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It felt good to be home again.

For those of us born and bred in New Orleans, the rest of the world is a strange place, lacking the grace and gentility of our city. Only in the Crescent City could her children ever feel truly at home. Had it not been for pressure from my family, I never would have left–even to go to college. But for my family, every eldest male had been packed off to Harvard since the early part of the nineteenth century. I often found myself envying my younger brothers in that they had choices that I, as the oldest son of one of New Orleans’ most prominent families, had never had.

My family had been an important part of Southern tradition and a fixture in Louisiana since Jean Devereaux came to the New World from Marseilles to make his fortune in the last half of the eighteenth century. And what a fortune he made! By the time of the Louisiana Purchase, he was a prosperous planter in what is now St. Charles Parish. By the beginning of the War Between the States, Willow Glen was home not only for the Devereaux clan, but for three hundred slaves and overseers as well.

Even the end of the war meant only a small setback for our family. As Reconstruction ebbed and the traditional powers of Southern aristocracy arose once more, our family took its ‘rightful’ place in polite society, becoming a leading force in politics and commerce. Banks, shipping, and agriculture were the foundations of the family fortune, but the Devereaux family, like the Roman nobility they admired, eschewed active management of their enterprises by the beginning of the twentieth century, choosing public service–or expressed another way–political power as a way of life.

Now, as a new century dawned, a new and unexpected power had stepped onto the stage: magic. When Webster and Kline unwittingly released magic on an unsuspecting world only a few years earlier, it meant an upheaval in our society, which threatened the traditional powers, but once again, the Devereaux family’s luck held, and it appeared as if once more our family was destined to prosper, in spite of rather pedestrian magical talents.

My father now headed the Federal Bureau of Magic for the Southern Region. With any luck at all (and our family abounded in luck), he could eventually lead the entire agency if he so desired–an agency which had eclipsed the fame and power of the FBI in the annals of American law enforcement. But he had other aspirations.

Of course, like most people of my father’s generation, he had little magical ability. In fact, he had no magical ability at all. Only those of us who reached puberty after the unleashing of magic seemed able to do well on the WK test. My own score was high enough that I was near the top of all male scores in the nation, although I would have scarcely been in the top third of women’s scores. Still, that would be high enough eventually to propel me towards the upper echelon of management in the FBM. The Bureau prized magical ability far more than experience, so some of the people in positions equivalent to my father’s were still in their twenties and thirties.

With my abilities, our family influence, and my father’s position, I would be on the fast track at the Bureau from the moment I graduated from Harvard in the spring. In a nutshell, that was my father’s plan. I would work for the Bureau mostly in name only while picking up a law degree at Tulane. Then, after I had served a minimum amount of time with the Bureau, I would be selected as the youngest Regional Director in the FBM–all before I turned thirty.

My father, on the other hand, seemed to have taken an interest in more active politics in the last few years. I had no doubt that he was just biding his time, waiting for the right opportunity to come up. Then he would run for office. Given his name, contacts, and wealth, he had a better-than-even chance of being elected to any office in the state. Once situated in a comfortably powerful position, he would be able to direct my own career, depending upon a loyal follower to run the office until I had all the appropriate tickets punched.

Of course, in many parts of the country, such power and influence from a single family–passing down a powerful position from father to son–would be unheard of. But this was the Crescent City, where such things had happened since the days of French and Spanish rule. Family connections were important everywhere, but in New Orleans, they were essential to success.

My thoughts were interrupted as I heard someone bustling in from the kitchen. I smiled as Lisa our maid, brought me a cup of the strong black coffee we Louisianans favored, along with two of her own beignets–pastries that were far superior to those served at the famous Café du Monde. She gave me a genuine smile, white teeth shining surrounded by an ebony face. “It’s good to have you back, Mr. Robert,” she said sincerely in that Southern drawl favored by most older servants in the city. Lisa had been with the family since I was a little boy, making our townhouse in the French Quarter as charming and genteel as Willow Glen itself. Although no longer a young woman, she was still attractive, as was everything we Devereauxs surrounded ourselves with.

“It’s good to be back,” I told her, returning the smile. As I sipped the coffee, washing down the sugary taste of the first of the beignets, I felt the warm spring breezes on my face. The sweet smell of magnolia blossoms from the garden below our white wrought-iron veranda where I was sitting was pure heaven. I couldn’t help but think about my unfortunate classmates up north, forced to ‘enjoy’ spring break in the chilly northern winds as winter only reluctantly loosened its grip.

I shivered at the thought of northern winters. At least this one had been my last. I had returned to Louisiana every spring break since I had begun my college career at Harvard, but this spring break promised to be special, indeed. Mardi Gras came at times which always seemed to conflict with my class work, but this year, by pure luck, spring break had been scheduled to coincide with the most exciting time of the year in my home state.

Most tourists associate Mardi Gras with the great drunken mob that rules the streets of the French Quarter every spring just before Lent. But for those of us of financial means fortunate enough to grow up in and around the Crescent City, it is a time of exciting balls and important events. More than a few Southern women could proudly boast that their hands were asked for in marriage at an elaborate krewe ball in one of the city’s finest establishments.

For anyone not born and raised in the South–particularly the Mississippi Delta of the South–the concept of a krewe is a little hard to explain. I would usually just tell Northerners that it was a local social club, but in fact, it was something more. Krewes determine social order in New Orleans, membership resembling a combination of an exclusive club, a civic organization, and a badge of honor. They also organize the most exciting parades and events surrounding Mardi Gras. In short, they are the true souls of Mardi Gras, without whom the celebration would be meaningless.

Of all the krewes in the city, none was more prestigious than the Krewe of Pliny the Elder. One of the oldest continuous krewes, it was founded by one of my ancestors and boasted among its membership some of the cream of Southern society. By right of birth, I was of course a member, as were my brothers.

The Grand Ball of the Krewe of Pliny the Elder would be held that very night, and I had come into the city the evening before from Willow Glen to have lunch with my father the next day and prepare for the parade and celebration. There was another event I wanted to prepare for as well. The previous evening, I had picked up a very special ring for a very special lady. That very evening at the ball, I intended to ask Alexandra Pierpont to be my wife.

It would be a marriage that would have all of New Orleans society enraptured. It certainly would not be an unexpected engagement, though. Alex and I had known each other most of our lives. Both of us came from prominent French families, and both were expected to marry well. We would not disappoint. Actually, we had talked about the possibility of wedding when I had been home at Christmas, but we had put off any formal announcement until Mardi Gras. As I said, many young women proudly boasted of their engagement at a krewe ball. Obviously, both sets of parents would be pleased since my father and Alex’s father had encouraged our relationship for some time.

The engagement was a mere formality. We had agreed it was the right thing to do. She would of course, say ‘yes.’

Were we deeply in love? That was something of a question. We certainly enjoyed each other’s company, and unlike prominent couples of an earlier era in the South, we had already enjoyed each other’s bodies before betrothal. I think in many ways, we were going to be married merely because it was expected of us. It had not slowed me down from dalliances back in Cambridge, and I suspected Alex had her own beaus at Tulane. I doubted if either of us would be willing to give up such pleasures entirely, even once we were married.

In this way too, I would be carrying on a family tradition. My family’s comfortable townhouse in the Quarter was often the site of liaisons between my father and a variety of discrete partners. I’m not just speculating: it was widely known and so common among his peers that it scarcely attracted notice.

I made my way from the French Quarter to my father’s office at the New Orleans Federal Building over on Canal. Now there’s another New Orleans oddity for you–Canal Street. It’s so named because at one time a canal was planned for the place where the street divides the business district. The canal was never built, but the street assumed the name. What other city would name its main street for a canal that was never built?

The Federal Bureau of Magic occupied the better part of an entire floor in the building–an indication of the growing importance of magical influence. In fact, it was per capita the largest regional office of the FBM–probably because New Orleans had always had a taste for magic, even before Webster and Kline had unwittingly released true magic on an unsuspecting world.

“Hey, Robert!”

I turned to see Helen Davis get off the elevator next to mine. Helen was one of my father’s top field agents. Like most of the best agents in New Orleans, she was female and black. Females usually had more magical ability than males–something about the Y chromosome inhibiting magical ability–and blacks had more contacts with the predominantly black magical community of the city. No one had ever come up with a good reason for blacks having more magical ability than whites, and only in a few cities like New Orleans did it hold true to begin with. I had always thought it was because the local black community had believed in magic, in the form of Vodun–Voodoo for the tourists–practically since the founding of the city.

Helen was dressed in a tastefully cut business suit of white linen. It contrasted nicely with her mocha-colored skin, and with her athletic build and short hair, she could have been mistaken for Halle Berry.

I gave Helen a warm hug. I had known her for years. I was just barely in high school when she joined dad’s team, and to tell the truth, I had developed more than a little crush on her. As I had grown older, the crush had faded, but a fast friendship had developed. “How have you been, Helen?”

“About the same as always,” she laughed, but I could tell from her tone that something was bothering her. I couldn’t tell what it was, so I let it go. If she wanted to tell me, she would get around to telling me.

Other agents from my father’s staff heard us talking and rushed over to greet me. I didn’t flatter myself by imagining that I was really such a popular person. I had always been friendly to my father’s people, and I suspected most of them did actually like me, but their effusiveness had much to do with the fact that I was the boss’s son. Still, I genuinely liked and respected all of the people on my father’s staff. One in particular–Uncle Avery–was even family, in spirit as well as in fact.

Avery Monaigne was my father’s right hand man in the office. Unlike many of the Regional Directors, father had chosen a man to be his number two based upon his administrative skills rather than magical ability–surprising given my father’s complete lack of magical talent. It had proved to be a cunning move politically. Uncle Avery freed up my father to pursue his other interests, such as politics while Avery did all of the grunt work. And since Uncle Avery was actually shirttail relation to the Devereauxs–a distant cousin to be exact–the blood ties allowed my father to feel certain of his loyalties. My brothers and I had grown up calling him Uncle Avery, which pleased him immensely.

Sarah Carmichael was with Uncle Avery. An attractive young redhead, she was in charge of field operations, so she was number three in the office. Given the lack of magical ability in her superiors, she was the magic expert in the office. Organized and aggressive, I had no doubt that someday she’d be called back to Washington where she would be part of the inner circle of the Bureau, which most field officers derisively called the Wizard’s Council. Both Avery and Sarah greeted me warmly, and I couldn’t help but note that my father couldn’t have chosen two more different people as his chief aides.

Uncle Avery was pushing fifty rather hard, complete with an expanding gut and thinning hair. He might have been reasonably handsome in his younger days, but he was going to be a dumpy old man someday. Of course, living in New Orleans was never good for the waistline. Five star restaurants occupied practically every corner in the city, and Uncle Avery appeared to have enjoyed them all.

“Good to see you, Robert,” he drawled, extending a pudgy hand. I shook it firmly but quickly to avoid the smell of garlic on his breath–remnants of a rich New Orleans breakfast, no doubt. It was amazing that a man so bland could be so flamboyant in his eating habits.

“How’s Harvard, Robert?” Sarah asked, squeezing my hand. Sarah was a Yankee with only a couple of years under her belt in New Orleans, but nearly ten years with the FBM. She was a tall redhead–a couple of inches taller than Uncle Avery, in fact. She was trim and fit and bordered on being beautiful. But dad hadn’t entrusted her with field ops for her looks. Sarah was one of the premier magic talents in the entire agency, scoring the third highest mark ever recorded on the Webster-Kline scale.

“Harvard’s great,” I told her, adding, “But Cambridge is cold.”

She grinned. “Don’t I know it.” Bostonian by birth, she was well aware of how miserable her home climate was for a poor Southern boy like me. Of course I would have my revenge when summer came, and Sarah sweltered in the unaccustomed Delta heat.

“Robert!” a deep, resonate voice boomed from the direction of my father’s office. “Come on in, son.”

I turned to face my father, and I thought–not for the first time–that he certainly looked the part of the successful politician he wanted to be. Patrician with his square jaw and iron gray hair, he had the resolute expression of a natural leader. Although I was certain he had been in the office since seven, as was his habit, his dark suit and white shirt looked so fresh and crisp a casual observer might think he had just donned them. His tie was the sincere red all politicians favored.

He motioned for me to follow him to his office. “I tried to reach you before you came over,” he told me, “but Lisa said you had already left. Make yourself comfortable. Helen, why don’t you get Robert a cup of coffee?”

Helen looked a little embarrassed. I couldn’t say that I blamed her. She was a field agent–not a waitress. “Thanks, Helen,” I said politely, “but I’m fine.” She gave me a smile of relief before I turned to head for my father’s office.

As I sat down in one of his comfortable leather guest chairs, I reflected upon what I had come to believe was my father’s greatest fault. Although raised in the New South where merit and position were becoming more a function of ability than sex or color, he was of the Old School. His treatment of Helen was ample evidence of that. Although she was arguably his best field agent, he treated her about the same as he treated Lisa or any of our other servants. He was polite–even gentlemanly–but convinced that he was superior by virtue of sex, color and breeding.

I often wondered why blacks like Helen put up with the backward attitudes of men like my father. The only conclusion I could come to was that New Orleans was their home as much as it was ours. To their minds, it was better to live where they wanted to live rather than go somewhere that the social climate was more favorable. Helen’s family went back in Louisiana almost as far as ours, although she was not exactly of slave stock. Her first ancestor to come to New Orleans had been a free black, and her family had been free from then on. That’s another thing a lot of Yankees don’t know about, but there were always free blacks, even in the Old South. Of course, the other side of the ledger was that they weren’t treated as equals.

“So how are you and your brothers getting along?” my father asked, rushing back into the office with a thick folder in his hand.

“Fine,” I lied. Paul and Lance were two and four years younger than me respectively. Since I was the eldest of the three boys, there had always been a certain amount of enmity between us since as the eldest, I had been tapped by my father to assume the family mantle. It was I who was sent to Harvard while Paul was packed off to Tulane. Lance would join him in another year. It was I–by virtue of both my majority and my WK scores–who would be brought into the FBM eventually to contend for my father’s job when he decided I was ready for it. It was I who my father had mentored in both my academic and personal life, making certain that I would be successful in all of my endeavors, since it was I who was destined to lead the Devereaux family once my father was gone.

That isn’t to say that Paul and Lance were deprived. As sons of the Devereaux family, they were given opportunities that would have been the envy of even some in our own social circle. Money, cars, ski trips to the family home in Aspen, and other perks of the wealthy were theirs for the asking. I can even say that my mother had always been more partial to both Paul and Lance than she was to me as if to offset my father’s favoritism. What they envied me for was the knowledge that they would always be ‘Robert’s younger brothers’ and their achievements would always be compared and subordinated to my own.

“Good,” my father grunted. I don’t think he necessarily believed me, but it was the answer he expected. In his mind, Devereauxs did not complain to each other about family problems. He knew I didn’t get along with my brothers, but he also knew I wasn’t to speak of it.

He sat down gingerly with a contented sigh, the leather of his chair crinkling to fit his trim body. The chair fit him so well that I was certain it had been spelled to fit him precisely. “I’m going to have to cancel our luncheon, I’m afraid,” he began with a note of sadness.

“Oh?”

He nodded. “I had our table reserved at Antoine’s,” he sighed. “I’m sorry we haven’t had much time together during your break, but we’re in the middle of a very big operation. You’re welcome to use the reservation if you’d like.”

“I will,” I told him. I too, was somewhat saddened. I had seen little of my father during my break, and the luncheon was to have been our opportunity to talk one-on-one in a casual, comfortable environment.

He was silent for a moment. “You are going to propose to Alexandra at the ball tonight.” It wasn’t a question.

I frowned. “How did you know? Do you have a Prognosticator in the office?” I had often suspected my father was using the magical talents of his staff to foretell my future. The suspicion did not please me.

“Don’t worry,” my father laughed. “Yes, I do have one on staff, but I didn’t need her for this. Avery saw you leaving the jeweler’s yesterday and put two and two together. He’s rather good at that, you know.”

I relaxed a little. “Well, now that you know,” I drawled, “what do you think?”

“I think you’ve made an excellent choice,” my father said smiling. “The Pierpont family will make an excellent alliance for us.”

I nodded. My father was right. We were rich, but Alex’s family was filthy rich–and at least as well connected politically as we were. When my father finally decided which office to run for, Alex’s family would be valuable allies. My father didn’t bother to ask me if I loved Alex. While our mutual attraction was obvious, love would remain problematic for now, and given my father’s proclivity for women, I knew it really didn’t matter one whit to him if I loved her or not.

Still smiling, my father reached for his phone. After announcing himself to the party he had called, he continued, “My son will be using my reservation today. I would like him to be served a bottle of champagne. Make it the Krug–the Special Cuvee. And put it on my bill, of course.”

Yes, my father was very pleased, I thought.

We said our good-byes. We would meet that evening at the krewe ball. Until then, my day was free. I would now be off to enjoy lunch at Antoine’s, but it somehow seemed a shame to dine alone.

“I thought you were going to lunch with your father,” Helen called out to me as I was about to leave.

I shrugged. “Apparently duty calls.” I nodded toward my father’s office where Uncle Avery and a couple of other men I didn’t know were entering for what looked to be an important meeting. “Aren’t you going to the meeting?” I asked.

Now it was Helen’s turn to shrug. “I’m not senior enough for that meeting.” She tried to look as if it was a matter of no importance, but I had known her long enough to tell from the look in her eyes that she felt she had been shut out of a major project. Now at least I knew what was bothering her.

On the spur of the moment, I asked, “Then you’re free for lunch?”

She looked a little hesitant, as if accepting would be somehow wrong. “I don’t think your father would like that...” she began.

I shrugged. “My father’s in a meeting. Besides, you’ve got to eat. And I for one, hate to eat alone.”

I could see her struggling with the invitation. I suppose I had spent way too much time up North. I had forgotten that there were still archaic rules Southerners still played by. The days when restaurants were ‘White Only’ were long gone–gone before either of us could remember. But a social caste system had continued, even if pure segregation has ended. She must have known my father would take me to his favorite restaurant, and for his son to be seen dining there with the hired help of any race would be a social gaffe.

“Are you sure?” she ventured.

In reply, I offered my arm which, to my pleasure, she accepted with a nervous but heartfelt smile.

The maá®tre d’ was too cultured to show any alarm at a bi-racial couple. While the décor and superb fixtures spoke of an earlier time in the South, blacks were as welcome as whites in Antoine’s. Perhaps an aging businessman looked a little disturbed as we walked past, but whether that was because Helen was black or just very attractive was subject to question.

Helen seemed a little relieved when we were led into a small, private dining room, but by the time we had been seated and given menus, I could see the wheels turning behind those beautiful brown eyes of hers. I decided to set her mind at ease.

“Don’t worry, Helen. We weren’t seated in here to hide us. This is my father’s favorite table. This is called the Last 1940 Room. It’s the smallest and most intimate of the dining rooms here. I suspect my father often brings young women here.”

Helen looked a little embarrassed. “I had heard that he did.”

I just nodded. “My father’s trysts are well-known, I’m sure.”

“He’s a good boss,” she insisted.

“But he treats you like a servant,” I pointed out indelicately.

She didn’t respond, for the waiter appeared at that moment. After we had ordered, she said, “He doesn’t mean anything by it. He grew up in a time when men–white men–were still mostly in charge. He treats blacks and whites alike in the office.”

I suppose that was somewhat true. He treated everyone at the office as if they were his social inferiors. He wasn’t unkind to them: he just made sure everyone knew their proper place in the pecking order.

“I think he treats me the way he does more because I’m a woman than because I’m black.”

I just nodded. I suspected she was right. His opinion of women was not terribly high, as evidenced by the way he cheated on my mother with apparent regularity. Even Sarah he had not so much accepted as used, as one would use a tool to accomplish a difficult task. Still, I knew that Helen’s career had plateaued as long as my father was in charge. Her magical abilities, her hard work at LSU and her sterling record with the FBM would mean nothing when it came time for promotions. She’d be always be what she already was–a field agent–for the rest of her life. When I joined the Bureau, I’d already be my father’s heir apparent, and competent people like Helen would be denied promotion by virtue of my leapfrogging them. I didn’t like it, but as I said, I was the eldest of the Devereaux sons, and expectations were pressed on me whether I wanted them or not.

“You could always go into private practice,” I suggested as the waiter brought the Krug my father had requested. “I understand a lot of the best magical practitioners are doing that now. I hear the money is much better in private practice.”

“It’s true,” she acknowledged, accepting a glass of the champagne. “Several people have left the Bureau over the last few years to join the private sector. A friend of mine–Brian Wallace–has a new agency over in Algiers.” Algiers was just across the river. “He used to be with the Bureau. He asked me to join him, but I don’t know.”

“Well, give it some thought,” I urged her as I took a sip of the champagne. It was excellent, of course.

“You sound like you’re trying to weaken your father’s team,” she laughed.

“Not really,” I replied honestly. “After all, I plan to be on the team when I graduate. I’m just looking out for you. My father is wasting your talents. I know Brian, and I know he’s a good man.”

She grinned at me, savoring the champagne. “He’s a better man than you’ll ever know.”

I grinned back. I was glad to hear she had someone in her life. I had known Helen long enough to know it would take one hell of a man to attract her interest.

“Well,” she teased, “you know you have to have pretty good magical ability to get on the team...”

Helen knew I had by far the strongest magical ability in a family not known for its magical talents. Actually, I was rather proud of my magical ability. While it wasn’t exceptionally strong, I had an unusually high degree of control over it–something many Pushers lacked. Rather than answer her, I just stared at her champagne glass. She gasped a little as the bubbly liquid rose out of the glass, retaining its shape as it floated a good three inches above the rim.

“That’s great!” she giggled. “I’ve never seen anyone who could keep the shape intact like that.”

“It’s a good parlor trick,” I told her, concentrating carefully to hold the proper shape. “I can do a lot more. I’m a top-rated Pusher.”

“Please, sir,” the waiter said quietly as he brought our gumbos, “we have a rule against any magical displays on the premises.”

I gently lowered the champagne back into the glass. It wouldn’t do to get thrown out of Antoine’s, after all, and I couldn’t maintain the control more than a few seconds anyhow. Besides, it wouldn’t do to waste the excellent champagne by having it splash out of control all over the table.

I decided to change the direction of the conversation and satisfy my curiosity. “So what are all the big meets at my father’s office about?”

“I don’t know if he wants me to say anything about it,” Helen replied coyly. “Besides, I’m not in the meeting, remember?”

“Aw, come on, Helen,” I begged. “You know everything that goes on in that office. You always have. Now what’s my father up to this time–something to further his political ambitions?”

She thought about it for a moment, staring at her glass. At last she sighed and I knew she had decided to share the story with me. “Have you ever heard of Mama Juno?” she asked.

I thought for a moment. “Isn’t she that Voodoo queen over on Magazine?”

“She’s more than that,” Helen told me, taking a sip of a well-seasoned gumbo. And nodding her approval at the savory dish. “She’s into smuggling as well.”

“Drugs?”

“That–and anything else that needs to be smuggled. Her gang got into a turf war with the local mob. The Mafia’s just too old fashioned, Robert. Their guns and threats lost out to her magic and finesse. The FBM got involved when she was suspected of smuggling some heavy-duty magically charged objects out of the country. You know, much of the world has very little magical power, so some of these charged objects are worth a small fortune.”

I nodded. Washington had come to realize that magic involved more than mere parlor tricks and could have military potential. Export of magically enhanced objects was subject to Federal licensing. I imagined the turf war she mentioned wasn’t the only one. I could just see my father using his influence to take the case away from the FBI.

“A raid last month netted us one of her warehouses, so she’s gone underground. We did take out her son, Pierre Dubois, though–or at least wounded and captured him. He was guarding a big coke shipment they were preparing for distribution.”

“You shot him?” I asked, shocked.

“Of course not,” she snorted. “It was a magical wound. You think you could walk if you got hit by a curse from a Freezer?”

“Of course not,” I replied. Freezers could partially paralyze a person in a heartbeat.

“Neither could he,” she remarked.

“So he’s in custody?”

“Sure is.”

“So what’s the meeting all about?” I pressed. When she was reluctant to answer, I guessed, “While they’ve got her son in custody and her organization off-balance, they’re going in for the kill, aren’t they?”

“Maybe,” Helen allowed.

This would be big news in the Crescent City. If Mama Dubois and her son went down, my father would be a local hero and a virtual shoo-in for any political office he wanted.

Just then, the waiter came to collect our bowls and the conversation shifted. I had learned everything Helen would be willing to tell me, so there was no sense in pressing her further.

As we ate our unforgettable servings of crabe mous amandine, we caught up on each other’s lives. She told me about how her brother was doing well at Tulane, and I told her about my family–but not too much. My father wouldn’t have liked it if I had told Helen that my mother was drinking far too much and had fried her brain to the point at which she was living in La-La Land half of the time. I also neglected to mention that my two brothers were jealous little pricks. I didn’t even tell her about Alexandra. I was afraid if I mentioned her, I might give away my plans to propose to her that evening. Mostly, I gave sketchy details and talked about my trials and tribulations at Harvard.

“It sounds like you don’t like it much up North,” she commented just as the waiter delivered her meringue glacee swimming in chocolate.

I shrugged as the waiter placed fraises au kirsch in front of me with Gallic finesse. “It’s all right,” I said with a deadpan expression, adding, “For Yankees.”

We both laughed at that.

“Thanks for lunch,” she said with a grin as we left Antoine’s. “That was the best meal I’ve had in a long time.”

“And healthy, too,” I joked. We both laughed, knowing that every fine restaurant in the city served food rich enough to make a dietician pale. New Orleans must have more cholesterol per capita than any other city in the country. We natives seem to think if it isn’t cooked in pure butter, it isn’t worth eating.

Impulsively, she kissed me lightly on the cheek. “And thanks for the advice. Maybe I will go into the private sector someday.” With that, she waved and headed back to the office.

I returned the wave and started back to our townhouse.

Not everyone in a krewe participates in the parade. Actually, it’s something of an honor to participate. Since I spent most of the year in Cambridge, I was not one of the participants, but my brothers were. I think it gave them satisfaction to know that they had achieved an honor I had not attained.

Instead, I would accompany my mother and father and go directly to the ball. I was just as happy to do so, since changing into a tuxedo after the parade would have been logistically difficult–especially since I carried Alex’s engagement ring in the pocket of my tux coat and I certainly didn’t want to lose it.

The weather was luxuriously pleasant that evening as Jason, my father’s chauffeur, led me out to the waiting car. The air was warm, but the humidity was still low for early spring. Just a few weeks later, the temperature and the humidity would combine to make wearing something as formal as a tux extremely uncomfortable. I often wondered how my ancestors managed to dress so much more formally in the days before air conditioning.

