Authors: Tina Connolly
Clearly the more practical way to be a witch was to be prepared. Have plenty of time to work out the spell before you need to actually use it. Otherwise your life was spent doing everything in tiny backtracking increments, taking five times as long as you should to accomplish a spell. I supposed powerful witches like Sarmine had a million spells memorized and wore a fanny pack full of essential ingredients.
Even if I worked any more spells after this week, which I wasn’t going to, there was no way I was going to wear a fanny pack.
When I came back in with the earwig and dandelions, I stopped in the kitchen and grabbed the pepper and paprika. No use understanding the self-defense spell if I didn’t try to mix it up, right? That wasn’t a slippery slope, just good common sense.
Once alone in my bedroom, I dug out the book with the spell for demon-loosening.
1.
If directed elsewhere to use #9 or #3, these are the measurements: 1 oz of #9, 2 units of #3.
Okay, so looking at the ingredients list, that was one ounce of goat’s blood (where the heck was I going to get it now?) and two apples. I’d already figured that out.
2.
If it is a Monday, use 1 oz of #12 and 18 units of #7. Else not, unless the date of the month adds up to 5 or is divisible by 5.
Halloween was not a Monday, and thirty-one did not add up to five nor was it divisible by five. So I didn’t need number 7—pumpkin (darn, one easy ingredient)—or number 12—basilisk urine (thank goodness). I worked my way up to step four, which had a riddle about an ingredient made up of chicken containers plus green leafy things, and I got stuck. What was a chicken container? A coop? A saucepan? There weren’t any ingredients that sounded like a coop or a saucepan.
I shoved that spell aside and dug out the paper with the self-defense spell on it. Slippery slope, here we come. I rechecked my solution from that morning and came up with the same answer: two and a half tablespoons chopped pear, two tablespoons water, three tablespoons maple syrup, one pinch each pepper and paprika; chop the pears with both hands.
Breathe.
Try it.
I grabbed a pear from my paper Celestial Foods bag and attempted to chop it with both hands. The pear slid out from under my knife and rolled onto the carpet, gathering brown carpet fuzz on the sliver my knife had cut.
Well, I wasn’t going to eat the spell. I wedged the pear between my feet and tried chopping again. This time I got a slice whacked off. Should have gotten riper pears. I laid the pear on its flat side and chopped again. This wasn’t so bad, just awkward.
The witch opened the door and I threw my hoodie over my feet. “Don’t you knock?”
“Since when?” Sarmine said. “I just want to make sure everything’s ready for tomorrow night. Have you been keeping track of the demon?”
“He’s got your first two tasks done,” I said. I assumed he’d finished kissing all those girls by this point. “I dunno if he’s found the phoenix.”
“He will,” the witch said. “Elementals can always sense other elementals. That’s my least worry. In fact, this all should go very smoothly. By this time tomorrow night the city will be under my command. And then there will be changes.”
“What sort of changes?” I casually wiped pear juice on my hoodie and tugged my backpack to cover the open spellbook.
“It will be a grand day for witches,” said Sarmine. “We will no longer be oppressed. We can come out of hiding and show the world our talents. The recycling program will expand. All city engineers will be directed to work on alternative-fuel solutions. Solar panels for all.”
“That actually sounds reasonable,” I said.
“And the city shall do my bidding in all things.”
“That, not so much.”
“Camellia,” said the witch. She squatted down by my backpack. I could see another of her spellbooks, the radio one, sticking out. I tried not to look over there. “Camellia, I’d like to talk to you.”
What had I done wrong now? I twisted awkwardly with my feet still covered, and grabbed the bag from Celestial Foods. “I got the things you needed for your spell tomorrow,” I said. “Ginger root, black-tea bags, apples, and rubber bands.”
“Good,” she said, and took the ingredients from me. She turned the ginger root over in her hands. Finally she said, “Have you thought any more about trying to work a spell?”
Eek.
“I’m kinda busy with my schoolwork right now,” I said.
She nodded, and her face was kind of soft and searching. “Sometime, perhaps. Still plodding along on that self-defense spell?”
“Still plodding,” I said with fake cheerfulness.
