Savannah stared at Katerina through the vanity mirror. Usually the Russian carried an amused look in her eyes. When their lives had been in peril in the recent past, like back when that Kazakh billionaire and her squad of goons chased the two throughout Moscow six months ago, Katerina always seemed to have be having a blast, her facial expressions a picture of childlike enthusiasm as she effortlessly disabled their would be captors, effortlessly earning her legendary status in the spy world as the “Black Widow”. One time, back when Savannah had been known as Seth, she had seen Katerina treat an imprisoned Poseidon(Yes, the actual Olympian god, whose essence was still currently being kept inside a crystal ball in the permanent storage department of Area 51) with the same contempt that one would treat a common gangbanger in San Quentin. But now she looked as if she had swallowed a canary. She normally exuded confidence, but that confidence wasn't in her eyes right now.
“What's the scoop?” Savannah asked to her lover/partner as she removed a pair of dangling earrings and put them in her jewelry box, in the back of her mind wondering what kind of idiots would try to summon demons.
“Well” said Katerina, “The good thing about occultists who want to summon demons is that they are usually insane and don't know what they're doing, so they won't be too difficult to apprehend. The bad part is that they want to summon demons."
“Yeah, no kidding” replied Savannah viscerally as she began applying lipstick to her face. “I hate dealing with demons. Last time I dealt with them, the cleanup took forever.”
Savannah briefly daydreamed back to when she had been in Mexico two years ago. The turf wars between the various drug cartels there had escalated to a supernatural degree, with many of the mid level and high level bosses having already offered their allegiance to all sorts of evil spirits and deities in exchange for more money and power or, at their worst, the desire to hideously punish their rivals. Savannah herself once had to mind wipe the memories of an entire team of DEA agents and army dudes Men In Black style who had stumbled upon a cartel compound that had been beset by a particularly nasty djinn. Inside, the poor fellas with bulging biceps and military hardware were reduced to tears as they gazed upon men who were turned inside out, men who had been turned into insects and larvae, men who had been reduced to dozens of perfectly shaped cubes made of flesh and gore, men who had been transformed into hideous chimeras of men, animals, and extra-dimensional beings, plus all matters of other horrors. Savannah herself had puked when she saw the crime scene while she waited for other agents to arrive, and was unable to even look at her (ex)wife Lydia that night when she had returned home.
The cartels had stopped using magic to settle their feuds because they eventually realized that there was a limit to their war, a place you just don't go. A realm that didn't just end in violence or collateral damage, but more importantly a cut in profits, as demons and other members of the infernal realm did not give one iota of a fuck if the entire mortal dimension was destroyed in their bloodlust. Drug lords were evil, but not stupid, so they stopped summoning demons to do their wetwork.
Wannabe occultists though? The kind that read too much about Aleister Crowley and John Dee and thought that they could be those guys? Those people were fucking stupid, Savannah had little patience dealing with them. She had even littler patience for the ones who ritually sacrifice children in an attempt to acquire more power. She listened to Katerina finish telling her the rundown of how this operation was going to go as she completed the last touches on her makeup. She turned around to face her lover. “How do I look?”
“You look prettier every day, American girl. You make me glad to snatch you up.”
Katerina began to sensually stroke Savannah's long red hair with one hand and cup her face with the other.
“One thing I don't understand though...this lady has the grimoire for the summoning in her house?” asked Savannah, perplexed. “How? We've got all cursed artifacts and spell books cataloged. Where did it come-”
Katerina put her finger on Savannah's ruby red lips to make her stop talking. The Russian sat down on a wooden stool and stuck her hand down her lover's panties.
“We worry about that later. Now we have sexy time.”
**
Two days later, Savannah and Katerina moved into a new a house in Fort Bridgewater paid for by Occ-Ops/R.O.S.S just a few rows down from Ophelia Thorfinnson, formerly Oliver, the supposed head of this cult of Satanic worshipers. The two agents had been fitted with temporary new backstories to attempt to infiltrate the cult, with Savannah playing a bored New Woman housewife who desperately wants to become a man again, and Katerina as someone with a magic necklace that grants the wearer the ability to turn invisible as well as superhuman strength, an artifact which had once belonged to the insane monarch known as Mary, Queen of Scots. This necklace would be used to bribe their way into the cult, whereby they would look for the grimoire, find out what these people know, and shut down their operation, by force if need be.
Savannah stared at the sunny, colorful suburban home that would become their temporary living quarters, watching a sunbeam just so preciously marking the time of day on the immaculate white shag carpet in the living room. She at rolled her eyes a little.
“This is exactly the kind of environment I hate being in” she said to Katerina as they stood in the foyer, ready to leave. “My wife...my ex-wife always asked me why I hated Long Island, and I could never quite tell her that places like these give me the creeps. I've seen a hundred different dimensions of Hell, with oceans of people drowning in a lake of fire, but if you ask me, the greatest horror movie is American Beauty. No demon or god has ever quite unsettled me more than watching old reruns of Ozzie & Harriet or Donna Reed. And now I'm dressed like her” said Savannah, looking down at her yellow dress. Katerina put on arm on her shoulder.
“It's OK, lover. I'm fucked up too. We have to be fucked up to be in this line of work. You know that. Just relax.”
Both agents left “their” home to the sound of Savannah's heels click-clacking on the sidewalk. Savannah was carrying a homemade lemon cake just to complete the "look" of her as the demure homemaker. Katerina meanwhile carried the case holding the case the necklace was stored in in the crook of her left arm as she knocked on the Thorfinnson's door. They were expecting a woman about 5'9 in height with raven black hair and a beauty mark on the right side of her face to answer. The girl who opened the door was instead a short, petite late teenage girl wearing glasses.
“...Hi?” asked Cat, unsure of who these two women were.
Thankfully, Savannah and Katerina were both aware that this was Ophelia's daughter Cat. Katerina's intelligence said that the Great Change had done a wallop on this girl, formerly named Josh, completely altering her from a bully with a bad future ahead of him to a shy, dorky submissive girlfriend of one of her former vicitms. Cat however had no knowledge of her parents demon summoning and occult shenanigans. She was an innocent, and was merely an obstacle the two agents would need to get out of the way.
“Hi” said Savannah sweetly. “We're new in the neighborhood, and we just thought we'd introduce ourselves. Is your mother home?”
“Which one? My 'Mom Mom' or the one who used to be my Dad?”
“Either one, sweety!” answered Savannah with as perky a voice as she could muster without throwing up.
“Sure...let me go get her” replied Cat. She shut the door and ran upstairs to fetch her former father. Savannah could hear one of them running down the flight of stairs(“Probably the kid” thought Savannah) with another set of steps gradually making their way down, and eventually Ophelia opened the door. She smiled politely at the couple. Savannah extended her hand, and began to introduce herself...