The apartment door clicked shut behind them, and for a moment, Jennifer just stood in the entryway, letting the stillness wrap around her like a blanket. It was the first moment all day that didn’t feel like a crisis—just silence and breath.
Her body ached in ways that words couldn’t describe. Her swollen belly pulled at her spine, her breasts throbbed with weight, and the fresh diaper between her legs was the only clean thing she had left to wear. She felt like she should be falling apart—but something inside her had gone cold. Focused.
She wasn’t going to sleep this off.
Maya kicked off her shoes and went straight for the coffee table, grabbing her laptop and flipping it open. “Okay. No more wandering around blind. We find everything we can about her. Kira. That bar. Local history. Anything weird.”
Jennifer nodded and waddled slowly toward the couch, lowering herself with a heavy exhale. She propped a pillow behind her and adjusted the hem of her sleep shirt over the top of her belly. Even breathing felt like work now.
She grabbed a notebook from the side table and uncapped a pen. “Start with witch sightings. Weird news. Local forums. That kind of stuff.”
Maya was already typing, her face bathed in the glow of the screen. “She’s not just some new-age poser. That spell was real. This is old magic—deep magic. It has rules. There has to be a loophole. A reversal.”
Jennifer stared down at her body. The diaper crinkled slightly as she shifted. Her belly rose and fell like a tide, tight and full. Her stretch marks had darkened. Her areolae peeked through the shirt, wide and heavy, her chest aching to be pumped again. She should’ve felt helpless—but she didn’t.
She felt done. Done being humiliated. Done being a vessel for someone else’s amusement.
Maya’s voice broke the silence. “Okay, here—someone on an occult forum mentioned a ‘woman in black’ who cursed her ex. She made his life fall apart slowly. Doesn’t name her, but it’s her style. Says the woman only ever gives one chance to stop it.”
Jennifer raised her head. “Did she say how?”
“No,” Maya said, scrolling. “Just that she makes you beg. And even then, it’s a gamble.”
Jennifer looked at her, eyes hard. “I’m not begging again. We go after her. We don’t ask. We take it back.”
Maya met her gaze and nodded slowly. “Then we need to learn her language. Her power. If we can’t fight her with fists, we fight her with magic.”
They worked into the evening, side by side, their laptops open, pages filling with symbols, rumors, and half-finished spells. The fear was still there—so was the exhaustion—but it was buried under something stronger now.
Resolve.
They weren’t going to wait around to see what happened next.
They were going to change it.