Eyes on Fire Part One
Hell, Chase decided, wasn’t other people.
It was being killed by morons.
The details of his fight with Caleb were fuzzy to him now, but one thing that he did remember distinctly was that Caleb had gained an extra dose of power, and then, in the most idiotic move a member of their covenant had made since betraying John Putnam in the first place, threw Chase backwards into the burning barn.
That had confirmed two things for Chase. First: that Caleb was a moron. Second: that he was right in presuming that the Covenant hadn’t bothered to read their Book of Damnation very closely.
The five of them were witches.
Elemental witches.
So by throwing Chase back into the burning barn, Caleb had saved his enemy’s life. He had effectively thrown him into the arms of the only mother he had ever loved, and the flames drew their prodigal-elemental son close and safe and hid him in the ashes of their aftermath.
It took Chase a month to come back to himself. A month to slowly and painfully use vague bits of his own magic, scattered at first, to rebuild himself from the literal ashes he’d become, like a slow phoenix. If the Covenant had been smart, they would’ve destroyed, or at least scattered, the ashes of the Putnam barn, so that he couldn’t do this. Of course, as Chase had already realized, they were morons. So they didn’t.
It took a lot of magic. A lot of using. When Chase finally awoke, naked and trembling and sooty in the snow dusted remains of the Putnam barn, he knew without finding a mirror that he had aged.
And he also knew now that it didn’t matter.
He could age.
But Caleb had to pay.
---
“My… god…”
Vanity had never really been Chase Collin’s (Pope? Putnam?) vice. Arrogance, yes. Vengeful, oh definitely. But not vanity.
All the same, he couldn’t take his eyes off the mirror now. Poking and prodding at his own skin, he keened softly. He thought he’d braced himself for this, but no preparation had prepared him for crow’s feet and hair that was more grey than blonde. Aging quickly had meant he’d maintained things like his eighteen year old weight and musculature, thank god, but he wagered that he was physically at least forty.
“Not a bad forty,” he conceded to the mirror. “But I barely recognize myself.”
He waited for a moment, head cocked, as though waiting for a response, then shrugged and left the bathroom.
Stepping over the body of the homeowner - he really ought to do something about that before it started to stink - he grabbed a pair of jeans from the dead man’s drawer and started to plan.
First - he had to figure out what had happened to ‘him’. What lie had the Covenant made to destroy him while he was gone?
Second - finding out what had happened to Caleb.
Third - what to do to destroy Caleb.
Shrugging on a dead man’s shirt and coat, his eyes flared easily to make a pair of his shoes fit his feet - was it a bad thing that he fell so easily into magic, now, as if it wasn’t a conscious choice, but rather a reflex? - and slipped outside.
Aside from the soft dusting of snow like powdered sugar across the rooftops, nothing had changed about Ipswich. It was the same little sleepy coastal town he’d first walked into in August, confident and cocksure and completely unprepared for the power of stupidity. Teens he recognized as Spenser’s students ran past him, laughing, and not one of them recognized him. At one point, it was even Reid Garwin that bumped his shoulder, arm in arm with a girl he vaguely recalled from Biology, and it took great willpower not to just fry the bastard where he stood.
It did tell him something, though, as he turned to watch Reid and the girl, whispering to each other, laughing.
They thought he was dead.
The Covenant may be idiots - and they were - but Caleb was also paranoid. And if he had the slightest inkling that Chase hadn’t died in that fire, he would have all of the other Covenant members on high alert at all times, looking for Chase Collins - or anyone who looked like an older Chase Collins.
“Yes,” Chase smirked. “That does make things easier.”
---
“You don’t say,” he drawled.
Kira giggled, batting her eyelashes at him as she rested her chin on her hand above her glass. He’d known, back before, that Kira was generally considered to be the school slut, but he hadn’t expected that with a single beer and the smile of a middle aged man that she’d be putty in his hands. Daddy issues, he decided.
“You’re just so funny, Mr. Pope,” she giggled again, the insipidly high pitched sound drilling into his brain.
“Please,” he smiled, easily falling into the old mask. “Call me John.”
“John,” she breathed, tiptoeing her fingers up his forearm. “I would love to call you John… anytime.”
Swallowing his feeling of disgust, Chase forced himself to remember why he was doing this. He needed this information. And if he had to endure the clumsy, drunken, awkward advances of an underaged skank to get that, so be it. If she didn’t give him the information he needed this way, it was easy enough to torture it out of her later. “You seem like a girl in the know, Kira,” he lied, easily, words dripping like honey off his tongue. He was good at this. “Someone with her finger on the pulse of the area.”
She giggled, pink. “I am!”
“That’s great,” he smiled, genuine this time, which might be why it looked a little shark like. “So what juicy rumours do you know? I heard a student died at your school.”
Her eyes got wide, and suddenly, Kira wasn’t in seduction mode, she was in animated gossip mode. “Two! This year alone!”
“Two?”
Kira nodded eagerly. “The first was this new transfer, Patrick something or other. He overdosed at our party at the Dells, start of the year. Idiot,” she rolled her eyes.
“You said two,” Chase pressed, leaning forward eagerly.
“Yeah.” To Chase’s surprise, a dreamy, almost glazed expression crossed her face, and Kira sighed, and, like a teenager in the sixties might have said the name Ringo Starr, said, “Chase Collins.”
Bemused by her reaction, he repeated, “Chase Collins?”
“Ooh, yeah! He was a transfer too, new guy, got on the swim team right away. He was smart, and talented, and sweet, and funny, and oooh god so hot…” she trailed off, distracted.
Flattering, but not helpful. “Kira. What happened to him?”
“Oh! Right!” she looked back at him, then, to his surprise, started to tear up. “He was friends with the
Sons of Ipswich, you know, the founding families? Well, they were having a get together thing at the Danver’s old place before the Fall Fest dance. On their way back to school, they realized that lightning had hit the old Putnam barn, and it was on fire. One of the girls from school was there - I dunno, taking pictures or some shit.”
Chase was relieved to see that someone else realized that Sarah Wenhem was a stupid bitch. “What then?”
“They stopped to tell her to leave, that it wasn’t safe, but… she was stuck inside. So Chase, he - he went inside to save her! And he did, but… he got t-trapped, and…” Kira snuffled, choking back tears. “He was a hero.”
Chase gaped at her. “A hero.”
Snuffling, wiping at her eyes, Kira nodded. “He was a real hero. He gave his life to save her!”
Completely confused by this positive spin on his ‘death’, he said slowly, “Who told you that story?”
“Caleb!” her eyes lit up again, flip flopping between extreme emotions like a fish out of water. “Caleb Danvers, that is. He gave the eulogy at Chase’s service. It was… it was beautiful. So noble and honourable. And Sarah even played a song on the violin for him. Between you and me,” she lowered her voice. “She was pretty terrible.”
“M’sure it was,” he mumbled.
“Hey, you okay?” she blinked.
“Huh? Oh yeah, of course. Say… tell me more about Chase.”
---
Chase had read once that the strangest thing in the world that a man could experience was going to his own funeral. Huckleberry Finn, or Tom Sawyer, or someone had said that. He wasn’t going to his own funeral, and he wasn’t hearing Caleb Danvers of all people giving his eulogy, and he wasn’t hearing the bitch that he’d tried to kill more than once playing violin for him, but he was standing on the ground in front of his own gravestone, feeling a little… surreal.
There it was, smooth and grey stone, with the name “CHASE COLLINS” carved in the front, dates listing him forever as eighteen. Just ascended, too young to have actually burnt out.
It was an unnerving feeling.
Frowning, he looked away from the gravestone to realize something that made his gut clench. The stone beside his looked older, but the burial itself looked about as new. “WILLIAM CALEB DANVERS” it said, and he swallowed. The sons of bitches had put him right beside Caleb’s father. They’d put him in the Covenant plot, and he hadn’t even realized.
He supposed that others might have felt flattered. Might have thought “well, they must have forgiven me for my actions after my death and realized that I was, in fact, a valid member of their Covenant all along”.
It just made Chase’s blood boil.
It was like an insult, to rub it in his nose after his death, to say that he hadn’t been a member of their Covenant during life because they still held a grudge against his ancestor for no real reason - after all, John Putnam had acted out a little, but he had never once threatened the Covenant itself or the other members of it - but now that he was dead, they could say that he was one of them, that he was their brother.
He snarled, fists clenched, and stormed out of the cemetery.
“I am going to - no, I am not going to kill him.” Chase muttered to himself as he marched, grinding his teeth. “Death is too good for them. Way too good for them. I need to crush them. Destroy them. I should fucking out them.”
Stopping dead on the street, his eyes widened with pleasure at that idea. “Yes… yes… I should out them. Tell everyone they’re witches! Ooh, that’s a good idea… good… but that’s not good enough.”
Grumbling to himself, Chase started walking again, frowning to himself as he tried to think of the perfect revenge. He needed something devastating, something that would crush them, make them putty in his hands. Well. He’d already done that to Pogue, on that back road a month ago. The thought made him laugh, actually, as he remembered the younger man’s cries of pain and the tears he had fought to not shed. That had been worth it.
“I could always find Caleb in a back alley somewhere,” Chase chuckled, “But that’s not terribly original now, is it?”
He had to destroy his soul, his heart, his mind, not just his body. Really, he could take Sarah out of the picture again, but that would just make Caleb hate him more, and well… Caleb hated him already. He needed something better. Maybe he could hire someone to seduce Caleb away from the bitch, or -
Or he could do it. And since he was pretty sure Caleb either wasn’t into guys or wasn’t about to admit publically that he was into guys, he needed to be a girl to do it.
Chase’s eyes lit up with orange flames, and he laughed. “Perfect.”
---
Sitting in the bathroom, dead man’s laptop open on the counter beside him, Chase frowned at his reflection, considering it. He looked old. This would never do.
His eyes flared orange than sank straight through to black as he watched his facial features shift and move slightly, tightening the skin, brown speeding through his hair like a wave of mud, until he looked exactly as he remembered looking the night that he “died”. He considered himself, frowning. Chase could feel the magic surging slowly under his skin now, working constantly to maintain this appearance. This much using would age him quicker, he knew that, but it was helping his addiction maintain itself pretty damn well, and if he aged… well. He was dead anyway, wasn’t he? So long as he took Caleb with him, who cared?
Glancing away from the mirror, he glanced at the laptop, frowning. Looking for pictures of naked women had been frustrating. He didn’t want to see them doing naughty things to themselves or others (or having naughty things done to them) and safe search had given him nothing. But a stockpile of old medical photos helped, so now he just had to figure out how to make the young, masculine image in the mirror that he’d created for himself into the young, nubile image on the screen.
