Chapter 22: 21. Chagrined

"Hey babe?" Kelly called. "You almost ready?"

"Be right there!" I called back then quickly finished doing my lipstick. I checked my hair once more, then turned out the bathroom light and hurried out to the door where Kelly was waiting.

I pulled on my jacket then picked up my bag and slung it over my left shoulder. "Ok, let's go."

She smiled and teased, "Once upon a time it only took you ten minutes to get ready for class, you know? Just pull on some jeans and a t-shirt and you were done."

"Yeah and once upon a time I could get away with it," I replied.

We hurried out of the condo, and a few minutes later we emerged from the lift into the parking garage. We were in the car and on our way to college at eight-thirty-five, so only five minutes late.

Mondays were the worst, me and Kelly both had early classes and full days. As I drove, I reflected again on just how quickly I'd settled into this new routine. It was the last week of October now, and I'd been a girl for just over two full months. I was more or less used to it, and I mostly really liked it.

Me and Kelly had been living together since I'd changed, and we were closer now than we ever were before. Our relationship was slightly different of course. Mainly because we were both girls, and we both had fae blood in us. I was happy with how things turned out though, and so was Kelly.

Our living arrangements were also pretty good, except for two things. We were a little further away from college than my old place, and being right downtown meant there was a bit more traffic to contend with. That wasn't a big deal though. The bigger problem was something I'd figured out after the first month.

It was a great condo, large and luxurious and fancy and all that. But it wasn't mine. It was Kelsey's, and it meant I was living under someone-else's roof. That meant I had to live by someone-else's rules. She paid the rent, and she gave me and Kelly money every month. She called it a stipend but I knew what it really was. It was an allowance.

It's like I was a kid again, living in my parents' house, getting an allowance. It meant I could be cut off, grounded, or worse.

It meant that I was no longer in charge of my own life.

Granted, it wasn't exactly like being a kid or teen. Kelsey didn't live with us, I eventually found out she was out on the west coast. She didn't give us a curfew or watch over our shoulders all the time. And I was definitely getting more sex now than I could have even dreamed of back in high-school.

But Ms. Connolly did check up on us regularly, she made sure I was keeping up with my lessons with Kelly, learning fae stuff and all that. There were never any threats or warnings, but there was always that unspoken knowledge that if she was unhappy, she could just change things, separate me and Kelly, whatever. I didn't like it, but at the moment I didn't have any other options.

My new ID was good enough most of the time, but Kelsey only changed the cards. I found out during some of my lessons with Kelly that if anyone actually tried to look me up on official databases, they wouldn't find me. Or they'd find the old me. She told me there's some people, fae, part-fae, or humans aware of our existence, who work in various government offices and could access and change the official records. They tended to have a fairly steep asking-price though, so usually wasn't worth it.

So most of the time, people like us just carried ID that's borderline-fake, and if we did get in trouble we used magic to get out of it before anyone had a chance to run the ID or dig any deeper.

And where that all came back to me and my living arrangements, was it meant I couldn't pass a credit-check to rent my own apartment. I couldn't pass a background-check to get a new job either. Which meant I was stuck doing what Kelsey wanted and living under her rules.

None of this had caused any trouble yet, but it was something I was aware of. Having had a few years of freedom after moving out of my folks' place, I wasn't happy about being back in that position.

Traffic wasn't bad and we got to college at about quarter after nine. As we left the parking lot, Kelly and I hugged and kissed before we went our separate ways. Our classes were on opposite sides of the campus.

Of course, college was mostly how I remembered it from the previous two years. There were still differences, and some of them felt weird but I was slowly getting used to that.

One big thing was the way everybody was taller and bigger than they were in June. I mean, obviously it was me who'd changed, I was smaller. It was just a bit of a shock going into a class and all those guys I used to see eye-to-eye with were suddenly towering over me.

The other thing that took getting used to was how all those taller, bigger guys were now leering at me and staring at my boobs or my ass all the time.

There were a few girls in my classes too, but rather than all of us all sort of bonding and sticking together, I discovered there was some rivalry instead. They viewed me and each other as more of a threat or something, which made me sad.

The fact that I was completely open and out about being a lesbian probably didn't help either. I'd hoped that might get the guys to leave me alone but they didn't seem to care that I wasn't interested. It certainly didn't do anything to stop them leering at me when they thought I wasn't looking.

• • • • •

"It just really pisses me off," I complained, before taking another bite of my pizza.

Kelly sighed, "I know babe. I'm sorry."

"As soon as I learn how to do that transformation spell, pow! I'm going to show that jerk what it's like."

She sighed again, "And that's why mom doesn't want to you learn it."

We were back at home now. It had been another long, boring, annoying, and tiring day for me.

