As she pulled up in front of the magic shop and put the car in park, Julia stared up at the store. Scarlet braced herself, waiting for Julia to call her a freak, just like everyone else in town did. Instead, Julia simply asked, "This is where you're going to meet the friends you wanted to meet?"
"It is," Scarlet said uneasily.
"The ones you need to put off seeing a doctor to see?"
"Yeah," Scarlet said, her mouth dry with nervousness. "I'm, uh... I'm a witch."
"A witch," Julia said blankly.
"A witch," Scarlet said. "Look... I know it probably sounds strange to you... but magic... it's real. I've been using it for years. I know how to make up a potion that..." She turned her head from Julia's gaze... looked at her hands. Anything to keep from seeing the look that she knew was going to cross Julia's face any minute now. "I'm not making this up. And I'm not crazy. Magic is real, it is... and I think it might be able to fix this. It might be the only way..."
There was a long silence. Scarlet studied her hands, looked at the makeshift bandages that was wrapped around one of them. All she heard was Julia's breathing and her own breathing, and the restless shifting of Chelsea in the front seat. At last, Julia spoke.
"I consider myself to be an open-minded woman," she said. "I don't like to discriminate against people because of their beliefs. It's none of my business. If you'd told me yesterday that you were a witch, though, that magic was real, I don't think I would have believed you. I would have accepted you, but I wouldn't have believed you." She laughed dryly. "But we're not living in the same world we were living in yesterday, are we?"
Scarlet looked up into Julia's eyes... the other woman's rough, prison-hardened features soft with compassion. Julia reached up and stroked Scarlet's face gently and went on. "Sweetheart," she said, "if you say magic is real, if you say you know how to use it, I believe you. And if you think you can fix everything, you have my blessing."
Scarlet smiled and whispered, "Thank you."
The two women hugged each other warmly, if awkwardly because of the car seats. At last, Julia said, "Go on, hon. And take care of yourself."
"You too," Scarlet said. She gave Julia one last smile, stroked Chelsea's head gently, then left the car and limped into the magic shop.
As she entered the dimly-lit store where she had spent much of her adult life, she was met by the faces of three strangers... an adult woman in conservative clothing, a curvy woman in a skimpy outfit, and a teenage girl in a dress, a corset, and long black opera gloves. The scantily-clad woman and the girl in the dress looked startled by Scarlet's appearance, but the conservative woman's face lit up, and she said, "Scarlet?"
"Scarlet?" the other two said, suddenly looking in the conservative woman's direction.
"You recognize me?" Scarlet asked, surprised.
"It's me," the woman said, approaching her. "Rachel Harris. This is Zoe," she said, indicating the woman in the racy clothes, "and this is Athena," she said, pointing to the girl in the dress. "I see you were swapped, too... and into a prisoner? Were you at the prison?"
"Goddess," Athena said, "it's a mess out there..."
"You look terrible," Rachel said, running her hands gently over Scarlet's injuries. There was a pained look in her eyes.
"How do you know it's me?" Scarlet asked, flinching slightly at Rachel's touch.
"Honey, you know I can see through physical auras," Rachel said, smiling sadly.
"Of course," Scarlet said, her eyes widening. "Is that what this is?"
Rachel frowned. "We don't know what this is. But Zoe thinks she has a plan to stop it. We've just been waiting for you to implement it."
"For me?" Scarlet asked, a little confused.
"Zoe has a plan to stop the swaps by stabilizing the magic that's operating them," Rachel said, waving at Zoe's sultry new figure. "It won't return people to their original bodies, but it should keep the magic from spreading from person to person and causing more swaps by negating the magic's catastrophic build-up and its need to spread. The problem," she said, strolling toward a set of cloth-covered equipment at the back of the store, "is that it's not going to be possible to cast the spell on a large enough scale to affect everyone in town... we just don't have that kind of power. So we're going to have to use a different means of distribution... a potion. And that's why we need you... you know more about potions than any of us."
Scarlet nodded. "So what do we need?"
"I left my books at my house," Zoe said. "There was... an accident that sidetracked me for a few hours. But"--and here she took a sheet of paper from the table where Scarlet and the rest of the coven usually met--"I've used Rachel's books to reproduce the information I found. We were hoping you could figure out the rest."
"And once we determine what we need," Rachel said, "we're going to be mixing the potion in this." And with that, Rachel pulled away the cloth covering her equipment, revealing... a large black metal cauldron.
"A cauldron?" Athena asked, looking skeptically at Rachel. "Are you trying to be a stereotype?"
"Yeah, what's next?" Zoe said. "Are we going to be riding broomsticks to distribute it to people? Do we all have to dress in black and grow warts?"
"Girls," Rachel said, "we have to create enough of this potion to give a dose to every single person who lives in town. We're going to need a huge amount of it. Mixing it in a cauldron is the only practical way for us to make enough of it."
"Fair enough, I guess," Athena said, taking a seat at the table. But she added, under her breath, "I can't believe you even have a cauldron..."
"Okay," Scarlet said, picking up Zoe's notes. "Let's see." She sat down and studied the notes. After reading them and thinking them over for a few minutes, and consulting some of the books that were lying out on the table, she wrote down a list of ingredients, then stood and handed it to Rachel. "Okay," she said, "this is what I'm going to need."
Rachel read the list, then nodded and said, "All right... Zoe, Athena, I need you two to look through the store and find these ingredients. Get everything you can find and put it out on the table... now's not the time to skimp. And when you're done, we're going to need to carry the cauldron out into the middle of the room and start filling it with water." She turned to Rachel. "While you girls work, I'm going to see if I can find some herbs to help Scarlet heal faster.... and Scarlet's going to take it easy until we're ready for her."
Scarlet opened her mouth to protest... but then she closed it again. There was logic in letting the others do the hard work. Scarlet was already beginning to feel tired again after the peace of the car ride, and her wounds were starting to ache again. She wouldn't be of any use to anyone if she passed out before the potion was even finished. So, sighing heavily, Scarlet sat down while the others got to work.
