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It was late at night -- a little way past eleven. The streetlamps outside were sulfurous and bright, and the clouds meant that they were the only light to see by -- it felt unsettled, just a little after Halloween, though there was no ghost activity outside. The only activity outside was a near-silent scuffle down the pavement, the sound of rubber soles hitting concrete, and then on the lawn outside the house.

And then the annoyed, tiny plink of pebbles on his window as they were flung up at the glass -- plink, plink, plink!, insistent. Outside, Jace had clambered up on one of the rotting garden trellises, with her handful of tiny stones as she waited.

It was ridiculous, considering Jack would've probably let her in anyway -- but that was how she did things sometimes.

The window slid open and Antony, his hair down around his shoulders and still slightly damp from his shower, glared at her. He looked a bit too pretty with his hair down, to be honest. Like someone you'd want to dress in drag. "What in the world are you doing?" he asked irritably.

The redheaded girl took in Antony's appearance -- silver-blue hair in damp tendrils around his shoulders -- and started to laugh, trying to choke it back. "Hey, Juliet," she said, momentarily ditching the state of Utterly Annoyed that she'd been in lately, the Permanent Fray that he now knew well -- "painting your nails? Let me in, f** hag."

She pinged up another pebble, just for luck, and dropped the rest with a slight rattle.

"Fine," he muttered, irritated that the pebble was now in his perfectly clean room. He shoved the window up the rest of the way and held out a hand, offering to drag her through. "But does your mother know you're here?" he asked. Of course she didn't, he answered himself irritably. Since when had Jace ever done the responsible thing?

"God, sometimes I think you're in love with my mother, the way you go on about her," said his friend, and scaled her way up the wall -- he had to help her in the last few inches, as she squirmed over his windowsill, and she sat there with her metal legs gleaming. She looked annoyed. Her clothing was reflecting it -- she was wearing a t-shirt of cotton so soft and old that it was just about ready to disintergrate, and her army camos that apparently proclaimed her membership in the military. And a bandanna. She looked like a preteen guerilla fighter.

"You can't do M.B.," she said, "she's dating a lesbian horse. It makes me throw up everywhere. Why is your room always tidy?"

"Because I appreciate cleanliness. And your mother's gay?" he asked, a bit shocked, although he wasn't sure why he should be. "That's... interesting." What else could he say. He turned, picking up the pebble and placing it in one of the bases of his unii's bonsai trees with casual perfectionism.

"So are you spending the night?" he asked. "I'll have to get a sleeping bag from Father."

"Of course she's not gay," said Jace irritably, "she's just -- being annoying as s**t. It's this private dating thing. M.B. is so not gay." (She wondered why she thought she was so sure, and then dismissed it.) "And don't worry, if I crash here I'll just sleep on your floor."

She dropped to the floor of his room and put herself in the plank position, hands fisted in front of her, spread out to rest up on the tips of her sneakers. "You look like a chick with your hair down," she said, "or like a pretty-a** drag queen."

"It doesn't dry when I braid it," he said with a sigh. "I'll just go get you a sleeping bag, then we can talk." He would also have Shade or Jack call her mother and tell her that her daughter was safe and sound. It was the responsible thing to do.

A few minutes later he came back with a black sleeping bag tucked under his arm, a pillow hanging from his other hand. "Here you go," he said, handing both to her. "More problems with the teens?"

"Stop being so responsible," she demanded, as though his care and attention to detail somehow wounded her, and she pushed herself back up to stand and flopped on his bed instead. She hugged the pillow around her middle, stretching herself up and staring at the ceiling. "Problems? They don't even notice me, why should I give a damn."

Which, of course, was a problem.

"Why don't you act like that?"

"Not noticing you?" he asked. "That's what you want me to do, then?" he added, a hint of amusement in his voice as he sat down on the floor next to his bed, leaning against the side. He held up a hand, concentrating for a bit so that the light could be clearly seen through the skin. It was creepy, even to him.

"I had a dream last night," he said, going off on a complete tangent. "Do you want to hear about it?"

"Oh my god," she said, but, displaying a fair amount of friendship and understanding in a girl who was neither friendly nor understanding, relented: "Okay, shoot, so long as it doesn't have you having sex with horses or anything. Then again, like you'd dream something that interesting."

