Jon began to pace slowly through the room. He had to think over his next step. He knew he needed to get the wishing stone from... from A... from Amy... Amy Johnson. But... every time he thought about Amy, he found it was very hard for him to concentrate. It was like he couldn't hold onto her in his thoughts, like she was... slippery. The fact that she had the rock, the fact that she looked so incredibly masculine, the fact that he'd found her next to that dead police officer, the fact that she'd had a gun in her hands... the fact that she was such a sweet girl who could never do anything wrong. There was something that Jon couldn't understand, something that just wasn't coming together in his mind. And until he could figure out what it was, he wasn't sure it was wise to chase after her to get the rock. He needed a clear head.
"Jon?" came a voice behind him. He turned and saw Zoe looking curiously up at him. "Jon," she said, "you can see me... not the woman I jumped into, but me, the real me. Can't you?"
"Yeah," Jon said.
"How?" Zoe asked. "I mean... Rachel... she can see people as they really are, but that's because she's had years and years of practice and study and prayer and devotion. It's because she's enlightened. You... I mean, it's not that you're... I'm not trying to say... but..." She trailed off helplessly.
"I'm curious too, Jon," Rachel said. "Seeing past the physical aura... it's a very rare gift. If you're capable of it, you may have spiritual potential far beyond what you realize. Or..."--she raised an eyebrow--"perhaps beyond what you show to the rest of the world?"
Jon sighed deeply. This wasn't going to be easy. "Zoe... you know that box I got from grandpa?"
Zoe's expression softened. "Yeah," she said, faintly. She had taken their grandfather's death hard... the whole family had.
"Well," Jon said, "there was a letter in it. And... a stone."
"A stone?" Zoe said, cocking her head.
"A stone," Jon said. "A... a magic stone." He took a deep breath. "I know, that sounds crazy, but--"
"Jon," Zoe said, smirking. "This is me. I believe you. And even if I hadn't already known magic was real, well... today..." She looked around at the people in the room, then nodded down at her own clothing. "I don't think there's anyone in town who would doubt you anymore."
Jon nodded. "Good point."
"So tell me about the stone," Zoe said.
"It was a... wishing stone," Jon said, running a hand through his hair. "It granted anything I wished for. It was like my own personal genie, with infinite wishes."
Rachel's eyes grew wide. "The presence."
All eyes turned to Rachel. "Presence?" Karyn asked.
"A few days ago I sensed a powerful new magical presence in town," Rachel said. "Without knowing more about the presence, I couldn't locate it. It must be your wishing stone. I never would have guessed you had it, Jon..."
"I guess I did," Jon said, shrugging.
"So what on earth did you wish for that caused all this?" Zoe asked.
Jon walked over to the table and sat down heavily. "Oh, Zoe, I was so stupid." He chuckled bitterly. "I wished for something interesting to happen. That's it. I didn't put any more thought into it, put any limits on the wish... I was just bored and wanted a change."
"Well, I guess you got it," Zoe said, frowning.
"This is wonderful, Jon," Rachel said. "I was afraid we might have to spend days, even weeks finding the cause of the swaps and researching a way to reverse them. But you already have the tool we need to reverse them. With your stone, we can simply wish people back to their original bodies. We can set everything right with a few well-worded wishes."
"Um... no we can't," Jon said.
"We can't?" Rachel said.
"No," Jon said. "I... lost the stone."
And with that, the air went out of the room.
"But," Jon said, "I think I may have found it."
Rachel and Zoe looked at him hopefully. "And?" Zoe asked.
"A... Ame... Aaaa..." Jon swallowed. "Aaaamy Johnson has it. She must have st... somehow he... she..." He shook his head. It was so hard to think about Amy, so hard...
"Jon?" Zoe asked, a rare note of concern in her voice.
Rachel frowned, then walked up to Jon, placed her hands on the side of his head, and looked deep into his eyes. A moment later, she nodded and said, "There's a powerful magic clouding your mind... the work of the stone, perhaps. It's confusing you, making it difficult to concentrate on the object of your thoughts. It's beyond my power to cure. But..."
