3

Chances were if he had changed the past, Justin had skewered his history, and he had ended up with a new mother and a new name. However, there was also the chance he had misplaced himself into an entirely new family, and if that was the case, these girls obviously saw him as whoever he had replaced. When Justin looked into the mirror, he saw his own face looking back. Who was he now? Just who was this William Troy he had become besides a dartboard of abuse and mischief from three older sisters. From what he had seen so far, he was a young heir with money, he lived in a very large house either in New England or Great Britain and was the younger brother of a few sisters. After a cold bath from what seemed to be his own personal bathroom, Justin found a white shirt and dark slacks to wear. The clothes were in his size, and he had an odd instinct of who he was in this world. He had an odd compulsion to brush his shoes clean after pulling them on and tying them, he pulled on the blazer on the hanger hanging by the door and then apprehensively scooted along to make his way downstairs and scout out this new family. Across the way from his bedroom was a small library adorned with a large library of books. Just a casual look around and he was soon off and exploring this estate. Who was his new mother? Who was his new father? Past six bedrooms going down the hallway, he reached the end of the hall to a large galley of portraits. Directly over him was the painting of a steely grinning gentleman in a large chair, his beautiful blonde wife standing at his side, two young girls in the portrait with them in forgotten style of dress. Father resembled the image of a certain comic book man of steel; mother could be a certain pop-star material girl. They certainly looked the image of American royalty.

"Two sisters…." Justin followed the length of the gallery and counted the children in the portraits. Down the hall approaching the grand stairway was another portrait. "Four sisters…" He counted the two new girls in the second painting in addition to the first two, but at the second landing heading to the main floor was yet another family portrait. "Six sisters?" His feet trudged nervously to the bottom and reached the parquet floor of the main entry hall. A great crystal chandelier was overhead, and Doric columns flanking the main entrance showed the way to halls leading deeper into this great mansion. The floor was a very grand pattern of black and white tiles. A noble Victorian clock built into the arch into the gallery hall under the balcony he had just descended. Up above the walls were decorated in the portraits of this family's ancestors. Noble men and beautiful women in styles of dress from modern to Victorian times looked down to Justin in this great place, but in the place of importance above the entryway was the last portrait of a beautiful grand lady with the image of her dearly departed husband added after his death, her nine children… four sets of female twins in early adolescence to adulthood and one male heir barely a year old. The clothing in the portraits varied, but the faces relatively stayed the same. The mother stayed young and beautiful, father stayed young and handsome except for silver temples. Each portrait seemed to give five to eight year lengths of time judging by how the daughters aged. At this last portrait, the nameplate gave the father's name: Peter Bradford Troy, 1922 to 1987.

"Eight sisters?" Justin stood in shock. "Eight older sisters? I gave up Alex… for this?"

"William…"

"What?" Justin looked up to Gwendolyn Stephanie Troy, the eldest of the eight sisters. Emerging from the archway to the dining room, she was extraordinarily attractive for someone possibly in her late thirties. She had long light blonde hair with soft romantic and regal brown eyes and a slender aristocratic figure and flawless white alabaster skin. Her ruby red lips and brown eyes made her look like a beautiful ivory statue of Venus brought to life. Dressed in a white blouse, light flirty black vest and rich blue designer jeans, she exuded a personal confidence and warm sense of trust.

"Mother sent me to see what was keeping you." She was more respectful and sensible that her more flighty younger sisters. "We're waiting for you at breakfast." She eyed him as if he had forgot.

"Actually…" Justin was heading toward the door. "I'm not hungry. In fact, I've got things…."

"William, you know that's not how we do things…" Gwen took him the shoulders and steered him between the columns for the double doors recessed at the end of the short hall. The room opened up at the top to a large dining room and a grand ten-chair dining table set for breakfast. The head at one end was vacant for the father long lost to the ages; at the other end, the beautiful blonde mother shining over her grown children. Justin could see all of his new sisters at once. Most of them were blonde, some with short blonde hair and some with long tresses of hair. Some of them had very incredible figures while others like Sara and Gwen were more modest. A few glanced up casually, others were more distracted by make-up and cosmetic refinement. Gestured toward the chair next to his new mother, Justin slowly acclimated to being the youngest in a house dominated by the other sex.