Sure, he’d considered just giving himself boobs and shaving really close and putting on a wig - didn’t that work for teenagers in all of those shitty after school specials? - but that would never pass muster against a cadre of witches. Never.
So he could cover himself in illusion, but to maintain that would be murder. He was going to have to actually change his body. Otherwise he’d burn out in a matter of a couple weeks, and if he was going to complete this job, there was a good chance that he was going to have to lie for a lot longer than the week it took to get from zero to sixty last time. Sure, he was a witch. He could reverse it if he needed to, but…
Besides, he was going to have to lay low. If he used too much after this, the others would realize there was a fifth witch back in town. So he could blitz this one time, blame it on Reid or Tyler being jackasses somewhere, then he couldn’t use again. Not if he could help it, that was. Caleb was ascended now, he would sense the power. So that meant he had to change now.
Chase glowered at his reflection, pretty sure that this might be the last time he saw it. After all, this was probably going to be a suicide mission, and he was going to die a girl.
“You better appreciate this effort, golden boy,” he grumbled.
Standing up, he cracked his jaw, then started working.
Structural changes first.
Chase’s eyes flared from orange to black, then he cried out in pain as he felt the bones in his legs break, then reform again, slightly longer, making him both taller and more leggy. He wouldn’t have done this if he didn’t think his own were too short for this to work. Bracing himself on the counter, he screamed out in agony as his pelvis shattered, and it was only the massive amount of power that he was surging through his body and through the air around him that kept his body upright as the bone fragments reset themselves further apart and bone surged to fill the gaps.
Sobbing in pain, he leaned against the counter, forehead on the cool tile as he waited for himself to recover. Would he have been able to stand this pain if he hadn’t already burned alive a month ago?
Finally, he pushed himself back up, and panting, finished some of the smaller body structural changes. Shoulders back, ribcage smaller and more compact. The hands and feet were almost worst than the pelvis had been - he should’ve tackled it one bone at a time, but he wanted it done faster, and shattering every bone in his hands and feet to make them reform themselves smaller was murder.
Changing the other layers was easier - forcing his skin to reform to a new, curvier skeleton, forming entirely new muscle groups as his eyes burned black and he grew breasts - he even, with great reluctance, changed himself from male to female sexually as well. After all, if he lived, he could change it back. But if he died this way… well, who cared if he had a dick when he took his revenge, anyway? Finally even the adam’s apple was gone, and he was finished, except for his face.
Hands - delicate, womanly hands - curled on the edge of the sink, Chase looked at his face in the mirror, panting. His body was perfect. Curvy, graceful looking, perfect woman. But his face…
It looked like something out of a freakshow. A perfectly masculine head - five o’clock shadow and thick brows and square jaw and broad flat nose - had been tossed on top of a perfectly feminine body - soft pale skin and perky breasts and childbirthing hips and fucking cute toes for gods sake. It was like someone had screwed up in the mannequin department, hired a kid on acid, and told him to recreate the people in his head for use in American Eagle’s store windows. A disaster.
But this was the hard part.
First, it was hard because Chase had never really considered what he’d look like as a girl, beyond this whole fiasco. And even if he had thought to do it, he wasn’t pretty. He was rugged. Manly. His face just didn’t lend itself to “look at me I could be a chick if I stayed home and did my pretty face and spent my nights singing with the band.”
Scowling at his face in the mirror, he leaned closer, trying to figure it out. He could narrow the nose, narrow the jaw… but would that actually do anything, or just make him… well, look like Chase with a narrowed nose and jaw?
“I can’t believe I’m about to fucking do this,” he grumbled, wincing. He’d forgotten that he’d tightened his vocal cords to raise the pitch of his voice, and it sounded goddamn weird.
Scowling, he pulled up the internet, eyes flaring to bypass the security on the internet - why hadn’t the home’s original owner saved his passwords or something? It was like he was expecting to get murdered and have the murderer just walk into his home and start living there, and wanted to make things as difficult for them as possible - and logged onto Facebook. Ignoring the hundreds of well wishing posts on his “Wall” and feeling like an idiot, he stuck one of the insipid photos that he had put there to seem “normal” into one of the moronic games he remembered someone telling him about months ago at school, and waited.
The screen had some damn foolish cheerful slogan with “Who’s Your Celebrity Twin?!” emblazoned on it, but finally it pulled up a pile of results.
“Brendan Frasier?” he snorted, shaking his head. “Oh yeah, I really look like Brendan fucking Frasier, give me a break… let’s see… ooh. What’s this?”
“Jeisa Chiminazzo.” He read aloud, snickering. “Nice name, chick.”
But a quick Googling of her name confirmed that she sort of did look like a female version of him. And if she was a model from wherever-it-was-she-came-from there was no chance she was going to waltz into Nicky’s and ruin the ruse. Besides, Chase, standing there half changed into a woman so that he could take revenge on a man that had only ever hurt him because he’d tried to kill and maim him and his family and friends first, was not about to have moral quandaries about the meaning of stealing someone else’s face.
“All right, Jeisa… sixty eight percent match is enough for me.”
His jaw snapped then, though, which made speaking to himself and the mirror a little more difficult, though he managed a gurgling howl as the magic knit his bones back together and he focused on reshaping himself completely.
---
Chase sauntered into Nicky’s, still a little unsteady. He hadn’t thought that changing his physical appearance would affect things like balance, but apparently trying hard to be realistic and full on accurate about this made a real difference. He felt so less… solid. Like a really good breeze could just knock him over, or something. Nose curling a little at that thought, he slid between two tables, and scowled as he bumped into things he normally never would have bumped into.
How did girls handle it? There were curves everywhere! Something was always curving out while something else curved in… it was weird and slightly confusing. Unconsciously crossing his arms over his chest to protect the soft squishy chest - which also curved out, and he kept bumping into people with it, which was awkward as all hell - Chase headed back towards the tables the Sons of Ipswich usually sat at. To his relief, Caleb, Pogue and Sarah were sitting there, and a quick glance around the rest of the bar confirmed what he had suspected - Reid and Tyler were bent over the pool table, hustling Aaron again - was that guy a complete idiot? - and giggling to themselves. Taking a deep breath, he set his hands on the back of one of the other chairs at Caleb’s table, and smiled.
Hopefully not maniacally.
“Hi.”
All three turned to look at him, blinking.
“…hi?” Caleb offered. “Do we… know you?”
“Sorry, I don’t think we were properly introduced…” Chase offered his hand, mentally having to remind himself that, yes, it was supposed to be so very girly. “I’m Cherry. New student at Spensers. The provost told me that you were the person to talk to if I really wanted to know everything important about the school.”
“Oh!” Caleb’s whole face relaxed, and there was light in his dark eyes. “That’s great, it’s always nice to meet a new student. So I guess you know that I’m Caleb… this is Pogue, and my girlfriend, Sarah.”
“Pogue,” he nodded, smirking a little. He couldn’t help it. Every time he looked at the suspicious blonde - who was regarding him with a marked level of suspicion again - he could only think of the look on his face as he was crouched on that back road, screaming that he better not have hurt Kate. Interesting to note that the pretty girl wasn’t here with him now, was she? Glancing to Caleb’s other side, he schooled his expression into a neutral smile. “Sarah.”
“Hi, Cherry,” Sarah smiled up at him. “Sit down?”
“Sure,” he agreed, and sat, then realized that Sarah was looking at him odd, and quickly crossed his legs. Damn. How did girls deal with this bullshit? “Thanks.”
“No problem.” She beamed, and he had to fight himself from gagging.
“So Cherry,” Caleb smiled at him, brightly. “You’re new, then. Same year as us?”
“Mmmhmm. I’m a senior too. And no, I’ve never lived here before, before you ask,” he smirked. This conversation felt… forced. Stiff. It was frustrating, because he needed for them to feel like he was a part of their world, an approachable member of their community before he could put the rest of his plan into effect. After all, it was hard to crush a man’s heart if he thinks you’re a dull conversationalist.
“Oh, that’s nice,” he nodded.
They sat in silence for a moment, then someone changed the jukebox, and Joan Jett started playing, loudly. It was like someone had set certain songs to be louder in the damn thing, because lord knows there was no volume control. Last time Chase had heard this song, Sarah had used Caleb like a stripper pole.
Hmm, he thought, as Sarah grinned at Caleb, mischievously, clearly thinking of the same thing.
“Dance with me,” he said, abruptly.
All three of them blinked at him. “Ah…” Caleb started.
Time to mix things up, just to fuck with their heads.
“Not you,” he grinned, and took Sarah’s hand, tugging her up. “You. C’mon, dance with me.”
“Me?” Sarah squeaked.
“Yeah,” Chase smiled, starting to warm up to this plan. It might work well in his favour, if he could show that he was more than just a pretty face - though oh what a pretty face he had made for himself - and if the current object of desire and the future one were doing something intriguing together… maybe he could speed this process along a tiny bit. “C’mon, Sarah. Dance with me.”
Caleb laughed. “Go on, it’ll be fun.”
“Oh well… all right,” Sarah laughed, and stood, winking at Chase as she let him tug her to the dance floor.
Slut.
Chase smirked, and started just vaguely dancing to the music at first, not really dancing with Sarah except that they were still clutching at each other’s hands like life preservers. He had never really learned to dance before - it wasn’t really necessary for a life of revenge - and now that he had a girl’s body, it was considerably more difficult that he had anticipated.
“Here,” Sarah laughed, and he jumped, startled. “Let me help.”
“Ah… sure.” Chase blinked.
The girl stepped closer to him, and set her hands on Chase’s new, curvaceous hips, and began to sway them both. “Not a good dancer, huh?”
Chase flushed slightly, despite himself, and lied, a little, “Not really. But I thought it would be… fun.”
“It is fun,” Sarah smiled, and swung them both a little, fingers curled over Chase’s hips, moving them both across the dance floor. “Think you’re up for a little more actual dancing, rather than just a little shimmying?”
“Sure,” he laughed, starting to realize that his old assessments of this girl had been right all along. She really would give it up for anyone who smiled and paid her enough attention. He was pretty sure that, even as a girl, if he said the right things she would let him do absolutely anything he wanted to do with her. “Sex me up.”
She snorted, and started to actually dance around him.
All Chase could think of was that night a month ago, in this same bar, to the same song, when Sarah had done the same dance. But last time, it had been her boyfriend she was gyrating around and against, almost kissing, hands flitting light and teasing across arms and shoulders. It hadn’t been her boyfriend’s mortal enemy sheathed in the body of an incredibly attractive woman, a woman who wanted to destroy her boyfriend. This time, there was a bit more of a crackle of electricity in the air, and men and women alike across the bar were turning to gape at the scene, surprised and intrigued. He couldn’t blame them. He was hot, Sarah was attractive enough in her own way…
He chanced a glance at the table where Pogue and Caleb still sat.
