Shannon O'Reilly was bullied and everything his older sister wasn't. When his sister Sarah gives him a chance to change things through a single wish things don't go as planned.     I Wish: Book 4 Chapter 8 Lisa By Amethyst

It was Lisa at the door, no doubt about it. She had been the last person I was expecting since it was her that we were trying to rescue. I grabbed Ziralin and Ellie and quickly ushered them up the stairs while one of the Sorority sisters was still talking to her at the door. As soon as we were upstairs I pulled them with me into Kari’s room. “Okay, new plan. Do you two remember what Lily and Danica looked like?”

“Ugh, I don’t think I’ll ever forget,” Ellie said with a shudder, looking like she was going to get sick again. Ziralin nodded grimly in agreement.

“Okay, I need you two to make yourselves look like them. Ellie glam me up as much like Kari as you can remember, give me a succubus makeover. If you can’t remember what she looks like just make me look Asian and inhumanly gorgeous. I doubt that Khinara gave Lisa much more than a brief description. Go downstairs, like nothing is wrong, and offer to bring her up to see Kari like good little succu-puppets. Then we’ll play it by ear.”

The pair of Fae quickly changed up our glamours and then left the room to go downstairs and retrieve our ‘guest’. I was a little worried since all that I knew was that Lisa had a Brand. That told me nothing about the actual nature of the curse or abilities that Khinara had given Lisa. Demon Brands are largely dependent on the intent of the Demon casting them. Just because the Vampire we encountered used hers to make obedient little Vampires who could blend in as human didn’t mean that Khinara would do the same. I had also felt that Lisa’s brand was active. If she was hiding in a human form like Laramie when I had first sensed his brand it would have been a lot harder to detect. The fact that she still looked human and the same as before probably meant that Khinara had imbued the brand with some ability or curse.

As I thought and waited I decided to try to get into my role. From what I had seen of Kari she was conceited, power-hungry, and wary of other Demons. She wouldn’t take on another Demon head-on but rather play along and wait to stab them in the back later. I also quickly sent a quick text to both Sarah and Jennifer. -Found Lisa @ Alpha Kappa Phi. Branded.-

I had barely managed to put my phone back in my purse when I heard voices through the door. Lily’s voice was laughing nervously. “What can I say, Alpha Kappa Phi party hard.”

“Yeah, that’s my room,” Danica’s voice admitted. “I got a little excitable with one of my meals.” Shit, I should have thought about the damn door that Ziralin had knocked off the hinges and into the hallway. At least it was covering the pile of ash that was all that remained of the room’s actual former occupant. “Anyway, Kari is waiting for you.”

The door opened and I did my best to look imperious as Lisa walked in, flanked by ‘Lily’ and ‘Danica’. I gave my very best indignant snort. “So you’re Khinara’s new minion of the day? If she’s going to check on my progress she could at least come in person.”

“You call this progress? She said you were supposed to be making her a small army of Succubae, but I only see the three of you. Some of those girls downstairs are pretty but they obviously haven’t been turned yet. They’re nothing like you three.” Well, that was one question answered, she couldn’t seem to sense the magick of our glamours or see through them. That, or she couldn’t identify them due to inexperience and thought that the glamours were what Succubus magick felt like.

“I’m working on it!” I snapped pseudo-haughtily as I tried to mentally come up with excuses and plans that Kari would use. “It’s going to take time since I need to make each of them drink the potion with my blood. I can’t exactly slip it into their breakfast unnoticed and my powers of seduction won’t work on most of the girls here, they’re straight. Putting it into the punch bowl would just dilute the potion and make it useless too, so I have to be subtle, have you ever heard of that?! I have seen a few potentials tonight though and I’m working on them, some girl named Kiley and her friends. They’re very eager to join us. I’d be doing that now but I was stuck waiting for you to show up! I also plan on making all of the Pledges drink the potion as part of their initiation, it’ll be easy now that I have control over Danica and Lily.”

“Fine, I don’t care. I wasn’t sent to report your progress to Khinara, just to warn you that some Faery, Celestials, and a Witch might come for you. So you’re supposed to keep a low profile, ” Lisa barked. If there was one thing she didn’t like it was being out-bitched. Then her eyes lit up as her frown turned into a smile. “If you need lesbos though, I may have just the girls for you.”

I had a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach that I knew exactly which girls she might be talking about, but I needed to keep playing my part. “Fine, if they’ll be useful, but you’d better not be wasting my time.”

