Alex doesn't gasp. She doesn't curse. She doesn't exclaim in shock or cry out in surprise. And not because she's trying to stay undercover or keep from getting caught, either. No, she doesn't make a sound because there simply isn't a sound Alex could make that would adequately capture what she feels at this particular moment in time. And even if there is...no, not even a hopeless, know-it-all, 'Words With Friends'-loving dork like Justin would know it.
Instead, she silently looks down, her mouth hanging open and her skin puckering into goosebumps all over—thankfully as completely invisible as the rest of her, which is a good thing, given that she's not wearing a stich of clothing to hide them—and stares at Justin's private little stash of fetish fuel. Even as he uses it to get himself off, less than a foot away from her. Both his raspy, labored breathing and the bow-chikka-bow-bow soundtrack of the porn movie playing in the background on his Macbook are eerily loud in her ears as, she tilts her head a little to the side, and tries to make sense out of what she's seeing.
Well, her first guess was at least half-right. The small rectangles carefully laid out across the bedspread next to Justin? The ones he's staring at without blinking as he jerks himself off with abandon? Yeah, they're definitely photos, all right. But they aren't the dirty pictures of Vampire Barbie she thought they are. Not even close.
Nope, they're all of her, instead. Of herself. Of Alexandra Marguerita Russo.
They're not exactly the type of photos she'd expect, though. (Not that she ever would have expected this at all, not in a gajillion years. But whatever, it's been that kind of week.) Because there's nothing dirty about them, not even remotely. Nothing gross, or compromising, or particularly sexy, even.
Most of them are just everyday candids, taken at barbecues, birthdays, or family game nights before things turned ugly. A few of her in her cheerleader outfit. A couple of her in her Zombie Prom dress. Yeah, there's one or two of her windsurfing on vacation in Puerto Rico a few months back…in a bathing suit and showing a little leg, maybe, but otherwise bound up in a ridiculously bulky life jacket that shouldn't be even remotely arousing. (Not unless Justin has some kind of weird nautical fetish that Alex can't begin to guess the name of, anyway.)
The one thing they all have in common, though? They're all of just her, and her alone, with nobody else in the frame. And in almost every single one of them, Alex is looking directly at the camera, her dark eyes bright and dancing, her pretty features lit up with a wide, uncharacteristic smile. Not the mischievous grin of an evil genius, nor the sarcastic half-smirk of a deadpan snarker…but an all-too-rare, genuine smile, that radiates warmth and happiness. Each photo captures a completely unguarded moment in which she'd dropped the act—the carefully polished mask of the girl who couldn't care less about the rest of the world, or what it happened to think of her—and was, for a brief second or two, unabashedly and unashamedly herself.
Every single one of them, a moment of truth. Just like the picture of her he'd placed on the scale, to weigh against TJ's. Just like that moment they'd shared the other night when—after everything else that had happened—Justin had kissed her, leaving her utterly speechless for perhaps the first time in her short life.
And just like that, Alex realizes what's going on here, why Justin risked a one-way trip to H-E-double-hockey-sticks to set foot in one of those evil "dens of inequity" in the Village. Why he'd bought the exact same skin flick they'd watched together. And why he's skipped to the exact scene that had been playing when she'd walked in and caught him, then let it play in the background while he flogged his log to photos of her looking...well,happy, for lack of a better word.
It hits her in the pit of her stomach with all the force of a fistful of feathers: Justin is trying to recreate that moment of truth they shared. The moment in which they'd made love for the first time.
Justin's words, of course, not hers. To Alex, it had been just a little harmless smut, nothing more...or so she's kept telling herself, at least a couple hundred times a day, every day since. But for some reason she can't explain, her vision goes blurry, and her eyes begin to sting, as she looks from the photos of herself, to the look of passionate adoration on Justin's face, and finally back to the enchanted lab balance bobbing back and forth in the center of the room, working its mojo on TJ Taylor. Each of them, in its own unique way—including, strangely enough, the hardcore orgy scene playing itself out on his laptop—a sure sign of how much he cares. Of how devoted he is to her.
