Alan was not prepared for the unyielding presence of the breasts—two soft, buoyant domes pressing out against the fabric of his sister’s bra. He had seen Francis countless times in sleepwear, had mocked the push-up bras in her laundry pile, but none of it prepared him for the actual feeling of carrying this weight, the perpetual, delicate balancing act required to sit upright, or even breathe.
He staggered backward, arms clutching himself, feeling the unfamiliar contours of ribs and waist, an hourglass suggested more than imposed.
Was this how she had always felt inside her skin? As Francis, he could feel the shape of his nose, the playful tilt of his lips, the smooth weight of his hair.
He examined his hands—her hands—sleek, knuckleless, digits too graceful for the stumpy utilitarian tools he was used to. He bent them this way and that, watching the pink nails catch the sunlight, and shook his head in disbelief.
He padded barefoot to the closet and slid open the door. Sure, Francis had always gone on about her “aesthetic”—somewhere between cottagecore and Wednesday Addams—but the rainbow of sundresses, black lace, and combat boots filled him with a thrill that was both embarrassing and exhilarating. Alan (no, Francis, wasn’t that who he was now?) snatched a velvet-chokered dress and swirled into it. The zipper caught on his hip and he found himself giggling—gigging, really, a high, delighted cackle that didn’t sound like him at all, but very much like the sister he'd spent so long mocking for exactly this sort of thing. That made it even funnier, and he leaned back, paralyzed in the tight dress, clutching at his ribs.
He turned sideways, then back, then leaned in so close to the mirror their noses almost touched.
For a wild moment, Alan tried a few faces in the mirror—duck lips, flirty winks, a classic Francis eye-roll—and cracked up, delightedly horrified by how authentic they looked. This was really happening.
“My body now,” he declared to the empty room, “and I do what I want!” He twirled in the mirror, petticoats floating, then paused—there, behind his new face, was a ghost of Francis’s smile, haunting the reflection with a kind of pride. Alan startled himself by smiling back.
He thumbed through the Book—so much heavier than it looked, the pages slick with something like oil.
He wondered if he could somehow make these powers permanent. But would he have to become Francis for good to make it so?
There was a giddiness in the very thought—permanent power, a life where every locked cabinet, every closed door, every whispered secret was now his (her?) to unfold, to rewrite, to upend at whim. Alan traced the lines of his forearm, soft and strangely familiar, running his fingers down to the birthmark he’d seen a thousand times on his sister’s skin but only now felt from within. It raised the question that made his scalp tingle: Could this be forever? What if the thrill of Francis’s magic didn’t have to end? What if he could have it all—not just the body, but the actual soul of her, the secret engine of her powers?
He flopped onto the duvet—Francis’s favorite, all strawberries and black cats and pentagrams—and the Book settled against his belly, vibrating with a low, approachable hum. The next page had already peeled itself open to a spell in greasy violet ink: “To Reckon the True Soul.” The words had a pull, a suggestion, as if they’d always wanted to be read aloud in this very room, by this very voice. Alan licked his lips, and imagined the possibilities. If he could anchor himself here, make this body and its magic his for good, he’d never go back to being a nobody, a joke, the little brother tagging along behind two real witches.
But the longer he stared at the spell, the heavier the Book got, as if it was trying to warn him—every gain would demand a loss, every new thing would come at a price, each act of theft echoing across the lives it touched. Would Francis be left bodiless, a memory fading inside her own best friend? Would Stacy forgive him if she ever knew what he’d really done? Would he, Alan, be able to wake up every day in this perfect skin and not go insane from the knowledge that none of it was ever supposed to be his?
He couldn’t decide if that made the whole idea even more tempting.
Alan grinned, tongue between his teeth, and began to recite the words. The letters shifted on the page, swirling into Francis’s handwriting, curling around his mind like a snake. Even as he chanted, he sensed the magic rearranging things deeper than flesh, swapping allegiances, making edits to the story of who he was. It was exhilarating, terrifying, and impossible to stop.
And as the circles of power cinched tight around his heart, Alan thought: Hell, if I’m going to be stuck as the family fuck-up for the rest of my life, I might as well do it with style.
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