“You look very nice tonight, dear,” my mother said, patting me on the knee as I took my place next to her in the back seat of the Lincoln Town Car. I could smell the alcohol on her breath and wondered–not for the first time–if she was drinking more now. It was the curse of many wealthy but ignored wives, if one were to judge by my mother and her friends.

“So do you, mother,” I replied. Actually, for a woman of fifty-five, she really did look very good–almost regal in the gold gown and formally styled silver hair. She had gained a few pounds since I had left for college, but still managed to look slimmer than most of her contemporaries. However, given my father’s indifference at her appearance, I imagined it was all for naught.

“Do you have the ring?” my father asked me without preamble.

I patted my pocket and he nodded. To him, this was not so much an engagement announcement as a proposed merger. If he had had his way, the engagement announcement would have appeared in the business section of the Times-Picayune: ‘Devereaux-Pierpont Merger Announced!’

“Mister Devereaux,” Jason called from behind the wheel, “there’s quite a crowd on Peters and all through the west side of the Quarter. I recommend we go up to Rampart.”

Actually, we were nowhere near the crowd he was talking about. Jason was a Seer. When he concentrated, he could see things happening for almost half a mile away. It was a handy talent for a chauffeur. Unfortunately, Seers couldn’t focus on details, so their value as observers wasn’t good enough to be admissible in court, or even for more mundane eavesdropping activities. Still, his instincts were good enough that my father grunted his approval and Jason pulled away from the curb.

“We’re so happy for you, Robert,” my mother smiled, giving my knee another pat. “Alexandra is a lovely girl, and her mother and I are such good friends. You’ll do well together.”

I nodded uncomfortably. I had visions of my mother and Alex’s mother conspiring to mold us into their ideal couple. People of my parents’ generation seldom had strong magical abilities: Webster and Kline’s release of magic had its greatest affect on humans at puberty, enhancing latent talents that would serve for the rest of a person’s life. But the key word was ‘latent.’ Even my parents’ generation benefited from the release of magic, and my mother was something of a low-level Whisperer–as was Alex’s mother. That meant both Alex and I would have to remain on the alert when they began to pepper us with suggestions that had at least a subtle flavor of magic.

The ball was already in progress when we arrived. A small but talented jazz orchestra was in full swing, and a few brave couples were on the dance floor, swaying to a hot number. Most of the guests preferred socializing to dancing, though. My brothers were laughing and talking with some of their contemporaries. They both glanced in our direction but made no indication that they were happy to see us–or more specifically, happy to see me.

My mother and father spotted a well-known local politician and made their way to where he was holding court, leaving me on my own. It took me only a minute to locate Alex, her bright red hair shining like a beacon as she laughed with a group of girls I recognized as her best friends, all of whom were classmates of hers at Tulane. I decided not to join them just yet. We’d have time enough together later. I decided instead to get myself a drink and see if any of my old friends and prep school classmates were anywhere to be seen.

I made my way to the bar by myself. Along the way, I saw no one that I could call a friend. It seemed that none of my old friends had made it to the ball, and I found I didn’t want to talk to any of my contemporaries who had managed to attend. It was funny, but maybe Harvard had changed me more than I realized. I found I had no real desire to hobnob with my fellow Southern aristocrats, half of whom were so wrapped up in their social circle that they didn’t realize how much the world around them was changing. Maybe father had been right to send me to Harvard. It had certainly widened my perspective.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I never had been part of the social set. Oh sure, I did all the things a rich young man was supposed to do and was still doing them. The balls, pressing the flesh, and living the lush life were all part of my upbringing and I couldn’t completely deny them. But on the other hand, I had always been very particular about my friends, selecting individuals such as myself who believed brains and talent were more important than money and contacts. Of course I–and many of my wealthy friends–had never truly had to test that hypothesis.

The party actually looked a little better once I had a scotch in my hand. The ice-cooled soda water was soothing to my throat, and the scotch... well, let’s just say that the Krewe of Pliny the Elder did not tolerate bad liquor. The orchestra had switched tempo and was playing a lush number which had most of the couples on the dance floor dancing very close to each other. I thought I should probably ask Alex to dance, but then I saw someone had already asked her. To my discomfort, they were dancing very close to each other as well.

“Mr. Devereaux?”

I turned away from my quiet people watching to see a waiter attired in the formal livery of the krewe. The uniform fit him poorly, and I doubted if the caterer had bothered to do much to them in the way of alterations. It was a shame, really. Sizing was a magic talent common (and cheap) enough that the uniforms should have been a proper fit.

“There’s a call for you, sir,” the waiter told me in a gentle Caribbean accent with undertones of French. He smiled, thick lips together in an ebony face. Looking back on it though, it was his eyes that I should have noticed. They were the eyes of a predator and not those of a servitor. The oversight was to cost me dearly.

I couldn’t imagine who would be calling me. Alex was at the party, as well as my entire immediate family. No one else would know–or care–that I was at the party. “Do you know who’s calling?” I asked.

“I believe it is a Ms. Davis,” he replied smoothly.

Helen? What possible reason would there be for Helen to be calling me? Of course she knew I was at the party but...

“Where did you say the call was?”

“Follow me,” the waiter replied with a small bow as he turned, not bothering to see if I would follow. I shrugged and fell into step with him.

The phones were located in a small alcove just beyond the restroom where a caller could be assured of having some privacy. In keeping with the décor of the establishment, the phones were located on three French provincial desks, separated from each other. The phone on the center one was off the hook while callers were on the other two phones. Again, I should have noticed something wrong. The two other callers wore formal attire, but in retrospect, I should have noticed that their outfits fit them as poorly as that of the waiter. Without thinking, I ignored the other two men and sat down, picking up the receiver. “Helen?”

Strange, there was no one on the phone at all. “Helen?”

That was as far as I got. The men on either side of me jumped up, one pinning my arms to my side while the other shoved a rag over my nose and mouth. “Whaa...?” was all I managed as darkness overtook me at once.

I woke up in total darkness. I was lying on a bed–that much I could tell from the softness and the cool feel of the sheets. It was easy to feel the sheets, because I wasn’t wearing a single stitch of clothing. There was no sound and no light, so I overcame my first impulse to stand since being both naked and sightless would not do me any good. Even in my chloroform-drugged brain, I had determined that my best course of action lay in waiting until I had been able to learn something of my surroundings. However, I wasn’t to be given the opportunity to play possum.

“We know you awake, boy,” a woman’s sultry voice called out calmly from the darkness. She had a soft French accent and a cadence of the islands–just like the waiter who had lured me from the ball.

I’d like to say that I was as unruffled as James Bond, but that would be a lie. In fact, I was scared shitless. Someone had kidnapped me, taken all of my clothing, and left me in stygian darkness. I was no fool. My father was both rich and powerful. I knew he had made many enemies in his tenure at the FBM. Either some of them had me in their clutches or I had been kidnapped for ransom. I actually hoped it was the latter of the two. Kidnappers would probably let me go after a ransom was paid. My father’s enemies on the other hand...

“Do you know why you’re here?” the woman’s voice asked.

“N... No,” I stammered.

Dim light appeared from nowhere in particular and I could see an attractive black woman in a long, flowing orange dress. She looked to be perhaps forty, but a very well preserved forty I had to admit. Her skin was very dark and her hair was short and curled closely along the side of her narrow face. “I’m Marie Dubois,” she said, moving toward me in a sultry gait. “But some folks call me Mama Juno.”

I would have gotten up from the bed and tried to greet her with something resembling dignity–or as much dignity as a naked man can muster–but for some reason, I couldn’t get up from the bed. I could move my arms and legs, but I couldn’t rise. It was as if my torso had been glued to the bed. I was forced to lie there unmoving as she sat beside me, the cotton of her skirt sliding over the smooth sheets.

“Your father has my son, Pierre,” she told me. Her voice was even, but there was hatred in her eyes when she mentioned my father. “He hurt him–hurt him bad. Right now, he can’t even walk.”

“Your son was paralyzed by a Freezer,” I told her, trying to keep my voice calm. “He’ll be all right. The spell will wear off.”

“You don’t know that!” she snorted. “You just know what you be told. My boy, he hurt bad. The Freezer, he no good. He use too much power. He may never be whole again.”

I had no reason to doubt her. Unfortunately, magic was still pretty much new to the world and could get out of control in a tense situation. Freezers had been known to accidentally stop a person’s heart when all they were trying to do was stop them from running. Helen hadn’t told me the details, but I suspected he had tried to resist before his capture. If he had resisted, the Freezer might have overdone it. It was very possible that he might never walk again. “I... I hope he’ll be all right,” I offered, praying that he would.

“Oh he walk again,” she said grimly. “I sure about that, yes... He gonna walk into the court on his own, but down here...” She reached out with long black fingers and caressed my balls. “Down here maybe he don’t work no more. He my only boy, too.”

“I’m sorry,” I managed, really meaning it on many levels.

To my surprise, she shrugged, looking away. “Well, maybe there some hope. Mama know things you white boys don’t know. We be able to fix him up fine.”

Then she turned her attention back to me. “But still your daddy–he hurt my boy. Now, you gonna pay the price for what your daddy do.”

I held my breath. I fully expected her to pull a sharp blade from somewhere inside her orange gown and slice off my manhood as I watched in horror. She was full of surprises, though, rising from my bedside and releasing the clasps that held the dress over her shoulders.

As the dress fell to the floor, I was mesmerized by her body. The top of her black breasts seemed almost to shine in the light that followed her. Her nipples were erect and perfectly sized for her magnificent breasts, which were firm with no hint of sagging–the breasts of a twenty year old. As for the rest of her, she was a perfect picture of womanhood–small waist, rounded hips, and long, slim legs. As precarious as my situation was, I couldn’t stop myself from becoming uncomfortably erect in her presence.

She smiled at my discomfort, her long fingers gently caressing my penis. It took an act of sheer will to keep from going off right then. “You like what you see?” she asked, not waiting for an answer. When she kissed the tip of my penis, I was certain that she was magically keeping me from orgasming since the pressure within me was too intense to hold back without magical help.

There was no romance in what came next, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t pleasurable. She mounted me. It was as simple as that. And since it was hardly consensual, it must be noted that what she did to me can only be called rape. I had enjoyed sex many times in my young life, but I had never felt anything like I felt that night. When I was finally allowed to come, I nearly passed out. I flatter myself in thinking that Mama Juno too, came, but the moan I exhaled was too loud to hear any sounds she might have made.

It was over as quickly as it began. She pulled away from me, leaving me limp all over. “Rest now, lover,” she whispered. And in response to her command, I felt all consciousness slipping away...

“Can you hear me?”

The woman’s voice was familiar. At first my confused mind thought it was Mama Juno, but the voice calling to me was higher and younger with no trace of a Southern accent. I tried to open my eyes, but I felt as if lead weights had been attached to my eyelids.

“Don’t try to open your eyes just yet,” the woman cautioned. “You’ve been spelled into a trance. I need to bring you out of it slowly. Just try to nod your head if you understand.”

With effort, I managed to do so.

“Good. Now just lie still.” I felt her touching the side of my face, then stroking my arms. At last, she withdrew her hands and ordered, “Now concentrate on the sound of my voice. I want you to open your eyes at the count of three. Are you ready?” I managed to nod. “One... Two... Three!”

My eyes literally shot open, and I was suddenly staring into the worried face of Sarah Carmichael. She sighed in relief. “You gave us quite a scare, Robert.”

“Am... I... in... hos... hos...” I managed to croak out.

“The hospital? Not exactly. You’re in the clinic at the FBM. You’re going to be all right.”

At that moment, my father rushed in, followed closely by Uncle Avery. “My God, Robert, are you all right?”

“He shouldn’t talk right now,” Sarah cautioned, tucking a sheet over my chest. “Let him rest for a while first.”

My father squeezed my hand, a serious look of concern on his face. “Yes, you rest, Robert. Your mother is in my office now. I’ll tell her you’re doing better.”

When he and Uncle Avery were gone, Sarah continued to check me out in the manner of a health professional. I wondered if among her many talents, she was also an RN. When she finished checking the monitors, she turned back to me. “We found you on the steps of the building this morning,” she explained. “You were out cold and naked.”

I blushed a little at that. I must have presented a bizarre image even in a town where bizarre can be commonplace.

“I’ve checked you over. I can’t find anything physically wrong with you, so you should be fine.”

Maybe, but the way she said it wasn’t terribly reassuring. The operative word was ‘physically.’ Strictly speaking, I could be a psychological or magical nightmare and still be ‘physically’ fine. Mama Juno was rumored to be one of the most adept magical practitioners in the parish, and everyone knew that sexually transmitted spells were the most powerful–and often the ugliest. Sarah knew it, too. I could see it in her expression. Since I doubted if Mama Juno had bothered to have me cleaned up before unceremoniously dumping me on the front steps of the FBM, Sarah must have suspected something sexual had transpired.

“Just get some rest,” she advised me. “We’ll talk more when you’re rested.”

I dozed off and on for the better part of the day. That wasn’t natural, and I suspected that Sarah had prescribed a light sedative spell for me. At least it would probably not result in the grogginess a chemical sedative would have produced. By nightfall, I was wide-awake–just in time for my mother and two brothers to visit me.

“Oh Robert!” my mother wailed, grabbing my arm as she bent over to kiss me. “We were so worried about you.”

I wasn’t sure who she meant by ‘we.’ Sure, she was worried, and so was my father, I assumed, but Paul and Lance stood back looking more concerned that I might actually recover. It was a good thing I wasn’t on oxygen because either of my brothers would have been more than happy to stand on the tube.

“I’m fine, mother,” I told her, shooting a smug glance at my brothers. Actually, I was feeling pretty good. Sure, I was worried about what Mama Juno might have done to me, but nothing had happened yet as far as I could tell. Sarah’s suspected spell had done wonders for me it seemed.

Mother left after a few minutes of forgettable chatter, my two brothers sullenly in tow. After they were gone, I realized neither of my brothers had bothered to say a word to me. Of course, I also realized I was okay with that.

I had one other visitor that evening. Fortunately, I had enough warning that she was coming that I had a chance to shave and run a comb through my hair. I didn’t seem to need a shave, so I assumed Sarah had gotten one of the attendants to shave me while I was asleep. There was nothing I could do about the oversized FBM sweats I had been given, so Alex would just have to see me not at my fashionable best.

“Robert,” she crooned, falling into my arms as I rose to greet her. “Are you all right?”

“It appears as if I am,” I allowed, hugging her closely. “I didn’t even get a chance to talk to you last night. I had something very important to ask you.”

She pushed back just a little, looking into my eyes. The light dawned at once in her eyes. She obviously didn’t want to hear anything like a proposal just then. “Maybe we’d better wait until you’re feeling a little better before we discuss... that.”

She was right. A patient room in the FBM clinic wasn’t the sort of place to propose to a woman like Alex. “All right,” I agreed. “We can talk about it when I’m out of here.”

“When are they going to let you go?” she asked, releasing me and changing the subject at the same moment.

“Tomorrow, I would imagine,” I replied. “They want to run a few more tests on me and debrief me in the morning. I should be home in time for lunch.”

“What did that awful woman do to you?” she asked, alerting me to the fact that my kidnapping by Mama Juno must have been common knowledge already. I hoped that no one–particularly Alex–had been told that I had obviously had sex during my abduction.

“Just held me for a few hours,” I lied. It wasn’t a good idea to tell her what had really happened. As I’ve mentioned before, Alex and I had been sexually active for some time over school vacations and summer breaks. She knew spells could be sexually transmitted, too. Until I had a clean bill of health from Sarah and her FBM staff, it was best not to mention my sexual encounter with Mama Juno. Come to think of it, it would be best if Alex was never told about that, as long as Sarah could confirm that nothing transmittable had entered my system.

“That’s all?” she asked–a little suspiciously, I thought. I really couldn’t blame her, though.

“I think she just wanted to prove to my father that she could do it,” I said glibly. I’m sure that was actually part of it, so it wasn’t really a lie. Half-truths always spin better than lies.

We then talked for a while about inconsequential things–her school and mine, mutual friends, and how much we were looking forward to being able to spend more time together. The possibility of marriage wasn’t mentioned, but we both knew it would be happening–probably sometime late in the summer. That would give us both time to get home from our respective schools.

Finally, the stress of the day got to me. Alex gave me a warm kiss and said goodnight. Minutes later, I was back in bed asleep, still in my sweats.

The next morning, I felt like my old self again. I awoke, refreshed and hungry. Of course psychologically, I was still a little off. After all, I had been raped when you get right down to it. I began to understand just a little how a woman felt when she was subjected to non-consensual sex. In some ways, I may have felt even worse than a woman would. I don’t mean that insensitively. I knew that women had the additional burden of worrying if a rapist had impregnated them, but on the other hand, most women I knew grew up with the knowledge that it could happen to them. I don’t think I ever worried as a man about being raped by a woman, and I doubt if there is a man alive who ever anticipates it could happen to him. It made me feel powerless in a way I had never imagined before.

My father had brought me some fresh clothes from home in anticipation of my release. It felt good to dress in something besides the utilitarian sweats. Once in a white polo shirt and gray slacks, I felt my self-confidence returning somewhat. Looking at myself in the mirror, my kidnapping and sexual assault seemed like something from a bad dream.

Sarah ushered me into a meeting room and my self-confidence waned again. A buffet of fruit, yogurt, beignets and other assorted pastries greeted us, and the amount of food made me realize this was going to be a large meeting. It seemed that my embarrassment was going to be shared with a dozen or more people. I didn’t want a group of strangers viewing me as some sort of sexual victim.

As the others filtered in, I began to feel a little better. Those who I knew–Helen, Uncle Avery, and a couple of others–all expressed relief that I was all right and assured me that Mama Juno and her gang would soon be behind bars. They were closer to me than most of my own family, I realized.

“Sit up here by me,” my father urged. I sat at his right hand while Uncle Avery sat across from me at his left. The rest of the dozen or so FBM employees took seats at the large conference table. I knew all of them at least by appearance and most of them by name. I relaxed a little, realizing that each of the people at the table were loyal to my father and by implication on my side.

“You all know why we’re here,” my father began. “You’ve had a chance to read the brief. Let’s go through what we know now and come up with a strategy regarding this Mama Juno.”

Uncle Avery took over, handing out a printed briefing and explaining the bare facts of the case as a review. The barest fact was the condition in which I had been delivered to the FBM offices–naked with a note taped to my chest. The note was news to me. No one had mentioned any note. A copy of it was attached to the report. It said simply: Por Pierre.

“Poor Pierre?” I asked, squinting to see the printing on the note in the photo they took of me when I was found.

“P-o-r,” Uncle Avery corrected me. Of course: it was French. It meant ‘for’ in English.

“So who is Pierre?”

My father gave me an ugly look, as if I was not supposed to be the one asking the questions. Still, he answered, “Pierre is Mama Juno’s son. We have him in custody.”

I nodded. I didn’t mention that Helen had already told me that much. I simply hadn’t been told his name. “But if she wanted to trade me for her son, why did she release me? Did you release him in exchange for me?”

It was Sarah’s turn to answer. “Robert, Pierre may never walk again. Even if he does, a Freezer probably destroyed his sex life. She didn’t want to trade for her son. This is Old Testament stuff–an eye for an eye. She cursed you.”

My first thought was that she had done the same thing to me the Freezer had done to her son. But no, I had awakened with hard wood that morning. Everything down south seemed to be working just fine. Maybe Sarah was wrong. “But I feel fine.”

“The curse is dormant,” she explained, “but it’s there. Two Detectors checked you out while you were asleep. There’s a curse on you like no other curse we’ve ever seen.”

That didn’t sound good at all.

“Go ahead,” my father said when Sarah looked at him questioningly. “He’s cleared on my authority.”

Sarah nodded. “Robert, we’re going to tell you something most people don’t know...”

She went on to explain that there was far more to magic than most people realized. Some of it I knew (or at least suspected) from things my father had told me over the years or from courses I had taken in magic. But some of it smacked of rumors I remembered from campfire stories of my childhood, and some of it was completely new to me–and all of it was frightening.

“We are tasked with keeping a lot of this information secret,” Sarah explained. “If the general public had any idea how powerful some of the magic is out there, they’d be very disturbed.”

And they’d probably throw a goodly number of the current politicians out on their collective ears for not doing more to control magic, I thought. Magic might be more commonplace now, but we still weren’t that far psychologically from wanting to burn ‘witches’ at the stake. In a society where most magical talents were weak at best, strong talents were to be feared.

“So you’re telling me,” I began, “that the curse might be anything–impotency, turn me into a werewolf...”

Sarah laughed nervously. “Impotency–maybe. But as for becoming a werewolf, that’s doubtful. Transformation curses are limited to transforming into other humans.”

For now, I thought, but I didn’t speak.

“And transformation curses are rare. They’re very difficult to do. They require a significant understanding of anatomy.”

“Yes,” Helen agreed, “but even those are more common than they used to be. Some spells have been standardized. And there’s that radical feminist group, the Women’s Liberation Army.”

“Aren’t they the ones who made men think they were women a couple of years ago?” I asked.

“That’s right,” Sarah replied slowly. I had a hunch she wasn’t telling the whole truth, though. The supermarket rags claimed the WLA actually turned a few men into women until they were caught and stopped by the FBM. ‘No,’ the FBM said. Men were only made to think they had been turned into women. I had an uncomfortable feeling the rags were right.

My father shot a disapproving look at Helen. I had a hunch she had not helped her career by mentioning the WLA. She wisely said nothing more about them.

“I’d like to keep you on a curse watch, Robert,” Sarah proposed.

“What does that mean?” I asked warily. I suspected I knew. If Sarah had her way, I’d be locked away ‘safely’ until they were sure the curse was stale.

“We’d assign a guard to you,” my father clarified. “You’d have to stay at the townhouse.”

I was pretty sure he meant I would have to stay inside the townhouse–not just ‘at’ it. “But I’m due to go back to Harvard in a few days,” I reminded him.

“I’ll make certain you’re allowed to graduate on time,” he assured me.

“What if I say no?”

Everyone in the room looked uncomfortably away from me except my father. He stared directly into my eyes, making me regret my audacity. “No is not an option,” he replied softly.

So began my virtual captivity. I didn’t consider it as such at first: I thought only that my father was determined to be over-protective. It didn’t take me long, though to discover the truth. Oh, no one spilled the beans. It was just that over the next few days, a word here or there would slip from one of my rotating guards or from one of the Farseers who came to project my Harvard lectures for me. Slowly, I learned the real truth for my seclusion. It was like this...

Pierre Dubois was due to come to trial in the Magic Courts in a few days. Magic, like taxes, rated its own set of courts with its own judges. Judges in Magic Court were powerful magical practitioners in their own rights, often blessed with the rare ability to perform multiple magic functions well. Of course, many people had a smattering of multiple talents. In a quiet room with just one other person, I could sometimes make out a word or two of their thoughts. But most people–like me–had only one truly marketable talent, such as my own telekinesis, and a host of weaker, unreliable powers.

Magic Courts were closed courts. Verdicts were announced, but the government didn’t want public testimony from the proceedings since it might reveal information which could be used by others to do magical mischief. Also, the closed courts kept the general public from realizing just how vulnerable everyone was to malicious magic–and exactly how widespread it was.

I expected that I would be sequestered until after Pierre Dubois’ trial. I had picked that up from my guards. What I had not expected was how serious the charges were against him.

“Kidnapping?” I repeated.

Helen nodded. She had come to visit me, and we were enjoying a cup of morning coffee together in the ornate living room of father’s townhouse.

“Don’t be so surprised,” she said. “After all, his mother kidnapped you. Why shouldn’t he be capable of kidnapping, too?”

I nodded. It made sense.

“And that’s just the start of it,” she continued. “He’s also facing extortion, smuggling, and dangerous practice charges–in addition to the primary charges of possessing cocaine with intent to sell.”

“What are dangerous practices?” I asked.

Helen looked a little uncomfortable. “Dangerous practices are why this is in Magic Court. In Pierre’s case, he practices Voodoo.”

“Voodoo?” I laughed. “You’re joking.”

Her eyes got wide and a serious expression clouded her face. “I never joke about Voodoo. It’s not safe.”

My smile faded. “You really believe in that stuff?”

“Robert, Voodoo has always been powerful–even before magic was released,” she explained. “Forget about everything you’ve heard about it. No offense, but you’re white. Not many white folks really know anything about Voodoo.”

Actually, I was a little offended. Like most natives of the Crescent City, I thought I knew a fair amount about it. I wasn’t one of those ignorant Yankees that thought it was all about love potions and zombies. Oh, that was part of Voodoo, but I understood its dark origins in the worship of primitive African gods. I knew something of its rituals and the concept of creating gris-gris through those arcane rites.

She read the expression on my face. “I don’t mean it that way, Robert. I know you know a lot about Voodoo.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Are you an Empath now as well as a TK?”

She shook her head. “No, but all white folks think they know more about it than they do. You see, Robert, Voodoo is real magic: it always had been. When Webster and Kline accidentally unleashed magic, Voodoo practitioners like Mama Juno became far more powerful than most people ever imagined. They were open to magic and embraced it. The combination of WK magic and Voodoo meant her spells were stronger than white folks could even start to comprehend. That’s why we’ve been working so hard to break up her gang. She’s managed to displace the Mafia and take control of crime in the area.”

“You make it sound as if she’s so strong that keeping me here isn’t going to prevent this curse of hers from going off.”

Helen didn’t answer, but I could tell from her expression that that was exactly what she believed. That evening, I began to believe it, too.

Looking back on it, maybe I should have realized what was happening to me right away. Perhaps some of my father’s people–or even my father himself–may have suspected at least some of what was about to happen to me, but if so, they were mum on the subject, presumably to foster my own peace of mind. However, the type of curse I was about to experience seemed in the province of tabloid stories and science fiction back then, so I don’t know if I would have believed them even if they had known and told me what to expect. Those of us who had grown up with magic were aware of its limitations as well as its attributes. Our parents’ generation must have felt the same was about space travel–knowing that interplanetary travel was possible but that getting to men to Mars was more than we could accomplish. Magic was great for lifting objects, reading minds, curing illnesses, projecting images over long distances and things like that, but good old fairy tale magic such as transformations and the like was as far out as a manned flight to Mars.

Or so I thought.

It began when I reached for a book on the top shelf of the bookcase in the townhouse study. I was bored–a virtual prisoner for over a week. My father had held me incommunicado. As far as Alex and my friends knew, I had rushed back to Cambridge on a school emergency. I was not even allowed to contact anyone: all calls from the townhouse were now routed through the FBM switchboard.

