Unreal Alchemy

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  That was… ominous.

  “When you say all sorted,” I started to say.

  “Like, I told them you had this whole plan and we weren’t factored into it, so we’re going to have to look after ourselves.”

  “And when you say look after yourselves you mean… staying at a nearby hotel?” The thought of Jules Nightshade and Viola Vale attempting to camp brought me out in hives. They did know that camping happened outdoors, didn’t they? Why were they even here?

  “No, they’re back at the campsite. Setting up our gear. I promise, you don’t have to worry about a thing.” He kissed the top of my head. “Want to go pick a band to watch? Who’s on this afternoon?”

  “I think,” I said slowly. “I think I want to just pop back to the campsite and check everything’s…”

  “No,” Ferd said too quickly. “I mean, we have this whole plan. So we don’t make any extra work for you.”

  “I was heading back there anyway. I tapped my hand-mirror and shoved it in a pocket. “Juniper crisis averted, so. That’s where I’m going.”

  “Sure,” said my boyfriend, looking uncomfortable. “Just do what you were gonna do. I won’t get in your way.”

  I tried not to break into a run as we headed back to camp.

  It even smelled different. My magic whimpered to me as I approached the campsite. My calm, simple, low key campsite.

  There was a large rolled-up carpet leaning against a gorse bush as we headed up the path. It smelled of wealth, privilege and antique flying charms, musty like they’d stolen it from a museum.

  “We may have made a few improvements,” Ferd called apologetically from behind me.

  Colour burst across my eyeballs as I stepped into our cozy bush clearing.

  Where we had previously had 3 large tents and 1 small tent set up in a semi-circle around the fire pit, plus a large tarpaulined area for beanbag lounging which could be quickly cleared away for band practice…

  Well, now there were two extra tents, bright green and so brand new that they squeaked. There was also a… pavilion was the only word for it. Draped with Indian silks, it exploded in colour, comfort and decadence. Warmth rolled off it, with a spicy scent that suggested protection and relaxation enchantments. Giant pillows spilled out, on to the ground which was… apparently tiled now. In marble.

  Dec lay sprawled on the cushions with a very animated Viola Vale lying half on top of him, chatting lazily. Their relationship made no sense to me. Apparently his type was ‘smart and spiky’ while hers was… super chill gamer geek?

  Mei was perched in one of several brand new canvas chairs, the kind that fold up so small with one containment rune that they can fit in your pocket. She was buried a mirror chat, too distracted to look up.

  Jules Nightshade sat at my campfire, feet on a stool, looking proud of himself. He was eating some kind of panini, which clearly came from the silver “five minute meal” cauldron that hung over our campfire, having displaced my family’s enchanted porridge pot (now sitting forlornly on the sidelines).

  “We may have gone overboard,” said Ferd behind me.

  “It all looks very comfortable,” I said, which was true. They had done a great job of accommodating themselves. I should be pleased.

  The trouble with domestic magic — and this is another embarrassing revelation — is that it’s inherently competitive. It doesn’t just want the people around it to be comfortable and well looked after. It wants to be the one responsible for that.

  I’d indulged my magic in setting up camp for the band — something I rarely did, and now it was awake and howling about how Jules bloody Nightshade had wandered in with his endless budget and glamorous tastes, and changed everything. It wasn’t mine any more.

  It’s possible I have a domestic magic problem.

  That wasn’t Ferd’s fault. It wasn’t even Jules and Viola’s fault. They’d tried to be helpful. They hadn’t done anything wrong. It was no big deal — it should be no big deal.

  I turned to smile at him, to say how nice it all was, to smooth over the horrible feeling that I wanted to burst into tears.

  Luckily for me, Holly interrupted. Thank goodness for her terrible sense of timing. “Hebe, we have a big freaking problem with Juniper!”

  “I still don’t see the problem,” I said, fifteen minutes later. Ferd had been remarkably understandable that I had to go with Holly and her crisis, because that was what I was here for. We’d catch up later.

