Despite the hour, Natalie was feeling restless again. The dream had been so vivid, and while that wasn't really new for her, remembering the whole thing was unusual. She felt like it was trying to tell her something.
She had no idea how to get rid of the scars, of course. She'd tried once when cleaning under the bandage, trying to use the description she read online about how skin healed to seal up the area. After a few particularly sharp spikes of pain, she'd given up, fearing even worse consequences.
But there's other things I could do… I need to be stronger, and not just on a whim. If I get surprised or knocked out like in the warehouse, I can't do magic. What if…
Visions of Jessica danced through her head, along with the endless warnings from Rachel and Cinza about ritual magic.
They never expected anything like this, though…
Natalie knew how to do a ritual. Well, she was pretty sure. She'd seen the big one to take down Omega, of course, and she'd spied on a few in town when she could. She even had all the ingredients in her bag, including the chalk dust and plenty of gemstones of all sorts.
And it cleans itself up, too…
Natalie started going through the home, which wasn't very large. In her head, she insisted she was just looking for a better place to sleep. After all, the couch was visible from the window, and it really wasn't very comfortable for sleeping — the armrest was too hard, and her pillow didn't fit on it very well.
She found Quinn's parents room first, followed by a bathroom and then what had to be Quinn's room. Natalie closed the door quick as soon as she saw his computer and his bed. The last door was another bedroom, but Natalie assumed it was a guest room or something. It had almost no decoration, the closet was empty, and the bedside table just had a couple books and a lamp. Still, the bed looked nice. Natalie laid down on top of it, and — while it couldn't live up to the beds in the Laushire house — in that moment, it was the softest bed she'd ever touched.
She decided to live out of that room for the next couple of days. It was the least offensive spot she could think of. But before any of that, she had an experiment to do.
Natalie wanted to be ready, just like she'd been told.
"That was a dream," she muttered aloud, as she pushed the bed over to the side of the room. It stood on little felt pads, so it didn't damage the wood floor — something Natalie checked in a panic when she realized she might be inadvertently ruining Quinn's house.
And now I'm talking to myself too… It's just because I'm lonely. That's all.
From her purse she pulled out a sealed plastic bag of chalk dust, along with two little red agates. She sprinkled the chalk in a circle on the floor, then set the agates at opposite ends. Natalie wasn't sure why she'd picked agates exactly, but it seemed right. They always seemed to work well whenever she did this type of spell normally.
I should really go learn all the different gemstones. Maybe there's a guide online or something.
She laughed aloud. Of course there wasn't a guide. Magic wasn't supposed to exist.
"Which means there's no one to tell me how to do this either..." she murmured aloud, losing her mirth. "Sorry if I ruin your guest room, Quinn."
She couldn't wait anymore though. She'd stalled long enough, heard all the warnings, seen the results when things didn't go as planned. As best she could tell, most of the time it turned out okay. Natalie felt like she was ready. She wanted to do this.
At least they figured out you don't actually have to take off your clothes. That was super awkward… Natalie took a nervous step into the circle of chalk, and then a second step. She'd watched the process before. Stepping into the circle was always the most dramatic moment, and she expected to feel something — but there wasn't anything at all. The room might as well have been empty.
Frustrated, Natalie sat down. She stared at the agates, sitting atop the chalk dust. "Do something," she muttered.
They didn't move. Natalie reached out experimentally with magic, picking one up and setting it down again. Still nothing.
What if I… Natalie tried drawing energy from them. Normally, she had to actually be touching them to do it, just like when people shared magic with each other. But something about the circle seemed different. As soon as she tried to pull magic out of the agate, the room seemed to get a little darker. Or was it just that her eyelids drooped? She blinked, and the room returned to normal.
Except… there was a hazy line hanging in midair between her and the agate.
Natalie stared. It didn't seem to go away. She tried drawing the energy from the agate again, and the line seemed to flow toward her. She could feel magic building up in her, waiting for direction, but it wasn't like normal. She could feel a connection to the little stone, which was beginning to blacken from the strain she put on it.
Excited, Natalie began shifting the energy around. She tried flowing it straight into her arms, in much the same way she did only a few minutes earlier to move the bed across the room. To her delight, it seemed to build up her muscles just as her usual spells did, but without the constant drain of energy or the mental focus she usually had to apply.
To her horror, it also created a visible change. Her muscles were bulking up, her arms visibly thicker. Natalie slowed down the flow before she started to look like a freak — more than I already do. As she released the flow entirely, feeling satisfied, the agates evaporated along with the chalk dust. The room returned to its usual light level, and Natalie felt a wave of exhaustion roll through her. She fell back onto the wood floor, staring up at the pale white ceiling.
But she didn't feel anything else. There wasn't a constant drain of magic, except for the tiny trickle to her bag on the bedside table. No mounting exhaustion from buffing up her weak stick-arms — which weren't so stick-like anymore. Not huge, but there was visible muscle, just the right amount, and there was still magic laced into each fold. She stood up, and with only a little effort managed to lift the whole corner of the bed, all the way up to her waist.
