Chapter 1: The Curse at Closing Time
The bell above the door didn't ring so much as wheeze, a rusty little gasp that barely registered over the hum of the old refrigerator in the back. Marisol Vega didn't look up from the mortar and pestle. She didn't need to. The boots told her everything—heavy, steel-toed, the kind that stomped rather than walked. The scent of sweat and frustration and cheap coffee rolled off him in waves, cutting through the lavender and cinnamon like a fist through cobwebs.
"You the owner?"
She ground another pinch of dried rosemary, let the silence stretch just long enough to be noticed, then lifted her eyes. He was exactly what she expected. Stocky, broad-shouldered, that particular set to his jaw that men like him wore like armor. Graying hair cut close to the scalp. Calloused hands that had never once hesitated to grab what they wanted.
"I am." She set the mortar down. "What can I do for you?"
"Your sign's busted." He jerked a thumb toward the window. "Been flickering for three days. Looks like a damn strobe light out there. Bad for business."
"For my business or yours?"
That got her a flat look. "I'm an electrician. Figured I'd do you a favor, seeing as how you probably don't know the first thing about wiring."
Marisol leaned her hip against the counter. The candles behind her flickered, casting long shadows across the shelves—bundles of dried sage, jars of honey dark as molasses, a ceramic bowl filled with something that shimmered when you weren't looking directly at it. The air in the botanica was thick tonight, syrupy with intention. She'd felt something coming all day, a prickling at the base of her skull like static electricity.
"That's generous of you," she said. "What do I owe you?"
Ben shrugged. "Fifty bucks. Maybe sixty, if the wiring's as shot as I think it is." He glanced around the shop, taking in the clutter with barely concealed disdain. "What is this place, anyway? Some kind of hippie store?"
"Something like that."
"Yeah, well." He snorted. "Figures. Woman running a shop like this. No offense, but you ladies ought to stick to something you're good at. Boutiques. Coffee shops. That kind of thing."
Marisol's fingers found the sprig of rue before she consciously decided to reach for it. The plant was cool against her palm, its tiny yellow flowers trembling slightly—though there was no wind in the shop, no draft from the wheezing door. She'd grown it from a seed her grandmother had saved, decades ago, in a village where the mountains touched the sky and the old ways hadn't been forgotten.
"Women shouldn't run businesses," Ben continued, warming to his theme. He'd found an audience, or thought he had. "No offense. It's just biology. Men are built for the grind. Women—" He made a vague gesture that was supposed to mean something. "You know. Soft. Emotional. Not cut out for the hard stuff."
"I see."
"You got a husband? Boyfriend? Someone who could help you out with the practical stuff?"
Marisol smiled. It was the kind of smile that had made men twice Ben's size take a step back, though he was too busy surveying her shelves to notice. She rounded the counter and crossed the small space between them. The candles bent toward her as she moved, their flames stretching like curious fingers.
"Let me see your hand."
Ben frowned. "What for?"
"Humor me."
He hesitated, then extended his palm with a grunt. Rough. Dry. A crescent of grease under one fingernail. She placed the sprig of rue in the center of his calloused hand and closed his fingers around it.
"Hold onto this."
"What is it?"
"Rue." She kept her voice soft, almost gentle. "It's good for clearing the mind. Helping people see things the way they really are."
Ben looked down at his fist, then back at her. "This some kind of joke?"
"No joke." She stepped back, and the shadows seemed to gather around her, thick and patient. "You'll understand soon enough."
He pocketed the sprig with a grumble, muttering something about weird women and their weird hobbies, but she caught the flicker of unease in his eyes. He wrote down a number on the back of a receipt he pulled from his wallet, told her to call if she wanted the work done, and left. The bell wheezed behind him.
Marisol watched him through the window, watched him climb into his truck and pull away, the flickering sign painting his taillights in alternating pulses of red and shadow. She reached for the small clay bowl on her counter, the one filled with dried rose petals and salt, and sprinkled a pinch into her palm.
"Not cruel," she murmured to the empty shop. "Just patient."