  I almost certainly wasn’t avoiding him, now that he was here.

  What I hadn’t expected was that Holly’s crisis was actually… well, a crisis. She was freaking out, and I hadn’t yet managed to nail down exactly why.

  “I don’t see how you can queue for coffee like a normal person when Juniper is clearly under some kind of evil curse,” Holly hissed at me, joggling up and down as we waited in line at the Cirque De Cacao beverage truck. “Possibly she offended a fairy. These things happen all the time.”

  “I need coffee,” I said in a calm, steady voice. “Because otherwise my magic is going to break up with my boyfriend.”

  “Oh.” She hesitated and looked closer at me. “Crap. The Basilisk Brats kind of messed up your campsite, didn’t they?”

  “It’s no big deal,” I said between gritted teeth.

  “Why don’t you explain to Ferd that your magic is an epic Housewitch Magazine control freak that needs to be in charge of everyone else’s comfort?”

  “Or I could drink a double latte and get over myself. Double latte, please,” I added to Evan, the nice goth barista who was manning the truck today.

  “Hey, Evan,” said Holly, her attention still on me.

  “Hey, Holly,” said the barista, and frothed some milk quickly to cover up the fact that while we were equal regulars at the bricks and mortar version of Cirque De Cacao, Holly’s was the only name he remembered.

  That’s not unusual for us.

  “Decaf?” he asked, in case I wanted to roll back my order.

  “Nope,” I said grimly.

  “I’ve got a couple of orders queued up, it will be about three minutes.”

  “I’ll have a cinnamon choc froth,” Holly told him, and dragged me aside. “Can you pause your drama while I tell you about mine?”

  “Wow. I think that’s the first time you’ve ever asked me that instead of bulldozing through regardless.”

  “Cute. So Juniper is not acting like herself. Ever since she went missing, she’s been… off.”

  “You mean since you ditched her to flirt with an attractive older lady with a guitar?”

  “The love of my life, yes. Seriously, Hebe. I tried to talk to Junie just now, and she completely brushed me off to go listen to Charmed Life with some OTHER GIRL.”

  I looked at Holly, patiently.

  She had finished her argument. Her eyes were wide, and her hands were… expressive.

  “I’m glad she’s making new friends,” I said finally.

  “Is that all you have to say? There’s something wrong, Hebe. Juniper never acts like that around me. She wasn’t acting like… like Juniper.”

  “So she stopped letting you take her for granted and treat her like a doormat for five seconds, and you think she’s under a curse?” I snapped.

  Holly looked like I had slapped her. “That’s not fair.”

  “It’s not inaccurate.”

  “Cinnamon choc froth for Holly,” Evan called out from the beverage truck. “And, uh, double actual caffeine latte?”

  I stomped over to the truck, paid for both drinks, and started downing my latte before I even handed Holly her cup of chocolate. The itchy discomfort that had been clawing at me since I realised what Jules Nightshade and the others had done to my campsite finally, finally began to ebb.

  “I know I’m right,” Holly said softly, beside me.

  “So fix it,” I told her. “It’s not always my job to fix things. Take some initiative.”

  It was nothing. Obviously it was noth
ing. Genuinely no big deal. But it wouldn’t hurt Holly to focus on someone other than herself for ten minutes.

  Brace yourself, Juniper. Holly’s coming to save you.

  Chapter 9

  The Secret Diary of Miss Juniper Cresswell, Under New Management

  FRIDAY

  Dear Diary

  This isn’t the first time that I have had my body stolen, or possessed, or enchanted to obey a will other than my own. This isn’t even the third time.

  My family’s magical affinity with music has led to some rather strange incidents over the years. My eldest sister is a banshee, my younger sister a siren. Before the decade of vocal training it took them both to control their powers, I was stuck in the middle.

  Carmen stole my voice once, for a whole year. She meant to do it, but didn’t realise how hard it would be to give it back once she was caught.