Pogue was glowering still. God, that man was pissy. Arms crossed over his chest, he watched them with a sour gaze, as though furious that they had chosen to do this and therefore distracted Caleb’s attention from whatever conversation he had been having with the Golden Boy of Ipswich.
Because Caleb was distracted.
Caleb’s eyes were riveted on them, and they were wide, as though he couldn’t quite seem to convince his brain that what he was seeing was in fact, real. He kept licking his lips and swallowing as though trying to keep himself from drooling, and he couldn’t look away.
Pleased with this turn of events, Chase threw himself a little more whole heartedly into the ridiculous dance, throwing his head back as he sang along, laughing, swaying and swinging with Sarah, at one point actually grinding their hips together teasingly. Even Sarah was looking up at him with an air of adoration now, which made him feel powerful, in control. Master of his own domain - or rather, mistress of her own dominion, at the moment.
The song ended, and Sarah made a soft mewling sound of disappointment.
Feeling bold, he pressed his lips to hers for a moment, a brief second of time. He had to do it - it made the whole thing a hell of a lot more believable. It just felt like skin on skin - no doves flying about their heads, no trumpets singing his joy to the heavens. There was no electric tingle on his spine.
All in all, the time he’d kissed Caleb was a lot more memorable than this.
Pulling back, he flushed. “Sorry, I got… terribly carried away.”
Sarah laughed, flushed, breathless. There was a light in her eyes that concerned him a little, but she looked happy and not about to start screaming rape. “Don’t worry… it was all in good fun. If you hadn’t done it, I might have.”
Chase laughed, flushed.
Talk about a goddamn double standard. If he’d still had a prick and done that… fuck, he’d have been thrown to the ground by a few men already as she’d screamed at him for being so fucking bold, and Caleb would have been cradling her protectively to her chest while telling his buddies to get him out of here. (He just couldn’t see the Golden Boy of Ipswich being so out of control as to actually start whaling on Chase himself, even if he wanted to.)
“So…” Sarah drawled, stepping a little closer to him, looking up at him through her lashes.
Fuck. Chase was trying to get to the boyfriend, not the skank. “We should get back to the table. I think I need a drink after that.”
“Ooh, me too,” she took his hand again, and dragged him back though the crowd. This time, instead of bumping into people, the crowd seemed to part easily for the two of them, and a couple awed looking men actually clapped. A few of their girlfriends glowered at them, furious, though he noticed Kira feverishly asking people who she was as Aaron Abbott stared openly at them.
Sinking to sit at the table, Chase smiled sheepishly at the two boys at the table. “Sorry about that. Got carried away.”
Pogue snorted, looking away from him.
“I’ll say,” Caleb snorted, looking sort of awed. It surprised him a little, the look on Caleb’s face - he would have expected more… jealousy, or something.
Sarah flopped half on Caleb’s lap, curling into him, giggling. “That was fun!”
“Having fun kissing on other girls in front of me?” Caleb laughed, smiling up at her.
“And here I thought it would turn you on,” she giggled, wriggling a little in his lap, and Chase had to bite his tongue to keep from gagging. Disgusting. Maybe if it had been a different girl writhing all over Caleb it might have gone differently, but… well. He’d thought Sarah was an inbecile the moment he met her, and cavorting up like a little whorish tart wasn’t changing his opinion of her for the better in the slightest.
He laughed. “Maybe it did.”
Pogue made a scoffing, almost gagging sound, and for the first time since he’d met the blonde pretty-boy, he had to agree with him on something.
---
Frowning, Chase considered himself in the mirror, twisting and turning a little so that he could attempt to see himself from every angle. The Spenser’s girls and boys uniforms weren’t that different - the same oxfords, same sweater vests, same jackets, same damn ties. But the knee highs and the skirts were a little… weird.
He wiggled a little in the skirt, frowning. Thank god it wasn’t too short, but he just knew that he was going to screw up and not cross his legs properly, or something, and he’d end up flashing the class. Great.
His ass didn’t look half bad in the skirt, though, so he supposed he could live with that.
Scooping up his bag, he tossed it over his shoulder, then stepped out of the house, black oxford shoes clicking a little on the steps as he headed down. Hiking up his bag, he frowned, checking up and down the street, then gave up pretending to be normal, and let himself almost dissolve into a puff of black smoke, reappearing in a second floor hallway at the school that he knew there were no classes in this time of the morning.
Taking a deep, steadying breathe, he headed down the hall again, marching towards his first class.
That is, Caleb’s first class.
Chase was officially dead - there was a death certificate and all, he’d checked. For some slightly creepy reason, even his school file here contained a copy of it - along with his birth certificate and his adoption records. What kind of school needed that kind of paperwork, anyway? Shouldn’t that stuff be protected by privacy laws, or something like that? But being officially dead meant that he was obviously withdrawn from all of his classes. And honestly, he didn’t really want to go to all the effort of creating a real false identity for himself, so he’d shoved a fake student file with fake photoshopped documents into the file cabinets - because lord knows that Caleb was likely to check his student file again - and magic’d his way into a few people’s minds. Just enough to make him a legitimate “student”, though he wasn’t going to be graded, and frankly, he wasn’t going to do any work. He’d faked school well enough last time that no one had noticed, he could do it again.
But this way, he would have every single class with Caleb, just so that he could get a little closer to him. After all, if he was going to make this work, he had to make the idiot pay attention to him.
Slipping into the first period English class - a class he had, in fact, shared with Caleb before, he considered the room. Mostly empty, but a few eager beavers were here, ready for class to begin. He had never been accused of being excited for class, but he could work on that for the sake of this mission.
Sitting in a seat beside where he remembered Caleb sitting before, Chase’s intuition paid off only minutes later.
“Hey, Cherry,” Caleb Danvers grinned at him, hopping up the steps towards the row he was sitting in, thumb hooked in the strap of his messenger bag as he slid past him, and sat in the row. “How’re you doing?”
He smiled, leaning forward to rest his chin on his hands, watching Caleb. “Good… how are you?”
“Good,” he nodded, shedding his bag and tugging out his water bottle, leaning back in his seat as he sipped at it. “You made it home all right?”
Chase nodded, watching him.
Caleb blinked at him for a moment, then offered the water bottle. “Want some? You’re kinda staring at me like you want to just grab it.”
He flushed slightly, shaking himself. He seemed to be blushing at the slightest provocation lately - maybe he shouldn’t have altered his hormones so that he was full on female after all. “Ah… yeah, sure, thanks.”
Laughing, he handed the water bottle over, smiling. “So you’re in my English class. We got any other classes the same?”
“I dunno,” he played innocent, sipping at the water. The lip of the bottle tasted of cherry lip balm and apples, which seemed strangely familiar for a moment until he remembered where exactly he’d tasted that exact combination before. “I have bio next, then AP math and Latin after lunch.”
The golden boy laughed. “We have the exact same schedule!”
“Really?” Chase smiled, predatorily. Having practiced facial expressions in the mirror last night - something he should have thought of doing before going out to Nicky’s earlier, but that wasn’t the point, so it worked - he had discovered that this new female face didn’t do evil quite the same way that his old one had. Before, when he had grinned like this, he looked a little like a shark who had just detected the blood in the water. Now, he looked a little like he was about to slide into Caleb’s lap and start trying to work on creating hickies on his throat. “Must be destiny.”
Caleb flushed bright red, and he considered that success. “Right, maybe a kind of…”
“Don’t you believe in destiny, Caleb?” Chase purred, leaning a little closer to him, eyes half lidded. This female body, it had so much more power than he’d had before, as a man. “Don’t you believe that it is possible for two souls to be linked somehow, before they even meet? Maybe lovers are destined to be, or mates, or mortal enemies, or dearest friends, or even business partners. I think people can meet and just know. See the signs, don’t you think so?”
He looked surprised by this statement, and fumbled a little. “Well… I don’t know…”
“I didn’t say we were destined to be lovers, Caleb,” he smiled, patting his arm, though of course that wasn’t what was running through his head at all. Lover he’d be, if he needed to be. He would get his revenge, no matter what he had to do to get it. “I just said destined for something.”
The other laughed, though he was still flushed.
“Aww…” he cooed, feeling like a ridiculous idiot, but willing to suffer a little indignity to further this cause. Reaching up, he patted one of Caleb’s burning red cheeks. “Your face is on fire.”
Caleb snorted, and pulled back a little, clearly embarrassed by either the attention or the intentions behind it. Either way, he was getting under the golden boy’s skin, and that was always a step in the right direction. But he didn’t pull back too far, and he was still smiling.
“We should do something today,” Chase said, abruptly, almost surprising himself. He hadn’t really planned on trying to make a move so fast, but it felt natural, and who was he to argue instinct?
“Like what?”
“Well,” he smirked, “You owe me a tour of the school.”
Caleb snorted. “I do, do I? How do you figure that?”
“Provost said that you were the one to ask about the school,” he reminded him, and although it wasn’t really exactly a lie, the provost had never uttered those words to Cherry, but to Chase over a month ago. “And you said he was right about that, so… you owe me a tour, way I figure it.”
He laughed, but nodded, smiling. “Sure. I’ll show you around. Show you what to avoid in this place.”
“Way I hear it, what to avoid is Aaron Abbott and his gang.” Chase said innocently.
A momentary flash of anger crossed the other’s face, and for a moment, Chase entertained himself by thinking that the anger was directed at the idea of Chase hanging out with Aaron and Kira and Bordy, and not at the infamous trio themselves. “You heard right.”
“See? You’re just a font of knowledge,” he smirked. “I need to pick your brain.”
---
Once, Chase had stood on the roof of Spencer’s Academy and watched his target below him like a hawk might watch a rabbit, or a mountain lion might choose a high vantage point to watch the sheep grazing senselessly and innocent in the pasture below. That time, he had stood there with the wind barely rustling over gelled hair, crackling in his coat, watching before throwing himself over the edge to let the magic and the wind catch and pull at him like unseen hands to lower him to the ground to seek out and destroy his targets.
This time, long hair drifted lazily around his face in the breeze, individual strands becoming caught in the sticky sweet slick of lip gloss he wore, taunting him before slipping on again. His skirt and his jacket rustled in the breeze, and standing beside him was his target, this time.
Caleb was resting his hand on the carved lintel that ran around the edge of the roof, like the lord of the castle looking out over his domain.
