Elizabeth
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 Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 1:28 am Post subject: Harley Asher - Story |
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1: ...And the Case of the Scaredy Cat
It wasn't my normal kind of case - but then, I don't know that I could really say any of my cases were all that "normal". At first, it hadn't seemed to strange. He came up to me after school, eyes all shifty, clearly not wanting to be seen with me. That was standard enough... I suppose figuring out how to start is tricky, since they all seem to have trouble with it. So I waited, patiently as I could, in the middle of the hallway.
For a moment, he just loomed in front of me, and then he stepped around, brushing past. His hand lingered just a second longer, slipping a note into the pocket of my jacket, then walking on. I briefly wondered if he wasn't just hitting on me, but I knew that was a more ridiculous notion than him having a job for me, by far. My mom called me pretty, sure, though my doctor preferred petite; at school, they just went with short, if they wanted to be nice. And he didn't seem the sort who liked that. I let him get a few feet away before pulling out the piece of paper, on which there was only one word. "Follow." I'm not big on just taking orders like that, but I had to admit, my curiosity was piqued, so I did it anyway. Besides, a bit of the old cloak and dagger was fun every now and then.
He waited for me in the parking lot, made a show of getting out his keyring and searching through it for the right one, which gave me enough time to get into my own car and start it. He drove around, seemingly aimless, for awhile, before finally pulling into the parking lot at Blockbuster, then pulling around the back. I hadn't been entirely pleased with that development, but after making certain there was nobody hiding in the shadow back there, I got out, leaned against my car, letting him come to me.
"What do you need?"
"It's an initiation thing, y'know? I'm supposed to spend the night in the Booke Witch House," he told me. "Ain't no way I'm going in there, though. Screw that."
I didn't bother to ask what the initiation was for. He wanted to get right down to business, that was fine with me. "So... What? You want me to be your bodyguard or something?" I asked, glancing up at him. I hate to stereotype; frankly, however, he looked like your typical jock, and I had to suppress a giggle at my own suggestion. Sure, physical size wasn't going to protect you from everything, but even ghosts could get intimidated. At least when the "ghosts" were likely to be his friends, wrapped up in bedsheets.
"I just told you I ain't going in there!"
I resisted the urge to ask if he was afraid the big, bad ghosties were going to get him, telling myself scaredy-cat-money spent just as good as anyone else's. "Then... What, exactly?"
For a moment, I thought I might have lost that money anyway, as he gave me a look that seemed to question my intelligence. Or maybe he'd just expected me to be able to read his mind. "You have to go in for me."
That time I had laughed, though I had to force it a little. "Me? I don't think anybody's gonna be mixing the two of us up anytime soon." He had a good couple feet on me, and maybe a hundred pounds, not to mention close-cropped blonde hair, rather than shoulder-length black. He was probably pretty close to being my exact opposite, all things considered.
"Yeah, whatever. I heard you could take care of it, and I know you ain't got no reason to be afraid of witches. So, you gonna do it?"
This sort of thing was, I suppose, the reason my parents were so against my little business. Well, one of the reasons, anyway. It wasn't like I went around advertising what I was, but in high school, word always does tend to get around, whether you want it to or not. "Will they be inside with me, or what?"
"Naw, they'll be there to make sure you go in and don't come out 'til morning. That's it. They'll be outside the rest of the time."
I nodded. That was good... I was pretty sure I could imitate this guy that long, but not the entire time. "100."
"What? Tricia told me you did her job for 50!"
I shrugged. "Tricia's job didn't involve ghost witches. They bump up the price. Unless, of course, you want to just do it yourself..."
"Fine, whatever," he shook his head, jamming his hands into his pockets. "Ain't paying you 'til the job's done, though. Don't have that kinda cash on me."
"I guess Tricia didn't tell you I get half up front, huh?"
"Yeah. Only got half of fifty, though."
"It'll do." He grumbled about it, but at least he did it while digging out his wallet. I stuck one hand into my bag, reaching for my wand, quickly setting it to record as his hand brushed against my other one with the cash. He already thought he knew about me - no need to make it any more obvious. "Oh, and one more thing... You mind if I look at your car?"
I hadn't felt too bad about the price gouging, for what would likely turn out to be about five minutes of work. He'd been willing to spend it, after all, and I was sure I could have found better things to do with my Friday night than spend it in some supposedly haunted house. What those things were, I'm not entirely sure, but there had to be something.
"Sleepover at Wendy's!" I called to my mother as I rushed out the door that evening
"I don't remember hearing about that," she frowned, coming in from the living room, knitting needles in one hand.
"Oh, last minute thing," I waved my hand dismissively. "Her boyfriend just broke up with her, so Janet was trying to cheer her up, and... Well, you know how it goes." Wendy was a useful friend to have around, mostly because she wasn't real. She had a phone, all right - my parents are pretty overprotective, and wouldn't dream of letting me stay overnight at some place they didn't have a number to. Why they couldn't just call my cell if they needed me, I don't know. But the Tracfone had been cheap enough, and had more than paid for itself by allowing me to get out of the house without too many questions asked on quite a few occasions.
"All right... Be careful! People drive crazy at night!"
"I know," I rolled my eyes, waving to her as I stepped out the front door, hugging my messenger bag to me. "See you tomorrow, mom."
"Bye, sweetie! Have fun!" I continued waving as I walked out to the driveway, not having to turn around to know she was watching me. To her credit, she waited until I was in my car and halfway down the street before picking up the phone and calling Wendy's house.