And, it occurs to her, as she gradually breaks into a wicked little grin, an undeniable sign that he hasn't been able to stop thinking about the other night, either!
Ha! She knew it! She knew that she'd know what she was looking for when she saw it! And this—all of this—definitely qualified as being 'it'.
Awwww yeah, that's right. Cue the Fiesta Trio and break out the Scooby Snacks, bitch! Dora the Explorer can go eat a dick! Her and her creepy little talking monkey!
And that's how Alex Russo winds up shaking her naked, invisible booty in an impromptu victory salsa around her brother's bed as he furiously masturbates only a few feet away, completely unaware...right up until the moment that she shakes it a little too hard, and carelessly scuffs her heel into the ring of sea salt that encircles Justin's truth ritual.
The second her skin makes contact, the flickering little tea candles erupt like flame throwers, each projecting a thick column of wicked red flame into the air, scorching the ceiling. Alex shrieks and recoils away from them, the heat so strong that she's certain her skin will be bright pink all over, once she's actually visible again. Justin shrieks even louder, the Macbook tumbling off his lap onto the bed as he scrambles backwards until his shoulderblades are pressed against his Tears of Blood poster on the wall, with his bare knees pulled up to his chin.
"AAAAHH!" he screams, because Justin's always been a screamer. "AHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Half-crouched on the floor in in front of the bed, Alex looks up and scowls at him. What the frig is he screaming about? It's not like he's the one who's gonna have to explain to Harper later how he managed to get an all-over sunburn in the middle of a rainstorm in October. Shaking her head in disgust, and wrinkling her nose at the smell of singed hair—clearly there's a trim in her very near future—Alex begins to cast her eyes frantically around the room, trying to figure out what she did to make the little tea lights mad at her.
"OK...it's OK...calm down, J-Man," Justin says to himself in the meantime, causing Alex to roll her eyes. (Because, J-Man? Really?) Squaring his shoulders, he takes a deep breath through his nose, and lets it out through his mouth, like an expectant mother in labor, breathing through a contraction. "Calm down and think, egghead. The book warned you this might happen, remember?"
"Oh sure, now you tell me," Alex mutters bitterly, under her breath. She glances down at the spot on the carpet he appears to be fixated on, and groans as she realizes that there's a visible footprint right smack in the middle of the seasalt circle—namely hers, since that's where her invisible foot happens to be planted at the moment.
The circle isn't broken, exactly—her heel hasn't scuffed clean through, just halfway—but it's a near thing. No wonder the candles got all pissed-off and threw a shit-fit at her. It was probably what the ancient Latinos, or whoever, considered an early warning system. Because while Alex doesn't know a whole lot about old ritual magic—having either slept through that particular wizard lesson, or sent an Edgebobo Utoosis clone in her place while she skipped it entirely, she's not exactly sure which—the one thing she's absolutely crystal clear on is that broken circle equals bad. (And OK, if she's retained that much, she'd probably just been half-asleep through it, then.)
Moving gingerly, Alex lifts her foot ever so slowly out of the salt, careful not to disturb it any further, starting with the heel. And the instant her big toe is clear of the floor, leaving her balancing awkwardly on the other foot, the tea lights knock off their whole blowtorch act, and go back to normal—as normal as four candles throwing off magical sparks in alternating primary colors get, anyway—as though nothing happened. Shoulders sagging, Alex allows herself to breathe a sigh of relief.
Justin, on the other hand, is practically hyperventilating as he looks wildly around the room.
"Am I—?" he squawks, his voice pitched two octaves higher than normal, before the clears his throat and tries again. "Am I in the presence of an ancient spirit seeking tribute in return for the boon I have requested?"
Alex pauses in the middle of lowering her foot back to the ground, and looks back up at him as though he's one cheese short of an enchilada suprise. Wait, what's this now?
