When I awoke, hours later, I was alone in the bed. I heard Stacy moving around in the kitchen and smelled dinner cooking. I briefly thought about the fact that I hadn't changed much at all on the inside, I was acting just the same way I have always acted. I felt no sudden impulse to become a homemaker, and I was a little sad when I thought about how I sometimes forgot little Alyssa even existed.

I was supposed to be her mother, the magic had made it so, yet I was so far from being a mother to her that I didn't even know where to start working on myself to actually become one. It seemed like those feelings didn't come with the body at all, else I should have had them, right?

In that respect, I felt I had failed miserably. I had failed at being a woman, at being a mother. But, since that was all I had now, didn't that make me a complete failure?

I tried to shake off these thoughts as I got up and joined Stacy in the kitchen, but she looked at me and realized something wasn't right.

“Penny for your thoughts,” she said to me.

“They're not even worth that much,” I said, and then sat down at the table and proceeded to pour it all out to her. All my feelings of inadequacy and fear and especially my feelings on having failed as a woman.

Stacy looked me in the eyes and gave me a hug and a kiss and said, “Don't feel bad, you are so much more than just a woman, and you will grow into that role as well as you handled everything else. I believe in you. I love you.”

I resolved to give womanhood another try after that and when I told Stacy, I was rewarded with an extra kiss. Stacy then had to take care of finishing dinner and I set the table, and then went into the living room to get Alyssa.

Alyssa wasn't at the table and I didn't see her anywhere else. From the corner of my eye, I noticed a bit of movement and as I turned to it I saw that it was the apartment door. It was open,

Alyssa was gone.

Sixty-eight

Stacy turned off the stove while I ran into the bedroom to get dressed. We reached the door at the same time and squeezed through, running along the upper floor walkway in opposite directions, calling Alyssa's name. We met at the bottom of the stairwells to the left and right of the entrance and looked at the building's entrance gate.

The last time the broken and rusted thing had locked properly must have been some time in the eighties, right now it stood fully open and locked in place by rust and years of disuse.

No one here owned enough to care and the landlord probably didn't even know. Now it presented a perfect exit for a little girl to toddle out of the building proper and into the great wide world beyond.

Stacy and I exchanged a worried look and we burst out of the gate and down the steps, looking up and down the street.

“I'll take the left,” Stacy said and swiftly headed left, towards Sunset Boulevard. I went right, towards Santa Monica Boulevard. While I was looking left and right, checking the spaces between parked cars and looking for open gates on other buildings, I also cast out magical feelers to try and pick up a trace of her. Adults with powers stood out like beacons in my mind, but Alyssa didn't show an energy signature yet.

I knew her well enough to feel her presence at short distances though, but I lacked the skills to find her by purely magical means, so I did what mothers have done since the beginning of time; I looked everywhere, feeling scared for my child. My child. I remembered my thoughts I had earlier and I realized that I did have feelings for Alyssa. Now that she had gone missing, I had feelings of fear for her and of despair.

When I reached the end of the block, I was terrified. Santa Monica Boulevard was a wide street with heavy traffic, sidewalks with moving people, shops with gaudy signs advertising “entertainment”. I knew that this was the place where gay men would meet; it was not the place I wanted my little girl to be.

I cast my net again, but I didn't feel even a tenuous contact, there was nothing at all. It was then that I realized that one of the people I felt around me, one of those with powers, was my Stacy. I reached out to her across the half mile that separated us and found that I could connect to her energy. I sent a tentative thought to her, hoping she could hear me, but I didn't receive any reply. No indication she even noticed me being there.

With this connection, just like the other one earlier, I had some perception of the person I was connected to. I was able to see a bit of her surroundings, she had reached Sunset Boulevard, which was also a wide, busy street with pedestrian traffic.

I broke the link and concentrated on my own surroundings, I had to make a choice which way to go. Head right, towards La Cienega and the major intersection there, or left towards downtown. I cast out for Alyssa again, but I didn't find any trace of her.

I chose to go right, on an impulse, heading down the sidewalk towards the big intersection, my fear rising.

Sixty-nine

Suddenly, a thought struck me, and I turned around to head back to the apartment. I tried to contact Stacy again, trying to send a thought of returning home immediately. I didn't know if she could read what I was sending, but she didn't answer, so I put it out of my mind and tried to walk even faster.

When I reached the apartment, I realized I had not taken my purse with me; I had no keys. I did have the unlock spell in my memory, so I canceled the wards and used it on the door, which clicked open without complaint.

I headed straight to the bookshelves, remembering precisely the book I needed. What I needed was a so called “Vision Spell,” a spell that would let me see what had happened in the near past.

Stacy hadn't shown up, so she had probably not been able to receive my thoughts. I took the book and cast the vision spell, and the air shimmered for a moment as ghostly images from the past were superimposed on the real images of the present.

I watched little Alyssa getting up from the floor and walk around, then, as was her habit, trying the doorknob. She wasn't strong enough to twist it, but this time the door wasn't latched and opened easily under her touch.

She went outside and I followed, watching her run around back and forth on the balcony, then she went down the nearside stairs to the building's ground floor. I had a sinking feeling when I watched her play around the empty pool, an unsecured great hole in the courtyard, then she turned around and passed the gate to the street, heading down the steps.

I followed the vision of her down to Santa Monica Boulevard, turning left where I had chosen right. She walked down the street, looking wide-eyed at the sights that were to be seen there. My heart nearly stopped as I thought she would run out into traffic, and then she turned back to the safe sidewalk.

I noticed one of the shadowy figures looking at Alyssa oddly, and then she pulled out a phone and made a brief call. I lost sight of her as Alyssa went on, down Santa Monica Boulevard towards the far away downtown area.

A black van with a sliding door pulled up to the curb a little ways ahead. When Alyssa reached the van, the door opened and gloved hands grabbed hold of her, pulling her inside the van. I screamed in fear, making the people around me, the real people, give me concerned looks before moving on. In my vision, the van's door closed and it sped up the street, and, looking behind, I saw it stop briefly and collect the woman with the phone. Then it headed up the street and vanished in the distance. I pulled out my phone and quickly typed in the license plate of the van. I didn't know what to do with it, but I did, just in case.

Fear filled me as I raced for home, casting out for Stacy's presence while I did. I sensed her close to home and I ran faster, wanting to waste no time. Stacy and I reached the building almost at the same time and I pulled her close, between the sobs that had now started wracking my body I told her what I had done and seen.

We held each other for a moment, and then we went inside the building and into our home.

End of part seventeen