“It’s the hypnosis,” Daggett replied. “We wanted to see how extensive this ability is.”
My eyebrow cocked. “And how were you going to do that?”
With a casual shrug, he said, “By hypnotizing us. Or mind-controlling us. Or whatever you want to call it.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little dangerous?” Max asked. “We don’t know what the hell that’ll do to your brain.”
“Dana seems fine,” Daggett replied.
We all glanced at Dana, who was seated on the opposite side of the room like she had been watching the entire time, but not participating. “You getting any headaches?” Max asked.
“No more than usual,” Dana said.
“See, she’s fine,” Priscilla nonchalantly commented.
I tilted my head at her. “Yeah, until she’s diagnosed with a brain tumor in three months.”
“This isn’t radiation or something,” Daggett began. “We’re talking straight-up magic here. I don’t think we can apply any kind of science to this.”
Max folded his arms and with a sigh said, “He’s kind of right. Maybe we should look into this. If anything, just to give us an idea of what we’re dealing with out there.”
“I know I don’t want to deal with vampires blindly.”
They had a point. It was just nerve-wracking dealing with something of this magnitude, especially when it felt like we were poking and prodding at Melanie like she were an experiment. She had already gone through enough of that with her months of containment.
I poked my head past the group and to Melanie, and I asked, “You all right with this?”
“It’s fine,” she replied. “I need to know what I’m capable of just as much as they do.”
“Then go ahead, I guess.”
They didn’t need my permission, but it felt like they were waiting for it.
Priscilla raised her hand and said, “I’ll go first.” She knelt down on the floor in front of Melanie, widened her eyes until they were the size of baseballs and said, “Make my tits bigger.”
We all groaned in unison.
“What?” she yelled.
“That’s not how mind control works, genius,” Max said.
“Uh, they made Dana turn into a werewolf,” she argued.
“Yeah, something she already was.”
“Are you implying my boobs aren’t already big?”
“You just asked a vampire to will you into having implants. I think we know the answer to that already.”
Priscilla gasped. “Cora, kick your boyfriend in the dick for me.”
I shook my head and said, “Get Melanie to hypnotize him into kicking his own dick.”
Priscilla’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, that’s a great idea!”
I pulled Priscilla off of the floor and pushed her away from Melanie before she did something we’d all regret. “All right, Broom-Hilda, give someone else a turn.”
“I didn’t even get my shitting turn.”
“Well, see, when you have bad ideas, you get your turn taken away.”
“Oh, I’d love to see what brilliant idea you three come up with.”
“It’s not like the bar is very high at this point.”
Priscilla crossed her arms, offended. “Please, by all means, go ahead. Make Daggett balance a pencil on his nose. I’m sure we’ll all be blown away.”
She was being her typical sarcastic self, but her idea wasn’t that bad. I had Daggett sit down where Priscilla had just been, and then I stood behind Melanie and whispered into her ear, “Tell Daggett he has to stand in the center of the room with his finger on the tip of his nose and one foot off the ground. He has to do this until Max says ‘Porky Pig.’”
Melanie nodded and then repeated what I said into Daggett’s ear, for only him to hear.
Daggett glided to the center of the room like he had an invisible string pulling him there. One finger went on his nose, and his foot rose off the carpet.
“Are you here with us?” I asked him.
“You mean mentally? Yeah,” Daggett replied.
“What is it like?”
“Oh, man, it’s weird. I feel completely normal, right? But I literally can’t put my foot down. It’s like there’s a cinder block under my toes.”
“How do we get him to stop?” Dana asked.
“I made it so only one person can. With a certain word,” I explained.
“Before we do that,” Max began. “Melanie, don’t use any tricks, but just ask him to stop what he’s doing.”
Melanie got up out of her chair. “Daggett, put your arm down,” she instructed.
Daggett didn’t move.
Max scratched the tip of his chin and nodded. “Okay. I wanted to see if the person doing this to them could undo it however they wanted.”
“It has to be exactly what I told him,” Melanie said. “No other way.”
I turned to Max. “Say ‘Porky Pig.’”
His brow creased. “Don’t tell me that’s the phrase you used to knock him out of this.”
“And what if it is?”
I thought he was going to poke fun at me, but then he just laughed. We were still in the honeymoon phase of our reunion, so I got to be as stupid as I wanted.
Max turned to Daggett and said, “Porky Pig.” Daggett’s arm and leg dropped, and he nearly collapsed to the floor. He only stood there for a minute or two, but his muscles tightened to restrain himself from moving that it left his limbs like jelly.
Daggett raised his hand and saw that it was involuntarily trembling. “Okay, let’s never do that again,” he said.
Priscilla stared at him, shaking her head. “Goddamn. If only I had this ability in high school.”
“There’d be no high school left,” I said.
She nodded. “Exactly.”
Daggett let out a sigh, and asked, “So now that that’s done, what do we do?”
My brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Our plan was to come here and find you. Well, we found you.”
With his arms
