Shannon O'Reilly was bullied and everything his older sister wasn't. When his sister Sarah gives him a chance to change things through a single wish things don't go as planned.     I Wish: Book 5 Chapter 19 Family By Amethyst

The next morning we were up early and Annie and Talisha left the house after breakfast so our Fae cousin could drop Annie off to rent a moving truck. Almost everything was already packed since we had expected Talisha to handle the move while we were on vacation, so there wasn’t much packing left to do other than in the kitchen and bathrooms. Thankfully, that was mostly sorted out by the time Annie got back with the moving truck. We only really needed to worry about loading the boxes and furniture in the truck and then driving to the new place.

It was a good thing that my car was still at Beth’s place for now, or we would have had to make a trip back for one of the vehicles. As it was, with Annie driving the truck, I was going to have to drive her car to the new house. With Talisha, Sarah, Annie, and me all having our own vehicles we were going to need the four-car garage at the new place.

I had gotten my driver’s license just before our trip but I was still letting Beth use my Beetle and having her drive me around as my assistant until she could get a new vehicle of her own. She could afford it with the job, and her parents had promised to help with it, but she wanted to get a motorcycle instead of a car. We thought that it would be best for her to wait until spring to get a motorbike and I enjoyed having her to myself in the car when she drove me around.

Unfortunately, Beth and the others couldn’t come to help us. I had texted with my friends over breakfast but after our disastrous plane trip everyone’s parents were feeling a little bit clingy, even Beth’s folks, and they knew about the whole magick and Demon hunting business. With that going on, we all decided that it would be best to let them get it out of their systems and act like normal teens until Christmas, It would make them more likely to approve a relatively harmless car trip to Jennifer’s family’s cottage.

It took us until mid-afternoon to get everything loaded and double-check to ensure that we hadn’t missed anything. Doing everything the mundane way without magick was tiring, boring, and gave me far too much time to think. Ellie was as bored as me, and it seemed that she was just as worried about Rebecca. She didn’t bring it up until we were in Annie’s car and headed to the new place.

Once we were buckled in, I decided to see what was bothering her. “So… why did you want to come with me, Cuz? I’m like, the least experienced driver and I’m not exactly used to Annie’s car either.” I didn’t mention that I was also the one that Khinara was most likely to attack if she was looking into our escape from Heil.

“Aren’t you worried about Rebecca? You two were pretty chummy when you found us…” she started uncertainly.

“Of course, I’m worried about her. There’s nothing going on between the two of us though, we’ve just developed a weird kind of friendship. You know that Ziralin is my soulmate. Beks is like you, a sometimes annoying little sister,” I poked back, uncomfortable with the thought that she might think that there was something more between me and my fellow faux-Succubus.

Ellie’s face turned bright red. “I didn’t mean it like that, Cuz. I just… I know that the troupe is our family and that we know and trust them but from her perspective, we left her over four days ago with a bunch of strangers in another world with no timeline on when we’d be coming back for her. She hasn’t been in the best mental state and she’s lost so much already. You and Michelle are the two people that she trusts and cares about the most now. Don’t you think that she’d rather spend the holidays with the two of you than with a troupe of Faery that she barely knows?”

I sighed and focused my attention on the road. “I get what you’re saying, Cuz, and I agree with you. We need to establish a whole new identity for her though and what Xuriel did for me didn’t even come close to that. I’m not sure where to start for something that big. It would be better to just make it look like she’s an amnesic runaway like Annie suggested but Beks doesn’t think she can act that well and with her powers, temporarily cutting off access to her memories would be risky. We tend to change when we get agitated and not having any memory of who she is would probably be stressful enough to trigger it even under good circumstances.”

“She doesn’t need to act. You’re a shapeshifter, Miss I belong in front of the cameras,” Ellie said with an exasperated tone. I was pretty sure that she was rolling her eyes too but I didn’t dare take my eyes off the snowy road to check. “You could copy her base human form and then just do the acting for her.”

