After the guys left, Tara stared out over the lonely, isolated valley that had been her home for three and a half years. In that time, she’d spoken to no one and heard nothing from the outside world.

  The internet dish Avery had left moved slightly, tracking a satellite. Tara watched it, then abruptly realized she was outside, in the open, during the day. The house blocked the view from the road, but anyone coming up the driveway could see her. It had felt safer when the two men had been outside with her. Now, in a fit of paranoia, she scrambled for the bedroom window and yanked the curtains shut.

  In the security of the room, Tara cradled the cell phone Avery had given her in her hands. It represented information, entertainment, and, perhaps, escape. She needed to talk to Libeza.

  She didn’t know where to start, though... reaching out to Libby felt like too much, too soon, and risked a devastating denial if Libby refused to help her.

  The news? No, she didn’t want to know what was wrong with the world now.

  Her father’s Facebook account? hadn’t he come for her?

  ... she discovered that his social media was locked down tight, friends only, and there was nothing to see. Her brothers were the same.

  She agreed with Avery’s warning about logging into any of her old accounts. Later, she might create a few fake profiles and friend her relatives to gather some information, but it seemed overwhelming to contemplate right now.

  She would have liked to check her bank account, but the odds that it was still untouched by her family after three years were close to zero. So many years of hard work... lost.

  .

  She'd expected Avery to be a rich, spoiled brat, entitled and arrogant. Instead, he was friendly and almost excessively eager to please. His awkward moments made him feel . Had he been perfectly smooth and suave, she would have been keenly uncomfortable in his presence. She liked him far, far more specifically because he wasn't perfect.

  But she was also conscious of he was. e was so damned gorgeous — and way out of her league; even just his kindness and generosity made him more of a man than she could ever hope for. Add his beauty and wealth... she had a vague idea that the Pazia family had enough money that his mother owned more than one house, and had a fancy sports car.

  No. He was being kind to her, but he undoubtedly had far better options than Tara.

  He probably flirted with everyone he met, and it meant nothing. It seemed in character.

  Impulsively, she lifted the phone he’d given her up and googled his name.

  Multiple social media accounts came up immediately. He had over 150,000 followers on the biggest platform. That was not... an enormous number, in the scheme of things, but they were all enthusiastically telling him how gorgeous they thought he was, and how talented. They weren’t wrong, but the realization that he had was depressing. She was glad for him, but any whisper of hope that she might have a chance disappeared. He could take his pick from many, many people who she assumed would outclass her.

  There were several posts of Avery posing for the camera, dancing, or singing. He was much smoother, less fumbling, and far less awkward in those videos than in real life. Multiple takes? Careful editing? She wasn’t sure.

  She clicked on a reel.

  He sat on a stool on the Rockin’ Road’s stage with a band behind him, an old guitar in his nimble hands. Voice soaring and clear, he sang a duet of the Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine” with a very butch woman — Tara peered at the screen, and recognized the manager, Katie, of the motel across the street from the Junk Shop. She’d met her a few times while working for her uncle.

  The recording was tinny and thin, clearly done with a cell phone. Even so, the power of Avery’s voice was, as always, startling, even though he seemed to be taking it down a notch. She guessed that was so he wouldn’t overpower the woman’s more reedier sound.

  She wondered what it would be like to sing with him now. Her own voice, her real human voice, was deeper than his. She’d been told a few times she was a contralto, and he seemed to be a natural countertenor with a several-octave range. Though now, after the transformation, she was equivalent to a masculine bass, with a tone to rival Keith David’s, and she hated it... could she even enjoy doing a duet with him in her current form? She wasn’t sure.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  ... in the video, he hit a shockingly high note without being the slightest bit shrill. She'd heard other people compare him to Freddy Mercury, and the analogy was fair, but his voice sounded a bit like Michael Jackson — or a lot, sometimes; she'd heard him sing Thriller once, and he'd been pitch-perfect — a little classical opera, and a show tunes influence too.

  She realized she might be underestimating his range when the next reel had Avery and Katie singing ‘Magic Dance’ with a band in the parking lot of the Junk Shop. Avery did all the muppet parts with a huge grin on his face and hilarious pantomime involving hand puppets and acrobatic dance moves, while Katie sang Bowie’s parts. His smile, whenever he flashed it at the camera, made Tara feel funny inside.

  That song had gone viral, with close to a million views.

  Aside from the music, however, there were plenty of other glimpses into a life far happier than her own miserable existence, even before the spell. His existence was so very charmed — he’d been born pretty, into a family with ridiculous wealth, and he had astonishing talent across a multitude of different arts.

