I awoke substantially later to a familiar sound - groaning, moaning, and thumping from the larger guest room right next door. I could feel the thud-thud-thud through the wall, even though I knew for a fact that the bed was on the opposite side of the room. They were really going at it.
"Fuck me! Fuck me harder!" Cassie's muffled voice moaned. "I said harder, god damnit!"
That was probably Magnus doing her, then - she preferred Liam for his technique most of the time, but went weak over Magnus's raw, masculine physicality. Indeed, I heard him bellow, either in orgasm or simply from taking things up a notch.
"Fuck mmph…!" It sounded like she'd got her mouth obstructed by something. One guess what.
I curled up on the bed and cried - they were carrying on without me. Carrying on as if I wasn't in the other room, able to hear the louder and more emphatic chapters of their frenzied rutting. To be fair, I had no interest in joining them as Martin. But their having a three-way in the room next door stung because I couldn't join them as Natalie. If I couldn't change back, the three of them would eventually drift away from me. They'd eventually go their own ways in the world of glamorous socialite magic-users, and I'd be stuck in the body of unmagical Martin Warner. I was supposed to be the baddest little witch, and here I was, stuck in a body of lumps and angles and not a wisp of magic.
I don't think they heard me sobbing, but only because they were so damn loud. I wanted to smash something… destroy something… the Gangling Men would be a good start. Rowan Bryce could be next. Either-or. And I'd never be able to do it if I didn't get my magic back… and that meant getting my body back. I'd spent my first few months at St. Circe's desperately trying to get my original body back, and now that I had it, I couldn't wait to jettison it off like 190 pounds of dead weight. Well, 100 pounds of dead weight… I'd take the other 90.
I must have fallen asleep again, because when Lily rapped on the door, it was hours later and the sun was low in the sky. The others had gone back to their respective schools - they'd wanted to wake me, but Lily had insisted that they didn't. She popped her head in without waiting for me to reply. "I've just gotten back from St. Circe's… care for some supper?"
"No, I'll…" my stomach growled. "Correction: supper would be good."
Lily didn't normally cook or do many other chores - why bother when you've got a whole house full of magical automatons? But tonight, she prepared dinner - her devices still did some of the work - grinding the beef, peeling and mashing the potatoes, and so on. That left her to tend to the more skillful and interesting bits of making a shepherd's pie… two pies, rather. One for each of us. And I've never been a huge fan of the stuff, but goddamn if it wasn't one of the best things I've ever eaten, hot and savory and filling. And I was ravenous after the previous night.
"My mother taught me this recipe not long before she disappeared," Lily said, a sad twinkle in her flinty blue eyes.
"Disappeared? What happened to her?"
"She was a witch like us," Lily said. She squeezed my hand - us. I was still one of them, even if I didn't look it. "But in the early years, a lot of witches and warlocks disappeared. The first three or four years after the Gangling Men came… she was one of the last to disappear. I was seven when they took her and only three when they first came…"
I did some quick mental arithmetic - and have since confirmed my findings. Lily, who looked all of about twenty-eight when she wasn't wearing her St. Circe's 'headmistress face', was born about three years before the Gangling Men arrived from beyond our realm (from another plane of existence, we think… basically a nightmarish dimension subtly intersecting with our own). That would have been 1905… the same year that the last great witch prophetess, Elisa Jasper, published 'The Prophecies of Elisa Jasper, Annotated'. January 1, 1905, to be precise… Lily's birth and the publication of TPoEJ,A (doesn't that roll off the tongue?). The exact same day. My birthday is January 1… Simone's is July 3rd (the antipode of January 1). Coincidence? You're a very foolish witch, indeed, if you believe that - there are no coincidences in magic.
"They stopped taking witches?"
"Not entirely," Lily said. "They'll still take one of us every decade or so - nobody's sure why, and there's no appeal to be made, no bargain to be struck. But they've been mostly content to control us with a long leash. They do not wish the world at large to know of our ways - no more practicing magic openly… though doing so was in decline even before they arrived. As the weapons of normal people, who far outnumber us, have grown in power to challenge us, we thought it best not to give them any inclination to wipe us out. Even the Gangling Men fear that, but they must be planning something… something that may be centuries to come to fruition but will result in their supremacy across the world… and I think we've got them spooked."
"Because of the prophecy?"
"The prophecy," Lily agreed. "A prophecy is a kind of pact, given great power by the death of the prophetess. Elisa Jasper died on the spot where the reality of our world folded with that of the Gangling Men, a once-in-a-millennium ley storm in Siberia in the June of 1908. And in that moment, I hope, she sealed in her prophecy the key to our salvation. So… how's the shepherd's pie?"
"Very good, thanks!"
