Chapter 2

Upon hearing the car door close, Imogen gave Hunter a this-is-it look across the chess board. He nodded and then moved his bishop.

Imogen and Hunter were friends, and when she had told him she planned to stay on campus for the Christmas break, he invited her to come stay with his family instead. She was reluctant, not wanting to encourage his romantic feelings toward her, but he invented the most extravagant, over-the-top story she’d ever heard to sway her: his little sister could show her real magic.

For a week she had been intrigued but not convinced, but he went to such elaborate lengths to sell his story that she wanted to see how it ended. It was obviously a prank, but he was so confident about it, so able to address every challenge she threw at him. He didn’t know all the answers, of course - he wasn’t a sorcerer himself - but the pieces he did know fit together tighter than off-the-cuff fabrications could have, and he hadn’t ripped the ideas off from any movie or book that she knew of.

Hunter and Imogen had been at his father’s house for two hours. She got settled in the guest room. She met his father, a nice man named James who refused to comment on the topic of magic until she’d talked to Hunter’s sister Laurel, who was out on a date. So after James had gone to bed, Hunter and Imogen had passed the time playing chess.

“Wow!” Imogen said when Laurel came in through the front door. Laurel froze. Imogen stood and moved to shake her hand. “Hi, I’m Imogen. Hunter didn’t mention that you’re absolutely gorgeous!”

“Uh, hi,” Laurel said, confused. After an awkward few seconds, she close the door and said, “I need to pee.”

Little sister Laurel was a petite redhead in a sleeveless lilac lace dress and a blue cardigan sweater. She had blue puppy-dog eyes but lips that could bring the proudest man to his knees with a simple, “please”. Her hair was fairly short - a cute choppy bob - but everything else about her dripped femininity. As an art student with an interest in fashion, Imogen was awestruck by the perfection with which Laurel’s body and dress complimented each other.

“She’s not really that hot,” Hunter muttered as Laurel rushed to the bathroom.

When Laurel returned she seemed a little more relaxed. “I’m sorry,” she said, offering to shake Imogen’s hand again. “I didn’t know there’d be ... I didn’t ... Um.”

Imogen smiled disarmingly. “I get it - Hunter didn’t tell you he was bringing home company.” She cast an accusing gaze at her friend.

“Yeah,” Laurel said with a smile and shrug.

Imogen grinned devilishly. “Actually, either you’re a very good actress, or Hunter put you on the spot more than you know.” She tilted her head and grinned. “He promised that you could show me real magic.”

“Wha...?” Laurel gasped, glaring at Hunter. He nodded and gestured encouragingly to her.

Laurel seemed to consider her words carefully. “Hunter was probably just joking with you, right? If magic were real, knowing about it would be a pretty heavy burden, don’t you think? I mean, if you really believed in that sort of thing, you couldn’t talk to most people about it - they’d think you were crazy. The people who did know about it would probably get sick of your questions. You’d never know what was real and what was fake online. Any time anything strange happened, you’d wonder if there was a supernatural explanation. It would be this big secret that you eventually realized you had to keep. But it would bug you for the rest of your life like an itch you can never scratch.”

Imogen chuckled. “Wow! You two are really good at this! You’ve run this scam before, haven’t you? Maybe you invented it to get the prom queen into bed?”

“Um, yeah,” Laurel said, relieved. Hunter looked at her pleadingly. His face seemed to say, I’ve never asked you for anything ever before, but this girl could be the one. Help me!

Laurel looked at the floor and paced nervously. She started to move toward her bedroom but Hunter sprung up and put his arm around her.

“Imogen - describe what Laurel looks like. Details but nothing flowery,” Hunter asked. He held her to his side.

“Okay...,” Imogen said. “Well, she’s like four inches shorter than you. Chin-length flaming red hair - basically as red as natural hair can get. Blue eyes, triangular face. Narrow body with a knockout figure. Flawless skin.” Imogen shrugged.

“What size bra do you think she wears?” Hunter asked.

“Dude, I don’t know,” Imogen argued. “I wear four different sizes myself depending on the company.”

“Well, compare them to something.”

Imogen shrugged. “They’re about the size of grapefruit halves.”

“Alright...,” Hunter said. He moved to Imogen’s side and began fiddling with his phone.

“Hunter, I really don’t...,” Laurel complained, but he interrupted her by snapping a picture. “Now look at this.”

Imogen looked at the photo for a moment and then shook her head. “The lighting in here...”

“It’s not the lighting.” He moved between the two girls to block Imogen’s view of Laurel. “Describe the picture.”

Imogen took a frustrated breath. “Well, here it looks like your hair is more brown than red. And the flash makes your eyes look like more of an ice-blue rather than sapphire.”

“What about her boobs?” Hunter asked. “Not grapefruits, right? More like orange halves?”

Hunter was right - in the photo, Laurel didn’t have a pinup figure. She had a pleasantly narrow waist and some girlish curves, but she wasn’t a fashion designer’s dream. There were lots of little differences, too. It was like looking at a candid photo of a celebrity at the grocery store after seeing them in a movie.

Imogen side-stepped Hunter and held the phone up to look at it side-by-side with the dejected-looking kid sister. It was disorienting. Her brain knew that she was looking at the same person, but it couldn’t decide what that person looked like. If she focused on one thing, like the color of Laurel’s hair, she could almost convince herself that she was seeing the color from the photo. But it was slippery - her mind couldn’t hold on to any scrap of truth for very long.

“See?” Hunter said standing beside Imogen and looking at his phone. “She’s not hot at all.”

Laurel turned around, like a child who’d been told to stand in the corner as punishment. “It’s going to give you a headache if you keep doing that,” she said. “Will you please just delete that?”