Good. It worked like I’d hoped. I now knew I had a minute.
I grabbed my elbow, pushing harder.
“I sense… something,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“It’s like when I saw the… Feorgbolds or whatever they’re called? There’s only darkness where the mirrors don’t let me see through, and I don’t dare show my face when they could look back at me.”
“No,” I said. “Definitely don’t take that risk.”
“But I see something, almost. I feel them.”
“The familiars are probably coming out,” I said. “Maybe they’re doing some tricks to clean the dishes, I dunno.”
I pushed harder one last time, then changed hands to do the same for the other.
“Set the house on fire?” she suggested.
“There’s a thought,” I said. “But no. This many practitioners, this being their territory, the fire would go out if they asked politely. I don’t think there’s anything I can pull, outside of poisoning them, that would do any serious damage.”
“Don’t poison,” she said. “Being a guest means there are rules. Even if the host has expressed an intent to murder you.”
“I know,” I said. “And there are kids here.”
“Yeah. Definitely don’t kill kids.”
I shifted my stance, bracing my knee against the sink. I bent down to grab my foot with both hands, forcing my knee against the sink.
“What in the fuck are you doing?” she asked.
I stepped back, and I fell. I reached for the towel rack for balance, then stopped before grabbing it, covering my head instead. I didn’t want to make a racket by pulling it out of the wall.
I hit the ground, my head coming within an inch of the toilet. If I hadn’t fallen at an angle, I might have knocked myself out.
I stretched my legs out in front of me. One was almost a foot shorter than the other.
“You… look genuinely disturbing,” she said.
I turned myself ninety degrees and braced myself against the wall, pushing out with my longer leg. With the exertion, I managed to squeeze it down to a matching length with the other leg.
“Blake… you need to go back to your regular ‘Blake’ shape. It’ll root you better in this shape. If you aren’t careful, it’s going to be time consuming or painful to go back to normal.”
“No time,” I said. “I can deal with problems later. Right now is what I want to focus on.”
I stood, and found the sink was at a level with my collarbone.
Bracing my feet against the floor, my head against the edge of the sink, I squeezed myself down just a little more.
I looked up to see Rose in the mirror, practically climbing over the sink on her side to look down at me.
I ran my hands over my hair. Dark brown hair with just a tiny bit of curling to it.
“Your face,” she said.
“I know.”
I ran my hands over the face. Away with the lines, away with the age, the larger nose and ears, the mustache. I handled my throat, then my body and arms.
“Eerie,” she said.
I pushed up my sleeves. Tattoos still there. But the clothes…
The clothes had shrunk with me. I hadn’t even thought about it, which would be a benefit of sorts.
My sweat, I realized, would be permeating the clothes. Sweat with glamour-ointment on it.
Would that dilute it? Make the glamour weaker?
No. If the glamour was weaker, I wouldn’t have been able to compress myself down to a height of three and a half feet.
My hands were damp with the sweat of my exertion. If I…
I brushed them off on the clothes. It took a few tries to get the colors right.
“I’m done commenting on this,” Rose said. “I have no words.”
I turned around, arms out to my sides “Convincing?”
“Yes. Definitely convincing. If I hadn’t watched it happen, I wouldn’t have known. I’m having trouble reconciling it even now.”
“Perfect,” I said.
“You realize, if you let this break, it’s going to recoil like crazy?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I realize. Wish me luck.”
“Oh, believe me, I’m praying you have good luck,” she said. “Please don’t get us killed.”
“Will try,” I said, smiling, an abundance of exuberance in my voice and expression. “You keep an ear out, in case there’s trouble.”
As a six year old boy, I descended the stairs.
The hair pointed me to the boy I was replacing. I spotted him from the other side of the room, playing with his cousin.
I ducked into the hallway, where the others were filing through the kitchen into the extension on the back of the house. A few familiars had come out, and cats stood on owner’s shoulders, the air alight with various birds.
One accusatory birdcall, and I was done for.
Someone mussed my hair in passing. I looked up and smiled wide, then ducked between legs to get away. I didn’t want anyone keeping track of me, human or familiar.
Nearly sixty people in all made their way into the back room. I was more focused on getting lost in the group than on the room itself, until people started settling on positions.
“I’m impressed, Laird,” a woman’s voice.
A whistle.
“Beatrice helped,” Laird said, on the other side of the room.
“Derivative, or-”
“My own invention,” Laird said.
“You used paint?”
“For the permanence of it,” Laird answered.
I could see bookshelves, each protected by a pane of glass with hinges and a lock. The locks, I noted, each had a rune on them.
Nothing I could mess with.
As I made my way to the back corner, I found a foosball table covered by a tablecloth and shoved into a corner, the telltale handles sticking out. A pool table sat a short distance away, similarly covered.
The crowd started to settle, and I dared a look at the room proper, peeking between legs.
A magic circle, if that was even the term.
Fifteen feet across, it was complex. Diagrams inside diagrams, mathematical notation towards the center, astrological symbols at the outermost edges.
The hair told me that my counterpart was heading my way. I reversed direction, keeping the crowd between us.
His cousin with him, they ducked under the foosball table, watching events from their new hiding spot.
Hopefully they wouldn’t cause a commotion and let someone realize that there were two little boys with the same face and clothes.
“Let’s talk about Blake Thorburn,” Laird said.
“The diabolist,” someone else said.
“You each have some idea of what the Thorburns involve. Just yesterday, Blake Thorburn attacked my reputation, putting me and my family in awkward positions. Sandra Duchamp was able to pull some strings, and things look like they will settle, but it’s clear Blake Thorburn isn’t on the same page as us. He poses a grave risk to our families, to our place in things, and to this town.”
“He’s a novice,” Sandra Duchamp said. “He’s new to this, and he’s finding his way. Laird told me he was dealing with Maggie Holt, no doubt exchanging knowledge. Laird did what he could to put an end to it, but the young man is desperate. I wouldn’t bet on anything right now.”
“What can you tell us about him?” one of the out-of-towners asked.