by Anita Oh
Nikolai shrugged. "I don't know what you're complaining about, when I made you a wonderful hat to hide in. They said you need to do it during the hour that Mars rules the sky, whenever that is."
I glanced at Tennyson, and he began typing.
"It's Friday, so the hour of Mars is one hour after the sun sets." He began typing again. "Which is five minutes from now."
I was a bit surprised. It felt so much later. It had been a long day.
Tennyson and I sat on the floor on opposite sides of the mirror. Althea left to go bury her witch bottle, but Nikolai took a seat, his feet up on the table, watching us like it was top entertainment. I wasn't sure where Sam was — he had made himself pretty scarce. I could understand why he'd be weirded out by the whole thing, but so was I, and I could've used his support.
"Okay," said Nikolai. "Start chanting in three… two… one…"
The chant was fairly simple, though I had no idea what it meant. I hoped it wasn't some sort of prank and I'd end up in an even worse pickle. Not that I could imagine what that could possibly be.
"Ablinnan se awiergan, aflieman wea," we chanted over and over. It sounded like gibberish.
It was cold sitting on the floor, and after a while my muscles started to seize up. I didn't know if we had to chant for the entire hour, but it felt like it had been even longer than that, sitting there, looking in the mirror and chanting. I'd never looked at Tennyson Wilde for very long before. I'd never had any need to, and he was the sort of guy who would poke out any unworthy eyes who dare gaze upon him. Now, though, I had my chance to stare my fill.
He was a good-looking guy. For a jerk, I mean. When you just glanced at him, all you saw was the pale skin and massive eyebrows, but he had super long eyelashes and really full lips that curled slightly at the edges, like a hidden smile, as if to spite his personality. He had a square jaw and pointed chin, which had a small mole to the left. It was the sort of face that you could keep on looking at, even for a whole hour of chanting.
Still, I wanted my old face back.
"Time," called Nikolai. "I assume that didn't work."
I rolled onto my side. My legs were too stiff for me to stand.
"Get up," Tennyson told me. "What if someone were to walk in and see me lying there like that?"
I wrinkled up my face at him.
"Honestly," he said, then grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me to my feet. "You need to school your face into an impassive expression at all times."
I let all my facial muscles go slack and pretended to be a dead fish as I stared at him.
"Much better," he told me.
I rolled my eyes and went back to the table.
"What next?" I asked.
Someone sitting in a chair by the fire cleared their throat, and I looked over to see Sam. I didn't know how long he'd been there; I'd been too busy chanting to notice him come in.
"I made something," he said, then came over to sit with us. He seemed nervous, but I wasn't sure why until he showed us what he'd made. "I know they're not very good, but I thought they might help."
Poppets were on my spreadsheet. Protective dolls made in the form of the person who was cursed, with the idea of transferring the curse out of the person and into the doll. Only, Sam's handiwork had given neither me nor Tennyson a very flattering form. The Lucy poppet was made from what I was sure had once been a fuzzy green sock, with some orange wool glued to the head. It looked kind of like a troll, but at least he'd drawn a big smiley face on the front. The Tennyson poppet, on the other hand, was all eyebrows and frown, though at least he was made from plain white cotton.
I picked up the Lucy poppet and turned it over in my hands. "Hello, Tennyson Poppet! I'm Lucy Poppet!" I said in a high voice, introducing Lucy Poppet to her new friend. "Let's do some magic and break this curse!"
I nudged Tennyson Poppet toward Tennyson Person, so that he'd get into the spirit of things, but of course he was no fun.
"Thank you, Sam. That was very thoughtful," he said, setting Tennyson Poppet aside and giving Sam a small smile. "I'll research the correct ritual to undergo with them."
"I also made these," Sam said, handing us a pair of hex bags. "I think you just need to burn them."
We went over to the fire and threw the bags in.
"Ablinnan se awiergan, aflieman wea," I said, because I figured it couldn't hurt.