I knew that, from what Lily understood, she was a part of that prophecy, Simone was part of that prophecy, and so was I. But if I couldn’t do magic, I could hardly help, and even if the power of the prophecy kept the creepy pale fucks from killing me outright, sealing me up in a non-magical body was the next best thing. At some point, the prophecy would expire, its power would dissipate, and the sacrifice of Elisa Jasper would be for naught. We witches would have no hope to defeat them. That is, if you believe in prophecies. I'd started a great skeptic and was still on the fence - it was plausible, but far from proven. But I was willing to use Lily's prophetic motivation to get me changed back.
"So… no Natalie no prophecy, right? How do I get changed back?"
"I'll get to work on the declension stones right away… if I devote my every waking hour outside of St. Circe's to them, they'll be complete in maybe four months. If I outsource the job, they might not be as good and I'll owe some favors, but I can probably get them in less than two months. But it might not be needed anyway - the power to destroy those stones was unspeakably immense, and it came from you - not the curse, from you. The curse… potion… whatever it is, it simply co-opted your own power. If you could focus your power like that from inside, it would be enough to shatter the curse."
"So… I just concentrate really hard?"
Lily sighed. "No, not exactly. It takes decades to cultivate that kind of focus… but we might be able to kick-start your journey there."
+++++
Lily's plan was to send me to Ambrose Nicht, a warlock posing as a silicon valley tech guru. That he was able to pull this off was a testament to his focus - since learning magic, I was never especially careful about throwing around dummy thicc amounts of my magic willy-nilly, and I once bricked my phone, a television, and a thermostat all in one go from across the room. From what I understand, Ambrose was a pretty respectable talent (not Lily caliber, but who is?) who managed to do whatever magic he liked around all sorts of technology and technology people without fritzing so much as a transistor. His magic was so focused that he could trace symbols with his pointer finger while texting with his thumb and the phone was none the wiser. He'd managed to teach some of those skills to his acolytes, and he might be able to teach the same to me - and, with Lily's introduction, he'd certainly been willing. My mother witch had connects.
The next morning, Lily walked me out to the edge of her property, out to the standing stones demarcating the ley. Embarrassingly, I couldn't even do the little ritual to meld the points between Shenandoah and San Francisco, so Lily had to do it. For the ritually-correct, that involves eight stones (usually dark ones), a sympathetic representation of the location you want to go to (usually a bit of soil), and two traced symbols (halepha-sigmus, the 'traveler's dyad'). But Lily just flicked a little garden variety (literally) sand at the standing stone and wiggled her fingers like she was conducting a tiny orchestra - she was an old pro who knew where she could cut corners.
"Be careful, be attentive, and learn fast." She brought my head down and kissed my forehead. Her hands and lips were warm.
"I will…"
"I'm serious, Natalie. I know you can learn fast. The other two I've got my doubts about. You need to be on your A-plus game here."
"Yes, mother," I said, and I'm sure I rolled my eyes.
"I am your mother witch, and don't you forget it. Now go before I have to do the ritual again."
I stepped across the threshold. "What the fuck, asshole!" a cyclist shouted at me.
I'd popped into San Francisco on the 101 pedestrian path and almost got run down. I stumbled out of the way and very nearly tumbled off the Golden Gate Bridge… not a great way to start my journey of self-discovery. And… San Fran was three hours behind the time at Lily's place. It was five in the morning on a Sunday. And I had no phone. And no money. The sorts of things witches don't worry about but regular people - which, for the time being, I essentially was - have to concern themselves with.
I hiked down to the Presidio and found a bench to snooze on until it was time for normal people to be awake. Though Ambrose Nicht might well have been awake at 5 am, I didn't want his first impression of me to be a dude disturbing his sleep and demanding mentorship. Lily usually awoke aggravatingly early, and so did a lot out witches. I think there may be some bit of witchcraft that allows long-time witches to get by on half the sleep, but I've always needed a solid seven (and, since becoming a teenager again, a solid eight - lazy kids!). I spent maybe two hours on the bench before a park ranger took me for a vagrant - technically accurate, I suppose - and kicked me off. So I hiked south toward the city and toward the address Lily had given me, passing joggers, cyclists, and asshole warlocks-in-training.
"It looks like somebody is in a real pickle," a familiar voice said. I was still on the Presidio, not too far from Mountain Lake Park, when they found me. Lucian Bryce and his three goons (I'd never learned their names and refuse to do so now).
"Lucian, I do not have the time for this," I said, and I'm sure he could hear the very real edge of fear in my voice. My current body was utterly defenseless against magic.
One of Lucian's goon friends held a familiar-looking device - a warlock's compass*. Simone and Cassie had built one to find me, a roughly saucer-sized device, maybe two inches thick and four or five pounds, mostly slate-gray stone with intricate little symbols carved into its face, detection mechanisms within, and a brassy needle calibrated to point right at the compass's target. Me. Simone and Cassie had calibrated theirs using a few coiled up strands of my hair, and I'm sure Lucian had opportunity to do likewise, and he certainly had motive.