"There's my baby boy…" Donna Louise Troy beamed without any trace of the ages on her youthful face. She had to be in her twilight years, but she had the mature perfection of a beauty in her prime. She was the kind of attractive mother his best friends would have had unfulfilled infatuations for their own lives. Justin sat at her right side nervously. Could she tell he wasn't who he was? Could anyone? The beautiful matriarch sensed something amiss and postured a bit as she looked him over. "Sweetheart, is there something wrong." She looked at Justin. "You look… terrified." She turned to his sisters. "What did you girls do to him this time?"

"Nothing… " Their voices echoed and chorused back out of sync.

"It's nothing…" Justin tried to play the role. Nervous and hesitant, he took the glass of orange juice nearest him and sipped it. "Just… tired…" He looked over his eight brand new older sisters down the sides of the table.

"And freezing I bet…" Dressed in a violet sleeveless dress, Lisa smirked hiding a grin. "I doubt he got very much hot water."

There was a short but brief chuckling from various sisters. Lisa sat across from him with a snide grin at him, her elbows on the table and fingers interlaced before her face. To her left was Alicia Sylvia Troy, another beautiful blonde in a casual black dress with a plunging neckline. She sat leaning back in her high-topped chair tapping out letters on her electronic device. Glancing over this clan of siblings, Justin could tell which sisters were twins and who wasn't. Gwen and Lizzie were the oldest and the most statuesque; the two of them just barely resembled each other, but Lizzie still had her natural hair color. Jessica and Kristy were the next youngest, possibly in their late twenties, maybe early thirties. They were both shapely with long blonde hair and bold brown eyes that made guys melt. Sara and Alicia were the third set of twins; athletically proportioned, not quite so bosomy but with an elegant royal grace and presence. Lisa and Tricia were just barely their height; the two bouncy beauties flaunted their figures in tight revealing attire. Sitting at this table was like having breakfast at the Playboy mansion. Each sister was incredibly attractive, all of them blonde except for Lizzie and Lisa, but they did not seem like a vacuous group of blondes. It seemed they had brains. Kristy was reading Hemingway at her table, and Jessica seemed to be some sort of entertainer, speaking to her manager on her cell phone about her next show. Alicia revealed herself to be an anthropologist of some sort, mentioning something about bones from the Tang Dynasty and relics from the Norse region. Despite this façade, something seemed off. They looked way too young for a father who died just over thirty years ago. Their mother looked way too young to be their mother, and yet one of them knew William as an infant. No one here looked older than twenty-five or thirty!

At the head of this table, Donna Troy sat at her unofficial throne beaming enlightened upon her progeny. Her azure blue eyes glistened with godhood, her ruby red lips exuded with a royal presence and her shoulder blonde hair rested atop her white high-collar blouse with a loose unfettered black ladies' tie hanging as decoration down her bosom. Reserved with a slight smile on her lips, she swayed her head to one side and lightly cleared her throat with a sip of juice from her decorative chalice.

"Yes, well…" Donna continued and glanced up briefly as servants carried out plates. "I just wanted you girls to know…" She looked to Justin behind her son's face and reacted embarrassed. "Sorry, honey…" She apologized for leaving him out of that introduction. "I just wanted you to know that after almost a hundred years, we are finally having a family reunion in this house…"

"Grandma-grandma-grandma…" Jessica started chanting with Kristy, Tricia, Alicia and Sara joining in with the chant. Looking a bit surprised, Lizzie suddenly dabbed her lips and sipped her juice.

"Cousins…" She grinned. "Fresh meat…"

Gwen rolled her eyes and sunk back in her seat. Justin looked at his plate and tried to be invisible in this family.

"Yeah…" Donna responded indifferent to how her children responded to their relatives. "Anyway, I've got yard crews coming to clean the gardens, restore the unused wing and prune the shrubbery. No funny business in front of them!"

"Tricia, Lisa…" Kristy leaned forward and looked to her younger sisters. "That means no nude sun-bathing."

Justin started choking on his breakfast as Donna patted his back motherly.

"And that means not asking every guy to come up and help re-arrange your bedroom furniture!" Tricia shot back.

"Oh my god…" Justin did a double take. Not only were his new sisters a bunch of divas, but they were eight man-hungry husband-hunting flirts!

