Erin had no idea what Susan had gotten into, but it wasn’t entirely clear that she was acting under her own power. She might not have noticed at all if she hadn't been a recent student of the mana stream, but between the shift in Susan's attitude and the amount of power being demonstrated, she had to be cautious.

Now, with the dozens of outfits menacingly facing her, caution had to be replaced with action.

“Hey, are you doing this?” Erin motioned to the outfits with her hands as she silently took in a mental picture of the mana surrounding her. It had an almost concussive effect, similar to the feeling she got in the second-hand shop the day before.

“Not exactly,” Susan said. Whatever the clothes intentions were with her daughter, she didn't seem concerned in the least. “But I'm also not going to try and stop it.” Susan turned around and started back up the stairs.

“Mom, the magic you're unleashing here is going to end up calling the shots in this house! You get that, right?” Sue stopped on the stairs for a moment, slowly turning to show Erin a wide grin.

“House, girl? You know we've already gone way beyond that.” Girl? We've? Whatever her mother did, it was clear she wasn't the one talking. More importantly, whatever was talking had plans, and it didn't seem likely that they were going to consider negotiation. Now Erin had to do more than bring her mother back to her senses. She had to prevent her from causing a massive magical outbreak.

Erin's first thought was of the leather gloves in her purse. They'd been dispelled, but if Erin recharged them herself...

Her purse was about the only thing in the room that didn't blind her ethereal eyes. She jolted the gloves to life, charging them with her mana but granting them autonomy with a sub-vocal utterance. By the time she felt soft fabric sleeves at her shoulders, it was too late to try to fight through the outfits in front of her or dodge the clothes at her sides. There were too many of them, and if Erin was going to win, brute force tactics weren't going to cut it—physically or magically.

She did nothing to stop the enchanted clothes from grabbing a hold of her. Whatever move she was going to make, it couldn't be wasted on imprecise flailing. The fabric tendrils tangling around her were so strong, but so deceptively gentle. As she looked around at her ghostly captors, she realized that almost none of the clothes were hers.

It only took her another second to realize that the couple of dancing items that were hers were the same ones that Susan would habitually borrow—a sweater here, a leather jacket across the room, a pair of ankle boots Erin didn't much care about...

Her room. If Erin could get to her room, there would be a bunch of clothes to recruit as backup. If she could recharge the gloves and the outfit she had on, she could do more—just not remotely. The mana of Susan and Andy's enchanted items was so dense that she couldn't ethereally navigate through them.

The ghostly outfits pulled Erin into the living room, led by a professional skirt-suit she'd never seen before. They placed her in front of the coffee table, and the skirt-suit bobbed aside. In front of her stood two fuzzy pink slippers.

“I'm not sure what you did with her,” Erin said, “Or what she may have done to encourage you, but if you all behave yourselves and cooperate with me, we can forget this happened.”

All the clothes erupted into pantomimed laughter—outfits and lone items alike. Skirts, pants, shirts and blouses shuffled aside behind the fuzzy slippers, dividing before Erin and opening a path to an overturned witch's hat, hovering in space.

The hat hovered closer, stopping as floated over the top of the pink slippers. Erin reached a hand toward the opening of her purse, being as subtle about the motion as possible. As she did, velvety black fingers began to rise out of the overturned hat. A second set of fingers fluttered out a second later, and now, black hands in fine, glossy fuzz rose out of the hat like magic.

Once the opera-length gloves left the hat entirely, the ghostly velvet arms directed themselves at Erin. One pointed at her and then swept its finger away, throwing her purse off her shoulder and out of the living room entirely. It landed back near the staircase at the entryway.

Erin looked at her discarded purse, and then back at the gloves. Now the hat hovered higher and turned itself upright. Something black and shear fell out of the hat as it did, and instead of tumbling to the floor, it unfurled in the air and puffed out to a thin shear black gown. Now coordinated as if they were worn by a shapely phantom woman, the hat, gloves, gown and slippers took a step toward Erin.

