I didn’t know what he meant by paying the debt—I was too busy being worried about how I looked. I know that sounds shallow but please try to put yourself in my place—how would you feel if you’d gotten uglified and then you were suddenly changed and you didn’t know if it was a change for the better or the worse?
“Bran?” I asked, appealing to him. “Please tell me—how do I look?”
A ghost of a smile crossed his lips.
“Why don’t you see for yourself, Emma?” he asked softly and nodded at the mirror over his dresser.
Steeling myself for the worst, I got up on shaky legs and crossed the room. I kept my eyes down on the carpet the whole way. Whatever way I looked now, I was probably stuck with it, I couldn’t help reminding myself. Whether I was ugly or back to my normal self, this was it—this was Emma now. I would have to learn to live with the face I saw in the mirror, no matter what it showed me.
I reached the dresser and looked down fixedly at the wooden top of it. My heart was pounding so hard I thought I was going to be sick. What would I see when I looked up? What would I be like now and for the rest of my life?
I can’t look, I thought to myself. I can’t—I can’t!
“Emma, it’s all right,” Bran said behind me. “You can do this—be brave.”
Just as they had before Lachlan had lifted the geas, his words gave me courage. Taking a deep breath, I looked up at my reflection in the mirror…
And screamed.
33
“Oh my God,” I gasped. “That’s not me! That can’t be me!”
I said that because the most beautiful girl I had ever seen was staring back at me from the mirror.
If that sounds vain, please realize I’m not bragging—I actually felt like I was looking at a stranger. The girl looking back at me was nothing like how I had ever imagined myself—even in my wildest daydreams.
Pale, creamy, almost translucent skin with hints of softest pink—what they call a “rose leaf complexion”—was the first thing I noticed. The girl also had the softest, fullest mouth with lips so lush any actress in Hollywood would have paid millions to get them. High, aristocratic cheekbones and clouds of raven black hair were the next things that drew my eyes. But speaking of eyes, those were probably the girl in the mirror’s most remarkable features.
They were purple.
And not just one shade of purple either—there were three concentric rings surrounding her pupils. The outer band was a rich, royal purple, the middle ring was violet and the ring closest to the black dot of the iris was the palest shade of lavender imaginable. And all three rings were shot through with streaks of purest gold.
Those strange and lovely eyes took the girl in the mirror from beautiful to bombshell. I’m sure you’ve probably heard some guys who are real assholes (pardon my language) ranking girls on a scale of one to ten. One being butt-ugly, supposedly, and ten being model-perfect. Well, the girl in the mirror blew that scale out of the water. As plain old Emma, I would have considered myself lucky to be a three or a four. This girl was like a twelve or maybe a twenty. I don’t know—she was just that gorgeous—she took your breath away.
Or she took mine away, at least. I put a hand to my throat as my breath caught there…and the girl in the mirror did the same thing. Frowning, I put up a hand to brush away a strand of hair that was bothering me and getting in my eyes—and the girl in the mirror did the same.
“You guys, this is weird,” I said uneasily. “She’s copying me.”
“That’s because she is you, little one.” Lachlan sounded amused.
“No. No way.” I shook my head and the girl in the mirror did the same.
“Yes,” Bran insisted, coming up beside me so that he, too, was featured in the reflection. Lachlan stood on my other side and we studied the mirror together.
“Look, this is just weird,” I said, frowning. The girl in the mirror frowned too, only on her, it was a charming, whimsical expression. In fact, every expression looked good on her. I drew my brows together and scowled and she did the same, but the angry expression made her look serious and sexy and altogether irresistible.
“This is your true face,” Bran told me softly. “If you study yourself, you can see some similarities to how you looked before the geas was lifted. The shape of your face…the straight line of your nose…the way your earlobes are so well-formed…
“You noticed my earlobes?” I demanded, raising an eyebrow at him.
His smooth tan skin turned a shade darker.
“I have been drawn to you from the first,” he admitted. “I confess I might have noticed more than I probably should about my lab partner.”
“And friend,” I pointed out.
“And friend.” He smiled. “Look at yourself again, Emma. But this time, look for the similarities and you’ll see your old face looking back at you.”
I did as he said and sure enough, everything suddenly clicked into place. It was like those old magic eye puzzles they used to have (my Mom still has a book of them) where you would stare at all the random colored dots until suddenly a picture would jump out at you.
It was like that when I was staring in the mirror—suddenly I could see me in that gorgeous, ethereally lovely face.
“Oh!” I gasped, reaching out to touch my reflection. “Oh my God, it is me.”
“What did she look like before the Suva?” Lachlan asked, Bran, sounding interested.
“She was still beautiful, just not as obvious about it,” was Bran’s answer—which I thought was really nice, though somewhat inaccurate.
“No, I wasn’t,” I told Lachlan. “I was completely plain—utterly forgettable. Dishwater brownish-blonde hair, hazel, no-color eyes, no figure to speak of…” I looked down to where my new, much larger boobs, were filling out the front of his black cape, which was still covering me. “Honestly,” I told him. “If you met me before, you’d forget me a minute later. I was that meh.”
Lachlan snapped his fingers.
“That must have been part of the geas—to make you so plain nobody would look at you twice. Someone was hiding you here in plain sight, in the human world.”
“Hiding me?” I asked, frowning. “Hiding me from what?”
Lachlan shook his head.
“I don’t know. But now that your beauty is revealed I’m sure we’re going to find out.”
“How do you mean?” Bran asked, looking concerned.
“I mean,” Lachlan said. “That if someone took such pains to hide Emma, there has to be a reason. Most probably, it means somebody is looking for her. And now that the geas is gone, they’re likely going to find her.”
34
I didn’t like the sound of that and from the look on his face, Bran didn’t either.
“We must hide her again then,” he said. “I think I still have some of the Suva.”
“No. No way.” I held up a hand to ward him off, as though he held the bottle full of pinky-purple goop in his hand already. “I’m never taking that stuff again! You have no idea how painful it was to get rid of the effects this last time—it felt like I was being skinned alive.”