Authors: Tina Connolly
“The difference between a frog and a pixie,” said the witch. “The difference between a llama and a unicorn. A very big difference.”
“Bosh,” I said. “Then how come I could work the spells?”
The witch looked me straight in the eye. “Obviously, Camellia,” she said, “because you’re my daughter.”
This is how I felt.
I felt like the world had stopped around me and broke into two sections—before, when I thought I was a regular human, and now.
Because deep down I knew the witch—my mother—was telling the truth.
Age lines creased Sarmine’s face, bringing her up to fortyish. “Some friend of yours told you it was bad to be a witch. Remember?”
I cringed. “Sparkle. Yes.”
“The two of you concocted a new story about how I stole you from your parents in some heinous Rapunzel-like scheme. As if any witch would want an ordinary human child.” Her face abruptly aged to that of familiar sixtyish Sarmine. “But that’s what I got.”
It seemed like a moment to say I was sorry, but I couldn’t feel it. Conflicting emotions shuddered through me—disappointment, stress, guilt. And underneath, a small sliver of … excitement? “I … I didn’t know,” I said lamely.
“I know,” said the witch. “That six-year-old girl was like some kind of Svengali. You were obsessed with trying to be what she wanted. And when she didn’t want you to be a witch, you convinced yourself you weren’t. I tried to make you admit the truth so many times. Eventually I just gave up.”
I thought back to when I was five and any urge to say “I’m sorry” vanished. “You’re wrong,” I said. “It wasn’t her, it was you. We
saw
you. We saw you in the basement, working a spell. A really horrible spell.
That’s
why I didn’t want to be a witch.”
It was the witch’s turn to be surprised. “What spell?”
I swallowed. “I’ve seen you use a bunch of ingredients I think are awful,” I said. “But I’ve never seen you actually kill something yourself. Except that day.”
The witch went white. “You saw the tracing spell,” she said. “I never knew.”
“That’s why I didn’t want to be a witch,” I said. “I
couldn’t
be.” I had never seen Sarmine at a loss for words and I didn’t know what to make of it. “We’d better get back to the demon,” I said awkwardly, and turned, but Sarmine touched my arm.
“It was my last chance to find Jim,” she said, her lips ghastly pale. “And it failed.”
“Jim Hexar.”
She nodded.
“Camellia Anna Stella Hendrix,” I said. “But my real name isn’t Hendrix, is it? It’s Hexar. It always was.”
“The neighbors had a dog named Hendrix,” she said. She shook her head, her color returning. “I never knew you saw. When you came home with your new name and story, I aged twenty years in a day. It was like between the two of you, you put some sort of block on yourself. Witches are secretive and paranoid and hide things from each other, but you two took it to extremes.”
“Sparkle’s that kind of girl already, though,” I said. “She hides everything. Like she hates that she doesn’t have parents. She lives with her grandfather on the Japanese side, and she won’t admit that she’s an orphan and they’re broke and everything else. Like if she doesn’t mention whatever it was that happened to her parents, she can block it out, re-create her life.”
“Her Japanese grandfather—” said the witch, suddenly staring at me. “Camellia, I always thought you were the one who managed the block. But what if—” She controlled her rising voice. “What if your friend was from a witch family, too? Kari—Hikari—was also Japanese.”
“Kari?” The name was familiar.
“The witch who hid R-AB1 fourteen years ago right here in this school. Really, Camellia, don’t you ever listen?”
Shock ran through me as I pieced this together. “Did Kari have a daughter?” I said.
The witch frowned. “I don’t think so. But perhaps Sparkle is a niece or cousin.” She looked bemused. “If her grandfather is the witch-blood side, then he’s sure been lying low.”
I shook my head, bewildered but certain. “Sparkle is a witch, too,” I said. “I’m almost sure of it. That’s the missing piece, the only thing that makes sense.” I ran through the clues again but came up with the same answer. And … “Oh hells, I left the demon locked in a pentagram. If there’s a witch on the loose—or a whole family of them—we’d better make sure he’s still in that pentagram.”
The witch was bone-still, thinking. “It doesn’t quite fit,” she said. “You girls were five and six years old. Even if she saw my spell, why would she care whether or not you thought you were a witch?”
“Duh, because she was embarrassed about being one herself,” I said.
The witch’s eyebrows drew together and for the first time, I saw her honestly puzzled. “Why would she be embarrassed about that?”