Anyhow, as I reached for the book–a pictorial history of New Orleans–I realized I wasn’t quite tall enough to pull it from the shelf. Odd, I thought. It had been a long time since I had tried to pull a book down from there, but I couldn’t recall having a problem reaching it. It was a high shelf, so I had always had to stretch just a little to get something from the shelf, but not as much as I now had to stretch. I managed to stretch just a little further, standing on my tiptoes but still the book nearly eluded me. I could touch it but was afraid I’d cause several other books to fall if I tried to pull it down.

More curious than frightened, I found a yardstick and measured my height against a doorframe. I appeared to be about five eleven, but I knew that couldn’t be right. I had been just at six feet since I graduated from high school. I knew people tended to lose height as they aged, but I hardly thought the four years since high school counted as significant aging. I had to have just measured wrong, I thought, dismissing my concerns. Or perhaps the shelf was now higher, replacing one within my reach.

Then as I returned the yardstick to the kitchen closet, I noted something else. In spite of a winter in New England and nearly ten days inside the townhouse, the back of my hand had a very healthy tan–the sort of tan I would normally expect to have only after a long Louisiana summer. I just shook my head. It had to be the lighting in the room. I’d check myself out on the balcony the next day at breakfast in the sunlight. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to go out on the balcony, but no one would know.

I found another book–one on a lower shelf–and chalked up the little oddities as delusions of a stir-crazed mind. Yes, I know I should have suspected something was amiss, but like most men, I tended to ignore potential physical issues, expecting them to take care of themselves if properly ignored. After all, how many men decided that those nagging chest pains were just gas? It couldn’t be a heart attack now, could it? My self-delusion worked for a little while, but I couldn’t quite disregard the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. I just didn’t feel... right. Sighing, I put down the book and turned on the TV, determined to suppress the feeling by immersing myself in some mindless drivel.

Cinemax (or Skin-i-max as my friends and I had come to call it) was showing one of its usual late evening semi-porn flicks, complete with lots on undulating flesh and intense moaning. I had enjoyed a robust sex life in my time at Harvard, and cooped up in the townhouse, I found myself getting just a wee bit horny. I settled down to watch the movie, expecting to get hard as a rock as I usually did. Not this time, though. Mentally, I was into the cheesy film, thinking about how the naked girl looked a lot like a little Vassar chick I had made it with just before Christmas break. Physically though, there was just no response. I began to think my unfortunate sexual encounter with Mama Juno had done more harm than I had thought.

Now I was starting to worry. There was some talk that Mama Juno’s son had been permanently damaged sexually. What if Mama Juno had done the same thing to me? Cautiously, I unzipped my pants and reached in, trying to stimulate myself just to make sure I still could. To my relief, I finally managed to ‘get it up.’ However, it seemed less insistent than usual, going back down quickly once the stimulation had ceased.

Perhaps I was just tired and a little anxious about what had happened to me, I thought. Yes, that had to be it. It was nothing more than performance anxiety. I had heard the expression before but just never suffered from it until now. It was all natural, I assured myself, sinking back onto the couch to try to get interested in the movie.

Finally, I gave up, choosing instead to channel flip for a while. At last, bored, tired, and still maybe just a little bit worried, I shuffled off to bed.

Sleep brought no relief. I was restless all night, waking up from bad dreams I could neither understand nor remember. My sheets were soaked, as if I had awakened in the middle of a New Orleans summer instead of a cool spring. I was so exhausted by sunrise that I fell back into a troubled sleep until nearly noon.

“Mr. Robert?” Lisa’s voice brought me out of the stupor I had fallen into at dawn. I could hear her approaching my bed. She couldn’t see me, though, as I had wrapped the sheet around my head to block out the morning light.

“What is it, Lisa?” I asked, throwing back the sheet.

Instead of a reply, she gasped. Her eyes were wide and full of fear. I had momentarily forgotten the concerns of the previous night. “What’s wrong, Lisa?”

“You... you...” she stammered, pointing a shaking finger at me.

I was getting nowhere with her. I wore boxers to bed, so I was a least minimally decent. I leaped out of bed shaking my head and noticed suddenly that my skin looked odd in the morning light. I walked over to the mirror for a closer look at myself. “Shit!” I muttered when I saw my reflection.

I still looked pretty much as I had looked before, but my skin had become darker–not the dark that comes with a natural tan but the dark of a man who has some black blood in his ancestry. Other than that, I could see no obvious change. No wait–that wasn’t true. My eyes had changed from blue to somewhere between blue and brown. Also, my lips seemed a little puffy and my nose just a bit broader. I turned to Lisa who was now visibly shaking. “Lisa, call my father right away!”

My father, flanked by Uncle Avery and Sarah, was there in fifteen minutes. Both my father and Uncle Avery looked shocked but Sarah showed no surprise as I stood before them in my boxer shorts. “So it’s started,” she muttered.

“You suspected this was going to happen?” I asked nervously.

“I expected something would happen,” she amended. “I wasn’t sure of what–until now.”

“They’re turning me into one of them! They’re turning me into a... a...” I shouted, unable to even say the word. “You’ve got to do something.”

In my own defense, I should point out that I was never a bigot. But the fact that I had no prejudices against black people didn’t mean I was anxious to be one of them, any more than I would have wanted my dark blond hair to suddenly become brown.

Sarah grabbed my hand, examining the back of my wrist. “It’s happening very quickly,” she commented.

“What’s happening?” I demanded nervously. “You mean something else is still happening?”

“This is more than just a simple pigmentation spell,” Sarah said, not so much in answer to my question but to everyone. I knew what a pigmentation spell was. Changing the color of a person’s skin was relatively easy. Such spells had been around for years. Soon after magic became practical, a number of blacks had used the spells to appear white since they felt it was socially and economically rewarding to be so. However, facial features tended to remain the same, so the spells were not truly racial changes–only changes of pigmentation. Besides, many blacks–most, in fact–decided they preferred being black to being white anyway once they actually had the option to change. Very few actually went through with the procedure anymore.

“What is it then?” Uncle Avery wanted to know. He pushed his fingers through his thinning hair as he stared at my darkened skin.

Sarah ignored the question, looking at me more carefully. “You aren’t as tall,” she said at last. She looked down at my feet. “You aren’t wearing shoes, but I’d say you’re at least two inches shorter.”

“Just an inch,” I blurted out.

“You knew you were getting shorter?” my father asked.

I shook my head. “No... I mean, I wondered, but I thought I had made a mistake.”

“Robert,” Sarah cautioned, “we don’t know the full nature of the curse you’ve been infected by. We need to know everything–anything that you think has changed may be important. Do you understand?”

“Why?” I growled impatiently. “There seems to be nothing you can do about it. You just don’t want anyone else to know about this.”

I could see from each of their expressions that I had struck a nerve.

“Robert,” my father began, “we have a difficult situation on our hands. We’ve been trying to break up Mama Juno’s operation for over a year now, but she’s always just a step ahead of us. Catching her son was the first big break we’ve had in the case. At last, we’ve found people willing to testify against her, now that we have her son. If word got out that my own son...” his voice broke, “wasn’t safe from her, we’d have hell to pay getting anyone to testify. It might even destroy our entire case.”

“Maybe so,” I allowed, “but I want you to do something! I want this curse stopped and reversed.”

“I understand,” Sarah nodded. “But Robert, we can’t stop it. We don’t know enough about it. If we tried to stop it, we might only stop part of it, and that could be fatal. The best thing we can do now is let it run its course and try to reverse it afterwards.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Try’ was a very comforting word. “How long until it runs its course?”

“Based on the speed of what has already happened, I’d say three to four days–at the most: maybe less. Of course, I’m only guessing. Sexually transmitted curses tend to work fairly quickly. This one seems to be happening very rapidly.”

So Mama Juno’s curse was just starting. So far, I was a little shorter and a little darker, but I knew in my heart that it was just the beginning. Sarah knew–or at least suspected–what the end result would be. I could see it in her eyes. It was time to make her level with me.

“Okay, Sarah, cut the bullshit. You have a pretty good idea what I’m changing into. Spill it.”

“Well,” she began reluctantly, “I’d have to say from the skin tone and the shrinking that you’re being changed into a black woman.”

My father’s gasp was nearly as loud as my own. Uncle Avery just stood there with a stunned look on his face. It was up to me to break the silence. “What makes you think that?” I asked, my voice quavering.

“The skin tone is obvious. You’re losing height and getting darker for starters,” she pointed out.

“Maybe I’m just turning into a deeply tanned young boy,” I suggested. While that wasn’t the most pleasant of fates, it beat the alternative.

“It’s possible,” she conceded, “but not likely. To my knowledge, there are no youth spells, so I don’t think you’re getting younger. The skin tone is more a racial trait. Look at your palms.”

I looked down. “They look normal.”

She nodded. “Blacks have lighter palms. Notice there’s a slight difference in pigmentation between the front and back of your hand. Look at your chest.”

I complied, embarrassed at my darker chest.

“Did you have more chest hair before?”

I looked down. She was right. About half of my normal chest hair was gone. “Blacks have less chest hair, don’t they?” I asked.

“Generally, yes,” she replied. “But look at this.” She reached out and touched one of my nipples. I jumped back, surprised to find it was oddly sensitive.

“It’s swollen,” she explained. “It’s often the first sign of breast development.”

“But those sex-change curses are just so much bullshit,” I argued. “Everyone knows that.”

I looked over at Uncle Avery and my father for confirmation, but the expressions on their faces told me that what I had always passed off as old wives’ tales about magical sexual transformation spells might be real after all. Could it be possible?

“Robert,” my father said slowly, “there are some things the Bureau has to keep under wraps for... everyone’s protection.”

My stomach was tied in knots. Could it be possible? All those stories about the radical women’s group changing men into women... the stories were true? I had already suspected that I was being changed into a black, but a black woman? Just having my race changed was no big deal. As I’ve already mentioned, changing a person’s race isn’t all that hard, at least superficially. I thought (incorrectly as it turned out) that changing my race again wouldn’t be all that difficult. But how difficult would it be to change me back from a woman to a man? I put the question to Sarah.

There was that look again. Reluctantly, she replied, “If it is a sex change spell, there’s no way to restore your sex.”

I now knew what a person felt like when he was told by his doctor that he was going to die. Oh, I wasn’t about to die exactly, but the person known as Robert Devereaux would no longer exist if she was right. Like a dying man, I clung to a thin thread of hope. “But maybe it isn’t a sex change spell.”

“It’s possible,” she conceded, “but it most likely is. And if it is a sex change spell, your body will duplicate its X chromosomes over time, forcing out the Y’s. The result is a female body. Since there will be no remaining Y’s to copy, it will be impossible to change you back.”

“What about the race change?”

“We may be able to change you back,” she said, “but I don’t think so.”

“May be able?” This was sounding worse and worse.

“If the race change spell is tightly linked to the sex change spell, it may be too tightly interwoven to be changed. The other problem is that there are some potential... side effects to racial spells.”

I didn’t have a chance to ask what she meant by side effects, for at that moment, my father put his hand on my bare shoulder. “Son, we’ll do everything we can to reverse this. I know Professor Morley at the University of Colorado personally. He’s the greatest expert in this area. I know this is difficult for you, but just try to stay calm and don’t give up hope.”

So there was still hope, I reasoned. I nodded, accepting a fatherly hug from him before he motioned for Uncle Avery and Sarah to go with him. Sarah hung around for a moment more.

“Robert, we’ll be doing anything we can,” she assured me. “I know your father. He loves you very much. If he has to make some sort of a deal with Mama Juno to stop this, he will. Maybe she knows how to stop or reverse some or all of the curse.”

Of course there was always the very real possibility that what had been set in motion could not be stopped or reversed. Sarah knew that... and so did I.

When they left, I had Lisa bring me another cup of coffee while I tried to come to grips with what I had been told. As Lisa delivered the coffee, I found myself looking at her as I had never looked at her before. She was considerably older than me but still rather attractive. I tried to remember what she had looked like when I had first met her as a young boy. At that time, she was close to my present age, and I remembered admiring this young woman with her very dark skin, pretty face, and large, firm breasts. I had thought she looked like a movie star–sort of like Pam Grier. What would it like to have her dark skin, her pretty face, her large breasts? Was I soon to know? It didn’t seem possible. It just couldn’t be possible. I was a man and could never conceive of being anything else.

Lisa had a very concerned look on her face. I wondered if she had been told what was happening to me. Eventually she would know–if I really began to change as Sarah had predicted. “What’s wrong, Lisa?” I asked as I sipped my coffee.

She hesitated, as if afraid to tell me. She had always been loyal to my family, but she and I had become friends over the years, and she had often warned me when my father was moody or upset. She had the same conflicted look on her face now as she had shown during those times. At last she blurted out, “Oh Mr. Robert, I heard them talking outside. Mister Avery didn’t know I was listening and said to those other men that they’re going to take you someplace and keep you under guard. They didn’t want you to know just now. They’re acting like there’s nothing they can do to help you so they’re just going to hide you away.”

“Uncle Avery said that?” I gasped.

She nodded, worry written all over her face. “The way Mister Avery talked, it didn’t sound too good for you. I’m concerned for you, Mr. Robert.”

A myriad of possibilities rushed through my head. Maybe they were just taking me to a safe house. It made sense: the fewer people who knew about my changes, the better, and Lisa was a potential security leak in the paranoid rationale of the FBM. Taking me someplace where she wouldn’t observe my transformation made perfect sense.

But there was a chance my transfer could be more sinister as well. What if I found myself in a medical facility somewhere reduced to being an elaborate lab rat? Would my own father do that to me? I didn’t think so, but I’ve always thought if it came down to a choice of protecting the Bureau or protecting his family, the FBM would take precedence. And the fact that Uncle Avery had told my guards but not me was worrisome indeed. If my transfer was a positive move, I would have thought he would want to tell me about it.

The more I thought about that, the more I realized that as much as my father wanted to see me safely restored, he wanted Mama Juno behind bars more. Her prosecution and punishment would be just the thing he needed to vault him into the public spotlight, giving him the high political office he sought. The Bureau under his direction would do nothing to help me. That meant I’d slowly be changed into a black woman while my father and the Bureau prosecuted Mama Juno’s son and, presumably, next his mother. I would be nothing more than an unfortunate civilian casualty, hidden from view so that no one would see the weaknesses of the FBM.

I came to the reluctant conclusion at that moment that my only chance for salvation was to find Mama Juno myself. I couldn’t really depend upon the FBM to do the right things for me if they were more interested in hiding me than curing me. I was becoming certain that the Bureau–and my father–had other objectives–objectives which might leave me as an unfortunate black girl. I could personally care less about the FBM’s objectives in this case. I wanted only to be given my life back, free to graduate from Harvard, marry Alex, and live the life I had been born to. Was I being selfish? Of course I was, but what privileged young man wouldn’t be under the circumstances? It meant I had to slip away before the FBM moved me to a more secure location. Thank God Lisa had overheard Uncle Avery or I would never have had the warning I needed to escape.

But where would I go? I had access to my checking account through any ATM, and my wallet was filled with every credit card imaginable. I still looked pretty much like the pictures on all of my identification, so for the time being, obtaining money was not a problem. And there were dozens and dozens of hotels within a mile of where I stood where I could hole up...

No, a hotel was out. My credit card would leave a trace, and the Bureau would have Sniffers checking them all before the sun rose. I couldn’t go home: even my mother wouldn’t protect me from my father, and as for my brothers, they’d happily buy tickets to observe my transformation, laughing with each change and recording it so they could watch it again and again.

Alex!

If I could get to Alex’s house, I could regroup, maybe borrow a car and begin my search for Mama Juno. I hadn’t changed much yet. Alex wouldn’t know what was happening to me. I had–what–three or four days according to Sarah until I was completely changed. Then I remembered that she had added “maybe less” to her estimate. I had to work quickly. Quickly meant right now. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

I dressed in my darkest pair of jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt, perfect for hiding in the shadows. I checked my wallet–two hundred in cash already there. I stuffed the wallet in my back pocket, disturbed to note it was a little hard to fit it in. Had my butt filled out just a little? Surely not so soon. But the words “maybe less” came back to me yet again.

I packed a gym bag as well, with a couple of changes of clothing. Of course, I didn’t know how long the clothes would fit me, and I didn’t have much of a selection since there were only the few items my family had brought to me since my forced residence in the townhouse. Still, a couple of changes of underwear and an extra sweatshirt, plus my toiletries should be enough, I thought. If I didn’t find Mama Juno in a couple of days, none of the clothing would work anyway. I didn’t even bother to pack a razor. Come to think of it, I had found little stubble the last time I had shaved. And when was that? Yesterday? I wouldn’t need a razor much longer, I thought grimly, and I certainly had no intention of using a razor to shave my legs.

Getting away wasn’t that big a problem. I only had one guard at the moment, and he had taken up station in the living room. With my door shut and the shower running, he wouldn’t suspect anything was wrong until I was out the window and gone. Part of my youth had been spent in the townhouse, and my parents would have had a fit if they had known that my brothers and I had often sneaked away climbing down on a makeshift path of loose bricks. After all, most of the buildings in the Quarter were nearly two hundred years old, and while the interiors and fronts were well maintained, time and weather had taken their toll on the backs of the structures, which often led to alleys or in our case, a small courtyard.

Still, I was nervous as I made my way down the wall. I wished that it were night instead of late morning so I could have blended into the darkness.

I began to relax a little as the cab I was riding in swung into one of the most exclusive streets of the Garden District. Although our own home was not nearby since my father had opted to maintain the family’s original plantation home, I felt as if I was on familiar ground. Stately mansions rose out of grassy lawns, hidden partially by tall oaks that had stood guard over the district for over a century. This was where my contemporaries had grown up, and many of the mansions had been playgrounds for my friends and private school classmates and me.

“You work for these folks?” the driver asked casually, mopping his heavy black brow with a well-used handkerchief.

“No,” I replied. “I’m going to visit friends. What made you think I worked here?”

“Well, not too many of us folks have what you’d call friends in this here neighborhood,” he chuckled.

My heart practically stopped. What did he mean by that? I hadn’t changed that much. But when I looked down at the back of my hand, I could tell it had become darker than when I was examined just a few hours earlier. When I had escaped from the Quarter, I appeared to have nothing more than an unusually robust winter tan. Now, though, I could easily be mistaken for a person of mixed race.

Mistaken? No, I realized, mistaken was not the word. I really was a person of mixed race. Already my genetic structure was changing, moment by moment, transforming me into someone of unmistakable African descent. I leaned forward, trying to catch a glimpse of myself in the driver’s mirror, but all I could see was that my face had become the same dusky color as the back of my hands.

No, that wasn’t quite right. There was another change as well. My hair was darker, too. It wasn’t yet so dark as to be obviously a Negroid feature, but it was no longer dark blonde. Instead, it was a darker shade of brown, still streaked with blonde.

I was beginning to understand why the driver had assumed that I was black like he was. It was no longer an outlandish assumption. Even my facial features seemed to be confirming his suspicions–my nose seemed a little wider and my lips a little fuller. Did he think I was a black woman? Probably not. My build and my clothing identified me as a male at least for now. But how much longer would my body seem male? Sarah had guessed the entire spell would take three or four days to run its course, but that didn’t mean it would take anywhere near that long for me to look more black than white and more female than male.

I hurriedly paid the cab driver after asking him to let me off in front of Alex’s house rather than pulling into the semi-circular drive and covered entrance. I didn’t want to take a chance on alerting Alex’s mother or any of the staff. All they would see was a young man of indeterminate race skulking about the grounds. They would undoubtedly call the police. Alex was the only one I was sure I could trust. I was betting that Alex would be outside sunning herself by the pool. It was her favorite activity during school breaks, and I was banking on her being there. If she was inside, I’d have to figure a way to sneak into the house, and that might prove difficult.

Of course there was a chance that she wasn’t home at all, and I nearly overrode my better judgment and called her on my cell. The problem was that I figured by now the FBM knew I was gone, and if they chose to monitor my calls, a Homer might be able to locate me before I could explain what was happening to Alex and get away.

To my relief, Alex was just where I expected her to be. She was stretched out on a lounge chair by the pool, a glass of iced tea in one hand and the latest Nora Roberts novel balanced on her flat, bare stomach. God, she looked beautiful lying there, and I couldn’t help but think to myself that her body, which I had enjoyed on numerous occasions, was now something I would probably never hold in my arms again. Unless Sarah and the FBM experts were wrong, I would soon be as female as Alex was.

Would I still like girls, I wondered, once my transformation was completed? Oh that would be just wonderful–to be changed into a black lesbian, I thought sourly. But the other prospect–being attracted to men–seemed somehow even worse. My only hope was in finding Mama Juno and getting her to use her powerful magic to stop this transformation before it got any worse. If she could just stop me from transforming further, I could at least carry on some semblance of my normal life. Then I could worry about finding some way to reverse the mounting damage.

“Alex!” I called out from the corner of the house.

“What?” she gasped, dropping her book. Her eyes fell on me. At first, I thought she was going to scream. She didn’t even recognize me, I realized.

“Alex, it’s me–Robert!” I hurried to explain before she could call for help.

At last recognition–then confusion–crossed her face. I must have still looked substantially like the normal me, but the darkness of my skin and hair must have bewildered her. “Robert? Is that really you? What’s happened to you?”

Nearly breathlessly, I gave her a short but concise version of what had been happening to me since I had last seen her. She listened patiently but cautiously. When I tried to hold her hand, she actually drew back, alarm on her beautiful face.

“You’re telling me,” she said slowly, “that you’re changing into a... a...”

“Woman,” I finished for her. “A black woman to be precise. Don’t look at me like that! This doesn’t have to be permanent. If I can find this Mama Juno, I’ll get her to reverse all of this.” Or at least I hoped that would be the case.

“But isn’t that what your father said he was going to do?” she countered. “What makes you think you can find this Mama Juno? And even if you could find her, what do you have to offer to get her to change you back? Odds are good what she wants is her son’s freedom. You can’t offer her that.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “and that’s the one thing I know my father would never agree to, even if it meant leaving me black and female. He’s worked too hard for a break like this. Besides, even if he would agree to release her son, odds are good the guy will never walk again. That’s why I’ve got to try myself–I need to see if there’s anything else she’ll accept to change me back.”

“Why did you come here?” she wanted to know. “Why not go directly to Mama Juno’s? Everybody knows it’s right down on Magazine.”

“Because it’s the first place the FBM might figure I’d go,” I explained. “They have to know by now that I don’t trust them to deal with her and will expect me to see her myself. If they see someone who looks like me getting out of a cab anywhere near her place, they’ll grab me. I thought perhaps you could help me.”

She shook her head. “No, Robert. Of course I’ll do what I can to help you, but don’t ask me to negotiate with that scary woman for you. Why, she just might kidnap me and hold me for ransom. My father would be forced to pay millions for my release.”

Negotiating with Mama Juno was, unfortunately, exactly what I had wanted her to do. I thought it unlikely that Mama Juno would indulge in a spur of the moment kidnapping, but I could see from the look in Alex’s eyes that she was genuinely frightened of the notorious mamba. I suppose deep down, I really couldn’t blame her. After what had happened to me, I was certainly frightened of her, too.

I thought for a moment. “You’re right. It might be dangerous for you to visit her. I’m going to have to do it myself. Perhaps if I can get there in a car they don’t recognize... disguised... I might get in. Then I can get her to change me back.”

“If it can be done,” she amended. I looked down, unwilling to let her see in my eyes that I was worried about the very same thing.

Alex was silent for a moment, but finally she rose and motioned for me to follow her. “I can loan you my car,” she told me. “Leave it over in front of Casamento’s and I’ll pick it up later. Just lock it and leave the keys on the floor: I have another set.”

I nodded. Casamento’s was just a few blocks from Mama Juno’s place and directly across the street from a police station, so it would be a safe place to leave the car for a few hours. I could walk to Mama Juno’s and walk in the place looking as if I belonged there. Of course, that would depend upon the second part of my plan–a disguise. “Can I borrow some of your father’s clothes–something the agents watching Mama Juno’s place wouldn’t be suspicious of?”

Alex looked at me carefully and shook her head. “I don’t think that would work. You’re a little smaller now, and you weren’t as large as my father to begin with.”

“Well I can’t go there like this,” I protested. “I’m sure every agent in six parishes has a description of what I’m wearing.”

Suddenly, Alex got a devilish look in her eyes. “I think I know just the disguise.”

“You do?”

“You’re closer to my size than you are my father’s,” she began with an evil little grin.

It didn’t take me long to realize what she was thinking. “You can’t be serious. I can’t wear your clothes!”

“From what you’ve told me,” she countered, “either you get to see Mama Juno quickly or you’ll be wearing clothes like mine on a regular basis.”

I was silent. She had a good point there.

“Now let’s see if we can get you up to my room without the household staff seeing you,” she said, rising from her lounge chair. Shaking my head, I followed her into the house.

I suppose I really didn’t know if I should be pleasantly surprised or disturbed at the results, but in a short time, Alex had me looking like a girl. The way I finally had it figured, the FBM would assume that I would try to look masculine for as long as possible. All things being equal, that would have been a valid assumption, but are things weren’t equal, were they?

A lot of business–both legal and not-so-legal–was conducted from Mama Juno’s office every day. What was one more black girl entering the antique store that fronted on her office? Many people–black and white but mostly black–entered the store every day. My skin had darkened enough that I could easily be mistaken for a light-skinned Afro- American. The cab driver had already made that mistake, and a couple of additional hours of changing would only make my new race more apparent.

As for the ‘girl’ part of the disguise, that was disturbingly easier than I thought it would be. Unfortunately, none of the clothing I had brought with me in my escape would suffice for a proper feminine disguise. In the end, Alex had provided me with a bra into which she stuffed wads of tissues, giving me the illusion of cleavage. A pair of white panties didn’t fit exactly right, but my male equipment had already been somewhat embarrassingly reduced in size, so the panties didn’t have a great deal to hide.

Alex suggested jeans and a loose top. That way no one would notice how my “breasts” didn’t move naturally, and my mostly masculine torso wouldn’t be so obvious. I wore a pair of Alex’s mother’s jeans, since there was no way I could fit into Alex’s trim ones. Her mother, though, had added a few pounds, so I was able to stuff myself uncomfortably in them. The jeans hid my somewhat masculine legs and saved me the problem of shaving them–at least completely. Also, many girls wore their jeans with the legs a little short, and since I was still a few inches taller than Alex’s mother, the illusion of intentionally wearing jeans that showed a little calf made me look all the more feminine. Of course, a little leg hair had to be sacrificed, but I didn’t have to shave my legs completely, for which I was grateful. I know it was silly, but shaving my legs entirely seemed like surrendering to my proposed fate, and I had vowed to avoid that as long as possible.