The bags sparked a little as they burned and gave off a nice herby smell, but apart from that nothing happened.
The only other thing on our list was the purifying baths. Neither Tennyson nor I said anything; we just kept researching. Sam seemed a little bit down, so I tucked my Lucy Poppet into the top of my shirt with her head poking out so she could help us work. After a while, Althea came back in from burying her witch bottle. She sat down by Nikolai and the two of them looked stuff up together.
Nothing else we found seemed helpful, and I definitely did not want to take a purifying bath with Tennyson. Even if he was wearing my body, so technically I wouldn't be seeing him naked, everything about it still seemed creepy and weird.
"I have a few other suggestions," Althea said.
Nikolai sniggered, and she elbowed him hard in the side.
"So, we were looking through common body swap scenarios in fiction…" she said.
Tennyson huffed.
"Oh, did you not want my help?" she asked him. "Would you rather stay like this until Mother finds out?"
He folded his arms across his chest but made no further comment.
"I've ruled out anything from science fiction, like laboratory mishaps or failed experiments, but there are still a lot of common elements."
"Because people are unimaginative," Tennyson muttered.
She raised her eyebrows at him.
"Sorry," he said. "Continue."
"Nearly always, the solution is related to the cause, as you'd expect, but often when magic is involved, the people who are cursed must do something or overcome an obstacle before the curse is broken."
I shrugged. "That makes sense for a movie or whatever, but I doubt Hannah would make it so easy."
"I agree," said Althea. "But, still, I don't think we should outright disregard anything that may be relevant."
It was a valid point, but from the way Nikolai was smirking, I was fairly sure I wouldn't like some of the suggestions.
"There's a lot of cases of magical statues being involved," Althea continued. "I think, considering how most of Hannah's magic has had some proximity to the statue of Professor Amaris, those cases should be considered."
I nodded in agreement.
"I am not urinating into any fountain," said Tennyson Wilde. "Nor is anyone wearing my body."
I thought it was a random statement until I looked over at his screen to see he had the Wikipedia page for body swap scenarios up.
"I second that," I said. "No public urination at all, actually."
"There's a lot of cases involving wishing," Althea said, sounding distracted as she read.
"I wish this curse would end," I said at the same time as Tennyson.
I raised my eyebrows at him, surprised we'd say exactly the same thing. He seemed equally surprised, though I supposed it was the obvious thing to do. At any rate, we were still in the wrong bodies, so it hadn't worked.
"Maybe the planets are out of alignment," said Nikolai.
I expected him to be sarcastic, but he didn't make any follow-up comments and seemed busy reading over Althea's shoulder, so maybe that was an actual thing. We'd had to do the chanting at the right time, and there was the whole moon-werewolf thing, so planetary alignment wasn't so very far-fetched. Maybe.
Althea stopped reading and exchanged a glance with Nikolai. He put a hand over his mouth to cover his laugh.
"Okay, so there's two things left that come up a lot," Althea said. She seemed very reluctant to say whatever she was about to say.
"Face transplant?" Tennyson said.
"What? No! And that's a terrible movie
."
"They have to kiss," said Sam. He didn't look at either of us. "That's what it is, right? They kiss, and the power of love switches them back into their own bodies."
I snorted. "Don't be ridiculous. There is no power of love here."
"It's a classic fairytale scenario," said Tennyson. "The kiss, I mean. Not the love."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Do you just want to kiss yourself? I mean, I know you fancy yourself a bit, but those are still my lips you're wearing, so you should be careful where you put them."
"The only other option is to be hit by lightning," said Nikolai, sounding positively gleeful.
"I'm down for that," I said, jumping to my feet. "Let's go! Bring on the lightning!"
"The weather forecast for the next week is clear," said Althea.
"So? Aren't you guys super rich? Can't we find where the next storm is due and go there? Or make some fake lightning? You could just electrocute me. I don't mind!"