She was always going on about not driving and using my wand at the same time; what she knew didn't hurt her, though. By the time I heard the Tracfone ring, I'd already called up a saved voice - it belonged to a biology teacher at school, but not mine - and cast it on myself. "Hello?"
"Hello, Mrs. Darden," my mother had chirped. "This is Harley's mother. I was just calling to check up on Wendy, the poor dear. I know she and Tyler were together for a long time..."
"Oh, she's taking it hard," I said. "It's so nice of the other girls to come cheer her up. Harley's still coming, isn't she?"
"She's on her way," mom had assured me. "Just left. Well, I'm sure you're busy, so I'll let you go... Give Wendy my love, will you?"
"Of course. We really should get together for coffee sometime."
"Well, I'm sure one of these days our schedules will work out." We shared a chuckle, then said our goodbyes. I'd managed to avoid that meeting so far, and hopefully I could continue doing so. Using the teacher's voice was one thing, but using her image would probably be too risky - what if mom went to my school, and that teacher just happened to walk by? No, that wouldn't do, even if I could have guaranteed that mom wouldn't manage to see through my glamour in the first place. I wasn't a terrible actor, but I knew that one wrong move would be enough to make her suspicious.
That was a problem for another day. I pulled into the public library's parking lot, hiding my car behind the bookmobile so I could get ready. The car was easiest, so I did it first. Of course, if the guy's friends were planning on playing some prank on his ride while he was inside, they'd know something was up, since I was sure the engines on our cars were supposed to look different, but as long as stayed out of it, I figured the glamour would hold up.
Then I'd moved on to myself. I made sure I had everything I needed in my messenger bag before putting it over my shoulder, to make sure it was covered by the spell, adding my wand last, after calling up the right file, so that I knew where to find it. I really hated watching, so as soon as I hit the Cast button, I'd closed my eyes, but not before seeing my hands start to expand, pale skin suddenly developing a pretty heavy tan. I breathed out, slowly counting to five, then opened my eyes. I didn't feel any different - you never really do. Well, in theory you would if you could somehow pull off real physical transformation, but that was just a myth anyway. So I'd peeked into the rearview mirror, a bit taken aback to see a guy's face looking back. I'd done it a million times, yet it never really stopped being weird.
It looked like it had worked, though, and that was the important part. I tested it by adjusting my glasses, making sure to watch for any shimmer around the eye area. Nothing. I started the car back up and pulled out, hoping nobody had been watching the parking lot too closely. Most people would just convince themselves they'd mis-seen what kind of car had gone in, but not all of them.
The Booke Witch House wasn't too far away, but far enough to give me time to think about it. It was a local legend, of sorts. Apparently, back in the early 1800s, the land was part of a farm, long gone by now. The owner had seen some weird animal out in the field and shot at it, because I guess that'd what you do when you're a farmer, and that had started it all. Supposedly the animal had been a witch - the traditional kind - in disguise, and she didn't like being shot at, not one bit. So she'd started to torture the farmer's family, starting with making strange sounds throughout their house at night, then seeming to take an interest in the farmer's teenaged daughter, invisibly torturing her, beating her up and pulling her hair, sometimes trapping her in her room for days at a time, not letting her out, or anyone in. It worked on the rest of the family, too, taunting the farmer's son and his fiance until finally the fiance broke off the wedding, continuously ripping the sheets and pillows off of the beds, and just generally being a real bitch.
Some versions of the story say that the farmer eventually went crazy, and set fire to the farmhouse. Others say the witch did it herself, having grown bored. And other still claim that the farmer finally found a way to trap the witch - there's some whole thing about a professional witch hunter, and silver bullets, but I never really understood that part myself - and was just planning to burn her, only to find himself and his family trapped inside as well. Whatever happened, the house burned down and the family died.
Time went on, and the story got passed down... And then somebody decided to ignore it, building a new house, supposedly on the same spot that the farmhouse had stood. Everyone who lived there complained of mysterious voices and loud knocking sounds coming from inside the walls, and after a while, people smartened up enough to stop trying to live there.
I slowed down as I saw I was getting close, gliding past a house with a faint glow coming from the TV in the living room window, a pair of satellite dishes adorning the roof, the last sign of life of life issuing from any of the houses on that street. People had started moving away from the houses near it as well, like they were afraid the haunting was going to spread, like an infection.
It didn't look any different from the other houses around, nothing setting it apart but the boards nailed over the windows, the lack of a For Sale sign - the real estate offices in town didn't even bother anymore - and the pair of teenagers milling about the yard. I hoped they weren't planning on staying in the front yard like that the whole time. I didn't really want to spend the night in jail for breaking and entering because they couldn't be more subtle than that.
"Hey, man, right on time," one of them greeted me, offering a hand. My client had taught me their silly little handshake, so I did it, moving quick to make sure he couldn't tell that my hand was actually smaller than it looked. Physical contact alone couldn't break a glamour, but if it made the person looking suspicious, they might be able to see through. I'd heard that ghosts could supposedly see through them anyway, so I guess if there really was one in the house, it would know I was really a girl, and perhaps wonder why I was wandering around its home in my pajamas, but I found it doubtful that it would tell these guys on me. "You ready?"
I shrugged. "Ain't no thing," I said, my voice having dropped a couple octaves. "Let's get it done." I felt myself shiver slightly, feeling as if I were being watched. If there was anyone else lurking around, however, they were well hidden, so I shook it off, told myself I was just being silly.