Unfortunately, although the top she chose for me was loose fitting, covering my very masculine butt and disguising the fact that my body lacked feminine curves, it was painfully obvious to both Alex and me that those unwanted curves were already starting to develop, but I was thankful that I still looked somewhat masculine.

Hair was a problem. It was growing longer and darker and developing a more feminine sheen, but it was still pretty short. Alex solved the problem with a black Saints ball cap tilted at a girlish angle. A couple of clip-on earrings Alex had saved from the time before her ears had been pierced added to the illusion.

As for makeup, it was a make-do job. “Your skin is too dark for most of my cosmetics,” Alex told me. “I’m using the darkest stuff I have, but other than eyeliner and a little lipstick, there’s not much I can do. When you finish changing, you might want to get some cosmetics designed for blacks.”

“I really don’t plan to need them,” I told her, examining her handiwork. “If I can convince Mama Juno to change me back, I plan for this to be the only time I ever have to wear makeup.”

“You don’t really expect to find her at her office, do you?” Alex asked. “With the FBM and who knows who else looking for her, she’s not going to be there.”

“I know that,” I replied, standing up in the heeled sandals Alex had strapped onto my feet. The shoes were a little small but I managed to get them strapped. Fortunately as a man, I had never had particularly large feet, and the curse had made them somewhat smaller already. I tentatively put a little weight on one foot. It felt funny to be elevated like that, but it was no worse than boots I had ridden while horseback riding. “I just want to make contact with her people. When she agrees to meet with me, they can get me to wherever she is. I just need to get into her offices undetected.”

“I still think you should let the FBM handle it,” she muttered as she fussed with my outfit and slipped a wide silver bracelet over my right wrist. “You know your father wants to see you cured of this.”

I knew he wanted to, but I wasn’t sure he wanted to if it meant not breaking up Mama Juno’s operation. He was committed to doing that, even if it meant I could never really be his son again.

I grabbed the car keys she had given me. “Wish me luck,” I said, leaning over to give her a kiss. She pulled back before our lips could touch. I was a little hurt, but I could understand her reluctance. As it was, I looked as much like a girl as she did.

I looked down to avoid looking into her eyes. That was when I noticed the picture on her nightstand. “Who’s this?” I asked, picking up the photo of a very handsome guy.

Alex flushed. “Oh, that. That’s Henry Beauchamp. He’s just a friend from school.”

“Oh,” was all I said as I replaced the picture, but as I walked out to Alex’s car, I began to wonder why she would have the picture of a casual friend–a male friend–on her nightstand and no picture of me in her room. Besides, wasn’t that the same guy I saw her dancing with at the krewe ball? I began to concern myself that my unwanted transformation might be solving an unsuspected problem for Alex. After all, if I became a black woman, someone like Harry Beauchamp just might have an easier time with my would-be fiancée.

On any other occasion, driving Alex’s little 230SLK convertible would have been a treat. I would have put the top down and roared down the streets like a silver meteor, certain that even if I were stopped by the police, the simple mention of my father’s name would be enough to get me out of a speeding ticket. On that particular day, though, I wanted to draw as little attention to myself as possible. For one thing, I barely resembled the picture on my driver’s license, and if I were to convince a policeman that I was, in fact Robert Devereaux, I might find myself hidden away in an FBM safe house with no chance of regaining my diminishing manhood. If I didn’t convince them as to my identity, I might find myself in a police holding cell, the victim of my casual cellmates who might find a young man dressed up like a girl to be an unexpected treat. I drove carefully within the speed limits, the top up to avoid undue attention. Good to my word, I ducked into a parking spot almost exactly in front of Casamento’s and left the key on the floor in front of the passenger seat, locking the doors as Alex had requested. She’d use her other set of keys to retrieve the car later.

Although Alex had done everything I had requested of her, it was more, I suspected, out of old time’s sake rather than support of the man–if I could be really considered a man any longer–who she was going to marry. Well, I couldn’t blame her. At Harvard, I hadn’t exactly remained chaste, so why should she? In spite of the desires of our parents, this wasn’t the nineteenth century, and if the passions generated from teenage hormones had waned as we gained our respective majorities, the certainty of our union became more problematic. While I had still been ready to go through with a marriage, perhaps Alex was not. Besides, if no solution was found to my continuing transformation, marriage between us would be out of the question before the week was out.

I tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible as I walked toward Mama Juno’s headquarters. It wasn’t too hard. Dressed as I was, I hardly looked like a sexy girl, appearing instead to be at least a mannish octoroon, so I attracted little male interest. And I could have easily been mistaken for an effeminate boy, so there was nothing about me to attract female interest either. New Orleans boasts (if that is the right word) a large number of transvestites whom the population at large tends to ignore. I suppose the more androgynous one looks, the more invisible one becomes.

As I got within a couple of blocks of Mama Juno’s store, I began to realize I might not be able to get in after all. Since I knew many of my father’s agents on sight, I was able to spot them easily. There must have been more than half a dozen of them in all. Two of them, a man and a woman, were lingering over a cup of coffee at a sidewalk café. Two more were window shopping, and two more were walking by themselves back and forth down the block just across the street. One of them was trying to look like a tourist, complete with a camera which just happened to swing into action every time someone entered or left Mama Juno’s antique store. There was too great a chance someone would recognize me, as I was certain FBM sketch artists had made a stab at my current appearance. Even if I were able to fool some of them, I doubted if I would be able to fool all of them.

I was about to give up hope when I spotted my brother Paul coming out of the store. What was he doing in Mama Juno’s? Then I spotted his car–a white Mustang–parked just across the street from where I stood. There were closer parking places, but maybe Paul hadn’t wanted the busy photographer to identify him right away. I casually strolled across the street and waited for him to get to his car.

“Paul!” I called out to him from the entrance to a gift store, as if I had just walked out the shop. Before he could react, I grabbed his arm as if I were an old friend.

He looked at me with confusion, but recognition soon followed. “Robert?” he gasped.

“Not so loud,” I said softly, eying a couple of the agents whose attention, fortunately, was focused elsewhere. “Let’s get in the car we need to talk.”

He unlocked the doors and I jumped into the front passenger seat, looking around to make sure we weren’t being watched. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked as if once Paul had left Mama Juno’s, he was no longer of any interest to the FBM team. They had probably already identified him and been told to ignore him–fortunately for me.

“Father’s looking for you, you know,” he told me once he was behind the wheel. “Just what the hell did you expect to accomplish running away like that?”

“I think father has given up on me,” I explained dejectedly, motioning for him to start the engine and drive. “He was going to move me out to a safe house–probably so no one would find out what had happened to me until everything... changed.”

“Bullshit!” Paul snorted. “He probably just wanted to move you someplace where Mama Juno couldn’t do anything else to you, you stupid twit. And sure enough, here I find you two blocks from her offices skulking around like James Bond–or should it be Jane Bond?”

I motioned for Paul to make a left and head for St. Charles. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Damned straight,” he replied. “Lance and I have always been afterthoughts where father was concerned. You were the crown prince. Well, it looks like you’re going to be a princess now, and once he figures out that his cherished heir is going to be a hot little black chick, about the only job he’ll be grooming you for is to take Lisa’s place in the Quarter.”

“You bastard,” I growled, although my voice was changing, too, and it didn’t sound as threatening as I would have liked. “So what were you doing down here–stopping off to thank Mama Juno for taking care of me?”

“That’s a thought,” he said with an evil smile. “Just where is it you wanted me to go?”

“Take me to Willow Glen,” I ordered. At least at home, I would be able to get a change of clothes and some things I might need if I was to stay hidden. I figured my father would be stuck in town for the time being, so I wouldn’t have to face him.

“Too late!” Paul laughed. “He’s already sent a team of agents out there. And even if he hadn’t, what do you think mother would do if she saw you?”

My mother, like many Southerners of her day, paid lip service to racial equality but really never saw blacks as more than servants. “How is she taking this?” I asked him.

He turned right on St. Charles. I thought he was going a little out of his way but decided he was going to catch the freeway before heading west. “She’s under sedation,” he replied grimly. “She talks about you as if you were dead. Father has tried to reassure her, but she knows she’ll never see Robert again.”

My mother and I had never been terribly close: Paul and Lance were her favorites as I was my father’s. I had a feeling that unless something happened to change me back into myself, I would never see my mother again, nor would she want to see me.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” I pressed. “What were you doing at Mama Juno’s?”

Paul’s hands gripped the steering wheel. “Father still hasn’t given up on you. He didn’t want any agents dealing with Mama Juno’s people. It would make him look weak. So he asked me to try to negotiate and get these curses removed from you.”

That was enlightening. Perhaps I had been hasty after all when I ran. I found momentary pleasure realizing that father had put Paul at some risk by sending him to Mama Juno’s. She could easily have been planning on escalating her attack by cursing Paul and Lance as well. Paul must have grimaced at the errand, knowing that while there was significant risk, he had to show our father that he was competent to be the standard-bearer for the family if I was out of the picture. “What if she demands the release of her son?” I asked.

Paul chuckled, “You really are out of the loop, aren’t you? Pierre Dubois was released today. His attorneys managed to get every charge dropped except possession already. Then the possession charge fell apart this morning. He walked out a free man. Even the Freezer’s paralysis cleared up, so he literally walked out of the courtroom. There wasn’t any evidence to hold him.”

“What about the cocaine they found him with?”

“Well, strangely enough, what they found in the evidence room wasn’t cocaine–it was plain old flour.”

“A Swapper?”

“What else?”

Swappers were rare magical talents. They had to work in pairs, and when they did, they could swap similar substances back and forth. A Swapper must have somehow gotten into the evidence room, stood within a few feet of the cocaine, and waited until his counterpart stood the same distance from similar containers of flour. Since cocaine and flour were similar in weight and appearance, it would have been an easy swap.

My mood brightened. “Then if Pierre Dubois is free and healthy again, Mama Dubois should be willing to change me back.”

“You’d think,” Paul replied, but I could tell from his tone that that wasn’t the case.

“What does she want?”

Paul glanced over at me as we were stopped at a light. “Apparently, she wants you to be a sweet little black chick.”

I looked around. I was becoming distraught. Why wouldn’t she change me back? She had everything she claimed to want. I pressed those questions to the back of my mind, realizing that we had not gone onto the freeway and were heading for downtown. “Where are you going?”

“I’m taking you to see father,” Paul told me.

“Why?” Panic welled up inside me. That was the last place I wanted to go. The FBM wasn’t to be trusted. I’d never shake this curse if I was back in their custody.

“You’re not thinking straight,” Paul told me, accelerating as the light changed. “There’s nothing you can accomplish on your own.”

“You want me back in their hands!” I yelled at him. “Then when they hide me away, you’ll be father’s favorite.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Paul scoffed. “Can you hear yourself? You’re completely paranoid. In fact, Sarah thinks you have other curses on you as well. Maybe one of them is making you think everyone is out to get you.” He stopped for another traffic light.

Everyone was out to get me: I was sure of it. But I wasn’t going to argue with him anymore. He was undoubtedly part of the plot against me. Before the light could change again, I impulsively threw the car door open and jumped out. “Robert! Come back!” Ignoring him, I ran as quickly as I could.

Running was nearly my undoing. In the short time I had worn Alex’s sandals, my feet had become a little smaller, but the straps were still tight and pinched my feet. The small heel and the growing changes in the weight distribution of my body made me comically clumsy, and I nearly fell more than once. I was afraid Paul might run after me, but instead, he must have driven on, probably while calling our father on his cell.

That would mean the FBM would have a full description of me in a few minutes. I was only a few blocks from the FBM offices, so in a short time, the entire area would be swarming with agents. I had to get out of the area quickly.

My salvation came in the form of a trolley car. One of New Orleans’ quaint tourist attractions was the aging St. Charles trolley. The ancient railcar trudged back and forth between downtown New Orleans and the Garden District. I rushed to the car stop the moment I heard the car’s bell, losing myself in a small crowd of tourists.

The car was nearly filled with tourists who had remained in the city after Mardi Gras. That was actually good for me since no one would probably remember a rather mannish light-skinned black girl sloppily dressed who hunkered down between two pot-bellied revellers who probably hadn’t been sober in over a week.

I got off a few blocks into the Garden District, walking over the grassy median as I followed a gaggle of tourists. They would all branch off shortly, gawking at the aging mansions that lined both sides of the street. As for me, I’d walk a few blocks back to Magazine Street which paralleled St. Charles.

This time though, I wouldn’t be going to Mama Juno’s. Instead, I would be regrouping. I hadn’t eaten since morning (although I wasn’t terribly hungry: perhaps the transformation into a smaller individual was allowing me to consume my own tissue until a new equilibrium could be established). Also, Paul would give the FBM a complete description of what I was wearing. I needed a new disguise.

Before leaving St. Charles, I pulled as much cash as I could–$300–from an ATM. Eventually, the FBM would get a record of the transaction, but I’d be gone before they could find me. I would use some of the cash to create a new disguise, and I knew already what it would be.

There are lots of funky little used clothing stores on Magazine. I selected one at random and began to assemble my new disguise. It turns out I picked well. The shop specialized in... shall we say sleazy outfits. The FBM would be looking for someone who was androgynous. I could no longer look male, so I decided to look as female as possible. And not just female–I had decided to look as if I worked the streets at night for a living.

To anyone unfamiliar with New Orleans, such a disguise would seem too flamboyant, but in the Crescent City, it would look very conventional. The sad truth was that New Orleans–particularly around Mardi Gras time–attracted a large number of young runaways. Broke and often addicted to drugs or alcohol, the youths–both male and female–often resulted to selling their bodies to the partiers who foraged for fun from the Convention Center to the Quarter.

Properly disguised, I’d take a cab to the Quarter and get a room in one of the less-reputable small hotels there. After a night’s rest, my mind would be clearer and I’d be able to figure out what my next move should be.

“You look fine!” the clerk said while I looked at myself in the mirror. She was a young black woman about my age. She looked as if she’d been around herself as there was recognition in her eyes as to what sort of a look I wanted.

I suppose I did look the part, although I still looked a bit mannish. My hair was now as black as any Afro-American’s, and my blue eyes had become an undeniably deep brown. My complexion had darkened still more, and my nose, while smaller than my male nose, was a little flatter. My lips had puffed up, and I had noticed when I talked with the clerk that my voice had become a little huskier and a little higher all at the same time. There was also a definite inflection to my voice that I seemed unable to control. It was similar to that favored by uneducated blacks in the area. Perhaps Paul had been right about additional curses being laid on me.

As for my body, my arms and legs were slimmer but still more muscular than most girls were. In the dressing room, I had removed some of the tissue from my bra after noticing that my own breasts were becoming noticeably fuller. My hips and waist were not properly proportioned yet, but they were changing in that direction. I still had my male equipment–but not by much. Everything was smaller than it had been when I had reluctantly put on the panties at Alex’s. At the present rate, I wouldn’t be technically male for more than another day–if that.

I was now wearing a dress–dress! It was cut very, very short, showing a lot of thigh. Dark red in a metallic sheen, it was also cut low to show off my growing cleavage. I had bought a pair of dark tights to wear under the dress since my legs had not been shaved yet. The black heels I wore weren’t as difficult to walk in as I had supposed. I guessed that wearing the small heel on the sandals had given me enough practice to be able to handle three-inch heels so long as I didn’t try to walk too fast.

“You really oughta get the thong,” the clerk coaxed. She had tried to sell me a new black bra and matching thong. The shop sold used clothing but (thank God) only new underwear. I bought the bra since the one I had borrowed from Alex would have shown given the neckline of the dress, but I opted for more conservative black panties. She was right: the thong would have looked good with the outfit, but there was no way I could wear a thong with my remaining male appendages. Besides, this was to be just a disguise–not a working outfit.

We dickered a little on the price–it was expected, after all. I even got her to throw in a ratty black bag that I could use to carry my other clothes in. Then, I had her direct me to a nearby beauty shop where I could get in and out quickly. Bracing myself, I entered the beauty shop, determined to complete my disguise in spite of my growing embarrassment. Just a block away from the clothing store, three black men walking together had put the moves on me. I wasn’t sure what bothered me more–the fact that they did it, or the fact that I found it mildly interesting in a perverse sort of way.

I think of all my unnerving experiences as I travelled the road to femininity, the first visit to the beauty shop was one of the worst. As a man, I was used to a simple, straightforward process of sitting in the chair, letting my stylist trim my hair just the way he had the last time I had visited him, paying him and leaving with a few comments about sports or politics sandwiched in between. The beauty shop, though, was a whole different experience.

The smells assaulted me first–pungent solutions designed to curl, straighten, color and condition women’s hair were atomized and mingling in the air. And since the shop appealed primarily to black women, the smell of cosmetics competed for airspace. As I found out later, many black women aren’t very happy with the cosmetics designed by and presumably for white women, so a number of black beauty shops had decided to carry cosmetics more appealing to black women. Add to all of that the smell of fresh nail polish and I nearly passed out. How could anyone stand to work in such an atmosphere?

“I got just the cut for you, honey,” the young, chubby beautician told me once I was seated. I had told her I was letting my hair grow out and wanted something easy to take care of that would look good as it grew. “Take a look at this.”

I looked at the picture she showed me from a magazine called Heart & Soul. I had never heard of the publication, but it was obviously a publication aimed at black women. The picture showed a smiling black woman wearing a shoulder length cut with a slight wave in it. “But my hair isn’t that long,” I protested.

In response, she held a mirror in front of me. “No, but it’s close.”

As quickly as I had been changing, I supposed I shouldn’t have been terribly surprised, but I was. True, my hair wasn’t shoulder length, but it was within an inch or two of being there. I had felt it tickling my ears and neck, but I had no idea it had become so long. At this rate, if it kept growing, it would be down to my ass in a couple of days.

As she worked on my hair, I thought at least once that maybe I should cut it extremely short since I had no experience in taking care of longer hair, but I realized that would defeat my new disguise. If I was to continue to stay away from the FBM, I’d have to look as naturally feminine as possible.

Sitting there in the chair gave me the first peaceful moments I had enjoyed since fleeing the townhouse. I began to think about what I could do to regain my old life, and for the first time since I had begun my flight, I began to wonder if it might be a wiser strategy for me to turn myself in and let the Bureau help solve my problem. After seriously debating that strategy in my own mind, I rejected it. Even though Mama Juno’s son had been freed, my father would never treat with her, in spite of sending Paul to negotiate, and I seriously doubted if the Bureau could unravel a spell as complex as mine on its own.

The problem was: how could I reach Mama Juno now, and with her son free, what could I offer her that would be sufficient to persuade her to change me back? Even in my new disguise, I didn’t dare try to get into Mama Juno’s offices. I finally decided my best course of action would be to continue with my plan to eat, get a hotel room, and then call Mama Juno’s office from a safe location in the morning.

“What do you think?” the beautician asked when she had finished.

I looked critically at what she had done. I had to admit, I looked good–for a girl. My hair was no longer the same black as it had been when I had entered the shop. Lighter highlights had been streaked into it, and order had come out of chaos, giving me a fairly long and obviously feminine style. The hairstyle did a lot to change my face, framing it in such a way to make my face look even more feminine. Or perhaps my face really was becoming more feminine, I realized dejectedly. “It looks good,” I replied, once again reminded of my new husky but girlish voice.

“And these will go with that new ‘do’,” she grinned, holding up a pair of earrings–gold hoops perhaps an inch and a half in diameter.

“But I don’t...” I had started to say that I didn’t have pierced ears, but apparently Mama Juno had thought of everything, because before I could complete my sentence, she had slipped one of the hoops into a hole in my earlobe that I had not realized even existed.

“See?” she said triumphantly, directing my attention to a mirror.

The earrings felt strange, as if something was trying to tug my ears downward ever so slightly. Mama Juno’s magic spells were frighteningly complete. What would be next? A hole for a nose ring or tongue stud? Tattoos? I shuddered to think.

“Now let’s get somebody to work on those nails...” the beautician said.

“Uh, no, the nails are fine,” I said, holding my hands down at my side where she couldn’t see them.

She was not to be denied, though. She gently raised my arm at the wrist, holding up my right hand in front of me. “Honey,” she sighed, “your nails are just too, too long for you to leave them like that. Why, girl, they are going to split on you and cause you all kinds of trouble.”

When had they grown so long? My nails looked as if I had not cut them in months. More magic at work, I realized. “Okay,” I agreed reluctantly, “but I like them short–real short.”

It was nearly dark when I left the shop, and anyone who remembered me as Robert Devereaux would have never believed that the pretty young black woman, sexily dressed, swaying on heels, and sporting professionally done hair, nails and makeup and the scion of one of New Orleans’ oldest and proudest families could possibly be the same person.

Technically, I suppose, I was still male, by virtue of what I could still feel nestled in my new black panties. The proper term for the moment would have been she-male, although unlike the pre-operative individuals who dwelled in the hermaphroditic twilight zone between male and female, I could feel very little of my male equipment between my dark legs. When Sarah had told me my transformation would take three or four days, I had never imagined that the final days of being a male would be nothing more than a mere formality. For all I knew, I might already be genetically a female with just a few remaining male attributes.

To make matters even worse, I could feel my mind changing as well. While I couldn’t remember everything that had happened to me that night in Mama Juno’s clutches, it was becoming obvious to me that my mind was being transformed as well. I was finding it harder and harder to speak with the cultured southern accent I had practiced since childhood. Instead “I” was becoming “Ah” and my grammar was deteriorating into the patois of an uneducated black girl.

Even worse than my speech patterns, I was starting to be attracted to men. It didn’t happen all at once, and I had been so preoccupied, I really hadn’t had much chance to think about it. But if I let my guard down, I found myself looking appreciatively at men. I began to wonder what it must be like to have a man’s arm around my waist or on my breasts or what it felt like to feel his hand slide up my leg toward...

I could still fight the thoughts down–perhaps because between my legs, I was still a man of sorts. But what would happen when the remnants of my sex had fully changed? Would such thoughts cause me to feel warmth in the vacant spot between my legs? Would I become moist, craving to have my new void filled?

I shuddered, hugging myself as if to hide my feminine body from the gaze of passing men–or from my own gaze for that matter. I spotted a cab letting off a fare just a few doors from the beauty shop and ran for it, ignoring the debarking male passenger’s appreciative stare.

The hotel I had the cab take me to was not one frequented by tourists–unless the tourists were guided there by one of the Quarter’s whores. I had been there more than once with just such a woman, back in my more carefree days immediately before college. Many of my friends had been there, too. Since magic had cured virtually all venereal diseases, patronizing a prostitute was more of a lark than it had ever been. Without the dangers of disease, prostitution was becoming more acceptable in some quarters, although still illegal. New Orleans was, after all, a convention town, and the police seldom bothered enforcing the laws against it.

I knew the desk clerk wouldn’t question a black girl all dressed up for a fun evening and ready to pay cash for her room. Probably most of the twenty rooms in the small hotel were being used by whores who would either cull their customers from the drunken men on Bourbon Street or wait for their pimps to lead them back to their rooms. It was the last place anyone would think to look for me.

I ordered some food in–simple fare, really. My body had used up much of my bulk in fuelling the transformation, leaving me smaller and daintier. The major part of my re-sizing completed, I had begun to get hungry for the first time that day. The Chinese food I had delivered hit the spot and made me feel like a new... well a new woman, I suppose.

I also had the first opportunity to really closely examine the changes the day had inflicted upon my body. Standing naked in front of the bathroom mirror, I took an inventory of my new form. I was not exactly beautiful, but I was becoming reasonably attractive, with full, high breasts and a large but not disproportionate ass. My waist was smaller, but not Barbie small. As for my hair, it had grown a couple of inches since I had left the beauty shop, and as promised, it was flowing neatly over the tops of my shoulders.

I could see from my facial features and my skin tone that I was not going to be one of those more-white-than-black girls like Vanessa Williams. My nose was feminine but broad, and my lips were... well, they were big. My eyes were so dark brown that they nearly looked black, and my skin was the color of coffee with just a small dash of cream.

One thing that surprised me was that I still had a fair amount of hair on my legs and under my arms. I suppose I had always thought of blacks as having very little body hair. Of course, the color of my skin hid part of the hair, but I could see I’d have to shave myself if I wanted to continue the illusion indefinitely.

I planned to get a good night’s sleep and start fresh in the morning, trying to get in touch with someone in Mama Juno’s organization who could help me. Her recently-freed son was my target. If I could reach him, perhaps I could get him to encourage his mother to change me back. I knew it was a feeble hope, but what other hope did I have? It was either pursue that avenue or find myself closeted away in an FBM safe house for a long, long time. I didn’t want to wait that long. I wanted my life back and I wanted it now.

In the morning, I would have to call Pierre. I’d do it from a pay phone after I had done some shopping. I needed to buy some basic items since I expected at best to be stuck as a girl for a few more days. I had left the few toiletries I had salvaged from the townhouse in Paul’s car when I made my quick getaway, so I had nothing in that department. I’d need a new toothbrush, a razor, and a change of clothes–especially underwear. Plus I needed something to sleep in. I realized I was going to have to sleep that night in the nude since I needed to keep my underwear as fresh as possible and had nothing but the clothes on my back and the clothes I had gotten from Alex–which probably no longer fit Besides, even if Alex’s clothes did fit, I was afraid my bastard of a brother had already given their description to the FBM. I would have to throw them out.

Add to this another night’s lodging cost and I realized I would also have to get more money. I was surprised my bank account hadn’t been frozen by the Bureau, but I supposed they were hoping I’d slip up and stay near the terminal after I had taken my cash. Growing up as the son of a high-ranking Bureau official had taught me that stupid stunts like that tripped up the vast majority of fugitives. Good, solid detective work alone was not enough.

Still, even if my account remained open, how much money was in it? I realized I had no idea. Funds had always been replenished through a fat family trust fund, and I’d never had to be aware of how much was there since there was always enough for my anticipated needs. Although the account was being left open, I doubted if my father would be so magnanimous as to allow the trust to continue funding it. Eventually–possibly quite soon–I’d be out of money, and then where would I be?

I looked into the mirror again. I looked black, female, and even a bit younger. I appeared no more than eighteen–if that. I had no ID, no history of work or education, and I was developing an accent which would pigeonhole me as essentially unemployable. Without an acknowledged education, I might find work in, say, fast food, but without identification, I couldn’t even qualify for a minimum-wage job. Besides, I noticed for some reason that I was having difficulty reading very well.

If I were still a man, there were plenty of low-paying jobs for cash where no questions were asked–jobs which required a strong back I no longer possessed. But as a young woman, I could think of only one profession that required no identification whatsoever and paid in cash. I shuddered at the thought of that. There was no way I would ever sell my body. Before I did that, I’d turn myself in to the FBM. They might keep me sequestered for the rest of my life, stuck in the body of a black girl, but at least I would keep my honor, such as it was.

