by Marlowe Blue
“But, Harper, please—”
She placed her hands on my shoulders. “Why did you make this switch in the first place? What’s so bad about your life that you wanted mine?”
“I told you. You’re pretty and popular and rich. You see how hard it is to live when your family’s broke.”
She shook her head. “Is that all? Abby, you have a family who loves you. I was taken away from mine. I have Guardians who don’t really love me at all. They’re just doing their job, making sure I do everything I need to do to make the transformation. All the money in the world can’t replace that. You have friends, real friends who love and care about you. I’d rather have two real friends than fifty fake ones. My so-called friends hang around me because I’m popular and the way I look and because I throw the fiercest parties and always pick up the tab. They don’t really like me.”
I couldn’t argue with any of that.
“And you keep saying that I’m so beautiful, but look at you. Did you know that I have a date with Oliver Goldberg next week? You’re stunning and guys would be asking you out left and right if you enhanced your features, had some confidence, and let them know you were interested.”
“Harper . . .”
“And then there’s Brooke. Brooke is the best. I never had a sibling before but now I have a built-in best friend for the rest of my life. I love that kid.”
Brooke was probably the most heart-breaking part of all this. I’d never be her sister again if Harper didn’t want to change back. And Mom, she worked so hard and did the best she could for us. She was the best mom we could ask for.
“Harper, you know this isn’t right. Please, give me my life back and we’ll act like none of this even happened. Being a Succubus can’t be that bad.”
Harper backed up toward the building. “I’m sorry, Abby, but I can’t do that. You should have been happy with the life you had. Now that I have a way out, I can’t go back. I’m so sorry.”
I stood there dumbfounded as she hurried up the stairs and disappeared into my apartment.
“What do you mean she doesn’t want to switch back?” Quinn demanded.
“Just that. She doesn’t want to be what she is and she would rather have my life.”
Quinn was quiet for a long time. “So, what are you going to do?”
“I’m not going to give up on Harper changing her mind, but I have to think of some way of getting out of this. There’s no way I’m going to be making human sacrifices. That’s insane.”
It was Sunday afternoon. I lounged on Harper’s bed letting the reality set in that this was not going to be as easy as I anticipated. There was a stern knock on the door. “Quinn, I’ll call you back.”
“All right. Bye.”
I hung up the phone and sat up on the bed. “Yes?”
“It’s time, Harper. Come down stairs, please.”
“It’s time for what?” I asked, but there was no answer.
Sighing, I dragged myself from the comfortable bed and slowly made my way downstairs. In the living room Mr. and Mrs. Granger sat side by side on the couch. Before them stood a man wearing an all-black suit and a black top hat. He was tall and skinny, reminding me of Abraham Lincoln.
I lingered at the bottom of the stairs. “Who is this?”
Mrs. Granger let out a polite laugh. “You’ll have to excuse her, Mr. Drake. Harper has suddenly developed a case of selective amnesia.”
Mr. Drake smiled at Mrs. Granger, then walked over and shook my hand. His hand was cold and bony, almost like he was dead. He sent chills down my spine.
“Hello, Ms. Granger. I must say you get more and more beautiful each time I see you. You are going to make a mighty fine Succubus. The men will not be able to resist you.”
I swallowed hard. “Uh, thanks?”
His brow furrowed a little, probably because I was nowhere near as gracious and poised as Harper.
His eyes traveled creepily up and down my body. “I hear you have chosen your first. The boy who is to be your mate.”
This was so not a conversation I wanted to have with any man, especially one I didn’t even know, so I said nothing.
“She has,” Mr. Granger answered for me.
Mr. Drake nodded toward him then looked back at me. “Good. And the other two sacrifices, have you chosen them?”
“No, I haven’t. And I won’t.”
Before I could blink, Mrs. Granger was at my side, digging her nails into my arm. “Of course, she will. The child is just being silly,” then she gave me a furious look, “but she’ll stop.”
Mr. Drake nodded. “Well, I’ve set up in the basement. We should go down.”
Mr. Granger and Mr. Drake made their way down, but Mrs. Drake held me back. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Before I could stop them, tears were running down my cheek. “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want any of this.”
She dug her nails in even harder. “You act like you have a choice. If you don’t do this, you die, and if you die, we die for not doing our jobs. Now get it together and get your ass down there.”
I planted my feet firmly on the floor, but she shoved me all the way down. I almost fell and broke my neck on the basement steps. Mr. Granger and Mr. Drake stood against the wall waiting for me. As I made my way down, something else came into view. A man strapped to a table with a handkerchief tied around his mouth. He tried to say something, but all he could manage were muffled yells.
“What is going on? What are you doing?”
Mr. Drake placed his briefcase on the long table beside the man and popped it open. He removed a silver sickle with a skull on the handle. “This is your practice trial. On Saturday night, your sacrifices have to be just right. We need to make sure you know how to split the throats in just the right place to get the most blood spray.”
“What?” I’d been hearing a lot about this sacrifice but now that this man was laying right here in front of me it was becoming all too real. “I’m not killing him.”