Even while considering how easy it would be just to push the golden boy over the edge of the ledge to the parking lot below, Chase had to admit that he cut an impressive figure. Almost intimidating. But ever so intriguing, at the same time.
“Beautiful, huh?”
Chase jumped, startled, and forced himself to meet the other’s eyes. Caleb was smiling, dark eyes crinkling around the edges as he grinned, all perfect white straight teeth and genuine amusement. Just when Chase was about to remark that arrogance didn’t suit him, he clarified: “The view. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Just the last few bright colours of fall holding onto the trees, the tiniest covering of snow… it’s like some giant baker shook powdered sugar over Ipswich. It’s beautiful.”
Looking out over the concrete and past the cars to the trees, he had to admit that it wasn’t a bad view. If you were into that. “Not bad, I guess.”
“Oh, and I guess the views of New York were so much better?” Caleb laughed.
Chase stiffened for a moment, then remembered the cover story, and looked over at him out of the corner of his eye. “And what makes you think I’m from New York?”
He flushed again, and Chase smirked. This face did hold power.
“Well?” Chase prompted again, poking Caleb in the side, forcing himself not to poke harder than a girl might playfully poke a friend. He wasn’t going to screw this up just because he wanted to jab the other in the gullet. “New York, Caleb?”
“I mighta asked around a little,” he shrugged, one shouldered.
“Could’ve just asked me,” he laughed, spinning from facing the view - which wasn’t that great, Mr. Hyperbole - to face the boy. “For all you know, this asking around you’re doing is getting you the wrong information. Maybe I planted fake information around the school so I could track down whoever was gossiping about me and string them up by their thumbs.”
Caleb barked with laughter. “Creepy, if you did.”
“Oooh… find me creepy, do you?” he took a step forward, slinking almost, like a stalking jungle cat. “Or intriguing?”
“Not really into torturing maniacs, actually,” he said lightly, though there was a hint of darkness to the statement, and Chase smirked a little. He was talking about Fall Fest, the barn. Maybe even the bathroom. Was it sick to be proud of those things? No, of course not. He’d been an expert at that. Different day and age, he’d have gotten a fine job in the Inquisition off the back of those nights.
“Oh yeah?” Chase took a step closer, looking up at Caleb and wishing he didn’t have to do that. He’d thought that lengthening his legs would take care of this - he hadn’t felt short next to Caleb before. Maybe it was just the fact that the rest of his frame was so slight. It made him feel smaller. “What are you into?”
Caleb’s breath caught, and he took a step closer.
Already? I’m better than I thought…
The bell rang in the distance, and Caleb swore, some archaic, antiquated word for irritation that Chase never would have recognized except for the easily recognizable intent and feeling behind the word itself. “Well, into not being late for class, for one, but we’ve apparently already missed our chance on that one.”
“Darn,” Chase laughed softly, and buttoned up his jacket so that it didn’t flap in the cool breeze anymore. “Just when it looked like rain, too.”
Danver’s eyes flicked skyward, and he asked, lightly. “You like rain?”
Fighting the desire to roll his eyes at the elemental water witch’s transparency, he said, just as lightly, just as innocently, “The only thing I like better than a roaring fire in the fireplace is a good old fashioned rain storm that I can stand out in and get soaked to the bone. Then come back to my roaring fire to warm up.”
Caleb laughed, and he set one of his massive hands on Chase’s shoulder, as if to guide him into the building. “Sarah hates the rain.”
“Her loss,” he smirked. “Do you like it?”
“Rain… rain is probably my favourite thing in the world,” Caleb murmured, not seeming to realize how incredibly dreamy he sounded as he said it, hand curling on Chase’s back.
“One of these days,” he said, still managing to sound innocent. “We should go spend some time in the rain together. I bet you’d be a great dancer if you danced in the rain. Out there, with the heavy droplets splashing, a bit like drumbeats…”
Caleb laughed, smiling at him. “Heartbeats.”
“Heartbeats, sure,” he nodded, smirking. What a damn romantic. “If your heart beats about a million miles a minute and all over the pavement.”
---
“No Pogue tonight?”
Caleb glanced at Sarah, and smiled slightly at her as he slid into one of the seats at his usual table. “No… he said something about a headache.”
Chase sat in the chair beside his, laughing softly. “And here I thought only girls did that when we weren’t feeling like lying back and thinking of England.”
The other girl at the table laughed, settling on Caleb’s other side. “Nice one, Cherry!”
“Mmm, I thought so,” he smirked, stretching.
“You two are going to be the death of me,” Caleb rolled his eyes, snagging a fry from the basket he’d picked up from Nicky earlier, pointing at each of them with it before biting it in half. “No ganging up on me, you hear?”
“Not even in the bedroom?” Sarah asked in what was probably supposed to be a seductive drawl, and Caleb choked on the fry.
Chase had to clear his throat a few times to keep himself from gagging.
“Well, I thought it was funny,” the girl pouted, twirling a lock of hair around her index finger. “So, Cherry… Caleb’s been showing you around the school?”
He considered that, glancing at Caleb. “Pretty much.”
“Pretty much everything important, yeah… though I suppose I should have showed you a few more of the classrooms than just the ones we have class in,” he laughed, and offered the basket to both of his female companions. “Fries, anyone?”
“Oh, not me,” Sarah waved off the offer. “I’m on a diet.”
Caleb blinked. “Again?”
“More fries for me, then,” Chase smirked, snagging a few. It was petty, sure, but pretty much anything where he got to rub dirt in Sarah’s face was great. “I’m really lucky, I guess… I just have a fast metabolism.”
She curled her nose slightly. “Well… that could change, you know, as you get older.”
“Oh, I doubt it. It’s kind of a… legacy thing.” He smirked.
“Mmm, I got something like that,” Caleb nodded, then jumped slightly when Sarah smacked his shoulder. “Ow! I meant alcoholism!”
Chase laughed.
Sarah flushed, and pointed at him. “Still not funny to joke about.”
“Who was joking?” he grumbled a little, grabbing another few fries. “It’s just a family legacy thing. And not as nice as a fast metabolism.”
Rolling his eyes, Chase shifted in his chair, crossing his legs, frowning. His stomach had been twinging and complaining all day, as though every muscle in his gut had decided to simultaneously crunch in on themselves, squeezing all of his organs down into the bottom of his torso and squeeze them until he couldn’t take it anymore. It was getting worse instead of better, which was why it didn’t make sense that his stomach seemed to be craving food. A lot of food. Sipping at his cup of water, he rubbed at his stomach, frustrated.
“Cherry?” Sarah said, again, and he looked up sharply.
“Huh?”
“I called your name like six times,” she laughed softly, but there was genuine concern in her eyes. “Are you all right?”
“I - yes, of course.” He said quickly. Weakness was unacceptable. Even if he was a girl.
“You sure?” Caleb asked, frowning a little. He reached forward, touching her forehead with his fingertips. “You don’t feel hot.”
“You can’t tell someone’s temperature through your fingertips,” Chase muttered, closing his eyes.
He smirked, and shifted his hand so that his palm was curled across his forehead. Chase didn’t feel any hotter than he felt usually, but Caleb’s hand seemed to be burning against his skin. “No,” Caleb said, “You still don’t feel hot. You’re probably not sick.”
“Oooh!” Sarah hissed, eyes wide, and lowered her voice. “…is it cramps?”
Chase opened his eyes again, blinking at her. “Ah… it… could be?”
“Oh no… lame!” the blonde leaned back in her chair, shaking her head. “Damn… and right before we were going to have a night on the dance floor, too! You got supplies?”
“Ah… not… on me.” He said, having no fucking idea what she was talking about.
“I do, c’mon,” she stood, and reached across the table to grab his hand, tugging him up. “Oooh, and you wore a white dress today… god, I hope we can catch it in time. We’re gonna run to the little girl’s room, okay, Caleb?”
He looked a little pained. “Sure.”
“Wait - “ he tried, but a moment later, he was being swept along into the girl’s bathroom.
Which was certainly cleaner than the men’s bathroom in this joint… Chase looked around, frowning a little. It was better lit, too, and aside from the lack of urinals and the added stalls - which he did know enough to have expected - the major difference was the fact that it was so much louder than the men’s washroom. There, men didn’t meet each other’s eyes, and tried to get their business done and get out of there as quickly as possible. Here, girls chattered and leaned over the sinks as they worked on touching up makeup that looked perfectly fine to him, giggling and talking and generally using the bathroom as some kind of gender segregated continuation of the bar itself.
“Here.” Sarah slapped a little paper package into his hand, and Chase blinked at it like it was an alien device. “There you are.”
“Ah… Sarah… I don’t…”
“Oh.” She blinked. “You don’t use tampons, do you?”
His heart sunk straight to his feet, a sort of sick realization sweeping through his limbs. Oh god. Tampon. He was having his period. Oh good lord. He really should have reconsidered this full and complete transformation into a woman thing.
“Ah… no.”
“Mmm,” Sarah frowned, digging in her purse, leaving him to feel completely idiotic standing there, holding the stupid crinkly little package like a moron. “Let’s see if I have any pa - aah ha!”
Holding her hand aloft with a grin, she snatched the little wrapped package out of his hand and swapped it for a little plastic square, squishy and kind of floppy and alarmingly bright yellow. “There we go, much better. Now you get in that stall and take care of that… you’re new around here. Believe me, you don’t want to make that kind of impression.”
Blinking at the yellow thing, he asked, slowly, “Why are you helping me with this?”
“Because I’m your friend, dork.” She snorted, and pushed him towards one of the stalls. “Get in there before you make a mess of your dress!”
The moment that chase realized that Sarah Wenhem was right for the second time in her miserable life - the first being the pitifully easy realization that Caleb Danvers was, in fact, a witch - and that he was in fact hemorrhaging from between his legs was a moment that Chase would like to have stricken forever from his memory. He couldn’t imagine how women could possibly deal with this once a month - this one moment of his body apparently deciding that there was just too much blood in it so wouldn’t it be a lovely idea to dump a massive amount of it unceremoniously from his crotch be a lovely idea? was scarring enough, thank you very much. How did women not revolt as one and tear out their uterus’? Miracle of being a woman his ass.
But he did manage to recall enough of grade nine health class to get the thing affixed to his underwear, then head back out to scrub his hands in one of the sinks like he was a surgeon prepping for an open heart bypass.
“Well?” Sarah asked, leaning on the sinks.
He quelled the temptation to throttle her. “Yeah. I hate this.”
“Miracle of being a woman, I guess,” she quipped, laughing, tilting her head to the side like a canary that had been dipped in bleach to attain that airheaded colour.