Perhaps things would look better in the morning, I told myself, crawling into bed. I didn’t think they could look much worse.

Of course, I was wrong.

I awoke confused and stiff. I had tried to sleep in my underwear, deciding I could always buy more if I had to, but the bra and panties were far more constricting than I wanted for sleeping. I know it was foolish of me to sleep in them, but somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to be completely nude, as if the bra and panties could somehow prevent further development of my feminine attributes.

To make matters worse, I discovered my breasts and hips had grown a bit more during the night, making the snug-fitting underwear even worse. In the middle of the night, I tried rummaging through the stuff Alex had given me during the night, looking for something that might work as sleepwear. However, without the bra and panties, the fabric of the top she had given me seemed entirely too rough for sleeping, as it rubbed uncomfortably against my increasingly-sensitive nipples. Now it turned out that the top could have been a more comfortable choice, in spite of its roughness.

Apparently, the room had been a little cool, attributing to my morning stiffness, and my confusion was understandable since I still wasn’t used to waking up to find my skin chocolate brown, two breasts hanging from my chest, and long hair tangled about my ears.

Instinctively, I reached between my legs, expecting to find a warm slit there. One was beginning: that was for sure, and the urge to pee seemed to be coming from a different part of my crotch. Desperately, I searched for some remnant of my penis, pushing back the concern that my masculinity could somehow be salvaged only if something of my male equipment remained.

Sarah had seriously underestimated the speed of my transformation, I realized grimly. Yesterday, I had tried to look more feminine as a disguise, realizing that at least some of the male me was still there. Today, though, I was with one disturbingly small exception as girlish as I could be. I suspected that one exception would be completely changed by nightfall.

Of course, it was possible that there were still internal changes to be made. My abdomen felt as if I had eaten a pound of baked beans and been fitted with a cork up my ample ass. In other words, things were changing inside me and changing uncomfortably. Was I receiving fallopian tubes, ovaries, and all the internal alteration that would make me completely a girl? Probably. From what I had read about sexual transformations in the supermarket rags, even eggs somehow formed, leaving the transformee able to conceive and bear children. I shuddered at the thought, hoping that at least that part of the sensational stories was false.

I dressed quickly in the same outfit I had worn the night before. It was a little garish for morning, but I had no choice. I didn’t have much of a wardrobe. I brushed my hair as best I could, silently thanking the beautician for giving me a style that fell back into place with a minimum of effort. Bowing to the inevitable, I even added makeup–lipstick and eye shadow mostly. I didn’t want to do it, but it seemed to make me look more... normal. I had watched as the beautician had applied my makeup the day before and vowed to be a bit more conservative in the application of the cosmetics. It was difficult to accomplish, but by being careful, I managed to look at least minimally right.

I didn’t bother to eat. My body must have still been burning up a little of my excess male weight that had previously dampened my appetite. As a result, the Chinese food from the previous night was still enough to keep me going that morning. Besides, I had no time to lose. I needed to call Pierre quickly before anything else happened.

Of course, what else could happen? Well, I was starting to realize that the changes that had been made to me were more than just physical. Nothing other than magic could have explained the way I was thinking. I was becoming more emotional and finding that making plans was getting harder. My speech patterns had already altered, and I was beginning to think that my vocabulary was shrinking. But worst of all, I was starting to become if not attracted to men, at least even more open to the idea of being attracted. I no longer felt shame when I looked at a man’s butt or checked out his walk or his smile. I found myself warming to being looked at with appreciation by men. I also noticed I no longer seemed to be gazing at women as I would have just a few days before. They no longer held any interest for me.

In short, I was starting to think exactly like the girl I was becoming.

It had to be the work of a Whisperer, I realized. I had not always been conscious when I was in Mama Juno’s hands, although I knew consciousness didn’t matter. A Whisperer could have planted girlish thoughts in my head while I was out cold or done it while I was awake, making me forget at a conscious level what he had told me. However it was done, if I didn’t get help quickly, I’d soon be a sexy little black chick mentally as well as physically.

I finally found a pay phone–not an easy thing to do in the Quarter–and punched in Mama Juno’s number, taking care to not damage my longer nails. I made a silent vow to get the damned things cut as soon as I no longer needed my disguise. How did women put up with anything as impractical as long fingernails anyway?

As soon as the receptionist answered, I asked to speak to Pierre. She seemed reluctant to put me through until I urged, “Tell him Rob... tell him my name is Devereaux.”

Her attitude changed at once, and I realized suddenly that my call to Pierre was expected. That gave me hope. Perhaps it meant he was willing to deal with me.

“Hello, Ms. Devereaux,” a deep male voice greeted me.

“Are you Pierre... Pierre Dubois?” I asked breathlessly. It sounded more like “Ah you all Pierre...” which elicited a chuckle.

“Well, well, don’t you sound sweet,” he mused sarcastically.

“Look,” I began, looking around to make sure no one was standing close enough to me to overhear. The phone was, after all, on a busy street. “I need to see you... I need to see what it will take for you and your mother to reverse all of this and give me back my life.”

“What makes you think it can be reversed?”

“There has to be a way,” I replied, my voice a little shaky as I realized that deep down I wasn’t as sure as I sounded. “There must be something I can do to get you to change me back.”

“Well,” he said slowly, “I suppose there is something you can do for me–and something I can do for you. Why don’t I meet you at your hotel at, say, one?”

I was silent for a moment. “How did you know I was staying in a hotel?”

He laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant laugh. “Nothing happens in New Orleans that we don’t know about, cher.” To prove it, he recited not only my hotel but my room number.

“I was planning on checking out,” I told him. “I don’t think I have enough cash for another day.”

“Don’t worry, cher,” he told me in a soothing tone. “It’s all taken care of. Mama owns the hotel. Most of the girls who use the hotel or their pimps have a deal with Mama. You can stay there as long as you like. I’ll see you at one.”

“I’ll be there,” I confirmed, holding onto the receiver until I heard the click at the other end.

As I stood there helplessly, I had the sudden thought that the FBM probably had Mama Juno’s phones tapped. But surely Pierre would have known that. He didn’t seem to concern himself that our conversation was being overheard by my father’s agents. Not that it mattered. I had to take the risk of meeting him, or in another day, I’d be all girl. How long after that would it be until I thought entirely like a girl? Not long, I suspected.

I thought about getting something more appropriate to wear, but my cash was running low. A quick trip to a nearby ATM produced no cash. Either I had tapped out the account or the authorities had decided it was better to cut me off. I didn’t have much cash left, and there were a number of things I’d need if I had to lie low in this new body for a while. I’d just have to meet Pierre as I was.

I went back to the room and tried to compose myself. I wanted to appear confident and calm when I met with Pierre. Just because I couldn’t meet him looking like a businesswoman didn’t mean I had to look like a runaway. I carefully reapplied the cosmetics I had bought and brushed out my hair. It was even longer than it had been that morning, and I was starting to wonder just how long it would eventually be. I began to realize leaving my hair long as part of a feminine disguise had been a big mistake since I wasn’t experienced at taking care of long hair–even though the beautician had assured me that it was a “low-maintenance” cut.

Once I had finished, I turned on the TV to catch the local news and wait. If I was looking for something to calm me down, that was the wrong thing to do. I sat there on the bed, unmindful of the fact that my already-short dress had ridden up my thighs as I stared in disbelief at my on picture on the screen.

“Authorities say Devereaux’s car exploded when it hit the bottom of the ravine near Knoxville. He was returning to college at Harvard at the time of the accident. Mr. Devereaux was twenty-one.”

Not many people get the chance to see their own obituaries. I really don’t recommend it, either. I sat there on the bed shaking, trying to make sense of what I had just seen.

Apparently, I realized, the FBM–my father, to be precise–had come to the conclusion that what had happened to me must never become public knowledge. It was simply too embarrassing for my father and the Bureau. If the tabloids ever got their hands on the story, he’d be held up to public ridicule as the FBM Director who couldn’t even rescue his own son from a magic spell. My father and the Bureau had obviously decided to cut their losses.

The cover-up meant that turning myself in to the Bureau had ceased to be a viable option. If I did so, the best fate I could expect was to be a virtual prisoner for the rest of my life. As for the worst case...

Would my own father order my death? He wouldn’t be the first powerful man to sacrifice his own son on the altar of power, I realized grimly. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life as a black woman, but given the option of doing that or dying, I’d choose life just about every time. That meant I couldn’t let the Bureau find me. It meant I was completely on my own for the rest of my life. With any luck, if I stayed hidden long enough, the Bureau would come to the conclusion that I had in truth met an untimely end and give up their search for me.

So how did all of this change my negotiations with Pierre Dubois? I wondered. Maybe I could convince him that by changing me back into my male self, I would publicly embarrass both my father and the Bureau. That might have some appeal to Pierre and his mother–to cause trouble for the Bureau to pay them back for all the trouble the Bureau had caused them. After all, I owed neither the Bureau or my father any loyalty after the way I had been treated. And given that I would not have any backing from my father now, it was probably the only card I had left to play.

There was a knock on the door precisely at one. Sighing deeply, I rose from the bed to answer the door, realizing that I was playing a very weak hand. My fingers rested on the doorknob, uncertain as to whether or not I should let Pierre in. Could I convince Pierre and his mother to change me back? I wasn’t very hopeful. Maybe there really was no way back. If the FBM lacked the resources to reverse the spells, maybe Mama Juno would be equally powerless when it came to reversing her magic. After all, there were limits to everything–even magic. At last, realizing I had few options, I slowly opened the door.

Pierre Dubois was a handsome man. That wasn’t the new female me talking: even if I had still been male, I would not have said differently. Most men–my former self included–could seldom tell if a man was good looking or not, unless that man was so incredibly handsome that there was no denying it. Pierre Dubois was such a man. He stood an inch or so over six feet, literally towering over my new female form. His hair was dark and naturally kinky, but it was cut by an artist who had left every hair perfectly in place. He wore a white polo shirt and khaki slacks, which accentuated the rich darkness of his skin and the firmness of his chest.

Then he spoiled it all by smiling.

Oh, his teeth were as perfect as the rest of him was–straight and white to the point that they nearly sparkled. But his smile was the smile of a cat about to devour a mouse. Guess what that made me. “Well, Ms. Devereaux, didn’t you come out nicely.”

Two casually dressed bodyguards standing behind him grinned knowingly at his sarcasm.

“I want to make a deal with you,” I said shakily, doing my best to ignore the remark. I was trying to sound confident, but I had a hunch I was failing. It was hard to sound confident when every word came out in a soft feminine purr seasoned with an uncultured backwoods accent.

The smile remained unchanged. “Oh? And just what do you have to deal with?” His voice was smooth and mellow, but I could detect hidden malice in the tone. I nearly shivered as he looked hungrily at my new body.

“I can give you information,” I began. “I know a lot about the FBM. If you’ll change me back, I’ll tell you whatever you need to know.”

“But we already know everything we need to know about the FBM,” he replied with amusement. “What else can you offer me?”

It was time to play my last card. “The Bureau made it look like I died in a car crash. If you change me back, you can embarrass them...” I felt as if I was betraying my father, but why not? Hadn’t he already betrayed me? “You could damage my father’s cred... cred...”

I gasped, realizing I could no longer say “credibility.” It just didn’t fit into the vocabulary of the ignorant girl I appeared to be.

“Credibility?” Pierre finished for me.

I could only nod, embarrassed.

He shrugged. “We have better ways to do that. So what else can you offer me?”

This wasn’t going well at all. “I... I don’t know. There must be something...”

He nodded. “Perhaps there is something you can offer me after all.”

“There is?” For just a moment, I felt a ray of hope. Then, I noticed he wasn’t looking at my face when he said that: he was looking lower. “No, wait a minute. I’m a man.”

“No, you aren’t,” he said simply. “Is your transition complete?”

“No,” I answered nervously, thankful that I still had at least a small semblance of my male equipment left. It was too small and undeveloped to be functional any more, but at least he couldn’t fuck me.

“No matter,” he returned, motioning for his two bodyguards to leave the room. They turned and left, closing the door behind them.

“Now, Ms. Devereaux, let me tell you what I want from you,” he began. “Your vagina may not be complete, but your lips certainly are.”

“No!”

He sighed theatrically. “And here I had thought you were willing to do anything to regain your manhood.”

“I... I am,” I stammered. “But you couldn’t want me to... I mean I don’t know how to... to...”

“Have you ever had a blowjob, Ms. Devereaux?” His voice was suddenly forceful, like the voice of God.

“Well, yes, but...”

He didn’t wait for my response. Instead, he began to pull down his pants, exposing his penis. It was large and already partially hard from anticipation. My mind was swept up in too many thoughts and emotions to organize. My first reaction was, of course, disgust. My body was nearly completely female, but my mind was repulsed by the thought of putting another man’s organ in my mouth. Was Pierre gay?

Of course he wasn’t, the more practical side of my mind reasoned. He couldn’t see inside my mind: all he could see was my body, and I had to admit I was almost completely a very attractive black girl. In fact within probably no more than a few hours, I would be fully female. If I had seen the new me while still in my male body, I might have also decided that oral sex with such an attractive creature could never be called a gay experience.

Another part of me felt vulnerable and frightened. He was expecting me to perform not an act of love, but rather an act of unwanted sex. I had read about girls who had been forced to blow men against their will and had always thought it an act of rape. Just because I lacked sufficient female organs at the moment didn’t make what was about to happen to me any less than rape.

And yes, I knew it was going to happen to me. He wasn’t giving me a choice. If I was to have even the thinnest shred of hope regarding a return to my old self, I would have to cooperate, no matter how repugnant the act would be. With his strong hands, he forced me to my knees, my face directly in front of his rapidly growing penis.

I thought for just a moment about biting it off. If Mama Juno wanted to make me into a girl, I could always make her son one, too. But if I did, I would be throwing away even the slim chance I had of recovering my true life. On the other hand, if I did it, maybe there was a chance I could get Pierre to help me. With my father and the FBM out to hide me away–or worse–with no hope of becoming Robert again, perhaps it was best to accept what was about to happen to me as just one more indignity heaped on top of a huge pile of indignities.

Drawing a deep breath, I let him thread his hands into my long, thick hair and push my lips onto his waiting organ.

I don’t like to think about that experience. At least I soon discovered why most women aren’t really anxious to perform oral sex. Proponents say it stimulates the female, but I was too frightened and confused to be stimulated. Instead, I tried to think about other things–movies I had seen, music I enjoyed–as Pierre prodded me to suck his penis.

I nearly gagged as I coaxed it involuntarily, and when he came, I did gag, cum spraying out of my mouth and running down my chin before dropping onto my breasts. I was crying, too, unable to control my emotions. I was a man, damn it! This wasn’t right. It just wasn’t right.

Pierre was chucking as he wiped himself off on the sheet of my bed and put his pants back on. “You’re good, girl. When you get a little experience, you’ll be damn good.”

“Change me back,” I murmured softly, the sticky cum in my mouth slurring my words. I could feel the hot sting of tears in my eyes, and knew I was only seconds away from sobbing uncontrollably.

“What, darlin’?”

“Change me back!” I managed, louder, my voice trembling.

“There is no way back, honey,” he replied coldly. “No one can change you back–not even Mama.”

“No!”

“Face it, honey,” he continued, holding up my chin until our eyes met. I could see the truth in his eyes, causing me to look away with a sob. “You’re going to be a black girl for the rest of your life. Nothing can change that. Absolutely nothing. You gotta get on with your life, babe.”

Part of my mind screamed at me that he must be lying to me, but deep down I knew he was telling me the truth. No one had really told me anything else. The supermarket rags that reported sexual transformations had said there was no way back. Sarah had told me that the Bureau was doing what it could, but never did she offer me a way back. Now, Pierre Dubois, standing smugly over me as the first sobs wracked my increasingly female body, was telling me the same thing. I was a woman–now and forever. There was no going back.

“I... I...” I managed between sobs. I wanted to tell him that I had no life. I had been betrayed by my family, hunted by the government, and had nowhere to turn. Why had Mama done this to me? Why had my family deserted me? Why? Why? Why?

Pierre pulled a card from his wallet and set it on the nightstand. “Don’t fret, babe. It’s not all bad news. I just left you the name of someone who might be able to help you. He’s waiting for you to come see him. Believe me, babe, this is your only chance. You go see him and pretty soon things won’t be so bad.”

I stared silently at the card, still on my knees.

“Oh! And one other thing.” He pulled a bill from his wallet and set it down on top of the card. “You were worth every dollar, darling.”

As I continued to kneel there on the floor, wracked with sobs, Pierre let himself out, gently closing the door behind him.

It was the most miserable moment of my life. In a matter of a few short days, I had been reduced from the scion of one the New Orleans’ oldest and most prosperous families to a penniless black girl who had just been forced to give her first blowjob. I was disheartened, confused, and frustrated. I had nowhere to turn–no one who could help me. What would become of me now?

Through the tears, I looked at the card on my knees. Pierre had said the card he had left had the name of someone who could help me. But Pierre had just forced me to blow him. I had no illusions regarding his help: I was past that now. Still, raising myself up along the side of the bed, I got up on wobbly legs and looked at what Pierre had given me. I held the card, still covered by the bill.

My hands trembling, I picked up what proved to be a hundred dollar bill Pierre had left. What had he said–that I was worth every dollar? Oh dear God, I had been paid for giving him that blowjob. That made me... made me...

I collapsed onto the bed, the tears flowing once more. Technically, he had made me a whore. I had been paid for what I had been forced to do.

Wait... forced to do it. That meant I had not really become a whore in the strictest sense of the word. He might pay me, but unless I accepted the money, I was nothing more or less than a victim of sexual abuse–of a rape.

My fingers closed around the bill, as if to wad it up and throw it away, but something kept my fingers from doing it. I stared at the bill–it was a crisp new hundred dollar bill. There was old Ben Franklin, smiling his thin smile as if gently coaxing me to remember that I was now without any source of funds. What would a hundred dollars give me? If I was frugal, it meant another night with a roof over my head, albeit in someplace more modest than my present room. It meant food in my belly. The transformation almost complete, my body no longer had any excess weight to draw down, so I was becoming truly hungry for the first time in days. I could find something other than the clothes I now wore–something to cover my body so that no other man could look down at my cleavage or stare at my shapely legs. I needed the hundred dollars desperately.

Even if it did make me a whore.

At last, I picked up the business card Pierre had left. It showed only a name, address and phone number. The name was Jimmy Saxon and the address was just a few blocks from my hotel. I knew who Jimmy Saxon was–he was reputed to run more girls in the Quarter than any other pimp. So that was Pierre’s idea of helping me.

For anyone who has never faced the prospect of life on the streets in an alien body, the thoughts running through my head probably would seem unreal. In fact, they seemed a little unreal to me. Still, there it was. I was a girl–a black girl. My accent was one of an uncultured southern black girl, and even were I able to convince anyone that I had almost enough course hours to graduate from Harvard, I would never be able to perform at that level since whatever had affected my mind was also affecting my ability to read. I had had to expend considerable effort just to read what was written on Jimmy’s card. So there it was–I was doomed to be destitute, without any marketable talents, hunted by the authorities, with only one potential asset to my name: my attractive and very female body.

How many runaways had faced such a decision? Many, I supposed. Unwanted at home, scorned by family and friends, pursued by the authorities, unable to make an ‘honest’ living, many turned to crime or prostitution. I was sure I’d make a very poor thief, so that just left... the other alternative.

And how bad could it be? I had already given a man a blowjob. While I didn’t like it, it hadn’t killed me. As for spreading my legs... well, soon I’d have everything I needed there to call myself a complete girl. With modern magical medicine, I wouldn’t have to worry about pregnancy or disease. Someone like Jimmy Saxon could provide me with such medical spells.

I looked at myself in the mirror. There was no trace now of the man I had once been. I was black, female, and I even looked younger than I had been. A casual observer might think I was no older than a high school girl of eighteen or maybe even a little younger. Had Mama Juno made me younger, too? I had thought that to be impossible, but then again, a few days before I would have thought it impossible that I would be standing there in the body of a girl contemplating selling my body on a regular basis.

Part of me still argued against such a demeaning profession, but it was being drowned out by the hungry rumbling of my stomach. I turned from the mirror, slinging my purse over my shoulder. I would get myself cleaned up–then I had to see Jimmy Saxon before I completely lost my nerve.

It was late afternoon when I finally found the courage to step out into the street. The shops in the Quarter were already starting to close for the evening and the bars and restaurants were shifting into a higher gear to greet the early crowd of tourists and conventioneers. Smells of Cajun cooking permeated the air, making me hungrier than I had been in a long time.

People were noticing me, and I wondered if they saw something about me that I had missed. Then I realized I looked the part of the streetwalker I was about to become, and it was a little early in the evening for a girl to be plying her trade. I decided to walk a little faster before someone took too much notice of me.

I was walking better in heels, but I was still inexperienced. That, coupled with the quick pace I had started and the somewhat uneven sidewalks of the less-travelled parts of the Quarter, spelled disaster. Without warning, my heel caught in a pavement crack, throwing me to the sidewalk.

But I never landed. A strong black arm reached out from behind and held me suspended in the air. Good thing too, because the way I was diving, my face would have smashed into the concrete. “Hey there!” a cheerful, boyish voice called out as someone lifted me back to my feet. “You shouldn’t walk so fast. You’re going to get hurt.”

I found myself staring into the eyes of a young black man a little younger than me. He was dressed in a red tropical shirt and khaki trousers, and his black, curly hair was cut stylishly short in what could best be called a medium crew cut. He looked to be a college student–probably from one of the local schools since most of the out- of-town students had left right after Mardi Gras.

“Thanks,” I managed, wriggling out of his grip.

“All part of the service,” he grinned. “Say, can I buy you something? A drink?”

I shook my head.

“Hey, I was about to get a sandwich. Would you join me for that? If you’re not hungry, I can just buy you a soda...”

I really wasn’t that anxious to see Jimmy Saxon, and I was very, very hungry, as my growling stomach reminded me. It might be better to do something as unpleasant as seeing a pimp with a full stomach. Besides, my would-be Samaritan looked like a safe kid–a nice looking kid... “Okay.”

We ended up at the Crescent City Brewhouse over on Decatur. My escort had a beer, flashing his ID comfortably. I was surprised to see he was twenty-one, as young as he looked. I just ordered a Coke. Since I had no ID as a girl, there was no way I could order a beer, even if I had wanted one. Besides, I realized I looked pretty young myself. If I had seen the female me on the street, I would have thought I was looking at a girl of no more than eighteen.

“I’m A.J.,” the young man said once we had ordered. He stuck out his hand.

“Nice to meet you, A.J.,” I replied, offering him my smaller hand but not volunteering a name. He wouldn’t believe I was a Robert, and there was no way I was going to pass myself off as a Roberta. As for any other female name, I’d put that off as long as I could. I felt a funny little tingle when I touched his hand, and A.J. seemed to space out for just a second.

“Are you from here in New Orleans?” he asked conversationally, suddenly returning to normal. I felt a little relieved: the way he looked when he touched my hand made me suspect he was using some sort of magic talent on me. Ciphers could pick up all sorts of personal information with just a touch. I sure as hell didn’t want a Cipher finding out I was on the lam from the FBM.

We just talked about inconsequential things while we waited for our food. I talked as little as possible, since I really didn’t want him to know anything about me and I was too tired to make anything up. I found out A.J. was a student at Tulane, majoring in Criminal Justice with a minor in magic.

“Planning to work for the FBM?” I asked him.

He laughed and shook his head. “No, nothing like that. The Feds are a little uptight for me. Besides, there’s a lot of opportunity these days in private practice.”

I nodded, thinking back about Helen telling me she had an offer to leave the Bureau and go private. “I’ve got a friend who’s considering that,” I told him. He didn’t ask anything about that because our food arrived.

Never in my life had a burger tasted so good. I practically inhaled the first half of the sandwich, swallowing my worries and fears with each bite of the savory meat. By the time we had finished, there wasn’t so much as a French fry left on my plate.

“Damn, girl, you were hungry!” A.J. remarked. I didn’t bother to answer–the evidence in the form of my empty plate spoke for itself. “You want the rest of my fries?”

Greedily, I grabbed a handful.

Unfortunately, my stomach full at last, it was time for me to part ways with A.J. and see Jimmy Saxon. Part of me regretted that I wasn’t the girl he thought I was, although I suspected that by now I was at least all girl. The panties I was wearing seemed strangely empty at last. Part of me wanted to stay with him–to enjoy the evening strolling around the Quarter. It was certainly preferable to what Jimmy would have in mind for me.

I gathered my purse. “Thanks for the meal, A.J., but I really have to go.”

“That’s cool,” he shrugged. “But hey. Before you do, can I get your opinion on something?”

“What?”

A. J. looked a little sheepish. “There’s this novelty store just down the street. They’ve got some cool shades. Would you go in there with me and help me get a pair?”

“I really don’t have the time...”

“Hey, it’ll just take a minute.”

There was a very big part of me that wanted to stay with A.J. And I reminded myself that I was in no hurry to see Jimmy Saxon... “Okay, but just for a few minutes.”

The novelty store was pretty cheesy–one of those forgettable places that stayed open late to catch the tourists with too little money or too little taste to shop in the more fashionable shops of the Quarter. A.J. led me back to a rack of sunglasses near the back of the store, grabbing a particularly ridiculous pair and slipping them on. “What do you think?”

Before I could answer, I felt a hand on my shoulder and hear a familiar woman’s voice. “Don’t say anything, Robert. I just want to talk to you.”

“Helen?” I breathed. Oh God! Was my father there, too? I thought about running, but A.J. was in my way, and the aisle was too narrow to get around him. Besides, he was about the size I used to be, and I was now far too small and weak to push my way past him.

Before I could protest, Helen and A.J. hustled me back into what should have been nothing but a storeroom. I tried to struggle, but they were too strong for me. One quick look around was enough to convince me that the store was a front for something else, though. A small office burgeoned with electronic equipment arranged haphazardly told me that the store was a temporary FBM command post. That just made me struggle harder. I was determined that the Bureau was never going to recapture me.

“Damn it, Robert!” Helen growled while A.J.’s strong arms kept me from slipping away. “No one is going to hurt you. Stop struggling right now!”

“But you’re FBM!” I squealed, redoubling my efforts to absolutely no avail. A.J. was a lot stronger than me, though. I think he could have manhandled me even without Helen’s help. And I sensed that he wasn’t even gripping me as tightly as he could have. Either I was a whole lot weaker or he was terrifically strong–probably a little of both, I imagined.

“Not right now I’m not FBM,” she countered. “Right now, I’m just Helen–your friend. And this is my brother, A.J.”

I stopped my struggling. “Your brother?” I had thought he was just another FBM agent with a particularly youthful appearance. I suddenly realized that although Helen had often mentioned her brother, I had never met him.