The bedsprings creaked as she rolled to her side, tangerine eyes half-closing. "You're like a back-ep of Latawnya The Naughty Horse Says No To Drugs!."

"There was no sex and there was no horse--ok, maybe there was a bit of sex somewhere, but it wasn't me. I dreamt I was walking down the street and people kept refusing to move out of the way. I didn't know why until I stopped at a store window." Then he fell silent, still staring at his translucent hand. "When I realized that no one could see me. And that I could see my skull through my skin."

There was quiet. Eventually, Jace reached over and waved at the light above his hand, as though it was some kind of trick -- waved it again, just for good measure, before retracting her fingers back. "You do see ghosts and s**t," she said after a while, subdued. "Can you make it go on and off?"

"Hmm," he said. "Sometimes. I used to wake up as a kid with various parts translucent. It looked like I was missing a leg, or an arm, or... other parts," he told her, turning to look at her. "You have no idea how disturbing that can be."

"Having an invisible wang?" Jace said, unselfconsciously. "That's pretty messed up. I bet you are a ghost. Like the living undead."

She drummed her feet on the bed. "We're all pretty weird people if you think about it," she said, "Iggy's lucky he's just furry."

"I've always worried he might get fleas," he admitted. "Do you think he has to use flea medicine?

That got a snort from her up on the bed. "Flea collar," she said, "flea spray... next time I see him I'm gonna ask him if he hates baths. And if he can scratch behind his ear. Damn, I should've asked him that ages ago, that's funny as hell!"

The room lapsed into silence again. After a while, Jace said: "I'm not a kid, you know. I'm older than Wisp is. I was old as Harper was."

"Perhaps whatever it is that ages us is just taking its sweet time finding you a pair of legs that will suit your teenage self," he said. "I often thought that that was why Chris took so long to grow, as well. It's not a natural process for us, it's more like... magic. I don't have anything too strange about me, so I grew faster, I think."

"But Irelia has a lock in her chest," she argued, a raw note of frustration sawing its way in. "Wisp has -- Wisp does crazy, stupid s**t! Wisp sees ghosts and makes rainbows and glitters like a fagged-up disco ball. Wisp's so magic Uncle Jack wants to, like, give her crash courses. I just have crazy-a** metal legs. I don't do anything -- and you see ghosts and can make your d**k invisible. It's retarded."

"But we look... reasonably normal, for all of that. How long do you think metal takes to grow?" he asked simply. Obviously metal didn't grow at all, it was part of the ground to begin with, then mined, then refined, then-- But he wasn't going to go into that.

"Look, I won't treat you as a child. Just a short, irritable female. Like a dwarf. Does that make you feel better? Although you don't have nearly the beard for a dwarf. Or the metal helmet and ax."

"You so don't even treat me like I was a girl," said his friend irritably, managing to insinuate at the same time that she 1. wasn't and that he 2. didn't. "Dwarf is right, I'm like your little hobbit friend. One day I'm still going to kick your a**, you know that? I'm just waiting to -- I'll kick your a** for everything, we'll see who wins that round. You swear to God you won't treat me like a kid? Prove it, let's go smoke a pack of cigarettes or something."

"I refuse to smoke," he said. "I'd start trying to look at my lungs to see if they were turning black because of it. But there is one adult activity--" He looked at her, wondering if he even dared to do it.

Her face lit up. "Oh hell yeah," she said. "I know where Jack keeps the key to the booze cabinet. C'mon. Bet you I'll make you spew first."

"I meant this," he said, reaching for her chin and leaning down to kiss her on the lips. He was going to get kicked in the "socks" for this one, he was sure.

Bizarrely, she did not. Hunched up in front of him, light as a bird, it was all too evident that she was still a child: but Jace froze up like a deer in the headlights before starting to awkwardly kiss him back. It wasn't even as awkward as it should have been: in her preteen close-mouth kisses, it didn't feel as though she was searching through her Very First Kiss, more like frustratedly kissing him back looking for something she wasn't finding.

When she broke off, she eventually said: "Your mouth's really rough."

"Sorry," he muttered, flushing ever so slightly. "Now, can we get off of the 'grown up' bullshit?" And it was obvious he was flustered because he had just cursed. How could he have kissed JACE of all people? Then again, his first kiss had been with a ghost, so maybe his standards were surprisingly low.