Natalie grinned. Piece of cake.
----------------------------------------
Natalie slept on top of the covers, after casually sliding the bed back to its proper place. Her pillow and blanket from her bag were more than enough to keep her warm, and she had a couple changes of clothes packed away too. When she woke up, she checked her phone — and finally she had responses from all the people she'd messaged the night before. Only now, in the daylight streaming through the bedroom window, Natalie didn't really want to read any of them.
The only messages she did read (besides the endless stream from Kelsey that she skimmed over) were from Quinn. A few short sentences that Natalie read curled up on the couch, with a blanket held tight to her shoulders, her eyes flicking over the glowing lines of text over and over.
Quinn: Kelsey texted me.
Quinn: She was worried about you but wouldn't say why.
Quinn: I saw the news. Is everything okay?
I saw the news… Quinn was too smart. He was telling her that he knew she was connected to the big story of the weekend. He was offering to help, like he always did, even though he was busy with his family a thousand mile and more away.
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Jenny: talk monday?
Quinn: OK. Before or after school?
Jenny: before. meet you at the library?
Quinn: Sounds good.
Natalie put her phone away. She couldn't bring herself to explain to Quinn from such a long distance what was about to happen. If the book came out on Tuesday, she'd at least have the whole day to tell Quinn all about who she really was.
Better you than the book. That way, if he doesn't want to be friends anymore, you'll know. You won't get blindsided.
"He'd never do that," Natalie murmured.
She got up and went into the kitchen, retrieving the doughnuts she'd bought the night before for breakfast. Reluctantly, she did end up pouring herself a glass of orange juice from the Kincaid's fridge, but she promised herself that she'd buy them a new jug. She could afford it, after all.
The sunlight, combined with her suddenly healthy, strong and agile body, seemed to portend a good day ahead. She'd checked the news while she ate, and there didn't seem to be any new developments. Nothing to panic about yet. Natalie wondered who was the person doing it — putting out a book like this — but she didn't really have a good idea. It didn't matter, anyway. If the story was accurate, she couldn't ever show her face in public again. She had to get used to that idea fast.
Unless I don't look like me anymore.
Her weird dream flickered back into her mind. She still had no clue how to get rid of the scars on her face, but there were plenty of other things she could do. After she'd made her arms stronger the night before, Natalie had moved on to other things. She boosted her legs to match, since it just seemed obvious, and now she could run and jump like an Olympian. And I'm from the Olympic Forest, she realized with a giggle.
After looking up some articles on human anatomy online, Natalie decided to experiment a little more, making her hearing a little better and her vision perfect, just by changing the shape of the muscles inside ever so slightly. It felt strange as it shifted around, but she felt the improvements almost instantly, and there didn't seem to be any drawbacks. She was most proud of an an improvement that touched on her brain. It was the very last thing she'd tried, well past one in the morning, but Natalie had felt confident in her research. Despite the risks, she delved in with four amethyst crystals, eager to make exactly the sort of subtle enhancement that no one could see.
It was pretty scary, casting spells on her own brain — but Rachel had done it, and Natalie was pretty sure other people had too. If she was supposed to be one of the most powerful magic users out there, then she should to be able to pull this off too, right?
The ritual worked. Natalie had felt the effects almost immediately after the chalk vanished from the room. Suddenly, she felt perfectly balanced on her feet. She had a distinct awareness of exactly where her hands and feet ended, much moreso than she had only moments before. She picked up the nearest object (which happened to be her phone) and began tossing it around casually, without even looking.
A moment later, she was juggling four different things as though she'd been practicing for years.
For Saturday, though, Natalie felt like relaxing. While Kelsey pushed her again to have a small party at Quinn's house before he came back, she just wanted to curl back up and read her book. Unlike the night before, she actually managed it.
It was a good book, but only for a few hours. She was feeling antsy again. Was she just hungry? Natalie ordered another delivery. Mexican food this time — one of her favorite meals that Hector always used to make. The quesadilla wasn't nearly as good as the way he made it, but it still helped her feel a little better. Not better enough, though. She felt like she needed to be doing something else — something more.
There was a whole new world of possibility open now that she could do ritual magic. What was she doing sitting around reading a book?
Natalie hurried back into the guest room. She'd only done changes to her insides the night before, making herself stronger, faster, more coordinated. What if she changed how she looked too?
Thinking of a certain mysterious older girl she'd last seen on a stone bench next to Rachel, Natalie started with her eyes. She'd never really like her boring old brown eyes. After some more experiments and a few crumbled moonstones, her irises shimmered into a beautiful shade of bright purple. She'd actually been aiming for pink, but as she released the ritual and the rainbow moonstones dissolved, the color had shifted down to violet. For a moment she was disappointed, until she looked at it in a real mirror instead of her phone camera. Particularly when she moved into the sunlight, the color looked spectacular, as the violet lit up to a shade halfway between vivid purple and hot pink.