“It’s definitely magically-induced paranoia,” A.J. told Helen. “I can sense it in her.”

So A.J. was an Empath. So what? “I’m not paranoid!” I protested, but his diagnosis started me thinking in spite of my vocal reaction. Since my transformation had begun, I was finding it harder and harder to trust anyone–even my family and long-time friends. I had isolated myself completely from everyone who might have been able to help me. But weren’t they all out to get me? Really? Well, maybe I was being just a teeny tiny bit paranoid...

Once A.J. had me seated in a well-worn office chair, Helen sat in its mate directly across from me. “I understand why you decided to run,” Helen began sympathetically. “I think if I were in your shoes I might have done the same thing. Your father has been getting some very bad advice.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, my fear giving way to curiosity.

“He’s been treating you like the criminal rather than the victim,” she explained. “He should have brought in experts to try to help you. Instead, he tried to sweep this entire thing under the rug and let Sarah try to overcome the spells. The stuff that was done to you is way over Sarah’s head. Then when he staged your death just to keep all of this out of the public eye, it got to be too much for me. You were always a good guy, Robert. You always treated me well. I couldn’t let your father and the Bureau do this to you.”

I slumped into the chair, feeling suddenly more secure than I had felt since my abduction. As much as something inside me insisted that no one was to be trusted, I found myself wanting to trust Helen. “Helen, what’s going on?” I asked shakily.

She looked at me and blinked. Then she looked at A.J. “Is that accent part of the same spell as the paranoia?” I guess I did have something of an accent. What I had actually said was something like, “Wha’s goin awn?” But that wasn’t too bad, was it?

“I imagine they’re related,” A.J. confirmed.

She turned back to me. “To answer your question, I’m not sure. At first all of us thought it was just a reversible spell designed to get your father to release Pierre Dubois. Now Robert, don’t get your hopes up. I’m just saying some spells have a reverse command built into them so that if certain conditions are met, the spell can be turned around. Your spell isn’t one of those, but we discovered it too late. Mama Juno must have decided to do this all the way from the beginning.

“Once we determined the spell was permanent, your father made the decision to move you to a secluded location. According to him, they’d be able to monitor your conditioning and treat some of the peripheral spells–like the paranoia and that terrible accent.”

“What’s wrong with my accent?” I asked, but it came out more like, “Wha’s wrong wit mah assent?”

“It’s starting to sound normal to her,” A.J. explained to his sister. “There are more mind spells in there. My guess is that within a couple more days, she’ll be exactly what she appears to be and won’t think anything of it. Whoever the Whisperer was, he was damned good.”

That was a sobering thought, and I suspected it was true. I had for the moment forgotten how ghastly my accent had become. What else was starting to seem normal to me? Would spreading my legs for strangers seem just as natural to me before long?

“Anyhow, Robert, when your father couldn’t find you, he panicked,” Helen continued. “He’s worried about how all of this will reflect on the Bureau...”

“And on himself,” I finished for her. She reluctantly nodded.

“So how come you and your brother just happened to find me?” I asked suspiciously.

I noticed A.J. looked a little embarrassed at the question, so his sister answered for him. “Some of our agents figured you had skipped town. That diluted the official search and gave me a little more operating room. You see, I figured differently: I figured you had gone to ground somewhere in the city. Since you always liked the Quarter, it just seemed logical you’d be here somewhere. A.J. and I thought you’d be acting like a runaway, and a lot of runaways end up in places like the one where you’re staying.” She gave a wry look to her brother. “Apparently most of the male students at Tulane know which hotels to check.”

I chuckled inwardly as A.J. offered proof that blacks can turn red with embarrassment.

“The break came when we saw Pierre Dubois go into your hotel today,” Helen went on.

“We?”

“A couple of Bureau agents,” Helen clarified, hastening to add, “But don’t worry. Nobody picked up on it but me. I figured you’d try to work out some sort of a deal with Pierre. It seemed to be your only possible course of action.”

“I thought he might have a way of changing me back,” I said forlornly. “I guess I was wrong.”

I think that was the first real moment that I realized that no matter what happened now, I was destined to live the rest of my life as a woman–and a black woman at that. I would have periods, be able to have babies, and sit to pee from now on. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, I supposed. At least I was healthy, attractive and young. And given the multitude of spells Mama Juno had slapped on me, I seemed to have at least a modest attraction to men which was probably designed to increase over time, so I wouldn’t think of myself as being gay for liking men.

“So anyhow, I sent A.J. to keep an eye on the hotel,” Helen went on. “As you’ve probably gathered, A.J. is an Empath–and a strong one, too. All he had to do was touch you to verify your identity.”

I couldn’t help but wonder how many other girls A.J. had touched before I left the hotel. Well, he wasn’t a bad-looking guy, so I doubted if any of them minded too much.

“So what happens now?” I asked. “You aren’t going to turn me in to the Bureau, are you?”

Helen shook her head. “No. That wouldn’t help you, I’m afraid. We need to do something to help you, and turning you into the Bureau won’t help you at all. The first thing we need to do is get some of the more bothersome spells removed or at least lessened,” she said, ticking the points off on her fingers. “We also need to get you some clothes and ID. Once we’ve got all of that done, we can figure out what to do next.

“Now as for the spells, we need to get rid of that horrid accent of yours. You sound as if you were brought up on a tenant farm in Mississippi. Then we’ll try to get rid of that paranoia of yours.”

“I know I’m stuck as a girl,” I broke in, “but do you think there’s something that would make me...” My voice trailed off. I didn’t want to offend either A.J. or Helen.

To my surprise, Helen laughed, having already figured out what I was about to ask for. “Is there something to make you white again? Is that what you were going to ask?”

My face flushed. “I’m sorry, Helen. I don’t mean that the way it sounds.”

“There’s a way,” A.J. told us, but then he shook his head. “The problem is that multiple racial changes can set off a nasty melanoma that even magic can’t stop. A friend of mine had it done last year–black to white and back to black. The doctors have been cutting shit off his skin ever since. It wouldn’t be a very good idea to change back to white. Sorry.”

The way he was looking at my rather attractive body, I didn’t think he was sorry at all.

Helen put her hands on my shoulders. “Look, Robert, it’s not so bad. Being a woman can be a lot of fun. And as for being black, I wouldn’t want to be white even if someone offered to change me for free.”

One of the best things to come out of magic was the ability to change race, even given its drawbacks. Now, any black of reasonable means could change into a white if he or she truly desired it. The interesting thing was that few chose to do it, and there were even a few whites who chose to be black. Race doesn’t mean much when one has the ability to change it.

Unfortunately for me, I had no ability to change my race unless I wanted the almost-certain risk of cancer. It seemed I was to be stuck as a black, and there were still a fair number of people out there–many of them my parents’ age–who still looked down on blacks. But it was just something I’d have to learn to live with.

“Now let’s get a name for you,” Helen suggested. “You can’t be a Robert anymore.”

“I’m not in any mood to pick a girl’s name for myself,” I sighed. “Just pick one for me. Anything but Roberta, that is.”

To my surprise, the name she came up with was Cassandra.

“My mother was fascinated with the Iliad in college,” Helen explained. “That’s why she named me Helen.” She nodded at A.J. who looked embarrassed since he knew what was coming next. “A.J’s real name is Achilles.”

“That’s a cool name,” I said. I didn’t really think it was so hot, but I felt poor A.J. had already been embarrassed enough for one night. He brightened considerably and gave me a relieved smile.

“So I thought we’d carry on a family tradition and name you Cassandra–Cassie for short,” Helen went on. “That way, we can pass you off as our younger sister.”

I nodded. It wasn’t a bad name, and it had a bit more class than anything I might have come up with on the spur of the moment. Besides, since my own family had pretty much thrown me to the wolves, it made me feel almost as if I had been adopted by Helen and her brother.

Helen sent A.J. off to try to run down somebody named Papa Bob while hustling me off to get some new clothes. I was a little apprehensive about a shopping trip. First of all, I was concerned that I might be spotted, but Helen assured me that only the FBM was looking for me, and not everyone in the FBM knew I was really their boss’s son. All they knew was to look for a runaway–a black girl–who had information about a magical crime. The FBM was spread too thin to be scouring the shopping malls for me.

“And as far as anyone will know, you’re my younger sister,” Helen explained as she fussed with my inappropriate clothing to make me look a little more presentable. “You look to be about eighteen or so, so we’ll get you something appropriate.”

“I don’t want to look too feminine,” I cautioned.

She laughed at that. “Oh? And what would you call this tight dress and high heels you’re wearing–butch attire?”

I managed to blush a little at that. “It was the best disguise I could come up with,” I muttered.

“Well, it wouldn’t have worked,” she informed me. “Our agents had been told you might be trying to throw us off by wearing something very girly.”

I mentally kicked myself for not realizing that the Bureau wasn’t that naíve. FBM agents were taught to look beyond the obvious. I certainly wouldn’t need a disguise because they would probably see right through it. But that wasn’t the only reason to change my attire.

The other reason was that I no longer felt I needed to disguise myself by being more feminine in my appearance. A quick trip to the bathroom in the shop had confirmed for me that I no longer had anything which could be called male organs. I was both devastated and relieved. I was devastated because I had lost the last remaining proof that I had once been a white male, but I was also relieved that my transformation was over. I was no longer a sexual freak–externally at least. Maybe a few things were still rearranging themselves inside me, but from all appearances, I was one-hundred percent girl now.

Helen assured me we weren’t out to do any female bonding crap by cruising the local malls and trying on girlish outfits. Instead, out destination was to be a trusty Wal-Mart where I could get some functional clothing designed to fit my new body. “You’re cute enough already that I don’t want to draw any unnecessary attention to you,” she explained. “Besides, I never was much into dressing up Barbie dolls when I was a little girl and I don’t see any reason to start now.”

Her assurances relieved me, and good to her word, our shopping trip was efficient and thoughtful, concentrating on the essentials that would allow me to blend into the crowd as a normal, conventionally dressed teenage girl.

We had no sooner left Wal-Mart with a couple of sacks filled with new underwear and an extra pair of jeans with two matching tops when Helen’s cell phone rang. She spoke for a few seconds and turned to me as she hung up. “A.J.’s found Papa Bob. He lives not too far from here and can see us right now.”

I fidgeted with the new pair of jeans I was wearing. I had never realized that girl’s jeans were so tight, but then again, I had never experienced a pair of them from the inside. I kept feeling as if the denim was a coating of second skin since it clung so tightly to my ass and hips. And as for the feeling between my legs, I felt as if I was about to be sawed in half. If anything had remained of my male equipment, I would have been in excruciating pain by now. Add to that the problems my new breasts created for walking, swaying back and forth in their new bra, and I was sure I must be looking like some sort of drag queen. To my relief, though, no one seemed to take notice. “So exactly who is this Papa Bob?” I asked.

Helen looked thoughtful as we drove down Napoleon past stately but aging homes hidden in the twilight by huge oak trees. “Papa Bob is a houngan,” she said at last.

“A houngan?”

“It’s... sort of like a priest.”

My eyes narrowed. “You mean a Voodoo priest.”

Most of the tourists think Voodoo is something out of the past, but in New Orleans, we all knew it still flourished. Mama Juno wasn’t the only practitioner of the misunderstood religion. Most whites like me–or like I had been until recently–knew little about it, though. Good Catholics that most of us were, we had been taught from early childhood that Voodoo was evil. We all knew that the blacks knew more about it than we did, but it still surprised me that Helen was seeking aid from such a discredited corner. I had always considered Helen too intelligent to be taken in by some hokey pseudo-religion. But the way she seemed to have a great deal of respect for this Papa Bob made me wonder if she was a practitioner of it. I even got up the nerve to ask her about it.

“Me?” she laughed. “No, my family are all born and raised Methodist. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have respect for Papa Bob’s beliefs. I think you’ll understand more when you meet him.”

I had been expecting to find this Papa Bob in one of the squalid little homes in one of the poorer sections of the city, over next to the river near an industrial area. Instead, Helen pulled the car into the driveway of one of the stately homes just off Napoleon. The aging home was immaculately cared for, with fresh white paint on all of the wood trim and a brick exterior which had been cleaned recently. Large oak trees hid the spacious grounds from view, and early spring flowers bloomed in large, weed-less beds. Whoever Papa Bob was, he had money.

A figure hurried down the stairs of the large front porch, and it wasn’t until the lights of Helen’s car struck him that I realized it was A.J. To my amusement, he formally opened my car door and helped me out with an approving look. “Damn, girl, you clean up nice!”

I smiled, pleased in spite of myself. “I thought you’d prefer the slutty outfit you saw me in last night.”

“There’s nothing like a tight pair of jeans to show off a girl’s a... figure,” he recovered. I had to laugh, though. I knew he was about to say “ass,” and I had to admit that as tight as the jeans felt against my butt, he was probably right. I missed the baggy feel of men’s jeans, but I was starting to understand why women had opted for a tight fit over the butt. From the way A.J.’s eyes threatened to pop out of his head, I realized the way I was dressed was as sexy as if I had been wearing a short skirt.

I don’t want to give the impression that I was entirely pleased by his remark. To tell the truth, I was a little embarrassed. I wasn’t used to having a guy tell me I had a nice ass, even if he did clean up the remark a little. However, if I had to be a girl for the rest of my life, it didn’t hurt to be an attractive one. I had always been considered attractive when I was male, and giving up my gender and my race was as much of a sacrifice as I could tolerate. If being attractive meant I would be given appreciative–almost hungry–stares by men like A.J., it was a price I would have to learn to pay.

As we waited for someone to answer the door, I looked down at myself. In addition to the stylish but tight jeans, I wore a white knit sleeveless top. I was thankful that A. J. didn’t say anything about how the top showed off my breasts–because it did. According to my newest bra, I was a 36C, and I made a mental note not to get any more tops that showed them off as well as this one did. If I had been wearing heels instead of the very practical tennis shoes that were on my smaller feet, I would have probably stopped traffic. I would most certainly have stopped poor A.J.’s heart.

The door finally opened, and if I had been expecting an aging black butler or a Voodoo priest wearing a necklace of chicken bones, I would have been disappointed on both counts. The man who answered the door wore khaki Dockers and a dark blue polo shirt. His black skin looked firm and healthy, and if it hadn’t been for his short grey hair, I would have put him closer to thirty than to fifty (which I found out later was his actual age). He wore rimless glasses, and I recognized the frames as an expensive brand. Instead of a necklace of chicken bones, he wore an understated gold chain. He held out his hand to me. “You must be Cassandra. I’m Bob Monroe.”

I took his hand and felt his warm, firm handshake. “This isn’t what I expected,” I blurted out. I didn’t add that I recognized him once I saw him as a board member of a successful bank in the city, noted for financing businesses in the black community. I had actually been introduced to him at a luncheon I had attended with my father at the mayor’s invitation a couple of years earlier. Although I was sure he wouldn’t remember me, even if I looked like my normal self, I certainly remembered him. Bob Monroe was an impressive business leader, civic booster, and known philanthropist. Now, to the impressive list, I would have to add Voodoo priest.

He laughed, “Nobody does–at least nobody who comes here to see Papa Bob.” He uttered the last two words as if they were an ominous expression, his eyes theatrically wide, and laughed again.

“Most of the time, I’m just your typical everyday doctor,” he said as he led us into his study past antiques which would not have been out of place in my parents’ home.

“Don’t let his modesty fool you,” Helen warned me. “Bob is one of the top heart surgeons in the state.”

I couldn’t help it: I had a bizarre vision of Papa Bob pulling out a still-beating heart from a patient in a modern operating room while jungle drums beat out a frantic cadence. In any case, it seemed I would also have to add ‘prominent surgeon’ to that mental list of Papa Bob’s accomplishments.

When we were all seated his comfortable study, Papa Bob took a seat behind his desk, leaned forward with folded hands, and in his best professional demeanor asked, “Now what seems to be the problem?”

I didn’t have to say much as Helen explained at length what had happened to me. Papa Bob’s polite, professional interest turned to rapt attention as she explained the wide variety of spells that had been laid on me over the last few days. She then went on to explain the details of my escape from protective custody and my eventual rescue by A.J. I was thankful she knew nothing of the blowjob I had been forced to give Pierre. With two men in the room, I was embarrassed enough without having to admit I had been forced into oral sex with a bastard like Pierre Dubois–or any other man for that matter.

When Helen had finished, Papa Bob turned his attention to me. “Let’s see if I understand all of this. You were a man before? A man in his twenties?”

I nodded, not wanting to speak with my terrible accent.

“And you were white?”

I nodded again.

Papa Bob leaned back in his chair. “Amazing,” he muttered. “You look to be about sixteen–eighteen at the most. Yet according to Helen here, you are in your early twenties.”

“But rejuvenation isn’t possible,” A.J. pointed out.

Papa Bob smiled slyly at A.J. “You probably don’t remember, but before the Webster-Kline virus spread, most people would have said magic wasn’t possible. I can tell you, there has always been magic in the world. All Webster and Kline did was accidentally make it stronger. Right now, about the only things that aren’t possible with magic are the things we just haven’t figured out how to do yet.”

“Like turning me back into a man,” I commented sourly.

Papa Bob looked at me again with interest, ignoring for the moment my question. “The speech patterns, I assume, are the result of a spell.”

Flushing with embarrassment, I nodded again.

“Any other... changes–a drop in intelligence or sudden interest in men, for example?”

Fortunately, Helen helped out again. “He... she seems to have trouble reading. Also, although she seems as intelligent as before, she exhibits some serious paranoia. She thinks the FBM is out to get her.”

“Maybe they are,” Papa Bob returned. It was obvious from his frown that he had no love for the Bureau. The frown went away as suddenly as it had come as he asked once more in his professional manner, “Do you have any magical talents, Cassandra?”

“Uh... I’m not bad at TK,” I replied. Then I added, “Or at least I used to be pretty good at it.”

He nodded and placed a folded sheet of paper in front of me on his desk. “Demonstrate, please. Push the paper toward me.”

He obviously didn’t have much faith in my powers. I was able to move a piece of paper even before puberty enhanced my abilities. Still, I had to humor him. I pushed with my mind–a simple exercise for anyone who called himself a Pusher. To my consternation, though, the paper didn’t budge–not even a fraction of an inch. I tried again, a little harder, but nothing happened. It was as if I was unable to access the part of my mind which allowed me to think an object into motion. At last, I shook my head in defeat.

“I’m not surprised,” Papa Bob told me gently.

“I... I thought women could do magic better than men,” I said softly. The one hope I had held out for myself in the last few hours was that maybe my change of sex would increase my own powers. Now, even that hope had been dashed.

“That’s true–most of the time,” he answered, “but not all of the time. Some women are better at magic than men. Some older people–like me–have strong magical abilities in spite of the fact that we caught the virus well after puberty. Some people have multiple talents while others have none. There’s really no good generalization.

“Besides, I suspect your talents will return in a few days–maybe even stronger than before. You see, some spells can use a person’s inherent magical powers to enhance a curse–or in your case, multiple curses. Most of what has been done to you consists of ‘canned’ spells. Even the rejuvenation spell has been done before. All it really does is reset your cells to an earlier part of their life cycle. Since human cells regenerate about every seven years, the spell will shave on the average three or four years off a person, as it appears to have done to you.”

“A lot of people would pay a lot of money for that little spell,” A. J. speculated.

“True,” Papa Bob agreed, “if it always worked right. There’s a fifty-fifty chance it will actually accelerate one’s age, making the victim on the average four years older. In your case, Cassandra, you were just a little over twenty-one, so the spell managed to regress you to somewhere between sixteen and eighteen I would guess. The odds favored your becoming younger. If, on the other hand, you had been about twenty-three, the odds are greater you would have gained three or four years. Either way, there’s no guarantee, though. The spell has been around for a long time, but most people wouldn’t want to take a chance on paying anyone to make them older roughly half the time.”

“So what can you do for her?” Helen wanted to know.

Papa Bob walked around the desk and looked closely into my eyes. “I can’t make you into a man again, Cassandra,” he said quietly.

“I know,” I answered, just as quietly. I had already reached that dismal conclusion.

“I can, however, remove some of the ancillary spells–such as the speech pattern, the reading problem, and the paranoia.”

“And you use Voodoo to do this?” I asked warily.

He threw back his head with a hearty laugh. I looked helplessly at A.J. and Helen, but they were smiling as well. “What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Voodoo is something of a misnomer,” Papa Bob said, still chuckling. “Zombies and Voodoo dolls have some basis in fact, but for the most part, they’re Hollywood myths. Why most folks don’t even realize that zombies are really living creatures spelled to do another’s bidding. What I’ll be doing is nothing like Hollywood Voodoo. I will use Vodun discipline coupled with the type of magic you already are aware of.”

I shook my head. “Now I’m even more confused. What is Vodun?”

“Vodun is the true nature of Voodoo,” he explained. “It’s a religion whose roots go back nearly six thousand years and is practiced by over sixty million people around the world. Like you Christians, we believe in a supreme being, sainthood–which we call the Loa–the presence of a soul, and an afterlife.”

“But how does this help me?” I wanted to know. “I’m sorry, but as a good Catholic, I don’t think I’d visit my parish priest to remove any of these curses.”

Papa Bob grinned. “That’s because most good Christians denied magic to humans while at the same time attributing all miracles to God. We who practice Vodun are much more open to the concept of magic and sorcerers. That’s probably why we have so many strong practitioners of magic–even among those of us who contracted the virus well after puberty.

“Now, I’ll be happy to discuss my religion with you in more detail at another time. Right now, let’s see what we can do about removing some of these curses.”

A few minutes later, I found myself alone in the room with Papa Bob. To my irrational relief, I was happy to find that neither A.J. nor Helen were followers of Vodun, so they were asked to leave the room so that “the spirits were not unduly distressed.” I guess since I was the subject of all of this, the fact that I wasn’t a Vodun practitioner had no significance.

He had me stand in the center of the room while he slowly and carefully circled me, mumbling chants in some tongue I didn’t understand and lighting candles which he carefully placed at regular intervals in his path. I was, of course, stark naked for all of this, as was Papa Bob. I guess Hollywood had some of this Voodoo or Vodun figured out after all. Or maybe it was just that Hollywood never missed the opportunity to show a well-built girl in the nude.

Papa Bob would sometimes stop with all the chanting and reach out to touch me–nothing sexual, mind you, but authoritative touches on my shoulders, my lips, and the top of my head. Each time he did it, I felt an unexpected tingle throughout my body, and my mind became... clearer. He would look deeply into my eyes as my mind seemed to clear until he saw something he was looking for. Then, with a satisfied nod, he would begin his chanting again, moving around me in some purposeful pattern I could only guess at.

I hadn’t realized until his touches, exactly the extent of what had been done to me. I had understood from Papa Bob that my accent, my loss of reading skills, and my paranoia were all part of curses I had been given, but there were more than that. My disgust at what Pierre had made me do compounded tenfold, until the thought of having sex with a man became utterly repugnant. I began to wonder how I could have ever considered appealing to Jimmy Saxon, and how becoming one of his stable could ever have merited serious consideration.

Strangely enough, I was still objectively able to appreciate the male form in a part of my mind. Like it or not, I had the body of a young woman, and that body was producing hormones which saturated my female brain to the point that I had to at least consider the male form pleasing. But Papa Bob had apparently freed up my suppressed male thoughts, making me feel like an alien in my own body to even consider sex with a male–no matter how pleasing he might be. The problem was that I no longer found women sexually attractive–at least from a physical perspective. Was I doomed to be asexual, unable to become aroused by either males or females?

“You’re making me feel very uncomfortable,” I warned him, noting with some relief that my accent was now more cultured. The backwoods slur I had been forced to speak in was nearly gone, although I noted I still had a slight accent associated with even more educated blacks in the South.

“It can’t be helped,” Papa Bob said quietly as he continued to move around me. “I know what you are feeling. You find yourself no longer sexually attracted to women and completely repelled by men. Don’t worry: your male sexual orientation has been suppressed and is now making itself known, but this will pass. Your male prejudices against being attracted to males will lessen over time, but they were unnaturally suppressed by that damnable caplata.”

“Caplata?”

“An evil sorcerer,” he explained. “That is what Mama Juno is. I, by the way, am a houngan, so I practice only white magic. Quiet now: I’m not finished. If you disturb the Loa, you may end up worse off than when you came here.”

I remembered him saying that the Loa were like saints. Well, as a good Catholic, I wouldn’t want to piss off St Peter, no matter what form he took, so I decided it was best to shut up and let Papa Bob finish...

“Awaken!”

My eyes flew open. I felt momentarily confused. Looking down, I noticed as if for the first time my dark, full breasts with their prominent chocolate nipples. My slender hands groped between my legs, as if unconsciously searching for something that was no longer there. But I remembered everything–my transformation, my flight, my humiliation by Pierre, my rescue by Helen and A.J., though it all seemed like a bad dream. It was as if I had been changed from Robert Devereaux to my present state in an instant. The difference was that my mind had become clearer, more focused. My knees nearly gave out, and if Papa Bob hadn’t grabbed me by the arm, I think I would have collapsed on the floor.

“It will pass,” he assured me, guiding me to an overstuffed chair near the door. “The feeling of dislocation is normal once the spells have been removed. You will be able to think more clearly now.”

Yes, I could feel a clarity I had unconsciously been deprived of since my transformation had begun. I was still distressed by my new form, and still uncertain as to how to act, but at least I no longer felt as if I was a helpless pawn in a game I could barely understand. Despite my befuddlement, I now felt new resolve–resolve to end somehow the threats against me and get on with what would be a new life.

He helped me to a chair and left the room. Moments later, Helen returned, helping me get dressed. By the time I had regained my wits completely, we were all seated in the study as we had been before. I found myself wondering just how long A.J. had been in the room.

“I have done what I can for you,” Papa Bob told me. “Of course, you may find you want a small spell later on. Otherwise, it might still be difficult for you to accept your new sex and your new race. I can ease that burden should you wish it.”

I shook my head. “No. I’ll cope. I have to. If I’m going to look like this for the rest of my life, I’ll have to learn how to be a woman without any more magical spells forced on me.”

Papa Bob nodded in approval. “It’s a wise decision. While you will have some difficulties, I think you will succeed in the end.”

I turned to Helen. “So what happens now?”

Helen shrugged. “That’s up to you. You seem to be pretty well convinced your family won’t have anything to do with you.”

“Like this?” I laughed, motioning to myself. “My parents are strictly Old South. Now they don’t call folks who look like me ‘darkies’ anymore, or sell us off when they’re displeased, but there’s no way that they would ever accept me looking like this. After all, what would everyone at the country club say?”

“Ok,” Helen nodded. “You’ve made your point. So what will you do?”