They led me around to the back of the house, where they'd already unboarded the door, so I just had to open it and step through. I reached down into my bag to pull out my wand, using it to set up a quick alarm on the door, to let me know ahead of time if they were going to come in and try to mess with me so I'd have time to get the glamour running again, before flipping on its flashlight function. Honestly, that was probably the most useful part of the wand most of the time.
The house was dusty, sure, and it had a cobwebs hanging in most every corner, and graffiti on most of the walls, and the staircase going to the second floor had a large hole in it, but it wasn't as bad as I'd been expecting. I gave myself a quick tour of the ground floor, setting up another alarm on the front door after peeking out the nearby window to see that one of the guys had went back around to guard it by leaning against it and smoking, before holing up in what seemed to have been the living room.
I set the wand down, setting it to record its surroundings, while I quickly pulled my laptop out of my bag, flipping it over and removing the battery panel. The wand gave a light beep to tell me it was finished, and I picked it back up, setting it into its place right behind the battery.
By the time I flipped the computer back over and lifted the lid, the screen had already sprung to life, downloading the data from the wand. I'd already set up a basic animation from the client's data, mostly him kicking back with a flashlight and an iPod, glancing around nervously, that afternoon, so I just plugged the room's data into that as a background. It would do, as long as his friends didn't bother to watch for too long at a time. Normally, even something that basic would have been hard to maintain for an entire room, but the limited vantage points - just a couple windows, and those boarded up so that the moonlight only came in a few tiny slivers from each - ought to make it manageable.
I popped the wand back out of the computer and set up the glamour, then, finally, let myself relax, slipping out of my own illusion. When I reopened my eyes, there was still a tinge of his tan left on my skin, for just a split second until it drained back out. I kinda liked the way I looked with a tan - I always just burned. Maybe I could talk mom or dad into writing a glamour for that... I was no good at modifying data. I could barely even change the color of a shirt, much less skin. I'd probably wind up making myself look like an Oompa Loompa if I tried it, given my past attempts. I'd tried to make myself look taller once, and wound up looking like someone had taken a picture of me and stretched it upwards in a computer program. It was kinda creepy, really. And it was better not to even think about the times I'd attempted to give my breasts a little enhancement. Mom wouldn't help me with that, but if it was just a tan, maybe I'd have a chance.
I knew his friends were likely to try to sneak in at least once, but they seemed the uncreative type, so I didn't expect that until midnight or so, giving me plenty of time to get a little homework done. I pulled a blanket from my messenger bag, spreading it out and sitting on it, setting the wand on its end and upping the light's power so I didn't kill my eyes staring at my textbooks. I decided to start with Trigonometry, since that would almost definitely give me the most trouble.
Sure enough, I was still staring at it an hour later, when I heard it. At first, I thought I had fallen asleep, and had a terribly boring dream about doing homework, and missed the sound of my alarm. But that couldn't be it - I should have heard it, even in my dreams. Had they hidden someone inside the house, and I'd just missed them on my tour?
I grabbed at my wand, standing up as I fumbled to find the right glamour file to turn myself back into my client, turning around in shock at the sound of a cough, heart leaping into my throat. And standing there behind me was...
Me. I stared into my dark blue eyes for a moment, transfixed, before looking down at the rest of me. At first, I'd thought I was just wearing a pink T-shirt - not my color, normally, but not all -that- strange - but as my eyes kept traveling down, I saw that it continued, snapping between my legs. I had nothing on my legs, but there was something peeking out from the leg-holes of the onesie, something white and a little stiff, like plastic.
"What the...?" I started.
"Shh!" I warned myself. "We don't want them to hear us outside. Listen, I know this is strange, but I need you to pay attention. I'm from the future."
I nodded slowly, sinking back down to the floor, trying to process all this. Time travel was another one of those things like physical transformation that was supposed to be impossible. And yet... About a million questions crowded my mind, but "Why are you wearing...?" was all I could get out.
The future me looked down at herself for a split second. "This is what I'm here about," she said. "You have to stop this from happening."
2: ...And the Case of Her Future Self
I reached out, hand shaking as my mind raced off in a thousand different directions. The future me took a step away, shaking her head.
"You can't touch me," she said. "I mean, it's not like we'd stop existing or something if you did - I don't think - but I'm not physically here. This is just a mental projection."
Well, that answered one of my questions easily enough. I guess I'd known I'd be confused about how this was possible at all. "All right..." I nodded. "Okay. But... Where are you projecting from? Or... When, I guess, is the better question... How..?"
She shook her head. "I know you have all kinds of questions. I wish I could explain things to you, but I can't. I'm already taking a big enough risk even showing up here..."
I guess I should have expected that. Even though my curiosity was still itching, I let that line of questioning go, and moved on to the perhaps more obvious one of, "All right, then, what happened to you... me... us? Why are you dressed like that?!" For the life of me, I couldn't think of any logical explanation for it. Well, other than Halloween, but in that case, the warning didn't make a lot of sense.
The only thing I could think of was that maybe, just maybe, traditional witches really had existed at one time. And one really had haunted a house in this very spot, and was pissed that I was there. It was stupid, of course, but at the time, it was the only thing I could come up with. I'd been hoping she would have something better to offer.
Instead she shrugged. "I can't really tell you that, either. Sorry."
I closed my eyes. Of course not. "Well, does it have to do with this house?" There was no verbal answer, but I'm sure if I had opened my eyes a moment sooner, I'd have seen another shrug. "Then why the hell are you even here?!" I hissed, perhaps a little louder than I'd really intended.
