The living room is silent except for the clanks and hisses of the ancient steam heater coming to life, and of my pen scratching paper.

It's so delightfully warm in here. I don't even need to wear four layers of clothing or a coat when I visit, despite the recent cold snap. So different from my own apartment.

"You should be back in college," he says softly. "I love coming up with essay assignments for you to entertain you, but ultimately, your mind needs more challenging than can come from one tutor who doesn't even have any formal ties to academia beyond a master's degree in library science. You need to use your academic inclinations. Did you envision a lifetime of telemarketing when you were a girl, dreaming of what you would be when you grew up?"

"College professor," I reply shortly. This isn't a subject I like to talk about much.

"You won't get that without a degree - preferably a doctoral degree, for most colleges and universities. You need to get back into college."

"Can't do that without money. Can't get money without financial aid. According to Uncle Sam, I can't get financial aid until I'm classified as financially independent, which can't happen until I'm a grad student, a veteran, a head of household, married, or twenty-four years old. That's what my college's financial aid office told me when I begged for emergency assistance after my parents disowned me, anyway." Not that I'd expected much success - the few students I know who received any kind of financial aid told me horror stories about how hard it was to get either need-based scholarships or help applying for federal assistance at our college - but I'd had to try anyway. And at least it had bought me a couple of weeks more time. That was time enough for my sisters in the sorority to brainstorm ways to find me new accommodations since only students could live in the dorms. "I won't be twenty-four for another two years. I can't skip straight past an undergraduate degree to apply to a grad school. The other options are not options."

"Two years is not that much time; we've been together for nearly a year, and it doesn't feel like much time at all, does it?" he asks in a quiet voice. "In the meantime, you might want to try attending the local university. The spring semester has already started, so it's a little too late for now, but you could apply to enroll in summer classes, or to start in the fall. One course would cost approximately three hundred dollars in tuition. That's not so bad. You haven't told me how much your monthly rent is, but it probably costs more than that per month. Taking a course or two every semester would help you build up your transcript and maybe get a few academic references, and you could use those to get a scholarship somewhere, or at least a place in the honors program of one of the better state universities here."

"I can't even afford groceries most of the time," I snap. "How can I possibly afford college tuition?"

He takes a deep breath. "You could move in with me."

My jaw drops.

"You're not serious."

"I'm very serious. It's something I've been stewing over for some time, now. I definitely have my reservations, but the arrangement makes sense from a purely financial perspective. Take whatever money you spend on your apartment rent now, and you can use it to pay for college. Factor in what you'd save on your other monthly expenses, and you could probably even manage to come up with enough tuition money to attend college full-time, if you opt for a monthly tuition payment plan - although between the demands of your job and the readings and occult study I plan to keep giving you, I'd recommend taking no more than two courses at a time, to make sure you will still have time for some sleep at night. There are other practical benefits as well. Food, for instance. It worries me that I can still count your ribs just by looking at them. I give you food for your cupboard, but do you eat any of it? Then there's the neighborhood you live in. I imagine you would prefer to live on a street that did not have gunfire waking you up on random nights. I know I'd prefer you to live on a street that lacked gunfire. For some strange reason, I like the idea of you not getting shot."

"My street is safer than that," I protest. "You have to go a few blocks south or west before you really have to worry about gangs. Where I live, most of the loud noise at night just comes from drunks getting into fights."

If I move in with him, I sacrifice my independence.

I have been living on my own since my parents locked the door behind me. For a brief while after the furnished studio my sorority sisters found for me got sold to a new owner, who jacked up its monthly rent by two hundred dollars, which meant I had to move out, independence meant living on the streets, looking for space in shelters, bouncing from the living room floor or dorm room floor of one friend to another until I finally found a cheap efficiency in a rundown section of town, near the railroad tracks. I gave up everything for my freedom. I don't want to lose it. What Magister and I do together might involve a temporary kind of giving up of freedom, but ultimately, I belong to myself - the arrangement was at my instigation, and he doesn't own me. He might have me under his domination during lessons, and often as a part of lovemaking, but I am still my own person, and I have always been free to negotiate my own terms or to end the relationship altogether.

Moving in with him threatens this. If things sour between us, where would I go?

And how do I maintain my own space when I am permanently a part of his?

No.

"Believe me, I have mixed feelings as well," he says. "However, from a practical and financial perspective, this seems to be the most sensible approach to take. I think we can work it out if we keep in mind that the purpose of this is specifically to get you back into college, rather than to make you a kept woman. Something tells me you'd like it even less if I offered to pay your tuition directly, although I suppose if you'd rather I charge you rent for moving in here, I could. I can't afford to cover both your housing and your university classes, though."

He's right about my not wanting him to pay for my tuition. The thought of moving in with him for free feels uncomfortably like mooching; letting him pay for my tuition would make me his sugar baby.

Damn it.

"Why are you pushing for this?"

"It's the only way I can think of to help you get your dreams back." He shakes his head. "I can't become a new dream for you. I can't replace your ambitions. I don't want to replace them. You need more than I can give you, not that anyone should make another human being into the embodiment of their ambitions, anyway. Can you think of another way to get back into academia, short of waiting for your twenty-fourth birthday, which is what you have apparently been doing so far? You have told me of a calling to teach, to guide. How do you see yourself following this path, if you try to do so through me? You can't be my student forever... I'm sorry. I don't mean to be pushy. Well. Perhaps I do, but I don't mean to make you feel like you have no choice in the matter. I've wrestled with this problem for a while. I simply don't see any other way to help you get what you want."

I try to answer that. Of course, I can't. There are no good answers.

"Aren't you worried that we might try to kill each other if we try to live together in close quarters?" I ask him.

He shakes his head. "We're together on the weekends, and we haven't killed each other yet. I think we can find a way to give you enough personal space that you can escape to it when you need to, while preserving enough space for me to escape to when I need to recharge. I'm more worried about Stockholm syndrome. You seem to lead a very isolated existence. We've talked about that. Getting people together for a gaming session was the first time I saw any sign of your having a social life that might not include me, and even so, two of my co-workers and I were part of the session, so I'm not sure it should count. If I'm the only person you see, other than superficial interactions with co-workers, you're mostly dependent on me for your friendships and social transactions, and the fact that we have a relationship based in part on power exchange makes the dynamic between us extremely intense. The spiritual bond we've formed as a result of our magickal work only adds to that intensity. I worry that if we live together, the intensity will overwhelm you entirely. It's the reason I hadn't invited you to move in with me before, when you had to vacate your old attic apartment."

"Isn't Stockholm syndrome something that happens under conditions of captivity and hostage-taking, though?"

"Yes. It also happens in situations of domestic abuse, because the abusive partner manages to cut the victim off from friends and family and creates a situation of social and financial dependence through isolation. Obviously, I'm not abusing you in this relationship, but the intensity of our personal dynamic combined with your being more or less a recluse could make for a bad situation. I'm worried about accidentally swallowing you up."

Oh, God.