  Calypso used to hum enchantments at me if she couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed for breakfast. I would stand against my own volition, march into the kitchen, make cereal and apple slices, and return to the bedroom with a tray.

  I fought it, at first, deliberately jolting or tipping the tray, so that her bed ended up a mess and she got the blame. But that only encouraged her to practice so that she could increase her control.

  She developed the skill to the point that she could force me to get out of bed and make her breakfast without actually waking me up.

  It sounds horrific but honestly, most childhoods have stories like that in them, don’t they? Maybe not of the misuse of magic, but some form of bullying or manipulation among the siblings. I had the reputation as the nice one, the sweet one, and I used that to my advantage — I never took revenge every single time that Carm or Caly did something wicked to me, but I saved it up. When I enacted my vengeances, I timed them well so that no one could accuse me without looking like they were making it up.

  Both my sisters are perfectly lovely now. Carmen is second clarinet of the Floating Orchestra, and Caly is in Grade 12 at the Willows Academy, applying to Belladonna U for next year.

  We almost never torment each other any more, magically or otherwise.

  I should thank them, really. Because when the cute little fangirl in the Cinnovate t-shirt and the knitted beanie stole my body, my first thought was resigned familiarity.

  Oh. This again.

  It wasn’t a traditional body swap — I’d been through one of those, too, the summer that Carmen was so angry at being sent to Woodwind Camp that she harnessed some seriously dark magic. It lasted a week, and because I was loyal I covered for her until she got sprung trying to take my fourteen year old body to a 16+ concert with her then boyfriend.

  Is it any wonder I spent most of my teens preferring to hang out with Jane Austen?

  Anyway. I knew that feeling of waking up in someone else’s limbs, and this wasn’t that. I was still resident in my body. I was just… removed from the action, observing as the fangirl took over the driving seat.

  Her own body fell limply to the path. She used my voice to summon her friend Ellie L — my thief was, it turned out, called Ellie K — and between them, they carried original Ellie K to their campsite, as if she were merely drunk, and not unconscious.

  No, unconscious isn’t the word. Empty.

  SATURDAY

  They were fans. That much was obvious. This was a joyride, and all I had to do was hang on tight and hope they got bored before they crashed the vehicle.

  The Ellies got drunk and giggly, watched a bunch of concerts together, and then finally got up the nerve to hang out with my bandmates at the camp on Saturday night.

  No one noticed that I wasn’t myself. Ellie K had clearly done her homework. On the rare occasions that the conversation opened in my direction, Ellie said something random about Jane Austen or cello music, or just smiled and gave off some pleasantry.

  Apparently with the right six sound bites, I could be replaced entirely.

  I had high hopes for Hebe, who was the one most likely to notice issues generally, but she was clearly rattled by the presence of the Basilisk Boyfriend Crew, and so busy pretending she didn’t mind that she couldn’t see anything else.

  Ellie L, not restricted by having to pretend to be me, stared openly at everyone with fannish glee. She kept up a whispered commentary into my ear, and genuinely squealed when Sage and Holly started noodling around with some new song he was breaking in, even though they blew up into an argument halfway through because something about lyric scansion?

  “Fine, I’ll play it with Juniper,” Holly huffed. She gave me a searching, challenging look. She’d been giving me a lot of those looks all day, like she was unhappy with me, like she didn’t trust me… it made me feel sick and stressed, more so even than the unwanted passenger in my body.

  But then Holly marched over to our tent, manhandled Irene towards me, and held her towards the wrong side of my body. She knew I hated anyone to touch Irene. She knew that wasn’t how…

  Oh. Holly knew.

  This was a test.

  All those glances of suspicion and dislike, they were for the passenger, not me.

  To her credit, Ellie K rallied hard. “I could have done that,” she protested quietly, eyes on the ground like she was embarrassed to point out Holly’s poor manners.

  Yes, that was a little too accurate for my liking.

  “Give us that beat you’ve been torturing us with, Sage,” Holly called out.