"You know, maybe we should go ghost hunting," he said suddenly. "Or something more interesting than just sitting here all night."

"You mean," she said, "you don't want to do it again and be my boooy~friiiend?"

She managed to keep the poker face until the very last word, whereupon she broke up into hoots of laughter and punched him on the shoulder (hard). "Okay," she said, "fair deal, I'll quit the moaning and whining. We can go ghost hunting, even if that sounds like some s**t Wisp would do. Just don't expect me to do anything other than, like, being there being awesome. Also, you know you basically told me you have a ghost weiner, right? I'm going to blackmail you forever."

"I do NOT have a ghost p***s," he said, heading for his desk and pulling one of the drawers open to pull out his blade. "Even if a part of me is invisible, it's still there," he told her, sliding the blade into the hem of his sweat pants and slipping his shoes on. "You can still touch it--well, you can't, of course, but--"

"I'm just going to stop now," he said, rather than going on.

"Good idea," said Jace, utterly unconcerned.

Antony stared at the screen of his laptop, wondering how far he could bullshit the sex ed paper before he got into trouble. He wasn't sure why they even HAD to write papers for sex ed, to tell the truth. Maybe his teacher was a secret voyeur or something, who enjoyed reading about teenagers' experiences with the other sex.

Not that he was EVER going to tell anyone that his first kiss had been with a ghost, and the second with JACE.

Usually when someone -- well, Jace -- was trying to get into his room, there would be the pattering of pebbles on the glass of his window: possibly she just liked any and all attempts to break things of his, but at least it was a giveaway that anything he was doing he had to drop and prepare to be annoyed. At least when he was writing papers Jace just tended to lie on his bed and play with rubber bands, firing paper clips into the wall above his laptop and cracking jokes.

There were no pebbles that time. He heard, of course, the window being lifted up, slid into place -- and a girl climbed into his room. Again, this was no biggie, considering that it was generally nothing so interesting as girl climbing into his room who might be Delilah or Irelia but girl climbing into his room who was going to sever his carotid with paper clips -- but the voice that greeted him was slightly lower, richer, familiar and rougher but all the same knowable.

"Peekaboo, b***h," said Jace, tugging down her t-shirt slightly. The t-shirt was too small. It was too small because she was too big, and had muscles and hot a** stuff like that.

He jerked so hard at the reflection in the computer screen that he fell backwards, staring at the ceiling for a moment before looking over at her.

"Ah... um... well..." he said, his feet still in the air, propped up by the seat of his desk chair. "This is unexpected. When did you grow?"

The teenage girl in front of him flipped her hair; there were two round, dark nubs on either side of her temple -- they looked like nascent horns. Probably something that suited Jace. She looked mildly drunk with barely-concealed excitement, he could tell, she was so pleased with herself that it radiated. Her clothes were also horribly-fitting, she had upsized her legs, she had upsized -- well, everything. She had gone from a skinny, knobby, slightly androgynous child to a leanly muscled, rangy woman, who actually looked a little dangerous.

Also she had breasts. She was not airing them like Wisp Darnell seemed to air them, but they were there, and she did not seem to notice this more or she would have invested in a bra. He really needed to point this out lest Irelia have to point it out.

"To-day, chickadee," she said, "actually a couple hours ago when I woke up from a nap. Growing pains out the goddamn retarded wazoo, let me tell you, I actually busted my shirt. Sweet zombie Jesus, why did nobody tell me that being tall is utterly rad, to bust out a Wispism? s**t! Look at me!" Jace did a slow turn. "I am built."

"I ah, can see that," he said, his eyes going to her chest. Had it been any other female he would have very steadfastly avoided looking at that. But this was Jace. "I think, perhaps, you might want to borrow some of my clothes for the moment," he added as he got to his feet a bit more clumsily than was his norm and headed for his drawers.

Unfortunately, he didn't have a bra, he thought as he pulled out a pair of blue jeans and a t-shirt.

There was something slightly off about her, underneath the excitement: it took a few moments, but Antony could eventually read it. It was fear. Jace was utterly terrified.

