Chapter 1: Snapped Fingers, Shattered Man
The word "immigrant" was still hanging in the air, dripping with the kind of lazy contempt Marcus reserved for people he considered beneath him, when the woman in the doorway tilted her head.
She'd been standing there for maybe thirty seconds. Long enough for him to notice her, dismiss her, and return to the far more important business of verbally eviscerating his maid.
"I mean, honestly, Rosa, how hard is it to fold a fitted sheet? They teach you that in... wherever you're from. What is it, Guatemala? El Salvador? One of those places where—"
He never finished the sentence.
The witch—though he didn't know she was a witch yet, would never fully understand what she was—snapped her fingers. Just a casual flick of her thumb against her middle finger, the kind of gesture you'd use to summon a waiter.
The world folded.
Marcus felt his spine compress like an accordion, vertebrae grinding against each other with a sound that was wet and wrong. His jaw unhinged, softened, reshaped itself into something smaller and rounder. His scalp erupted in a cascade of jet-black waves that tumbled past his shoulders, past his shoulder blades, settling in a silken curtain at the small of his back. His stocky frame—the product of too many steak dinners and not enough gym visits—melted like wax under a blowtorch.
He tried to scream. What came out was a breathy whisper in a language he didn't recognize.
The witch smiled.
She circled him—her—the thing on the bed that used to be Marcus Thornton, mid-level marketing executive, connoisseur of Scotch, casual destroyer of female self-esteem. The obsidian mirrors lining the penthouse bedroom caught the transformation from every angle, warped and cruel, each shard offering a different glimpse of the grotesque, perfect metamorphosis.
"Let's see," the witch murmured, trailing one long finger through the air as if checking off items on an invisible list. "Bones? Ground to powder and rebuilt. Jaw?Softened. That unfortunate nose you were so proud of? Button now. Cute, even."
Marcus—Marisol—tried to move. Her limbs responded, but they weren't her limbs. They were slender, smooth, eighteen years old, draped in skin the color of café con leche. Her hands flew to her face, touching unfamiliar cheekbones, a smaller chin, lips that felt fuller and softer than anything she'd ever—
Wait.
She.
The thought landed in her brain like a stone in still water, and the ripples spread outward, distorting everything. She tried to grab hold of the old thought, the he thought, the Marcus thought, but it slipped through her fingers like smoke.
"No, no, no," the witch said, her voice sing-song, patronizing. "None of that. You don't get to keep the old software. That's the whole point."
She stopped in front of the full-length mirror, her reflection sharp and terrible. The witch was beautiful in the way a knife is beautiful—efficient, purposeful, dangerous. Dark hair cropped close to her skull. Eyes the color of an oil slick. A mouth that had forgotten how to smile without cruelty.
"Look at yourself."
Marisol looked.
The girl in the mirror stared back. Wide brown eyes, thick lashes, a face still soft with youth. High cheekbones that spoke of indigenous ancestors she'd never had. A mouth that seemed perpetually on the verge of a shy smile. Waist-length black hair, glossy as obsidian, parted in the middle and swept back behind small ears adorned with tiny gold hoops.
Her body—her body—was curved and lush, hips flaring beneath the white cotton bra and matching lace panties that hugged her like they'd always been there. A neat triangle of dark pubic hair peeked above the waistband, perfectly groomed, the kind of detail that felt deliberate. Cruel.
"What..." Marisol's voice came out high and sweet, with an accent she'd never learned. A stammer caught the second syllable. "What... what did you..."
"Shh, mija," the witch said, and the word sounded like a slap. "Don't strain yourself. Your brain's still settling into the new wiring."
She circled behind Marisol, her reflection looming over the girl's shoulder in the mirror.
"Let me give you the tour," the witch continued. "You're Marisol Vega now. Eighteen years old. Born in East Los Angeles to hardworking immigrant parents—a nurse and a construction foreman, if you must know. You have two older brothers, both of whom adore you. You graduated high school last spring. Barely. You work at a place called Warm Embrace Co., where you start Monday as a professional cuddle companion."
Marisol blinked. The words made sense individually, but strung together they formed a sentence that her brain rejected.
"Cuddle...what?"
"Companion. You hold people. You're very good at it, apparently. Very nurturing. Very soft." The witch's reflection smirked. "You also happen to be a lesbian. Devoutly. The kind of girl who goes to pride parades and has a very specific opinion about flannel. I chose that part especially for you."
Something inside Marisol's skull screamed. It was a distant scream, muffled, like someone trapped in a basement behind a locked door. The old Marcus was still in there somewhere, pounding his fists against the inside of her eyes, howling with rage and horror and something that might have been grief.
But the scream couldn't reach her mouth. Her mouth was too busy forming a confused, childlike pout.
"I don't... I don't understand," she whispered, and the stammer was getting worse, her tongue tripping over syllables that should have been simple. "I'm not... I was just..."
"You were just being an asshole," the witch said cheerfully. "And now you're not. Now you're a sweet, pretty little thing who wouldn't hurt a fly. Who apologizes when other people bump into her. Who cries at commercials with dogs in them."
She ran her fingers through Marisol's hair, and Marisol felt it—felt the pleasure of being touched gently, felt her new body lean instinctively into the contact. The betrayal of it made the thing inside her skull scream louder.
"I could have just killed you," the witch mused. "That would have been simpler. But you treated so many women like objects. Like things to be used and discarded. I thought it would be poetic if you got to experience the other side of that equation."
She stepped back, admiring her work.
"Except you won't remember any of this. Not really. By morning, Marcus Thornton will be a bad dream you can't quite recall. You'll just be Marisol. Sweet, stammering, cuddle-loving Marisol with her neat little triangle and her gold hoop earrings and her lesbian haircut that screams 'I own at least three flannels.'"
The witch tapped her chin.
"I picked the hair specifically to make the old you scream. He always hated short hair on women. Said it made them look like men. Now he's trapped inside a skull that can't even form the words to complain about it, watching through eyes that think it looks cute."
Marisol was crying. She didn't know why. The tears just came, hot and confusing, rolling down cheeks that weren't hers.
"Oh, don't cry, sweetheart." The witch's voice softened, almost genuine. "The tears are part of the programming. You're going to cry a lot now. Sad movies. Cute babies. When your coworkers bring in birthday cake. When someone raises their voice at you. It's who you are."
She headed for the door, her heels clicking against the obsidian floor.
"Your apartment's in Koreatown. The address is in your phone—pink case, by the way. You like pink now. Your family calls every Sunday. You love your abuela's tamales. You've never kissed a man, never wanted to, and the thought of doing so makes you feel vaguely nauseous."
She paused at the threshold, glancing back.
"Goodbye, Marisol. Try not to think too hard. It's not what you're built for anymore."
The door closed behind her with a soft click.
Marisol sat on the bed—the satin sheets embroidered with thorns felt impossibly soft against her bare legs—and stared at the mirror. The girl staring back was crying, yes, but she was also somehow... peaceful. The wide, guileless eyes held no malice. No cruelty. No memory of the man who had spent forty-two years being casually terrible to almost everyone he met.
Inside the basement of her skull, Marcus Thornton was drowning in darkness, clawing at walls that were shrinking by the second, his voice growing fainter with each breath.
Marisol picked up the pink phone from the nightstand, scrolled through photos of people she'd never met but somehow loved, and smiled through her tears.
She had a shift at Warm Embrace Co. on Monday.
She couldn't wait to meet everyone.