I sighed, “Try to find a way to finish college, I guess. I’ll need to do something to earn a living.” It was a noble goal, I suppose, but I knew it wasn’t going to be that simple. With no support from my family and Mama Juno probably not finished with me, where could I go? Helen had agreed to provide me with identification, so I wouldn’t be a non-person strictly speaking, but I had no history. How could I finish college when Harvard had never even heard of a Cassandra Davis? I was on the verge of tears when Helen stepped in.

“I’ve pretty much agreed to adopt you as my little sister, so if you want, all you need to do is start your new life as if everything was normal,” she said, but I could tell she had more to say. I waited for her to continue. I knew that wasn’t the only course of action–or even the one that she was really recommending.

“Or,” she continued, “you can work with me and A.J. to find out why this was done to you.”

“You don’t think it was just revenge for what happened to Pierre?” A.J. asked.

Helen shook her head. “No, I don’t. I think Cassie here is still in danger. I’m just not sure what Mama Juno has in mind.”

“I agree,” I said, pleased to be able to speak without sounding as if I had just wandered out of the bayou. “If revenge was all Mama Juno wanted, Pierre would never have... visited me. It was too dangerous for him. If the FBM had been watching me, they might have decided to charge him with being an accessory to my transformation. No, he was there for a reason. He was trying to goad me into something else.”

“Like hooking up with Jimmy Saxon,” Helen prompted, looking a little embarrassed at her unfortunate choice of words.

I nodded though. “Precisely. Hooking was exactly what she had in mind for me. Her spells alienated me from the Bureau, forced me into a corner where I had no choices. I was like a runaway with no home to go back to. I had no home, no family, no friends–or so she thought. Out of desperation and with the paranoia spells on me, I’d be left with only one choice. I’d have to sell my body to have enough to eat.”

“Maybe someone paid Mama Juno to do this to you,” A.J. suggested.

The thought had crossed my mind. Alex appeared to have another man she preferred to Robert. If I was transformed into a woman, the engagement our families had wanted for years would be impossible. Alex would be free to marry someone else.

And for that matter, there was no love lost between me and my brothers. With me out of the way, Paul and Lance both stood to gain. Paul would now be the favored son, and Lance would move up in the pecking order as well.

Coming up with the money to hire Mama Juno wouldn’t be a problem for any of them, either. I didn’t know what the going rate would be to have one’s enemy changed into a girl, but in a town where murderers could be hired for less than the price of an economy car, it couldn’t be that much.

When I explained all of this, Helen asked me, “But do any of them really hate you?”

“I don’t think so,” I answered slowly. Maybe Paul did, but I always thought it was more envy of my position than hatred.

“Then why go to the trouble of turning you into a whore?” she asked.

No one seemed to have a good answer for that.

“We may never know,” I mused. “The only way to find out would be to let their plan work.”

Everyone looked at me in surprise. It was Helen who asked, “What do you mean?”

I almost told them to forget what I had said, but I felt in my heart I would have to forge ahead. After all, part of Mama Juno’s plans for me had been foiled, but it might be important enough for her to try again. Unless the mystery of why I had been transformed was solved, I would always be in danger as her target. She could always capture me again and put new spells on me, and the next time, there might be no one around to pull me out of the soup.

“I’ve got to go to Jimmy Saxon–just like Mama Juno wants.”

“No!” A.J. interjected. “Cassie, you can’t do that. Jimmy Saxon is a Whisperer and a pimp. He’s good at what he does–maybe the best. He’ll turn you into one of his street whores before you know what hit you.”

A.J. was so passionate in his argument, I felt a warm glow course through my body. Both A.J. and Helen had treated me more like family than my real family had. I was beginning to feel as if I really was their little sister.

I smiled at A.J. “Thanks for caring, but Jimmy Saxon is the next phase of Mama Juno’s plan.” I looked over at Papa Bob. “Is there anything you can do for me to protect me from a Whisperer?”

Papa Bob nodded. “I can protect you from his power, but only temporarily. If he suspects you aren’t submitting to his suggestions, he can turn up the intensity until he breaks through any protective spell. And you need to remember–Jimmy Saxon has more than just a Whisperer’s power. He’s a cruel man with a citywide reputation. He wouldn’t hesitate to hurt you if it serves his purpose. He might even decide to ‘break you in’ himself.”

“There’s got to be another way,” Helen added. “You’d be on your own with him. Let me work on some other leads.”

I shook my head. “Sorry, Helen, but you don’t have any other leads, do you?”

“Well...”

“This is the only way,” I concluded. “I’d rather see Jimmy Saxon on my schedule and not wait for Mama Juno to try to coerce me again. At least this time, with Papa Bob’s help, I can be ready for him.”

I tried to sound confident, and apparently succeeded. There were no more objections to my plan. I should have been happy, I suppose. My argument had carried the day. But how could I be happy when I was about to face one of the most dangerous men in the city?

Helen and A.J. worked on me the next morning. We all had stayed at Papa Bob’s house that night, and in the morning after breakfast, Papa Bob laid a ward on me that he guaranteed no Whisperer would notice, but it would make me immune for a time from Jimmy Saxon’s magic urgings.

“Just remember,” he cautioned, “the ward won’t last more than a few hours. If you can’t find out what you want to know in that few hours, you’ll have to give up and get away from him.”

“Exactly how long will it last?” I asked as Helen worked on my hair to give it a sufficiently ratty look.

Papa Bob just shook his head. “It varies from person to person. It also depends upon how strong your opponent is. I hear that this Saxon is a very, very strong Whisperer. Don’t depend on the ward lasting more than twelve hours.”

“What if I’m able to get away and have you put a new ward on me?”

“It won’t work,” he replied flatly. “If I try to extend the ward, he’ll see it and be able to overcome it. Just make sure you’re out of his hands in twelve hours to be safe. Do you hear me, girl?”

I nodded, still not used to being called “girl.” I only hoped that twelve hours would be enough time to find out what I needed to know.

Then A.J. retrieved the slutty clothing I had been wearing when he had found me, and he and Helen did their very best to make me look as if I had spent a night on the street in those impractical clothes. When they were satisfied that I looked suitably bedraggled, they drove me back to the Quarter, where I was to be dropped off a few blocks from Saxon’s place.

“It’s about four blocks from here,” A.J. told me, pointing in the general direction.

“Yeah, I know.”

“And don’t forget the accent.” A.J. had coached me on it all morning, making sure I sounded like the poor ignorant girl the spells had made me seem just hours before.

“Ah tink ah done got it,” I replied, sounding intentionally dull.

He smiled. “You could fool me.”

I smiled back. I just hoped I could fool Jimmy Saxon.

Then a serious expression crossed A.J.’s face. “You know, it’s not too late to back out of this. We can figure out another plan.”

I shook my head. “Thanks, A.J., but there’s no time. Saxon won’t be suspicious if it takes me a day to come to see him, but any longer than that would be hard to explain.” I patted him on his arm. “Don’t worry: I’ll be fine.” I smiled, but behind the smile, I was just as worried as he was. Before he could say anything else, I closed the car door and turned away toward Jimmy Saxon’s address.

My courage began to ebb as I made my way to Jimmy Saxon’s place. Although it was broad daylight, the section of town Saxon lived in was not the best in the city. Apologists might kindly call it the undeveloped portion of the Quarter, but realists would point out that the area was outside the designated boundaries of the Quarter in an area that had once housed small warehouses and seedy bars. The smell from rotting garbage and standing water resulting from inadequate storm sewers gave the area a pungent signature all its own. Yes, a few brave souls had begun buying up property on the edges of the area for redevelopment into lofts and trendy shops, but not much had been done yet, and the few pedestrians I saw looked as if they would cheerfully roll anyone for pocket change–even in broad daylight.

The fact that I was now an attractive young woman wearing rather suggestive clothing would have been enough to make any of them molest me if I had slowed down enough for their slow, drug-dulled minds to come after me. However my quick, purposeful walk was enough to keep most of them at bay. And the closer I got to Jimmy Saxon’s, the more reluctant even the burliest of them seemed to be to take a chance that I might be one of Saxon’s stable of whores.

As I listened to the rapid click of my heels, I began to wonder if my plan was flawed after all. It was easy to be brave when Helen, A.J. and Papa Bob were with me, but now, I was on my own.

Well, not quite on my own. Helen had seen to that. A small, magically- enhanced tracking device was wedged behind one of my molars. It would allow Helen to know where I was, but unfortunately, she would have no way of knowing what was happening to me. Listening devices were too vulnerable to both electronic and magical detection. I could be lying dead in the middle of Jimmy Saxon’s living room rug and the device would dutifully report my position as advertised with no hint as to what my condition was.

But I knew that I had to follow through with my plan. If I didn’t I’d never be safe from Mama Juno’s machinations. Whatever she had planned for me had to fail at great personal cost to her before she would decide to leave me alone. From my perspective, she had already done considerable damage to me. Instead of a rich white male, I was a penniless black female, but somehow, she had something even worse in mind for me. It was up to me to discover what that was.

I realized as I carefully walked up the steps to Saxon’s place that he would make me a whore. That was, after all, what he did for a living. I was prepared–or at least I thought I was prepared–to have sex with a man if that was what it took to uncover the rest of Mama Juno’s plan. Of course, I wouldn’t enjoy having sex with a man, and I really hoped I could find out what I needed to know before it came to that.

I also hoped Saxon wouldn’t demand an audition, but I was fairly sure he wouldn’t. After all, some men would pay well to break in a virgin, and Helen’s examination of me had determined that that was exactly what I now was. I just hoped and prayed that I would learn enough about their plans before some slimy john got a chance to plow into me.

The guy who answered the door would have seemed huge to me even if I hadn’t lost a few inches during my transformation. He was about forty, with a graying beard covering up a pock-marked face. He looked at me about the same way a small boy would look at a bug. “What do you want?” His voice was so deep it rumbled.

“J... Jimmy Saxon?”

He gave me a look as if to indicate that I had to be one dumb bitch if I thought an important man like Jimmy Saxon would stoop to answering his own door. “Why do you want to see him?”

“Uh... Pierre Dubois sent me,” I managed to tell him, trying my best to duplicate the accent the original spells had saddled me with. While I had to fake the accent, I didn’t have to fake being nervous. Staring at that mountain in a black shirt and slacks was enough to scare the crap out of me.

“Wait.” He slammed the door in my face. He could use some new people skills, I thought, but I doubted if part of his job assignment was making anybody–other than Jimmy Saxon–happy. In a few minutes, he was back, opening the door and motioning with a nod of his head that I was supposed to come in. His expression hadn’t changed, though. He still looked at me as if I was a dead bug on the bottom of his shoe.

The drawing room was appointed with expensive antiques and large sofas covered in red velvet. In all, the room looked like the drawing room of a wealthy nineteenth century aristocrat. Jimmy Saxon certainly lived well: I’ll give the bastard that. Of course, why shouldn’t he live well? He was one of the top pimps in the state. His client base probably read like a Who’s Who in Louisiana. His girls had a reputation for being top-drawer whores–and now I was to be one of them if Pierre Dubois had his way.

The world’s most intimidating doorman didn’t offer me a seat in Saxon’s well-appointed drawing room. In fact, he looked a little disturbed that my heels might leave marks on the Persian carpet. He indicated with a menacing stare that I should just stand there and wait, so that’s just what I did.

I didn’t have to wait long. Jimmy Saxon bustled into the room with a big friendly grin on his lips. He wasn’t a particularly large man–only about five ten or so–but he was well-muscled as was apparent from the tight fit of his black t-shirt. His hair bore the mark of a hundred dollar cut, and his beard was equally cared for. His skin was fairly light for a black man–the perfect shade to hobnob with both blacks and whites in the city.

I tried to imagine what an impression he’d make on some poor little runaway who had come to him as a last resort. I imagined the smile, the wardrobe, and the furnishings had convinced many a young woman that the profession she was about to enter was the epitome of gentility and taste. Of course once Saxon took them in, they would find themselves in a world where gentlemanly behavior was the exception and not the rule.

“Well look at you!” he said, taking my hands in his. The smile was still on his lips, but I noted a coldness in his deep brown eyes. He thought no more highly of women than the brute who answered the door: he was just better at hiding it. “You look beautiful.”

“Thank you,” I murmured, trying to sound both embarrassed and flattered at the same time.

“Pierre told me you’d be coming to see me,” he remarked, adding, “but I was rather expecting you yesterday. Why didn’t you come by and see me then? We were all worried about you.”

I was prepared for that one. “I... I just didn’t think I’d have to do anything like this. I just... sort of wandered around, hoping something else would turn up.”

His smile projected a false sympathy. “But nothing did: did it, darlin’?”

I shook my head and lowered my eyes. I even managed to squeeze out a couple of tears, and I suppose in my frustration, they were an honest expression of my new feminine emotions. I had never done any acting before, but it seemed to come easily to me. Maybe women are natural actresses.

“Well, don’t you worry...”

My senses were alert. Thanks to Papa Bob, I was temporarily immune to the Whisperer’s talent. Although that didn’t mean I felt nothing at all. Saxon was a powerful Whisperer. He had undoubtedly used his powers to great effect, convincing many a girl to work the streets for him over the years. When he told me not to worry, I could actually feel the impulse to follow his suggestion. It wasn’t just an assurance: it was a Whisper.

But part of a Whisperer’s power comes from catching his victim unaware. If a Whisperer’s victim recognizes what is happening to her, she can resist subtle suggestions such as the one Saxon had made. The problem was that if a Whisperer knew he was being blocked, he could always turn up the power. To prevent Saxon from seeing he had no influence over me, I had to play along, visibly relaxing myself. I tried to remember the relief I felt when Helen and A.J. explained to me that they were going to help me, or what I felt when Papa Bob removed my ridiculous accent. It was enough to physically relax my shoulders and give the illusion that I was following his Whisper.

It worked. Seeing me appear less tense, he moved on without attempting to reinforce the Whisper. “You’ll be a natural working with me,” he said. “I’m sure of it.” His facial expression became serious. “You know what business I’m in?” he asked softly, as if he was about to confide a family secret to me.

I just nodded, looking down at my feet in feminine embarrassment.

“Then you know how rewarding it can be to make men happy.” It was another Whisper, crashing over me like a wave over a seawall, but the wall held–barely, but it held. If I had not been protected by Papa Bob’s ward, I would by now have been deeply in Saxon’s grasp.

I nodded again, staring this time with unfocussed eyes at the wall beyond him. I didn’t want him reading my true emotions, but I couldn’t suppress a little shudder of pleasure at the thought, and realized at least some of his suggestions were seeping through. Resist, I told myself, resist...

Fortunately, I convinced him. He studied my face carefully until he was sure his subliminal commands had soaked in. “Let’s see what you look like. Take off those dirty clothes.”

I wasn’t anxious to stand naked in front of a weasel like Jimmy Saxon, but I had little choice. I mechanically removed my clothing, trying not to blush. At least given the color of my skin, I hoped he wouldn’t see me redden. The room was cool, and I realized to my dismay that my nipples were hardening just a little. Fortunately, that seemed only to make me seem even more of what he was looking for.

Saxon walked around me as I stood, unmoving. He would occasionally put an inspecting hand on me, gripping my ass and feeling the slimness of my arms as he grunted in approval. I had to just stand there, as if men had touched me hundreds of times before. One unexpected flinch and he might Whisper to me again. I wasn’t sure how much more of his magical talent I would be able to withstand.

Then came the moment I had been dreading. Standing before me, he reached down between my legs and probed gently between the folds of my labia.

Since my complete transformation, I had been reluctant to explore myself too much, as if by not touching my new sex, I could somehow make it go away, replacing it with my proper male organs. Now, someone else was touching me there, and it took all the fortitude I could muster to keep from shrinking away from his touch. To do so, however, might alert him that I was not under his spell, so I forced myself to remain still.

His touch was not exactly unpleasant, but neither was it pleasant. The times I had touched Alex or any other girl there, they were already as aroused as I had been. True, I was sensitive there, but not in a sexual sense. To be sexually aroused would have taken more than he would have been able to muster. I felt a pressure inside me, though, as if he had touched something which yielded only slightly.

“Ah, a virgin!” he remarked happily. “That’s perfect.”

I hadn’t really thought about that before Helen had performed a similar inspection. As a male, I was certainly no virgin, but I had never thought that my change of sex would involve a return to virginity. Saxon’s obvious pleasure did not bode well for me. I knew there were men who delighted in being the first for a girl, and some such men would pay very well for the privilege–particularly given that I had the appearance of a girl who might be no more than sixteen. It seemed somehow sleazier than most other forms of sex for money. It meant a girl would be robbed of her innocence for money rather than surrendering it for love. I felt saddened by the prospect.

But on the other hand, I reminded myself, that same virginity would probably be enough to protect me from a full audition for Jimmy. He would want me in pristine condition for my first customer–a customer both discerning enough to appreciate my virginity and wealthy enough to afford taking it from me.

Saxon beckoned for his gargantuan servant who heeded his master’s call without even a glance at me. “Take our new girl... Hmm. We can’t just keep calling you girl. I’ll have to think of a proper name for you. I think Samantha would be appropriate, don’t you? Anyhow, take Samantha here to see Muriel and have her prepare our girl here while I make a few calls.”

As I was led away, I was becoming quite sure that the first call he would make would be to my first customer. Events were in motion. I just hoped that I could continue to resist Saxon’s seductive commands when the main event started.

“Thank you, Lucien,” an attractive woman who appeared to be an exotic mixture of black and oriental said to my brutish guide. She was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, and I regretted very deeply the fact that I was no longer a man. I tried to imagine myself getting hard gazing on such loveliness, but my new body lacked the proper hardware to make that happen. Instead, I felt a most unmanly surge of something which might have been envy.

To take my mind off her, I tried to think about my hulking escort as he walked away leaving us alone. Lucien? I thought to myself. What a refined name for such a boorish creature! His mother must have had a strange sense of humor.

“I’m Muriel; please come with me,” the woman told me with a smile, taking my hand in hers. Fortunately, my mental defenses were up instantly. This delectable woman, wrapped in a tight, elegant cocktail dress of sparkling red, was a Whisperer nearly on a par with Saxon. I felt her command washing into my will, looking for cracks in my defenses as it bubbled through my consciousness. It made sense, I supposed. Some girls might be enticed by Saxon but slowly regain their self-control. However, if such girls handed off to Muriel, they would find the joys of prostitution continually reinforced. I began to wonder if my defenses would be enough to ward off both Whisperers at once. If I couldn’t, I just might become the good little whore they wanted me to be. I could only hope that neither of them suspected I was not completely in their control.

I let Muriel lead me through so many feminine beauty rituals that they made my short time in a beauty shop seem like nothing more elaborate than getting a man’s haircut. I was bathed (bubble bath, of course), massaged, styled, combed, painted, and in general pampered as if I were a tycoon’s spoiled daughter at a beauty spa. Then once Muriel was satisfied, I was poured into an iridescent blue dress which fit me like paint. But of course, the dress was just the outer wrapping. Underneath, I wore enough sexy underwear to make a Frederick’s of Hollywood model blush. Smokey black stockings showed off my legs, and the blue strappy shoes with their towering heels accentuated my ankles. A little jewelry, including hoops in my ears with a matching necklace dropping down to my ebony breasts and I was dressed to kill.

Looking at myself in the mirror was unsettling at best. I felt as if I wasn’t a real person, but rather a toy–an elaborate sexually charged black Barbie doll. Like all men–or in my case, former men–I had always enjoyed looking at women dressed and coiffed as elegantly and sexily as I now was, but to actually be such a woman left me feeling... exposed... vulnerable... helpless.

I couldn’t show my feelings, though. All the time that my mind churned, I had to maintain an unruffled exterior as Muriel used her Whisperer talent to keep me calm. I actually even managed to calm myself a bit, by pretending that this was nothing more than another disguise, although certainly one far more elaborate than I could have managed on my own. I could actually start to understand how some women enjoyed such attire. After all, a sexy woman dressed as I was could hold incredible power over most men.

It was that revelation that helped me to regain control of myself. Yes, I was weaker and more vulnerable, but I also had new power as well. I could use my very weakness and vulnerability to make men do my bidding. I might be physically weaker now, but I was stronger in a way that men could never imagine.

Suddenly, I could see Jimmy Saxon’s smiling image behind me in the mirror. He was looking intently at my ass, and I could almost hear him thinking that if it wasn’t for the bigger plans set for me, he would gladly deflower me himself. His gaze made its way up my nearly-bare back to my exposed shoulders.

I turned to face him, and nonchalantly, his eyes travelled up my body once again, this time from the front, lingering at my breasts and finally, reluctantly, reaching my eyes. “You turned out absolutely beautiful,” he said. I managed to give him a wan smile. It was probably the first truthful thing he had said to me that night.

Muriel joined Saxon, taking his arm and smiling. “She’s going to enjoy her new life, aren’t you, Samantha?”

It wasn’t really a question: it was another demand from a Whisperer. It seemed a little stronger than what I had experienced before, and I began to wonder worriedly if Papa Bob’s wards were starting to deteriorate already. In defense, I nodded, smiling, as if the words had soaked into my very being. If I could convince them I was already in their power, I wouldn’t have to fight off more verbal commands.

“We have something special prepared for you,” Saxon told me.

I’ll just bet you do, you slimy bastard, I thought to myself, but I managed to hide my thoughts with another demure if puzzled smile.

“He’s waiting for you now,” Saxon continued. “You’ll enjoy pleasing him. You’ll do everything he asks of you.”

The statements were delivered calmly, but they crashed over me like waves along a breakwater. More power to the shields, I told myself, thinking of all the old Star Trek reruns I had seen in my life. It actually seemed to work. Maybe Captain Kirk knew what he was doing. As Saxon continued to bombard me with Whispered instructions, I found I was able to ward them off. I did, however, remember everything I was being told, and most of it wasn’t exactly pleasant. Saxon certainly had big plans for me. As suspected, I was to be an ignorant little sex toy, virginal and naíve just as the client often requested. I now knew everything except the identity of the lucky man.

He and Muriel accompanied me to a waiting limo where Lucien held the rear door open for us before going around to the driver’s door. I was placed on a rear-facing seat with Saxon and Muriel sitting across from me. I braced myself, knowing still more Whispering attacks were planned. I wasn’t disappointed. Muriel reached out and took my hand as the car started. “Oh, you will enjoy yourself so much tonight.”

I could feel it as another Whispered command. They were going to keep reinforcing me all the way to my client’s location. What they had planned for me must be very, very important, I realized, or they wouldn’t be spending so much effort making sure that absolutely nothing went wrong. In a way, it gave me some relief. Earlier I had been concerned they might want to break me in first, but it appeared I was going to be taken immediately to the person I had been made for all along. Of course, as a virgin, I was undoubtedly worth far more.

I began to wonder who my client was to be. Was he the true mastermind of all of this? Or was he somehow as much a victim as I was? Or was he even a he? Whoever he or she was, the client would be a wealthy individual, willing to pay an obscene amount to deflower what appeared to be a girl well short of the age of consent. We were driving slowly into the heart of the Quarter, so I knew I wouldn’t have to wait long for an answer. There was no reason to drive deeper into the Quarter unless that was our final destination.

The windows of the limo were darkened, and one part of the Quarter looks much like any other part at night, but through the smoked glass, I could see the lit signs of little bars and restaurants I knew so well. From the route, I began to get an uneasy feeling that I knew what our final destination would be. I suppose after all that had happened to me, I shouldn’t have been surprised by it, but I was–just a little.

The limo stopped and Lucien came around to help me out of the car. His grin was nothing short of evil as he watched me struggle to rise from the car in a skin-tight skirt and comically high heels. He was watching my eyes, expecting shock when I noted my destination, and I tried not to disappoint him. Shock was not what I felt, though: I was instead overwhelmed in immense sorrow.

“Just a minute, Samantha,” Muriel called, pulling something from her purse. “This will make you absolutely irresistible,” she told me as she applied a little perfume in my cleavage. Since I suspected the perfume contained something–probably a magical compound–designed to heighten sexual interest, I was sure she was right. The question was: was it designed to heighten my interest, my client’s, or both?

“Come, my dear,” Muriel said, pulling me toward the red enamelled door with the familiar door knocker of a lion’s head in gold gleaming subtly in the dim street light. As Saxon watched from the limo, Muriel knocked on the door. She then turned to me, handed me a small handbag, and said in a Whisper, “Remember, do everything he tells you.”

At last, the door opened, and I was not at all surprised to see the leering face of my father.

“Come in,” he urged. “Come in.” He glanced furtively up and down the street to make certain no one had seen us enter, then closed the door behind us.

“This is Samantha,” Muriel introduced me, not bothering to introduce me to him in return. Of course, I hardly required an introduction to my own father, but he wouldn’t know that. As far as he was concerned, Muriel was simply showing good business manners by maintaining my father’s anonymity. Besides, as a lowly prostitute in the making, I would scarcely be important enough to know who my powerful client was.

My father smiled approvingly but with no sign of recognition. “You may call me Louis,” he said, using what I knew was his middle name. At least by his feeble ruse, it became obvious to me that he had no idea of my true identity. And why should he? I looked nothing like the young man who had been his son. I was a stranger–no, worse than a stranger. I was a tool. Unfortunately for my father, I was not to be the sort of tool he thought I was. I realized my father was about to become a victim of Mama Juno’s as well. That was, of course, the true reason for what had been done to me.

Muriel decided to take one more punch at me before she left. Staring me in the eyes as she held my hands–a trick Whisperers often used to heighten their power–she said, “Now remember what I said, Samantha, enjoy yourself and do everything... absolutely everything Louis asks you to do. Is that very clear?”

I stared vacantly as I nodded, and Muriel relaxed and smiled. “Then good night, Samantha.”

After my father had shown her out, he turned back to me. The look he favored me with was enough to sicken me. “Would you like something to drink?” he asked smoothly.

They gave us half an hour to be in bed together. I suppose they assumed that, being the gentleman he was, my father would not make me immediately strip off all of my clothes. No, I was to be given the illusion of a romantic evening with an older–slightly older, mind you–man. Then slowly, deliberately, he would begin to remove my dress, fondling me with a passion I’m sure he never mustered for my mother.

When they saw the lights go out, they were convinced we had been given enough time. It was then that they put a Pusher to work on the lock, prepared to tell anyone who asked about it later that the door had been standing open when they arrived. The Pusher was a real professional. The opening of the lock would have not disturbed a couple writhing passionately in the bed in the next room.

Then they attacked like a squad of Army Rangers, coordinated to the second as the darkened bedroom burst suddenly into light sufficient to make the images of the two people in bed together stand out in even the smallest television picture. Another high-ranking official was about to be caught in the act, embarrassed publicly and pulled from his high position.