He knew there was a reason he hated her.
It was being killed by morons.
The details of his fight with Caleb were fuzzy to him now, but one thing that he did remember distinctly was that Caleb had gained an extra dose of power, and then, in the most idiotic move a member of their covenant had made since betraying John Putnam in the first place, threw Chase backwards into the burning barn.
That had confirmed two things for Chase. First: that Caleb was a moron. Second: that he was right in presuming that the Covenant hadn’t bothered to read their Book of Damnation very closely.
The five of them were witches.
Elemental witches.
So by throwing Chase back into the burning barn, Caleb had saved his enemy’s life. He had effectively thrown him into the arms of the only mother he had ever loved, and the flames drew their prodigal-elemental son close and safe and hid him in the ashes of their aftermath.
It took Chase a month to come back to himself. A month to slowly and painfully use vague bits of his own magic, scattered at first, to rebuild himself from the literal ashes he’d become, like a slow phoenix. If the Covenant had been smart, they would’ve destroyed, or at least scattered, the ashes of the Putnam barn, so that he couldn’t do this. Of course, as Chase had already realized, they were morons. So they didn’t.
It took a lot of magic. A lot of using. When Chase finally awoke, naked and trembling and sooty in the snow dusted remains of the Putnam barn, he knew without finding a mirror that he had aged.
And he also knew now that it didn’t matter.
He could age.
But Caleb had to pay.
---
“My… god…”
Vanity had never really been Chase Collin’s (Pope? Putnam?) vice. Arrogance, yes. Vengeful, oh definitely. But not vanity.
All the same, he couldn’t take his eyes off the mirror now. Poking and prodding at his own skin, he keened softly. He thought he’d braced himself for this, but no preparation had prepared him for crow’s feet and hair that was more grey than blonde. Aging quickly had meant he’d maintained things like his eighteen year old weight and musculature, thank god, but he wagered that he was physically at least forty.
“Not a bad forty,” he conceded to the mirror. “But I barely recognize myself.”
He waited for a moment, head cocked, as though waiting for a response, then shrugged and left the bathroom.
Stepping over the body of the homeowner - he really ought to do something about that before it started to stink - he grabbed a pair of jeans from the dead man’s drawer and started to plan.
First - he had to figure out what had happened to ‘him’. What lie had the Covenant made to destroy him while he was gone?
Second - finding out what had happened to Caleb.
Third - what to do to destroy Caleb.
Shrugging on a dead man’s shirt and coat, his eyes flared easily to make a pair of his shoes fit his feet - was it a bad thing that he fell so easily into magic, now, as if it wasn’t a conscious choice, but rather a reflex? - and slipped outside.
Aside from the soft dusting of snow like powdered sugar across the rooftops, nothing had changed about Ipswich. It was the same little sleepy coastal town he’d first walked into in August, confident and cocksure and completely unprepared for the power of stupidity. Teens he recognized as Spenser’s students ran past him, laughing, and not one of them recognized him. At one point, it was even Reid Garwin that bumped his shoulder, arm in arm with a girl he vaguely recalled from Biology, and it took great willpower not to just fry the bastard where he stood.
It did tell him something, though, as he turned to watch Reid and the girl, whispering to each other, laughing.
They thought he was dead.
The Covenant may be idiots - and they were - but Caleb was also paranoid. And if he had the slightest inkling that Chase hadn’t died in that fire, he would have all of the other Covenant members on high alert at all times, looking for Chase Collins - or anyone who looked like an older Chase Collins.
“Yes,” Chase smirked. “That does make things easier.”
---
“You don’t say,” he drawled.
Kira giggled, batting her eyelashes at him as she rested her chin on her hand above her glass. He’d known, back before, that Kira was generally considered to be the school slut, but he hadn’t expected that with a single beer and the smile of a middle aged man that she’d be putty in his hands. Daddy issues, he decided.
“You’re just so funny, Mr. Pope,” she giggled again, the insipidly high pitched sound drilling into his brain.
“Please,” he smiled, easily falling into the old mask. “Call me John.”
“John,” she breathed, tiptoeing her fingers up his forearm. “I would love to call you John… anytime.”
Swallowing his feeling of disgust, Chase forced himself to remember why he was doing this. He needed this information. And if he had to endure the clumsy, drunken, awkward advances of an underaged skank to get that, so be it. If she didn’t give him the information he needed this way, it was easy enough to torture it out of her later. “You seem like a girl in the know, Kira,” he lied, easily, words dripping like honey off his tongue. He was good at this. “Someone with her finger on the pulse of the area.”
She giggled, pink. “I am!”
“That’s great,” he smiled, genuine this time, which might be why it looked a little shark like. “So what juicy rumours do you know? I heard a student died at your school.”
Her eyes got wide, and suddenly, Kira wasn’t in seduction mode, she was in animated gossip mode. “Two! This year alone!”
“Two?”
Kira nodded eagerly. “The first was this new transfer, Patrick something or other. He overdosed at our party at the Dells, start of the year. Idiot,” she rolled her eyes.
“You said two,” Chase pressed, leaning forward eagerly.
“Yeah.” To Chase’s surprise, a dreamy, almost glazed expression crossed her face, and Kira sighed, and, like a teenager in the sixties might have said the name Ringo Starr, said, “Chase Collins.”
Bemused by her reaction, he repeated, “Chase Collins?”
“Ooh, yeah! He was a transfer too, new guy, got on the swim team right away. He was smart, and talented, and sweet, and funny, and oooh god so hot…” she trailed off, distracted.
Flattering, but not helpful. “Kira. What happened to him?”
“Oh! Right!” she looked back at him, then, to his surprise, started to tear up. “He was friends with the
Sons of Ipswich, you know, the founding families? Well, they were having a get together thing at the Danver’s old place before the Fall Fest dance. On their way back to school, they realized that lightning had hit the old Putnam barn, and it was on fire. One of the girls from school was there - I dunno, taking pictures or some shit.”
Chase was relieved to see that someone else realized that Sarah Wenhem was a stupid bitch. “What then?”
“They stopped to tell her to leave, that it wasn’t safe, but… she was stuck inside. So Chase, he - he went inside to save her! And he did, but… he got t-trapped, and…” Kira snuffled, choking back tears. “He was a hero.”
Chase gaped at her. “A hero.”
Snuffling, wiping at her eyes, Kira nodded. “He was a real hero. He gave his life to save her!”
Completely confused by this positive spin on his ‘death’, he said slowly, “Who told you that story?”
“Caleb!” her eyes lit up again, flip flopping between extreme emotions like a fish out of water. “Caleb Danvers, that is. He gave the eulogy at Chase’s service. It was… it was beautiful. So noble and honourable. And Sarah even played a song on the violin for him. Between you and me,” she lowered her voice. “She was pretty terrible.”
“M’sure it was,” he mumbled.
“Hey, you okay?” she blinked.
“Huh? Oh yeah, of course. Say… tell me more about Chase.”
---
Chase had read once that the strangest thing in the world that a man could experience was going to his own funeral. Huckleberry Finn, or Tom Sawyer, or someone had said that. He wasn’t going to his own funeral, and he wasn’t hearing Caleb Danvers of all people giving his eulogy, and he wasn’t hearing the bitch that he’d tried to kill more than once playing violin for him, but he was standing on the ground in front of his own gravestone, feeling a little… surreal.
There it was, smooth and grey stone, with the name “CHASE COLLINS” carved in the front, dates listing him forever as eighteen. Just ascended, too young to have actually burnt out.
It was an unnerving feeling.
Frowning, he looked away from the gravestone to realize something that made his gut clench. The stone beside his looked older, but the burial itself looked about as new. “WILLIAM CALEB DANVERS” it said, and he swallowed. The sons of bitches had put him right beside Caleb’s father. They’d put him in the Covenant plot, and he hadn’t even realized.
He supposed that others might have felt flattered. Might have thought “well, they must have forgiven me for my actions after my death and realized that I was, in fact, a valid member of their Covenant all along”.
It just made Chase’s blood boil.
It was like an insult, to rub it in his nose after his death, to say that he hadn’t been a member of their Covenant during life because they still held a grudge against his ancestor for no real reason - after all, John Putnam had acted out a little, but he had never once threatened the Covenant itself or the other members of it - but now that he was dead, they could say that he was one of them, that he was their brother.
He snarled, fists clenched, and stormed out of the cemetery.
“I am going to - no, I am not going to kill him.” Chase muttered to himself as he marched, grinding his teeth. “Death is too good for them. Way too good for them. I need to crush them. Destroy them. I should fucking out them.”
Stopping dead on the street, his eyes widened with pleasure at that idea. “Yes… yes… I should out them. Tell everyone they’re witches! Ooh, that’s a good idea… good… but that’s not good enough.”
Grumbling to himself, Chase started walking again, frowning to himself as he tried to think of the perfect revenge. He needed something devastating, something that would crush them, make them putty in his hands. Well. He’d already done that to Pogue, on that back road a month ago. The thought made him laugh, actually, as he remembered the younger man’s cries of pain and the tears he had fought to not shed. That had been worth it.
“I could always find Caleb in a back alley somewhere,” Chase chuckled, “But that’s not terribly original now, is it?”
He had to destroy his soul, his heart, his mind, not just his body. Really, he could take Sarah out of the picture again, but that would just make Caleb hate him more, and well… Caleb hated him already. He needed something better. Maybe he could hire someone to seduce Caleb away from the bitch, or -
Or he could do it. And since he was pretty sure Caleb either wasn’t into guys or wasn’t about to admit publically that he was into guys, he needed to be a girl to do it.
Chase’s eyes lit up with orange flames, and he laughed. “Perfect.”
---
Sitting in the bathroom, dead man’s laptop open on the counter beside him, Chase frowned at his reflection, considering it. He looked old. This would never do.
His eyes flared orange than sank straight through to black as he watched his facial features shift and move slightly, tightening the skin, brown speeding through his hair like a wave of mud, until he looked exactly as he remembered looking the night that he “died”. He considered himself, frowning. Chase could feel the magic surging slowly under his skin now, working constantly to maintain this appearance. This much using would age him quicker, he knew that, but it was helping his addiction maintain itself pretty damn well, and if he aged… well. He was dead anyway, wasn’t he? So long as he took Caleb with him, who cared?
Glancing away from the mirror, he glanced at the laptop, frowning. Looking for pictures of naked women had been frustrating. He didn’t want to see them doing naughty things to themselves or others (or having naughty things done to them) and safe search had given him nothing. But a stockpile of old medical photos helped, so now he just had to figure out how to make the young, masculine image in the mirror that he’d created for himself into the young, nubile image on the screen.