“I’ve only done a few commercials,” I countered with a long sigh. “That barely counts as acting experience. There are so many things that could go wrong with that plan, Ellie. I have no idea if things like my fingerprints change when I shift and that’s not even taking into account what weirdness that any medical or blood tests might pick up while I’m using my Succubus abilities.”

“But…”

“No, Ellie, no half-baked plans. We need to do it right,” I insisted as I cut off whatever protests she had been about to make. “We will bring her here from Tír na nÓg once we get to the new place so she can spend the next few days with us until we’re ready to go to Heil though. That should be fine so long as she doesn’t leave the house in a form that can be identified later when we do figure out the identity stuff.”

“I… fine,” my Fae cousin conceded.

For the rest of the drive, we were both quiet as I focused on the road, the moving truck in front of us, and trying to sort through Xuriel’s memories for some idea of how to create a new identity for Rebecca. I did discover something that might help but I wasn’t sure that I liked the idea. It would have to be Rebecca’s decision, and it was too risky to do right away.

Our new home was a five-bedroom and two-and-a-half bath home on a large fenced property with a hot tub on the back deck. Since Annie and Sarah were sharing a room, that left enough bedrooms left that Ellie, Talisha, and I could all have our own, and still leave the last for Rebecca to use. The unfinished basement was huge and Annie and Sarah planned to build a training room down there for Annie to give our martial arts lessons and a magick library and workroom where I could practice my magick and give Lisa lessons as well. It was also conveniently located close to our school and just down the street from Beth’s place.

Fortunately, Sarah, Annie, and Talisha agreed with Elsaishe and me about Rebecca needing to be around people that she cared about and trusted for Christmas, especially with everything that she had lost. The poor girl had nothing but the clothes on her back now, and most of those clothes were technically mine. So, while the others began unloading the truck, Ellie and I made a brief trip to Tír na nÓg to bring Rebecca home for the holidays.

This place is huge… and empty,” Rebecca commented as we stepped through the gate back into the foyer of the new house.

“Yeah, well, almost everything is outside in the truck,” I replied with a shrug. “We kind of had to move up moving day to make it harder for Khinara to find me if she comes looking for us here on Earth. I’ll need to start on the wards soon too and that’ll take a while with a house this big. The good thing is that we have enough bedrooms that you don’t have to bunk with me or Ellie. You may need to use the camp mattress from my bunker until we can get a bed and stuff in there for you though.”

Sarah came through carrying a box bound for the kitchen but stopped once she saw that we were back. “We can handle things here. You two should take Rebecca to get some clothes and other necessities if she’ll be staying here for a while. Just be careful that she’s disguised so nobody sees her with you before we officially ‘accidentally discover’ her,” my sister suggested.

“I… don’t have any money,” Rebecca said with a despondent shake of her head. “I’ll probably get a lot of attention if I use my shapeshifting too, and leave a trail of lust-zombies behind me. I don’t want guys leering at me.”

I put an arm around my prickly friend and pulled her into a side hug. “Don’t worry about it, Beks. The least I can do is make sure that you have a few new outfits for Christmas. I’m the reason that you need them after all. And there are other ways of disguising you than shapeshifting, you know.”

It took over an hour to find the boxes that I wanted and place them in my bedroom to look through. I didn’t have any furniture set up yet but once I had Rebecca dressed in a slightly oversized blue sweater dress and some black leggings, I worked on her makeup to make her look a little bit older and a bit different while Ellie put her hair in a French braid. I wasn’t as into makeup as Jennifer but you learn things when you’re the face of a company that produces it. Being friendly with the makeup artists at my photo and commercial shoots had helped me learn a lot too.

