“Where are you going? Do you want me to wait?” Dion asked, confused.
“Nope,” Cassandra called back, already running into the parking lot. “See you at home.”
I followed her, and the feeling on the back of my neck intensified from a tiny tickle to a full-on scratch. It was my Sitter sense. Cassandra’s came on like a buzzing in her ears, and it was obvious that both of ours were firing at full strength right now. I stopped for a second and slowed my breathing so that I could look and listen. The strip mall had a hair salon, a water store, a children’s consignment shop, and a pizza place, and everything was closed except for the pizza place. Which was good for us, because the fewer people around the better. Zapping people’s memories, even if it was for their own good, was one of my least favorite parts of being a Sitter.
Cassandra stood beside me, and then slowly, without saying anything, we shifted so that we were back-to-back, and then began turning in a circle.
“Over there,” Cassandra whispered. “By the U-Haul.” I breathed a small sigh of relief—this was, thankfully, about as far away from the pizza place as we could get. “Okay, go!” Cassandra said, and we both took off at a sprint. One of our main jobs as Sitters was to capture escaped demons and Return them back to the Negative before they could do any harm. Cassandra and I had trained hard at Returns and were getting pretty good at them.
I caught a glimpse of this demon right before it ducked behind a side mirror. It looked like a lemon, though its yellow color was ghastly and pale, not cheerful at all. It was a Gamboge, and though it was petite in size, it was powerful. It had the ability to detonate itself, spraying a large area with the disaffecting funk of the Negative, and then reassemble after it had sufficiently sucked the joy from its victims. I’d never seen one IRL before, just in our study books, so this was almost exciting. Beside me, Cassandra had taken off her flannel and was tying the sleeves together. “I wish we had a net,” she whispered, and then just like that, the Gamboge was off.
It couldn’t fly, and it didn’t run. It bounced like a tennis ball. And it was bouncing straight toward the pizza place. Cassandra went running after it, swinging her shirt, whereas I went to work with my kinesis. A Gamboge was tough to Return because there wasn’t much surface area for me to grab on to—no fur, no tails. It was just small and oval and slippery. As it zoomed across the parking lot, I tried to catch it but just felt the rays of my kinesis close around air. On my second attempt, I still couldn’t get ahold of it but did make enough contact to throw it off course, so it bounced into a big red pickup truck. Then the worst thing happened: I lost it. Frantic, I searched, standing on my toes and spinning as I squinted into the dark, trying to see around all the parked cars. But I couldn’t see the Gamboge anywhere, and it was so small that it could hide behind, or below, anything. It could be perched on a radio antenna right now, pretending to be a tennis ball.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cassandra raise her hands, and I shielded my face. Her kinesis was pyrokinesis, and the parking lot lit up as she shot out a spurt of fire like a flamethrower, but there were too many places for the Gamboge to hide.
A burst of laughter caught my attention, and I looked up to see a large group of teenagers, several of whom I recognized, spilling out of the pizza place. Crap, crap, crap. Cassandra and I would have to split up.
“I’ll take them,” she said, tossing me her shirt. “You got this.” Then she took off running, and I had just heard her yell out “Hey!” to get their attention when I spotted the Gamboge again, bouncing around like this was Wimbledon.
This time, I lifted Cassandra’s shirt in the air and sent it flying toward the yellow ball like I was trying to snag a butterfly. I managed to get the Gamboge tangled in a sleeve for a split second before it escaped. Then I decided that I was going to stop trying to grab it and start trying to slap it. Its bouncing accelerated, and it was making its way directly to the pizza place, where I knew Cassandra had cast a spell on our classmates to keep them from noticing anything. I reached out with my kinesis and whacked the Gamboge back in the opposite direction. It bounced off the side of a station wagon, and then I hit it again, this time sending it slamming into the door of a hatchback hard enough to make a dent. This seemed to put it in a daze, and it wobbled a little bit. I swung Cassandra’s shirt at it, and caught it square in the middle, but to my surprise, it ripped right through the shirt, leaving a perfect Gamboge-shaped hole in the center of the fabric.