(*if you're at all familiar with witchcraft, you know what this is, and if you aren't, you should find somebody to teach you, since this document is only readable if you've got high potential)
"You'll make time for this," Lucian said.
With a few gestures, he summoned streamers of dark cloth to ensnare me… of course, being a mediocre warlock, his weren't that strong. Even normal-human me was able to struggle free from them, and leap at him, knocking us both over. Immediately, his big goon friend - the guy had to be 6'6" - lifted me off of Lucian, and the two of them combined efforts to magically bind me, wrapping me up like a dark-clad mummy and dragging me further into the park.
"What do you think of a little target practice?" Lucian said, and they used their magic to shuffle the bindings and tie me to a tree.
From there, they took turns zapping me with arcs of electricity - not deadly amounts, because what would be the fun in that? But energy enough to painfully singe and burn me. Fortunately, their aim was pretty shit, so I only got zapped by every third or fourth arc, but they hurt like hell and left whichever bit of me got hit sore, tingling, and twitching for a minute or two afterward.
They also tried to turn me into all kinds of disgusting creatures - a worm, a cockroach, and a naked mole rat to name a few. But, small blessing, my existing curse kept anything transformation-related from working on me.
"Stop it! Let me go, you asshole!" I shouted. "Using your lame-ass magic against a girl!"
His goon guffawed. "He still thinks he's a girl. I think maybe we gave him brain damage."
"Good," Lucian said. "But I don't have to use magic. We can fight mano a mano if you prefer… what do you say, 'sis'? I'll let you take the first swing and everything."
"Yeah… yeah… ok," I said. Now, Lucian was about 6'2", younger and stronger than me, and pretty good at jiu-jitsu. Magnus was better than him, but not by much, and he was about two thousand miles away. I didn't stand much of a chance, but maybe I had a puncher's chance, and it was better than being tied to a tree and electrocuted. Plus…
As soon as the bindings fell away, I tore off toward the road. Really, what chance did I have? What if I actually beat Lucian in a fight? It's not like his boys were going to let me go - fair's fair, Natalie - you beat our boy, you get on home! I sprinted maybe twenty yards before Lucian caught up and took me down with a flying tackle. He mounted me, punched me twice in the face, my head knocking back against grass and mostly-solid earth, and then slid his hands to either side of my throat and… he didn't strangle me. He started to electrocute me.
Volts flowed into me and my whole body jerked. He did it a few seconds at a time - three seconds on, three seconds off… four seconds on, three seconds off… three seconds on, two seconds off… just upredictable enough that I never knew when it was going to stop or start. I would have been begging for mercy if I'd been capable of any voluntary action.
"Do you feel helpless, Martin? Do you think that maybe this is how my sister felt when you raped her and left her for dead?"
"I didn't rape Amanda," I would have said, but instead I just gurgled. Four seconds on, three seconds off.
"Do you know how long I've wanted to do this, you piece of shit? How long I've waited?"
"Please, I can't breathe," I would have said. Five seconds on, three seconds off.
"Lucian, come on, man, that's enough," his goon said.
"He deserves this," Lucian said. Seven seconds on, three seconds off.
"Bro, come on… you're gonna kill him. Seriously, man."
"He deserves to die!" Lucian said. And whether he actually meant to kill me or was just too enraged to stop himself, I knew for a fact I was going to die. I was going to die in a park in San Francisco, and nobody I cared about would ever find out what had happened to me. I'd disappear again, and this time I'd never be found again. I'd never love Cassie again or Magnus, would never see my friends, would never get the revenge, the justice I deserved.
Some last little corner of my mind snapped. All of me came surging forth. Whatever energy I'd engaged during Lily's attempt to break the curse and more. A whole lot more. I felt the curse crumbling away like a sandcastle in the surf, a torrent of force from within me scouring the curse away and leaving nothing behind. I felt Lucian growing on top of me as my body changed, felt air flooding into my lungs and the crackle of raw magic running along a million nerve fibers. I felt the earth recede, the air whipping about me as I rose.
"Holy shit! Run!" One of the goons said. Lucian's friends were hightailing it.
"No!" Lucian shouted. "No! This was mine! I deserve this!"
"You deserve nothing!" I shouted, and I felt some power within myself reaching out and enveloping him, enveloping every atom of Lucian Bryce, and it felt good. Then I was immersed in darkness and oblivion.
Cassie, Magnus, and Liam really pissed me off this chapter! I can’t believe they had s*x in room next to her. That’s just really mean.
Yeah, it was. They was no cruelty intended but, since Natalie doesn't look like her usual self, they weren't considering her emotions. I chalk it up to them being teenagers, but it was pretty callous.
Oh wow. Did she just go magical super sayan? ?
Yupp
More surprises ?.
It would be pretty boring to read if there weren't any!
Oh dear lord. (Terrific focus medium!) miss, did you even aim? (…Oi, one step at a time. If that sticks, the campaign is back on schedule.)