The Body Swap (Werewolf High Book 3) Read online

  They stared at the name hovering in the air. The sparkles had started to fade, but what they spelled out was still clear.

  "Is it wrong that this only makes me like her more?" Nikolai asked.

  "Yes," said Tennyson.

  "We need a plan," said Althea. "A good plan," she added before any of us could reply.

  The problem was, none of us were very good at plans. On TV shows I'd watched, people always came up with plans to defeat evil so easily, but really, that was the hardest part. Anyone could throw themselves into the path of danger; it was finding the right path that was the problem. I was just a normal fifteen-year-old girl. The wiliest plans I could come up with were how to get seconds of dinner and evade homework.

  "We should confront her," said Sam. "If we're just honest with her, maybe she'll tell us why she's doing this."

  "That is the worst plan ever," said Nikolai, but he couldn't come up with anything better, so he just lounged on the sofa, staring up at the sparkly words.

  "If we confront her, we need some sort of assurance," said Tennyson, poking around the room as if a plan would pop out from behind the bookcase. "Some way of restricting her powers so she can't attack us."

  I had started gathering up my things and packing them into my suitcase. No way was I staying there with her now, not when I knew she was guilty and there were sparkly letters in the air to tell her that I knew.

  "What about something like that cage thing we used on the full moon when I was tiny? Only we use it on her, not ourselves," I said, looking up from my sock drawer.

  "You don't think trapping her in a cage might be a bad idea?" asked Sam. "We don't want to make her angry."

  "She cursed me into being two inches tall and made the whole school into zombies who kept vomiting up their darkest secrets. I think she's already angry." Plus, I didn't see why I should care about her feelings. She obviously didn't care about mine.

  "We might not have to use a whole cage," said Althea. She had taken her phone out of her pocket and was looking something up.

  The rest of us watched her blankly, but before she could explain, the door swung open and Hannah walked in.

  "Or we could just do this," said Nikolai, then he shut the door behind her and stood to block it.

  I rolled my eyes. Nikolai's plans were always the worst.

  Hannah looked around suspiciously and started when she noticed the sparkly letters of her name.

  "So, the jig is up, then," she said with a sigh. "I wondered why you hadn't shown up for class."

  There was an awkward moment where nobody really knew what to say.

  "So…" I said, standing awkwardly with a pair of socks in each hand. "You're a witch?"

  Hannah shrugged.

  "We will, of course, need to deal with you," said Tennyson Wilde, because in any given circumstance, he could be counted on to make things worse.

  "And what do you intend to do?" Hannah asked. "You haven't exactly been impressive at defending yourself against me so far." When she had turned to look at him, her whole face had changed. She seemed like a completely different person, not cute at all.

  "How about you just agree not to curse us again, and we'll forget it all ever happened?" I asked hopefully.

  Hannah laughed. An honest witchy cackle. I was fairly sure she was laughing like that on purpose, because she normally laughed like a normal person, not some sort of evil mastermind.

  "I won't stop," she said. "Not until I have my revenge."

  The magical letters swirled around, which seemed like a bad sign.

  "Revenge?" I asked, edging toward the door.

  Hopefully, I could get her talking enough to distract her and then make my escape. I'd have to leave my suitcase behind, but it was a sacrifice I was willing to make. I signaled my plan to the others through waggly eyebrows and assumed their enhanced senses could work it out from there. Althea, Sam and Nikolai were close to the door, but Tennyson Wilde and I would need to get past Hannah to get out.

  "What did I ever do to you?" I asked.

  "At first, nothing, but I had to teach you a lesson when you started nosing around, ruining everything."

  "Teach me a lesson?" I spluttered. "By killing me?"

  Hannah rolled her eyes. She had definitely lost all her cuteness. "Your life was never in danger. I only shrank you for a bit of fun, some payback for the setback you caused with the Mr. Porter business, and it got you out of the way. I couldn't have you messing up my master plan."

  "You have a master plan?" That did not sound good. "Why? Surely with all that TV we watched together, the one lesson to take away is that revenge plans never turn out well."

