The 7 Secrets of Mr. Magpie Ch. 04

Five months is just about enough time for you to forget about something, but even if I had forgotten, Sheila clearly hadn’t, because in spring of 2017, my phone popped up with a text message from Sheila, whom I hadn’t heard from since our insane encounter last fall. “Saturday still good for you?” the message read. “Kept your schedule clean for me?”

“You didn’t tell me when we were meeting up again, but I always honor my end of any contract. What do I need to know?” I sent back.

“Expect to be picked up at five o’clock, and you two can talk it over on your way up. You’ll be coming up to my house, which you’ve seen before, and the engagement lasts until seven the next morning, although as per our previous encounter, if all parties want to sleep in, that will, of course, be fine. Your mirror will bring you an outfit matching their own, so you don’t need to worry about picking out the right attire for the night. Other than that, you saw how I behaved in our encounter. All I ask is that you show me generally the same courtesy, within your previously stated boundaries.”

“Got it,” I typed back. “See you Saturday.”

I sort of knew what generally to expect, but there’s really no way to prepare yourself for meeting your doppelganger. So when I opened the door to see a man looking so much like me that it almost felt like looking into a mirror instead. His hair was styled slightly different, and it looked like there was a bit of makeup on his chin, I think hiding a scar although I didn’t feel comfortable asking.

“You are Rafael?” he asked me, his voice tinged with a thick Spanish accent, which made the illusion fall apart. “I am Pedro. I will be your sombra, your shadow. I will take my lead from your actions, follow your motions. I will mostly remain quiet, because, as you say, my voice does not match with yours, and we do not want to destrozar el espejismo, to break the mirage. Come, let us get you changed and then the car will take us up to the señorita’s house.”

The outfit was something refined, elegant, sleek and stylish, a black button-up shirt that we both left half unbuttoned, a red silk scarf which I needed to wrap around my neck (which I could see was covering up a tattoo on Pedro’s collarbone), black silk boxers and black loose fitting slacks, along with a pair of black loafers and accompanying black socks.

One thing I noticed was that my feet were slightly larger than his, but I decided that was probably something no one other than he and I would really notice. I tried to think back if there had been minor differences between Sheila and Annie, and while I could remember there was a mole that Annie had needed to apply with makeup, other than that, there wasn’t anything that immediately stood out to me. I guess than when you’re looking at yourself, you tend to spot the discrepancies a lot more than you would if it was someone else.

Pedro and I didn’t talk much at all during the drive up, although I did catch him a few times taking a look at me, adjusting himself a bit. He’d clearly decided it was more important for him to look like me than it was for me to look like him, although he did do a bit of styling to both his hair and mine, shaping them both to be about the same, which can sometimes be a problem with getting out of control, considering how feathery and poofy it can be sometimes. I guess since our hair types were so similar naturally, though, Pedro had plenty experience with styling it, and doing so on my hair was just like doing it on his own but in reverse.

Sheila had gotten a limo to ferry us up from my place in San Jose to her home in San Ramon. Now for those of you not familiar with the San Francisco Bay Area, let me say that San Ramon is a very nice area of the Bay, with lots of remarkably wealthy people having very nice houses on expansive bits of property. Sheila’s property was even gated, so when the limo pulled up, the driver had to roll down his way to press the buzzer to let us drive up to the house itself.

I’d seen the mansion from the outside before but as soon as we got out of the limo, I could take a look at the grounds for the first time, and there was so much open space, it almost felt more like a park than a private home, the grass neatly trimmed and well-kept paths, a few benches scattered around the space, including next to an actual pond with what looked like real koi fish swimming in it.

The building was that sort of new modern look, although there were stabs at incorporating some classical European architecture into it around the edges, like the gargoyles that were ringed around the top of the second story. The whole home was, of course, that sort of stucco beige that was so popular among homes in the Silicon Valley and Napa County.

