Chapter 3:

Sydelle

Witch Nonce arrived promptly twenty-four hours after her first appearance at my office. I did not waste time with pointless politeness. “I can’t take your case.”

She gazed at me with those large blue eyes. “Tell me why.”

“We have problems of our own. My best friend has just been killed in an accident.”

“That was no accident.”

“So I’m in no condition to focus on—” I broke off. “What?”

“A Vamp was killed last week. Then my cousin. Now your friend. All were made to seem like accidents or suicide. Actually they were murder. We have a common cause.”

I stared at her. “How can you know that?”

“Witches have avenues. Phil, I can’t say that these killings are linked, but I strongly suspect it. I think we have a serial killer—of Supes. I want to locate the one who murdered my cousin. You want to find the one who killed your friend. The Vampires have similar motive. We have to work together.”

I looked at Syd. “Can this be right?”

Syd concentrated. “It is right! My premonition agrees.”

“The gold is yours regardless,” Nonce said. “Likewise my friendly thighs. I believe you can solve this ugly mystery, Phil. Commit.”

“He commits,” Syd said.

She had made the decision for me. I didn’t resent it; I was grateful. It meant that she now approved of our collaborating with the Witch, friendly thighs and all, and believed that this would lead to the answer we all wanted: who had killed Bear, and why?

This sent me into another tour of memory, this time of Syd.

It wasn’t long before Bear introduced me to his new girlfriend, Sydelle. She was older than he, and not really pretty, but she had compensating virtues. Notably her precognition, her sense of what was to come. It was necessarily vague, because specifics led quickly to paradox, as she explained, but it served to guide her when in doubt. It had guided her to make shrewd investments, and she was financially comfortable. It guided her to Bear as her ideal man, and really, he was. He was a big unhandsome lunk of a young Were, needing social and supernatural guidance, eager for the willing companionship of a woman. It might have taken her all of five minutes to persuade him that her interest was genuine, and he was immediately in love with her. I was younger but more cynical, distrusting this.

“Talk to her,” Bear said. “You’ll see.”

We arranged a time and setting, her house, I being fifteen, she twenty, but I was the cautious one, concerned for my friend. And Sydelle persuaded me. It took longer, maybe ten minutes, but was just as certain. Her candor was devastating.

“You can see I’m no beauty,” she said. “But I long for love. To be genuinely appreciated for myself by a man, not for my money or intellect or appearance. And Bear does. I’m the first woman who showed real interest in him, and he can’t keep his hands off me. He desires me, and I desire his desire. We had sex four times in the first hour we were alone. I’d give it to him a hundred times in a night if he were capable of it. The fact that we’re both Weres is almost incidental. I love him.”

I knew as she spoke that it was true. She was not playing Bear; she truly loved him.

“He wants the two of us to get along, because you’re his best friend and he trusts you,” she continued. “And so do I. I will give you my Name.”

Her Name! “But—”

“I have given it to no one else but him, and now you. I want your complete trust in me. Because you and I will go far together.”

“Now wait!” I protested. “I’m not going to—”

She laughed. “Not romantically, silly! As friends. We can do a lot for each other.”

“A lot?”

“My primary is WereSerpent. My secondary is premonition, or intuition. My tertiary is the usual, a bit of illusion.” She smiled. “I could be prettier than I am, but Bear doesn’t need it.” For a moment her dull features sharpened into beauty and her bosom swelled; like most Weres she could indeed enhance her appearance. “It’s the second that guides me to Bear, and now to you.”

“The premonition?” I asked, swept along by her attitude. She had a compelling personality.

“It’s necessarily vague, because specifics tend to invoke paradox. If I knew I was going to die in an airplane crash tomorrow, I wouldn’t catch that flight, which would spoil the prediction. It’s also limited to me: how I am impacted by a coming event. The closer I am to a person, the more my premonition relates also to that person. I knew that Bear and I would hit it off, that he was well worth my while, and that has been amply vindicated already. When I met you, I knew that we would have just as powerful a connection, albeit of a different nature. That it will do us both good in significant ways; change our lives, in fact. We just have to find out what that nature is.”