She thought about changing her hair too, just like she'd always wanted to when she found out she was going into hiding with Kendra and Lily — but if she was ever going to go back to school, Natalie didn't want to look too different. The muscles and even the eye color wouldn't be noticed (who really looked that close at other people's eyes, anyway?), but a sudden and dramatic shift of hair color wasn't really something people could miss.
Natalie spent the day messing around with it anyway, just because she could. She went through a whole pile of hair colors, at one point just browsing through a color palette on her phone and rapidly shifting her hair through each color while muttering the spells under her breath. At the end of the day, while munching through her leftover pizza, Natalie decided she actually liked her hair as it was, plain old straight brown. She'd left it as golden blonde for the moment, the last color she'd tried out, but she fully intended to shift it back to her natural brown later. Probably after dinner.
Colors and muscles were one thing, though. Even her brain was technically just a big, complicated muscle, if she understood the articles she'd read online. Natalie wanted to see if she could actually change her appearance in a more complex way. It was a step toward figuring out how to get rid of her scar completely.
Natalie sat down again in the center of the guest room, drawing out the ritual circle for the umpteenth time. She set out a combination of agate and moonstone crystals, as well as a pair of obsidian stones. She wasn't sure why obsidian exactly, but something about the dark earthy rock seemed right for trying to move and stretch skin and cartilage around.
Something simple to start, she reminded herself. Just in case.
After a great deal of thinking, Natalie finally decided on morphing her ears a little. The upper tip made the most sense. It was something she could hide under her hair if she really had to, and it wasn't anything more sensitive which she'd regret if she couldn't reverse it.
Natalie set to work. As soon as she'd activated the obsidian stones, the skin seemed to morph into a jelly substance that she could squish around. With the addition of the agate, the underlying cartilage bent too, and she could move it however she liked.
Thanks to her new sense of coordination, Natalie split her focus so that she could move both ears in unison, making sure each movement was identical. She didn't want to look weird and imbalanced. As the structure of her ear shifted around, Natalie giggled aloud. It felt so strange, but it wasn't exactly uncomfortable. She was in total control, so it didn't bother her too much. It was like her hands were doing the shaping, even though they lay perfectly still in her lap.
Finally, she let go, satisfied that she could really change the shape in a permanent way. After performing so much magic, and so many rituals, Natalie was utterly exhausted. The sun was starting to go down anyway, and even though it was pretty early, all Natalie wanted to do was sleep.
She collapsed onto the guest bed, not even bothering to change clothes. She pulled her jacket over her, then her blanket. It felt good, finally. She felt peaceful. Not at home, exactly — she was all too aware this was not her home, even if she still had it all to herself for a little while longer. She doubted she'd ever feel at home again until she went back to Rallsburg.
That's where it'll be, she decided. When all this is done in the winter. I'll go back home and open a store there. Like a tourist thing. There's gonna be lots of tourists, so it should be easy. And no food. Maybe Hector will want to help.
That'd be nice.
With that pleasant thought, Natalie drifted off, grateful for a dreamless sleep for once after all the nightmares and bizarre lucid visions.
----------------------------------------
"...weird…"
Natalie rolled over, shoving her hands underneath the pillow for warmth. She kept her eyes shut tight, wanting just a few more minutes of sleep.
"...said no one was inside and nothing was taken."
"You think…"
Just go away. Please. I'm trying to sleep…
"...okay, Mom. It's probably just broken."
Why's Quinn here…?
Natalie's eyes snapped open. She sat up straight, grabbing desperately for the edges of the blanket, as footsteps approached. A curious hand pushed open the door, and a ray of light from the hallway blinded her.
"Why's the guest room door op…"
Quinn stopped dead, staring at her. His nice brown eyes opened as wide as they could go. Natalie sat up straight, blanket pulled up close to her face. Fear wracked every muscle in her body, but she couldn't move.
"What was that?" called Quinn's mother from down the hall.
"Linnethea?" asked Quinn breathlessly. He took a step into the room.
"What?" Natalie whispered, confused.
He looked closer. "...Natalie?"
A strand of golden hair at the edge of her vision reminded her everything she'd done earlier. She reached up slowly, and felt along the top of one ear. It was still pointed and sharp.
Natalie nodded. In a burst of movement, she grabbed up her blanket and stuffed it into her bag, along with her pillow. He rushed to her side, helping her pack everything back into her bag, but still making sure he always stayed a short distance away.
"What are you doing here?" Quinn hissed.
"It's a long story," she whispered back. "I thought you weren't gonna be home til Sunday."
"It is Sunday. It's one in the morning, but..."
"Oh no," Natalie murmured. "I gotta go."
"Yeah, you really do." Quinn glanced over his shoulder. "I'll try to sta—"
"Hey Q, who are you talk…ing to…"
A man who could only be Quinn's father appeared on the threshold. Natalie looked up against her better judgment, meeting his dark brown eyes. He didn't look unfriendly, particularly with the warm smile lighting up his dark face—but it faded the moment he saw Natalie sitting on the bed, frantically packing up a bag with his son's help.
Her heart sank. I'm so sorry, Quinn.
Again.
Please don't hate me.