I shook my head. “Sarmine Scarabouche, you do not remember what it was like to be five, or even fifteen,” I said. “Now help me find Sparkle before she throws a monkey wrench in the works.”
I ran out of the gym and down the hall, the witch clip-clopping behind me in her heels. “Where are the hundred pixies?” she said.
“Last I saw they were being squished on the rooftop,” I said. It didn’t hurt to tell her, because she wasn’t going to get to use that spell. Especially not now that there was one pixie missing.
“I’ll send Estahoth after them after we release him from the pentagram,” said Sarmine. “What about my hopes and dreams? Did he get those?”
“The proof is in the pentagram,” I said.
We skidded out the side door. The living pentagram still stood.
Standing next to the T-Bird was Sparkle.
Not surprisingly, she was dressed as a princess, in a rose gown covered in various shades of pinky-rose sequins from shoulders to train. A tiara perched on her glossy straight hair.
The witch rapped the glassy air between two of the girls. “Nice work,” she said. “A little watery-sounding. Your breath must have betrayed nerves. Still, not bad for your first try.”
There was, I admit, a small glow created by the words “Nice work,” coming from the witch. I suppressed it.
“What are you doing here?” I said to Sparkle as the witch poked the air.
“I—I don’t know,” said Sparkle. She was doing the now-familiar gesture of clutching her cameo.
“Oh, right,” I said sarcastically. “No clever plan at all. Nothing that involves being … a witch.”
Sparkle wet her lips. “No!” she said. “Nothing like that. I just—I just got this feeling, okay? Like there was something I was supposed to do over here by the T-Bird.”
The T-Bird.
Of course.
“The phoenix,” Sarmine said reverently. She left the pentagram and crossed to the statue, her heels squishing points in the dirt. Devon and the zombie girls watched as Sarmine raised her hands reverently to the bird’s head. She closed her eyes, running her fingers over the head of the transfigured elemental. Silence filled the air.
“It’s not it,” said Sarmine.
“What?” I saw shock on Devon’s face, too. The T-Bird made so much sense.
“I can’t be positive, but … it doesn’t have that elemental feeling. It feels like plain metal.” Sarmine looked at Devon, bound in the pentagram. “Well, there’s one way to find out. Time to get the demon out of there. He knows.”
“No!” I said sharply.
“No?”
I pointed to the bowl inside the pentagram. “He’s not tied into Devon right now. You want him loose?”
The witch’s face went rigid. “A loosening spell? Why would you do that? What kind of idiot—?” She composed her face. “We have to let him out regardless. He has to transfigure the phoenix and harness its power before it explodes. The power can only be contained safely if the phoenix is in its proper form.”
Devon shook his head wildly. There was fear on his face as the demon realized he had failed one of his tasks. “I don’t know where it is.”
“That’s your third task,” Sarmine said. “You must.”
“I was so sure it was the phoenix. I know it’s near. I can feel its presence here in the school. It’s lonely and cold and hard.”
“It’s
got
to be the T-Bird,” I said. “What else would it be?”
“I don’t know,” said Sarmine. “What else would it be,
Hikari
?”
Sparkle backed away from us. “How do you know my real name? Are you a teacher?”
“I didn’t recognize you when you were six,” said Sarmine. “But you can’t hide anymore. Tell us where the phoenix is. You’re the one who summoned a demon to hide it. You’re the one who knows.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Sarmine whipped out her dragon-milk wand, scattered a white powder in front of it, and flicked it at Sparkle, slamming the girl backward. “Tell us,” she said.
“What are you doing?” I rushed toward the witch, but she forestalled me with a flick of the wand.
“You stopped me before. You won’t stop me this time, Hikari,” said Sarmine.
“Stop calling me Hikari!” shouted Sparkle. She clutched her cameo necklace as she fought off Sarmine’s force.
“What do you have in that charm? Dragon scales glued to the back? You were always a scaly sort of hag.”
Sparkle was staying upright only by a huge effort. We all saw her nose suddenly flick back to its crooked form.
“Ha!” cried Sarmine. “It’s keeping your nose job on, isn’t it? How’d you figure out that spell?”
“Envelope to me … said not to open till I was fifteen … then I could have the nose I always wanted…” Sparkle’s eyes darted, and the words were an effort. “Followed the weird algebra problem with rhubarb and horsehairs and then suddenly this happened.” She gestured at her straight nose.
