Rachel pulled a book from the shelf.
"Hurry!" Zoe said, panicking. "I don't want to turn into Biff."
Rachel turned and looked at her. "Relax, Zoe. It's a gradual process. The transformation would probably take hours, maybe days."
Zoe seemed to settle down a bit.
"That's better," Rachel said, walking over to the middle of the room. "Now, there's an incantation in this book that I think will stabilize your aura. I just wish Scarlet was here. She's usually the one who recites the spells."
"But you can do it without her, right?" Zoe asked.
"Yes. Of course. Um ..." She opened the book to the correct page and stood before Zoe. Then she began to read the incantation. To anyone else, it would have sounded like mumbo jumbo, but to Rachel and the rest of her coven, it was anything but nonsense. When she was done, she looked down at Zoe. "Do you feel any different?"
"No. Did it work?"
Rachel took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and then opened them. The glow that she saw around Zoe had returned to normal.
"Yes."
Zoe sighed with relief.
"But it doesn't fix the body swapping problem," Rachel said. "You'll still look like Biff, but you won't be compelled to act like him."
"What about others who have the same problem I had?" Zoe asked.
"I'd have to be standing right next to them, just like with you, so I'd have to fix one person at a time. But with Scarlet's help, we could fix more than one person at a time. But until we find her, I can't really do much."
"What about the spells I found? Could those work to stop the swapping?" Zoe asked, pointing to a stack of open books on a nearby table.
Rachel picked up one of the books and looked at it. "Yes. Yeah, I think so. But we'd need four of us to do it. So again, that means we need Scarlet."
"Maybe not," Athena said, as she undid her hair bun, causing her hair to fall to her shoulders, and making her glamour (of the girl Angie) look less uptight.
"What do you mean?"
"Zoe's brother. He can see past the glamours."
Zoe turned. "He can what?" This was obviously news to her.
"Before I met up with Rachel," Athena told Zoe. "I made contact with your brother, who has the glamour of a girl, by the way. He knew it was me. I asked him how, but he seemed to evade my question. Could it be that he practices magic?"
"No way," Zoe said. "I think I'd know if he did."
"Maybe he's keeping it a secret."
"Come on, Athena. We're talking about Jon here."
"Yeah, but he can see past the glamours. That makes him a witch, right?" she asked Rachel.
"I don't know. I thought that only witches could have that ability, but ... it doesn't seem likely that Zoe's brother could be practicing witchcraft. I mean, we would know. Right?"
"Then how is he able to do it?" Athena asked.
"I don't know," Rachel said.
