“Oooohhhh,” Amirah said, “is this where they live? Apartment buildings look so different here in Kansas. We don’t have anything like this in New York.”
“This isn’t where they live,” Brian said, sounding exasperated. “It’s their storage unit, where they keep the stuff they don’t use anymore.”
“Oh,” Amirah said. “So they don’t just keep their old stuff in the apartment downstairs?”
“Not everyone owns two floors, Amirah,” Ji-A said, ever the voice of reason. Then, “Do you think they have any extra boxes of T-shirts?”
“Who cares about the T-shirts? Esme might be in there somewhere.” This voice was male, and it took me a second to place. It was Adrian. What was he doing with them? Had he outed himself to them, for me?
Then, without being able to stop myself, I screamed his name. “Adrian! Adrian!” Then I screamed for Brian as well, and even pounded on the door a few times.
They didn’t hear a thing.
“You don’t know which one it is?” Brian said, and I couldn’t hear Adrian’s response.
Then Janis’s voice, carrying over the concrete in the cold. “If you think Esme is here, just yell for her!” she said, and then she proceeded to do just that. What followed was a great deal of shushing, it seemed, from Adrian and Brian, but Ji-A, Amirah, and Pig joined in, a chorus of girls singing my name.
“Did you get their autographs?” Ji-A yelled. “I want Tom to sign my copy of The Catcher in the Rye!” I couldn’t help but be momentarily distracted. Why in the world would she want that? And why did Ji-A have a copy of The Catcher in the Rye?
“We’re not supposed to be here. It’s closed.” Adrian’s voice sounded stressed. “There are hundreds of units here,” he continued. “This place is huge. We’re never going to find her. Wait. Amirah, you can walk through walls. Go through these doors to see if you can find Esme.”
I couldn’t hear her answer, but there was silence, then Adrian’s voice again. “I know it’s dark in there. It’s a storage unit. And we’re not looking for the band; we’re looking for Esme.” A beat. “Okay, we’re looking for the band, and Esme might be with them. Try again, try that one.” Two beats. Three. “I’m sorry it stinks in there. The next one will be better, only about a hundred and fifty more to go.”
It got quiet again, and then Brian’s voice: “Okay, please don’t cry. We’re going to find her. I mean, we’ll find them. Come on.”
Then a sharp yelp, and Adrian’s voice. “Jeez, she’s strong.”
I groaned. I needed—we all needed—Ji-A and Janis and Amirah to stop being useless five minutes ago. “If Amirah or Ji-A would just come here, they could feel the door and know that something is wrong,” I said to Circe.
“Maybe not,” Circe said. “If the band took extra precautions, the spells might not be detectable from the outside because they wouldn’t want anything that would arouse suspicions.” I sat down on a box labeled “protein powder,” and it dented slightly under my weight.
“I can’t believe we’re right here, and they’re right there, and there’s nothing we can do,” I said, feeling hopeless. “And Cassandra and Ruby and Mallory aren’t with them.” I looked up at Circe, and then something just beyond her head caught my eye. A fire alarm. The one that had gone off in the gym hadn’t done us any favors when it had come to quelling the chaos, but maybe this one might actually save our lives.
I jumped back to my feet, and Circe must have known what I was thinking. “It’s hooked up,” she said, “but I went through all the boxes and couldn’t find anything to set a fire.”
I looked at Circe, and then up at the fire alarm, and felt a twinge pierce through me. I’d felt it earlier tonight, when I had opened the door to the gym and found the Spring River student body about to explode in a Superfüd frenzy. Something was missing: Cassandra, normally my right hand, was now my phantom limb.
In all the time I had been a Sitter, I had never felt hopeless, and now I was starting to see why. I was always with Cassandra. Even Wanda—who had decades of magic on our paltry few months—couldn’t keep us down. And why? Because no matter what we were in, we were in it together. If we were defeated by Superfüd, it wouldn’t be a victory that they had earned. It would be one we handed to them, the minute we decided to split up for the evening.
