Seriously Wicked

by Connolly, Tina

  I picked up my phone.

  And then a tall guy with a wide pale face strode stiffly into the room. He was wrapped in aluminum foil from head to toe, with occasional green ruffles.

  Kelvin.

  I was sure he wouldn’t want to talk to me any more than I wanted to talk to him right now, so I turned toward the stage where Blue Crush (minus Devon) was setting up. I looked down at my call log to find Creepy Guy’s number. Maybe Kelvin and I could pretend we hadn’t seen each other.

  But a crinkling sound proclaimed that he now stood next to me.

  “Um. Hi,” I said. “What are you?”

  “Leftovers,” Kelvin said. “Specifically, a leftover six-foot sub. Feast your eyes on the lettuce sticking out. I made the lettuce out of an old dust ruffle. I made the foil out of foil.”

  “Clever,” I said. “I’m afraid I’m just me. Maybe I could be leftover me. The me after I’ve had a very long week.”

  There was silence except for the crinkling of his aluminum. The dance lights twinkled off his foil. His lettuce ruffles danced in the breeze from the heating vent.

  Then Kelvin said: “I lied before. You know what about.”

  “About the pig flu. About liking me. About how to multiply exponents. About the fertilization of chicken eggs. About the earth being flat. About the goat’s blood?”

  “It was cow’s blood,” he said. “The goats were being grouchy and my mother didn’t think it would matter. I didn’t want to be the one who messed up your experiment, so … I used my acting skills on you to pretend I hadn’t. It’s a violation of theater ethics and 4-H ethics. I’m sorry. I know deep down you already knew all this and that’s why you despised me.”

  “Kelvin. I do not despise you. I just like someone else and I can’t help that.” I put on my best robot voice: “Love is strange and nonmechanical. Does not compute.”

  For once, Kelvin smiled.

  Then he held out a cooler. “No payment due,” he said.

  Relief, brilliant bold relief. Kissing Kelvin’s cheek would be a bad idea, but I hugged his arm. “Thank goodness,” I said. “Ooh, I crinkled your foil.”

  He looked down at me. “It’s more authentic now,” he said.

  “Right,” I said. Awkwardly. “Look, I’ll see you later, okay? I’ve got an experiment to get going.”

  He nodded and lurched off to talk to a boy in a sparkly dragon T-shirt, not saying good-bye.

  I looked at the items on my latest list and made a couple more notes.

  • Trap Devon in a pentagram (blow on it and tap with wand to set the spell)

  • Compound demon-loosening spell (in progress!)

  • Check and see if Devon has located the phoenix JUST HOPE HE DOES

  All I had to do was find Devon. And hope the zombie girls were by the T-Bird, where Jenah told them to meet. I jumped onstage even though Miss Crane turned from her convo with Rourke and the witch to scold me from a distance. “Camellia, dear, really, should you—”

  “Hey guys,” I said. “Have you seen Devon?”

  The bassist shook his red dreads. “Not my day to watch him.”

  The guitar guy said, “No, and if he thinks he can get out of setup just because he’s singing lead instead of me . .!” He waved the cords he was untangling.

  “All righty then,” I said, and stepped over black cords to go.

  But the drummer said, “I saw him.” The drummer turned out to be a fine-boned black girl with piercings. She stopped fiddling with her snare to point toward the side entrance. “He finally got a reputation, huh? I kept telling him one day he’d be dripping in girls.”

  I was suddenly jealous of this unknown girl for sharing Devon’s life before I knew him. For bolstering him in his shyness. For having a history. For being easy in her skin, like Jenah. For being cooler than I was.

  What I said was: “Thanks.” I know she watched me go, watched me jump off the stage and dart through the dance, and I wondered if she thought I was hurrying to drip off him, too.

  Devon was by the T-Bird talking to some girl dressed as a miniskirted pirate. Miracle of miracles, four of the zombie girls were clustered nearby. This wasn’t entirely due to the magnetic pull of Devon—I had tasked Jenah with phoning them all after school. She told them Devon had a little game for them, and to meet by the T-Bird.

  Occasionally one wandered up to Devon and drove off the latest girl to stop and talk to him. Two zombie girls were dressed as witches and two as groupies, both of which seemed ironic. Reese had reverted to idiotic bliss, now that Devon was nearby and smiling her way.

  I nodded to Reese and then dropped to the ground behind the mock orange with my backpack and Kelvin’s cooler. I took out the apple-oyster glop for the demon-loosening spell, and carefully swirled in the last, precious ingredient.

  “Over here, Avery,” I heard Reese holler, and then the fifth zombie girl (a groupie) hurried from her mom’s car up the hill to the T-Bird.