“So her mom left her a spell?” I said.
“Not her mom,” said Sarmine. “Considering the source it was vaguely clever. All Kari had to do was an amnesia spell on herself. Ten years ago after she transfigured the phoenix and had to hide until its rebirth, she made herself forget almost everything. Made herself think she was six. And then—”
“Because witches look on the outside like the age they feel inside…” I said.
Sarmine nodded. “For all practical purposes she
was
six.”
Sparkle was pale. “It’s not true,” she said.
“Probably dropped herself off at her grandfather’s with a note from ‘Mom,’” said Sarmine. “‘Take care of my daughter’ et cetera. Is that right? You live with your grandfather?”
“I do…” Sparkle shook her head wildly and I admit I felt kinda bad for her. “It’s not true! I’m not
old
. I’m not!”
“Oh yes, you are,” Sarmine said grimly. “And I bet you have another note that you were supposed to follow today, to summon a demon to control the phoenix. Did you balk at that spell?”
Sparkle looked at me, and I think in that moment we both remembered tiptoeing halfway down the basement stairs, curious. Holding on to the cold railing and each other. Watching pretty red smoke curls, watching silver stars. Then watching Sarmine sacrifice a ferret in a pool of crimson blood.
“The spell called for goat’s blood,” Sparkle whispered.
Sarmine looked at her bracelet watch. “Six minutes till the explosion.” To me: “Get your wand out.”
“How did you know I’ve got—” She glared and I shut up. “Right.”
“You never were a very clever witch, were you, Hikari?” Sarmine was needling Sparkle, throwing her off balance. In a low voice she said: “To find the phoenix, I have to lift the spell so she remembers everything.”
I could tell from Sarmine’s posture that she was braced. Hikari might not be the best witch in the world—and she probably didn’t have a store of ingredients close to hand like Sarmine did—but she was about to have all her power and memory back, and she wasn’t going to like us very much. I gripped my wand.
Sarmine’s free hand was rummaging through her fanny pack. “A sprig of parsley,” she muttered. “Three alder leaves … we’ll substitute elm. Four faux gems…” She ripped off the two pearl buttons on the high neck of her shirt. “Cam, six elm leaves and two more things like gemstones. Now.”
Of course you know where the gemstone-like things were. In what I supposed was irony, I tackled Sparkle, who was busy watching the witch root through the fanny pack. “I’m sorry,” I gasped out. “But otherwise the phoenix … will incinerate … us all.” I grappled for her tiara, but she wouldn’t let it go.
“You’re as bad as she is,” hissed Sparkle, which made me lose the sympathy for her I’d just had. Honestly, she was as aggravating as Sarmine Scarabouche. Why couldn’t people be all good or all bad? This business with feeling sorry for someone who could turn around and be obnoxious the next minute made things so complicated.
The witch pulled off her shoe and pulverized her ingredients in it. “Counterfeit money would work, too,” she said. “Something that imitates something valuable.”
“Oh, that’s you, all right,” I said to Sparkle. She bit my arm.
“Humans invest belief in fakes,” the witch lectured. “We agree to regard Hikari’s tiara as imitating something expensive. And the expensive item itself is something that’s only expensive because we believe in its value. A gemstone rarely has intrinsic worth, except for diamonds, which are used to cut things, and opals, which will keep all insects from biting you.”
Sparkle shoved me off and I fell, cradling my arm. One last ploy to prevent that phoenix explosion. “I’ve got my phone in my pocket,” I told Sparkle. “You want your picture back? So you can go back to pretending your nose didn’t straighten out magically?” I held it out, and when she brought the tiara up indecisively, I grabbed it and dropped the phone into her hands.
I tossed the tiara at Sarmine, who caught it. With her wand she poked two jewels from it and they fell in her shoe.
“Press seven-oh-four to unlock it. Then scroll and delete,” I told Sparkle.
Sparkle’s fingers flew. I don’t think she even cared as Sarmine threw the contents of her shoe at Sparkle and traced the air with her wand in a star pattern.
The air whirled around Sparkle. For a moment, she lost all color, like she was a sepia photograph. “Whoa,” said one of the zombie girls. Then Sparkle colorized, in pieces, and as she did her head jerked up as if she was remembering things, great gallons of things, all at once. The phone dropped to the ground and blinked off, dead.