Cassandra could set off a fire alarm in her sleep. She’d done it several times. And now I was here with her mom, and neither of us could conjure so much as a waft of smoke. After all, why bother learning fire spells when the other half of your tag team is pyrokinetic?
I stood in the middle of the storage unit for a second, listening with every cell in my body, and heard nothing but the rush of traffic and the whoosh of the wind. Then, voices again, muffled but coming closer. Brian and Adrian were talking, and Brian was urging everyone to get back into the car.
“We can’t just leave her here,” Adrian said.
“I know,” Brian answered, “but we don’t know for sure that she’s here. They could have taken her back to their house, and we know that the others are there. We’ve lost so much time already. You yourself said you saw them pull in, and then just saw them leave. What happened in the meantime?”
“There was a flock…I was getting bullied…It’s not important. If you don’t think she’s here, then we need to go,” Adrian said.
Go? No, they couldn’t go. They couldn’t just leave us here. I looked frantically around the room and racked my brain. The fire alarm was our only possible connection to the world outside the concrete garage box. I had to know a spell that would trigger it. I could move things with my mind, make plants grow, make animals talk. I could make things popular, clean up messes, make a steak appear out of thin air…
Wait, steak? My meat manipulation had once gone horribly wrong, and I’d conjured a live chicken. After that, I’d concentrated really hard on conjuring something that was cooked. But what about overcooked? Like, burned to a crisp. Smoking hot.
“You look like you just had an idea,” Circe said, but I didn’t have time to answer her. This was going to be tricky, because I was going to have to use my kinesis and cast a spell at the same time. I needed to conjure a sizzling steak, and have it hovering just slightly below the ceiling.
It was an absolutely ridiculous idea.
Outside, I could hear Adrian and Brian sounding more and more urgent as they tried to herd everyone into the car. I turned and focused my attention on the fire alarm, specifically a space just a few inches below it. “Kréakinesis,” I said, holding out my hands. The air wavered a bit, and then, there it was. A giant ribeye, like something out of a cartoon, and it was still sizzling, practically starting a grease fire in the storage unit, and the temperature started to rise instantly.
And then, success. It was an earsplitting screech, and instantly I bolted to the door. Behind me, the still cooking steak fell through the air and landed with a thud right on the floor. Over the racket of the alarm, I could no longer hear voices outside, but then one lone sound cut through the alarm’s screeching. Pig was howling from the other side of the door. Then I heard an engine revving, loud and close. I had just enough time to turn around and knock Circe to the ground, and out of the way before Brian’s Ford Explorer came crashing through the door.
Apparently, the way to defeat Red Magic was with an SUV. The force of the collision had caused the door to bend in like a baseball glove, the metal crumpling and crunching against the Ford’s hood. This divot pulled the door away from the floor and the sides, and I could feel the spells break around me, the magic rushing out like the storage unit was exhaling, as the alarm continued to wail.
“What the what?” Circe said as I rolled off her and we disentangled our limbs, the crunch of the door having stopped just mere inches from totally dismembering our feet. There was a groan of gears and then another vroom, and I scrambled to my feet, pushing boxes out
of the way, as the Explorer started to back up.
“There are people in here!” I screamed through the crack at the side of the door. Then I grabbed the door with my kinesis and pulled as hard as I could. I managed to wench it enough that I could then squeeze my arms through at least, and I waved wildly. “Stop the car,” I yelled. “Stop the car.” All I could see through the gap were the headlights, bright enough to blind. My attempt to cook a steak had set off the fire alarm for the entire property, not just our unit. It was a shrill shriek, with lights that strobed like a camera flash. After tonight, I never wanted to see or hear another fire alarm again.
Then, in the split second between the shrieks, I heard someone yell my name. Adrian. The next thing I knew, I couldn’t even count the number of hands that had grabbed on to me and were trying to pull me out through a hole that was way, way too small.
“Stop! Stop!” I screamed again. “I can get the door open! I just wanted to make sure you didn’t hit it with a car again.”
