When we get upstairs, I see what the nurse meant about the blue line; there are three stripes painted along the wall, one blue, one green, and one red, and as we walk down the hallway, the colors occasionally veer off at corners. I guess that's an easy enough way to give directions in a hospital, and my pulse picks up as we round the corner and the blue line ends at a large waiting area.
"There," Christina says, pointing to Dad's imposing frame. He's standing near a magazine rack, staring at the titles as if he can't see them, and we hurry to him. Christina slips an arm around him and he starts, looking at both of us in surprise.
"What are you girls doing here?"
"We got your text. How is...where is Mom?" Christina clears her throat.
Dad looks down at her, and then his gaze shifts to me. "There's nothing to worry about."
My throat tightens. "The guy downstairs said she was in surgery. What happened?"
Just then, a doctor in a crisp white coat comes around the corner, and when Dad spots him, he hurries to meet the man. Christina and I exchange a quick look before we follow him.
The doctor is smiling as he shakes Dad's hand. "She's out of surgery, and the prognosis looks good. With proper recovery time, I have no reason to think her sight will be permanently impaired."
"Her sight?" I blurt out, not understanding. The doctor looks at me, and then glances back at Dad before answering.
"Your mother has been experiencing symptoms of severe retinal detachment, but the surgery she underwent today has a ninety-five percent success rate, so I'm optimistic."
I look at Christina, and my shoulders sag in relief. "So it's not serious?"
"Oh, on the contrary, if we had let it go much longer without surgery, it could have been very serious. Without treatment, blindness is often the result of retinal detachment like your mother was experiencing. But," he adds cheerfully, "I believe we caught it in time."
Blindness? I stare at him, processing his words. Could Mom still scribe if she was blind? I swallow, trying to draw my thoughts away from what ifs and back to the present. "Can we see her?"
He glances at Dad, who nods, and the doctor smiles again. "Of course. I'll take you back there."
I'm bursting with questions I don't want to ask in front of the doctor, but to my surprise, Christina doesn't seem to have any hesitations. "How long have you guys known about this?" She asks Dad, keeping her voice low.
He shrugs, but he doesn't look at her. "Your mother didn't want to worry you girls. She's been consulting with a specialist to try to figure out what was going on with her vision for a month."
"And she...she won't have any problems now?" I venture, my thoughts still swirling.
Dad nods. "That's what the doctor said." He drops his voice so low I have to strain to hear. "Although I doubt she'll be up to scribing any time soon." He looks apologetically at me. "You're on your own for your Threes."
I shake my head automatically. "Shelby's going to help me," I say, feigning confidence I don't even come close to feeling. "Right?"
Christina looks at me, and we have a silent conversation; if Mom's recovering from eye surgery, there's no way we can ask her to help us before the exam. After a moment, she nods slightly. "Right."
Dad glances at the two of us skeptically, but then he smiles. "I'm glad you girls are pulling together for a change."
Christina rolls her eyes, but before either of us can retort, the doctor stops and gestures to a door. "I'll give you a few minutes alone to talk. I'm sure Elena will be happy to see you."
Suddenly, my nerves return, even though eye surgery is nowhere near as awful as I'd started to imagine, and I glance at Christina. Her eyes are glassy, but she rolls her shoulders back and gives me a slight nod before we follow Dad into the hospital room.
Mom is propped up in the weird bed that looks like an angled stretcher, and her left eye is covered with a thick wedge of gauze held onto her head with medical tape. There are wires connecting her body to various monitors, but otherwise, we could be in a hotel, with the neutral walls, white bedding, and windows letting in the afternoon sunlight. It's a small room, and mom has it to herself, even though there's another bed in the corner, waiting for its next patient.
Mom's good eye darts to my face, and then to Christina, searching. I wonder if she's trying to figure out if we've changed places yet, and when she looks at me again, I shake my head slightly. Her lips tighten for a moment, like she's worried, but she smooths her expression and lifts her face up for Dad to kiss her gently.
"I wasn't expecting a party!" She says, her tone light.
Dad pulls up a chair and sits down next to her. "I texted the girls, and I guess they didn't want to wait." He pauses, as if finally processing the fact that we showed up at the hospital thirty minutes from our house, and he gives me a hard look. "Did you drive?"
I almost tell him that Christina drove, but I bite back my words, remembering that Dad doesn't know about the body swap. Let's hope he never finds out, I think, remembering with a shiver his no tolerance policy for magical rule breakers. I swallow nervously. "Yeah. I was really careful, though."
He frowns. "We'll talk about you breaking the law later. But I'll drive you both home in a few."
I nod, glancing at my sister, and I'm surprised that she looks just as worried as I do. I guess Dad scares both of us, I think, and for some reason, that's almost comforting.
We make awkward small talk, but Mom looks tired, and it isn't long before the doctor returns and gently sends us on our way. Before we leave, I lean over and hug Mom, and she squeezes me tightly. "Good luck on your Threes," she says, looking into my eyes as if trying to tell me something without words.