Cassandra’s shirt fell to the pavement in a slushy puddle, and the Gamboge bounced on. I could feel my blood start to course with frustration and anger. I held up both my hands and focused my power. I hit the Gamboge as hard as I could into the U-Haul’s window, cracking the glass into a spiderweb, and the demon dropped to the ground. That’s when I felt a tug coming from the sky. I looked up to see that the Portal had arrived, which meant I must have been doing something right with the Gamboge. Now all it would take was one good whack to send its bright yellow butt back to the Negative.
Movement caught my eye—the Gamboge was up and at it again. I hit it down hard, and it made a thud when it hit the pavement. I realized I was smiling. And that this felt good. I smashed the Gamboge into the side of a van, then the pavement again, through a slushy puddle, and into the dumpster. With each new crash and bang, the Gamboge got a little slower, and a little shakier. In the distance, I could hear someone shouting my name. Cassandra, probably, but I couldn’t stop to see. This was fun, and with each whack of the Gamboge, I felt a little better, a little less angry. I was totally focused, and then a screech stopped me in my tracks. Like nails on a chalkboard. Like a bird. A crow. I snapped my head up to look for it, but all I saw was black sky and light pollution. If there had been a bird, it was already gone.
Cassandra appeared, running forward with her hands out, and built a box of flame around the Gamboge, and then, with her actual hands, she bent down and scooped the demon up out of the fire box’s center, shuddering a little bit as she did, and chucked it, as hard as she could, right into the middle of the Portal, which was swirling up above us like vomit in a blender. The Portal closed around the Gamboge, and then my ears rang with its signature flushing sound. Cassandra was standing in front of me, her eyes wide.
“Esme, what was that?” she asked. “You were in a zone. I was screaming your name, but you wouldn’t stop. It seemed like you were going to kill it.”
At her words, I looked down at my hands and realized I was shaking. Sitters weren’t supposed to kill anything, even demons. It was one of our cardinal rules. Normally I didn’t even like stepping on bugs, but right then I…
“I didn’t mean to…,” I started, but then stopped myself, realizing that what I had been about to say wasn’t quite true. “I didn’t want to kill it,” I said, and my chin started to quiver. Then the tears were coming, spilling hot drips down my cheeks. “I just wanted…I needed…” Behind us, the group of kids from our school laughed and joked as they made their way to their cars, totally unaware of what had just happened a few yards away. “I just wanted to do something,” I said finally.
“You don’t need to explain it to me,” she said. “Trust me. I get it.” I looked at her for a second, then nodded without saying anything else. She wasn’t just saying that. She did get it. Giving me a small smile, she turned and walked over to where her now-honey-colored shirt was lying in a puddle. She picked it up, and dirty water streamed off it.
“It gives new meaning to the word ‘distressed,’ doesn’t it?” she asked.
I shrugged. “It doesn’t look that different from what you normally wear,” I said, “though maybe a little cleaner.”
“Har-de-har-har,” she said, then walked her dripping shirt over to the trash can and shoved it in. “Come on,” she said. “I know what will cheer you up. I’ll buy you a coffee.”
* * *
—
Cassandra didn’t drink c
offee, which was probably a good thing for the rest of the world. But standing at Starbucks with her while she tried to figure out what to order was painful. The line behind us was growing longer and the customers more impatient as she asked about, and then dismissed, almost every drink on the menu. Some were too hot, some were too cold, some were too chocolatey, and some just sounded “disgusting.” Finally she settled on a cup of whipped cream and a bottle of water. I got my usual iced Venti and sat down at a table by the window.
Raging out on the Gamboge had worked up a sweat, and I had a cold, clammy feeling in my armpits. I sipped my iced coffee while Cassandra alternated between a swig of water and a spoonful of whipped cream. She took me by surprise when she asked, “So, how you doing?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, shocked. Cassandra wasn’t one to talk about feelings, at all, ever, but over the past couple of months, it had seemed like she had changed. She had a girlfriend now, and that had softened her. She was happy, and she thought about other people. Maybe she was even getting in touch with her feelings and wanted to talk about stuff like emotions.
