Around noon Andy got a little fussy from hunger and Allie was getting a little hungry herself. She stopped in the Mall food court and picked up a small Chef’s salad with fresh sour cream dressing and croutons. She found a high chair among a line of them at the back of the food court and dragged the wheeled oaken chair to the nearest unoccupied table. Then she unstrapped Andy and put him in the high chair to feed him his lunch. Allie bent down and took the diaper bag from the rack and put it on the table. Then she opened it to find the jar of baby food that Krystyn promised would be in the bag. It was; she found a jar of Gerber Sweet Potatoes. Krystyn had never given Andy Sweet Potatoes before so the taste was a new one for Andy. She had fed him mostly mixed vegetables or puréed green peas to torture him. The minute the spoon hit his mouth, he was in heaven. How could Krystyn could have missed this? With all the squash and vegetable mixtures he had been forced to eat, there was nothing to compare with the sweet full aroma of the yams as they filled his mouth and found a comfortable home in his tummy. He polished off the jar in nothing flat, then nursed on the bottle of formula that Allie gave him while she ate her salad. Before he had finished his bottle, his eyes had drooped closed and he fell asleep with the bottle in his lap.
Allie took the bottle from his hands and recapped it, then returned it to the diaper bag before she moved it back to the rack on the back of the stroller. Then she patted him on the back gently to wind him without waking him before she lifted him from the high chair and carefully sat him in the stroller and strapped him back in while she finished her lunch. Andy slumbered on as she threw her dirty bowl and styrofoam container of iced tea in the trash bin and continued her shopping spree. Before long he was both wet and messy and even though he still slept, she wanted to change him as soon as possible. She took him to the women’s restroom and waited for a baby changing station to empty before she began unstrapping him.
Andy woke in the unfamiliar environment of a women’s bathroom surrounded by squalling babies on what appeared to be short, wide, foldout ironing boards covered in plastic and fitted with safety straps. When it was his turn, Allie took him from the stroller and laid him back on the changing station, then strapped him in place while she got the diaper bag from the stroller. Andy cooed pleasantly at her attentions, unlike the angry, screaming infants who surrounded him on their changing tables. The other mothers noticed how mild Andy was and commented to Allie that they wished their babies would be as pleasant for their diaper changes. Allie was please with how Andy had behaved himself and paraded him proudly
While this was happening, Krystyn had made contact with Brad to meet her at the park where she feigned forgetfulness in having left the money clip at home. She took him home and offered him coffee while she went to get the money clip. True to his coach’s instructions, Brad refused caffeine on the night before the big game, but accepted her offer of a glass of milk. He drink the proffered glass of milk while he examined the clip carefully and decided whether to claim the unknown clip as his own or not. He had just decided that it was best to take it and thank her profusely when the change began. Within minutes, he was a naked screaming ten-month-old brat on the floor at Krystyn’s feet. She chuckled as she diapered him and brought him up to the nursery to begin his retraining program.
She put him in the crib that Andrew had occupied only that morning and left him for the night. Then she went back to her room and made herself a triple nightcap of evaporated milk and Kahlua before going to bed. It had been a good day. She had made a substantial profit on Andrew, showed her independence from Becky and turned Brad into an infant on the same day.
The next morning, all Hell broke lose in the town. The town’s star quarterback had gone somewhere the night before and had never returned to his parents home. They were frantic and called the police. The coach was equally upset and echoed his parents calls to the police. Soon the police were out canvassing the neighborhoods to see if Brad had been seen with anyone. The local news media was alerted and hourly bulletins were put out on the radio and TV. The town wasn’t all that big and everyone took football very seriously indeed. If the star quarterback had been abducted, there was a good chance they’d loose the big game that night. Everyone in town was up in arms.
It didn’t take Becky long to figure out who was at fault and what to do about it. After all, most of her Coven members liked football too! She sighed and remembered the backup plan she had prepared for just this sort of eventuality. She gathered some of the Coven members together to pay a call on Krystyn and resolve the issue once and for all. Krystyn had endangered the Coven’s existence by her foolishness and would pay. When they opened her front door (magickally picked the locks) and marched up to Krystyn’s bedroom, they found her still asleep with the glass of evaporated milk and Kahlua beside her. One of the Coven members went to the nursery and confirmed that Brad had indeed been regressed. Becky opened a small vial she took from her pocket and emptied it into the remnants of the drink from the night before. She picked up the glass and swirled the contents around for a moment to mix it and said to the other witches in the room, “Alright, it’s time. Let’s wake her up.”
“Krystyn?”, Becky cooed, “Kystyn, it’s time to wake up. It’s time to talk to the Coven about what you’ve done. Wake up, Baby!”
“What the Hell?”, Krystyn choked as she looked around to see the grim-faced Coven members that surrounded her bed. “I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely, “I need something to wet to drink in the morning before I can talk.”
Becky nodded and handed her the drink that was on her nightstand from the night before. Normally Krystyn wouldn’t have touched a milk-based drink that had been standing out all night, but the angry expressions on her fellow witches faces frightened her and made her swallow the dregs whole without delay. Fortunately, the high alcohol content of the Kahlua had preserved the milk from spoiling.
“Well now….,” Becky began, “I seems you have the town in an uproar. The star quarterback has mysteriously disappeared and now they have the entire state looking for him. What did I tell you about maintaining a low profile? You couldn’t pick some unknown student with no family to regress on your own. No, you had to pick the town’s favorite son, just before the big game. You didn’t care about what effects that your spell would have and it exploded in your face. Your probation period as my apprentice is over, Krystyn, and I’m sorry to say that you’ve flunked miserably. You see, we give our apprentices a fair amount of latitude in what they do so they can stretch their powers while we evaluate how well they deal with the power that we give them. Once the period of probation is over, the apprentice is either accepted into the Coven or dealt with as required.
Frankly, Krystyn, your lapse in judgement tells me that you need a long rest from making any decisions whatsoever. And your choice in nightcaps tells me that the kind of rest I have in mind for you is just right.”
She sniffed the glass and said, “Evaporated milk and Kahlua, right?”
She smirked and said, “It’s kind of like an adult version of baby formula with a flavor to make it taste like chocolate milk, isn’t it? Well, we can suit your taste for formula and see to the problem you’ve created at the same time. Grechen, get Brad out of the nursery.” She turned to the woman in the bed and handed her some forms on a clipboard and offered her a pen as she said, “Krystyn, we have to move fast, sign these forms.”
“Wha…what are they?”, Krystyn asked in a stupor.
“Don’t ask! Just sign, Damnit! We haven’t time for any more of your foolishness. This is for the Coven, remember?”, Becky demanded. Shirley came up from behind Becky and stamped the documents with a notary’s seal and entered it into her record book. Once the forms were signed and notarized, the law was clear; Shirley was a notary public and the forms had been freely signed without duress. The forms would be legal in every sense of the word. Even if they weren’t, in a week or so, the forms would disappear entirely, so they didn’t have to be perfect. They were only a temporary measure to have for insurance while the Coven set things in their proper places again.