It made sense; she'd loved being a child, loved kicking the crap out of everything, loved grazing her head and playing on swings and being in a band -- and now she needed a bra and could never be mistaken for a boy again. Now she couldn't ride her crappy monolith of a bike. She kept cracking her knuckles: she always did that when she was stressed.

There were a few seconds as he went to the closet door; and then she suddenly had him in a headlock from behind, arm around his throat.

"I guess I can pay you back now, right?" she said, and there was a weird element to her voice. "For Harper. I can kick your a**."

"Ah, we're back to that?" he asked, letting her hold onto him. "Why don't you change before we do that, though. In case you rip something you shouldn't rip." He sounded calm, even with the threat. He picked up on the stress now, feeling it through her hold. "I'll leave the room, of course."

It was like he hadn't even spoken -- she immediately checked him forward into his closet door, though it wasn't anywhere near as hard as it might have been. She shoved him again, and it seemed like Jace was marvelling at how different it was now -- muscles bunching, drawing one fist back in a much-too telegraphed move to slam into his shoulder. Punch; she was following it up with another palm strike. It was all sloppy, but there was growing power behind it as she sized up how hard she could hit.

He grunted and grabbed for her wrists, irritated with her taking it out on him. "Hey," he said. "Quit it!"

Jace batted his wrist away -- the other one caught fast; she pressed his shoulder back into the closet wall again, head down, as though she wanted to headbutt him or tackle him -- but she remained still. Her hair was much shorter in the back now: it was bright crimson fuzz, with long bits that fell in the front. Girly.

Eventually she said in a low voice: "It's all different now, isn't it." A slightly shaky laugh -- "Why didn't you ******** tell me it was going to be like this -- like -- I ran out the house and nobody was home, I'm like, sick, I don't want to show Irelia, what if she laughs -- it's crazy. You should get the option to go back, man. I want to go back. I'm sorry I was ever like, 'wow, teenager, I want it right now.'"

"Hey," he said softly. "Jace. Jace, look at me," he told her. "C'mon, kid, this doesn't mean anything other than the fact that you'll be able to throw paper at me in class again. Got it?"

"It's creepy," she said defiantly, still staring down at the floor. "Look at my horns! Seriously. What the hell? Horns? What kind of weirdo am I? You with your ghost wang, me with my horns -- and, God, I sound like some pathetic emo kid, but -- everything is different. I can't move the same. Why couldn't I have been..."

She trailed off, mouth pursed up tight. It looked as though it had hit home that Jace was not, in fact, a guy, and she clenched her fingers down on Antony's shoulder a little in aggravation -- logic tended to hit her hard. Obviously her ego would bounce back and she would, once more, continue to pretend she had a Y chromosome. But.

He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her towards him. "Who cares?" he asked her. "You look good with horns. If you ask me it's about time your outer form showed just how evil you are inside."

She snorted another unsteady laugh, burying her face in Antony's shoulder. She scuffed him a little with her hand -- pushed it into his stomach, muttering, "Don't give me one of your faggy gay hugs," but nonetheless accepted it -- which pretty much told him how out of her mind she was. Eventually she said: "At least you and me and Iggy can run around again, right? Iggy's not going to freak, is he? Damn I am so glad I have better muscles than the both of you. I'm the hunky one."

He laughed. "Sure you are," he agreed. "You'll be breaking hearts left and right. But you do realize it's only gay if we're the same gender, don't you?" Of course not, he thought in amusement. She had a completely different definition for "Gay" entirely.

"If it makes you feel better," he added a bit evilly, "You're prettier than I am now."

It was just like Jace to utterly ignore any point-out that their hug was not, by any homosexual definition, gay; she just gave him another little shove, sniggering again. "As if," she said, "you're a goddamn cheerleader, okay? You're Lady Lovelylocks all flouncing prettily from room to room. Don't call me pretty, retard, I'll show you pretty -- you can go get all lipstick with Delilah."

It was a little incoherent. But she seemed less frantic, anyway, less tense. "But I guess we can go back to being the Three Stooges."

"I," he said self importantly, "call Moe." Then he grinned at her. "And you are rather, shockingly pretty. It's disturbing, if you ask me. I mean it was bad enough that Delilah and Irelia grew up pretty, but now... you? Dear lord, I'm going to have to beat every guy in school by the time this is over."

