Whoreiffying, p.1
Whoreiffying, page 1
ALSO BY PIPER CJ
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WHOREIFFYING
PIPER CJ
CW: turn to the last page for a complete list of content and trigger warnings
Whoreiffying
Copyright © 2025 Fawn Storytelling LLC
All rights reserved ® No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
PRINT ISBN 979-8-9854544-1-3
Orders by U.S. trade bookstores, wholesalers, and all other business inquiries, please connect at pipercj.com, or message hello@pipercj.com
Cover: Helena Elias Illustrated
Editor: Rachel Wharton, Page and Proof
Formatting: Zachary James Novels
CONTENTS
1. Mixed Mediums
2. Phantom Touch
3. Veiled Intentions
4. The Ghosts Speak
5. Curses on Canvas
6. Possessed
7. Brett’s Big Adventure
8. A Soul for Sale
9. Hex and the City
10. The Witching Hour
11. Deadly
12. His Body, Her Soul
13. ‘Til Second Death Do Us Part
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Trigger and Content Warnings
To the witches—
Not to the daughters of the ones they couldn’t burn,
But to the surviving heirs whose families would have been the first
to point the finger and see us hang
CHAPTER 1
MIXED MEDIUMS
Lenora Pendrake
Iran my finger through the fine, gray powder—probably dust, possibly the ashes of human remains—and examined the ornate, wooden object with four brass animals carefully guarding its contents. I breathed in the hopefully-dust, the old wood, the memories. I’d ached for the past for as long as I could remember and was thrilled whenever I found a new treasure for my collection of unusual items. I had an empty space against the wall, just below the shelf of haunted porcelain dolls, practically calling the chest’s name.
“It’s gorgeous, Dev. Where did you find it?” I touched the brass bear, admiring the noble forest beasts protecting their former master’s secrets.
Devereaux—most definitely a nom de plume and every bit as false as mine—waited with sparkling eyes. “An estate sale in Rhode Island. I set it aside just for you. Could you squeeze it into Pendrake Cabinet?”
Pendrake Cabinet, yes, a fake name for a real museum that was a fake storefront for a real medium. I wouldn’t put it on Dev to keep my web of lies straight. He didn’t need to know I held seances for word-of-mouth clientele after dark. He could believe that I was a niche, legitimate business, and a reliquary enthusiast for daylight clientele only.
He didn’t need to know I was a witch.
Few museums could channel the ghosts of the objects within, leading to the most emotionally charged and accurate informational placards of all time. Being a clairvoyant curator came with its perks.
It came with its downfalls, too.
I still remembered the gagging noises a tourist had made when reading the placard beside a glass-encased embalming kit from 18th century Russia.
“This story about the Slavic undertaker who the corpses up like dolls,” she’d asked, “Is it true?”
Grigori’s spirit had cleared his throat while looking between me and the woman. He’d wiped a menacing butcher knife on his blood-soaked apron as he spoke in his thick Russian accent. “She would have made a lovely doll. Her fat cheeks make an excellent canvas.”
I’d shot the ghost a silencing glare.
“And you!” the ghost chortled. “Some blush, I think. Some lipstick that isn’t made of coal. Speaking of coal, why do you create such dark circles around your eyes? Are you sure you’re alive?”
Grigori hated my gothic aesthetic nearly as much as I hated his desecration of corpses.
I’d ignored him and answered her question. “Every word.”
Some of the ghosts were friendly, some were dreadful, and some, of course, were the kind not born from spirits at all, but from moments I couldn’t quite forget. Devereaux, for example, had been haunting me for the better part of two years.
I bit down on my lower lip while I eyed the antiquities dealer, thinking about the unspoken tension that stretched between us.
He’d gotten so bold with his euphemisms that now, even though he’d asked a perfectly normal question, I wondered if he was asking to squeeze something else into my cabinet. I was no stranger to the over-sexualization of goths. Something about our black corsets and pale skin served as a beacon for unwanted male attention. I’d gotten so good at rebuffing advances that I worried I’d shut the door to Devereaux before having the chance to explore whatever lingered between us. Truth was, Dev had been the star of my late-night fantasies for the last eighteen months. If I wasn’t terrified of fucking things up with my primary antiquities dealer, I’d rip open his white button-up right here in broad daylight.
We’d gotten close once before, nearly a year ago. Dev had been helping me with a particularly heavy object on a tall shelf while I’d reached my hands overhead to spot the piece, lest it clatter to the floor. He’d lowered it so slowly as he’d turned toward me, spinning with such control that the space between the shelves and the wall had suddenly become too tight to breathe. I’d choked on the dust, the heat of his skin, the velvety scent of my perfume. My skin scorched under the weight of his gaze, and I’d known that if I looked down, telltale red blotches would have spread across my neck and chest. I’d suddenly been overcome by the delicious thought of being crushed to death—of being pinned between the immovable wall and relentless pleasure. I’d stared up at him in stunned silence while he’d hovered inches from me. Dev had taken a step closer, forcing me against the wall as he’d waited an inch from my lips. One more step and the pressure of his tall, heavy frame would have been the last thing I’d felt before the air left my lungs altogether.
