She wilts slightly, hands slowing a bit before they return to their usual pace.

You don't feel any special emotion about that, but you can make Cytherea think you do. It is plausible for a human to care more about a pretty person who they've had sex with than a bunch of people in Hell, no matter what high-minded crap their philosophy says.

"Well, you are here now. And we are having a sleepover. And if you act as a decent person — not a great person, just a decent one — then I promise not to send you back as long as I live. Fatigue be damned."

Give her modest expectations and high hopes. Shoes she feels she can fill comfortably. More-than-reasonable expectations are inspiring; she'll try much harder to meet them than simply reasonable ones. Let her grow acclimated to the niche you carve for her and she'll cling to it like a nest.

She finishes the braid and lets her fingers come loose. She wanders off to find her cell phone and holds it up in front of Cytherea as a mirror.

"That's a pretty nice braid."

She finishes the wand and hands it over to Lily. "Here. This should be good to enchant."

She looks at Marianne. "And thank you."

"You're welcome!"

Lily takes the wand over to the sink along with the CVS bag, gets down a bowl, and mixes the ingredients together into a gloopy viscous mostly-honey mess. She dips in the wand and applies mana. 

The mixture sucks itself into the wood, forming a glossy lacquer, a mottled black color. The runes turn honey-gold. The whole thing smells of camphor and roses. 

After several dips into the mixture, there's a brief flare of light from the runes, and the rest of the mixture vanishes instantly.

Lily silently hands over the wand to Marianne.

Marianne Belor has eight wells in her soul brimming with power, placid but willful.

She can feel as soon as she lays a hand on the wand that it's the missing piece, like a dislocated shoulder knocking into something, unexpectedly popping back into place.

"Yeah," she says, suddenly soft.

Interlocking her wand with one of the wells, she can feel — the moisture in the air more intently, a sense of pressure and vibration, like standing in a strangely echoing cave —

Marianne Belor takes three long steps to the sink, turns it on, and stands before it for nearly a minute.

When she turns back around, a tiny serene globe of water is floating some inches above the tip of her wand, like a raindrop that got stuck sliding down a windowsill. It looks like an optical illusion, or a trick with bubbles maybe.

It's not.

Lily grins, and quietly applauds.

"Thank you, Cytherea and Isabel."

It is good to not be broken.

"I think the next order of business... Cytherea, do you have blood?"

"I have blood. I heal fast, too. Do you want me to draw some for Lily?"

Mari has generalized orders over her, but no willingness to use them. Coercion is the mother of hatred.

"That would be handy, though we can live without."

"Is it alright if we wait until we have proper equipment? You can get needles and ampoules for controlled blood magic at Hawthorne's witch market, and since they're mortal goods they'll be cheap."

"I think that should be fine." Accommodating words that nonetheless hint at a failing.

"What is Hawthorne? You've made mention a couple times now."

"It's the main witch academy, in a pocket dimension under Greenland. Strict, but actually good at its job. It specializes in the use of implements like the one you've got there, but more powerful. The pocket dimension is about the size of Germany, full of imps, constructs and undead that do the menial labour, and hosts a lot of talented witches who like company for whatever reason. You have to pass potential testing at rank three or higher to get in to the academy, but they offer a full-ride scholarship for anyone with potential. The pocket dimension is more generally open but most of the space is claimed already. You'd have to do some serious favours for a talented witch to get residence. Or pay a lot of Kisses, which works out to the same thing."

"Did you attend, is that why it lies high on your mind? Or is it just that important to witchdom?"

"About as many witches live in the Hawthorne pocket dimension as there are on Earth, and almost all of them are competent, unlike those in Arcadia. It's where you go if you're above average but don't want to commit to any particular cause. I've been summoned by attendees before; policy allows personal succubi there where it doesn't in Arcadia. Plus most Arcadians don't have the talent to summon something like me."

"—huh. Lillian, do you want a higher education?"

"I would like to stop worrying about eating five hundred dollar apples. And potential testing sounds like it would be a good idea for us. Do they do that for free?"

"Yeah, they do. You'll get your projected maximum rank back and an invitation to join if you test three or above."

"Okay, sign us up for that."

"Cytherea, here's my phone, you can keep it — go do whatever? Or stay here if you want. You can come back to sleep here or not, it's none of my business."

This is a brilliant ploy to never have to see how many angry messages you got from your boss.

"Does it not have a password or are you going to give me that too?"

"I would factory-reset it if it's going to be Cytherea's phone. That's just common sense."

Aww, but letting someone go through your web history is a fun bonding activity. How could you, Lily!

She takes the phone, lets her eyes elide over the messages as she powers it on and clicks through to settings—

"Here you go, all fresh and clean."

"Thanks."

She accepts the phone and pockets it. "I owe you one. See you around."

And she's off out the door.