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I grumbled, then had a sip of my vodka-lemonade. "I'm just as good at this stuff as I was in June. My skills and abilities haven't changed. Why the heck do they all have to act like I'm some idiot who doesn't know her way around the modelling software?!"

There weren't too many things I had to complain about when it came to me being a girl now. But this was easily one of the most annoying things I had to put up with since my transformation.

Between having to pretend to be a new student transferred in from another college, and the fact that I looked two or three years younger than I really was, and being a girl, every male prof and almost every guy in class talked down to me and treated me like I didn't know a damn thing.

As a guy, I'd been getting excellent grades and was considered one of the stars in the program. Now they all treated me like I needed special help or something. The profs didn't even take me seriously half the time, and my grades dropped despite the fact that I was turning in work that was better than most of the rest of the class.

It was like any little fault or flaw, whether perceived or real, was judged harshly. Meanwhile the guys could screw up all over the place and just get a pat on the back and an 'atta-boy' because they put in a half-assed effort.

At the end of the day it meant I had to work twice as hard just to get anywhere, and it was seriously sucking all the fun out of college for me. I wasn't ready to quit yet, but I was ready to start throwing some fae magic around. Except I knew that would get me into a world of trouble with Kelsey.

The whole problem was made worse because I had a ton of extra work to do above-and-beyond the normal college stuff.

Since I was allegedly a different person, I couldn't use any of my old work from last year as the basis to work off of this year. The profs would recognize it as 'his'. So I had to spend my weekends redoing or modifying a bunch of last year's work, to make it different enough that nobody would make the connection.

Then there were the fae lessons with Kelly, which usually took us a couple hours every night. It was mostly boring stuff, but it was stuff that could keep me alive so it had to be done.

The only fun bit was learning magic. I'd only picked up a couple spells and things, and most of the time I wasn't even allowed to use them, but it was still pretty cool. So far I'd only learned how to do stuff for safety and security, and of course I was still very much at a beginner level.

The first thing I learned was how to protect myself from being enspelled. It was a sort of defensive counter-spell, and I was pretty good at blocking Kelly's magic when we practiced. She made it clear though that a half-fae like her mom, or a full fae like her grandfather would be much harder to defend against.

The fun stuff I'd learned so far included glamours and charms.

I could disguise myself like Ms. Connolly did that time with my mom, and I could use it to mask or hide things like Kelly did at the bank. I was really good at it too. Kelly could only hold glamours for ten or fifteen minutes, and she said her mom could only do it for an hour at most. I could hold them all day long. We both figured that was because I was full fae, so it meant I had more magical-whatever-ness to work with than her or her mom.

The charm spell was for situations like if we got pulled over and a cop wanted to run my license. I could 'charm' him out of it so he'd just let us go.

When Kelly described it, I thought it sounded dangerously close to mind-control. She said it wasn't though, because it didn't change people's thoughts or personality, and it was really short term. And you couldn't use it to make people do stuff they wouldn't anyways, you couldn't make someone hurt themself or others.

So you could make a cop decide to let you off the hook with a warning, but you couldn't make him like, quit his job or give you his gun or hand over his badge or whatever.

After dinner we did the dishes and tidied up. As we were putting the plates away I apologized "Sorry for taking it out on you Kelly. I didn't mean to spend the whole meal bitching and whining. It just really bugged me today."

She put an arm around me and pulled me into a hug, then gave me a kiss on the cheek. "I know babe. I get it. I hope you can let it go though, so you aren't distracted while we're doing your fae lesson."

I hugged her back but sighed, "I'll try. What are we doing tonight? More boring history lessons?"

Kelly smiled, "Let's save the history for another night. How about we do some more magic tonight?"

That brought a smile to my face, as I'm sure she knew it would. "Oh! Yes please, that sounds much more fun. What's the spell?"

"Not a spell," she replied. "Let's work on improving your magical senses." After a moment she added, "Ok it's kind of like a spell, in a way. Really though, it's about helping you to be more aware of magic around you. Like, to see people's auras, to see glamours around you, and see through them. To see when someone's enspelled."

I frowned, "Can't I already see that? I mean, we can see when someone uses magic, we see that flash in their eyes right?"

Kelly shook her head, "That's just when a spell is cast. I mean afterwards. If I've put a glamour on me or something else, but you don't see me do it, you won't see anything unusual. That's what I'm going to teach you tonight, how to see that stuff."

"Oh... Ok, I guess that sounds all right." I frowned slightly. "Not as fun as actual spells though."

She smiled, "We'll be casting a bunch of spells tonight to help you learn to see the magic, so I'm sure we can have some fun with it."

I grinned, "Oooh. Ok, yeah now it sounds fun again."

She led me to the sofa and said "Ok have a seat, get comfy, and let's get started..."

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