“Director Devereaux!” a voice triumphantly called out the instant the lights were on so that the man rutting away on the young black woman would look up suddenly–right into the camera...

But the bed was empty, and no one answered his triumphant call.

“Over here,” a woman’s voice–my voice–called out in amusement.

The light swung toward me, nearly blinding me in the chair where I sat. “Would you mind turning that light off and turning on the overhead light?” I asked, allowing my irritation to show. “The switch is just there–on the wall.”

I heard a whispered conference go on for a moment, followed by the dowsing of the camera light and a more acceptable light glowing from the small chandelier. I could now see a cameraman holding a professional rig with ‘Fox 8’ emblazoned on the side. I recognized the man next to him as a reporter for that same station. I didn’t know the other man who stood confused, his digital still camera not aimed at anything in particular, but I was sure he was a representative of the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

“Are you aware that you are interrupting an ongoing FBM operations meeting?” I asked coldly as I demurely smoothed down my short skirt–to emphasize, of course, that I was still fully clothed. Of course, I had really been expecting them...

When Saxon and Muriel had dropped me off, it became quickly apparent what their plan really was. I had been transformed into a seemingly ignorant black girl who appeared to still be a minor because that was the look that would most appeal to my father.

My brothers and I had known for some time that my father used the town home for sexual liaisons. Perhaps even my mother suspected her husband was being unfaithful to her. That may have explained some of her drinking problem. But I’m sure none of us had any idea as to the nature of father’s proclivities. I had assumed–and I’m sure my brothers had as well–that father had a mistress, but I had envisioned a woman younger and more attractive than my mother, but from the same social set. Such relationships happened all the time among the elite of the city, and everyone just turned the other way.

But it seemed as if my father had a more unacceptable need that could only be satisfied with black girls not quite of a consenting age. Perhaps he saw himself to be like one of our slaveholding ancestors, privileged to choose a fine young virgin from among his slaves. Or perhaps the randy bastard just liked to dip his pen in black ink. Whatever the reason, Mama Juno had discovered what the rest of us either didn’t know or chose to ignore, and now I was being made to pay the price for my father’s failings.

As I stood before my father, my identity still completely unknown to him, I almost considered letting Mama Juno’s plan go on. Sure, I would lose my virginity–to my own father, no less–and the thought sickened me. And I certainly didn’t want to spread my legs for any man. But on the other hand, it would bring about his ruin, and once he was ruined, my life–such as it now was–would be mine once more. Mama Juno would have no further use for me once my father was ruined.

I had always held my father in high regard, and even after my transformation began, I thought he was hiding me to protect the name of the Bureau and all it stood for. Now, though, I realized for the first time that my father was nothing but a selfish, egotistical pervert for whom everyone was expendable and women were nothing more than toys for his warped amusement. He had faked my death and been willing to hide me away to protect himself.

But Mama Juno and her cohorts had somehow learned of my father’s sexual obsessions and had deliberately turned me into the perfect trap. They had waited for the right moment–for an excuse. When Pierre was arrested, they had the excuse they needed. They knew what my father would do about me: their plan depended upon it. If everything proceeded as planned, my father’s downfall would be on the evening news and headlines in tomorrow’s paper. He would be ruined, and Mama Juno’s biggest nemesis would have to resign in disgrace.

“Would you like something to drink?” my father repeated, completely oblivious to the danger before him.

If he had been any other man, I might have found his attempt to be suave laughable, but this was no laughing matter. This little play was a tragedy of Greek proportions. I quickly looked toward the window. The curtains had been drawn, thank God, so no one was snapping candid pictures of us just yet.

“No, I don’t want anything to drink,” I told him tersely, “and neither do you.”

A puzzled look crossed his face. Before he could speak, I went on, “Look, you’re in serious trouble here. You need to do what I say.”

He frowned, drawing himself up like the pompous ass I realized he was. “Now listen here, young lady...”

“I’m not a young lady, damn it,” I told him angrily. “I’m your son!”

His mouth flew open, and the drink glass he had in his hand fell to the carpeted floor with a thud.

“In a few minutes, someone is going to ‘discover’ us,” I went on, ignoring his shock. “When they do, they’ll want to look at this.” I showed him the handbag Muriel had given me, pretty sure of what I would find in it. I rummaged around in the small bag. Beyond a few feminine items such as a Tampon and a tube of lipstick, there was the one item I was looking for. It was an ID, encased in plastic, which declared me to be Samantha Sue Washington, a fifteen-year-old high school student from Baton Rouge. I handed the ID to my father.

“They told me you were eighteen,” he mumbled incredulously.

Maybe they did and maybe they didn’t, I thought. Frankly, I didn’t look eighteen, and I was sure he knew it. He must have suspected I might be younger than eighteen, but I didn’t think that would have mattered to him. The younger, the better.

“And that’s just the start of it,” I went on. “Pretty soon, they’ll find out there is no Samantha Sue Washington from Baton Rouge. Then they’ll get a tip that I’m really your transformed son.”

“But you’re a girl,” he muttered. “How could they find out you’re not a girl?”

“Didn’t you hear me?” I said. “It’s me–Robert. I’m your son damn it! Mama Juno did this to me herself. Her own son sent me to see Jimmy Saxon. You think they did all of this to me just to catch you with an underage girl? They could have found one out on the streets if that was all they wanted. Boffing a fifteen-year-old girl is bad enough, but if that fifteen-year-old girl is all that’s left of your son, you’ll be completely ruined.”

It was too much for him. He staggered back and fell into an ornate occasional chair. “Robert? But it can’t be...”

“You were going to hide me away,” I pressed proving my assertion. “You didn’t want anyone to know what had happened to me.”

He shook his head. “No, that’s not true. I was told there might be a cure. Then they told me you were dead.”

“I don’t believe you,” I retorted. If he had thought I was dead, I would have known. After all, was this his way of mourning the death of his son–by screwing a high school girl? He was a liar as well as a pervert and deserved to be ruined. But in the end, it wouldn’t matter what I thought of him. If Mama Juno wanted my father disgraced, that meant I wanted him protected. I couldn’t allow her to get away with her plan. She had ruined my life and this was the only way I could return the favor. I had to make my father understand.

“Look,” I said at last, “we can talk about all of that later. Right now, we need to make sure we’re not compromised. Here’s what we’re going to do...”

He was too shaken to argue with me. The first thing I did was hide the high school ID card in one of the books shelved in the living room. Then I threw the bag onto a couch. I ordered my father to move two chairs into the bedroom, far from each other. Then I baited the trap by turning off all of the lights and telling him to sit quietly and wait.

It almost hurt to see my father look so broken in the dim light that managed to spill in where the curtains didn’t quite meet. As we waited in silence in the darkened room, I could imagine the thoughts that were going through his head. He had been tricked and maneuvered into a trap which would have ruined his professional life if I hadn’t foiled the plan. Now, for the first time in our relationship, I was in charge, in spite of the fact that I had been transformed into a young black girl–an entity he would never have considered his equal. If it had not been for me, he would have been ruined. It must have been hard, knowing that the only way out of this ingenious trap was to do exactly what I told him to do.

Maybe he actually was remorseful as well. Our relationship as father and son had always been reasonably good–better than most, I suppose. If this transformation hadn’t happened to me, we might have continued to be reasonably close to each other. He probably missed that as much as I did. The difference was that if our positions had been reversed, I would never have abandoned him as he had me.

The waiting was straining. I was beginning to think I had miscalculated when at last, I heard the lock on the front door rattling under the direction of a Pusher. I smiled to myself, realizing with relief that I had guessed right. The end game was in sight.

Sitting there in the semidarkness, I was nearly blinded by the sudden camera lights, and they weren’t even aimed at me. The cameraman had gone for the bed first, mistaking the large pillows for the shape of a couple in bed...

“I’m waiting for an answer to my question,” I told the little raiding party, but I already had my answer in the eyes of the reporters. Instead of a rutting couple and a seamy story for the late news and morning headlines, they had barged in on two people, fully clothed sitting across the room from each other–and one of those two people was the Regional Director of the FBM. They were in deep shit and they knew it.

Still, I’ll give the reporter from the newspaper credit. He tried to bluff his way out of the situation by challenging me. “And who are you?” he demanded.

“She’s is my sister,” Helen’s voice called from the door. She pushed past the now-thoroughly confused reporters with A.J. trailing along behind her, trying to keep a nasty little smirk off his face.

Helen flipped out her ID with a practiced move and shoved it in the television reporter’s face. “My sister volunteered to act as a messenger for me by delivering some highly confidential information to the Director. Your dumb stunt just compromised the entire operation. Just what were you looking for anyway?”

Of course none of the men wanted to admit to this very aggressive and obviously pissed-off FBM field agent that they had been trying to catch her boss in bed with a minor. The newspaper reporter managed to stumble, “We had some... information about a... a...”

“Assignation?” Helen snapped. “Some sort of a sex orgy? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

A.J. stood beside me as he watched his sister work. I really thought he was going to blow everything by laughing, so I squeezed his hand to distract him. He looked down at me with a most un-brotherly interest, but at least he managed to hold back his laugh.

“We had a tip...” the newspaper reporter began.

“From whom?” Helen demanded.

“Uh... ma’am, you know we can’t give out that information.”

“Then get your butts out of here,” she growled. As they scrambled to leave, she called after them, “And don’t be surprised if your bosses get a call from Washington tomorrow!” If anything, they moved even quicker.

We all just sighed as they shut the door behind them. My father was the first to speak: “What was all that about?” he demanded, a measure of his dignity returning once the danger had presumably passed.

“Someone’s out to ruin you, father,” I told him again. I didn’t have to elaborate. In his position, he had made a number of enemies, but it had to be obvious to him that Mama Juno was the culprit.

“She’s right,” Helen concurred. “They knew what was going on here tonight–and they knew that the girl you’d be with was your son. If I hadn’t been so rough on them, they would have probably demanded to see your identification.”

“Which I have right here,” A.J. called out, displaying a women’s wallet he had been carrying in his pocket. That was why he had moved to my side–to pass me the forged identification if I needed it. He handed it to me with a grin.

“You... you really are Robert though?” my father asked incredulously.

I nodded. “At least I used to be. According to this ID, I’m now Cassandra May Davis.”

“Robert, I...”

“It’s Cassandra now,” I said coldly. It was hard for me to find much sympathy for him, and it was time to tell him that we were no longer family.

“We can work out the family reunion later,” Helen snapped. “Right now, we’ve got to figure out why Mama Juno wanted to ruin you, and we only have a few hours to figure it out.”

“Isn’t that obvious?” my father asked, recovering a little. “After all, I’ve done everything in my power to break up her operation.”

“True,” Helen admitted, “but what good would it do? Another Regional Director would be appointed and go after her operation. It has to be more than just ruining you, and if we don’t figure it out quickly, we may not get a chance to figure all of this out.”

I knew what she meant. The reporters probably wouldn’t go back to their source right away, and it was the source we really wanted. Mama Juno was lying low, so it was unlikely she had personally tipped the media. That meant there was someone in between who stood to gain from my father’s fall. We didn’t have very long to discuss the situation, though. By morning at the latest, our suspect would know that his or her plan went wrong just by looking at the paper. The suspect might choose to flee the city at once.

We left my father at his town home with instructions to remain there in seclusion until he heard from us. He was still so shaken that he offered no argument to our orders. He promised to go right to bed and get a full night’s sleep. We would contact him in the morning when it was safe to surface.

Helen was a little uncomfortable with the discussion as we walked back to her car. In spite of everything my father had done, she still felt some loyalty to him. A.J. didn’t know all the players, so he just listened to Helen and me.

“How about your girlfriend?” Helen asked pointedly.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. She had a chance to lead me to Saxon when I visited her and didn’t. The same is true of my brothers. I think I know who it might be, though, but I’d like to talk to Papa Bob first. He knows something I need to know.”

Helen looked surprised. “You think he knows something about the source?”

“I don’t think he would have any reason to know who the perpetrator is,” I admitted, “but I do think he can clear up the holes in my theory. If I’m right, I think I will know who the source is.”

“What do you need to ask him?” A.J. asked as we got into the car.

“Something about zombies,” I replied cryptically.

We sat in the darkened office–Helen, A.J. and I–sipping coffee and waiting. Our suspect was always on time, so we had arrived at the office about half an hour earlier. No one questioned us when we entered the New Orleans offices of the FBM. Helen had every right to be there, and relatives, such as her brother and sister, were always welcome.

Although the few morning people who had arrived early were polite and friendly, I found them to be less effusive than they had always been to me back when I was the boss’s son. That was to be expected, I suppose. Of course that didn’t mean I was treated badly: instead I was treated like who I appeared to be–the very attractive sister of one of their fellow agents. For the first time, though, I was glad I looked particularly young since although I was attractive, I also appeared to be jailbait. It probably kept a couple of potential Lotharios off my back.

I was quite nervous as I sat with Helen and A.J. in our suspect’s office. It still didn’t seem possible, but from my latest conversation with Papa Bob, I was pretty sure we knew who the traitor was. Helen and A.J. agreed, so there we were.

At exactly eight in the morning, the office door opened and the lights flicked on. The man who entered had a surprised look on his face, so I decided to break the ice.

“Hello, Uncle Avery.”

He squinted at me. “Robert? Is that you?”

I just nodded.

He smiled, ignoring A.J. and Helen. He had to know why we were there, but he decided to bluff it out. Still, I had known him for so many years, I could tell the smile was false, and I could almost feel the sweat developing behind the collar of his crisply-pressed dress shirt. “You know, we’ve all been really worried about you, boy. Your father and I have had everybody out looking for you.”

“Why?” I asked pointedly. “You knew where I was most of the time. How long have you been working for Mama Juno?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, boy,” he snorted, sitting behind his desk while he sat his briefcase on the floor and his cup of Starbuck’s on a coaster. “I haven’t been working for Mama Juno.”

“Yes, you have,” I countered, half rising from my chair. “You staged the raid on her son just to cover the real reason for changing me into... this. Helen checked. The raid was all your idea, so don’t bother to deny it. Then, you got him off by changing the drugs into flour. And it was you who reinforced my paranoia about my father and the Bureau, both magically and by making sure Lisa overheard you talking about moving me, causing me to run rather than being held captive.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “Well, boy, that all sounds convincing, except for one little detail: I don’t have an iota of magical ability in my body. There’s no way in the world I could have done all those magical things you’re talking about.”

I leaned forward, staring at him with piercing brown eyes. “Uncle Avery, do you know what a zombie is?”

He was unprepared for the question. He looked a little puzzled as he answered, “Sure. It’s one of them dead guys in the Voodoo movies.”

“Most people would agree with that,” I conceded, “but you and I both know zombies are living creatures who are able to do the bidding of others. It would be a simple matter for a Voudon priestess to prepare someone to be a conduit–a zombie, if you will–for others to use their magic through. That’s how you changed the drugs into flour. All you had to do was stand close to them while someone else performed the spell through your body. Presto! The drugs became flour. That wouldn’t even be a very difficult transformation, would it? It was the same with the paranoid spell. All you needed to do was stand next to me while someone else filled me with mistrust of the Bureau, causing me to run. And the plan was designed all along to make me run right to Jimmy Saxon. Tell me, Uncle Avery, did you channel a Whisperer to convince me I could trust Jimmy Saxon?”

“There’s no such thing as zombies,” he challenged me, but I could sense he was uncomfortable with what I had said. He knew what a zombie was–a real zombie, that is. “There’s nothing about them in any of our research.”

“But you know as I do that the research isn’t complete,” I pointed out. “Mystic societies who believe in magic have developed a number of attributes in line with their pre-WK beliefs. The Voudons would never tell the Bureau if they managed to perfect a zombie spell.”

The look on his face told me that I had been right.

“What makes you think you can prove that?” he ventured slowly, a concerned look crossing his face. He knew the answer before it could be given.

Helen answered for me. “It doesn’t matter if we can prove it or not. All that has to happen is for someone in power to believe her and your career in the Bureau is over.”

That really struck home. “No one would believe it,” he responded weakly.

“They just might,” I countered. “Here’s what I figure happened. You’ve been on Mama Juno’s payroll for a long, long time. At first, it was no big deal since the Bureau didn’t have much to do with Mama’s activities. Then, Mama Juno got into some of the businesses organized crime traditionally had, forcing the mob out with magical hardball tactics. When my father decided to focus on her crimes, you were already in her hip pocket, so you continued to help her, becoming even more important to her efforts.

“Lately, my father had her and her gang on the run. You used Pierre’s arrest as an excuse to kidnap and change me. Then, the plan was to make sure I ended up in his bed where the media would find me and ruin him. Just think of the scandal–the director’s son changed into a girl and deflowered by her own lecherous father.”

The man I had once called “Uncle” shook his head sadly, a gun suddenly in his hand. I had been so intent at watching his face that I hadn’t noticed him pulling the weapon from his pocket. “You’re too smart for your own good, Robert,” he said while motioning for Helen to surrender her own gun. She did so without an argument. “It was all pretty innocent at first. Mama Juno just wanted to know if the Bureau was investigating her or her people. For years, the answer was no, so I got paid pretty well just to tell her that we were no danger to her.”

“And then all that changed,” I prompted.

He nodded. “It changed big time as soon as your father decided he could make headlines out of going after Mama Juno. Since I was on her hook, I had to give her more and more information just to keep your father from damaging her operations. Then two things happened. Your father told me he was going to run for Governor next year and wanted me to be his Chief of Staff when he got elected. The second thing was that he started thinking a mole was in the Bureau since Mama Juno always seemed to be a step ahead of him.”

“But your father kept applying more resources to Mama Juno’s case,” Helen filled in. “He knew breaking Mama Juno’s gang would make him a shoo-in for Governor. If things kept on going that direction, it was only a matter of time until Avery was powerless to stop an investigation into his activities. He couldn’t fight the entire office.”

Avery nodded. “That’s right. But if your father could be eased out before any of that happened, there’d be no run for the governorship and most likely I’d be put in charge of this office.”

“Maybe for a little while,” I told him, “but not for long. Don’t you see, Un... err, Avery? You don’t have my father’s political connections or any magic power. You’d just be an interim manager until Director Harrington in Washington could bring in a replacement.”

Avery just shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve got more friends in high places than you give me credit for, boy–or should I say girl? Either way, I’d still be useful to Mama Juno, and she pays me very well these days. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth like you and your father were. Even if I couldn’t hold on to the directorship, I’d still have time to make sure everything I’ve earned was safely hidden offshore and forge a new identity someplace else.”

“So what are you going to do now?” A.J. asked. “Shoot us?”

Damn, I wished he wouldn’t give Avery any ideas.

Avery rose to his feet, the gun still trained on us. “No, I’m not a bad person–no matter what you think. I’m just hungry. I’m even sorry this was done to you, Robert. I even pleaded with Mama Juno to find another way to stop your father...”

He noticed the expression of disgust on my face and stopped his justifications. I suppose many people who find themselves on the wrong side of the law begin their criminal careers fairly innocently. Avery could have been one of them. After all, at first what was the harm? The Bureau wasn’t after Mama Juno, so the information he gave her meant little. But that was at first. Now his greed had left my life in shambles, and if Mama Juno’s plan he had assisted on had succeeded, it would have left even more lives devastated. He had betrayed the trust my father–and my entire family, for that matter–had placed in him in exchange for a bigger paycheck.

He straightened himself up to his full height and said, “However, all that about my being the Director is moot now. You all have spoiled all of that, so I guess it’s me who’s out. I’ll just have to make a run for it. Now I need the three of you to come with me. You won’t be harmed, but I just need to be sure you don’t blow the whistle on me before I have a chance to get away.” He motioned for us to stand.

He pressed a number on his cell phone as we slowly rose to our feet. In a few seconds, he had made arrangements–presumably with Mama Juno’s people–for a helicopter to meet us at the pad at the Superdome for a quick flight to Slidell Airport, a small suburban field where a plane would be waiting to take him to a safe destination.

“You may not want to harm us, Avery,” Helen pointed out, “but I don’t think your friends will be so magnanimous. What do you think is going to happen to us once you get on that helicopter?”

“Don’t worry: you’ll be safe,” he assured us, but there was little conviction in his voice.

Frankly, I wasn’t sure even Avery would be safe. He was of no further use to Mama Juno now, so why bother to protect him? If he was out of the way, he couldn’t be turned and rat out her and her gang. As Avery ordered his car brought around, I realized we were all in more danger the further we were taken from his office.

It was a shame, I thought to myself, that neither A.J. nor Helen had any powers that could be helpful. As an Empath, A.J.’s powers were of no use, and as a Whisperer, Helen’s chance of catching Avery off guard and susceptible to a command were nil. If I had my Pusher powers, I might be...

But wait. Papa Bob had said my powers might return a few days after my full transformation. Had they? It was worth taking a chance. Looking down from the barrel of Avery’s gun, I tried to visualize the other side of his desk. It was a large desk, with full drawers on both pedestals. I tried to visualize what the drawer just by his left leg might look like and pushed with all of my mind.

We had already turned and were heading toward the door when we heard the loud crash and the impotent curse as Avery’s gun went flying from his hand. We all turned back at once to see Avery sprawled on the ground, clutching one leg. Helen jumped for the gun, grabbing it before Avery was even aware it was gone. A.J. jumped Avery, throwing him on the carpeted floor, causing him to cry out in pain. Avery was no match for A.J. and didn’t even try to get up. I just slumped down into a chair, exhausted from the use of my power. That damned drawer had been heavy!

With my father holed up in his town home and Avery in custody, Sarah Carmichael was put in charge of the office for our debriefing. Sarah wanted a full rundown from me on everything that had happened to me once I was out of FBM custody. To be honest, I think she and the two agents assisting her were worried that I had told too many people about what Mama Juno had done to me. I had been around my father long enough to know that their primary concern was that too many people would find out just how powerful her spells really were, thus panicking the city. And, of course, that was just what Mama Juno had planned when she had Avery tip off the media about my father’s anticipated tryst with me. Not only would she remove my father from power, but the entire city would know that she was a force to be reckoned with.

They did look a little grim when I related my Whisperer-induced paranoia and ignorance. I guess the level of power used against me in those areas was greater than normal. Actually, I thought the suggestive power was probably made stronger by my disorientation at being changed into a black girl than by any unusual Whispering strength.

All in all, Helen, A.J. and I spent the better part of the day in debrief sessions. We were grilled separately and as a group, working right through lunch (although food was brought in for us). It was nearly four in the afternoon when Sarah checked her notes one more time and sighed, “Well, I think that about does it.”

“So what happens now?” I asked, concerned.

“What do you mean?” Sarah asked me, leaning back in the chair that had once been my father’s.

“I mean is there anything the Bureau can do for me, or do you just plan to shut me away somewhere so I can’t tell anyone.”

“I thought the Whispering spell that gave you paranoia had been removed,” Sarah pointed out with a faint smile.

I nodded. “It was, but as Henry Kissinger once said, sometimes someone really is out to get you. I don’t imagine the Director in Washington will want the general public to know anything about Mama Juno’s mojo.”

Sarah looked at the three of us. “Helen, you’re covered by law from repeating anything discussed today.”

Helen nodded nonchalantly.

“As for you and A.J.,” Sarah went on, “I think given your connections to the Bureau, the two of you can be trusted. As for you, Cassie, the IDs Helen made for you will stand up–especially once we’ve added a little meat to the bone in the database. We can even get your credits at Harvard put in your new name with no one outside of you and the Bureau being any the wiser. Of course, that assumes you’ll cooperate with us. Will you?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. I had already decided to take a decent offer if they extended it. This one didn’t look too bad. “I guess finishing school will have to be a top priority for me now. I won’t have the Devereaux money to fall back on anymore.”

Sarah grinned, “Don’t be too sure. We’ve been investigating your situation as well. Apparently part of your stipend was willed directly to you from your grandfather. Your father is aware of that and has made arrangements for it to be transferred to you.”

That was certainly welcome and unexpected news. Since I had grown up with money all around me, I had never spent much time thinking about where it came from. Now that I was no longer a Devereaux–partially by magic and partially by choice–I thought I would have to fend for myself entirely. Later, I found out that my grandfather had left me enough that I could expect to finish college without having to take a job waiting tables or taking out student loans.

“Where are you planning to finish school?” A.J. asked. He tried to be nonchalant, but I could tell he was hoping it would be Tulane.

“I haven’t decided yet,” I replied, equally nonchalant. Actually, I had pretty well decided on Tulane. With the Bureau’s influence, I’d have no trouble getting in. I was in my heart a Southern boy–girl now–and the thought of continuing my education in the frigid north held little appeal. I had only gone to Harvard at my father’s insistence, and now his influence over me was finished.

“What’s going to happen to Mama Juno?” I asked Sarah.

She shrugged. “First, we have to catch her. There are rumors she’s somewhere in the Caribbean but nothing has been confirmed.”

I nodded grimly. I wasn’t happy with the fact that the woman who had done all of this to me just to get at my father had walked away without a scratch. True, her criminal empire in New Orleans had been damaged, but it was still a potent force. And as for Pierre–I owed the little monster big time for what he had made me do.

Helen got to her feet. “If you’re finished with us, Sarah, I need to take Cassie here and get her some things. She’s going to be staying with me for a while.”

“Do you think I should stay with you guys, too?” A.J. asked hopefully. Helen had told me A.J. had his own place near the Tulane campus.

To my relief, Helen replied, “I don’t think so, A.J. We’ll be fine.”

A.J. just smiled sheepishly. Even though he wasn’t going to be staying with us, I had a hunch we’d be seeing quite a bit of him since he seemed to be more than a little attracted to me. Unfortunately for him, I just wasn’t ready for anything like a relationship. In my heart, I was still white and, more importantly, male. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to be able to consider myself anything else. I might never be able to overcome what had been done to me.

But never say never, I reminded myself as we left the FBM offices. I had lost my family but had gained a new one. I had been given a second shot at life and would have to make the best of being black, female, and appearing to be about sixteen (although my ID said I was nineteen). I had been victimized, but I had been able to overcome that, even damaging my tormentors in the process. Come to think about it, I had made more of an impact as a homeless young black girl than I had ever made as the scion of one of the Crescent City’s oldest and proudest families.

As Helen ushered me out of the office, I realized that my life wasn’t over–it was just beginning. I had college to finish, a career to think about, and as for any relationships with either male or female partners, a lot to think about.

Back out on the street, I saw men–white and black–look at me with approval as they smiled. I saw women who smiled and nodded at Helen and me, as if they knew us instead of just being women who shared with us what it meant to be women. I told myself that the only way I could make sure that Mama Juno had really lost was to get on with my life. After all, success is the best revenge.

And one way or the other, I was going to revenge myself upon Mama Juno.

But that’s a story for another day...

The End