She raised a finger to indicate to them to wait, and then she walked off into the store. Hurrying from shelf to shelf, she gathered a book and a handful of ingredients. Returning to the back table, she put down a small bowl and began flipping through the pages of the book. One by one she measured out small quantities of the various ingredients, which she then ground and stirred together into a fine dust. At last she took a handful of the dust and stood in front of Jon. "Open your mouth," she said.
Jon opened his mouth. Suddenly Rachel lifted her hand and blew on the dust, which flew up in a cloud around his face.
"Now breathe as deeply as you can," Rachel said.
Jon breathed deeply, and a great deal of the dust went into his mouth and nose, causing him to cough. And suddenly, everything became clear.
The realization hit him like a sledgehammer to the chest. The person he'd seen in the alley, the one he had thought was Amy Johnson... it hadn't been Amy. It hadn't even been a girl. It had been a man, a masculine, goateed man, maybe around forty years old. He'd been wearing a dress, so perhaps he had jumped into Amy... but Jon couldn't understand how on earth he had come to think that the man really was Amy. No... no, he did understand. The stone. It must have been the stone. The man had wished for something that had fooled him.
And then, with a terrible, sinking feeling in his stomach, Jon realized something else. The gun. The man on the ground. The man in the dress had murdered the dead man... and try as he might, Jon couldn't recall seeing any remorse in the man's eyes. It hadn't even crossed Jon's mind to suspect the man he had thought was Amy. And it apparently hadn't occurred to Karyn, or to the still-living police officer who had been in the alley. The man in the dress was a murderer--a dangerous, dangerous man--and he had in his hands a wishing stone, an object of enormous, reality-bending power. He was a demon running loose in the city. And Jon had let him walk away.
"What is it, Jon?" Karyn asked, stumbling to his side as quickly as she could in her shoes. And then, to Rachel, "What did you do to him?"
"I cast a spell on him to clear his mind of arcane influences," Rachel said. "He's seeing whatever truth was hidden from him before."
"Amy Johnson," Jon said, jumping to his feet and coughing out a mouthful of dust. "Amy Johnson... she isn't really Amy. She's a man, Karyn... a murderer... and she has the wishing stone."
Karyn made a sour face. "What? Jon, you're joking. Amy Johnson is no murderer... she couldn't hurt a fly. And we just saw her, like, an hour ago... she's definitely not a man."
"No, Karyn," Jon said. "Someone switched with her. I saw him. He was wearing her dress, but he was a man... he made a wish that somehow kept me from realizing that he wasn't really Amy."
"Jon, that's ridiculous," Karyn said. "Amy didn't switch. I know she didn't."
Rachel shut her eyes and held her head, as though she were suffering from a terrible headache. "I admit, I'm disinclined from believing you as well, Jon, even though I don't know the person you're speaking about. But Karyn, the spell I cast on Jon has given him a clarity of vision that the rest of us don't have right now. I would recommend trusting him before you trust your own senses. And in any case," she said, grabbing onto Zoe's arm to steady herself, "you need to find this Amy to find the wishing stone and break the curse Jon cast on this town. Whoever she is, whatever she wished for, whoever is right... right now, all roads lead to Amy Johnson.
"Jon," Rachel went on, putting her hands on his shoudlers, "as long as you hold the dust you breathed in your lungs, you'll be able to see through Amy's wish, or the wish of the man in Amy's body, whatever the case might be. But my spell won't last forever. The magic that's clouding our minds is of an incredibly powerful, deeply primal variety. Soon you'll be as unable as the rest of us to see the truth about Amy Johnson. You'll have to act quickly and carefully, and use what time you have wisely, if you're to face Amy and get your stone back. But Jon." She put a hand on Jon's cheek. "I see people as they really are. And I have faith in you. You're better and stronger and wiser than you know"
Jon smiled.
"So, okay," Karyn said. "I still don't believe Amy is some evil killer man, but she does have the wishing stone... I'll give you that. So... how do we find her?"
"Huh?" Jon said, turning blankly to Karyn.
"Where is she?" Karyn asked. "I don't know where Amy lives... do you?"
