I saw her hemming and hawing for a moment.
“You look bigger. Have you grown?”
I managed to stay stock still as I felt another hit to the glamour. Another crack.
Bigger?
“He is!” Leanne said. “It’s the first time he’s ever been taller than me!”
Ah, frick frack fuck.
“Yep!” I said, plastering a proud smile on my face. “I’m all grown up!”
“You’re getting there,” she said.
“I’m a big boy,” I added, for good measure. “I don’t need a car seat.”
“Okay. Let’s get you two going, or you’re liable to be intolerable tomorrow.”
“Yay!” I cheered.
“Yay!” Leanne joined me.
As we climbed into the car, I could feel my shoulders straining against the stolen winter jacket.
I could feel the growing pains, now. The extension of my limbs, the shifting of my spine.
It was like the Glamour had soaked into me, and the change back was affecting me from head to toe.
I was sweating bullets, and this time, I could feel the sweat wiping away the glamour as I sat there in the back seat, behind Leanne’s mom.
“Did the thing work?” I dared to ask.
“The ritual was stopped,” I heard.
There was nothing else volunteered. We drove in silence for a few long seconds. I tried to keep from smiling.
“I’m going to show you the house I made for Elsabelle,” Leanne told me.
“What did you make it out of?” I asked.
“Magic, of course,” Leanne told me.
“No fibbing,” her mom called out. “You know the rules.”
“…cardboard boxes, mostly.” Leanne amended. “And I put all of my favorite music in there, and I put up pictures I drew, and I’m going to learn to sew and do dresses, so it’s all ready when she comes.”
Oh man, this was starting to hurt.
“When… when does she come?” I asked. Keep her talking, keep her excited with her focus elsewhere.
Or she might notice that I had stubble on my face.
“You know when I get to meet Elsabelle. I told you!”
Thwack. Another hit to the glamour.
“In six years, four if I’m extra super good, I get to have a magical friend like Donny and Ian and Heather, and she’s going to be a fairy princess, and I don’t know who she is or what she’s a princess of, and I’m only calling her Elsabelle because I don’t know her name yet, but she’s going to be perfect and nice and sweet and beautiful and she’ll be my best friend forever. Because all Faerie are noble and pure and Faerie princesses are extra special in all those departments.”
“Four years only if you learn not to fib,” her mother said. “Even a little. And you need to read the books. And she might not be noble, unless you work hard enough to earn the attention of someone special.”
“Yes! I will!” Leanne pronounced.
“And no making promises!” her mother rebuked her.
It was all I could do to sit still, to avoid groaning. This sucked.
Not everything was fixing itself in the right order. My stomach was twisting, and my breath was short because my lungs felt too large for my ribcage.
I didn’t dare speak, because I was pretty sure it would be my voice that came out.
“Are you okay?” Leanne asked.
What did I even say to that?
“Need to…” I strained the words, to mask my voice. “get to your bathroom.”
“I’ll hurry,” her mother said.
She was a practitioner, I knew.
If I fell to pieces here, I was screwed. I’d be incapable of moving, and I’d have an angry practitioner looming over me.
We stopped, and I had my seatbelt off in seconds. I yanked on the door handle.
Childproof.
A solid fifteen seconds passed, with me waiting for Leanne’s mother to get herself untangled and open the door.
I nearly fell as I climbed out of the car. One leg shorter than the other.
She glanced left, then right, looking down the length of the neighborhood.
“House!” she said, in a stern voice. “Open!”
I saw the connection, straight to the front door.
A demesne?
“Do you need help?”
I shook my head. “I can go in?”
“Of course you can go in. We’ll be right after you.”
I hobbled for the front door, praying she wouldn’t notice how my pants legs were two inches two short for one leg, a good four inches short for the other, or how I’d kicked off the small boots and I was walking through the slush in socks.
But her focus was on getting Leanne out of the car.
I went inside, searched the rooms, and found the bathroom. I could barely move my arms, with the jacket being so small.
In the end, I tore off my shirt, sweater, and the jacket, pulling from the bottom of each and turning them inside out.
I dug my fingernails into the edges of my tattoos, and scraped.
Slowly, systematically, I clawed off the remainder of the crumbling glamour. I could only hope it would be easier if it was deliberately removed rather than crumbling.
It wasn’t. I spasmed, felt more things shift into their natural places. Muscles tensing and stretching out. Bones, too.
Connections appeared. My connections. And a prying eye would be able to see them, identifying me.
As I’d done with the line of blood to ward off Jo’s connection to me before and after fighting the Faerie swordswoman, I used the nearest power at hand to ward off the connections that emanated from me. With palsied, twitching fingers, I surrounded myself with a loose ring of the shed glamour skin and glamour infused clothes.
When I was done, I collapsed onto my side, twitching, dry heaving, doing all I could to avoid pissing myself.
All I could think was about whether I’d fucking overdosed on the stuff.
I just needed to bounce back. To get over this, and get out of the house.
Dimly, I heard a knocking on the door.
Leanne’s higher voice. “Are you okay?”
No?
I gasped.
“Do you want me to get my mom?”
“N- no.” I managed, trying to keep my voice higher. “Out soon.”
Another damn promise, in a moment of desperation.
Shit. I’d even told her I’d show her what was up, if she kept my secret.
I waited. Praying that the mother wouldn’t come in and find me. Could she use a command to open the bathroom door, like she’d done with the front door?
I’d traded one dangerous prison for another.
It was a little while before I felt strong enough to stand. I gripped the sides of the sink and used it to pull myself up.
Fuck me. I looked even more drained.
I’d pushed this too far.
I reached out and grabbed the two toothbrushes from beside the sink. One small one, pink, with a fairy on it. One larger one, purple.
The circle I’d drawn out blocked the connections.
Tentatively, I stepped out.
The mother was upstairs with Leanne.
Reaching down, I grabbed my shirt and sweatshirt and pulled them on. I grabbed the tatters of glamour and dragged it behind me like a limp jumping rope, keeping it between me and them.
I didn’t have much strength as I walked down the length of the hallway. Not the front door. Too much risk they would hear or see. The side of the house… a sliding door.
I stopped halfway there.