The candles guttered. The air settled. Somewhere in the back, a jar of amber liquid hummed its low, thrumming note, as if it had heard her and approved.
Ben Agnew had no idea what he'd just agreed to.
He noticed the tingling halfway through his second beer.
It started in his chest—a warm, spreading sensation, like the buzz of a heating pad turned up too high. He rubbed at it absently, frowning at the television. Some reality show about people renovating houses. The kind of garbage his ex-wife used to watch before she'd packed up and left him for a guy who sold insurance.
"Goddamn chest," he muttered, setting the beer down. Maybe he'd pulled something at work. He'd been hauling wire all day, crawling through attics, breathing in insulation dust. Wouldn't be the first time his body had complained.
But it wasn't pain. That was the strange thing. It felt almost... pleasant. A warmth that sank deeper than skin, curling into the tissue beneath, spreading out in slow, deliberate tendrils. He pressed his palm flat against his sternum.
His chest felt—
Fuller.
He shook his head. Ridiculous. He was just bloated. He'd eaten too much pizza, that was all. Should've skipped that last slice. Heartburn, probably. He'd take an antacid before bed.
The tingling didn't stop.
It followed him into the bathroom, where he stripped off his work shirt and stared at himself in the mirror. Same gut. Same graying chest hair. Same sagging pectorals that had once been decent muscle, back when he'd been younger, leaner, before the divorce and the beer and the years of nothing much to look forward to.
But something was different. Something he couldn't quite name.
The skin over his chest looked... smoother. Tighter. And there was a tenderness there, a sensitivity that made him flinch when he brushed his hand against his nipple. He leaned closer to the mirror, examining himself with mounting unease.
"Getting old," he told his reflection. "That's all. Just getting old."
He went to bed and told himself the tingling would be gone by morning.
It wasn't.
The first thing he noticed when he woke up was the weight. A heaviness on his chest that hadn't been there before, like someone had laid a warm, soft blanket over him in the night. He blinked at the ceiling, groggy, confused, and then he sat up.
And felt them move.
He looked down. And his mind went blank.
Because the tentative, fragile sensitivity from the night before had become something else entirely. The loose, sagging skin had tightened, filled out, swollen into gentle curves that sat on his chest like—
Like breasts.
Not big. Not yet. But unmistakable. Small, soft mounds where there had been nothing but flat, aging muscle. He stared at them, his breath catching in his throat, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"What the fuck," he whispered. "What the fuck."
He scrambled out of bed and nearly fell. His balance felt off, his center of gravity shifted in a way he couldn't quite understand. He tore across the room to the mirror and stood there, shirtless, staring at his own reflection.
The breasts were still there. Real. He touched them—gently, tentatively—and felt a jolt of sensation that made him yank his hand back like he'd been burned. They were warm. Soft. Sensitive.
They were his.
His hands trembled. His breath came in shallow gasps. This wasn't possible. This wasn't real. He'd had too much to drink, or he was dreaming, or—
The sprig of rue sat on his nightstand where he'd tossed it the night before.
He stared at it. The memory of the woman in the botanica rose up like bile—her calm smile, her knowing eyes, her fingers closing his hand around the cool, small plant.
"You'll understand soon enough."
"No," he said out loud. "No. Fuck that."
He grabbed his phone, his thoughts a chaotic blur. He needed to go back. He needed to find that woman—that witch, whatever she was—and make her undo this. Whatever this was.
But as he stood there, the morning light streaming through his window and illuminating the impossible curves of his transformed chest, he realized with a sickening lurch that he had no idea what he was going to do if she refused. Because something told him—something deep and primal and afraid—that this was only the beginning.
Because something told him—something deep and primal and afraid—that this was only the beginning.
He found a shirt in the back of his closet, an old flannel he hadn't worn in years, and pulled it on with shaking hands. The fabric scraped against his chest in ways it never had before, every brush of cotton against skin sending little sparks of sensation through his body. He fumbled with the buttons, his thick fingers suddenly clumsy, and when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he stopped cold.