Lisa was smiling like a shark. “One is named Shannon O’Reilly. You can’t miss her, she’s the redheaded teenage bitch on billboards all over the city. The other will be the jock-chick with the short black hair hanging off her arm that claims to be her assistant. I know what she’s assisting the little bitch with. I get her little blonde cousin with the big mouth though, and once you’ve turned Shannon I want her under my control until I get tired of her.”

Danica’s face contorted in fury while Lily looked sick. I wasn’t sure if I could keep Ziralin from killing her then and there with how angry she was. I tried to remain calm and send that calmness to my Familiar as I carefully controlled my own nausea and anger to retort, “You don’t get to tell me who I can and can’t turn or what is to be done with them!”

“I already promised the blonde to Khinara. I need to give her a meal to replace me. I’m not going through that again and I wanted to make the other two suffer myself,” Lisa spat.

“Tell me where Khinara is and I’ll take this up with her,” I said. I was torn between trying to find a way to save Lisa, wanting to kill her, and wanting to find Khinara to put an end to all of this.

“No, Khinara doesn’t want to be bothered while she’s searching for her little Witch and friends. I don’t know where she is anyway, she sent me here and said that she would come to find me for her promised meal once she’s finished with the Witch. If you don’t want to do things my way then I’ll just have to make them suffer on my own.” A blood-chilling smile lit up her face as a small blue ball of fire appeared in her hand. I could feel the cold and sickening feel of her magick even as she summoned it. “And Khinara promised that the more I make people suffer, the more my power will grow.”

Well, shit. Khinara had used the Brand to make her into a goddamned Sorceress, and now she wanted to make me suffer for some reason. If we didn’t deal with her now, then I and everyone close to me would have to constantly watch over our shoulders for a crazed magick user. I reached out with my magick senses as I tried to keep her talking. “Obsessive much? What did some little human do to you to make you hate her so much?”

“She made me want her,” she spat. “And she saw things about me that I didn’t see myself and I hated her for it. I hated myself for it. So I got angry and tried to make her as miserable as was. Through it all, I wanted her but she’s always with her girlfriend and even if I did try to talk to her why would she be interested in me after what I’ve done? Then the blonde had to go rub their happiness in my face. I’m going to make them all suffer, and one way or another I’ll make Shannon mine. If you’re not going to help me then stay the fuck out of my way.”

As much as she had made me uncomfortable, I had never really taken the time to think about how she might see things. I felt bad for that, but she knew that what she was doing was wrong while she was doing it. I may not be able to get rid of the brand, but maybe I could seal her magick as I had with Ewen. I tried to give a typical Demon response while I probed for more information. “I’m not saying that I won’t help you, I just want to know what’s in it for me. Is magick the only gift that she gave you?”

Lisa twirled a strand of her blonde hair around her finger as she thought and then shrugged. “Okay, I can totally get that. If you help me get what I want I’ll help you get what you want, new recruits. Khinara told me that magick is all I need to get what I want, as long as I use it creatively.”

“Yes, it is,” I agreed with a smile as I focused on the magick within her and sealed it with a silent spell.

“Wha…” Lisa uttered in confusion as the blue ball of flame in her hand evaporated.

“It’s called using magick creatively,” I said with a grin. Then pushing my gathered magical energy toward her once again I commanded, “Sleep.”

As soon as Lisa fell into Ziralin’s waiting arms I pulled out my phone, checking for return texts from Jennifer or Sarah, but finding none I just texted again. -Got Lisa but it’s complicated. Bringing her home.-

I had to cast an obtusification spell over all of us before we could go back downstairs since we would look pretty suspicious if we walked through the gathering of young women and then across campus with Ziralin carrying Lisa slung over her shoulder. For the next ten minutes, people would be less likely to notice us and if they happened to look directly at us their gaze would just slide on past us and they would forget seeing us in the first place a moment later. Soon we were in my car and driving through the snowy streets toward home.

None of us spoke much during the drive, I think that all three of us were all trying not to think about what we had been through, and while trying to avoid thinking about it, of course we couldn’t help but think about it. The silence was broken halfway home as my cell phone rang. Seeing that it was Sarah, I quickly swiped to accept the call. “Hey Sis, we should be home soon. You may need to work your mind magick on Lisa. Things were a little complicated.”

“Annie and I are on our way home now,” she replied. “Sorry we couldn’t get back to you sooner but we were dealing with a huge nest of werewolves and it took a while. I think the Demons are trying to increase their numbers by turning Humans to their side. We didn’t get anything on where Khinara is hiding out though.”