  Nikolai slipped out the door, then Althea, but Sam didn't look like he wanted to leave. He stood with his arms folded over his chest, waiting. He wasn't going to leave without me. I shook my head at him, but he ignored me.

  "I've learned from the failure of others," Hannah said. "I will have my revenge."

  Before I could ask her about the finer details of her master plan, she flicked her hand, and the sparkly magic letters dissolved into tiny little darts and flew toward Sam. He ducked behind the door to shield himself, then, with a gesture, Hannah slammed the door shut, locking the others out.

  "Finally," Hannah said, turning to Tennyson Wilde. "I am going to make you suffer."

  The room seemed to fill with that blue smoke again, only this time it was hard to breathe and I began to choke. I lost sight of Hannah and Tennyson Wilde as the smoke thickened. I clapped a hand over my mouth, trying not to breathe it in, and headed toward the door, but before I made it more than two steps, I passed out.

  Chapter 3

  When I came to, the smoke had cleared and Hannah was gone. Everything seemed strange, off somehow, but it took me a moment to figure out why.

  It was several things, really. Firstly, I was staring right into my own face. And, boy, did I look freaked. Secondly, everything seemed brighter, more vivid. I could hear people talking out in the hallway as clearly as if they were standing right beside me. My body felt fuller somehow, kind of like if I'd eaten a whole roast turkey, only without the wanting to throw up, and kind of not like that at all. More like there was less room inside my skin or something. I felt angrier, wilder, and somehow trapped.

  "This cannot be happening," my mouth said. The mouth in the face I was looking at but which was definitely not me. I hadn't spoken.

  "I did not say that," I said, but the voice that said it was not my own. I knew that voice, and it was definitely not mine. I started to suspect what had happened and I did not want it. I sat up and put my hands over my face, feeling my skin, my nose, my mouth and ears.

  "Please refrain from touching my person," the imposter-me said.

  Although it was my voice, my body that was speaking, the phrasing was familiar, and it confirmed my worst suspicions. I jumped up and rushed to the bathroom, letting out an involuntary yelp when I saw my reflection in the mirror.

  Of all the curses in all the world, this had to be the worst. I stepped closer to the mirror, eyes wide with horror as Tennyson Wilde's reflection stared back at me.

  "And please stop making such undignified noises while in my body," Tennyson Wilde said. He was standing in the doorway. Looking like me.

  "No, no, nononononono," I said.

  None of the other curses had freaked me out like this. Being small had been workable. Telling the truth… well, I hadn't really believed that was happening. But this? This was the worst.

  "Pull yourself together."

  Did I really look like that? I was sure I didn't usually purse my lips like that when I spoke, but other things about the not-me seemed odd as well. I supposed that I'd never looked at myself objectively before, but, boy, was there a lot to object about. My face was weird-looking, like a patchwork of parts rather than a cohesive whole, and the proportions of my body were all wrong. Still, it was my body and I wanted to be back in it.

  "Clearly, the witch knew this was the way to infli
ct the most suffering on me," Tennyson Wilde said. And, wow, who knew I could sound like such a pompous jerk? "We need to discover why she has a vendetta against me and work toward undoing this mess."

  "No joke," I said, flinging my arm out to emphasize my point. Only it didn't flail around like it normally would; it moved gracefully in an arc through the air. My hand was large, with long, square-ended fingers.

  The other three burst into the room.

  "Are you okay?" asked Sam, grabbing Tennyson Wilde by the shoulders and spinning him around to stare into his face. My face. He pulled Tennyson into a rough hug, and Tennyson's eyes nearly popped out of his head. Or my head. It was all very confusing.

  "She just vanished," said Nikolai. "We left in pursuit of her, but she turned into smoke right before our eyes." Normally when Nikolai spoke to me, his voice had an underlying tone of sarcasm, but now it was respectful. "That's really high-level magic."

  "Wait," said Althea, looking between the two of us. "Something isn't right."