The flannel hung wrong. It pulled across his chest in a way that made the new curves beneath painfully obvious, the fabric straining just enough to announce what had happened to anyone who looked. He yanked the shirt open, sending buttons skittering across the floor, and stood there breathing hard, his reflection staring back at him with wild, panicked eyes.
"Okay," he said to the empty room. "Okay. Think."
He grabbed his phone and scrolled through his contacts, thumb hovering over his ex-wife's number. No. Absolutely not. She'd laugh herself hoarse, then call her sister, then call her mother, and by noon the whole goddamn state would know that Ben Agnew had grown a pair of—
He couldn't even think the word.
His foreman's number was next. He'd call in sick, say he threw his back out, buy himself a few days to figure this out. His thumb pressed the call button before he could second-guess himself, and the phone rang twice before a gruff voice answered.
"Agnew. You're late."
"Not coming in." Ben kept his voice low, trying to sound normal. "Threw my back out. Can barely move."
A pause. "You sound weird."
"It's the pain."
"Right." His foreman didn't sound convinced, but Ben heard him sigh. "Fine. Take a couple days. But I need you on the Henderson job by Thursday, no excuses. That clear?"
"Yeah. Clear."
He hung up and tossed the phone onto the bed. His hands were still trembling. He needed to see the woman. He needed to see the witch. He needed to make her fix whatever the hell she'd done to him.
But first, he needed to get dressed.
The bra was an accident. He'd been digging through his ex-wife's leftover things—she'd never bothered to come back for the box of clothes she'd left in the basement, and he'd never bothered to throw them out—when his fingers closed around something lacy and soft. He pulled it out and stared at it, a black thing with thin straps and cups that looked impossibly small.
He almost threw it across the room. But then he looked down at his chest again, at the way his nipples had grown sensitive and obvious, at the way every movement made them ache with a strange, foreign tenderness. He imagined walking into the botanica, into the world, with nothing but a loose shirt between him and everyone's eyes. The thought made his stomach clench.
"Just this once," he muttered. "Just until I get this fixed."
The bra didn't fit. Of course it didn't. His ex-wife had been a small woman, and whatever was happening to his body wasn't finished yet. The cups dug into his flesh, the band squeezed his ribs until he could barely breathe, but when he looked in the mirror, at least the shape beneath his shirt was contained. Almost normal. Almost like a man who'd just put on a few pounds in an unfortunate place.
He grabbed his keys and headed for the door.
The drive to the botanica took fifteen minutes. He spent every one of them rehearsing what he'd say. He'd demand answers. He'd threaten to call the police, the newspapers, anyone who would listen. He'd make her understand that whatever game she was playing, he wasn't going to be her goddamn pawn.
But when he pulled up in front of the shop and saw the flickering sign still buzzing overhead, the words died in his throat.
The place looked different in the daylight. Smaller. The windows were dark, and the door was shut, and for a moment he thought she wasn't there. He sat in his truck, engine running, trying to work up the nerve to knock. His chest ached beneath the borrowed bra, a dull, throbbing pulse that seemed to have its own heartbeat.
The door opened before he could decide.
Marisol stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the warm glow of candles that shouldn't have been visible in the middle of the day. She was wearing the same dress as before, or one just like it, and her silver-streaked hair was loose around her shoulders. She didn't look surprised to see him.
"Mr. Agnew," she said. "I was wondering when you'd come back."
"You." He killed the engine and climbed out of the truck, slamming the door behind him. "What did you do to me?"
She tilted her head, studying him with those knowing dark eyes. "Do to you? I gave you a sprig of rue. Nothing more."
"Bullshit." He stormed up to the doorway, close enough to smell the cinnamon and something darker that clung to her skin. "This—" He gestured at his chest, at the shape beneath his flannel that he could still feel, still ache, still hate. "This isn't nothing."
Marisol didn't flinch. She didn't step back. She just looked at him with an expression that was almost kind, almost pitying, and that made him angrier than anything else could have.