"It will be over in just a moment," said Althea. "And then we can rule it out. If that doesn't work, we'll think about electrocuting you. I promise."
She was missing the point entirely, and I suspected they all wanted me to kiss Tennyson Wilde for their own perverse enjoyment.
"I don't know why you're complaining so much," Tennyson told me. "Obviously, this is much more of a hardship for me than it is for you."
I had never wanted to punch my own face before. It was an interesting sensation.
"None of you are allowed to look." I narrowed my eyes at Nikolai. "Or take pictures or any recording whatsoever."
"They should leave the room entirely," Tennyson said.
Nikolai grumbled about it, but Althea pushed him out of the room. Sam gave me a sad, betrayed look, but honestly, he'd brought it up in the first place. And it wasn't as if he was fighting to kiss me anyway, so he could just put a sock in it.
"Right," said Tennyson Wilde. Then he stood up and looked at me expectantly.
I sighed and stood up to face him. "I think this will be easier if we close our eyes and don't think about the fact that we're kissing our own faces. Or that we're kissing each other. In fact, let's just pretend it isn't happening."
He nodded. "That sounds like the best idea."
But try as I might, I couldn't stop thinking about it.
He put his hand on my shoulder, and I leaned in. Even though it was my face and I could do with it what I wanted, it was still Tennyson Wilde. He smelled like coffee and pine needles. I'd expected him to feel cold, but he was warm, and when our lips finally touched, he was soft and gentle.
For a moment, I forgot it was my face I was kissing, forgot why he was doing it, and just let him kiss me.
We both remembered at the same time and jumped backwards. My lips tingled, and I could still feel the warmth of where his hand had rested on my shoulder. I didn't look at him.
"Well, that didn't work," I said. "You guys can stop spying on us now."
Althea and Nikolai crept back into the room, though Sam wasn't with them. Nikolai shot me finger guns, and I quickly sat down and pulled the laptop over in front of me.
"Well," said Althea. "Before we electrocute you, I have one other idea."
But the look on her face said none of us would like it.
Chapter 5
It was not a good plan. That was the only thing the five of us agreed on.
"I hate this place," I told them as we snuck into the bamboo forest. "Bad things happen here."
The plan had taken us almost two days to put together, but it was our best shot at breaking this curse before the weekend ended and we had to go back to class. We couldn't get off the island to find a lightning storm, apparently — Althea and Tennyson's mother had restricted their use of the family jet, though nobody would tell me why — and it was harder to simulate a lightning strike than I'd expected. We'd even tried the purifying bath, though separately and fully clothed. That left us with one option, which was a long shot at best.
"It'll be fine," Sam said, touching me on the arm.
"That's all well and good for you to say," I told him. "Come back and talk to me after you get miniaturized." But I smiled at him so that he'd know I wasn't mad. It was hard; everything I said with Tennyson's voice sounded snappish and angry, and I didn't want to hurt Sam's feelings.
He'd been strange with me since the horrific kissing incident, and I could kind of understand it. I mean, if the person that I apparently liked was in the body of my best friend/adopted brother/whatever, then I'd probably need some time to process too. I certainly did. My feelings for Sam were strange, confused. Part of them seemed to be residual feelings of Tennyson's, like the pack connection or something, but they were so tangled up with my own feelings that it was impossible to straighten them out. There was a strong sense of caring about him, of platonic love, but not so much of that belly-hopping excitement.
Things were creepy in the bamboo forest, shadowy and indistinct. At least it was easier to navigate now that I had werewolf senses, which were better than GPS. We eventually came to a clearing where the statue of Professor Amaris sat. He looked no different from when I'd first seen him, with his big moustache making him look like a walrus.
"What's with this guy, anyway?" I said. "What makes him so special? Does he have some sort of magical properties?"
"That's right, Lucy. Full marks." Hannah stepped out from behind the statue. "The statue is made from a special sort of metal that is the perfect conduit for magic. I'd have thought with all your research, you'd have learned at least that much. How are you the top of the class?"
