... and grabbed for the stone.
Jonni's first instinct as Jon would have been to fight. But an 18 year old man fighting a pregnant girl was not exactly a fair fight. The only weapon she had was, fortunately, in her hand at the moment; she had enough presence of mind to say "I wish you'd stop".
Liam ignored the wish and wrested the stone from Jonni. He made a wish: "I wish that you and the stone were back with Lucius." Jonni was horrified when the idea of that wish sunk through her head. Everything they had done, all of their escape, gone, in a single moment.
The stone fell from Liam's hands. Jonni looked around herself. It was the familiar house, changed as before by months of her family living with wishes. She wasn't back with DeMorrell; she hadn't gone anywhere. "I don't understand..." she said, picking up the stone and holding it for Nora to look at. "Is this the real stone? It didn't do anything. And then it didn't do anything again."
"I believe it is," replied Nora. "It's not so hard to figure out what happened. Lucius left behind a wish: if your mother sees us with the stone, she takes it and wishes us back. You couldn't wish that she stop taking the stone, because it would contradict Lucius's wish."
"And us?" asked Jonni. "We're still here."
"That one isn't so hard either if you have a little experience with this stuff. The stone isn't a teleporter. You can wish that you're somewhere, but it's just like any other wish... with all the limits that wishes normally have. You wished us to this house. Wishing that we were back there would reverse that wish. I suppose it could have partly fulfilled the wish by sending only the stone back, or moving the house, but there's a limit to how far it'll go when it can't grant a wish normally.
"Now," she continued, "let's get started fixing things. Let's see. What else is changed, Liam?"
"Uhh... Jon's friend is an eight year old now. Wendy is a guy, Peter. Mindy wasn't affected but her name is Deidre for some reason. They're still almost identical, though I know opposite sex twins aren't really identical."
"It's because of all this shuffling of families. Probably in the new reality, 'Linda' had some relative by marriage named Mindy and couldn't reuse the name. Now, the fixes. I can think of one thing to do right off the bat."
"What's that?" asked Jonni.
She explained her plan to Jonnie.
"Really?" she replied. "I guess that does make sense. I wish that my dad is a golden retriever because DeMorrell used a mind-swap machine, like Nora is thinking of, and we have the machine and his original body."
The device was a simple pair of helmets, like one would see in any TV show or movie that used such a device, wired to a small switchbox. The body had appeared in a wheelchair, barking weakly but strapped down. Nora put one helmet on the body in the wheelchair and another on the dog. A button press and a minute later, the dog was barking and the man in the wheelchair was... a man.
"He'll be okay," said Nora, "and history should say was married to 'Linda'. And if not, we can wish that he is, and he was. Now, there's one more thing to do." She removed the helmet from Jonni's father (the dog had nearly thrown off its helmet anyway), tossed them aside, and pressed a button.
In a shower of sparks, the box began to fall apart, the wires beginning to smolder.
"We could have used that on Mom--" said Jonni.
"Yes, we could," said Nora. "To make that work, you had to create an innocent dog victim. If I fixed your mother the same way... there would be an innocent human victim who came into existence in the wish area, having been retroactively body-swapped for months, with no records and family outside, just so that we could get your mother back to normal. I'm not going to help you do that. And I hope you never would. That's something only people like DeMorrell would do. We've just got to think and find some other way."
"You're pretty smart," said Liam. Then a thought occurred to him. "You're very smart. In fact, you sound a lot like Dad. Could it be...?"