Sure, he’d considered just giving himself boobs and shaving really close and putting on a wig - didn’t that work for teenagers in all of those shitty after school specials? - but that would never pass muster against a cadre of witches. Never.
So he could cover himself in illusion, but to maintain that would be murder. He was going to have to actually change his body. Otherwise he’d burn out in a matter of a couple weeks, and if he was going to complete this job, there was a good chance that he was going to have to lie for a lot longer than the week it took to get from zero to sixty last time. Sure, he was a witch. He could reverse it if he needed to, but…
Besides, he was going to have to lay low. If he used too much after this, the others would realize there was a fifth witch back in town. So he could blitz this one time, blame it on Reid or Tyler being jackasses somewhere, then he couldn’t use again. Not if he could help it, that was. Caleb was ascended now, he would sense the power. So that meant he had to change now.
Chase glowered at his reflection, pretty sure that this might be the last time he saw it. After all, this was probably going to be a suicide mission, and he was going to die a girl.
“You better appreciate this effort, golden boy,” he grumbled.
Standing up, he cracked his jaw, then started working.
Structural changes first.
Chase’s eyes flared from orange to black, then he cried out in pain as he felt the bones in his legs break, then reform again, slightly longer, making him both taller and more leggy. He wouldn’t have done this if he didn’t think his own were too short for this to work. Bracing himself on the counter, he screamed out in agony as his pelvis shattered, and it was only the massive amount of power that he was surging through his body and through the air around him that kept his body upright as the bone fragments reset themselves further apart and bone surged to fill the gaps.
Sobbing in pain, he leaned against the counter, forehead on the cool tile as he waited for himself to recover. Would he have been able to stand this pain if he hadn’t already burned alive a month ago?
Finally, he pushed himself back up, and panting, finished some of the smaller body structural changes. Shoulders back, ribcage smaller and more compact. The hands and feet were almost worst than the pelvis had been - he should’ve tackled it one bone at a time, but he wanted it done faster, and shattering every bone in his hands and feet to make them reform themselves smaller was murder.
Changing the other layers was easier - forcing his skin to reform to a new, curvier skeleton, forming entirely new muscle groups as his eyes burned black and he grew breasts - he even, with great reluctance, changed himself from male to female sexually as well. After all, if he lived, he could change it back. But if he died this way… well, who cared if he had a dick when he took his revenge, anyway? Finally even the adam’s apple was gone, and he was finished, except for his face.
Hands - delicate, womanly hands - curled on the edge of the sink, Chase looked at his face in the mirror, panting. His body was perfect. Curvy, graceful looking, perfect woman. But his face…
It looked like something out of a freakshow. A perfectly masculine head - five o’clock shadow and thick brows and square jaw and broad flat nose - had been tossed on top of a perfectly feminine body - soft pale skin and perky breasts and childbirthing hips and fucking cute toes for gods sake. It was like someone had screwed up in the mannequin department, hired a kid on acid, and told him to recreate the people in his head for use in American Eagle’s store windows. A disaster.
But this was the hard part.
First, it was hard because Chase had never really considered what he’d look like as a girl, beyond this whole fiasco. And even if he had thought to do it, he wasn’t pretty. He was rugged. Manly. His face just didn’t lend itself to “look at me I could be a chick if I stayed home and did my pretty face and spent my nights singing with the band.”
Scowling at his face in the mirror, he leaned closer, trying to figure it out. He could narrow the nose, narrow the jaw… but would that actually do anything, or just make him… well, look like Chase with a narrowed nose and jaw?
“I can’t believe I’m about to fucking do this,” he grumbled, wincing. He’d forgotten that he’d tightened his vocal cords to raise the pitch of his voice, and it sounded goddamn weird.
Scowling, he pulled up the internet, eyes flaring to bypass the security on the internet - why hadn’t the home’s original owner saved his passwords or something? It was like he was expecting to get murdered and have the murderer just walk into his home and start living there, and wanted to make things as difficult for them as possible - and logged onto Facebook. Ignoring the hundreds of well wishing posts on his “Wall” and feeling like an idiot, he stuck one of the insipid photos that he had put there to seem “normal” into one of the moronic games he remembered someone telling him about months ago at school, and waited.
The screen had some damn foolish cheerful slogan with “Who’s Your Celebrity Twin?!” emblazoned on it, but finally it pulled up a pile of results.
“Brendan Frasier?” he snorted, shaking his head. “Oh yeah, I really look like Brendan fucking Frasier, give me a break… let’s see… ooh. What’s this?”
“Jeisa Chiminazzo.” He read aloud, snickering. “Nice name, chick.”
But a quick Googling of her name confirmed that she sort of did look like a female version of him. And if she was a model from wherever-it-was-she-came-from there was no chance she was going to waltz into Nicky’s and ruin the ruse. Besides, Chase, standing there half changed into a woman so that he could take revenge on a man that had only ever hurt him because he’d tried to kill and maim him and his family and friends first, was not about to have moral quandaries about the meaning of stealing someone else’s face.
“All right, Jeisa… sixty eight percent match is enough for me.”
His jaw snapped then, though, which made speaking to himself and the mirror a little more difficult, though he managed a gurgling howl as the magic knit his bones back together and he focused on reshaping himself completely.
---
Chase sauntered into Nicky’s, still a little unsteady. He hadn’t thought that changing his physical appearance would affect things like balance, but apparently trying hard to be realistic and full on accurate about this made a real difference. He felt so less… solid. Like a really good breeze could just knock him over, or something. Nose curling a little at that thought, he slid between two tables, and scowled as he bumped into things he normally never would have bumped into.
How did girls handle it? There were curves everywhere! Something was always curving out while something else curved in… it was weird and slightly confusing. Unconsciously crossing his arms over his chest to protect the soft squishy chest - which also curved out, and he kept bumping into people with it, which was awkward as all hell - Chase headed back towards the tables the Sons of Ipswich usually sat at. To his relief, Caleb, Pogue and Sarah were sitting there, and a quick glance around the rest of the bar confirmed what he had suspected - Reid and Tyler were bent over the pool table, hustling Aaron again - was that guy a complete idiot? - and giggling to themselves. Taking a deep breath, he set his hands on the back of one of the other chairs at Caleb’s table, and smiled.
Hopefully not maniacally.
“Hi.”
All three turned to look at him, blinking.
“…hi?” Caleb offered. “Do we… know you?”
“Sorry, I don’t think we were properly introduced…” Chase offered his hand, mentally having to remind himself that, yes, it was supposed to be so very girly. “I’m Cherry. New student at Spensers. The provost told me that you were the person to talk to if I really wanted to know everything important about the school.”
“Oh!” Caleb’s whole face relaxed, and there was light in his dark eyes. “That’s great, it’s always nice to meet a new student. So I guess you know that I’m Caleb… this is Pogue, and my girlfriend, Sarah.”
“Pogue,” he nodded, smirking a little. He couldn’t help it. Every time he looked at the suspicious blonde - who was regarding him with a marked level of suspicion again - he could only think of the look on his face as he was crouched on that back road, screaming that he better not have hurt Kate. Interesting to note that the pretty girl wasn’t here with him now, was she? Glancing to Caleb’s other side, he schooled his expression into a neutral smile. “Sarah.”
“Hi, Cherry,” Sarah smiled up at him. “Sit down?”
“Sure,” he agreed, and sat, then realized that Sarah was looking at him odd, and quickly crossed his legs. Damn. How did girls deal with this bullshit? “Thanks.”
“No problem.” She beamed, and he had to fight himself from gagging.
“So Cherry,” Caleb smiled at him, brightly. “You’re new, then. Same year as us?”
“Mmmhmm. I’m a senior too. And no, I’ve never lived here before, before you ask,” he smirked. This conversation felt… forced. Stiff. It was frustrating, because he needed for them to feel like he was a part of their world, an approachable member of their community before he could put the rest of his plan into effect. After all, it was hard to crush a man’s heart if he thinks you’re a dull conversationalist.
“Oh, that’s nice,” he nodded.
They sat in silence for a moment, then someone changed the jukebox, and Joan Jett started playing, loudly. It was like someone had set certain songs to be louder in the damn thing, because lord knows there was no volume control. Last time Chase had heard this song, Sarah had used Caleb like a stripper pole.
Hmm, he thought, as Sarah grinned at Caleb, mischievously, clearly thinking of the same thing.
“Dance with me,” he said, abruptly.
All three of them blinked at him. “Ah…” Caleb started.
Time to mix things up, just to fuck with their heads.
“Not you,” he grinned, and took Sarah’s hand, tugging her up. “You. C’mon, dance with me.”
“Me?” Sarah squeaked.
“Yeah,” Chase smiled, starting to warm up to this plan. It might work well in his favour, if he could show that he was more than just a pretty face - though oh what a pretty face he had made for himself - and if the current object of desire and the future one were doing something intriguing together… maybe he could speed this process along a tiny bit. “C’mon, Sarah. Dance with me.”
Caleb laughed. “Go on, it’ll be fun.”
“Oh well… all right,” Sarah laughed, and stood, winking at Chase as she let him tug her to the dance floor.
Slut.
Chase smirked, and started just vaguely dancing to the music at first, not really dancing with Sarah except that they were still clutching at each other’s hands like life preservers. He had never really learned to dance before - it wasn’t really necessary for a life of revenge - and now that he had a girl’s body, it was considerably more difficult that he had anticipated.
“Here,” Sarah laughed, and he jumped, startled. “Let me help.”
“Ah… sure.” Chase blinked.
The girl stepped closer to him, and set her hands on Chase’s new, curvaceous hips, and began to sway them both. “Not a good dancer, huh?”
Chase flushed slightly, despite himself, and lied, a little, “Not really. But I thought it would be… fun.”
“It is fun,” Sarah smiled, and swung them both a little, fingers curled over Chase’s hips, moving them both across the dance floor. “Think you’re up for a little more actual dancing, rather than just a little shimmying?”
“Sure,” he laughed, starting to realize that his old assessments of this girl had been right all along. She really would give it up for anyone who smiled and paid her enough attention. He was pretty sure that, even as a girl, if he said the right things she would let him do absolutely anything he wanted to do with her. “Sex me up.”
She snorted, and started to actually dance around him.
All Chase could think of was that night a month ago, in this same bar, to the same song, when Sarah had done the same dance. But last time, it had been her boyfriend she was gyrating around and against, almost kissing, hands flitting light and teasing across arms and shoulders. It hadn’t been her boyfriend’s mortal enemy sheathed in the body of an incredibly attractive woman, a woman who wanted to destroy her boyfriend. This time, there was a bit more of a crackle of electricity in the air, and men and women alike across the bar were turning to gape at the scene, surprised and intrigued. He couldn’t blame them. He was hot, Sarah was attractive enough in her own way…
He chanced a glance at the table where Pogue and Caleb still sat.