"I know about the old ways," Justin continues, his eyes sweeping back and forth across the room, his voice quivering just enough that probably only Alex herself would be able to tell how scared he is. "I understand that magic of this kind often comes at a price. And I appreciate that establishing my sister's innocence beyond all doubt is—given who she is—a pretty tall order to say the least..."
Alex snorts, and starts to scowl at him in offense, then simply shrugs it off and nods. Yeah, OK, fine. So maybe he had a point there.
"But I'm willing to do whatever you ask," Justin goes on, the subtle tremor disappearing from his voice entirely. "Give you anything you want. Name your bargain. It's yours for the asking."
Alex blinks at this—or again, at least she thinks she does, transparent eyelids be damned—and takes a step towards him. Because one other half-heard piece of information about old-school pact magic has just come floating back to her, and if Justin's prepared to make the kind of deal he thinks he's making, he's even more serious about this than she thought. Ancient spirits don't just hit you up for cash, or gift cards from Suburban Outfitters, or whatever. They trade in stuff like firstborn children. The lives of loved ones. Souls. That kind of thing. They play for keeps.
Jesus Christ. Justin wasn't even a little bit kidding when he said he'd fix things for her. He is not fooling around.
"Look, whoever you are...whatever you are..." Justin says evenly, still looking around the room, "with all due respect, let's stop wasting each other's time and just get on with this, please. I appreciate the theatrics, but you're not exactly dealing with an amateur. I know you're here. I can sense your presence."
Alex cocks an eyebrow at this, and tilts her head to the side a little. Oh, so now he can sense her presence? Gee, and after only having been in the room with her for the better part of an hour. It's not like she's been exactly subtle, either. Jeez, the candles do a little pillar of flame action, and suddenly that sets his wizzy-sense a-tingling?
She breaks off in mid-thought, and looks over her shoulder at the footprint in the salt. Oh. Ohhhhhh. So yeah, that right there is a pretty dead giveaway...
"Identify yourself!" Justin shouts then, defiantly, getting up onto his knees on the bed. "Tell me what it is you want from me. Now. Or I'll put an end to the ritual, send you back from whence you came, and summon someone else who's a little more forthcoming. It doesn't make one damn bit of difference to me."
Normally Alex would snort or giggle mercilessly at Justin's pathetic attempt to be all kewl and badass, but the thing is...well, it actually isn't all that pathetic, for once. In fact, it's actually kind of, um, hot, for lack of a better word. There's something about the tone of his voice, the confident way his shoulders are set, and the determined glint in his eye that's doing more to turn her on than any late-night skin flick ever has. So much that it feels as if her excitement is actually dripping down the insides of her thighs. If she were still wearing panties right now, they'd be flooded.
And OK, so the fact that his cock is still standing at rigid attention doesn't hurt, either. Possibly even redder and harder than it was when he was stroking it, it juts up and out from him, bobbing slightly with his every movement, commanding her attention. God, she can't imagine what it must be like to walk around with one of those things in your pants. It looks awfully uncomfortable, almost painful, all swollen and veiny. And yet staring at it fills her with an animal need, pulsing deep in her core. To touch it. To feel it. To...
That milky-white bead of precum, she can't help but notice, is still there. Sitting on the tip of his dick, larger than ever.
Oh, what the hell, huh? It's not like he knows it's her. And it sure as shit seems as though this is where everything's been leading to, so far. Almost as if, somehow, they've each been led to this point by some outside force, so that nature could take its course...no matter how unnatural that course might seem.
Yeah, that's it. It's those stupid laws of physics and probability that are responsible, the ones that govern everything magic can and can't do. This is all their fault, goddammit. Not hers. Not his. Theirs. All theirs. Nothing either of them can do but play along, right?
Damn skippy.
And so, having characteristically absolved herself of all responsibility for what she's about to do, Alex responds to her brother's command, and proceeds to let him know in no uncertain terms what the invisible entity that had invaded his room wanted from him. Stepping towards him and bending forward—her heart pounding heavily in her chest, ears and clit—she reaches out to wrap her small hand around the base of his warm, throbbing cock, and holds him like an ice cream cone...which she then begins to lick.