity, spontaneity, and absolute fearlessness.

“If you liked the show, and we know you did,” Lucy shouted to the crowd as the singing dissolved into applause, “give them a little something for the cause. Flying all those toys down from the North Pole isn’t cheap.”

Lara picked up the milk crate and shoved it into Duke’s hands which were slowly coming back under his own control as Sasha began releasing the dazed and panting Santas.

Before the trio could get caught up between the flash mob fans intent on dropping tip money into the crate and the Christmas Cartel who didn’t seem remotely happy about being made to dance for money, Sasha scooped up Lara and Lucy, one under each arm, took two bounding steps covering half a city block and jumped onto a bus passing by on one of the major cross streets, effectively leaving the angry army of Santas well behind with no hope of catching up.

It all zipped by too quickly for Lucy’s brain to really process what happened. She had a sensation similar to being on a roller coaster mixed with the oddly familiar feeling of being carried like a sack of potatoes, which was how her father had carried her as a child sometimes when playing, and then she was flying through the air with the street whizzing by a good twenty feet below followed by a remarkably soft landing on the top of a moving bus.

Lucy thrilled at the cold air blowing past them as the bus sped further uptown with its three stowaways huddled together on the roof. It was really the first time she’d ever experienced Sasha doing anything truly superhuman. There were the mental tricks, the occasional moving faster than human eyes could follow, but to truly experience moving the way a vampire could was thrilling and frightening all at once.

“How did we get on the bus?” Lara asked, looking a little queasy from a combination of too many vodka tonics and a very sudden external bus ride.

“Sasha saved us,” Lucy said, practically cooing the explanation up into Sasha’s face. She pulled herself up the front of Sasha’s coat and kissed her firmly on the lips. “I’m sorry for not telling you.”

“Yeah, we’re sorry,” Lara said before throwing up over the side of the bus. “Did I tell you guys that I get motion sick pretty easily?”

“Good information to have for the second date,” Lucy said with a little snicker.

“Did you have as much fun as we did?” Sasha asked of Lara who looked like she felt a lot better after throwing up.

“I did, throwing up and almost being assaulted by a gang of Santas not withstanding,” Lara replied.

“Up for another?” Lucy asked.

“I’m not giving up on this one yet,” Lara said with a wry smirk. “Just let me brush my teeth first.”

11.

Lara pointed out, and Lucy and Lara agreed wholeheartedly, that mental fantasies, even with corresponding orgasms, weren’t the same as real flesh and blood sex. Apparently, Sasha had planned for this eventuality and produced a keycard to a hotel room at the Manhattan Hilton.

“It was spendy to get a suite, but I booked it when I thought our take was going to be bigger up front,” Sasha explained. “Still, it’d be a shame to waste it.”

Since the bus clearly wasn’t going to take them to the hotel, they jumped off the roof at the next stop and caught a cab back up town. It really was all Lucy could do to keep her hands off Lara and Sasha during the ride. She was once again in the unfortunate position of sitting between them in the cab’s cozy backseat and neither of her girlfriends appeared to be in the mood to let the cab ride pass in silence. Lucy didn’t know how the game of naughty telephone began, although she suspected Sasha was talking to Lara telepathically. Almost immediately after the cab pulled away from the curb, Lara whispered something wicked into Lucy’s ear, telling her to pass it on.

Lucy leaned over to the waiting and expectant Sasha and whispered in her ear, “Lara wants to undress you with her teeth.”

Sasha smiled and whispered back, “Once she has, I want to play with myself while I watch you two undress each other—pass it on.”

And so it continued through several blocks of slow holiday evening traffic with Lucy acting as the conduit of intensely sexual thoughts passing between Lara and Sasha. By the time they pulled up in front of the hotel, the verbal sexual acts had reached completion a dozen times over and both of Lucy’s ears were tingling from the gentle kissing and licking that began to accompany the secrets.

They raced through the checking in process and up to the room. Lucy couldn’t remember the last time she was as turned on and frustrated as she was in that moment—drenched didn’t begin to describe her situation. They were barely into the room with the door closing as an afterthought, when Sasha and Lara pounced her. Apparently, all the telephone game plans were tentative when what they really wanted was to co-ravage Lucy first.