  She should have been envious.

  Instead, she found herself caught up in his enthusiastic joy.

  She saw him with a succession of partners, easily identifiable by the public displays of affection in their posts. They included a gorgeous blond woman, a petite brunette chick with a glorious rainbow collection of tattoos, a slim black man with a dancer's body and locs to his waist, a trans woman with stunning cheekbones, and more. None looked alike; he clearly did have a type. However, they all had one thing in common: They were all very beautiful.

  Then, to her surprise, there was one more partner — a woman with severe burn scars on her face and head, rendering her nearly bald, lipless, and noseless. For a moment, she wondered if they were simply friends, despite the flirty nature of their videos, but then she found a video of them dressed as He-Man and Skeletor, kissing to the hooting approval of a large crowd at a con. A few more pics with just as much PDA as with his other partners confirmed they weren’t merely hamming for the crowd. Avery's He-Man costume was campy, with neon pink tights and a muscle suit over his already impressive physique. His sword was giant, plastic, and it lit up and glowed when he pulled it out to pose with it for the crowd.

  Avery was with that woman for about a year, but even after he had clearly moved on to someone else, he still regularly shared her posts.

  His romantic exploits were only part of his social media presence, though. Much of his work centered on artistic projects. He created numerous cosplay or drag costumes for others — including an elaborate robot costume for a teenager with cancer. That series of videos ended with Avery convincing the voice actor who played the character to wear the costume. They surprised the kid with it, and then accompanied the kid on a walk around a convention center.

  Beyond cosplay, however, he restored or re-envisioned old furniture, remodeled his house, worked on the Junk Shop’s vintage truck, baked, and made cool things on a 3D printer.

  All of his posts were popular. It seemed his followers loved his varied tastes ... or perhaps they just liked watching him work. He did a good job with the fan service; he wasn't shy about stripping off his shirt to show his tall, lean dancer's build, with rippling muscles under smooth skin, or mugging for the camera with bright smiles and flamboyant makeup.

  Suddenly, she put the phone down, cheeks flaming despite nobody watching. She him to look at her the same way he looked at the ‘Deadpool’ girl in that one video. She wanted... she wanted .

  Scrolling through his social media like she’d just done was weird, wasn’t it? It was obsessive, crazy, and . She felt like she’d just spied on him because, surely, his posts weren’t meant for her. He might be nice to her or even flirt, but he was just being kind. He'd be repulsed if he knew how much she desperately wanted him.

  She rose and stalked to the bathroom mirror. For this, she didn’t even need a candle.

  The face looking back at her was that of a monster. Exaggerated cheekbones framed enormous blue eyes, catlike ears were pinned back, and a short muzzle hid powerful teeth.

  She rested a hand against the glass. Long, narrow fingers ended in razor-sharp claws.

  Avery acted as if the monster were beautiful. It was flattering, but it wasn’t , and it left her uneasy. He was drawn to someone who wasn’t real.

  An bloomed from her fingertip contact with the glass: her human self.

  She’d been shorter than the grimalkin, though still far too tall for a woman. Her face was rounder and chubbier, with acne scars, a few fresh zits, and coarse and unrefined features. She thought she had more in common with the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man than the model-glorious people that Avery could score with. The one exception, the girl with the scars, must have been somebody truly exceptional. Tara knew she was not special in any way.

  As a human, she was fat but not curvy in any way that was remotely sexy. She was built like an overweight linebacker, complete with A-cup moobs. Plus, in her human form, she’d lost seventy pounds since high school and now had loose skin folds around her waist. Even her face had sagged a bit, making her look much older than her twenty-five years.

  Her slightly wavy and somewhat greasy blond hair didn’t contrast much with vampire-pale skin. Anything less than a theatrical level of makeup didn’t help unless she wanted to cover herself head to toe; it just made her look like a clown.

  But, no matter how much she hated her appearance as a human, it was . And she wanted it back. Impatiently, she dismissed the image.

  Avery, she realized, was flirting with the grimalkin, not her.

  There was no chance in hell he’d ever look twice at her true self.

  He was so very pretty.

  She glanced at the mirror and forced a smile. She should enjoy it while it lasted. She’d never had the attention of anyone like Avery before. She could just... pretend for a bit, right? There was nothing wrong with that. She wouldn’t let it go beyond light flirting.

  Nobody she’d ever desired had flirted with her in her entire life.