"I've seen men like you before," she said. "Walking through the world like it owes you something. Like every person you meet is either useful or invisible. You've never had to wonder what it's like to be looked at and dismissed. To be talked over. To be told what you're good for and what you're not."
"I don't know what you're talking about—"
"You told me women shouldn't run businesses." Her voice was soft, but it carried. "You told me we're too soft. Too emotional. Not cut out for the hard stuff. You said it like it was fact, like it was something you'd learned by living, not something you'd just decided to believe because it made you feel tall."
Ben opened his mouth, then closed it. His jaw worked, but no words came out.
"I want you to understand something, Mr. Agnew." She stepped aside, gesturing toward the candlelit interior of the shop. "I'm not going to undo anything. Not yet. Not until you've had a chance to see what I see. What every woman you've ever dismissed sees, every day, in every interaction, from men who think exactly the way you do."
"You can't—" His voice cracked. He hated that it cracked. "You can't just—"
"I can." She smiled, and there was something ancient in that smile, something that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. "And I did. Now. Are you coming in, or are you going to stand on my doorstep and yell at me until the neighbors call the police?"
Ben stared at her. His chest ached. His borrowed bra dug into his ribs. Somewhere behind him, a car drove by, its driver glancing at the two of them with idle curiosity.
He stepped inside.
The door wheezed shut behind him, and the candles bent toward him as he passed, their flames stretching like curious fingers. Marisol gestured toward a small table in the corner, cluttered with herbs and jars and things he couldn't name. A single cup of tea sat steaming on the table, as if she'd been expecting him.
"Sit," she said. "We have a lot to talk about."
He didn't sit. He stood in the middle of the cluttered shop, surrounded by the scent of cinnamon and secrets, and tried to find words. His chest was so tight he could barely breathe. The bra felt like a cage. Everything felt like a cage.
"How long?" he finally managed.
Marisol poured herself a cup of tea, not looking at him. "That depends on you."
"On me?"
"On how quickly you learn." She took a sip, then set the cup down with a soft clink. "The transformation isn't a punishment, Mr. Agnew. It's a lesson. It'll stop when you understand what it's trying to teach you. Not before."
Ben looked down at his chest, at the shape hidden beneath flannel and lace. His stomach churned. His skin crawled. He wanted to scream, to break something, to grab this woman by the shoulders and shake her until she gave him his body back.
Instead, he stood there, frozen, and felt something deep inside him begin to fracture.
His chest ached. His shirt pulled tight across the curves that shouldn't exist. And somewhere, in the back of his mind, a small, terrified voice whispered that this was real—that this woman had done something to him, something he couldn't explain, couldn't fight, couldn't control.
His breath hitched. His shoulders hunched.
And then, without warning, without permission, with a soft, almost intimate click that echoed through the silent shop—his buttons popped.
The sound was small. Almost delicate. Like a knuckle cracking or a twig snapping underfoot.
But in the hush of the botanica, with nothing but the hum of candles and the distant drip of water from somewhere in the back, it might as well have been a gunshot.
Ben looked down.
The top button of his flannel had launched itself somewhere into the shadows of the shop, and the second button was barely hanging on, straining against the fabric like it was trying to hold back a tide. The third button had already surrendered, and the gap between the two sides of his shirt was wide enough to reveal the black lace of his ex-wife's bra, the pale skin it couldn't quite contain spilling over the edges in soft, undeniable curves.
His face went hot. His whole body went hot. He grabbed the shirt and yanked it closed, but his hands were shaking and the fabric was already stretched beyond saving, and he could feel Marisol's eyes on him, calm and steady and utterly unsurprised.
"God damn it," he said.
His voice came out wrong.
He heard it as soon as it left his mouth—a slight tremor, a faint thinness at the edge of the words. Higher than it should have been. Softer. Like gravel that had been sifted through a finer screen. He clamped his jaw shut and swallowed hard, trying to force his throat back into its usual register.
He grabbed the shirt and yanked it closed, but his hands were shaking and the fabric was already stretched beyond saving, and his chest was still there, still growing, still moving beneath his fingers with every panicked breath he took.