No sooner had Lucy finished an insanely intense and cold kiss with Sasha then did Lara turn her face to share an equally powerful, but this time incredibly warm kiss with her. Her clothes were partially removed by Lara and mostly torn off by Sasha in short order. She was practically carried to the bed, placed once again between them while lying down. Lucy tried desperately to undress Sasha as well, resuming their passionate kiss to slow the process, but Lara clearly wasn’t to be left out. Lara’s hands found their way around Lucy’s hips, down between her legs, and began gently caressing Lucy’s drenched lips with talented, soft fingers. By the time Lucy had Sasha undressed, she was well on her way to a powerful orgasm, but Sasha wasn’t cooperating on that yet either, instead rolling her to undress Lara as well. Lucy turned as directed, accepting Lara’s kiss and beginning her work on Lara’s clothes. Sasha’s hands, which Lucy had hoped would follow Lara’s example, instead took a teasing, meandering route across her breasts and shoulders followed closely by Sasha’s fangs trailing little nibbles along the ticklish parts of Lucy’s neck.

Lucy wasn’t about to take the teasing lying on her side, and she was also having a little trouble getting Lara’s skin tight jeans all the way off. She broke the kiss, let out a little growl and pushed Lara fully onto her back. She grasped Lara’s partially removed jeans and roughly tugged them the rest of the way down her long legs, hurling them off the edge of the bed, glad to finally have them out of the way.

Sasha snuggled up to Lara’s side with her fangy, smug grin. “I think she’s about to snap from all this teasing,” Sasha whispered into Lara’s ear although her eyes never left Lucy’s. As if on cue, Lara’s hand grasped Sasha’s wrist and guided it down the front of her black, satiny panties.

Lucy was momentarily mesmerized by the two hands playing with Lara’s pussy beneath the shiny satin fabric. She was about to snap, and she did want some aggressive contact, but she also really wanted to see what Sasha and Lara’s hands were doing under there. She grasped the waistband of Lara’s underwear, surprised when no one stopped her in pulling them down. It was everything she hoped. Lara had the tiniest ball hoop piercing on the hood of her clit and apparently she and Sasha had been having a little fun playing back and forth with it using their index and middle fingers. Lucy vaguely remembered Lara mentioning she had piercings that didn’t always show, but to actually see what she meant blew what she’d imagined out of the water.

“You made all this possible,” Sasha whispered.

“And we want to make sure that you know we’re grateful,” Lara added.

Lucy’s heart melted at the mutual compliment. Lara and Sasha reached for her simultaneously, pulling her down between them, rolling her onto her back and then sliding down between her legs together. Lucy propped herself up on her elbows to watch with rapt attention. With her legs spread wide enough to accommodate both women, they explored all the avenues of licking and sucking at things two women could do at once. To say it felt better or different than a single mouth couldn’t possibly cover what Lucy experienced. She held herself up as long as possible to continue watching their mouths working in tandem to lick at every part of her. When it all became too intense, she dropped back to the bed and felt her hands down to their hair, lacing her fingers through their hair, one to each hand. She climaxed in a moaning, writhing jumble, but they pressed on, their tongues playing equally well to tickle her clit in ways one tongue simply couldn’t. Her orgasms came in quick succession after the floodgates broke until she became too sensitive to stand anymore stimulation and she pulled away.

She slithered up onto the pillows in her post orgasm daze, glancing down to the foot of the bed through sparkling eyes at her two girlfriends. Sasha and Lucy were sitting with their legs tucked under, cuddled close to each other, gently caressing each other with exploring hands. Not a drop of jealousy colored what Lucy watched.

“Don’t think you get to turn voyeur,” Sasha said as her hand made it down between Lara’s legs. “We still need your help.”

“Take a minute to recover, but then you have to join us,” Lara said, her hand following suit as it disappeared between Sasha’s legs.

Sasha laughed and nipped at Lara’s neck. “There’s no way she can wait that long.”

Lucy waited all of five seconds before rejoining them and that five seconds wasn’t spent recovering; rather, she took the time to marvel at how lucky she was and think of a few ways to make sure Sasha and Lara knew how much she appreciated both of them.

12.

Lucy glanced over the rims of her sunglasses at the family across from her in the airport terminal. The little girl was happily bouncing a Dancing Albatross Doll on her sleeping mother’s forehead. She thought, with no small sense of satisfaction, that the parents must have been part of the original grift since those were the only customers to get the preferred early release of the toy before Christmas Eve. Lucy was glad to find she actually did feel as accomplished as she’d hoped she would by playing a small part in making children happy, especially since she’d made a nice profit on the whole thing.

