"It's Dad or Mom," said Jonni. "Grandpa can't use it, you don't have it, and we're not going to give the stone to two 13 year olds. Can you ask them to send it back to me?"
Karyn shook her head. "Jon, they're in a hospital. They don't let you use cell phones in a hospital. I don't think you can anyway."
"Yeah," replied Jon, "but you gotta try. I got back here and we discovered we need to fix all these wishes... and we've been constantly interrupted. We try to fix a wish, something gets in the way, occasionally we can fix another wish in the process, something gets in the way again. Don't you think this has gone on for too long?"
Karyn pulled out her cell phone and called Liam, whose number was already in memory.
...
"It's a good thing Mom and Dad left the stone here," said Jonni.
"Huh?" said Karyn. "Liam just wished it back here. She didn't leave... Oh, I get it. You didn't hear the wish that sent the stone back here. Now he wants to talk to you." Karyn handed Jon the phone.
"Are you okay?" said Liam. "The stone got back to you okay?"
"Yes," replied Jon truthfully. "It's as if it never left."
"You're feeling okay, right? You're not going into labor or anything?"
"No, Mom," said Jonni, despite the masculine voice on the other end of the connection. "Say 'hello' and "I love you' to Dad, but I have to go, please? I feel like everything is all going to slip through my fingers if I don't do something about all these wishes. It's been one thing after another getting in the way."
"All right. Goodbye, Jon." She hadn't told Jon to wait for advice from his grandfather. They must still have issues.
Jonni closed the phone and handed it back to Karyn. "Here, Karyn. Here's your phone. Now, let me think, what's the most likely thing to interrupt me again? No, never mind. I don't want to jinx it. By the way, is the front door locked?" She nodded.
"Okay. First wish. I wish Karyn isn't in a sexual or romantic relationship with Liam. I don't need Grandpa's advice for that one. It's a side effect, it's not something anyone asked for, and there's no reason I can't reverse it. And this is the perfect time to fix it, since my sisters aren't here. The wish to make you 17 messed with their minds and I need to reverse it outside of their hearing to change it back."
"I ought to make sure that worked, anyway," said Karyn. Jon watched her open up the cell phone, hoping that nothing strange had happened. Finally Karyn said "It's okay. He-- your Mom-- isn't in here." She glanced over to her school papers, which she had dropped on Jon's desk. "By the way," she said, looking around, "I think this is your room."
Jonni looked around the room, familiar in some ways, but unfamiliar in others. "You're right. That's my desk, that's my TV... but a lot of things are different too, that stuffed animal was never in my room. I was changed in the same lab as everyone else, and it affected home for them, so it should have affected home for me, too. I was changed a little more later, but this should still be a girl's room. Was the picture okay?"
Karyn picked up the notebook and held it out to Jonni. "It's a 'Vampire Diaries' sticker now."
"Whew..." said Jonni. "Okay, next wish. I wish that Deidre is named Mindy again. That's another side effect."
"Do you want me to test that? You're in no condition to be running around the house."
"Sure, Karyn. We'd better."
Once Karyn had hunted down some school papers in Deidre's room to verify that her name was changed back, Jonni explained the next wish. "The amulet. I was going to make an amulet to transform people when you put it on."
"Do you wear it and transform someone else, or does the person who puts it on get transformed?"
"You know," said Jon, "I never thought about that. If the person who puts it on gets transformed, who controls it? If they control it, then we can't use it on someone who's unconscious, or a baby, or something like that. If they put it on and then someone else controls it, then you can have lots of people all controlling it in different ways at the same time. It'll have to be the wearer using it to transform other people. I wish I had such an amulet... without changing reality."
The amulet appeared in Jonni's lap, partly obscured by her bulging belly. She took it, put it on, and said "I hope I can figure out how to use this thing..." Trying to keep an image in her head, she concentrated.
"Your hair!" exclaimed Karyn. "It's like it was before. And I think your chest moved. You seem to look a little more like you."
"Not 'moved'," replied Jonni. "Shrunk. First I became a girl. After that I became a redhead with more curves. I just reversed that second part. It's not a dramatic difference, but it proves we can get rid of the effects of a wish with this. We can use this on Mom and Wendy. I was worried."
"Worried?"
"If you can reverse a wish by making an item that reverses it, you can reverse almost anything. Why even have limits if it's that easy to get around them?"
"Well, we basically did that with the mind transfer machine. Maybe it's, um, some kind of safety feature."
"Could be. Aaaaah!" Jonni clutched her stomach.
"What's wrong? Don't tell me..."
"This must be labor pains," said Jonni.
"But you said you were a month off!"
"I thought I was, but I forgot. DeMorrell wished that I would be as far along in my pregnancy as Grandpa. I can't be a month off."
Karyn reached for the stone. "We're getting you to the hospital...."
"That's great. We can use the stone to... No, don't!"
Karyn dropped the stone onto Jonni, like it was on fire.
"If Mom wished the stone back here, and you wish us to the hospital, the stone can't come with us. It would be reversing the wish that the stone come here. Call a cab or something. You can wish you called the cab already and they just got here. Take the stone and the amulet. Once we meet up with Mom and Wendy you can fix them with the amulet and change the records with the stone."
"Okay..."
"Three wishes," muttered Jonni as the cab drove towards the medical center.
"Three wishes?" said Karyn. "The stone has more than that."
"No, I mean I got to use three wishes before I was interrupted yet again...."