Pogue was glowering still. God, that man was pissy. Arms crossed over his chest, he watched them with a sour gaze, as though furious that they had chosen to do this and therefore distracted Caleb’s attention from whatever conversation he had been having with the Golden Boy of Ipswich.
Because Caleb was distracted.
Caleb’s eyes were riveted on them, and they were wide, as though he couldn’t quite seem to convince his brain that what he was seeing was in fact, real. He kept licking his lips and swallowing as though trying to keep himself from drooling, and he couldn’t look away.
Pleased with this turn of events, Chase threw himself a little more whole heartedly into the ridiculous dance, throwing his head back as he sang along, laughing, swaying and swinging with Sarah, at one point actually grinding their hips together teasingly. Even Sarah was looking up at him with an air of adoration now, which made him feel powerful, in control. Master of his own domain - or rather, mistress of her own dominion, at the moment.
The song ended, and Sarah made a soft mewling sound of disappointment.
Feeling bold, he pressed his lips to hers for a moment, a brief second of time. He had to do it - it made the whole thing a hell of a lot more believable. It just felt like skin on skin - no doves flying about their heads, no trumpets singing his joy to the heavens. There was no electric tingle on his spine.
All in all, the time he’d kissed Caleb was a lot more memorable than this.
Pulling back, he flushed. “Sorry, I got… terribly carried away.”
Sarah laughed, flushed, breathless. There was a light in her eyes that concerned him a little, but she looked happy and not about to start screaming rape. “Don’t worry… it was all in good fun. If you hadn’t done it, I might have.”
Chase laughed, flushed.
Talk about a goddamn double standard. If he’d still had a prick and done that… fuck, he’d have been thrown to the ground by a few men already as she’d screamed at him for being so fucking bold, and Caleb would have been cradling her protectively to her chest while telling his buddies to get him out of here. (He just couldn’t see the Golden Boy of Ipswich being so out of control as to actually start whaling on Chase himself, even if he wanted to.)
“So…” Sarah drawled, stepping a little closer to him, looking up at him through her lashes.
Fuck. Chase was trying to get to the boyfriend, not the skank. “We should get back to the table. I think I need a drink after that.”
“Ooh, me too,” she took his hand again, and dragged him back though the crowd. This time, instead of bumping into people, the crowd seemed to part easily for the two of them, and a couple awed looking men actually clapped. A few of their girlfriends glowered at them, furious, though he noticed Kira feverishly asking people who she was as Aaron Abbott stared openly at them.
Sinking to sit at the table, Chase smiled sheepishly at the two boys at the table. “Sorry about that. Got carried away.”
Pogue snorted, looking away from him.
“I’ll say,” Caleb snorted, looking sort of awed. It surprised him a little, the look on Caleb’s face - he would have expected more… jealousy, or something.
Sarah flopped half on Caleb’s lap, curling into him, giggling. “That was fun!”
“Having fun kissing on other girls in front of me?” Caleb laughed, smiling up at her.
“And here I thought it would turn you on,” she giggled, wriggling a little in his lap, and Chase had to bite his tongue to keep from gagging. Disgusting. Maybe if it had been a different girl writhing all over Caleb it might have gone differently, but… well. He’d thought Sarah was an inbecile the moment he met her, and cavorting up like a little whorish tart wasn’t changing his opinion of her for the better in the slightest.
He laughed. “Maybe it did.”
Pogue made a scoffing, almost gagging sound, and for the first time since he’d met the blonde pretty-boy, he had to agree with him on something.
---
Frowning, Chase considered himself in the mirror, twisting and turning a little so that he could attempt to see himself from every angle. The Spenser’s girls and boys uniforms weren’t that different - the same oxfords, same sweater vests, same jackets, same damn ties. But the knee highs and the skirts were a little… weird.
He wiggled a little in the skirt, frowning. Thank god it wasn’t too short, but he just knew that he was going to screw up and not cross his legs properly, or something, and he’d end up flashing the class. Great.
His ass didn’t look half bad in the skirt, though, so he supposed he could live with that.
Scooping up his bag, he tossed it over his shoulder, then stepped out of the house, black oxford shoes clicking a little on the steps as he headed down. Hiking up his bag, he frowned, checking up and down the street, then gave up pretending to be normal, and let himself almost dissolve into a puff of black smoke, reappearing in a second floor hallway at the school that he knew there were no classes in this time of the morning.
Taking a deep, steadying breathe, he headed down the hall again, marching towards his first class.
That is, Caleb’s first class.
Chase was officially dead - there was a death certificate and all, he’d checked. For some slightly creepy reason, even his school file here contained a copy of it - along with his birth certificate and his adoption records. What kind of school needed that kind of paperwork, anyway? Shouldn’t that stuff be protected by privacy laws, or something like that? But being officially dead meant that he was obviously withdrawn from all of his classes. And honestly, he didn’t really want to go to all the effort of creating a real false identity for himself, so he’d shoved a fake student file with fake photoshopped documents into the file cabinets - because lord knows that Caleb was likely to check his student file again - and magic’d his way into a few people’s minds. Just enough to make him a legitimate “student”, though he wasn’t going to be graded, and frankly, he wasn’t going to do any work. He’d faked school well enough last time that no one had noticed, he could do it again.
But this way, he would have every single class with Caleb, just so that he could get a little closer to him. After all, if he was going to make this work, he had to make the idiot pay attention to him.
Slipping into the first period English class - a class he had, in fact, shared with Caleb before, he considered the room. Mostly empty, but a few eager beavers were here, ready for class to begin. He had never been accused of being excited for class, but he could work on that for the sake of this mission.
Sitting in a seat beside where he remembered Caleb sitting before, Chase’s intuition paid off only minutes later.
“Hey, Cherry,” Caleb Danvers grinned at him, hopping up the steps towards the row he was sitting in, thumb hooked in the strap of his messenger bag as he slid past him, and sat in the row. “How’re you doing?”
He smiled, leaning forward to rest his chin on his hands, watching Caleb. “Good… how are you?”
“Good,” he nodded, shedding his bag and tugging out his water bottle, leaning back in his seat as he sipped at it. “You made it home all right?”
Chase nodded, watching him.
Caleb blinked at him for a moment, then offered the water bottle. “Want some? You’re kinda staring at me like you want to just grab it.”
He flushed slightly, shaking himself. He seemed to be blushing at the slightest provocation lately - maybe he shouldn’t have altered his hormones so that he was full on female after all. “Ah… yeah, sure, thanks.”
Laughing, he handed the water bottle over, smiling. “So you’re in my English class. We got any other classes the same?”
“I dunno,” he played innocent, sipping at the water. The lip of the bottle tasted of cherry lip balm and apples, which seemed strangely familiar for a moment until he remembered where exactly he’d tasted that exact combination before. “I have bio next, then AP math and Latin after lunch.”
The golden boy laughed. “We have the exact same schedule!”
“Really?” Chase smiled, predatorily. Having practiced facial expressions in the mirror last night - something he should have thought of doing before going out to Nicky’s earlier, but that wasn’t the point, so it worked - he had discovered that this new female face didn’t do evil quite the same way that his old one had. Before, when he had grinned like this, he looked a little like a shark who had just detected the blood in the water. Now, he looked a little like he was about to slide into Caleb’s lap and start trying to work on creating hickies on his throat. “Must be destiny.”
Caleb flushed bright red, and he considered that success. “Right, maybe a kind of…”
“Don’t you believe in destiny, Caleb?” Chase purred, leaning a little closer to him, eyes half lidded. This female body, it had so much more power than he’d had before, as a man. “Don’t you believe that it is possible for two souls to be linked somehow, before they even meet? Maybe lovers are destined to be, or mates, or mortal enemies, or dearest friends, or even business partners. I think people can meet and just know. See the signs, don’t you think so?”
He looked surprised by this statement, and fumbled a little. “Well… I don’t know…”
“I didn’t say we were destined to be lovers, Caleb,” he smiled, patting his arm, though of course that wasn’t what was running through his head at all. Lover he’d be, if he needed to be. He would get his revenge, no matter what he had to do to get it. “I just said destined for something.”
The other laughed, though he was still flushed.
“Aww…” he cooed, feeling like a ridiculous idiot, but willing to suffer a little indignity to further this cause. Reaching up, he patted one of Caleb’s burning red cheeks. “Your face is on fire.”
Caleb snorted, and pulled back a little, clearly embarrassed by either the attention or the intentions behind it. Either way, he was getting under the golden boy’s skin, and that was always a step in the right direction. But he didn’t pull back too far, and he was still smiling.
“We should do something today,” Chase said, abruptly, almost surprising himself. He hadn’t really planned on trying to make a move so fast, but it felt natural, and who was he to argue instinct?
“Like what?”
“Well,” he smirked, “You owe me a tour of the school.”
Caleb snorted. “I do, do I? How do you figure that?”
“Provost said that you were the one to ask about the school,” he reminded him, and although it wasn’t really exactly a lie, the provost had never uttered those words to Cherry, but to Chase over a month ago. “And you said he was right about that, so… you owe me a tour, way I figure it.”
He laughed, but nodded, smiling. “Sure. I’ll show you around. Show you what to avoid in this place.”
“Way I hear it, what to avoid is Aaron Abbott and his gang.” Chase said innocently.
A momentary flash of anger crossed the other’s face, and for a moment, Chase entertained himself by thinking that the anger was directed at the idea of Chase hanging out with Aaron and Kira and Bordy, and not at the infamous trio themselves. “You heard right.”
“See? You’re just a font of knowledge,” he smirked. “I need to pick your brain.”
---
Once, Chase had stood on the roof of Spencer’s Academy and watched his target below him like a hawk might watch a rabbit, or a mountain lion might choose a high vantage point to watch the sheep grazing senselessly and innocent in the pasture below. That time, he had stood there with the wind barely rustling over gelled hair, crackling in his coat, watching before throwing himself over the edge to let the magic and the wind catch and pull at him like unseen hands to lower him to the ground to seek out and destroy his targets.
This time, long hair drifted lazily around his face in the breeze, individual strands becoming caught in the sticky sweet slick of lip gloss he wore, taunting him before slipping on again. His skirt and his jacket rustled in the breeze, and standing beside him was his target, this time.
Caleb was resting his hand on the carved lintel that ran around the edge of the roof, like the lord of the castle looking out over his domain.