In one movement, he could have had the object safely on the lower shelf. In two movements, one hand could have pinned my hips against his while the other planted on the wall behind my head. For all the lace and frills I wore on top, my panties had been a thin triangle of fabric that could have been ripped from my thighs with a single tug. In four movements, he could have been inside me, lips on my throat, hand working my breast, hips pumping against mine.
Maybe when he finished with me downstairs amongst my collection of things, he could carry me up to the one-bedroom over the museum and fuck me until I forgot my name.
The pulse in my panties reminded me that it’d been too long since I’d gotten laid.
“Lennie?” Dev repeated my name expectantly. I shook the lusty cobwebs from my imagination as I refocused my attention.
He’d been selling me antiquities for three years, and I’d been attracted to him for at least half that span. It had taken me a long time to collect my green flags, but by then it had been too long to cross the threshold and inform him that, at long last, I was interested.
There was no good way to tell him that I wanted him to crush me, to be pulverized by his masculine frame while he was buried inside me, so instead, I kept it professional.
I told him the clawfoot chest was unlike anything I’d encountered, despite having seen this exact piece in a vision. Well, sort of. I’d seen a brown box, hidden keys, four animals, felt more love than I’d ever felt, and been so terrified that I’d trembled. That had to mean it had a good story, right?
My curated museum of antiquities rested on the blood-soaked earth of the two hundred women Salem once accused of being witches. Now, tourists and residents alike saw witchcraft as little more than a gimmick. It’s why people like Dev wandered the streets dressed like they were the bartenders at pretentious steampunk microbreweries, and why no one batted an eye that I lived and breathed in lacy black dresses. My inky, box-dyed hair, ribbon chokers, powder-dusted skin, and blackberry lip stain completed my look, just as suspenders and leather shoeshine completed his. He was classically handsome, broad-chested, and looked like he had been voted Most Likely to Succeed in high school. My yearbook superlatives, on the other hand, had invented a new category: Most Likely to Steal Your Soul.
They were right.
Dev and I were both carving our futures while trapped in the past, albeit for different reasons.
“Look at this.” He dropped to a knee and rotated the stag’s brass hoo f until it clicked. The post above it loosened enough for him to give it a gentle twist that revealed a curiously shaped key. Dev handed me the me the object.
I’d forgotten that I wasn’t supposed to know how to use it. I’d already inserted the key into a small slot behind the stag when I caught Dev’s expression.
He raked his fingers through the gentle curl of his auburn hair. “Jesus, Lennie, it’s meant to be a puzzle.”
Sure, sure, we weren’t all meant to have obscure visions that guided how we conducted business.
The bells tinkled as a customer walked through the door. She was wearing a white t-shirt with “Girls Trip” stamped on the front above a picture of three women tied to a flaming post. I didn’t find Salem’s tourism attire particularly tasteful.
“Let me know if you need any help,” I called to the tourist, grateful for the distraction of Dev’s questioning eyes. “You can take pictures, but please, no flash photography. Oh, and don’t touch anything unless you want to leave the museum cursed.”
The woman mumbled something in return before promptly taking a flash photo of the porcelain dolls. Dev jogged to the front of the museum to stop the sightseer from plucking the doll off the shelf while I twisted open the next door to the chest.
Dev’s voice continued the question-and-answer, back-and-forth with the customer. “Ma’am, sorry, those aren’t for sale. No, everything behind the velvet rope is display only. Yes, it’s a museum. No, the museum objects aren’t for sale. No, you can’t buy things at a museum. No, you can’t use flash photography on curated, historical objects, either. Yes, there is a gift shop. Just over here. Right here. No, these things. No, not the haunted dolls. Didn’t you hear her say you’d leave cursed?”
I chuckled at the one-sided conversation between the articulate Devereaux and the mashed potato-mouthed tourist and her drawling stream of unintelligible mumbles, and then I focused on the task at hand. One more twist of the key, and the stag’s antlers dropped with a click.
Arctic air rushed from the now open compartment. The chilly scent of snowfall hurt my lungs. I sucked in a sharp breath as silver mist pooled at my feet. Cobwebs and gauze filled my vision, blocking out the light as a spirit rushed into me.
“Oh, no you don’t,” I groaned, shoving the foreign soul out of my body.
“Wait, what the hell?” A woman’s voice echoed my gasp. “How did you do that?”
I looked at the gray features of a barefoot woman in a thin, white shift dress. Loose, pale curls hung to the middle of her back. She stared at me.