She licked some whipped cream off her spoon. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she continued, “but it seems like you’re under a lot of stress. I mean, I know you’re happy to have your mom home, but it can’t be easy.”
I sighed and leaned back in my chair. “It’s not that,” I said, twirling my straw and sending the ice spinning in the cup. “It’s just…” I stopped and bit my lower lip. “I’m sick of this,” I said finally.
“ ‘This’ meaning…being a Sitter?” Cassandra asked.
I sat there for a second, processing the words that had just come out of my mouth. I hadn’t even admitted this to myself before. I didn’t look at Cassandra as I nodded. “Not totally, but yeah. I was okay before, you know?” I continued. “My life wasn’t great, but it wasn’t horrible, and I didn’t know any better. Ever since Halloween, though, I know that there’s a way out for Mom, and to know that, but not know what to do about it, that’s somehow worse.” I took another sip of my coffee. “I go to bed mad, and I wake up mad. And now Pig is gone, and it just seems like the Sitterhood is good for everyone except those who are in it. Like, we protect the world, but not ourselves.”
To my surprise, Cassandra smiled. “Esme, you’re talking to someone whose mom is missing and whose dad was so bad he’s now in another dimension,” she said, “so I have those same thoughts about ninety-eight times a day. But it’s always like that for the heroes. I mean, haven’t you seen Batman? His life blows.”
I smiled, and snorted. “Did you just compare yourself to Batman?” I asked.
“Maybe.” She smirked as she scraped the last of her whipped cream out of the cup. She had put her phone facedown on the table, and it had been buzzing nonstop since we’d sat down. She’d been ignoring it, but now that it started again, she flipped it over so that she could see the screen. Aside from Ruby’s, which was saved under just one red heart emoji, Cassandra didn’t save any numbers in her contacts, somehow keeping track of whose number was whose and just constantly hitting redial. I could see that the number that was calling now was local, and a look of concern crossed her face as she tapped accept.
“Hey,” she said into it, “what’s up?” She listened for a second, her brows knitting together. “Get out of there,” she said. “Park the van down the street, lock the doors, and stay inside it. Watch the house. We’re on our way.”
She was out of her chair before she’d even hung up, and I was right behind her, painfully leaving my still-half-full iced coffee on the table. “Cass,” I said, running after her, “who was that? Is everything okay?”
“Dion,” she said, throwing the door open and breaking into a run. “We were robbed.”
I had no choice but to follow. It had once taken me two class periods to complete the mile in gym, but since I’d started Sitting, I’d built up a stamina that was almost embarrassing. Even in my dress and flats, with my coat flapping in the wind, I was able to pretty much keep up with Cassandra on the almost-mile back to her house as we dodged cars and leapt over puddles.
When we finally turned onto her street, I could see down the block that all the lights were on in their house. Dion’s van was parked a little bit down the street, and he was sitting inside it in the dark, just as she had instructed. He climbed out when he saw us coming, and blabbered in disbelief. “The door was ajar when I came home, and the whole—the wh-whole p-place…,” he stammered. “I mean, you’ll see it. Cass, it’s freaking destroyed. The couch, the walls, everything. Your room…”
At these words, Cassandra turned and ran for the house. Dion and I were close behind, and I gasped when we entered the living room. Dion was right. There were no words to describe it. It was beyond destroyed. Couch cushions were ripped, and there were holes punched in the walls. The table was flipped and every shelf had been cleared off.