“I really don’t see how,” I said. “I’m just a teen boy. I don’t know anything.”

“You are young. It’s your potential I’m picking up on. There’s something special about you, as there is about me. We owe it to ourselves to discover what it is. Let’s start by changing. In Weredom there is truth.”

“I—I’d have to get naked,” I said, disgruntled.

“As would I. Once again, Phil: we’re not lovers. This isn’t sexual. This is Were.”

“I—I’d get a—I can’t control it.”

She laughed again. “Do you think I haven’t seen it before? If it bothers you, cover it with illusion.”

She had more answers than I had objections. “Do you know what my form is?”

“No. Bear didn’t tell me, respecting your privacy. Just that it was odd. I can tell that myself. It wouldn’t even be any of my business, except that my premonition informs me that it is. We need to be close enough to know each other’s secrets.”

I would have argued further, but my own secondary was telling me that she was sincere and knew what she was doing. There was a deep core of rightness in her that I had to respect. So I told her. “I’m a WereWoman.”

She gazed at me, surprised. “You change genders?”

“Yes. I turn into a girl.”

“You’re not an Incubus?”

“No. Once an Incubus has sex, he has to become a Succuba, and she can’t Change back until she has sex with a man. Passing the— the semen back and forth. I’m not that way.”

“Remarkable! I didn’t know there was such a thing. But I suppose it makes sense, in the sense that some folk consider men and women different species. But it certainly is odd.”

“I’m odd,” I agreed.

“Let’s get to it. I’ll go first, if you prefer. As a python I won’t care what state you’re in.”

I bit the bullet. “No, we can do it together.”

We stripped and in moments stood facing each other, naked. I saw her bare breasts and the mound of her pelvis, and sure enough I got a stiff erection.

“Actually, you’re handsome,” she said. “You’ll be a fine man.”

“Too handsome,” I said. “I used to get teased. Before Bear.”

“Of course. When I was younger I got teased for being a late bloomer. Now I will Change.” She focused, and I heard her Name in my mind: “Sss.”

Then I said my Name, and started my own Change. My swollen penis quickly shrank, replaced by a swollen vulva and vagina. The flesh on my chest filled out into breasts. My pelvis widened. My legs thickened. My hair lengthened. I became Mena.

Meanwhile Sydelle formed slowly into a sixteen-foot-long serpent. She lifted her snake head, and I reached out my hand so she could sniff it. We had shown each other our Were forms.

Actually hers was more remarkable than mine. Most Weres were wolves, and most of the rest were large mammals. To become a reptile—that was rare. To be one without limbs was rarer still. I was impressed.

But I sensed that more was needed. I could not exactly read her mind, but I picked up on her need. She wanted something from me. What was it?

I focused, and got it. She wanted me to trust her. How could I demonstrate that? In another moment I got the answer.

I stepped close to her, reached down, and hauled up the center of her body. She weighed the same in serpent form as in woman form, about a hundred and twenty-five pounds. I hauled a segment of her up close to my belly. Her head moved around me, sliding across my shoulders, and her tail section wrapped around my hips and legs. Soon she spiraled around me from head to foot. Pythons were constrictors; she could tighten up and suffocate me if she chose.

She didn’t. She slid on around and down and off me. Then she hissed her Name and started shortening and thickening into her human form. As she did, she stayed close to me, in contact, so that I felt the changes against my body. I stood there, unchanging, sensing that that was what she wanted.

At last she was the woman again, plastered to me breast to breast. She kissed me, then separated. “Good girl. You trusted me.”

“Thanks,” I said somewhat lamely. “I’m Mena.”

“You read my Name. I saw your surprise.”

“I did,” I agreed. “It just came to me.”

“That may be your special secondary: to fathom Names. That will give you power over other Weres, especially if they don’t know it, and maybe over other Supes too.”

“Maybe so,” I said, surprised.

“You’re remarkably pretty, even without illusion or makeup. A combination of the two should make you virtually irresistible to men.”

“I don’t want to be like that!”

“Ah, but you need to be. Not so that men will mindlessly chase you, though of course they will, but so that you have control over the situation. A smitten man is a malleable man. You have to use what you’ve got, and you’ve got a lot.”