"I'm just trying to warn you!" she threw her hands up defensively. "It isn't my fault!"
"You can't just say that and then leave! You have to give me something to work with!" That was when the alarm went off, a loud siren echoing in my mind, as the light on my wand's flashlight turned red. I'd almost forgotten where I was, and what I was supposed to be doing - had they heard me talking to myself?
I fumbled with my wand, trying to turn off the alarm, to throw the glamour back up, only to drop it, sending it rolling across the floor, right through the future me's feet. The wailing in my head thankfully turned off, but, on the less fortunate side, so did the light. "Damn it..." The light came back on a split second later, still red, but a much fainter one now, one that told me it was rebooting, one that illuminated a sheepish looking future me, and the rest of my stuff as I hurried over to pack it all up.
"Sorry," the future me said behind me as I did so. "It's a side effect of..."
"Shut up!" I whispered, fumbling over to throw my wand into my bag, stifling its light. I didn't know which door they were coming from - both, maybe - and I couldn't risk running into them un-glamoured. And I couldn't get glamoured until my wand came back online. Perfect. I just hoped the guy from the front door wasn't outside and looking at the street, so he didn't see my car turn back into itself.
I fumbled around the front pocket of my bag, biting my bottom lip as I saw a faint light heading down one of the hallways, joined a moment or two later by another, coming through the kitchen. I bit back a few choice words, trying to stay as quiet as I could, hoping neither of them had looked at my window glamours. That might buy me a couple minutes while they tried to figure out where I was.
I let out a tiny sigh of relief as my fingers closed around the emergency car tool my father had given me for Christmas the year before. I'd never had reason to cut a seatbelt, or use its alarm, but it was still useful to keep around. Especially now, I thought, as I pressed it against one of the windows facing the street. There was a slight pop, and then a crackling, and I quickly covered my eyes as the window caved in on itself.
I brushed off the windowsill, trusting shoddy craftsmanship, and several years of disrepair, to work in my favor as I pushed at one of the boards nailed across the outside of the house. For a second or two, it held, and then I felt it start to push away. I could hear them getting closer, so I shoved harder, and the board fell away. Then the next, and the next, as the beams of the flashlights reached the living room, and started to search around it.
I shoved my bag out of the window, then squeezed through myself, almost feeling the light wash across the top of my head as I wiggled out, dropping to the ground on top of my bag. I grabbed it, slipping the car tool into the bag and fishing out my keys as I dashed out to my car, frantically pressing the unlock button on the remote. I thought I heard voices behind me, but I ignored them, not daring to turn around as I opened the car door and jumped inside. It would have been nice to have time to re-establish the glamour on my car before I raced out of there, as I heard the wand make the distinctive beep that signaled it had started back up, but I decided it would be wiser to just get the hell out of there, and hope they weren't watching too closely, or hadn't paid much attention to the kind of car that had been parked there.
Either way, the case was pretty much a bust. I could have risked going back there, I suppose, claiming I'd just gotten scared when I'd heard them coming, but that wouldn't exactly be flattering for my client. And how would I explain my client being able to get out of a hole barely big enough for me?
As the adrenaline rush wore off, I started to feel tired, as well as aware of a sharp pain running along my back. I considered making up some story about getting in a fight with Wendy, or Wendy being too upset to want other people around after all, but nothing sounded convincing enough that I was going to risk going to my parents with it. So, instead, I took my client's down payment, hoping I'd be able to talk him into not demanding a refund since it was only a quarter of my fee in the first place and I'd done part of the job, and threw on a random glamour to get a room at the cheap, run-down motel at the edge of town.
I winced as I looked at my back in the dingy mirror, though I had to admit it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. I'd need to go out and buy another tank-top before I went home, as this one had a pair of rips in it, matching the cuts in my skin beneath it, but my wand didn't detect any fragments of glass in me, so that was a big plus. And my shorts had somehow come away unscathed. So, all in all, it could have been worse.
I cleaned myself up, then flopped down onto my stomach on the bed, eyes starting to drift closed. I had so much to think about... Too much. Had that escape been what pissed off the witch? I had messed up the house, after all, even if it wasn't even the original house. And I'm sure I'd left behind a little blood. That was never a good thing, at least with real witches. But that couldn't be it, could it? I wouldn't have had to run away if the future me hadn't temporarily fried my wand... Those guys might not even have come inside if I hadn't gotten so loud talking to her.
I shook my head, taking off my glasses and tossing them onto the crooked table beside the bed, too tired to even reach up and turn the lamp sitting on it off before falling asleep. For once, I didn't dream, thankfully, because I'm sure after that day, they would have been pretty weird.
She was waiting for me when I woke up, standing over the bed and watching. I nearly rolled off the bed in surprise, glaring up angrily once I realized who it was. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack?!"
The future me blushed, cheeks turning about the same color as her onesie. "Sorry."
"Here to be vague at me some more?" I spat at her.
"I told you, this isn't my fault! I don't make the rules for this, you know." I rolled my eyes, sitting up. "You don't know what I'm risking even telling you as much as I did!"
"You mean, nothing? Because that's all you've told me so far. And, y'know, thanks for that. Big help." I gave her a thumbs up from the edge of my bed, grabbing my glasses to get a clearer look at her, and the clock. "You couldn't have waited until after 6?"
"I didn't wake you up," she said defensively. "You did that on your own. I was just waiting."
"For..?"
She shrugged. "I thought you might want to talk."