Ellie and I were easier to take care of; my cousin just cast glamours on the both of us so we (or more specifically I) wouldn’t be recognized. After borrowing my sister’s car and checking to make sure that nobody was watching the house or the security gate, we were on our way to the mall. We wouldn’t have much time for shopping, especially since we were all hungry and wanted to stop by the food court first, but we would likely have enough time to pick out a few outfits and get some important things like a nightshirt and a toothbrush for Rebecca before the store closed.

I was worried about Rebecca as we shopped though, and I was sure that Ellie was too. She seemed more withdrawn than usual and I had noticed over the weeks we had spent together that Rebecca being sullen and withdrawn rather than surly and sarcastic was a sign that she was thinking about her mom. I had hoped that being back in familiar territory back on Earth might help but then, was this familiar territory for her?

Before Michelle started hanging out with her, Becca didn’t have any friends. She was bullied by most of the kids she knew and like Michelle, she had learned to avoid the places where kids her age gathered, for her own safety. I was willing to bet that on those few occasions that she did frequent the mall, she had been with her mom for safety. And her mom wasn’t here now, and never would be again.

So, as we bought her some clothes, and anything else that we thought she might need, she was largely quiet and didn’t offer much input. She swayed between distracted and depressed and I felt bad for convincing her that this was a good idea, because it obviously was not. We made quick work of finishing our shopping and as we drove home I apologized.

“I’m sorry, Beks. We were hoping that this would help but I think it did the opposite. Were you thinking about…” I trailed off, uncertain if I wanted to open that can of worms if I was wrong.

“My mom?” Rebecca asked, looking down at her hands as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Yeah, I… some days it felt like she was the only one in the world on my side. She… kept me going, helped me focus on the life and body that I wanted to have someday rather than… She kept me sane and stopped me from just giving up and… I’m still alive because of her, and now… she’s not. Christmas is about family but… my only family is gone.”

I clenched the steering wheel tightly as I disagreed. “No, Beks. You’ve got us and we’re going to take care of you and help you avenge your mom. I promised that I wouldn’t abandon you and I won’t. We can’t replace your mom, nobody can, but we can be there for you like she was and try to give you the kind of life she’d want for you.”

“You know,” Ellie said quietly from the back seat. “My dad was killed by a Demon too, and it was my fault. I got careless and because of it we lost him and Mom and I had to run, leaving everything important to us behind to make sure that the Demon didn’t find us and kill us too. I didn’t have any friends because I never really felt like I belonged anywhere. Then Mom and I met Shannon, Ziralin, and Sarah and suddenly I wasn’t alone anymore. It was hard to get used to at first, having someone besides my mom who cared enough to make a place in their life for me, to treat me as if I mattered… to hold me while I cried myself to sleep. Shannon did that for me, and she’s been trying to do it for you too. I’d like to help too, I’d like to get to know you and be there for you if you’ll let me.”

“You’re both sappy as fuck, you know that?” Becca wiped at her tears with the back of her hand and sniffled before adding, “Umm… thanks, Shannon… for everything you’ve done and wanting to be there, even when I push you away. I think Mom would have liked you… and your family.”

“Our family, Beks,” I told her.

“Yeah, you’ll be staying with us for now, and it’ll be permanent as soon as Shannon can figure out a way to get you a new identity,” Ellie promised.

“Actually, I have an idea how to do that now, but it will have to wait until after we take care of things in Heil. I don’t want to risk leaving Becca helpless if Khinara or one of the other generals tries to make a move on us,” I told them candidly as I stopped for a red light.

“But earlier you said…”

“That I needed time to figure something out,’ I interrupted my cousin’s protest. “I have an idea but I’ll need to sort through some more of Xuriel’s memories to make sure it’s going to work. I won’t risk it until after we’ve dealt with our Demon issues though.”

Becca wiped at her tears again, her expression hardening. “Well, I’m ready to take care of that whenever you are.”

I nodded as the light changed to green and I put the car back in gear. “We’ll have the next two days to prepare so as soon as we get home I’ll cast those wards on the house. Then we can finish unpacking and start planning.”