A creeping flush grew into her cheeks, embarrassment rather than flattered blushing, and she wriggled out of his embrace to shove at his shoulder. "Shut your trampy whore mouth up," she demanded, "damn, I'll be beating up every homo in school if they start doing that jazz -- like any of them would, it's you and Iggy, c'mon. Oh my God I can't believe you just said that. What're you trying to get out of me? Another a**-whooping? Or if anything has boobs are you all, 'Damn! That is A+! I would ride this ride!'"

He rolled his eyes. "Sure, Jace," he drawled. "Now why don't we take a good look in one of my many mirrors?" he said, shoving her towards one of them. "And yes, as we all know, I have a lot of mirrors. Then you can tell me who's prettier."

"I hope you get hot for Chris when he grows and has man boobs the size of your head," said his friend, but looked at herself in the mirror; mainly all she did was raise an arm and flex her bicep, then flex her other bicep. "You're still the prettiest, Mantony. You have long pretty princess hair like Malibu Barbie."

She sauntered back, and raised her hand; she smacked Antony firmly on his rear end, dead center, with a look of satisfaction. "You keep your trophy, sweet cheeks," she said, "far as I'm concerned -- so you sure nobody's gonna try to mess with me and crack jokes?"

"No one's going to crack a joke," he said, shaking his head. "Because everyone knows you'll beat the crap out of them if they do. And besides, there's nothing to joke about. Now would you PLEASE change clothes? I'm only a teenage boy, after all, and even if I KNOW you're Jace in my head, tight clothes are a bit... revealing."

She cracked up laughing at that: because she was Jace and had no shame, nor any sense of what was appropriate, she squeezed her boobs together at him and made a face that looked as though she had just taken a tab of LSD. Then, thank goodness, she consented to go over to his closet and yank at the clothes he'd suggested for her -- pulled the doors away out of sight as she muffled curses, wrestling herself out of her old ones and into what he'd given her.

"Thanks, man," she said, "I promise not to get blood or mud on them or whatever or you'll faint and need to go bleach 'em in your laundry."

"I appreciate that," he said dryly, still trying to get the boob squeezing image out of his head. "Now... this is rather rude of me... but can I touch--"

"OH MY GOD," boomed Jace in a voice that resounded off Jupiter, probably making Jack and Shade look up from whatever they were doing: she'd burst into peals of laughter. She also punched him in the shoulder. "What? What?! Can you touch my boobs? Can you touch my muscular, naked body? Damn, baby! You move quickly! Pumpkin, I'm not doin' anything with you until you put on some lipstick and fix up your hair -- "

"Your horns," he finished, crossing his arms over his chest. "I'm not quite stupid enough to ask Christian if I can touch his, you know."

She was still sniggering; she put her head forward obediently. "Go ahead," she said, obviously not heartbroken, still laughing at her own jokes -- whatever had happened, Jace was still Jace, and Jace was still his friend, and they still gave each other crap.

The little nubby horns on her head were cool to the touch, and on further examination were metal: dark, leaden metal, hard and rounded, with one ridge at the base. Her hair had fallen over her face so he couldn't see her expression, but she said: "Are they awesome?"

He blinked. "They're metal," he said, sounding surprised. "I guess I should have--but--" He rubbed them absently. "They're extremely cool," he added almost absently. "But it makes me wonder if your bones might--no, that's just silly."

"Might be made out of super steel like Wolverine?" she finished for him. She sounded excited. "We could always go get a steak knife and play doctor, see if my bones are friggin' metal. That'd be awesome. Still can't make my weiner invisible, though, so you got one up on me."

Jace paused for a moment, though he didn't know why, and she straightened up again. There was a slightly, ridiculously hopeful look on her face. "So we get class together?" she said. "Save me a seat tomorrow, okay, retard?"

"I doubt you'll want to sit on the front row, but I will," he said, finally letting go. "And it'd be easier to get a metal detector than cut you open. We can go see if Uncle Jack has one. He and Father will want to see you, anyway," he added.

He figured she needed a bit more time away from home, as well.

"Yeah," she said, and she looked much more cheered than before. Contented. Relieved. Back to her old cocky grins. "Good idea. C'mon -- I wanna see if I can arm wrestle the s**t out of your dad, man!"

Looked like the more things changed the more they did stay the same.