Sarmine rose and looked around the room. It was a mess. Besides the random pile of nine eggplants and jar of earwig and so forth, the feathers from the pillow that Wulfie had shredded clung to the bedspread and the wall and covered the floor in drifts. Sarmine considered. “Do you have a piece of Scotch tape?” she said.
“Um. Yeah.” I found her the dispenser. The witch gathered two feathers and dusted them with a red-brown powder from her fanny pack that smelled like cinnamon. “EhLARu,” Sarmine said, and pointed at the pillow with her aluminum wand.
Feathers whisked off the floor and into the pillow. The cotton case rewove itself around Wulfie’s rips and tears and stitched itself closed. “You like animals, don’t you?” Sarmine said.
The scope of the question was like asking someone if she liked food. Nevertheless, I was amazed at this sign that she knew anything about me at all. “Yes.”
The mended pillow plopped into the pillowcase, which rewove its own damage. “EhLARil, larIL,” she said, and blew something off her fingertip at the case. A pattern of tiny green turtles embroidered itself along the edges. The pillow plopped down onto the head of the bed with a soft thump.
“Thank you,” I stammered.
The witch nodded and left my room. “See you tomorrow night,” she said.
I flung my hoodie aside and finished chopping the pear. Combined it with the syrup and water and spices and mixed them all in a plastic pencil box.
It looked like pie filling.
Maybe I’d managed to interpret spells, but that didn’t mean I could work them. I dug under my bed for the wand I’d taken from the witch’s study and pulled it out.
It was black wood with a white tip. I hoped the white tip wasn’t ivory, because I would hate that. But when I looked closer it seemed to be made of that shimmery stuff that comes from seashells. The black wood felt solid, but I knew it couldn’t be. All wands have to have something elemental in them, which in practice is usually dragon milk, dragon scales, or phoenix feather. I wondered if anyone had ever managed to make a wand with essence of demon in it. It seemed unlikely.
I hefted the wand in my hand. It was shorter and sturdier than the witch’s wand. I liked the feel of it. It felt practical, and somehow warm, too.
I held it over the pencil box of pear mixture. What would a self-defense spell do if no one was attacking me? I dipped the tip of the wand into the pear.
Nothing.
“Because I’m not a witch,” I growled, then stopped. If I was doing this because Jenah was right that maybe anyone could work spells, then I was going to have to go about this the right way. Spells required intention. Not me thinking, I’m not a witch.
“Even goats have magic in them,” I said. “I’m practically a goat. I’m a goat, I’m a goat.” I lowered the tip of the wand to the pear.
This time a shot like a bolt of electricity went up my arm. I jerked back, the wand flicking out just like the witch’s always did—straight at the pyramid of nine eggplants.
The pyramid exploded.
Bits of eggplant covered my backpack, my desk, my ceiling. My bedspread. My new pillowcase with its tiny green turtles.
Despite the mess, I laughed hysterically. “Eggplant,” I said. Chicken container plus green leafy thing. “Egg. Plant.”
* * *
Friday morning. Halloween.
The school was buzzing with the holiday. Officially, the school prohibited costumes during the school day, but I saw lots of people with add-ons like kitten tails or nerd glasses. The Halloween Dance Committee whisked in and out of classes on “official” business. Rourke passed out gawdawful root beer candies.
Devon wasn’t coming to classes anymore, but he was there at school, wandering all around and looking for the phoenix. In some ways that was the most important thing of the day, because if he didn’t find it, the school would blow up. He didn’t seem worried, though I suppose he expected he could teleport away or whatever if the phoenix blew. But the rest of us didn’t have that luxury, and the idea of telling the principal to cancel the Halloween Dance because something in her school was going to blow up tonight would probably get me arrested on a bomb threat charge.
I couldn’t concentrate on classes with everything jumping through my brain. I pulled out my list to see where we were:
•
Solve Ye Olde Demon-Loosening Spell (MOST IMPORTANT)*****
•
Get demon-loosening ingredients and self-defense ingredients
•
Retake algebra test
•
Figure out how the demon is planning to steal “the
hopes and dreams of five”
•
Figure out why Devon is hanging out with Reese and
her blue bra
•
Trap Devon in a pentagram
•
Compound Demon-Loosening Spell (in progress!)