"No," Jon said. "And I doubt the man who's jumped into Amy would be at Amy's house anyway. He seemed... busy."
"I think I can help with that," Rachel said. "I couldn't locate the wishing stone before, because I didn't know anything about it. It's difficult to track magic without having ever had contact with its source. But Jon, you've seen the wishing stone. You've touched it. You've used it. You have a connection with it still, one that I don't have. With your help, I should be able to locate the stone."
"Great," Jon said. "What do I need to do?"
"Give me a minute," Rachel said, and again she bustled around the room gathering up items. A few minutes later she returned to the table with a bag full of clanking objects.
Taking a book from the bag, she flipped through the pages until at last she settled on one. Then she took a towel and wiped out the bowl in which she'd ground the powder she'd created for the previous spell. Once she'd poured in an assortment of ingredients, she turned to Jon and said, "Jon?"
"Yeah?" Jon said.
She frowned. "I'm afraid I need some... blood from you."
Jon's heart skipped a beat or two. "Blood?"
"Not much," Rachel said. "Only a couple of drops... just enough to establish a connection with you."
Jon hestitated, then said, reluctantly, "Okay."
Rachel pulled a small knife from her bag and took Jon's hand. Jon--always a little squeamish--looked away. He felt a sharp sting in his fingertip, then Rachel's fingers squeezing his gently. A moment later Rachel let go. "Thank you," she said.
"No problem," Jon grumbled.
Rachel mixed her ingredients together in her bowl. Once she was satisfied with her mixture, she took two small stones, both a little smaller than the wishing stone, from her bag. One of the stones had a chain attached to one end; this one she set down on the table. The other stone she dipped in the mixture she'd created in her bowl. Then she took both stones in her hand and rubbed them together, whispering a few words Jon couldn't make out. She studied the stone on the chain for a moment; then, nodding in apparent satisfaction, she placed it in Jon's hand.
"Your very own magical lodestone," she said.
"Uh... how does it work?" Jon asked.
"Let it dangle from your hand by the chain," Rachel said.
Jon did as Rachel had said. The stone hung still on its chain for a moment... then suddenly, as though acting on its own will, the stone tugged gently in one direction. Jon stared in amazement; defying all gravity, the stone was hanging at an angle, as though someone were pulling on it.
"Your wishing stone is in that direction," Rachel said, pointing in the direction in which the lodestone was tugging. "Just hold the lodestone like that and it will show you where you need to go; it will always point in the direction of your wishing stone. Think of it as a sort of compass."
"Thanks," Jon said. "It's perfect."
"Okay, one more problem," Karyn said. "It's dark already, and the town is a mess. It's not safe out there." She turned to Jon. "Jon, you've never been a woman before. You've never had to think about what it's like for a woman to walk around at night. Two women who look like we do, who are dressed like we are... we shouldn't be walking around out there. And besides," she said, lifting one foot, "I don't want to have to walk around for God-knows-how-many miles in these things."
"You don't happen to have a spell to help with that, too, do you?" Jon asked, looking back at Rachel.
"I have better," Rachel said with a grin. She walked up to the front counter of the store, and returned carrying a purse. "I drove here in Mary Foster's car... under the circumstances, I think it's okay for you to borrow it." She fished a set of keys out of the purse and tossed them in Karyn's direction. Karyn caught them nimbly.
"Then I guess all our bases are covered," Karyn said. She took a deep breath, and then, with a quick look at Jon, "After you, Jon-Girl."
"Thanks for everything," he said, looking at Rachel. Then, to Zoe, "You should call home when you can. Mom's worried." He took a few steps toward the front door... then stopped to look down at the man tied to the chair, who was still unconscious. With everything else he'd had to think about, he'd almost forgotten the man. The man was breathing steadily, but otherwise he was quite still. "You should probably call the police about this guy," Jon said. "I'm not sure how long these ropes will hold him once he wakes up; he looks pretty strong."
"I will," Rachel said with a smile. "You have enough to worry about; leave him to me."
Jon nodded. And then, with a look at Karyn, he headed out into the night.
