Kelly McClymer-Salem Witch 03 She's A Witch Girl (14 page)

The first question didn’t seem that awful. “Do you think Tara really likes Angelo?”

“Yes.” That one was easy. She was always trying to talk me into getting her more Angelo-time, so I knew she
really
liked Angelo.

“Do you really like Angelo?” That was a trickier question. But she looked me straight in the eye while she asked, and I couldn’t look away.

“Yes.” Admitting it aloud was a little weird. I was glad Tara wasn’t there to overhear—never mind Angelo.

Mom’s next question was completely out there, though. She cocked her head like she was just engaging in girl talk. “Is there a girl you know who
doesn’t
like Angelo?”

“Of course—” I stopped, remembering that even Denise had kept her eye on him at my party. Denise, who always crushed on guys with tattoos or piercings, or both. “No.”

She sighed, as if my answers were very bad news. “Okay. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Why? What are you going to do? This isn’t Angelo’s fault.” I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Nothing, however, prepared me for what my mother said right before she popped out of the room, “Of course it is, honey. But I don’t think he can help it. Maybe it’s not too late. If Agatha will take him into the school.”

Yep. My mom went nuts just because Tara and Angelo made out in the living room. So nuts, she was going to try to convince Agatha to take Angelo into the school. A mortal. Being interviewed by the mortal-disdaining headmistress of a school for witches. I remembered my interview with Agatha. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, never mind Angelo.

There was sooo much wrong with this that I couldn’t even begin to deal with it. To-Do pinched my hip. “Study for scrying midterm to begin now.” I summoned the scrying crystal and buried myself in my homework, glad to have something
to distract me from the disaster that had just occurred. Until I smelled cookies burning.

I was headed back to the kitchen to rescue the Christmas cookies that Angelo was never going to eat when someone called my name. It was a girl I’d never seen before.

Correction, it was a girl I’d seen before and thought was a guy friend of my brother’s. They’d been playing video games in the den since Mom had moved them out of the living room to give me study space for my tutoring sessions with Samuel.

Great. Mom is losing it, and so am I. I’d been a little busy, and having Dorklock out of my biz was such a wonderful thing that I didn’t notice for almost two weeks that the kid from school who’d started popping in to play videos with my brother was, in actuality, a girl.

To be fair, she wore a baseball cap, jeans that were more jockey than Juicy, and sweatshirts so big that any budding figure she might be developing was well hidden.

I’m a little ashamed to admit I didn’t clue in until the kid stood there in the kitchen, smiling at me as if I were holding the answer to the secret of everything in the universe— maybe even beyond. “Pru?”

I don’t know what it was that had made me realize, this time, that she was a girl. Sure, her voice was high like a girl’s, but at thirteen, that doesn’t mean a thing.

“Yes?” I knew then. Clue #1? None of Dorklock’s friends
had ever said a word to me before, not even when we lived in Beverly Hills. And none of them had ever looked with unrequited adoration at the red and green Christmas pompom cookies I had made.

After that, everything tumbled into place in a flash. The Dorklock had a girlfriend. Sure, she was skinny and liked video games as much as he did. But she was a girl, and she hung around with him all the time, so, technically, she was a girlfriend.

Which was why I was a little slow to respond when she said, “Can you tell me what to do to make the cheerleading team at Agatha’s next year?”

I’d gotten distracted by the whole “Dorklock has a girlfriend and will be going to Agatha’s next year” psychic screaming loop.

“Sure.” It’s not like I hadn’t been asked this question before. True, the other times it had been mortals talking to a member of the champion Bevery Hills team. But the answer is the same: “Practice, work hard, and smile.”

She had the smile-part down, judging by the sunbeam she shot at me. “I will.”

Dorklock sounded annoyed, although he didn’t bother to get up from the couch in the den; he just sent his voice into the kitchen. “Pru, stop interrupting our game.”

“Get real, you waste of oxygen. She asked me a question and I answered it.”

“I’m gonna die here, Hannah, if you don’t ignore my sister like she deserves.”

Hannah’s sunbeam smile disappeared and she popped back, controller in hand, to rescue my brother from whatever monster, menace, or CGI-boogeyman was after him.

Even though I think she has a crush on me. Or sees me as her shortcut to kewl through the secrets of cheerleading.

Too bad she likes bad haircuts, baggy sweatshirts, and video games.

Not to mention the Dorklock. Whom she calls Tobias, with a little sigh on the last syllable. Gag me.

Mom still hadn’t come back, but life had to go
on. To-Do was insistent that I get my homework done. I tried to concentrate, but every sound—and our creaky old house makes a ton of creaks, groans, and sighs—made me wonder if Mom had returned. And what she would have to say when she did show up.

Sassy was being a true noodge while I was working on my transubstantion homework. Every time I got close to the end of my incantation, she pounced. Cute, she is, but her claws and kitten teeth still drew blood from my big toe—and threw off my magic big-time.

Finally, I picked her up and brought her eye-to-eye. “What is wrong, Sassy? You have a full food dish and plenty of water. What else does a kitten need?”

She looked at me and yowled. Only this yowl sounded like “witches’ council.” It did, no matter how impossible that sounds. And just when I was starting to get a clue— accompanied by a sinking feeling in my stomach—she climbed up my arm and latched on to my ear. Before I could say ouch, we weren’t in my room anymore.

The first person I noticed was Agatha. The frost white she favored stood out at the council table.

The second person I noticed was Mom, who was standing beside me, looking very unhappy. She had a book in one hand that had a gold title embossed on the dark black leather:
Loss Prevention for Witches.

It hit me that I’d been summoned to the witches’ council. I adjusted quickly, putting a competition smile on my face and dropping my hands so that Sassy sat on my shoulder nibbling on my ear without interference.