Plants had been pulled out of their pots and the roots shaken loose from the dirt. Even the insoles had been ripped from the shoes that hadn’t made it into their owners’ bedrooms. I carefully made my way to the kitchen, trying not to step on anything, and that room was even worse. The refrigerator door stood open, and everything had been dumped out, even the contents of the bottles and jars. There were globs of mayonnaise on the floor, mustard on the walls, pasta sprinkled everywhere like confetti, bags of flour ripped open and covering everything in white. Ice cream dripped from the freezer, and there were little puddles of water everywhere, from the ice trays being turned out onto the floor.
The back of my neck absolutely burned, so much so that I rubbed it, trying to dispel the physical sensation that was there to tell me that something really wasn’t right.
“Esme.” I spun around at the sound of Cassandra’s voice. She was standing behind me, in the door to the kitchen, a look on her face that I’d never seen before. She was holding her hands out in front of her, cradling a bunch of black plastic. I took a step closer so that I could see what it was, and recognition shot through me like an electric shock.
It was the Magic 8 Ball, or at least what was left of it. It was in about a million pieces, the tiny answer orb now completely exposed, like a heart outside the body. Cassandra let the plastic bits fall to the floor, and held up the icosahedron between two fingers. “They broke it out of the ice, and then smashed it,” she said, “like someone stomped on it.”
I looked at Cassandra’s face. Her irises were always as black as coffee, but now they were even darker, like the Portal itself. The 8 Ball wasn’t just a toy. It was a communication device. It was the way she talked to Erebus. Erebus was hardly a candidate for Dad of the Year, but as Cassandra would say, he was the only dad she had, and they’d been talking, building a relationship bit by bit, triangle by triangle, ever since Halloween, even though she still kept the 8 Ball frozen in a block of ice just in case.
I got a chill just thinking about it. Though I trusted Cassandra, mostly, I still didn’t trust Erebus. He’d gotten Dion to break him out of the Negative once before, and it seemed totally within his powers to manipulate someone into coming and trashing their house. “When was the last time you talked to Erebus?” I asked.
“Two days ago,” she said. “It was just normal stuff.”
“Did you leave the 8 Ball out afterward?”
She looked at me like she was pissed. “No, of course not. I froze it back up like I always do.” She quickly shoved the icosahedron into her pocket as Dion walked into the kitchen, looking like he was about to cry or break something.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said, looking around, and then kicking a can of beans so that it rolled across the floor. He must not have realized it was open. The top had been cut off, and it left a trail of pintos behind it. “What the hell!” he said, his face turning red with rage. “They even opened our beans? We should call the cops.”
&nb
sp; “I don’t want cops here,” Cassandra said, and as with everything she said, Dion agreed immediately.
“I don’t even think they took anything,” he said. “It’s like they just came in here and systematically destroyed every single thing we own.”
“It almost seems like they were looking for something,” I said, pointing to the couch cushions, every one of which bore a knife slash right down the middle. Every cell in my body was screaming that this was not your average break-in. This was all about magic.
“Maybe someone thought we had drugs or money hidden in here?” Dion suggested.
“I doubt it,” Cassandra said. “Would we really still be working our jobs if we had thousands hidden in the walls?”
“Hey, I like my job,” Dion said.
“Well, I hate mine,” Cassandra said. “Frozen yogurt is for tools.”
Cassandra and Dion started to bicker, and I tuned them out as I exited the kitchen back into the living room. Whoever had trashed the house had done it methodically and left nothing unturned. “How long were you gone?” I called to Dion.
“Not even an hour?” he said, walking into the room. “Cass texted me that you guys were done, so I came to the hotel, dropped you guys off, got gas, then took Petunia back to Roger. We hung out for a little bit, and then I came back. I called Cass right as I came into the house.”
“So, it was more than one person, then,” I said. “Probably more than two, and they were thorough. They were probably watching the house to see when you were leaving.” Suddenly something hit me. “Hey,” I said to Dion, “you first found your dad’s journal and the 8 Ball in the basement, right?” He nodded. “How hidden were they?” I asked.
“Not that hidden,” he said, “just stuffed in between a couple of boards. I found them when I was down there looking for a breaker box.”
Spells Like Teen Spirit Page 3