Ari watches his "brother", sometimes. The one Belinda replaced him with. Usually when there's not much else to do - he's just not that interesting, usually. But he has been, since he met the girl. Zanna electrifies Eric, makes him do things. And she does things with Tom, too... less pleasant things, mostly.

Ari and Tom hang out, once in a while. Ari can appreciate a good hunt. The chase, the kill.

He's never been one for traps. For hobbling a creature and making it suffer. Tom is. Apparently Zanna is too. He's not shocked. It's common, for the Unseelie.

(He's Unseelie - or he will be. But he's not common.)

The poor lame girl is crying, now. Ari wonders what she's like, when she's not hurting.

...he could find out.

It'd be fun, if she's fun. If she isn't, he knows how to touch her mind, make her forget. Put her right back where she was, when she was, no one the wiser. (It's not easy for him, not like the real fairies. But he can do it.)

And... he knows it's silly, but this is the first chance he's ever had to steal his brother's toys. Isn't that what brothers do?

He focuses his mind, steadies his breathing. Makes himself heavy, solid, real. Forgets the gossamer landscape; thinks of ceramic floor tiles, and brick-and-mortar walls, and aluminum-alloy fixtures. The sounds of a girl sniffling, echoing just a little. The smell of chemical cleaners, and nothing else. Cold porcelain beneath his feet, and a plastic stall door at his back.

And then there's a boy in the stall with Madison. He's naked, his skin pale and sun-kissed with freckles. He's leaning against the door, and his eyes open, and he grins.

"Hi! I'm Ari."

Madison doesn’t scream. This is too strange and sudden for terror. She does freeze, though, like ice. Everything except her eyes, which look the boy up and down.

And then she thrusts a leg out, right into his groin.

The boy's knees buckle a little, and he half-giggles-half-coughs. "Oh, you are fun."

He tosses a pinch of sparkling powder over her, from somewhere, and then she's - slow. She can still move normally, but trying anything sudden feels like she's in a dream, the motion arrests itself and loses all momentum.

Now she’s terrified. It doesn’t show much on her face, but Madison has to practise smiling in front of the mirror. 

This boy looks familiar. Somehow, even his junk does, too.

“Eric, why are you in the girls room?” she asks.

Madison knew right away that Eric was a freak, but not this kind of freak.

"I'm not Eric! I'm his brother. ...I'm not sure he knows he's my brother? But he is."

He sketches a quick bow. "And you're Madison. And I want to help you."

“By being naked in the girls room?”

"Eh, I'm naked everywhere. The girl's room seemed like it'd give us some privacy."

He takes out a little glass vial and hands it to her. "Drink this? It'll help, I swear." (There's a little bit of weight to the oath, something undeniable. It doesn't make it impossible to doubt, but it's very clear that it means something.)

Madison takes the vial, with a slowness that’s all her rather than the powder. She squints at it, then at Not-Eric. “If this is poison, I’m gonna bite your penis off before I die.”

She downs the contents in one gulp.

The potion tastes like flowers and moonlight. Which isn't to say it tastes really good, it's mostly just kind of weird.

As she drinks it, there's a feeling of something spreading through her, cold but pleasantly so, and as it does, the aches and pains and itches and blisters and everything of the past few weeks fall away. Her skin smooths back over. Her fingernails stop hurting, and she didn't even know those hurt.

And there's a tickling sensation on the back of her neck, as her hair grows about a foot longer.

"I couldn't make it just bring back the hair that was gone," Ari notes. "But you can cut off the parts you don't need."

Madison gently but firmly pushes Not-Eric aside and opens the stall door, so she can see herself in the mirror. She smiles. “I’m pretty again.”

She is. Once an old woman cried looking at her.

"Yep! Honestly, it was dumb of Eric to let her make you so much less pretty. He had to keep looking at you, didn't he?"

Madison swings around to look at him. “Eric let who do what?”

She’s ready to kill him, whatever the answer.

"Zanna. She's been cursing you, tormenting you, driving you to madness, whatever. If you try to come for her you'll regret it, though. This is not the worst they can do."

Zanna. How could she forget Zanna? 

“Where is she? How is she doing this? Is she a witch? Can I be a witch?”

"She's in Spain at the moment, visiting the ruins of Castell Famolenc. She's a fairy. I'm kind of a witch, the way you mean it, and if you like the idea that much I guess I could show you some tricks."

“Yes.” Madison quickly remembers her manners. Manners are something her parents taught her that help you acquire things you want. “Please.”

Ari takes out a wand, this time, a stripped birch twig scorched with strange runes, and taps himself and then Madison on the forehead. There's a sensation almost like the potion in reverse, except instead of the aches and pains coming back it's just a faint, almost ticklish sensation of something whispering across her skin.

They're both invisible now.

Madison yelps. “Ari?”

Then she notices she can’t see herself. She’s not in the mirror, either. She waves her arms. It’s an odd sensation, feeling her body move and not being able to see it. It’s like the opposite of your hand falling asleep.

“I know this is magic, because if it wasn’t, I’d be blind.”

"If you actually believed that, you'd be blind," Ari says, faintly amused. "You're invisible; why should there be rules?"

"Eyes work by absorbing light reflected off objects," Maddie recites. "So if my eyes are see-through, it should pass through them. But I can see, so science must be stupid. Kinda glad it is."

"Yeah, exactly. But if you did believe that was how it worked, it would've. Which would've been inconvenient all 'round."

Madison hops from foot to foot. "Mind helping me take revenge?"

"Depends what kind! I'm not going to do what they did to you, that was boring and miserable. But if you want to invisibly scare the living shit out of somebody I'm game."

Madison nods, not that Ari can see that. "I except your terms. So, I had these two friends. They were complete idiots, but they did what I said. Then all the weird, awful stuff started happening, and they got thinking they were better than me."

"Ah! Whereas if you remind them that they need you, they can't stand on their own, and come back radiant and powerful..."

Madison grins. Sometimes that happens without her even thinking about it! "Exactly!"

Ari takes her hand. "Lead the way, fair wraith."

As they walk, he sings softly: "A-hunting we shall go, a-hunting we shall go..."

“Fair wraith.” She likes that.

Her teacher is wandering the halls, calling Madison’s name. She walks into the girls bathroom.

Madison giggles. “I think I’m missing.” 

Missing and invisible. Something about that feels very… freeing.

"Not very missing yet. Probably the first place she's got to check, yeah? But we can get our work done while she's going down the list."

Once they get to Madison’s class, they find the other students watching an old VHS of Pete’s Dragon. Madison notices a glum looking Eric with his chin resting on his desk. “So, you’re brothers?”

"Whose? -oh." He waves a hand through the Eric glamour, making it wobble sort of alarmingly. "Yeah, sort of. Belinda left him in my place. So, same mum, different dad - I think that's a kind of brothers, right? And we haven't strictly met, but that hardly matters."

“So, he has to go to school and stuff, and you get to run around being magic?”

"Well he's got magic too. It's not like he's actually sitting here."

Madison nods. She strolls through the desks until she’s standing between Julie and Sandy. Then she remembers she’s invisible. “Uh, Marco! So, could you make the TV show these two dying?”

"Eh. The glass..." He runs a finger along it and sticks his tongue out invisibly. "No good. Unnatural stuff makes magic harder. I could definitely make them see their deaths on it, though. Eyes are plenty natural."

“Excellent! And  the others won’t see it, so they’ll look crazy!”