The gloves both pointed at Erin's chest and made a sweeping motion. Erin jumped a little at the baby blue fabric on her sweater pulled up around her torso. When she moved her hands to stop it, her sleeves locked, and the soft blue fabric stopped trying to pull free.

Erin shuddered, feeling the tightening fabric pucker around her breasts. The velvet gloves waved like inky streaks, and her denim skirt went loose around her as it snapped open and unzipped on its own. The skirt fell to the floor, but now the black pantyhose rippled over her hips, dancing the sensation over her thighs and down her legs.

Whatever they'd done to her mother, Erin guessed it had to have been with her compliance—in one way or another. After the strange mana shock wave hit the gloves, they tried to force Erin in reading a passage. Since this was the source of the energy, Erin could only guess they'd try to make her do the same. Judging by the behavior Erin saw, they must've succeeded.

Now Erin was was at their mercy, being stripped by this unnamed, bodiless yet lust-hungry enchantment, her will confused with sensation as her erogenous zones were teased and massaged by living clothing. The clothes took turns with their powers of touch as they worked their way off of her, but as soon as they lost contact, their enchantment ceased. When the sweater fell to the floor, her tee took over. When that flung itself off her and landed somewhere, her nipples were tweaked and pulled by the enchanted cups of her bra.

Luckily, she'd been training herself in being in two places at once. While the enchanted forces worked her body over like a living toy, she held her focus on the leather gloves sitting in her purse across the room. As her tanga panties slid back and forth, teasing over her clit, the gloves in the purse clinched their fingers.

No wonder her mother gave in. This was unrelenting and insistent, but—so precise. She held focus as best as she could, her body shuddering pleasure as she tried to separate her flesh and blood nerves from her ethereal control over the gloves.

They felt tingly, but she could move them. She sneaked them out of the purse, shuffling the gloves across the floor and toward the staircase. They passed over Erin's now-limp tee, and Erin felt a different kind of jolt—almost like a conductive energy. It was held in the shirt, but—could she still charge it?

“Mmmm--fuck me...” Erin held her hands out to her sides, encouraging the affections of her enchanted underwear and giving up any sign that she was fighting. Now Erin was approached by the witch's outfit. It stood directly in front of her, its invisible bust filling the shear chest of the hovering gown.

The velvet gloves moved swiftly to her hips, one reaching around to stroke her ass while the other slid its fingers between her thighs. The wet tanga panties slid themselves aside to make way for two black velvety fingertips. Erin trembled for a moment as she was parted by warm, petite fingers. After sufficiently wetting themselves, they retreated to her clit.

Erin closed her eyes, tunneling the sexual fire running through her body back to the gloves. The energy moved through them and jumped into the t-shirt, inflating it—breasts first—under the grip of the gloves. She immediately felt the feedback, both from the leather gloves and the shirt now expanding to her curves.

It was easy. The clothes in the living room only wanted her body to comply with them—she didn't have to place her focus there at all except to feel the warm, exquisite echoes of her body's responses. Now that she had ethereal anchors, she was centered on getting them into her room.

If the enchantments in the house could tell any difference between themselves and Erin's charged tee and leather gloves, they made no sign of it. The gloves and shirt headed up the stairs while everything else kept attention on Erin's writhing body.

She wasn't sure of her plan. It depended on what she'd find. The empty gloves and shirt pushed her bedroom door open, finding a large collection of Erin's clothes already filled, but apparently unmotivated. Unlike the outfits downstairs, Erin's clothes were simply standing in her room, rank and file.

A glove waved at one of the outfits. Downstairs, Erin tried to interpret the leather glove's relay while the velvety gloves at her body sent her into fits of tension and relaxation, spiking her senses with tactile assault. Her lingerie was still on—and very much still helping. Living bra cups held and squeezed her tits, moving over her skin like a lover's hands, altering their techniques every few minutes. Her tanga panties played over her hips, the fabric at her rear flitting back and forth like a teasing feather.

