So if the couch is the neutral zone, then this is enemy territory.
A faint electric tingle washes over Alex's skin as she pushes through the wall into Justin's bedroom, and steps all over the Star Wars bedspread laid across his crisply-made bed. Glaring down at the expertly-folded hospital corners, she almost gives into the impulse to jump up and down all over it—which she knows would drive him batshit crazy—but restrains herself. She's here on a stealth mission, after all. She has bigger fish to fry. Instead, stepping carefully across to the end of the bed, she aims her wand at the carpet in the center of the room.
"Whatever wards are on the floor," she intones, "undo 'em so they ain't no more."
The tip of Alex's wand glows greenish-blue this time, and it's as though the floor of her brother's room is the surface of a still pond, and her spell a tiny pebble cast into it. Eldritch energy ripples from the center outward in concentric circles as whatever security spells he's cast upon it are neutralized. Only once the last of the ripples has faded against the baseboard in the farthest corner of the room does Alex finally hop down off the bed.
"Alright, that's outta the way," she murmurs to herself, as she hitches one knee up to her chest to holster her wand in her boot. "Now what, Alex?"
It's not a bad question. In fact, it's a very good one. Because forethought has never exactly been Alex Russo's strong suit, and she isn't entirely sure what it is she's supposed to be looking for, exactly. Yeah, she's here to find some kind of proof that Justin's world has been rocked by their drunken little sprint to third base the other night as much as hers has. She just doesn't have clue one about what form that proof might actually take, is all. Alex has her sketchbook to vent her emotions into when she's confused, but what does Justin have? Would he build some kind of android shrink to psychoanalyze him? Rearrange his action figures into some kind of tableau of conflicted morals and forbidden lo—er, lust?
A quick look around the bedroom answers both questions for her pretty quickly: nope, and um, nope. There don't appear to be any robotic works-in-progress anywhere. And all his little dolls on display are still factory-sealed and carefully preserved in their original, mint-condition packaging. Alex frowns to herself as she begins pacing around, idly picking up items and considering them for inclusion in her Box of Justin's Favorite Things From His Room, while she searches for clues.
It's a pretty quick search, and it comes up with bupkis. Justin's room is so spartan that even one of those oily dudes from '300' would look around and wonder if anybody actually lives in it—because, y'know, they're Spartans, get it?—and so perfectly neat that it might as well be a picture from the Dork Lifestyles section of the Ikea catalogue. There isn't a single thing out of place that stands out. She'd have better luck trying to find a clue in Max's room, and the last time she was in there, it took her ten minutes and a geo-location spell just to find his bed so she could wake him up for school.
Alex sighs heavily as she sits down against the edge of Justin's desk, and shakes her head. Yeah, so this is a waste of time. Clearly, cartoons have led her astray again, because this whole clue-finding deal isn't nearly as easy as they've made it out to be. Where the frig are Dora and Boots when you really need them? Hell, she'd even take Shaggy and Scooby-Doo right about now, and those two idiot burnouts never find anything. Usually all they manage to do is to get stumbled upon by the bad guy, then run and hide from him for most of the episode, while everybody else does all the—
Alex breaks off mid-thought, her head coming up sharply as she looks towards the door. Waitasecond, are those footsteps she hears coming up the staircase? Justin's footsteps?
Ruh-roh, Raggy.
"—know it's raining, Schnuggly Boo-Boo McCutiekins," she hears him say faintly from the hallway, his voice gradually growing louder as it gets closer to the door. "And I'm really sorry we couldn't spend the afternoon together, but I told you I'd have to head uptown right after school, remember?"
"Zoinks!" Alex mutters to herself, eyes wide with panic. Normally it wouldn't bother her in the least to be caught skulking through Justin's room, but things have hardly been 'normal' between them for the past couple days. It might raise questions she isn't ready to hear, much less answer. She casts her eyes frantically around the room, looking for an escape route, until they come to rest on the Tears of Blood poster hanging over his bed, the one she walked through to get in here.
She hesitates for a second, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth as she struggles to remember a wizard lesson that she was just barely paying attention to six months ago. Is Go Through, Mow Through the kind of spell that stays active until you tell it to turn off? Or does it wear off as soon as you've used it?
"Just needed to pick up a few supplies for a project I'm working on," Justin says from the hallway, and his voice is, like, right outside the door. "Nonono, it's not for class. This is more of an, uh, extra-cirricular assignment."
And then the doorknob rattles as, on the other side of the door, Justin presumably lays his hand on it. And that's all it takes to make up Alex's mind for her. Crossing the floor towards the bed in three quick strides, she leaps up onto it, and throws herself bodily at the wall...then grunts as she slams face-first against it, drops back onto the mattress, then bounces off it and tumbles to the floor next to the bed, landing with a thud.
Yeah, so Go Through, Mow Through? Not the type of spell that stays active.
Also, ow.
Groaning, Alex winces in pain and brings one hand up to press it against her tender forehead...then freezes as she hears the door swing open, and Justin step hesitantly into the room.
"Hmm? No, I'm still here, Schnuggly Boo-Boo, I just thought I heard...what? No, you're not distracting me from something more important, I just...no, I was just...I just thought I heard...I was listening to you, McCutiekins, but I was distracted by the...no, hang on, I didn't mean—"
Lying on her side, hidden behind the bed on the opposite side of the room from the door, Alex rolls her eyes towards the ceiling. Sweet Zombie Jesus, could Justin be any more pussy-whipped? Shaking her head, she draws herself up onto her hands and knees, intent on scurrying towards the door and freedom while his attention's elsewhere. But then her breath catches in her throat as the bed next to her squeaks its springs in protest when Justin sits down on the other side.