  "That's for sure," I said. "It's so not right that I can't even."

  Their eyes boggled as they looked at me.

  "You need to stop doing that," said Tennyson Wilde. That haughty expression looked so strange on my face.

  "Well, I'm not going to start acting like a jerk just because I look like one," I told him.

  "You're kidding," said Nikolai, his eyes alight with evil glee.

  "What?" said Sam, narrowing his eyes and peering into Tennyson Wilde's eyes. "I don't understand. Lucy?"

  "No," said Tennyson Wilde. "And please unhand me."

  Sam let go of Tennyson as if his hands were burning and backed away. "Sorry!" he said.

  "So, she knocked you out, and you woke up like this?" Althea asked, pulling out her phone. "In the wrong body?"

  I nodded. It seemed like she knew what was going on, which made me hope that she knew how to fix it.

  "We cannot tell Mother," said Tennyson Wilde. "If that is what you're doing, then stop."

  Althea shook her head. "Of course not. I'm looking up classic body swap scenarios to see how they're typically resolved."

  Tennyson shook his head. "We need to end this once and for all," he said. "The witch must be stopped."

  I didn't disagree, but I didn't have any bright ideas on how to end a body swap and stop an out-of-control teenage witch, either.

  I grabbed my suitcase, and we headed over to the Golden House to figure things out. I took Tennyson's room, so that things wouldn't look weird if anyone came around, and he had to share with Althea. Neither of them seemed too happy about it, and I felt kind of bad to have a whole luxurious room to myself, but it was obviously the best way to do things without arousing suspicion. He seemed super paranoid that his mother would find out what had happened.

  "We need ground rules," I told him.

  He had called an "emergency summit" about the situation, which seemed overly dramatic to me, as it was just the five of us there anyway, sitting around the main table in the living area like normal, exactly as we would've been anyway.

  "We definitely need ground rules," he said.

  "You bet we need ground rules, buddy," I said.

  The other three kept looking at us and laughing, but I didn't think it was so funny. If I'd learned anything in my time at Amaris, it was that magic was not for jokes. It might start out all like, "Hahaha, Lucy is in Tennyson's body," but it always ended in strife.

  "No looking at me naked," I said. "If you need to shower, do it with your eyes closed. Same for going to the bathroom and getting dressed."

  Sam choked.

  "Believe me, I have no desire to become any more familiar with this body than I already am." Tennyson sniffed. "You are not to attempt to transform into a wolf, use any other non-human abilities, do anything to alert anyone to the existence of lycanthropy, or anything that would arouse suspicion that I am not who I appear to be."

  "Same to you, buddy."

  "It is very restrictive being in this form," he said. "All my senses are dulled, and I am slow and witless."

  I raised my eyebrows. "If I punch myself, will it hurt you?"

  "There are three main problems, as far as I can tell," said Althea, typing away at her laptop. "Obviously, the first and most immediate is how to get you back into your own bodies. Secondary to that is keeping this a secret — from everyone, not just the general public. We all need to agree on this point specifically." She gave a sharp look to Nikolai. "Delete everything of this that you've recorded."

  Nikolai held up his hands. "Okay, okay. But we're missing some prime blackmail material here. Can't I just keep it for personal amusement, if I promise not to share it with anyone?"

  "No," said Althea. "You know what my mother will do if she finds out about this."

  The four of them shuddered, but I had no clue why. From what I'd heard, she was a harsh woman, but surely she wouldn't do anything to harm her son.

  "What would she do?" I asked.

  Nobody answered.

  "And lastly," Althea said, "we need to deal with Hannah Morgan."

  We all agreed on that.

  "But how?" I asked. "She's outsmarted us at every turn. We've got no way of defending ourselves against her and no idea how to stop her."

  "And it's not as if we can ask for outside assistance on this," said Tennyson Wilde. "In all this time, our research has come up with nothing."

  I picked up a mini pastry to bite into, but Tennyson Wilde yelled at me to stop.