When it was clear that the outfits in her room weren't going to react to her ethereal presence in the gloves and t-shirt, Erin had the gloves explore around.

She had her mind on the book—but she didn't know exactly where it was. The gloves had hidden it on their own when they were under the influence of the magic in the house. Using her ethereal presence to read the gloves themselves, it came to her.

The book was in her parents' room.

Her breath was getting faster now—the sexual fire still building within her as the velvet gloves and sheer gown were joined by other items in the storm of soft, silky tingles over her body. She drew enough focus back to her physical awareness that...her body was restrained. She was surrounded by costumed outfits. Hovering just above her--spinning through the air, but unfilled by any shape—was a genie's costume.

She realized she probably needed to work fast. Whatever the magic had done to her mother—she didn't seem herself. Erin hadn't looked at much of the information on influencing or controlling a living being. She was learning quickly that in magic—no knowledge was the same as no defense.

If the gloves were right about where the book would be, she wouldn't have a problem. Grab the thing from the closet, see what I need to see--

“Ohhhhhhh...”

She couldn't hold back. She was going to come. Everything felt soooo good, and if she got through just one good orgasm, she'd have far more endurance to--

Shit. That was the trigger; that's what the outfits spinning in the air were waiting for. That's why everything suddenly got so gentle and...friendly. They needed her to come.

Erin's eyes caught her car keys, laying just outside her purse. Just before leather fingers wrapped around the doorknob to her parents' room, she wondered if she could retrieve her own binder from her car—ethereally.

She had to hold herself together as she split focus again, sending another intangible awareness of herself out to the car. It was easy enough to unlock the car, but lifting the thick binder with an ethereal hand wasn't as easy as she expected it to be.

In the house, there were so many outfits surrounding Erin's body that she was now held aloft by them—parts of her squeezed between soft fabric while others were held tight by invisible hands. She wanted to come; she needed to—but she knew it would be her undoing unless she waited for the advantage.

As soon as the door to her parents' room opened, Erin knew she'd made a mistake. Even through the lens of the gloves, the mana masked most of the room in white-hot fog. Erin was thankful she was spared a visual of the activities within, but she'd also have a lot of trouble getting to the book.

She kept the shirt at the door as the gloves buzzed inside, heading straight for the closet. She let it happen like it was muscle memory. She didn't need sight—she just needed to trust the gloves' expectations. When they gained access to the closet and slid between clothes on a shelf to find the book, Erin's heart sank.

It wasn't there.

“You think I didn't see you sneak in?” As soon as Erin heard the sound of her mother's voice, the gloves shot back out of the closet. Through the blinding mana, Erin could see the book in her possessed mother's hands. It was time to take a big risk. She made the gloves rush Susan, hoping to grab the book.

Downstairs, Erin's binder hovered steadily outside the front door. It faltered once, steadied, then fell to the ground completely. Struggling with Susan upstairs, Erin had to put all her effort into coordinating the gloves.

Just when they managed to wrest the book from Susan's hands, the bedroom door slammed itself shut. Sensing a sudden surge from Susan, Erin decided to have the gloves drop the book and slide under the door. It was time for plan B.

“Stop those gloves!” The bedroom door swung open again, and a trio of unbuttoned blouses swooped out, flying down the stairs after Erin's gloves. They paid no attention to the tee sneaking back into Erin's room.

Erin was at her limit. Keeping enough focus on her own body to prevent her orgasm was hard enough; coordinating a t-shirt and gloves with separate ethereal structures was a little bit more difficult. The gloves precariously bumped some other items on their way to the front door before finally grabbing the deadbolt and turning it open.

The other glove jumped onto the knob and twisted it, pulling the door open in one smooth motion. Sitting just outside the door was Erin's binder. Together, the two gloves grabbed it and swooped into the living room, just barely missing ensuing blouse sleeves.