"Honey, don't be like this, OK?" Justin sighs, over the gentle rustle of a plastic bag as he sets it down on the bedspread next to him. "Look, I'm sorry if it feels like I've been distant all week, but...no, I'm not trying to tell you what to do, I'm just...no, I'm just...I'm just...just...just..."
Holding her breath, Alex braces both hands on the edge of the bed and gradually pulls herself up, just enough to peer over it. Sitting with his back to her, facing the open door, Justin slumps his shoulders and drops his head forward in defeat.
"Fine, I'll let you go, then," he says flatly, although it's plainly not his idea. "But listen, call me later, oka—hello? Juliet? Are you still—?"
Alex ducks back behind the bed a little, as Justin jabs his thumb down on the 'end' button, and drops his phone to the mattress in frustration. He reaches up to press the heels of both hands into his eyes, shaking his head as he scrubs them furiously. Then, after about a minute of that, he drops his hands into his lap, heaves a heavy sigh, then stands up and crosses towards the open doorway. Alex's heart leaps in her chest, and she tenses her entire body to bolt for escape as soon as he's out into the hall...but she quickly deflates as Justin merely shuts the door, then depresses the little button in the middle of the doorknob to lock it.
Aw, crap. Now she's stuck here.
She barely has time to register this, though, before Justin takes a few steps back, reaches around to pull his wand out of the back pocket of his jeans, then twirls it around his index finger and points it at the door.
"What I'm about to do, no one else should see," he intones, "so lock this door, and throw away the key."
And Alex's eyebrows jump several inches above the edge of the bed as the tip of Justin's wand glows purple, as does the door before him while the security ward settles on it.
Aw crap! Now she's really stuck here!
Alex quickly ducks back down behind the bed as Justin turns around and steps back towards it, tucking his wand back into his pocket, his expression resolute. Pressed low against the floor, Alex frowns to herself as she hears the rustle of the plastic bag again as he rummages through it. Just what the hell is he planning to do that he's willing to use magic unsupervised to prevent anyone from seeing it?
"OK, let's see," Justin mutters to himself on the other side of the bed, as he lays out items one by one. "Two tea candles, blue, check...barbeque lighter, check...one bluebell flower, check...lavender petals, check...sea salt, check...a-a-a-a-and a pair of scales, check. Hmph, still wish the scroll had been more specific about that one. If it meant fish scales instead of weigh scales for some reason, I'm seriously pooched, here..."
Alex's frown deepens, and she fights the urge to lift her head back over the edge of the bed to see what's going on. That was one hell of of a shopping list. Either this 'extra-curricular project' of his is the Home Ec recipe from hell, or Justin is rhyming off the components for a spell. For some reason the inclusion of lavender petals in it is ringing some serious alarm bells somewhere in the back of her head—as though it's dangerous, somehow—although she doesn't have the faintest idea why. And the fact that Justin apparently feels the need to cast it in secret doesn't make her feel any better.
"Oh," Justin says to himself then, snapping his fingers. "Smoke alarm. Better disable it, just in case."
And wow, that can't be good, either. Because Justin, Tribeca Prep's Deputy Fire Drill Warden for four years running, willfully ignoring fire safety? Yeah, never a good sign. Jesus, maybe him fingering her really did knock them both into the Twilight Zone...
(Agh, seriously? Right, that's settles it. As soon as she gets out of here, she's marching herself down to the free clinic and getting herself shot full of whatever she needs to kill this stupid venereal dork-ease he's given her.)
Justin slips off his shoes, then hops up onto the bed to reach the smoke detector on the ceiling, forcing Alex to quickly scurry beneath it before he sees her. She breathes a quick sigh of relief as the bedsprings creak above her, and shakes her head. OK, this is getting to be a ridiculous situation, here. Like something out of those old black and white "comedies" with no sound that Justin and Harper love so much. She has half a mind to just fish her wand out of her boot and flash herself the hell out of here while she's out of sight, which she totally would if she weren't so damned curious about what Justin's up to. If only there were some way to see what he was doing without being seen.
"Oh, duh," she mutters, rolling her eyes at herself. Idiot. Hi, wizard much? Shaking her head, she twists to the side and strains her arm, struggling to reach her boot in the narrow confines of the space under the bed, and manages to grab hold of her wand on the third try.
"I'm trying to operate under cover," she whispers under her breath, as she twists her wand in a tight circle, "so make me invisible to my big...uh, brover?"
Alex bites her bottom lip hopefully as she stares at the tip of her wand. Nothing happens. She can practically feel the laws of physics and probability scoffing at her and saying "Really, little girl? Really?"
Alright look, not all her make 'em ups are gonna be gems, OK?
"Don't do what I say, do what I mean," she growls impatiently. "Just fix it, goddammit, so I can't be seen."
And even though she didn't actually intend for it to rhyme, that works. The business end of her wand flares with a blue-white glow that travels up her arm, causing first her fingers, then her hand, wrist and arm to completely fade from view...although, oddly enough, not the wand itself, nor the sleeve of her shirt.
Alex blinks at her seemingly hollow sleeve, then cranes her neck to look down along the length of her body. Yep, it's all still there: boots, skinny jeans, even the waistband of her panties peeking out a little just below the hem of her shirt.
"Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me," she groans, dropping her forehead against the carpet and closing her eyes. The spell fixed it so she can't be seen, all right, but apparently only her. "Dude, seriously?"
Ugh. Somewhere, the laws of physics and probability are laughing at her.