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A high school student finds a grimoire that shows how to make magical disguises. |
Previously: "The Boys to Come"  "Let's try Luke Richardson," you tell Autumn. "He probably won't come out, and then we can call—" But your girlfriend has already whipped out her phone and is busily thumbing in a text. * * * * * To your surprise, and maybe to Sydney's as well, Luke—or "Red," as she insists on calling him—says that he'll be out in fifteen minutes to give Autumn's car a jump. During the wait, you go back to working on the memory strip. But that's tedious—just scratching and rescratching the same simple lines over and over again into the metal—which gives you lots of attention to talk. You ask Sydney why she's so keen on adding Luke Richardson to the Brotherhood. "Oh, I'm not 'keen'," she insists. "He'd just be a good choice, is all." "There's lots of 'good choices'," you retort. You give her a look from under your eyebrows. "Do you have a crush on him? Or does Autumn?" She turns a little pink under her Hispanic tan, and looks away with a tight smile. "He's friends with some of my old friends," she says. "I told you. Girls like Reagan. I just think— Well, I think it'll be interesting to hang out with them, without them knowing that it's, um, me. And you." She hops up to sit on the table next to where you're working. "Don't you want to do something like that with your old friends?" "You mean you want to fuck with some of your old friends?" you mutter. "That's all I'd want to do with mine." "Oh, no," she says. "I'm not mad at my old friends. It'd just be, you know, a thrill. Being in disguise and they don't know it's you, and they talk to you like you're someone else." She pauses. "You still want to fuck with your old friends?" "No," you sigh. "And I don't want to get close to them, either, because then I would want to fuck with them." "Mm. You don't like getting in conflicts with people, do you, Will?" Autumn says. She leans over to put her face close to yours—so close you can faintly smell the crusty salt of dried sweat on her, mixed with her own scent underneath. "Not really," you confess. "And right now I just want to forget about my old life." It still hurts to think about it, you silently add as a hard twinge pinches your guts. "Well, you should get used to it," Autumn says. "That's what life is. Conflict. People fighting, people scrapping." Her face drifts closer to yours. "And when we start doing the rituals, you're really going to have to be in conflict with others. That's where the power comes from. The fuel." "Yeah?" You look up from your work, into her dark eyes, and find you can't tear your gaze from them. "Why's that?" "Because you need a focus, and it's easiest to focus on a person, on someone you want to fuck over." "Why's that?" "We'll talk about it later." Her voice falls into a mewling murmur. "But you focus on someone, on what you want from them, on what you want to happen to them. And then that fire goes—" She doesn't finish, but puts her lips to yours. They only touch. But then you feel her tongue, and you open your mouth and touch the tip of her tongue with the tip of yours. And then you are kissing. She grabs you by the shoulder, and you put your hand behind her head to press her to your face, and then you are grappling. And when she breaks off, it's only so that she can push between you and table, sitting in your lap by straddling you, so that you can kiss and bite and nibble at each other while your hair and hers fall softly about your faces, half-smothering you. * * * * * She's the one who breaks off, and even then after cuddling awhile with your burning cheeks pressed to each other's as you hugged each other tightly. "My God," Autumn groans as she heaves herself back up onto the table. Her face is burning and she is breathing heavily as she brushes her disordered hair out of her face. "I've never made out with another girl. And Autumn would think it's gross." She titters. "Makes me want to do it again, lots more times." Ella has never made out with a girl either, but you've no idea how gross she would find it, because you are still so turned on by what you just did. "Can we do it lots?" you ask. "Sure." From under heavy lids she gives you a sultry look. "So I guess you definitely want to keep Ella as one of your masks?" You nod. "Okay. But," she continues as she hops off the table. "You have to finish the new mask. Because someone has to go home as Ella, and someone else has to go home as Red. That can't happen if you don't get finished. "So," she concludes as she backs toward the stairs, and she scoops up the just-polished mask, "I'll get out of your way. I need to wait for Red outside anyway." You grin after her, and replay the memory of the feel of her lips against yours as you return with double the sweaty effort to the job of scraping the runes into the metal strip. And it's only a few minutes later that you hear a car pulling up outside. You hop up and peer out the window at the dark sedan that's pulled up. The driver is invisible behind the reflections off the windshield, and you withdraw lest you be spotted by him. You've been waiting nervously for a few minutes, wondering how long it will take and if you should go out to help, when the basement door opens and shuts, and Autumn comes flying down the stairs. "Hey, get ready to get changed!" she call. "Do we need bring him down here?" You take a step toward the stairs. "No, just leave him in the car. Mask is on him, I slapped it on him while he was still behind the wheel. But get out of that mask, Will, so I can set it up. And I need to get 'Ella' home asap, don't I, so her date can pick her up?" You make a face at the thought of the concert, then clamber onto the desk. Sydney asks you to take your clothes off first, which you do, and you are prickling all over with a chill when you nakedly lay out on the desk. Autumn thrills you by running a quick forefinger up between your legs, then leans over you with a raffish grin. "Gonna miss you, Ella," she says after snatching one last, quick kiss off you. "God, I hope she's as much fun when she's sitting on Red!" Before you can make any kind of retort, she lays a palm across your forehead. You close your eyes as she tugs and squeezes a couple of times. At last there is the frightening sense that your face is being stretched and pull off the front of your skull, and everything goes dark— * * * * * —and when you awake you are cold and stiff all over. You sit up slowly with a groan, and stretch muscles that feel like cold clay. A glance down confirms that you have a cock and balls inside a tangled mess of hair, and that you've got legs with hair and a shallow chest also with hair. You flinch all over at the thought that you no longer have the silky but firm body of Ella Jaynes, with her mane of soft hair and her tits, but your old, bony, scrawny body. You lay back down for a moment, blinking at the ceiling, but are disturbed by strange ringtone. You sit up again and trace it to a pile of clothes you don't recognize, sitting on the table near your feet. After pulling the phone free, you see that there's a text on it from Autumn Mattera: Hi driving Ella home now all seems ok will come right back later luv u delete this text. You blink at it, then stagger to your feet and stumble over to the windows. That dark sedan is still parked outside, but Autumn's car is gone. And Luke "Red" Richardson? This is apparently his phone, and those are apparently his clothes, and when you sort through them—a forest-green denim button-down shirt; Levis; boxers; argyle socks; hiking boots; and a brown suede jacket—you find under them a mask. It's been sealed already—good, that's a step that Sydney has saved you—and you can make out the glimmering highlights of a face within it. The details are hard to make out, but presumably it is the face of Luke Richardson. You're cold, and there's no way you're going to work on the memory strip in the nude. So though it squicks you out to pull his boxers on, you dress in Luke's clothes. The jeans are a trifle long for you, and the jacket hangs a little loosely on your shoulders, and the boots are also a little loose on your feet. But overall, they are a reasonable fit, and you no longer feel as gross in a male body as you did when you woke. You take a quick look at yourself in the big mirror that leans against a back wall. It causes you to flinch, not because you look bad, but because in Richardson's clothes you look better than you usually do. Why couldn't I have gone for a style like this when I was still me? you ask yourself as you settle yourself inside that jacket. You thrust the thought away by returning to work on the memory strip. Richardson's phone buzzes with another text soon after, and you pick it up expecting another text from Autumn. But this one is from "Cara Wilson": Don't pick me up till 7:30, it reads. I'm running late. Your heart beats hard in your chest as you open the conversation. Dreadful confirmation comes as you read the texts leading up to his last one. Luke "Red" Richardson is supposed to pick up a girl you've never heard of for a coffee date. That's all for now. |
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