It was just the beginning. The enchantments apparently knew something was up, because Erin found herself mentally navigating a living room full of clothes trying to trip up the gloves holding the binder. There was no way they were going to let her go or give her enough time to hold the book steady so she could read it. She'd have to try another way.

Luckily the disturbance caused the clothes to slow (but not quite stop) their advances in bringing Erin to orgasm. The enchantments were more cautious, but there were still enough of them to go after the binder while keeping Erin occupied.

She had an idea.

Like piloting a ship through an enemy formation, the gloves whisked the binder through the kitchen, back out the hallway and over the banister. As soon as Erin got them into her room, they slammed and locked the door. Erin's charged tee dropped its shape, stretched horizontally and stuffed itself under the door, blocking any intruders from moving in. She knew it would only be a matter of time before they overpowered her, so she'd have to concentrate and work fast.

The clothes in her room remained uninterested, giving her an idea. If she could gain control of the ambivalent-but-charged items in her room, that would be a big step. She couldn't afford to actually control them ethereally—she was already taxing herself.

What she'd need would be in an Animation chapter—and in order to read it, her focus would have to be very good. This was old, ornate printing—not exactly the bright, large-text computer printing from the sign in the store she magically sneaked into the day before.

The pages of the book fanned open as Erin tried to get a feel for detail with her ethereal sight. She was interrupted more than once by her body--downstairs, trembling, and primed for orgasm. The book held itself open around where Erin thought she'd need to be, and just as she started to resolve the larger headings—something started pounding on the bedroom door.

“You're too late to handle this on your own terms. Stop trying to handle the situation and accept your position. ” The uncharacteristic tone was just barely audible over Erin's own moans. “The books can't help you as long as they're up here.”

Erin hoped that wasn't true. Now she flipped pages, grabbing big words and hoping that she'd find—

CONCENTRATE AND CONFINE

Like a coin in a fountain—distorted and wavy, but shining bright.

...charge into an object for safekeeping...bounding up the whole of the energy whilst allowing the manifestations in that energy to be untangled and mollified...dispersal of intricacies whilst maintaining net charge...allowance of reconstitution to undirected...

Perfect.

Perfect! It sounded like a way to store a huge sum of mana in one place while stripping the energy of any attached motivations. She kept her ethereal gaze on the couplet, working out the syllable breaks until she was sure her tongue knew the dance steps.

Lastly, all she needed was an object to place all the mana.

When she was interrupted by the sexual tremors running through her flesh, they served to bring her attention to a perfect solution. The bra and panty set so anxiously pleasing her would be the focal points for all the magic in the house—the mischievous force and Erin's free mana alike.

She snapped the ethereal fingers inside a charged leather glove as she spoke, her voice rattling with expectation from the orgasm she could no longer hold back.

“Ether retreat at my command to your new home as I demand, pes utna'har aqti-ti-al, pah'shel il—”

A velvet glove clamped around her lips just before the incantation could be completed. When she tried to pull herself out of the way of the glove, her living panties descended her legs, and her blue bra unclasped. The witch outfit before her leaned into a more predatory stance, one of its velvet gloves playing with Erin's clit as the other stayed firmly wrapped around her lips. The components of the genie outfit halted in their lazy spins and oriented themselves—in unison—toward Erin's body.

 

At this point, the question of resistance versus compliance was now being drowned out by imminent sexual release. Erin felt the fire building through her body, the gleaming wet velvet at her clit reducing her world to a rushing pulse.

There wasn't any time left—Erin's resistance had all but crumbled. She moaned through the leather fingers over her mouth as her body began to flail, throwing her against the velvety touch sending her over the edge.

Aching expectation gave way to the moment. Erin lost herself in the perfection of the attention; the forces driving her mind to indifference. Even as wave after wave of pleasure rumbled through her, she knew she'd lost to whatever was occupying the house. And yet, she was still here, still experiencing everything. She felt recharged, even invigorated.

