Francisco was about to take young Marco in his arms to
comfort him, to promise him that he would be restored,
when his cellphone rang.
"Who could that be?" he wondered. It was a new phone,
and he'd only given the boys the number . . . and THEY
weren't in a position to call anyone at the moment.
But it was Ric.
"That wasn't funny!" said the boy, sounding hurt but his
normal age.
"It was to get you back for doing that to me. Hey, how
did you get back to normal? What's going on there?"
"Elise started reading spells and accidentally
regressed herself again. She dropped the book and
ran away, and we had to climb out of the playpen and
get it again. Good thing we could still talk."
"Yeah, well, OK. We've all had our fun. Now just leave
the book alone and I'll be home in a little while."
Ric slammed down the phone, still mad at the dirty trick
that Francisco pulled. He wasn't furious, but he was
certainly in the mood to get some revenge (forgetting
that Francisco's spell over him was also revenge).
Picking a spell at random, he pictured Francisco and
began to read. He didn't know if it would work at a
distance. He had a momentary twinge of guilt for what
he was about to do--if it worked--but he knew that Marco
was with Francisco and wouldn't let anything happen to
him (he had no way of knowing just what state Marco
was in at the moment!). At most, it would be very
embarrassing.
Ric finished reading the spell and could then only wait
to see what the results, if any, would be.