  "Do not pollute my body with unhealthy fats!" he said. "No carbs, no sugar, no dairy!"

  I put up my hand to stop him. "No talking," I said, and popped the pastry into my mouth.

  It tasted wrong. So wrong. Like rotten sawdust. I looked around wildly for a napkin and spat that pastry into it.

  "What is this devilry?" I asked it, feeling much like my best friend had betrayed me. Well, she had, but the pastry too.

  "Your taste buds are different," Althea said. "In fact, your entire metabolism, physical make-up, everything. If you have any allergies, health conditions, anything like that, you need to let Tennyson know what to do for them."

  "I'm allergic to this whole situation," I told her.

  "We need a plan," Tennyson said. "A well-laid-out plan. The sooner this is resolved, the less risk that anything will be exposed."

  "Like your butt," Nikolai mumbled.

  Sam coughed to cover up a laugh, and Althea put a hand over her face. Tennyson looked confused, and I realized that he hadn't heard Nikolai's comment.

  "The most logical thing to do," Tennyson said, sounding annoyed, "is to attempt to reason with her. Obviously, her vendetta is against me. If we discover why and take measures to appease her, perhaps she will agree to reverse the curse and stop targeting us."

  I snorted. "You don't think if she was that reasonable, she wouldn't have cursed us all in the first place?"

  "Maybe she felt she had no other option," said Nikolai. "We shouldn't be too hard on her."

  "You just think she's cute," said Althea shortly. "If we do approach her to reason with her, we need to take precautions. I don't want to end up in Nikolai's body. If that happens, I want everyone to agree right now that you will render me unconscious until the situation is fixed."

  "We'll do some research," said Tennyson. "Lure her to a place that is safe for us and trap her there."

  Nobody had any better plans, so we hit the books to find a way to trap a witch.

  Chapter 4

  Luckily, it was the weekend, so I didn't need to go to class or do anything that warranted acting un-Lucylike. We holed up in the living area of the Golden House and worked our way through every suggestion ever on how to break a spell.

  "Most of this is absolute poppycock," said Tennyson as he sifted through the search results on how to break a curse.

  "I don't know what you expected," I told him, brushing a pile of nail clippings up off the table and handing them to Althea for whatever it was she was doing.


  She sprinkled them into a round, fat bottle with a bunch of herbs, hair, and who knew what else. She poured some red wine in, then corked the bottle and shook it up.

  Tennyson read out a few suggestions, which I added to our spreadsheet. None of them seemed particularly likely to work, but probably more likely than the whole situation happening in the first place, so I didn't want to judge.

  "What are you doing with that?" Tennyson asked Althea, as she muttered over her bottle.

  She glared at him for a moment, shook the bottle in a particular pattern, muttered some more and then set it on the table.

  "It's a witch bottle," she explained. "If I bury it in the right place, you should wake up tomorrow with the spell broken. Or, at the very least, it should weaken Hannah's power."

  She picked the bottle up and carried it carefully to the eastern corner of the room, then started the whole shaking and muttering process again.

  "Did you add 'purifying baths'?" Tennyson asked me, his attention back at the task at hand.

  I nodded. "You said there were different types, though."

  I hoped to avoid taking any sort of bath while not in my own body, or experience any nakedness at all, but if it was for the greater good, I couldn't really argue.

  "Not that way, you dummy," Nikolai called. "In here!"

  We looked up to see him directing a couple of the polo guys into the main room. They were carrying something large and heavy, though what it was I couldn't tell, as it was concealed by a white sheet.

  "Speak of this to nobody," Nikolai told the polo guys as they set the thing down in the middle of the room. "And bring us down some of whatever is for dinner."

  He waited until they'd completely left before revealing what was under the sheet.

  "A double-sided mirror!" he said. "My cousins let me borrow it, though I didn't tell them what for, and they gave me a few suggestions on what you need to chant while looking into it. They said it should break any curse."

  "Really?" I asked him. "Even a curse like being super tiny? It's great how you suddenly have all these extra resources when it's him being cursed, not just me."