I shrugged. "I'm also running a business while trying to maintain my grades." Neither of which I was doing particularly well at recently. "Plus, I keep getting hit with these pesky curses. That kind of makes it hard to learn about the black arts."
Our plan had been to lure Hannah out and trap her, then convince her to break the spell. It was rudimentary at best, but we'd apparently done the luring part okay at least. Now for the trapping.
Althea had snuck out during the night and buried a ring of iron around the clearing. She'd left a gap for Hannah to pass through where the path ran, and now we just had to close it. But as soon as Althea dropped the iron pole into place, Hannah clicked her fingers and let out a sharp laugh.
I felt the effect immediately. All my senses were dulled, and I felt as if a great weight had fallen on me and was pushing me to the ground.
"What are you doing?" I gasped, bending over with my hands on my knees so I wouldn't collapse completely.
Hannah rolled her eyes. "Alchemy is the most basic form of magic. Even iron can be transformed if you know what you're doing. Iron into silver, the perfect defense against werewolves," she said, sounding far away, even though I could see her right there in front of me. "You're so disappointing, Lucy. I thought you would be my Hermione, but you're not even…" She broke off as if she couldn't think of anything bad enough to call me. "Wormtail!" she said finally. "At the first sign of trouble, you turn your back on me and go off with these… Death Eaters!"
"Um," said Nikolai. He was still standing, though he looked as if he was struggling to remain upright. "You do realize you're the bad guy here, right? You're not Harry Potter, no matter how much magic you do."
Hannah narrowed her eyes at him. "Do you think this is a joke?" she asked. "My family has lost everything, and you don't even care."
Blue smoke gathered around her. We needed to calm her down before she released any more bad juju on us, but I couldn't even begin to think of what to say. I tried to think of something Dumbledorey, that would definitely work on her, but it seemed so long ago, back in the fall when we'd watched the movies together, that I couldn't remember anything specific.
"We don't think it's a joke," said Sam. "Why don't we talk about what happened and see if we can sort it out?"
The reasonableness of Sam's tone only seemed to annoy her, and the smoke clouded even more thickly around her.
Hannah rolled her
eyes. "What are you going to do? You can't even werewolf properly."
"If we don't know what's happened, how can we help to fix it?" asked Althea.
"He's gone," Hannah said hysterically. The blue smoke crackled. "He was the head of one of your stupid family's companies, and you just tossed him aside and now he's gone."
The five of us looked at each other in alarm.
"Your father?" I guessed.
"He's dead?" asked Tennyson Wilde. He was obviously unaffected by the silver, but the rest of us were struggling. "I hardly see how I am to blame for any of this. I can put you in touch with our Human Resources department. Perhaps you are eligible for some sort of compensation. This is hardly the way to deal with such matters."
"He's not dead," said Hannah. "He's gone. Vanished. Because of you and your stupid family."
"Did you know anything about this?" Tennyson asked Althea.
She shrugged. "We don't even have a vote on the board in the business yet," she told Hannah. "I understand that you're angry, but you're directing it toward the wrong people."
"It's nothing to do with the business. Do you people understand nothing?"
Clearly, we did not.
"It's them. The Enforcers. They took him because of the precious Wilde family." She turned to me. "Your father. How do you think you got into this school so easily? My aunt is on the board of directors, and we knew that you'd be useful. Now you have to prove that you are. You have one hundred days. Get him back in that time and I'll reverse the spell. Fail and you will stay that way forever, gradually losing more and more of yourself as you become the person you appear to be." She turned and walked away, out of the circle of silver.
Tennyson Wilde and I looked at each other in horror. Become him for real? I did not want that at all.
Chapter 6
I didn't think I'd ever get used to being in Tennyson Wilde's body. The strangest thing was the way people looked at me. I'd been so used to being an outcast at Amaris, and even back home I'd never been all that popular. It kind of gave me the creeps a bit.