I had forgotten that Sassy, the kitten I was given as a familiar for my sweet sixteen birthday party, was supposed to be a conduit to the witches’ council. Traitor. I always fed her canned food. But the whole ear-biting transportation-to-the-witches’-council-without-warning thing made me wonder if I ought to switch her to dry.

Whenever I heard anyone talk about the witches’ council, I pictured everyone being like Agatha: old, wrinkled, cranky, and all dressed in white. But, as it happened, Agatha was the only one who favored white. The rest were dressed in ... their
own uniquely individual style. One wore an elaborate sari, and one an elegant kimono; one old guy had a kilt on, and one was into red in the same way Agatha was into white. They were all old. And, judging by the way they were looking at me, as cranky as Agatha. Possibly even crankier, although I would have thought that was impossible.

“You have been called to testify in front of the council. Do you swear to tell the truth?”

“Yes.” I didn’t see that I had any choice. Rumor had it that the council could employ truth spells, potions, and charms until their victims were permanently incapable of telling a lie. Not something most witches were eager to risk. Especially those of us with a year left in high school.

I stood in a penned-in area with two other people. One of them was my mom, and one was someone I’d never seen before. She was beautiful. Probably a Water Talent, by the way she favored blue, kind of foamy clothes. Not that that was always a clue, but with the Water Talents, it usually worked.

“Hi,” I whispered to Mom, who I saw now was looking unhappy because I’d been summoned, not because of the whole being-surrounded-by-cranky-ancient-witches thing. “Do you know what’s going on?” I pointed my right index finger at the council and my left index finger at the semicircle of bleachers behind us that held people who were watching everything avidly, though silently. Probably the
council had magic-damped them to keep the already cranky council members from going into cranky overload, I guessed.

Mom only had a chance to say, “There’s a hearing—” before some big guy with a scythe shouted, “Quiet in the council!”

When a big guy with a scythe asks you to be quiet, you don’t argue.

The guy indicated with his scythe that the lady I didn’t know should step forward. When she did, a big light surrounded her. Not blinding, but believe me when I say every pore was visible. The judges were going to be able to observe and analyze every muscle twitch and bead of sweat. If she was lying, I had the sinking feeling that they were going to start flinging spells and charms and potions to get the truth out of her.

Old Lady in Red rose into the air and began to glow. I guess she was the boss. “Why did you give birth to your son in the mortal realm?”

Son. Okay. I was off the hook on that one. Unless there was something Mom and Dad hadn’t told me? I checked Mom out. She looked worried, but not about me—about the lady being questioned in the harsh light of the council.

“I had no choice. I had only planned to swoop in quickly to hear a performance of the Boston Pops. But before the concert was over, I went into labor and—and the mortals nearby took me to the hospital.”

Old Lady in Red frowned and shook her head. Clearly, she didn’t like the answer, which seemed pretty simple to me. “How could you have risked going into labor in the mortal realm?”

I tried to witch-whisper to my mom, but I guess the court had spells against it, because all I got was an echo in my ear, “Action forbidden.” Too bad. I really wanted to know what was so bad about mortal hospitals. Dorklock and I had been born in one.

I relaxed, though. This had nothing to do with cheerleading. Nothing to do with Agatha’s. As far as I could see, this wasn’t about me.

Agatha looked at me for a second before she bent forward and asked a question of the shaking witch (you could see her hair vibrating in the light). I hoped she hadn’t heard my thoughts.

“Why did you not have a companion to guard you during labor?” she asked.

Guard her? From what? Poor lady. I’d seen one of those birth shows once on TV when I was home from school and too sick to change the channel. It wasn’t easy, but the doctors and nurses seemed to know what they’re doing.

The poor witch on trial cried even harder. “A friend had planned to go with me, but she heard the northern lights were going to be spectacular over Greenland and decided to go watch them instead at the last minute.”

“You should have gone with her.” “I didn’t expect to go into labor. It was horrible.” She had gone beyond faint trembling to full-scale shaking now. “You don’t know how it felt to be whisked away in an ambulance, into a delivery room, and not be able to do anything about it.”

“No, I don’t.” The Old Lady in Red didn’t seem all that sympathetic. “That’s why witches who could go into labor are advised not to go into the mortal realm. I followed that advice when I gave birth.”

Oh. Well. I glanced at Mom. I guess her case was different, since she’d had Dad to watch over us, and had been living in the mortal world.

“I wish I never had. But I didn’t think—”

“No.” Agatha broke in to the questioning. She sighed like she did with errant students at school. “Your kind never do.”

Old Lady in Red asked, “Was the infant ever out of your sight?”

Again, she cried so hard, it seemed like she was going to turn into a puddle of tears. “They took him to the nursery. But as soon as my powers came back the next morning, I asked for him and popped us out of there.”

Agatha’s next question was asked very quietly, as if she was hoping that that way, she wouldn’t get the answer she feared. “So the boy was out of your sight and care overnight?”

“Yes.” Tears were running down the witch’s cheeks.

There was a moment of silence, and then the light switched off.

I thought I’d be popped back home with Mom, but instead I stood in the dark, listening to the sound of what seemed like wings flapping in the breeze. I hoped it wasn’t the flying monkeys, the ones that came after Daniel and me after we’d been caught kissing in the time bubble.

When the light blasted back on, I closed my eyes for a second. I opened them, slightly teary from the assault of the spotlights, to see Angelo in front of the witches’ council. The light was focused on him. Even in that nasty, unforgiving light, he was a perfect 10. The council members made startled little sounds. I could see the observers behind me lean forward, even though I couldn’t hear the sounds they made. Sighs, probably.

He blinked. Then he blinked again and rubbed his eyes. I realized that he thought he was dreaming. Boy, was he in for a surprise.