“Stand back!” Brian yelled, and then everyone disengaged. There was a weird hiss behind me, and I spun to see that Circe and I were no longer alone. Amirah, looking like she’d been to hell and back—or just to a school dance—was standing in front of me, wringing her hands and looking around, distressed.
“Superfüd’s not in here,” she said. “Brian lied to us!” And then, with that, she walked right back out through the middle of the bent metal door.
“Well, that was definitely a Sitter, of some sort,” Circe said, almost sounding amused.
“That’s Amirah,” I said. “She’s from New York, and she’s also under Superfüd’s spell.”
“Clearly,” Circe said. “Now, please, get us the heck out of here.” I nodded, then turned and focused again on the door. I raised my hands and used my kinesis, making the door groan and creak as I managed to make a little progress with the hole on the right side. Not a ton, but it looked big enough for us to crawl through.
“By all means, you first,” Circe said.
I stepped back to examine it, and nodded, and then used my kinesis to move some boxes, and climbed up and shoved myself through. Brian and Adrian were waiting on the other side and grabbed me and helped pull me out so that I wouldn’t just fall and tumble into a pile on the asphalt. As soon as my feet hit the ground, the Explorer’s horn honked. I looked up, peering past the headlights, into the driver’s seat. Janis was at the wheel, her face illuminated every few seconds by the blinding strobe of the alarm. Pig came bounding over, then stopped to howl, the shrill alarm no doubt murdering her ears. I pushed myself up, ran over to her, and clamped my hands down over her ears and she tried to cover me in kisses.
“Esme!” Janis screamed at me. “Did I do good?”
“Very good,” I yelled back at her. “You’re an excellent driver!” I turned to see Adrian and Brian helping Circe around the crumpled door.
“Brian,” I shouted to him over the alarm, “this is Circe, Cassandra’s mom. Where is Cassandra?”
“We don’t know,” Brian said, “but we need to get out of here, fast. The last thing I need tonight is to have to explain something to the fire department, again.” I turned to see Amirah materialize out of another storage unit, apparently still trying to find Superfüd.
“Esme,” Ji-A said, running over to me. “Did you hang out with them? Did you get their autographs?”
“No,” I said, “but we’re going to go meet them right now!” There was a chance this was not a lie. “Amirah, Ji-A, get in the car right now! Janis, you are not driving.”
“What?” Janis shouted back. “You just told me I did good!”
“This is not your car,” Brian yelled. “Into the backseat.” Janis started to protest, but then obliged, joining Ji-A and Amirah as they climbed into the car. I used my kinesis to pick Pig up, and deposited her on the floor in front of them, and then climbed in as well. Four people and a dog were kind of tight, but then Brian got in the front seat, and Circe and Adrian squeezed in shotgun.
Brian put the car in reverse and started to maneuver what no doubt would be a seventeen-point turn to get the car pointed in the right direction. The fire alarm was still screaming, and I put one hand over Pig’s ear and one hand over my own. Everyone else in the car was doing all they could to block out the sound, except for Brian, who kept his hands on the wheel at ten and two as he pointed the car in the direction of the exit and started to drive away.
The sound of the alarm didn’t start to fade until we had pulled out of the parking lot, driven down the street, and crossed an intersection into the next block. Then I could hear sirens in the distance. Brian drove extra carefully, and his mouth was set in a grim line. Adrian also seemed nervous. As did Circe. The backseat, however, was absorbed in a conversation about which member of Superfüd was the cutest.
“I just really like what Todd does with his hair gel,” Janis said.
“Gross,” I said. “Janis, he’s old enough to be your dad.” She ignored me.
“I think Tom’s facial hair is really creative,” Amirah said. “What do you even call that kind of beard anyway?” Of all the things that I had endured tonight, overhearing this conversation might have been the worst. Then I suddenly had an idea.
“Brian!” I hissed, turning away from them so that I was facing him. “We need a soundtrack!”
“You’re kidding me, right?” he said, and I shook my head, frantically digging for my phone.