I walked up and rang the bell, and Sheila answered the door almost immediately. She had chosen a slippy red dress that hung loosely over her frame almost like it was draped cloth instead of an actual outfit. The neckline was plunging daringly down almost past her waist, and she hadn’t bothered to putting on high heels, not that she really needed them, I know I said her height was 5’11” before, but looking at her this second time, I realize she might’ve actually been a little taller than 6′, her long slender arm reached up to keep the door propped open, a wide grin on her pearly whites. “You know, I always wondered if I’d want my own services,” she said to me, “and now I’m glad that I decided to take myself up on it, just for the once.”

She stepped out of the doorway and ushered us into her home. “The illusion isn’t as important to me, Pedro, so I don’t mind if you talk a bit over the course of the evening,” Sheila said, brushing her fingertips across his face as he walked past, so no matter how good the illusion was, there were still subtle enough differences between the two of us for her to tell us apart. “The effort’s more important to me than a perfect show, because a fellow magician always knows where to look for where the misdirections are.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Pedro said with a shy smile. He was far more nervous about this than I was, I guess because I’d sort of seen in first hand from the other side, while he was going through all of it for the first time.

The inside of her house match the exterior, with a sparse amount of furniture scattered around the room, lots of open space all over the place. Her living room looked like it had only a single couch with a couple of chairs on either side of it, and I couldn’t even spot a television. It looked like the furniture was pointed at a fireplace, although there wasn’t a fire raging within it right now. She led us past it for the moment, however, and brought us into a dining room, an elegant long glass table with only two place settings, which made me arch an eyebrow as I looked at it.

“Dinner?”

“Mmm,” Sheila said. “You and I can have dinner, and your shadow can bring us dinner and then have a different sort of meal. Not that I think he’ll mind.”

I saw Pedro continue to walk past us and head around a corner before he returned a few minutes later with two plates containing rather highly refined meals, looking like they were prepared by a professional chef, scalloped potatoes and grilled salmon. Once he put the plates down, he walked out of the room and then brought back three glasses full of red wine, setting one out for me, one for her and the third for him to have at some point.

Once he placed the wine on the table, he moved to drop down onto his knees and slowly started to crawl beneath the table. I know I smirked, but I tried to push the look off my face and be respectful of the moment as he kept moving on his hands and knees closer and closer towards her, as she spread her legs nice and wide for him, the long stripe of fabric pretending to be a dress pulled to one side to expose that she indeed was wearing no panties beneath.

As my shadow moved to slip between her thighs, his hands resting atop them as he leaned in and began to slowly lap at her pussy, she continued a conversation with me as if nothing was happening, something I think gave my shadow a little encouragement to bring his A-game.

“So, now that you don’t have to be driving to get a new hot water heater, did you stop driving for Uber again?” she asked me with a wry smile, picking up her glass of wine, swirling it around in her palm’s grasp.

“It’s just a water heater,” I teased. “Hot water doesn’t need heating. But yes, without that particular sword hanging over my head, I hung up my driving shoes, at least for a while, until the next crisis springs up. But there’s always another problem springing up on the horizon, I suppose.”

“And what are you doing instead?”

“I’m back to doing contract work in 3D modeling again,” I said, seeing her do her best to keep her expression as neutral as she could, although every so often I could see a slight twitch on her face, or her holding the fork a moment before bringing food to her mouth, as if she was trying to summon her concentration back up, as my shadow continued to work his tongue against her slit. “It’s not full time work still, but it’s enough to pay most of the bills and keep me afloat. How about you? Did your little dispute with Roger cause you any trouble in the long run?”

“Oh, Roger stamped his feet and complained about it, but all the people who know both him and I, they all like me much better,” she giggled a little bit, kicking off her shoes, moving to rub one of her bare feet along Pedro’s side, as he pushed his tongue inside of her, making her whimper just a little bit, her eyes closing for only the briefest of moments. “Other than that, my work has been going excellently. I had a couple of clients recently who were extremely delighted with my results, including one whom I can’t name, because you would know her, as she’s rather famous. She was so pleased with my results, however, that she’s gone out of her way to introduce me to an entire new string of clients I likely wouldn’t have gotten as easily without her. That should be great fun, a whole new world of people entirely unlike the ones I’ve been working with so far.”