  He tapped the beat and started to sing his rough lyrics, not quite there. Holly joined in, singing along.

  I played.

  Ellie K played me like I was Irene. She was an actual cellist, it turned out. No wonder she picked me as the Fake Geek Girl band member to hijack.

  I realised then how much I had been hoping that Ellie K would show herself up in rehearsal, or during our set tomorrow, and that the band would finally realise something was wrong.

  Instead, I saw Holly’s eyes soften as Ellie K played. Like she wasn’t sure whether to trust her own suspicious thoughts any more. Like maybe she had been mistaken.

  I wanted to howl, “You see me! Don’t give up now!”

  But Holly was smiling with what looked like relief, and Ellie K was so proud of herself that her entire identity swamped mine with confidence.

  I drifted deeper, losing my senses, drowning in my own body.

  It went foggy. I think I slept.

  SUNDAY

  When I awoke I was in the tent, with Holly in the sleeping bag beside me, and I knew I had lost her. She wouldn’t be asleep if she didn’t trust that this was me and not some intruder.

  Next time I struggled up out of the fog, Fake Geek Girl were in the middle of band practice. Ellie K kept up fine with what was expected of Juniper — she played our songs like she’d been practicing them for years, which wasn’t overly surprising.

  Her friend, Ellie L, sat nearby, legs swinging as she watched us. Her eyes were on Holly. She didn’t look as aggressive as before. She looked contemplative, like she was measuring Holly for a new outfit…

  Oh. No.

  It wasn’t only me I had to worry about.

  Ellie L was planning to hijack a Fake Geek Girl bandmember too. Did they have another friend who had aspirations to be a drummer?

  They were stealing the whole band.

  From here, there was nothing I could do to stop them.

  Chapter 10

  Sage Can't Solve All His Problems With Coffee

  SUNDAY

  On Sunday, it rained. Which pretty much put the cherry on the top of this total whipped cream disaster of a weekend.

  Our whole gang was either loved up, on edge or both. Hebe was still pretending she didn’t mind the Basilisk Invasion, downing so many lattes that caffeine rolled out of her pores. She was all over Ferd like she had something to prove, and he was romancing her so hard he almost strained a shoulder muscle.

  Then there was Jules bloody Nightshade, posing his way around the shiny new renovated campsite like he
was a VIP. I’d never seen him on his best behaviour before. He didn’t turn up his nose at the food, the company or the accommodations (which, admittedly were a whole lot more swank thanks to his contribution).

  When Ferd was around, Nightshade stuck to him like glue, all snark and laughter. When Ferd was making out with Hebe or disappearing into a tent with her, which happened every time one of them wanted to avoid making conversation (so all the freaking time), Nightshade would make conversation with everyone else, making so much effort I suspected he was trying to win a bet.

  He sizzled with energy, like a lightning bolt in a silk dressing gown. It hurt to look at him. He didn’t look at me, or acknowledge my existence, for most of the weekend.

  It didn’t bother me. What did I care?

  Juniper finally returned to our campsite last night but brought her new friend with her. They spent all their time cuddled up together, eyeing off the rest of us like they shared a secret we weren’t in on.

  The song I hadn’t been able to find? It itched at my skin, tapped on my rib cage, twisted my stomach. I hadn’t slept in the tent I was now sharing with Mei, even after the glow of her mirror finally faded at 3am.

  Don’t ask me how she always looks fresh as a daisy on four hours sleep. That at least was business as usual.

  “You look like crap,” Mei said, perfectly awake at 7am, as if someone had plugged her into a charger and she’d just hit 100%. “Let’s get breakfast somewhere that isn’t here.”

  “That’s the best suggestion anyone has made all weekend.” I changed my shirt before we left the tent. If she could make an effort, so could I.

  No one else was awake as we staggered out of the Fake Geek Girl campsite and into the Sunday morning drizzle. Waterproofing charms had kept the rain off the tents and our instruments during the night, but we’d need more than that if we were going to practice (and perform) in the open air.