"I want to go back to sleep. Can't you come back later?"
"You think this is easy?! That I'm just doing this for the fun of it?! I'm trying to help you! You have no idea what they'll do to me if they catch me talking to myself like this! How about a little gratitude?" Her eyes flared, like my friends always told me mine did when I was angry - I'd never quite believed them, but, as they say, seeing is believing.
I shrank back a little. "Sorry... I'm sorry. This is just all so... Well, you know, right?"
Her face softened as she nodded. "I know."
We smiled at each other for a moment before I finally asked, "Okay, so what -can- you tell me?"
"Well, I... I... Shit, they're coming! I need to get back!" And she vanished.
I groaned, falling backwards across the bed. Perfect. Just perfect.
As tired as I still was, I couldn't get back to sleep after that. I rolled around on the bed for a while, trying to find the least lumpy spot. It didn't seem to exist.
I searched around for a remote to the tiny TV perched on the dresser at the foot of the bed, but it had apparently gotten stolen. It was just as well, since getting up and flipping through the channel manually showed that none of them came in well enough to bother watching. I briefly considered getting out my laptop and surfing the Internet, until sense hit me, and I realized the chances of them having wireless were pretty much nil, and not even magic laptops could get online without a network.
So I put the glamour from last night back on and headed out, stopping at Wal-Mart on my way home to get a new top for my pajamas. That sort of thing was exactly why I didn't get any fancy pajamas with designs or anything on them... Just plain gray, easy to replace.
Mom was already up when I got in. "Everything all right?" she asked, raising an eyebrow over her cup of coffee.
"Yeah, fine. Couldn't sleep," I mumbled. "And Wendy had a swim meet this morning, so..." Why hadn't I come up with that excuse earlier, and saved myself the money from the motel? Apparently because I was an idiot.
"And you girls thought it was a good idea to keep her up all night beforehand?"
I couldn't tell if my mom was being suspicious, or just amused. Maybe it was a good thing I hadn't tried to use that story on her in the middle of the night. "It was a good idea at the time. I'm going to bed."
Mom nodded, getting up to kiss my forehead before I trudged to my room. I half expected my future self to be waiting there for me, but it was blessedly empty. I was still curious about just what the hell was going on, of course; however, I was sure that particular mystery could wait for a decent hour to be solved. I stayed awake just long enough to make sure mom didn't call Wendy's mom to confirm the supposed swim meet.
I did dream that time, something with a stereotypical green, warty witch shooting fire from her broom at me, while my future self watched with a shrug, telling me there was nothing she could do about it. But, even so, it was a nice break from the strangeness my waking life was becoming.
3: ...And the Case of the Breadsticks
I set my tray down, wishing - for closer to the hundredth than the first - time that my magic extended to being able to transform the school's slop into actual, edible food. "I told you we should have just gone to Penn Station," I told Janet, shaking my head at the supposed chicken alfredo.
"If you don't want it, I'll take it," she shrugged, looking up from her own plate. And, I knew, most likely that's what would end up happening. I'd been friends with her since kindergarden, and while she could be a bit of a wet blanket from time to time, my parents liked her, so I kept hanging out with her. Besides, if I didn't, who else would I eat lunch with? She was pretty skinny, though a pretty kind of skinny, not that anorexic look, but she could put away food like nobody's business, without any real consequence. I hated her for it sometimes - if I ate as much as her, I'd probably have a glamour up on myself 24/7.
But the questionable quality of the school's pasta wasn't the main reason I'd wanted to get off-campus for lunch. In fact, that reason was strolling by as I looked up from my tray, as if taunting me. It didn't seem to notice me, yet once I'd seen it, I couldn't just let it pass. "I'll be right back," I said, getting back up. "Help yourself to... Well, whatever." I grabbed the stale chocolate chip cookie from my tray and hurried off.
"Hey, you," I smiled up at my client, having apparently forgotten just how big he was - very. "Can I talk to you for just a minute?"
He looked over at his friends, none of whom, luckily, were the pair I'd run away from that Friday night. "Can we do this later?" he asked.
A part of me was relieved, but the part that wanted to get this over with was much stronger. "Now would really be best."
He thought for a second, then shrugged. "Can't get enough, huh?" he asked, getting a good guffaw from his pals. Considering what I was about to tell him, I managed to resist the urge to reach into my bag for my wand. He set his tray down, and we started to walk, as behind us, one of his buddies got up, going over to flirt with Janet.
He followed me over to a quiet corner of the cafeteria quietly, then stared at me blankly as I tried to think of how to say what needed to be said, going through several false starts before coming up with, "I had a bit of a problem with your case."
"Really?" he raised an eyebrow. "That why they're all pissed at me? Never would've guessed."
I let myself blush, mostly to help keep him from getting too mad, if he wasn't immune to my charms of cute. "It's complicated, but just... I'm sorry. Things went south, and I overreacted a little." I'd been over it a thousand times in my head since then, and I knew that I could've gotten out of it, and still finished the job. My future self popping up must have rattled me more than I realized, or something, to send me running off like a scared rabbit. Not that I could explain it to him that way.
But, even without that explanation, he still took it rather well, with a "Whatever. They're givin' me one more chance, and changin' up the initiation, so I'm cool," as he stared down at the floor, hands jammed deep in his pockets.
"Good to know," I nodded, trying to sound like I really thought that. "I should probably let you know, though... Well, I can't refund your money. There were some unexpected expenses, and... Well, I can't cover it right now. I'm not sure when I'll be able to, either, but..."