“I’m a man, inside!”

“Of course. Just as I am a human person inside my serpent form, to the extent feasible.”

“Feasible?”

“There’s not room for a human sized brain in my serpent head. Some brain tissue gets converted to muscle. So I know what and who I am, but I’m not smart. When we work together, you will need to guide me.”

“Work together?”

“It is slowly clarifying. I think we are destined to go into business together, with our forms an integral part.”

“What business?”

“Something that requires private information about clients. Maybe you could become a private investigator.”

“I don’t know anything about anything like that!”

“Think of it, Mena: As Phil you can be a PI. But a female client does not tell you everything, which hinders your ability to help her. So you set up a meeting with your associate Mena, and she wheedles news, woman to woman, that Phil couldn’t get. It could make you a superior PI.”

“But I have no training, no expertise.”

“You have three years to get it. Not by formal schooling; by anonymous online courses. By day you can be a schoolkid; by night, and in summer, a forming detective. You can do it.”

“Three years?”

“Until you’re of legal age to go into business for yourself.”

The idea was beginning to appeal. Me—a private eye! But I was not so foolish as to think it would be that easy. “Those online courses cost money, especially if they’re private. And a PI needs a front office, and a secretary and computer and stuff. I have like two dollars to my name.”

“I will sponsor you. I will rent the office when the time comes. In fact I will be your secretary-treasurer, so you won’t have to worry about drudgery like bills or records or sweeping the floor.”

“You’d do all that? Suppose I get no clients, or mess it up, and can’t repay you?”

“You will owe me nothing. I will own the business. I will issue you a regular paycheck. All you’ll need to do is satisfy clients.”

“Sounds like a dream job. But you’d be taking an awful gamble.”

She put her hands on my shoulders and faced me squarely. “You trusted me when I coiled around you. Trust me in this.”

“I do, I guess. But what do you get out of it?”

“My intuition tells me that this is my dream job too. That I will never regret it. That you have what it takes to make us a success, and we’ll both be fulfilled. I trust my intuition.”

“If you’re willing to gamble like that, then so am I. Let’s do it.”

“We’ll do it,” she agreed. “Now before you change back, let me help you with being a woman. We don’t want anyone to catch on.”

Since Molly left, Mena had lain fallow. I did need help making her viable again. “Okay.”

Syd took me to the bathroom and did things to my hair and face. “Illusion is useful, but it tends to fade when you’re not concentrating on it, while makeup is relatively permanent,” she explained as she brightened my lips and darkened my eyebrows. “You’ll have to carry a small compact with the essentials even in your male state, so that you can Change on short notice. You’ll have to learn to flaunt your femininity. To seduce a man when you need to.”

“Now wait on that! Have sex with a man? I’m not gay!”

“You can’t afford to deprive yourself of a primary tool. Some men become more talkative after sex, and it’s not just a function of the alcohol. Sex brings out the hormones, the endorphins, changes the brain for a while. You need to be as competent here as when sleuthing for clues at a crime scene.”

“I’d retch.”

“You’ll need practice to get over that. I assure you that many prostitutes are gay, doing it purely for the money. If they can, so can you.”

“I just can’t.”

She let it drop, to my relief, and in due course I Changed back to Phil. It had been a most remarkable session.

Thereafter I went into the program. Bear and I were still pals, and Syd was Bear’s girlfriend, so sometimes I Changed and we made a threesome for dinner or a movie, Bear with two girlfriends as had happened with Molly. We were careful to keep the PI project secret from everyone except Bear, who understood and supported it. We had directions in life.

Bear graduated and got a stevedore job that kept him in shape. Syd had an office job that bored her. We were marking time, as I learned the things I needed to be a decent private eye.

When I was sixteen Syd brought up the matter of sex again. By then I had more experience with occasional girlfriends and pretty much knew what it was about. I agreed that she had a point: to be completely reliable, Mena needed to be able to perform completely, in case there was ever an emergency need. She would have to have sex at least once.