“Umm yeah we ran into a Succubus who was trying to use a sorority to do the same thing, she already turned two of their leading members. None had a clue where Khinara is, not even Lisa, and she was playing messenger girl.” I said, trying to keep the emotions from my voice.

I guess that I wasn’t all that successful because she quickly asked, “Are you all okay, Shannon?”

“Yeah, we’re… uhm… fine,” I lied. “It was just a long night. Khinara gave Lisa a Demon Brand to make her a sorceress, but I think that I’ve sealed her magick, so maybe we can get Lisa back to whatever passes for normal for her. We’ll see you soon.”

Lying, changing the subject, and cutting a conversation short. Three things I never liked to do with my sister, but I didn’t want to worry her and we all needed to process what we had gone through. Besides, admitting what had happened would have been humiliating for all three of us. I already felt dirty, violated, and sickened that I had wanted it so badly. That was the worst part, I had wanted it. That I had been oh-so-eager to please her and for her to take something that I was saving for Ziralin. In my heart, I also knew that I was to blame, we had all suffered because I wasn’t smart enough to see the signs and once I had, I had let Kari whammy me like some love-struck bimbo. I guess that I didn’t want Sarah and the others blaming me too. If I hadn’t touched her with my platinum hand flowers… I couldn’t finish that thought, it would only hasten the breakdown that I knew was coming.

It was almost one-thirty by the time we got home and Annie and Sarah were waiting for us. I was a bit concerned that Jennifer and Mason were nowhere to be seen, but Sarah quickly told us. “Jennifer and Mason left a note for us. They took out the Demons on their list, but their phones got fried when one of them tried to electrocute them with a lightning spell. They’d be here, but they had to hurry to get home before their midnight curfews.”

We explained to Sarah and Annie about our hunts and unfortunately, they insisted on hearing the entire story of what happened at the sorority house. By the end of it, Ziralin, Ellie, and I all had the mental breakdowns that we had been trying to hold off since our encounter with the Succubae. They held us as we let it all out and once we were merely sniffling and sobbing rather than outright freaking out Annie ordered, “Girls look at me.”

I turned my head to look at my sister’s tiny Chinese girlfriend and saw Ziralin and Ellie doing the same. She had a serious expression on her face as she spoke again. “I know what it feels like to have someone have that kind of control over you, making you do and feel things that aren’t real. Ziralin and Shannon, you saved me from him when things could have gotten a lot worse. It could have gone a lot worse for you too, but you got control of the situation when it mattered. I know that that isn’t much condolence, believe me, I know, but it is true. What you were feeling wasn’t you, it was them manipulating you and you did nothing to deserve it nor are you to blame for it. Don’t hate yourself for that, place that blame and hate where they belong, on those who took advantage of you.”

If anyone knew what we were going through, it was Annie. She told us what we needed to hear and how she had managed to cope after her ordeal. It didn’t really make us feel better, but it did give us something else to think about. Once she was done she offered to drive Ziralin home, since she didn’t think that my Fae girlfriend should be driving in her current state, especially with all the snow out there. Once she had dropped off Ziralin and my car she would return home by flying in her Celestial form. Once they had left Sarah ushered Ellie and me to our bedroom and put us to bed.

“I should help you with Lisa,” I protested weakly as she tucked me in like Mom used to do when I was little and kissed me on the forehead.

She shook her head, looking away for a moment, but I still saw her sadness and guilt. “No, it’s already late and you have school in the morning. Besides, I have questions for her and I don’t think that you need to hear some of the answers to those right now. After that’s done I’ll take away her memories of everything since Khinara captured her and then I’ll fly her to a hospital or something so she can be found. If either of you wakes up or needs anything Annie or I will be here as soon as you call.”

As she spoke I wondered what she had to feel guilty over. But then I remembered that she had chosen the assignments for the evening. As she walked away I took her hand in mind. “Sis, please don’t blame yourself. None of us had any idea what we would be facing, it could have just as easily been you and Annie who faced them and you would have both been affected just as much as we were. Annie was right, we need to place that blame where it belongs, and it’s not on you. There’s only one thing that I could ever blame you for and that’s making my life better in every possible way. We’ll get through this, but I need you to be there for me like you always are because we’ve always been stronger together.”

Sarah wiped at her eyes and came back to hug me one more time. “I love you, Sis. I will always be there for you, no matter how, where, or why you need me. That goes for you too Ellie, you’re part of this family now too and no matter what, we stick together.” She hugged Ellie again as well and then left to deal with Lisa, leaving Ellie and me alone to try to find sleep that I didn’t think would ever come for either of us.