Zoe took a deep breath. This next wish was a doozy. If it came out right she would be able to prove to Athena that she now had access to real magic - - not that stupid wiccan crap they sometimes played around with. Not ouija boards and Tarot cards. Real magic, the power to change things. "I wish for the power to change my form and appearance in any way I can imagine, big, small, man, woman, animal, plant, mineral, old, young, whatever, and back again at will."
Zoe had already run afoul of the stone's tendency to irrevocably alter the target of a wish. She didn't want to end up stuck as a rock or a toaster or something the same way she had accidentally turned Otto, the old family dog, into Lucifer, a big black cat in the prime of life. Not that it wasn't an improvement. Lucifer was cool and Zoe had always wanted a cat, but it had been a shock to realize the old irish setter was gone never to return. Sad, yes, but also a lucky warning in Zoe's book.
Zoe felt the now familiar compulsion to avert her gaze from the stone. When she looked upon it once more she didn't feel particularly different. Looking down at the hand still holding the stone she imagined her nails becoming longer, curved and black and razor sharp, the fingers themselves longer and spider-like. A brief second behind the thought came the reality. Her hand began to shift and flow to conform to image she had envisioned.
Pleased, Zoe walked over to her vanity and placed the stone deep inside one of the flickering shadows dancing upon it. Withdrawing her hand she quickly envisioned the fingers longer, thinner, and webbed like a bat's wing. With a sweep of her transformed hand she created a gust of wind which blew out several of the nearest candles. The dancing shadows on the vanity had disappeared. Returning her hand to normal Zoe swept it across the wooden surface, but could detect no bump, no irregularity, no opening, and no trace of the stone itself.
Safely hidden away. Zoe mockingly dusted off her hands and turned away from the vanity. She stalked over to the window and slid it open. Now for a bigger test. Zoe concentrated for a second and suddenly she came apart, exploding outward in every direction at once, disintegrating into a black feathered cloud of crows. The crows circled the room once, then twice, until, seeming to come to some decision, they all spun off into a trailing column of winged shapes and flowed out the window a few at a time.
The experience was bizarre, but not totally disorienting. Zoe now saw out of dozens of sets of eyes and, though she controlled the movement of each individual crow, they seemed to naturally hang together in a close formation as if all animated by the same spirit, a group mind of sorts. Flying was a dream come true, soaring through gray, misty clouds, beneath the waxy light of a full moon. If she had still been human just then Zoe would have been smiling.
Zoe rose up above her house, circling once to orient herself. There was the neighbor's place, lights still on, people moving inside. The street out front was also still active, cars going back and forth, mostly business commuters coming from downtown back to the snug little neighborhood where she had been living only all of her entire life.
Ackworth Drive branched off from the road she lived on and after only a few blocks the neighborhood got progressively rougher. Soon the older brick two-story homes were subdivided into duplexes or even broken apart into single room occupancy boarding houses. One of the houses was an old Greek revival style mansion with a pillared front. Athena's mom owned it, left to her by Athena's great-grandfather, and it served as one of these boarding houses. Athena and her mother lived in the old combination servants' quarters and kitchen out back, connected to the main structure by a short covered walkway. The family's only income was from their lodgers, but Zoe knew that Athena hated most all of them and wished she was the one living in the big gloomy old house, the whole "coven" living with her, holding her prayer circles and seances.
The swirling murder of crows cawed as Zoe thought to herself with some amusement about the the so-called coven. Now that she had real power, not pretend slumber party bullshit, it seemed like such a joke. Maybe, if it suited her, she might grant Athena's fondest wish. There was no doubt that the house she was even now homing in on would be a killer party spot if Athena and the rest of the crew were liviing there 24/7.
Except that just now her biggest concern was how to get into the place. There were probably lots of little cracks, nooks, crannies, whatever, that she could get through as rat or snake or something, but Zoe was ready to up her time table on this whole wishing thing, which meant she didn't have time for a long twisty trip through the guts of Athena's house.
Sometimes the simplest methods were best. Zoe drifted closer to the gorund, the crows she was composed of forming a busy column of feathers and claws by the rusted iron gate letting onto the side yard. Yard was probably too dignified a term. It was just a narrow strip of brownish-green that led up to the walkway between the front and back buildings. Zoe had come this way a thousand times, but never like today, transformed, alive, full of power, and...
Naked! Zoe let out a small strangled shriek of mortification, her hands fluttering in useless ineffectual confusion before settling on one hand over her crotch and an arm across her breasts.
Well, this was no way to get things going, Zoe thought, wrinkling her nose in irritation. What was that naked woman in those X-Men movies Mikey was always watching.Mystique? In the next second Zoe's skin from the neck down was darkening to a blue so deep it was almost black. Zoe tried to envision a ridge around her neck and a seam running down the front of her torso. Maybe she could make it look like a leather catsuit or something.
The young woman's nipples receeded and her pubic mound became undifferentiated. It was tricky, but she got her skin to ruck up here and there around her elbows, knees, and hips to simulate folds of material. She fused all her toes together and ran a hoof-like structure all along the bottom of her foot, which made a fair approximation of boots. It was pretty sleek, maybe a little too much, Zoe decided.
Almost instantly an outsized pair of the crows' wings she so recently made use of sprang from between her shoulder blades. Folding them about herself like a cloak, Zoe confidently opened the gate and strode down across the grass to the door of Athena's home. Lengthening the nail on her index finger into a daggerlike point Zoe reached out and depressed the doorbell.
After a moment the door was unloacked, then unloacked again. It opened a crack, across which Zoe could see the usual doorchain. After a bad experience with a drunken renter, Athena's mother had invested heavily in some new security. One watery blue eye, a webwork of wrinkles at the corner, peered out from the crack.
"Um, hi, Ree," Zoe thought it was cool that everyone called Mrs. DeVries by her nickname, but she had never quite gotten used to it. She still kinda thought of parents as "the enemy."
"That's some outfit, Zoe," Rhiannon DeVries undid the doorchain and let her inside.
"Oh, just a - - costume party I have to go to," Zoe rolled her eyes as if it were more of as hassle than a good time, "Thought I would come by and see what Athena thought about my outfit."
"It's pretty impressive, girl," Ree nodded in approval, "Thena's upstairs. Head on up!"
"Thanks!" Zoe mounted the steps, each one coming quicker than the last. Before she knew it she was at the upper landing. The door to Athena's room was only a few more feet away. How should she play this? Just some weird clothes would be nowhere near enough to convince her best friend. She would have to show off some of these fancy new powers of hers, but how to kick things off?