"God damn it," he said again, and this time he heard it even more clearly. The pitch was off. The tone was off. It was his voice, but it wasn't his voice, like a radio playing his favorite station with the frequency just slightly out of tune.
Marisol set her teacup down. The soft click of porcelain against wood sounded louder than it should have.
"Take it off," she said.
"What?"
"The shirt. It doesn't fit you anymore."
Ben stared at her. His fingers were still clutching the torn flannel closed, knuckles white, the fabric bunched in his fists. It didn't fit. He could feel it—the seams digging into his shoulders, the collar tight against his throat, the sleeves suddenly too long for his arms. Everything was wrong. Everything was shifting.
"I'm not taking my shirt off in your shop," he said.
The words came out like a boy's voice cracking through puberty. He heard it and wanted to die right there on the spot.
Marisol stood up from the table. The candle flames swayed with her movement, casting her face in alternating planes of gold and shadow. She crossed the small space between them with slow, unhurried steps, and Ben found himself backing up until his shoulders hit a shelf filled with jars, their contents clinking softly behind him.
"You're fighting it," she said. "That's going to make it worse."
"Make it worse?" His voice cracked again, and he felt his throat close up around the sound, humiliated by his own body. "How the hell could it get worse?"
"You tell me."
She reached up and touched his chest—not the shelf, not the torn shirt, but the place where the fabric had split open, where the black lace of the bra was visible, where the skin beneath was warm and tender and nothing like the flat, calloused muscle that had been there that morning. Her fingers were cool and dry, and they rested there for just a moment before she pulled back.
"The transformation is moving faster than I expected," she said. "That's interesting."
"Interesting." Ben barked the word out, and it came out with a strange, almost musical lilt at the end, like a question he didn't mean to ask. "You think this is interesting?"
"I think you've spent forty-nine years being certain about something you never once bothered to understand." Marisol turned and walked back to her table, settling into her chair like a queen taking her throne. "The body is a teacher, Mr. Agnew. It's more honest than any sermon, more patient than any lecture. You're going to learn things you've spent your whole life refusing to know."
Ben stood there, breathing hard. His shirt was hanging open, the destroyed flannel offering no concealment at all. He could feel the lace of the bra against his skin, the soft weight of his chest shifting with every breath, the unfamiliar pull of gravity where there had never been anything to pull before. His throat was tight, and his eyes were stinging, and he was not going to cry, he was not going to cry, he was—
"I don't want to learn anything," he said, and his voice was a stranger's voice now, clear and soft and undeniably feminine. "I just want my body back."
Marisol looked at him for a long moment. The candles flickered.
"I know," she said softly. "That's where you start."
Ben didn't move. He didn't trust himself to move. Every step felt different now, his center of gravity shifted, his hips carrying weight they'd never carried before. He stood in the middle of the shop, half-naked in the ruins of his work shirt, and felt the last forty-nine years begin to slip away from him like water through his fingers.
"Put this on," Marisol said, and held out a shawl. Blue, soft, free of any pattern. "Wool. It's cold outside, and you're going to want something that covers—" She paused, smoothing a stray thread from the fabric. "—everything."
His hand trembled as he took it. He threw it around his shoulders. It draped strangely—his shoulders felt narrower, his neck thinner, the fabric pooling where it should have draped flat. He yanked it tighter and looked at the floor.
"What now?"
Marisol returned to her chair. "Now you go home. You take off that bra—it's too small, you're going to hurt yourself. You get some sleep. And tomorrow morning, when you wake up, you look in the mirror and you see what you see."
"You're sending me away?"
"No." She shook a sprig of dried rosemary loose over the table. "I'm giving you time to decide what kind of man you want to be. Because the man you were doesn't exist anymore. The body is gone. What are you going to do with what's left?"
Ben stared at her with a face he did not yet recognize. His jaw tightened—then softened. It felt suddenly smaller. Delicate.
His voice cracked when he finally spoke, thin and strange in his own ears.
"I don't know."
Marisol didn't look up.
"Good," she said. "That's the first honest thing you've ever said to me."