Mr. Drake took the sickle and placed it forcibly in my hand. “You are. Now let me show you. It’s easy.” He placed his hand on my back and pushed me toward the poor man on the table. I had no idea who he was or what he had done to end up in this predicament. Had they just picked up a random person on the street?
Mr. Drake guided my hand over the man’s throat. “You want to start on the left side and make a clean slice to the right. Do it right under the chin so you get the jugular. That’s the most important part—hitting the jugular.”
“Now, try it.”
“No! I won’t.”
Mr. Drake sighed and Mrs. Granger wrapped her fingers around my elbow, pulling me close to her. I saw a fire in her eyes I had never seen before. “You’re going to do it. You’re going to slice that man’s throat, or I’ll slice yours.”
Would she really? Considering it was her job to see to it that I made it through the ritual and she had been Harper’s guardian for all these years, I didn’t think she would. If I died, she died, so I decided to call her bluff.
“Millicent,” Mr. Granger said in an almost whisper.
“Do it,” I said. “Go ahead and do it.” She held the cold blade of the sickle against my throat and for a second she looked like she just might do it. Maybe I shouldn’t have tested her. Then her hand trembled and she tossed the sickle aside.
Mr. Drake picked it up. “Why don’t I just demonstrate even though this is highly unacceptable and completely defeats the purpose of a trial run.” He didn’t bother to hide the disappointment in his voice.
There was no way I could stay and watch so I made a mad dash for the stairs. Mr. Granger caught me and held me in place. He seemed to be one thousand times stronger than me. There was no escape.
The man on the table continued to struggle. “Wait!” I yelled. “Who is this man?”
Mr. Drake sighed. “It doesn’t matter, child. They don’t matter. They’re all interchangeable.”
He raised
the sickle and I closed my eyes as tight as I could, wishing I could be anywhere else in the world but in that place. There was a final muffled scream and something wet sprayed across my face.
I forced myself to open my eyes. Blood was squirting everywhere and the four of us are covered in it. Mrs. Granger took a perfectly manicured finger and wiped the blood from her cheek. Then she placed the finger in her mouth and sucked the blood off as if it were cupcake batter.
“Simple as that,” Mr. Drake announced as if he hadn’t just killed someone.
Mr. Granger loosened his grip on me and I hurried up the basement steps. In Harper’s bedroom, I pushed the dresser against the door, then I ripped my clothes off and jumped in the shower. Watching the dark red flow down the drain, I shivered underneath the cold water. I washed a good five times and even though the man’s blood was long gone, I could still feel it on me. I didn’t think I would ever feel clean again. No matter what it took, I had to get Harper to take her life back. There was no way I could live like this.
12
That evening I called Quinn with intentions of spending the night over there. I had been calling Harper, but she didn’t pick up. I’d even gone by the apartment, but no one answered. I wondered where everyone was. Of course Mom was working, but Brooke at least should have been home. Where was she?
“Let’s go to the police,” Quinn said firmly. “This problem is bigger than the both of us. Abby, you witnessed a murder. That poor man. He could have been someone’s father or husband.” She was right. If the fortune teller couldn’t fix this without Harper’s permission and Harper wasn’t cooperating, the police were my last resort.
I followed Quinn to where her mother was busy at the kitchen table making jewelry. She had an Etsy shop and sold very well. Quinn’s father did okay too. He was a trucker driver and was currently out on a long run. Quinn thought it was best not to tell her mother what we were doing. The first thing she would want to do was contact the Grangers. Everyone knew the Grangers.
We took Harper’s car to the police station where we were seen right away. A man who introduced himself as Detective Lowry took our statement. His head was bald and shiny like Mr. Clean’s and he had piercing blue eyes. He tossed a notebook on the table across from us and straddled his chair. “What can I do for you ladies today?”
“I need to report a murder.”
He froze and looked up, dropping his pen. “A murder. Who was murdered?”
“A man. I don’t know his name or who he is, but my parents and this man named Mr. Drake had him down in the basement and they slit his throat.”
“Harper Granger, you’re telling me that your parents murdered a man in their basement. Why would they do that?”
I exchanged looks with Quinn and she shook her head. If I told him the whole story he would never believe anything else that came out of my mouth. I had to make this sound as realistic as possible. “I don’t know. They just did.”
He didn’t believe me. Everything about his body language said that he didn’t believe me. Still, I knew he had to at least check it out. “Okay. We’ll dispatch some officers there and check it out as quickly as possible. In the meanwhile, I want you to go back to your friend’s house and remain there until we tell you any different.” I nodded. One thing I did know was that I was never setting foot in the Granger’s house again.
It took an hour before the door rang at Quinn’s house. At first I thought it was the police. I waited for Quinn’s mother to announce they were there and for us to come down but that never happened. Quinn and I sat perched on the edge of her bed until the door burst open. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was only Gunner.
“Hey, Quinn—” He stopped short when he noticed me. “Hey, what’s Harper doing here?”
I seemed like forever since I’d been able to hang out with him. I resisted the urge to hug him because that would’ve just been weird. “Harper’s hanging out,” Quinn said.