That, surprisingly, was met with another, "Whatever," this one accompanied with a shrug and a "Whenever," followed with, "you get it, it's cool. You know where to find me. Obviously."
He wandered off back to his table before my shock could wear off. There was a moment of elation, realizing that I'd gotten through it even easier than I could have possibly imagined. And then I remembered how hard it had been to part him from his money in the first place. Either this guy had multiple personalities or there was something more going on here. It had been way too easy, and, as I thought back, other than to see who I was when I first went over to him, he'd barely looked at me. He'd been acting almost... guilty. But why? I was the one who'd screwed up.
I reached up to rub my eyes, only then remembering I had a cookie in one hand. It was a bit crumbled by that point, but about as good as I'd expect any of the school's cookies to be. I leaned back against the wall, thinking.
At least until I heard the sound of loud coughing, choking almost, coming from across the cafeteria. I glanced up lazily, more out of annoyance than curiosity, only to see that it was Janet making the noise, standing up, her just long enough to meet the dress code shorts declaring her to be Juicy to the world as she bent over, trying to breathe. As horrible as it was, I have to admit that my first thought was, "Maybe that'll teach her not to eat so quickly."
That cost me enough time that, by the time I managed to get through the crowd, she'd already been escorted out to the nurse's office. I don't know why, but part of me drew me over to our table first, before I went to check on her. And there, on my tray, I found my breadsticks, which somehow always managed to be too dry and too greasy at the same time, in the shape of a cross.
The nurse, for whatever reason, had never liked me much, so other than the news that Janet would be fine, I didn't get much out of her, nor did I manage to get past her and into her office, where I could hear Janet, sounding much quieter than usual, telling her mother's cell number to one of the nurse's assistants. Janet always had been a bit of a goody two-shoes - apparently she'd left her own cell in her locker, which was closer to leaving them at home, like we were supposed to, than what pretty much everyone else did.
Including me. I had enough time before my next class to pull out my laptop and update my all-purpose "paying attention in class" glamour with my current outfit and update the file in my wand, making sure the voice file attached had its volume set to mute. One time I'd accidently changed that, and nearly drove my Biology teacher crazy as he tried to figure out who was talking in the middle of his class. I gave Janet until the middle of the class for her mother to pick her up and get her home before I activated it, pulling out my cell phone and dialing her number. If someone had been paying close attention to me, they might have noticed a slight change in position, though I tried to get as close to the glamour's pose as I could before turning it on. Besides, the human brain has a way of filling in things like that, to keep people from having to believe in things like magic, or witches.
"Are you all right?" I said in greeting.
"Harley?" she asked, sounding confused. "Shouldn't you be in Trig?"
"I am," I rolled my eyes. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she answered finally. "How...?"
"Kryzinski gave me permission to check on you," I anticipated her question. "She heard about what happened to, and she was worried. It's cool, Jan."
"Okay," she said reluctantly. "If you say so... I don't want you to get in trouble."
I decided not to tell her how boring she could be sometimes, instead asking, "So, what happened?"
"It was nothing, Harley. I just choked."
I might have believed that, especially since it had been the first thought in my own mind. But she was a terrible liar, and that, most definitely, was a lie. "Janet, if you don't tell me, I'll just break into the nurse's office and look at your file."
She sighed. "Fine, I... Did you really just say that in front of Kryzinski?"
"All right, I'm not in class! Just tell me the truth, Jan!"
"You have to promise you're not going to blow this out of proportion," she warned me, though she didn't wait for my promise. "It's probably nothing, but the nurse said it looked like food poisoning." Before I could even finish processing that, she went on, "But she doesn't know for sure, so I'm sure it was nothing. I hafta go, though, and you need to get to class... Could you tell the girls I won't be at practice this afternoon? Thanks, doll!"
She hung up before I could say anything else, or even decide what to say - whether to continue questioning her, or to tell her to call one of the other cheerleaders herself. Despite what Janet seemed to think, I knew there had to be more to this. Sure, the food at school was terrible, and it wasn't hard to imagine someone getting food poisoning from it, but it seemed unlikely that it would have come on so quickly. And that nobody else but her would have been affected. Sure, it could have been something she'd eaten elsewhere, the day before, but I knew that wasn't it - I just kept thinking back to those breadsticks. It couldn't be that simple.
But I would have to wait to figure it out. Sure, my glamour could cover for me for the rest of the class, but without a way to get out of the room, it didn't do me much good. There was no way to turn invisible, and having somebody else rise out of my seat while I was apparently still sitting there would probably be too much to expect Mrs. Kryzinski's mind to wrap itself around. With some teachers, I could get away with getting a hall pass to go to the bathroom, then sending a glamour back in my place, but Kryzinski was bound to say -something- when it got back, and it was hard to say what.
If I did know, I could just program a response in, which would be easy enough, but without knowing, I ran the risk of it saying something completely wrong and attracting another question, which the glamour wouldn't be able to answer, unless I could somehow plan for that, too. Independent glamours were tough that way - with them, you're basically just setting up a movie, pressing play, and hoping nothing gets in it's way. Sure, you can set up some basic subroutines to keep it from walking through walls or people, but that was getting into some very advanced stuff that I was just beginning to learn about. Regular glamours are so much easier, since they're just like overwriting your own image - or, say, that of my car - and voice with another one. The one I had up in class was a bit of a mix; it was laid over my own image, like a regular glamour, but programmed to act like it was listening, and occasionally write down a note. As long as I stayed at my desk, it could cover for me, though if I were to get up, it would follow, which would look rather strange, since it couldn't actually stand up, so it would just be floating in a sitting position.