I smirked in return. I didn’t meet many spirits who were aware of their gifts. Her intentional attempt at possession was a nice change of pace. I asked, “How often does that work for you?”
She crossed her arms. “Almost always. For the last three hundred years, anyway, give or take. When is it now? Still the 1980s?”
I gave her today’s date, and she choked on the answer.
“No one has solved the puzzle in decades? Impossible. There’s no way people are that stupid.”
Another flash from the camera of the idiotic customer cast harsh lights and shadows through the little museum. Dev scolded her, and she shouted an answering stream of obscenities as she marched out of the building, bells signaling her exit. Yes, people most certainly could be too stupid to solve a puzzle chest in forty-odd years. The ghostly woman didn’t appear to be from the eighties, though. Something told me there was a reason she’d been successfully running this grift for so long.
“How is it that you can see me?” the ghost asked.
“I’m a medium,” I replied. I knew that the Hollywood reaction to ghosts was to scream and run for the hills, but I’d been clairvoyant for as long as I could remember. My childhood included far too many unsettling drawings of imaginary companions, which stretched into an otherwise friendless upbringing. No one wanted to hang out with the weird girl who talked to the dead. Now, I treated them like any other visitor passing through my museum. “I see spirits whether I want to or not. You can call me Lennie.”
“Coraline Winters,” she said. “Cora for short. Are we still in Providence?”
“Salem, Massachusetts,” I said.
Her lips turned up in a slow smile, flashing her teeth. “You don’t say. I’ve made it to the land of witch hunts.”
She was as comfortable with the exchange as I was, which was unusual for the dead.
A male voice interrupted our conversation before I could ask her why she was so comfortable speaking with the living.
“Who are you talking to?” Dev asked, walking up behind me.
“Just the ghost that lives inside the chest,” I replied, relying on implied sarcasm.
His answering smile was polite, if only for my sense of humor. Dev, like most humans, couldn’t see the dead. He was pragmatic, atheistic, and lived for the One True God of our modern age: the almighty dollar.
“So, what’ll it be, Lennie? Did I make the sale?”
I tasted lipstick as I chewed on my lip. “I’d love the chest, Dev.”
My crushing kink sprung to life a second later when Dev swept me into a back-cracking hug. My ears nearly popped as he squeezed me. “God, Lennie, what would I do without you?”
He brushed a kiss against my cheek and my entire body heated in response.
Straining through the embrace, I managed, “File for bankruptcy?”
He set me down. “I owe you a steak dinner. Wait, what’s the vegetarian equivalent? I’m going to take you out for the nicest mushroom you’ve ever seen. The fattest, juiciest portabella in Salem. You still drink, right? What do you say?”
I wasn’t sure which emotion was stronger: how touched I was that he’d remembered I didn’t eat meat, or how badly I wanted him to squish me again. I agreed to a future dinner, returned the peck on the cheek, and watched him leave.
Then, I prepared to deal with my latest spectral infestation.
Three hours after sunset, the streets were mostly quiet. Salem had its fair collection of historic pubs and hosted many boozy nights for the students attending the state school. It was just dead enough to draw attention if people used the front door and just busy enough that I could never be certain that passersby wouldn’t wonder what sort of exclusive speakeasy was hosted in the back of the Pendrake Cabinet.
Except, I only poured one drink and only offered a one service.
A sparkle of silver and the ghost was beside me. “Are you always up this late?”
“I’d love to get to know you, Coraline, but now is not the time.”
“I told you to call me Cora,” she said.
She followed me as I checked the locks on the doors and windows. A séance was no time for unwanted intruders.
I lit the dripping, taper candles mounted on the wall that led to the back room. Behind the velvet curtain was exactly the sight one might expect when visiting a medium. Between the tattered tarot deck, the aged Ouija board bolted to the wall, the antiqued mirror catching shadows of movement, and the crystal ball in the center of a circular table, I could have stepped out of a cheesy horror movie.
“Why do you have this shit?” Cora asked. “I thought you were the real deal.”
“People want a sense of mysticism,” I said, hands busy lighting incense in the room’s four corners. “Their minds are only as open as they allow them to be. This shit helps.”
“People want sex,” Cora retorted. “Your tits are up too high in that corset to pretend you don’t know that.”
“Don’t be crass.”
“You could make a lot more if you turned your seances into fuck sessions. Don’t you want to be rich?”
“Stop that,” I scolded again.
“What? Never fucked a ghost before?” She ran a fingertip along a candle, beaming as a sliver of wax curled beneath her fingertip.
“How did you do that? Touch it, I mean? Usually ghosts can only interact with moral surroundings when they’re overcome with emotion.”
She shrugged. “I mastered a few tricks in life that have made death a blast. Now, why are you dodging the question? Is it because you’ve felt ghost lips between those legs? A chilly, throbbing cock, perhaps? A lady’s icy fingers stroking inside you?”