Gunner looked back and forth between the two of us. He closed Quinn’s bedroom door and leaned against it. “What is she really doing here? The most popular girl in school who has never given us the time of day and all of a sudden she’s hanging out in your bedroom? If Aria knew she’d be throwing a fit.” He looked at me with those dark eyes. “Really, what are you doing here?”
There was no use in lying to him. Against Quinn’s protest I told him everything from the carnival, to the switch, to Mr. and Mrs. Granger, and the murder they had committed. When I was finished I waited for Gunner’s reaction. I needed him to believe me as easily as Quinn had. I needed him to be that best friend who could sense something wrong and who knew that the Abby he’s been hanging out with all week was a little off. “I don’t know what type of game you girls are playing, but I don’t want anything to do with it. Quinn, I knew that Abby was obsessed with Harper, but I didn’t expect this from you.”
He looked hurt at the thought that we were playing a prank on him and before we could stop him he’d hurried from the house.
Not long after that, the doorbell rang again. This time Quinn’s mother called for the two of us to come downstairs. I took a deep breath. This was it. The police would tell me that they’d arrested the Grangers and Mr. Drake for murder and I would never have to see them again. Then I’d tell them how Harper and I had switched bodies and they would make her take her life back.
By the time we came downstairs, Detective Lowry sat on the couch beside Quinn’s mother while a female officer lingered by the door. Quinn and I sat on the empty couch. She held one of my hands and squeezed it.
“So, did you see him?” I asked. “Did you see the dead man’s body?”
Detective Lowry shook his head. “No, we didn’t. We checked the basement. There was no sign of any crime, not even a drop of blood. We checked the rest of the house for good measure and found nothing that was out of sorts. We even checked the missing persons reports to see if anyone had been reported missing who matched the description you’d given us of the man and there wasn’t anyone.”
Quinn let go of my hand like she didn’t believe me herself. Quinn’s mother stared blankly ahead.
“That’s impossible,” I told them. “It happened less than a few hours ago and when they killed that man, blood had sprayed everywhere. No matter how good they cleaned up, you should have been able to find some traces of it.” I had watched enough real crime TV to know that much. What kind of idiot cops were these?
Detective Lowry sighed and sat back on the couch. “We had a long discussion with your parents about why you would lie about something like this. They told us you’d had a big fight and this was your way of acting out to get back at them. Harper, you have to know that reporting a false crime, especially something like a murder, is illegal. You’ve wasted the department’s time and resources. We could be out there right now handling real crimes.”
The female officer by the door, folded her arms over her chest. “You have a good life Harper. You live in a magnificent house where you have everything you want. You have a mother and a father who love you. They told us about the huge party they’re throwing on Saturday for your eighteenth birthday. I suggested they cancel it after this stunt you pulled but they wouldn’t hear of it. You’re a lucky girl.”
I jumped up from the couch. I couldn’t take it anymore. The Grangers had everyone fooled and it wasn’t right. “Are you crazy? I’m not lucky. My life is the worst ever. You believe everything the say because they’re beautiful and they have money but this is bullshit. I’m not even their real daughter. I’m Abby Drummond and I’m trapped in Harper’s body. I want her to take her miserable life back, but she won’t.”
By then everyone was looking at me as if I had three heads. “It’s the truth,” Quinn said, not that it would help. “Abby’s my best friend so I know her. I even spoke to the fortune teller who casted the spell herself.”
The female officer laughed. Detective Lowry rose to his feet. “That was an imaginative story, but we’ve been instructed by yo
ur parents to bring you home for your own safety. They’ve confided in us that you are not well and I’ve suggested that they get you some professional help. We have to take you home.”
I could not go back there. Who knew what they would do to me now after I’d run away and called the police. I made a run for the back door, but Detective Lowry caught me by the waist and pulled me toward the front door.
“Is this really necessary,” Quinn’s mother asked, rising to her feet. I could tell she felt bad for me but was also quite confused. Quinn stood beside her mother.
I was carried out to the car kicking and screaming. I was sure all Quinn’s neighbors were watching but I didn’t care. All I knew was that these cops were delivering me right back into the hands of the devil and there was nothing I could do about it.
13
I didn’t go to school on Monday. The Grangers had taken away my phone and laptop. They said they didn’t trust me being out of the house.
On Tuesday morning Mr. Granger took me to school and would pick me up since my car privileges had been taken away.
He put the car in park as we pulled up to the front of the school. “I’ll be back to pick you up at 3 on the dot. Be right in this spot waiting. Mrs. Granger will also be checking with the school to make sure you are present in each of your classes. Violate our trust again and it’s the last time you’ll leave the house unsupervised.”
I wouldn’t call what I was doing now being unsupervised but whatever. I took a deep breath and headed into the school building. The first thing I wanted to do was find Harper. I didn’t appreciate the way she had been avoiding me.
I spotted her right away sitting on a bench talking to the guy who had asked her out. I took a moment to observe my old body. Harper had been right. I had never given myself enough credit for the way I looked nor had I tried much to make myself prettier. Harper wore a short skirt that showed off my legs, which were normally pale, but they had just a little bit of a tan. My hair was up in a cute messy bun and there was light makeup on my face. I looked really cute and I wished I had noticed that before.