“I doubt we can break the spell,” I said, “but what if we can hurry it along? I don’t know what the rest of this night is going to bring, but we need them.” I motioned toward my seat mates. Janis was bobbing her head to a song that no one else could hear, Ji-A was tracing something on her thigh over and over, and Amirah looked like she might cry. “I want to play some good music, actual good music, and maybe we can push Superfüd out of their heads.”
“Oooh,” Ji-A piped up. “If you have any Superfüd, put that on.” Her fellow backseat inhabitants nodded enthusiastically, but the front seat ignored this suggestion.
Brian leaned toward the stereo. “I have some Maroon 5 in here,” he said.
“No!” Adrian and I yelled at the same time.
“Here,” I said, passing my phone up to Adrian, “go into my playlists. There’s one called ‘Epic.’ Put that on.” Adrian plugged in the USB cord and hit a few buttons, and a second later, the first few beats of “Hypnotize” by the Notorious B.I.G. kicked in. Brian had surprisingly good speakers, and I could see Adrian start to smile as he scrolled the track listing.
“Wow,” he said, looking back at me. “This playlist is definitely epic.”
“Thanks,” I said, looking down before I could blush.
Brian was intensely focused as he piloted us down the street, but I swear I could see him doing the most minute, almost invisible head bob.
“Wow,” Circe said. “You kids still listen to this? I remember dancing to this at my prom.”
A few bars passed and the car was silent. Brian turned off the main street onto a side street as the chorus started. “Oooh,” Amirah said, “I like this song.” Everyone who wasn’t under Superfüd’s spell held their breath.
“Dang,” Janis said, “Biggie was the best.” By the end of the block, the whole backseat was dancing and rapping along, and I felt like I could finally exhale.
“Way to go, Esme,” Adrian said, turning around. “I’m so glad you’re okay. If you are okay. Are you okay?”
I nodded. “What happened?” I asked. “Where are Cassandra and the others? Where are we going?”
“We don’t know where they are,” Brian said. “We haven’t been able to get ahold of them.”
“I flew over there to check on them like you asked,” Adrian explained. “Their van was parked outside the band’s house, but there was no sign of them. So I flew back to meet you, and I got there ri
ght as four guys shoved you into the back of their car. I followed them to the storage lot but got ambushed by a big flock right when the car turned in, so I didn’t see where they put you. Then I flew back and found Brian, so he drove us over here. We were getting ready to leave. Then right before the fire alarm started to go off, Pig began to sniff this one particular unit, and wouldn’t stop.”
“Oh God,” I said, reaching over to grab her wrinkles and give her a hug. “She smelled the steak! I’m sorry, girl. I should have brought it with me.”
“Where did you get a steak in a storage unit?” Adrian asked.
“I panicked,” I said. “Meat manipulation hasn’t failed me before. Or wait, it has failed me, but not because it didn’t work…”
Adrian gave a quick glance past me into the backseat and lowered his voice. “Janis jumped into the driver’s seat when Brian wasn’t looking.” He gave a mock grimace that made me giggle.
“Sadly, wrecking his car is not the worst thing we’ve ever done to Brian,” I whispered back. “Fortunately, I think I can find a spell that’ll fix that bumper.”
Adrian swallowed, and I couldn’t help but think he looked nervous, and then I suddenly remembered why.
“He’s not going to turn you in,” I said. “At least not in a bad way. Brian’s not like that.” Adrian swallowed again, his eyes flicking back to Brian, who was asking Circe a million questions. She kept assuring him that she was fine, that she didn’t need a hospital, a doctor, or even a shower, and that she just wanted to find her daughter.
“So you didn’t see them at the house?” I asked, turning back to Adrian and the most pressing problem, my missing partner.
“No, but there was a broken window in the back of the house,” he said, then suddenly smacked himself in the forehead. “I should have looked in it. Or gone in. I don’t know why I didn’t.”
“Don’t worry,” Circe said, leaning over and patting him on the knee. “The house is spelled to keep people away.”
Spells Like Teen Spirit Page 29