•
Check and see if Devon has located the phoenix
My wand was in my backpack, along with Tupperwares full of ingredients. After I had had my eggplant breakthrough last night, I had started mixing the demon-loosening spell. By lunch the apple-oyster mixture had steeped for twelve hours, so I used part of lunchtime to stand at my locker and stir in earwigs and dandelions and so forth.
“Any luck?” I asked Jenah when I finally got to the cafeteria. I had put her in charge of identifying the five girls whom Devon had kissed. As far as I knew, the demon hadn’t handed the “hopes and dreams” off to the witch—however one did that—so he must still have them all, somehow. Devon, plus a demon, plus the important parts of five girls—that poor boy was stuffed.
Jenah was sitting next to some girl whose head was cradled in her hands, obscuring her face. I plonked down whatever it was the lunch lady had handed me, and started scarfing it.
“Yes, in fact,” Jenah said. “I’ve located all five zombie girls. The two you saw, plus Avery from the tennis team and
two
seniors.”
“Wow. Moving up in the world.” The girl next to Jenah had limp blond hair that dragged in her lasagna, turning the ends tomato red. “Um, your hair…” I said.
Jenah gently shook the girl’s shoulders. “Hey. Sit up,” she said.
The blond girl shook her head, further moistening her hair.
Jenah pushed the girl’s tray away, took her paper napkin, and began cleaning tomato off the girl’s hair. “I was briefly distracted when I heard a rumor that he’d gotten
Miss Crane
,” she said to me. “Can you imagine?”
Even in the middle of disaster I could see the funny side of that. “I would pay to see that.”
“Apparently she’d gone to the dentist and
that’s
why she was drooling,” said Jenah. “It’s been tricky sorting out who the girls are when no one knows the real story. But with little hints—this girl seemed high, that girl was singing ‘Kiss Me’ in the halls—I tracked all five of them down.” She put the tomato-ey napkin back on the tray. “There you go, Reese.”
The girl finally looked up at the sound of her name. Her eyes were dull and forlorn. I had not even recognized her. “He’s all I want,” Reese said.
“Oh, no,” I said. “She’s worse.”
“It’s like she needs her fix,” Jenah said. “She was dreamy Reese before school. Said she saw him at his locker. Then he disappeared and won’t answer her texts. Now she’s like this.”
“What do I do without him?” Reese said.
Despite knowing that the hope-stealing was magically induced, I tried reasoning with poor Reese. “Remember he’s just a boy,” I said. “He’s not worth it. You have so many other things you want to accomplish.”
Brief life snapped in Reese’s eyes. “He’s not
just
a boy and you know it.”
Jenah and I exchanged a look, but we knew Reese didn’t mean what we were thinking.
“Just a boy,” I repeated. “No boy is worth giving up your
self
for.”
Reese looked down at her tray and her lip trembled. “The lasagna looks like Devon,” she said. Her hair tumbled back into her tray, covering her face. Jenah tried to sit her up, but she wouldn’t budge.
“Add that to the list of tasks,” I said. “We’ve got to reverse this horrible process before the witch gets ahold of their hopes and dreams and steals them for all time.” Reese’s state was so disturbing that I covered up my fear with flippancy. “I don’t want to hear that she’s seeing Devon in pieces of toast.”
* * *
So Devon was definitely on my mind, but I didn’t see him close up till just after lunch. Till just after the American history video about All Hallows’ Eve got interrupted by a frog jumping out of nowhere.
A frog with wings that only I could see.
I jumped from my desk and grabbed the little thing out of the hair of a squealing girl.
“I think it escaped from Ms. Sanghvi’s biology lab,” I said. “I’ll take it back to her.”
Mrs. Taylor squeaked, “Just get it out of here.”
So one pixie had escaped the rooftop massacre. To fulfill the witch’s contract, the demon needed one hundred pixies at the school by Friday. It was Friday, so that was fulfilled. Now, if I could get this little guy
out
of the school, then that was one less pixie that the witch would have for her Ye Olde Becoming the Mayor Spell. Without all the ingredients, she couldn’t take over the city, no matter whether I succeeded with my other plans or not.
I took the little pixie down the hall. It was a rich green color, speckled with tiny green dots like flecks of ash. It fluttered in my hand. I almost didn’t see the pink flash that illuminated an empty classroom down the side hall.