Their layover in Atlanta hadn’t been a complete waste since the red eye was the only flight they could safely take with Sasha and Lucy needed the change of pace to keep from falling asleep on the airplane, which always left her feeling disjointed and strange upon landing. Plus, it was the first opportunity to really take a breath and enjoy the fruits of their labor which were beginning to pop up everywhere. Television ads for the Dancing Albatross Doll were playing throughout the airport, featuring Auntie Albatross, creator of the toy, in a matronly feathered gown, explaining how she couldn’t have brought the adorable bird to life if it weren’t for the help of her three mischievous elf assistants. In the commercial the trio was played by three computer animated little men with beards, which was about the only part Lucy didn’t like.

Lara and Sasha returned from wherever they’d gotten off to, sitting to either side of Lucy. “Hopefully this will help with Auntie’s acting cravings,” Lucy said, nodding in the direction of the nearest television monitor.

“She’s going to be insufferable is more like it,” Lara said as she slipped off her shoes, exchanging them with flats from her carryon bag.

Lucy glanced from one of her girlfriends to the other. Lara was bundled in a trench coat buttoned up to her neck to conceal her clothes beneath, and Sasha was discreetly counting a wad of cash behind the cover of her purse. “You two didn’t…” Lucy muttered.

“We thought you could use a break from the scams,” Lara said.

“Plus this one was a two woman job,” Sasha added.

As they collected their things to begin preferred boarding for first class, an announcement came over the airport intercom, “No airline is offering reduced checked bag fees for cash payments in ticketing lines. Do not give your luggage to anyone but an approved ticketing agent at a designated ticketing counter.”

They showed their boarding passes on the way down the causeway to the jet for the last leg of their trip to Puerto Rico. Lucy thought she caught a glimpse of a blue flight attendant uniform skirt beneath the edge of Lara’s jacket when she reached up to put her carryon in the overhead compartment.

As they settled into their seats, once again with Lucy in the middle, she leaned over to Lara and whispered, “What did you do with the bags?”

“Left them at a TSA station,” Lara whispered back.

“Without being seen?” Lucy asked.

“The TSA officials were too distracted by a rather large group of businessmen doing the hustle,” Sasha explained with a devil-may-care wink. “Now, who wants to join the mile high club?”

Lucy didn’t think they could all fit in one of the airplane bathrooms at the same time, but she thought it might be fun to try. She had a sneaking, but thrilling, suspicion that they would probably be kicked out of Puerto Rico at some point—an island that small couldn’t possibly handle the three of them.

“I’m game if you are,” Lucy said, turning to Lara.

“Merry Christmas to us,” Lara said, downing a mini bottle of vodka she’d smuggled off the last plane. “I’m in!”

About the Author

Cassandra Duffy spent most of her childhood being precocious, which stopped being entertaining or impressive when she grew into an adult, at which point she had to start being precious. After being an outcast child prodigy it was no surprise when she graduated from one of the many fine University of California schools a year early to follow her girlfriend in a cross country move.

She writes a free-lance sex advice column found in various lesbian magazines and dating websites. Her short story collections and novels can be found on her website at http://cassandra-duffy.com/.

Two of her greatest prides are being a native California girl and author of some truly naughty things. She is a dutiful partially-Asian daughter who is beloved by her fairly traditional Korean father who thinks having a gay daughter is just fine as long as she keeps playing coed flag football. She is a stereotypical younger sister, and an adoring aunt of a hilarious little boy. Being a modern techno-freak, gamer-girl, she spent most of her childhood dreaming of being a video game designer, but changed her mind and brought her dreams of world building and story-weaving to writing unique romance novels.

Cassandra is a gleefully monogamous girlfriend to an earthbound goddess who was once her high school bully, but has done a magnificent job of making up for all the school girl nastiness ever since. When she isn't being an avid fang girl (vampire fan girl) or tormenting people in online gaming, she lives and writes in Winter Park, Florida with her partner and soul mate Nichole and their two cats: Dragon and Josephine.

Table of Contents

1 - Auntie on an Old Futon

2 - Two Scamming Elves

3 - French Kisses

4 - Festive Fantasies

5 - Five-fingered Discounts!

6 - Plots-a-hatchin’

7 - Cons-a-conning

8 - Vampires-a-nibbling

9 - Santas Dancing

10 - Ladies-a-leaping

11 - Naughty Games of Telephone

12 - Minutes in Heaven

Table of Contents

1 - Auntie on an Old Futon

2 - Two Scamming Elves

3 - French Kisses

4 - Festive Fantasies

5 - Five-fingered Discounts!

6 - Plots-a-hatchin’

7 - Cons-a-conning

8 - Vampires-a-nibbling

9 - Santas Dancing

10 - Ladies-a-leaping

11 - Naughty Games of Telephone

12 - Minutes in Heaven