I glance at Christina, and she nods. "I'm going to scribe for her," she says. "So we'll both be there."
Mom's uncovered eye looks at me first, then at my sister, and she looks like she wants to ask a question, but then she just shakes her head and smiles. "I think that's a good idea. After all, this affects both of your futures."
I nod, feeling a prickle of apprehension. Last night, when Christina first suggested her plan, it seemed doable, but then this afternoon, when we'd decided to go to Mom for help, I felt overwhelmingly relieved. The reality that I'll be taking my sister's place for the biggest casting event of her life settles over me with an icy weight, and suddenly, I'm terrified of what tomorrow will bring.
***
Dad lectures me for most of the drive home, even going so far as to threaten not to sign off on my supervised driving hours, but Christina's license is the farthest thing from my mind. I glance at the rearview mirror, meeting Christina's eyes for a moment, and she mouths the words, "Just breathe." If she's not worried, I guess there's no reason for me to freak out, but still, as soon as we're back to the house, I grab her hand and pull her into my bedroom.
"So we're really going to do this."
She looks annoyed. "Shelby, unless you've figured out how to reverse this spell in the last half hour, then yes, we're really going to do this. I don't see what other option we have, with Mom..." she trails off, and then she clears her throat. "I don't want to bother her right now."
I nod my head quickly. "No, I agree. It's just—"
"Did you want to ask Dad?" She raises an eyebrow, and I shudder.
"God, can you imagine what he'd do? He'd go through the roof."
Christina nods. "Not to mention I'm sure there's probably some magical law against impersonating somebody else or something; knowing Dad, he's just as likely to call in the Caster Force as he is to help us."
She's right, but I can't help wishing for a fleeting moment that Dad would be on our side. I take a deep breath. "So I'm you."
Christina smiles. "For now. We'll get through the Threes, and we'll both get into Henbane, and then when it's all over and we have some breathing room, we'll straighten this mess out once and for all."
I exhale slowly, resigned to my terrifying fate. "Okay. What do I need to know to pass the test?"
"I'll be the one doing all the magic," she reminds me.
"I know, but I have to make it look believable. We need to rehearse or something."
She pauses, considering. "I guess you're right," she concedes. "Wait here."
She leaves me alone in my bedroom, but as I stand there looking at all my familiar things, the room suddenly feels foreign, like it's not mine anymore. I shake my head, dispelling the depressing thought, and when I turn around, Christina slips through the door and closes it after her. She's holding a small diary, something I've never seen before.
"These are the spells I was planning to use," she says, holding the notebook out to me. Her hands shake slightly, and I realize that this is as personal for her as my spell book is for me, and for a moment, I feel a flicker of sympathy for my sister. But then she ruins it by saying, "You think you're smart enough to memorize the whole thing by tomorrow?"
I grab the notebook and glare at her. "I'll do what needs to be done." Flipping through the pages, my eyes skim the spells. Christina's been collecting a ton; some are long and complicated, and others are only a word or two, but there must be over a hundred spells in the small notebook, and I've never even heard of most of them. I look up to find her watching me intently. "Where did they all come from?"
She exhales slowly and looks away. "I've been buying them for a long time."
"Buying them?" It takes a minute for the words to sink in. "What, like on the Internet?"
She nods, not meeting my eyes. "When you started selling spells, I panicked. I mean, what if these spells aren't any good? If you could do it, well, anybody could." She flounders, and then she clears her throat. "I mean, you know your spells weren't any good until this year."
I want to be angry with her, but mostly, I just feel tired. "I know. But now they work. Or at least," I amend, "it seems like the work. Miah didn't have any trouble with the ones he used last night."
Christina hesitates, but then she nods. "I haven't had a chance to test all of these," she admits. "I guess we don't have to use the ones I haven't tested." After a beat, she says, "Do you think you could scribe a couple spells, too, just so you'd have some you're familiar with tomorrow?"
I stare at her, wondering if I heard her right. "You're going to help me get into a coven," I begin slowly, "and now you're actually asking for my spells? Who are you and what have you done with my sister?"
She sticks her tongue out at me. "Fine, be a brat. It was just an idea."
"No," I say hurriedly, grasping at this chance before it passes me by. "I'll scribe for you, if you want. I want to earn my way into the coven; I don't want to feel like I owe you for the rest of my life."
She laughs. "You already owe me, Shelby. I let that stupid boy kiss me, and let me tell you, he didn't bother with a breath mint."
For a minute, I want to smack her, but then she cracks a smile, and I can't help it; I giggle. In a second, we're both laughing, and every time we start to get a grip, our eyes meet and the giggling starts again. I haven't felt this close to her, this easy with her, since we were kids, and in the midst of the warm fuzzies that accost me, I can't even stay angry about her kissing Miah anymore.
"Okay," I finally say, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. "Show me which spells to cut, and then we'll figure out what new ones you need."