But just as her orgiastic pulses subsided to clarity, the genie costume moved in. It was a blur. The velvet gloves changed positions to grab her wrists, lifting her arms into the air to allow the billowy top over her shoulders. As it slid itself on, the gloves gripped her tightly and lifted her clear off the ground for just long enough for a red thong and billowy translucent pants to slide over her feet.

When Erin realized what has happening, her panic was replaced by stupefied realization: pushy as this force was—it just did NOT seem to appreciate the fact that a mouth had to constantly be guarded if it was to effectively be silenced.

Upstairs, Erin's bedroom door blasted itself open with a fiercely delivered ethereal ram. Thinking she'd finally pried her way in, Susan entered to search for the binder. The leather gloves hid under the bed, gripping the copied plastic-and-looseleaf tome. Susan took one step toward the bed and pounced to the floor, spotting the gloves immediately.

But lost in ecstasy as her body was, Erin's ethereal presence was ready. Her clothes dog-piled Susan while the gloves slipped out the door. They carried the binder only as far as the stairs, where they let it drop. The force possessing her mother didn't seem to understand that the text wasn't important anymore. Now everything came down to timing.

She was swinging her hips with the flow of the genie outfit pulling itself on her while she whispered the lead of the spell again, careful to make it audible to her own ears.

“Ether retreat at my command...to your new home as I demand...” The velvet glove went loose around one of her wrists, and just as it went to clamp her mouth, it was caught by a glossy black streak. Erin's exhaustion didn't stop her face from twisting into a defiant smile. Her ethereal form was barely overpowering the phantom glove trying to to stop her, but now she could feel its panic. She was winning.

“...pes utna'har, aqti-ti-al,” The other velvet glove dropped her wrist, and she reacted quickly enough to grab it with her own hand before it could reach for her. Speed didn't help though—Erin hadn't accounted for how strong her ethereal form was in comparison to her well-worked body. Erin tried to pull it away, but the velvet glove in her grasp swung itself around to clamp around her mouth once more.

A second later, another leather glove locked its fingers around the sides of the velvet glove at Erin's face. Using the last ounce of her ethereal strength to pry her mouth free, the last of her physical will went to speaking the last of the spell.

“...pah'shel il-a, tah rahsp'a-kal.”

Erin wouldn't really remember the details of what happened next, but the effects of the spell would later reveal that what seemed to Erin as an open sea of sensations and experiences was actually a side effect of her successful spell.

Her body had been turned into a conduit, condensing the active mana surrounding her and concentrating it into the genie's costume that forced its way onto her body. The costume's will was the first of the force to be swallowed up inside itself, reverting to inactivity as it was concentrated.

The rest of the enchanted forms backed away from Erin, now the epicenter of her own spell's effects. None of them could move quickly enough; no matter how far away they got from Erin, each and every one lost its shape and fell to the floor as Erin pulled all the enchanted energy through her.

* * *

Susan awoke under a couple of Erin's outfits. Exactly what had happened wasn't clear, though she did remember doing a couple of things that seemed—out of her control somehow.

When she stood up and looked down at her outfit, a couple memories came back to her. She remembered pointlessly trying to convince Andy that he wasn't dreaming, which was pretty much impossible against the hyper realistic backdrop of supernatural sex that he couldn't otherwise explain. She remembered the witch outfit—but clearly that game had gone another round. Now she was in Erin's room under a pile of lifeless clothes. What happened?

She walked into the hall and walked across it, easing open the door to the master bedroom. Clothes were strewn around the room, and a sleeping Andy was sideways in the king bed, lying atop a lifeless and flat negligee.

She continued down the stairs, picking up an overturned binder. Flipping through it, she realized it was an exact replica of the magic book she'd found. Hmm. Déjà vu.

“Say something,” Erin called from the living room. Susan turned to see several piles of folded clothes sitting on the floor and furniture around where Erin stood.

“How did you—I mean when did you—what happened?” Erin squinted at her mom, looking at her neck. The choker Susan was wearing unbuckled, loosened and fell to the floor. Erin took a deep breath.