"Hey, I said no funny business…" Donna Troy was obviously a very stern matriarch. "I do not want to be surprised by more grand children…."

Justin started choking on his scrambled eggs as his new mother rubbed his back again.

"Oh yeah…" Tricia whipped out her cell phone. "I forgot to send Brandi money for her birthday…."

"Julie wanted me to ask if you got the birthday gift she sent you." Lisa looked up.

Silently under his breath, Justin sunk back into his seat and gradually assimilated his new family's eccentricities and dirty little secrets. Sipping his juice to regain his composure, his eyes widened in stunned shock and placed his chalice down uttering one silent "wow" under his breath.

"Yes, tell her I got the clock." Donna regained her composure again. "Is there anything else?" She looked to her rice and eggs.

"Oh…" Her cleavage nearly pouring out of her dress, Alicia leaned forward toward Justin. "William," She called him by his new name. "Ally called…"

"Ally?" Silently eyeing his breakfast plate of scrambled eggs, large sausages and cheese-covered chopped potatoes, Justin wondered who that was.

"Your fiancée?" Kristy reminded him.

Justin suddenly coughed up the juice on his lips, sending an eruption of juice and spit across the table into the face of the nearest sister. Sara and Alicia leaned back as Lisa sitting across the table received the worst of it. She dropped her fork to her plate and froze out of disgusted surprise.

"Thank you…" She replied sarcastically. "Thank you… oh, so much…" She rose dabbing her face of her brother's drink and to change her clothes upstairs.

"William…" Surprised and ecstatic, Donna turned to Justin. "Are you two engaged?"

"Engaged?" Justin screeched under breath. Who the heck was Ally?

"Lecy, stop that…" Gwen responded as the only responsible sister and eyed her obnoxious sister with derision. "Mom, Lisa and Tricia have a conspiracy with Ally to get William to re-pop the question. Just the other day, Sara helped them tie old shoes and cans to the back of his car as…" She looked to the young man she thought was her brother. "Incentive."

"Yes…" Sara dripped hollandaise sauce from her spoon to her scrambled eggs. "I helped them, and next week I'm hiring a bunch of kids to follow you around and call you… Daddy!" She smirked toward Justin and dipped her spoon into her mouth to taste the sauce on her tongue. She didn't seem that ornery; behind that mischievous side was a sense of true respect – a sister who teased her brother because she loved him.

"I call dibs on his room…" Jessica stuck her left arm up. "I need to get as far away from Kristy as possible."

"Hey…" Kristy looked down the table excitedly. "If William gets married, can I put in a door to Jessica's room? I need more closet space!"

"For the last time," Donna put her glass chalice down. "I am not giving permission for anyone to knock down any walls or create any new doorways. That's what the enchantments are there for. We are leaving the house exactly as it was when I was young. You girls can either get rid of your excess clothes or store them in the empty servant's quarters in the attic."

"But that's too far away…" Kristy groused.

"There's a secret passage…" Alicia beamed secretly. "As if I'm telling anyone where it is…"

The candles on the table suddenly flashed and sparked. Everyone jumped at the flash including Justin. The only problem was… they were never lit.

"Stop the sniping…" Donna was the only one who hadn't jumped at the tiny fireworks; it was almost as if she had caused them to flare and pop. "Like I said, get rid of the excess clothes. Half of the North Wing looks like the ladies wardrobe department at the mall!"

"But I don't like conjuring my own clothes…" Jessica sat back grousing. "Buying them is so much more fun…"

Almost everyone agreed with that.

"Materialize them out of the photo ads like I do…" Lisa returned to the dining room in a tasteful black and white ensemble with a blue belt. "At least… I'm not hiding clothes in the closets of empty bedrooms…" She kicked Kristy's chair on the way back to her chair.

"That explains all the naked models in my Cosmo!" Tricia screamed.

"At least, I wear underwear!" Kristy shot a venomous look at Lisa.

"Honey…" Donna rolled her eyes tired of this morning clash of egos, gave Justin a light kiss to the cheek and rose from the table after daintily dabbing her lips of her breakfast. "I've got work to do. Have a nice day…" Justin looked at her and then a bit afraid of his new sisters.

"What kind of wizard family did I land in…" He silently asked himself.