Bear and Syd set me up at her house. I Changed, put on a sexy dress with a pushup bra, did my hair, put on makeup, and put in a female condom. Bear agreed that I looked the part; I was a stunning creature. Then Bear and I left and went down to a local bar that was notorious for prostitution. Bear faded back, becoming anonymous. I sat on a bar stool and ordered a drink. I waited for business.

It wasn’t what I expected. A genuine harlot pushed up to me. “What you doing in my spot, bitch?” she demanded.

“It’s a free country,” I said, irked.

“No it ain’t,” a tough looking man said. “You ain’t one of mine, slut. Get out of here.”

Then a heavy hand fell on the man’s shoulder. “Let’s talk,” Bear said.

They went outside together. Only Bear came back. He evidently had not lost his touch. The whore disappeared, having gotten the message: I had my own pimp, and he was tougher than hers.

It wasn’t long before a man picked me up. He had alcohol on his breath and was looking for action. “How much?”

I named a low figure. “But I don’t have a place. It’ll have to be your car.”

“Car it is,” he agreed. He was half drunk, but driving: par for that course.

We pulled into a private alley and he had at me. There was no subtlety. He just kissed me with his stinky mouth, grabbed at my breasts with his sweaty hands, and hauled out his grubby penis. I barely had time to get my legs apart and my panties pulled aside before he jammed in, pumped for about thirty seconds, and spewed his gluey jism into me. Then I got out and he, satisfied, drove weavingly away.

Bear pulled up, and I got in his car. “I need a barf bag,” I gritted.

He had one. I spewed into it, then yanked out the loaded condom and added it to the vomit. There was no other dialogue; he knew I wasn’t in the mood.

As we drove, my disgust at the process slowly gave way to a deeper aversion. I had had sex with a man! I had never felt like a woman, only a man garbed in a female outfit. I had evidently performed well enough; the drunk might hardly have noticed even if I had been a male body. But I hated the very notion of it.

I Changed in the moving car, not caring that it messed up my clothing. I just had to get away from what I had been.

We reached Syd’s house and I stumbled into Syd’s embrace. “It was awful!” I said. “I feel so damned dirty!”

She took me into her bedroom and got my ruined clothing off me. She took a cloth and wiped off the smudges on my body. I let her do it, shuddering with delayed reaction.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You weren’t as prepared as I thought you were. It’s my fault.”

“I feel unmanned. My mouth, my chest, my groin feel filthy, and it won’t wash out.”

“Maybe we can fix that.” She stepped back, got efficiently out of her clothing, and came to me naked.

“What—?”

She drew me down on the bed with her. “Hush.”

Then she started kissing me. I tried to protest, but she continued, and soon I was kissing her back. My limp penis stiffened. Then somehow I was on her, and my member was sliding into her cleft. Her hands clasped my buttocks and hauled me into her. I was hardly aware of thrusting before I was jetting inside her.

As it ebbed, I came to my senses. “What have I done?”

“You re-manned yourself,” she said. “The filth is gone.”

And it was. I remained disgusted with Mena’s experience as a whore, but now there was a more recent experience that overwrote it, making it a bearable memory.

But that was not actually my question. “You’re Bear’s girl!”

“He understands. I did what had to be done, as a friend. I stanched the wound. Now you can heal in private.”

I stared at her. This was a new dimension of friendship. “You’re some woman, Syd.”

“Thank you.”

And Bear, knowing about it, had stayed clear. He was some man.

“Your premonition—did you see this coming?”

“Not in detail. I just knew there would be some stress, and that I could handle it. If I had seen that mistake farther ahead, I would have spared you the horror.”

“It was horrible, but I have gained some understanding. Of more than sex. Maybe I’ll be a better person for it.”

“You’re already a good person, Phil.”

Then she fetched our clothing, and dressed, we rejoined Bear. Nothing more was said, then or ever. Friends did not need to review such details. But they would never be forgotten.

I never had sex again as Mena, but at least I knew I could if I had to. That was what counted. I continued my studies, with Bear and Syd’s support. I graduated from high school, and passed my PI courses, legally qualifying for the position. And so we came at last to the first day of business. And the awful second day.

The extended memory had been covered in an instant. “Assuming we have a serial killer,” I said to Nonce, getting down to business. “What background do we have on the victims?”