Even while considering how easy it would be just to push the golden boy over the edge of the ledge to the parking lot below, Chase had to admit that he cut an impressive figure. Almost intimidating. But ever so intriguing, at the same time.
“Beautiful, huh?”
Chase jumped, startled, and forced himself to meet the other’s eyes. Caleb was smiling, dark eyes crinkling around the edges as he grinned, all perfect white straight teeth and genuine amusement. Just when Chase was about to remark that arrogance didn’t suit him, he clarified: “The view. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Just the last few bright colours of fall holding onto the trees, the tiniest covering of snow… it’s like some giant baker shook powdered sugar over Ipswich. It’s beautiful.”
Looking out over the concrete and past the cars to the trees, he had to admit that it wasn’t a bad view. If you were into that. “Not bad, I guess.”
“Oh, and I guess the views of New York were so much better?” Caleb laughed.
Chase stiffened for a moment, then remembered the cover story, and looked over at him out of the corner of his eye. “And what makes you think I’m from New York?”
He flushed again, and Chase smirked. This face did hold power.
“Well?” Chase prompted again, poking Caleb in the side, forcing himself not to poke harder than a girl might playfully poke a friend. He wasn’t going to screw this up just because he wanted to jab the other in the gullet. “New York, Caleb?”
“I mighta asked around a little,” he shrugged, one shouldered.
“Could’ve just asked me,” he laughed, spinning from facing the view - which wasn’t that great, Mr. Hyperbole - to face the boy. “For all you know, this asking around you’re doing is getting you the wrong information. Maybe I planted fake information around the school so I could track down whoever was gossiping about me and string them up by their thumbs.”
Caleb barked with laughter. “Creepy, if you did.”
“Oooh… find me creepy, do you?” he took a step forward, slinking almost, like a stalking jungle cat. “Or intriguing?”
“Not really into torturing maniacs, actually,” he said lightly, though there was a hint of darkness to the statement, and Chase smirked a little. He was talking about Fall Fest, the barn. Maybe even the bathroom. Was it sick to be proud of those things? No, of course not. He’d been an expert at that. Different day and age, he’d have gotten a fine job in the Inquisition off the back of those nights.
“Oh yeah?” Chase took a step closer, looking up at Caleb and wishing he didn’t have to do that. He’d thought that lengthening his legs would take care of this - he hadn’t felt short next to Caleb before. Maybe it was just the fact that the rest of his frame was so slight. It made him feel smaller. “What are you into?”
Caleb’s breath caught, and he took a step closer.
Already? I’m better than I thought…
The bell rang in the distance, and Caleb swore, some archaic, antiquated word for irritation that Chase never would have recognized except for the easily recognizable intent and feeling behind the word itself. “Well, into not being late for class, for one, but we’ve apparently already missed our chance on that one.”
“Darn,” Chase laughed softly, and buttoned up his jacket so that it didn’t flap in the cool breeze anymore. “Just when it looked like rain, too.”
Danver’s eyes flicked skyward, and he asked, lightly. “You like rain?”
Fighting the desire to roll his eyes at the elemental water witch’s transparency, he said, just as lightly, just as innocently, “The only thing I like better than a roaring fire in the fireplace is a good old fashioned rain storm that I can stand out in and get soaked to the bone. Then come back to my roaring fire to warm up.”
Caleb laughed, and he set one of his massive hands on Chase’s shoulder, as if to guide him into the building. “Sarah hates the rain.”
“Her loss,” he smirked. “Do you like it?”
“Rain… rain is probably my favourite thing in the world,” Caleb murmured, not seeming to realize how incredibly dreamy he sounded as he said it, hand curling on Chase’s back.
“One of these days,” he said, still managing to sound innocent. “We should go spend some time in the rain together. I bet you’d be a great dancer if you danced in the rain. Out there, with the heavy droplets splashing, a bit like drumbeats…”
Caleb laughed, smiling at him. “Heartbeats.”
“Heartbeats, sure,” he nodded, smirking. What a damn romantic. “If your heart beats about a million miles a minute and all over the pavement.”
---
“No Pogue tonight?”
Caleb glanced at Sarah, and smiled slightly at her as he slid into one of the seats at his usual table. “No… he said something about a headache.”
Chase sat in the chair beside his, laughing softly. “And here I thought only girls did that when we weren’t feeling like lying back and thinking of England.”
The other girl at the table laughed, settling on Caleb’s other side. “Nice one, Cherry!”
“Mmm, I thought so,” he smirked, stretching.
“You two are going to be the death of me,” Caleb rolled his eyes, snagging a fry from the basket he’d picked up from Nicky earlier, pointing at each of them with it before biting it in half. “No ganging up on me, you hear?”
“Not even in the bedroom?” Sarah asked in what was probably supposed to be a seductive drawl, and Caleb choked on the fry.
Chase had to clear his throat a few times to keep himself from gagging.
“Well, I thought it was funny,” the girl pouted, twirling a lock of hair around her index finger. “So, Cherry… Caleb’s been showing you around the school?”
He considered that, glancing at Caleb. “Pretty much.”
“Pretty much everything important, yeah… though I suppose I should have showed you a few more of the classrooms than just the ones we have class in,” he laughed, and offered the basket to both of his female companions. “Fries, anyone?”
“Oh, not me,” Sarah waved off the offer. “I’m on a diet.”
Caleb blinked. “Again?”
“More fries for me, then,” Chase smirked, snagging a few. It was petty, sure, but pretty much anything where he got to rub dirt in Sarah’s face was great. “I’m really lucky, I guess… I just have a fast metabolism.”
She curled her nose slightly. “Well… that could change, you know, as you get older.”
“Oh, I doubt it. It’s kind of a… legacy thing.” He smirked.
“Mmm, I got something like that,” Caleb nodded, then jumped slightly when Sarah smacked his shoulder. “Ow! I meant alcoholism!”
Chase laughed.
Sarah flushed, and pointed at him. “Still not funny to joke about.”
“Who was joking?” he grumbled a little, grabbing another few fries. “It’s just a family legacy thing. And not as nice as a fast metabolism.”
Rolling his eyes, Chase shifted in his chair, crossing his legs, frowning. His stomach had been twinging and complaining all day, as though every muscle in his gut had decided to simultaneously crunch in on themselves, squeezing all of his organs down into the bottom of his torso and squeeze them until he couldn’t take it anymore. It was getting worse instead of better, which was why it didn’t make sense that his stomach seemed to be craving food. A lot of food. Sipping at his cup of water, he rubbed at his stomach, frustrated.
“Cherry?” Sarah said, again, and he looked up sharply.
“Huh?”
“I called your name like six times,” she laughed softly, but there was genuine concern in her eyes. “Are you all right?”
“I - yes, of course.” He said quickly. Weakness was unacceptable. Even if he was a girl.
“You sure?” Caleb asked, frowning a little. He reached forward, touching her forehead with his fingertips. “You don’t feel hot.”
“You can’t tell someone’s temperature through your fingertips,” Chase muttered, closing his eyes.
He smirked, and shifted his hand so that his palm was curled across his forehead. Chase didn’t feel any hotter than he felt usually, but Caleb’s hand seemed to be burning against his skin. “No,” Caleb said, “You still don’t feel hot. You’re probably not sick.”
“Oooh!” Sarah hissed, eyes wide, and lowered her voice. “…is it cramps?”
Chase opened his eyes again, blinking at her. “Ah… it… could be?”
“Oh no… lame!” the blonde leaned back in her chair, shaking her head. “Damn… and right before we were going to have a night on the dance floor, too! You got supplies?”
“Ah… not… on me.” He said, having no fucking idea what she was talking about.
“I do, c’mon,” she stood, and reached across the table to grab his hand, tugging him up. “Oooh, and you wore a white dress today… god, I hope we can catch it in time. We’re gonna run to the little girl’s room, okay, Caleb?”
He looked a little pained. “Sure.”
“Wait - “ he tried, but a moment later, he was being swept along into the girl’s bathroom.
Which was certainly cleaner than the men’s bathroom in this joint… Chase looked around, frowning a little. It was better lit, too, and aside from the lack of urinals and the added stalls - which he did know enough to have expected - the major difference was the fact that it was so much louder than the men’s washroom. There, men didn’t meet each other’s eyes, and tried to get their business done and get out of there as quickly as possible. Here, girls chattered and leaned over the sinks as they worked on touching up makeup that looked perfectly fine to him, giggling and talking and generally using the bathroom as some kind of gender segregated continuation of the bar itself.
“Here.” Sarah slapped a little paper package into his hand, and Chase blinked at it like it was an alien device. “There you are.”
“Ah… Sarah… I don’t…”
“Oh.” She blinked. “You don’t use tampons, do you?”
His heart sunk straight to his feet, a sort of sick realization sweeping through his limbs. Oh god. Tampon. He was having his period. Oh good lord. He really should have reconsidered this full and complete transformation into a woman thing.
“Ah… no.”
“Mmm,” Sarah frowned, digging in her purse, leaving him to feel completely idiotic standing there, holding the stupid crinkly little package like a moron. “Let’s see if I have any pa - aah ha!”
Holding her hand aloft with a grin, she snatched the little wrapped package out of his hand and swapped it for a little plastic square, squishy and kind of floppy and alarmingly bright yellow. “There we go, much better. Now you get in that stall and take care of that… you’re new around here. Believe me, you don’t want to make that kind of impression.”
Blinking at the yellow thing, he asked, slowly, “Why are you helping me with this?”
“Because I’m your friend, dork.” She snorted, and pushed him towards one of the stalls. “Get in there before you make a mess of your dress!”
The moment that chase realized that Sarah Wenhem was right for the second time in her miserable life - the first being the pitifully easy realization that Caleb Danvers was, in fact, a witch - and that he was in fact hemorrhaging from between his legs was a moment that Chase would like to have stricken forever from his memory. He couldn’t imagine how women could possibly deal with this once a month - this one moment of his body apparently deciding that there was just too much blood in it so wouldn’t it be a lovely idea to dump a massive amount of it unceremoniously from his crotch be a lovely idea? was scarring enough, thank you very much. How did women not revolt as one and tear out their uterus’? Miracle of being a woman his ass.
But he did manage to recall enough of grade nine health class to get the thing affixed to his underwear, then head back out to scrub his hands in one of the sinks like he was a surgeon prepping for an open heart bypass.
“Well?” Sarah asked, leaning on the sinks.
He quelled the temptation to throttle her. “Yeah. I hate this.”
“Miracle of being a woman, I guess,” she quipped, laughing, tilting her head to the side like a canary that had been dipped in bleach to attain that airheaded colour.
He knew there was a reason he hated her.