If it had been any other class, I might have just stayed as I was, tried to reason out what could be going on, but I had enough problems with Trigonometry as it was, so I tried to match the glamour's position, then switched it off and did my best to pay attention. I glanced over, making sure Britney hadn't skipped again. She hadn't, so once Mrs. Kryzinski dismissed everyone, I made a beeline over, to save myself having to hunt down another cheerleader later on.
"Hey, Britney," I said with a forced smile. "How are you?"
"I -was- doing great," she answered, her grin equally faked.
So it might have been a better idea to wait for another cheerleader, or at least until I had a chance to grab the data of someone the cheerleaders didn't despise, but who would still know about Janet. I guess I should have assumed most of them would still be pissed at me for exposing about half the squad for cheating in order to keep their grades up high enough to stay on the team. I'd already started though; I figured I might as well get it over with.
"Look, Janet just wanted me to let you know she's not gonna be a practice today. So, could you pass that along to the rest of the hive mind for me?"I started to turn and leave, my good deed for the day done, until I heard her voice again, more to herself than to me.
"Her too?"
I tried to ignore my natural impulse, and yet I still found myself asking, "Her too what?"
"Like you care," she rolled her eyes. "Hell, you're probably just trying to finish the job."
I could have pointed out that Janet was my friend, and I wouldn't do anything to her, or that I couldn't have cared less about what the other cheerleaders did, at least until someone hired me to do so, or even that if the squad had just done their homework like normal people, they wouldn't have got in trouble. My curiosity was stronger than the need to set the record on any of those counts straight, however, so instead I said, "Did someone else get food poisoning?"
Britney shrugged. "I don't know what it was... I just know Mallory hasn't been to practice in a week."
I vaguely recalled Janet mentioning Mallory before. It didn't seem like her loss would be too tragic - she sounded rather wild, and not particularly dependable - but it seemed like too much of a coincidence for both her and Janet to be taken out of commission in so short an amount of time without some connection.
"Hey, did-" I started to ask, but Britney was already on her way out, pretending she couldn't hear me.
4: ...And the Case of Batman
"You should definitely get it!" Janet exclaimed, smiling as she held the dress up to me.
"Yeah, I'll definitely think about that," I said, gently tugging it away from her an putting it back on the rack. "I'll do that with all the money I have."
She shrugged, quickly flipping through the other clothes. "It's on sale," as if that would make me suddenly have more money in my possession.
I kept myself from sighing out loud, just barely. It wasn't that I didn't like doing stuff with Janet, or even that I didn't like "dressing up all cute", as she'd instructed me, and going shopping - I had to admit I looked all right in my black and white striped shirt, with black lace around the bottom, going just low enough to hit the top of my admittedly short red plaid skirt, though perhaps I should have gone with my classic black Converses, rather than the neon green ones - but the real reason I'd asked her to do anything that day was to get her talking about what had happened the day she'd gotten food poisoning. So far, all I'd gotten out of her was that she'd suddenly started feeling sick in the middle of eating, and then suddenly hadn't been able to breathe. Not particularly helpful.
"Do you remember what you were eating right before you felt sick?" I asked, waiting for her to look up from the clothes to go on with, "The breadsticks, maybe?"
"I don't know, Harley," she shook her head. "It doesn't matter, though."
"Yes, it does!" I insisted. "What if this wasn't an accident? You have to admit, it seems kind of..."
"Harley, you promised to drop this. Now would you please do that? We're supposed to be having fun here!"
"I didn't promise that," I pointed out. "You didn't even ask me to. You told me not to overreact, and I didn't even agree to that. And that was before I found out about..." I paused, pretending I'd forgotten the name.
"Mallory has nothing to do with this. I heard her parents just had her transferred to a private school. Some strict Catholic thing, I guess." She pulled out a black dress, eyeing it before putting it back.
"Was she Catholic?"
"I don't know, Harley." She rolled her eyes, turning to face me, "I didn't know her that well. You didn't know her at all. Why are we even talking about her?!"
"Because it's strange that she vanished a week before you got poisoned, isn't it? That's a hell of a coincidence."
"For the last time, Harley, I wasn't poisoned. I got food poisoning. There's a difference. And if you don't drop this, I'm leaving - I didn't come here to get interrogated."
"All right," I forced a smile. "Just making conversation."
"Sure," she nodded, unconvinced as she got the first dress back out, shoving it into my hands. "Try this on instead."
"I told you, I can't afford it." Especially not after spending an afternoon hanging out instead of looking for a new client. I wasn't completely broke, just close enough. But she grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me around, pushing me towards the changing rooms. "Fine, fine..." I handed her my bag, got a key from the bored looking attendant, and walked into one of the little booths.
Technically, I wasn't supposed to leave my wand with anybody else, especially not a non-witch, but there was no way I was going to leave it in the car the whole time, nor was I going to risk having the attendant take it. I at least trusted Janet not to go rummaging through my stuff.
I glanced down at the dress, shaking it off the hanger. It was a bit big, and I didn't actually care how well it fit, even if I did like it, so I decided to just throw it on over my clothes. I bunched it up a bit, slipping an arm into it, and then my head, then struggling a little to get my other arm through, twisting and turning a bit before I could tug the whole thing down, past my face. I took a quick look at my face in the mirror, jumping a bit, as I hadn't remembered there being a mirror in there, then bending over to smooth the dress down.