“I read the directions,” Erin said. “That's what happened.” Her mother placed her hand at her neck, feeling where the choker was.

“How did—Erin, did you do that?” Erin smirked and nodded.

“Yeah. Amazing what you can do when you study properly.” Susan walked into the living room, holding out the binder to Erin.

“Things got so out of control, but I—I thought I could—”

“Mess with things you didn't understand and THEN hide it from the one other person who might've been able to help you with it?” Erin shook her head, chuckling. “You owe me big time.” A leather glove floated out of the kitchen and took the binder from Susan. The other glove emerged carrying the matching tome. “I'm keeping these, at least for now. If you want to learn to use them the right way—let me know.”

“Says the daughter to her mother,” Sue huffed.

“Raise your hand if you saved the house from out-of-control magic.” Erin raised her hand. She laughed when she saw one of the leather gloves do the same.

“You're right, you're right—it's just...how did you know?”

“I felt it,” Erin said. “It's like I learned how to perceive another sense now—something tied into the kind of underlying energy that powers all the spells.”

“So what are you going to do now?” Susan asked.

“Clean up the rest of this mess and go back to school, I suppose,” Erin smiled.

“With all the things you can do? Why don't you--”

“Mom.” Erin looked her directly in the eyes. “You gotta know by now that book isn't a toy, right?” Her mother nodded like she was being forced to do so. “I'm going to keep both copies safe with me—and keep studying them for the time being.”

“It was fun in the beginning,” Susan said. “The kind of things that were happening made me feel like a kid at first. Heck, even after they got pushy I was having fun—” She held her hand to her face. “Erin, you don't want to hear any details about—I mean, it's just—what am I supposed to tell your father?”

“Is he—?”

“Asleep, upstairs,” Susan said.

“Well, let's get this all cleaned up before he wakes.” Erin picked up a pair of fuzzy pink slippers, extending her ethereal senses over it before holding them up to her mom. “It started here, didn't it?” Susan nodded.

“How can you tell?”

“Object of the spell,” Erin said. “The mana isn't near the threshold they need to walk around by themselves and start causing other mischief—but the signature of the energy is strongest here.” Erin gestured to a genie costume in a plastic bag. “Except for that hot mana trap, which is coming with me.”

Erin looked around in disbelief of the scope of what had just happened. “And what are you going to tell dad?” She asked. “Is it even possible to pass something like this off as a dream?”

Her mother rolled her eyes—not long ago, she couldn't convince Andy he wasn't dreaming.

“Yeah,” Sue said. “I think we might have a chance there.”

* * *

That night, everything was back to normal. Susan had listened with interest to every detail of Andy's strange and intense dream, agreeing with him that their recent escapades had sent his mind on quite the ride. More than once, she almost slipped up by nostalgically offering up particular details of the “dream” before Andy did.

Back at school, Erin spent all night on the same chapter, double-checking the rules for restricting and binding a spell with certain limitations. Her mother seemed genuinely sad when she left to return to school earlier after clearing all the active magic out of the house.

There had to be a happy medium somewhere.

Late that night, Susan slipped off her robe and let it drop to the floor before crawling into bed with Andy. He was already sound asleep. She snuggled under the covers and pulled the chain on the lamp. Settling into bed, she heard a noise.

When her eyes opened, she watched as her robe hovered off the carpet and took her shape. The fuzzy slippers next the dresser righted themselves and walked beneath the robe, standing in front of the mirror and turning around as if it were admiring itself.

So much for Erin gaining control over the magic, Susan thought—though she couldn't help smiling as she watched the robe and slippers walk to the closet. The robe hung itself up, and the slippers floated into their cubby.

How about that. Maybe they'd learned a little self-control after all?

Erin snickered after she uttered the phrases, wondering exactly how the spell would reveal itself. She thought twice about recharging the house with autonomous mana, but her mother just seemed so disappointed when Erin took the magic with her.

“She deserves it,” Erin said to the leather gloves, holding her annotated binder open. “Everyone deserves a little bit of magic.”