I glanced back up at the mirror again, now almost certain I hadn't seen one before, something only confirmed as I saw what looked like the edge of a diaper peeking out from the legholes of the onesie my supposed reflection was wearing. I straightened up with a blush, feeling stupid as I hissed, "Where have you been?"
My future self looked at me incredulously, crossing her arms. "I mean... How are you doing? You didn't get in trouble, did you?"
"Nothing I couldn't handle," I replied, looking somewhat proud of myself. "I couldn't risk coming back until now, though. They're really keeping an eye on me."
"Sorry," I said, trying to sound as sincere as I could, before finally letting go with, "Why didn't you tell me that was going to happen to Janet?!"
My future self looked down at her feet sheepishly. "With everything that's gone on with me, I... Well, I kinda forgot when that happened. She's all right by now, though."
"You forgot when your best friend got poisoned?" I raised an eyebrow.
"I didn't realize just what was going on yet by that point!" she said defensively. "I hadn't started writing down dates yet, and I didn't want you to freak out every day at lunch until it happened."
"Oh? And when will I figure out what's going on?"
"It should be soon," she assured me.
"Can't you just tell me?" Of course, by then I knew better than to expect a straight answer, but I couldn't help but try anyway.
"What kind of detective would get her answers that easily?" she teased.
"I never claimed to be a detective."
"No, but that's what you like to think of yourself as, isn't it?"
I shrugged uncomfortably, but there wasn't much of a defense against being psychoanalyzed by yourself. "Can you at least tell me if her getting poisoned is connected to... well..." I gestured to her, and her attire.
"Everything is connected," she told me. "The sooner you realize that, the better. Look, I've screwed around her for longer than I should, and your friend's getting restless. You probably don't want her to hear you talking to yourself. Just... Look out for..." She glanced around nervously, then whispered, "Batman," before vanishing. A split second later, I heard a knock at the door of the changing stall, almost causing me to jump out of my skin.
"It can't look that bad!" Janet called in. "Just let me see!"
"Just a second," I replied, straightening the dress a little, tugging it down over the hem of my skirt and opening the door, looking at myself in the mirror at the end of the row of changing rooms as Janet looked me over.
"It's all right," she declared, echoing my sentiments pretty accurately. It wasn't nearly as cute when it was actually on me, luckily, since it kept me from being tempted to find a way to buy it. I looked back in the mirror, wondering if I was really such a bad judge, or if I'd cheated myself so much by wearing it over my clothes. As I was looking, I saw a couple guys, about my age, walk up to the woman at the counter, who had, until then, been watching Janet nervously, as if she was going to help me smuggle the dress out in my bag. They looked slightly familiar, most likely someone from school, but I couldn't quite place them...
And then I looked down at what they were wearing, and saw that one of them had a T-shirt with the Batman logo on it. "Oh, shit," I whispered, grabbing Janet's arm and pulling her into my changing room, shoving my hand over her mouth before she could ask what was going on. With my other hand, I held one finger up to my lips. She gave me an odd look, then nodded, letting me remove both my hands, which then started to grab for my bag, and the wand inside.
I stopped myself - what was I going to do with it? Even if I wasn't in here with Janet, thus keeping me from actually casting anything without breaking one of the cardinal rules, surely the attendant would realize that my new form hadn't gone in, and my old one wasn't coming out. So all I could do was wait, fidgeting nervously, until at last I decided to take the dress off to give myself something to do, hanging it back up. I jumped again as another knock came.
"One person to a stall," the attendant reminded us. "And no purses or other bags!"
I waited as long as I could, until I heard her restart her spiel, then opened the door, shoving the dress into her arms. Luckily, the two guys seemed to be gone, off trying on their own clothes. Janet started to open her mouth, and I shook my head, leading her quickly out, taking my bag back as we wound our way through the store. I slung the bag over my shoulder, and, even though I didn't dare to do anything with it, I reached inside the bag and held onto the wand, just to make myself feel better. Finally, when we were almost to the exit, she could hold it no longer.
"Who are you hiding from, Harley? What's going on?"
I shrugged. "I wish I knew." My future self had never warned me like that before, and in fact, had always said she couldn't. Had she found a way around it? Or maybe her message had been just cryptic enough that it would work... Either way, had that been enough? Had missing that one little meeting, or whatever would have followed, changed the future enough to keep me from ending up like that?
Was anything ever that easy? Perhaps, but not for me, so went to a stationary store next, under the pretense that a distant cousin of mine had a birthday coming up. I picked up a day planner, something small, easy to hide, as well as a cheap cover card, after giggling with Janet over a bunch of different ones. Mostly at how lame they were, but there were a few clever ones.
Janet wanted to get back to clothes shopping, or at least grab something to eat, but I was feeling too nervous for either. "I'll make it up to you," I promised. "I just... I don't want to run into them again. I screwed up a case of theirs, and..."
I didn't even have to keep making anything up. "That's why you shouldn't mess around with that stuff," she admonished me. "You're going to get yourself in real trouble one of these days, Harley."
"Yeah, you're probably right." And then something clicked, and I looked back up at her curiously. "Hey, did you happen to have started on my food before you got sick?"
She sighed in an overly protective sort of way, but humored me all the same. "I think I'd had a bite or two. Why?"
"Just curious," I smiled.
When I got home, I pulled out my new planner, and, on that day's date, I wrote, "Watch out for Batman."
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