  Reese drove off the pirate girl with a white-toothed snarl, and the zombie girls moved in around Devon.

  “Hey chickies,” said Devon. The actual suaveness the demon had learned from Devon receded as the demon got more and more confident that he had his claws in Devon for good, and the faux suaveness that the demon thought was totally the bomb had taken over. He had his collar flipped up again. “What do you girls want?”

  “Kiss me,” said the zombie girls in a ragged chorus.

  “One kiss per satisfied customer,” said Devon, shaking his finger. “Don’t crowd me, sweet things.” The girls sighed and obeyed, but they stayed in a loose circle around Devon.

  Well, not quite a loose circle.

  Only an observant observer would’ve noticed that the five girls had evenly spaced themselves around the grinning boy in the middle. They smiled sweetly at Devon.

  “This is the life,” the demon said. He looked at the twilight sky as if he wanted to remember it forever. “This is the life.”

  That’s when I said, “Now!”

  The girls grabbed each other’s hands with straight arms. I ran from the bushes, shoved the bowl of ingredients just between Reese’s feet. I blew on her arm just as I brought my wand down upon her shoulder, freezing the pentagram in place. The magic jolted me just as it had when I tried the self-defense spell.

  But this time I was ready for it. I held the wand on Reese’s shoulder while beams of light shot up from all the girls.

  Devon was enclosed in a living pentagram.

  He expanded for a moment and rippled all colors, just like I’d first seen the demon. Rage was written all over him. Then he shrunk down into a black-haired punk-band boy. “Very funny,” he said to me. “But a human pentagram has certain limitations. Reese, let me out of here.” He motioned for her to drop the hand of the girl next to her.

  “No thanks,” Reese said sweetly.

  “Ha. Come on.”

  “Nope,” she said.

  “Avery? Tashelle?”

  The other girls shook their heads.

  Devon glared at me. “What is this?”

  “Cam said you said it’s the only way to prove our love,” said Reese in a singsong recitation. “Whoever holds on the longest wins you forever.”

  “For the evening,” I corrected.

  Devon turned a smoldering gaze on Reese. “Why don’t you drop hands and I’ll choose you right now?”

  Reese looked dubious, but the girls on either side scowled and held her tighter. She tugged a bit and gave up. “Nope,” she said finally. “She said you’d test us to see who’s weak. But my love is strong.” Her eyes burned with zombie fire. “My love is eternal.”

  Devon reached out to force Reese and Avery’s hands apart, but his hands stopped an invisible quarter inch from them. He tried to lean on the girls’ hands, tried to push on them, tried to focus power onto them, but nothing. It looked like he couldn’t touch the pentagram girl formation at all. Which is what the book had implied, but it was very reassuring to see it actually work
.

  “Why you…” he growled at me.

  “Temper, temper,” I said.

  He smoothed his face. “It doesn’t matter what you hope to do. I’m almost permanently embodied. Devon enjoys having me around, and once he feels the power of us controlling the phoenix, he’ll never want me to go. We’ll be together for all time.”

  I hoped the demon wasn’t as confident as he seemed. “But you don’t have his soul yet,” I said. “And what you haven’t noticed is that I stuck a loosening spell inside the pentagram with you. Devon, now’s your chance. The demon’s not bound to you anymore. You can push him out of you.”

  I held my breath and watched Devon freeze in the middle of the pentagram.

  Tension. Waiting. Surely struggle must be passing behind his eyes, back where I couldn’t see.

  Finally he blinked and sneered. “Nearly have him for good,” he repeated. “So what’s the point of this charade?”

  My shoulders sagged.

  But it isn’t over till it’s over. “At the very least this keeps you where I can keep an eye on you,” I told him. “Have you found the bird? Are you ready to transfigure it so the explosion can be controlled safely?”

  “Found it ages ago,” said Devon. “It was obvious.”

  “Good. Where is it?”

  He snorted. “Let me out.”

  “Not till you’re out of Devon,” I said.

  “Then it will explode,” he said.

  I narrowed my eyes. “Then the blast will take you down, too.” I didn’t plan to let it come to that. “Girls, don’t let Devon down,” I said. “Prove your love for him. Your own personal ‘Hands on a Hard Body’ competition.”

  “Ooohh,” the girls sighed. Hands trembled.

  “Except you can’t let go!” I said hastily. “That part comes after.”

  “Awwww.”

  A few kids had stopped to take in the scene. They looked interested until I said, “It’s a skit we’re performing later in the evening.”

  “Lame,” said one, and they hurried into the dance.

  I checked my cell. Eighteen minutes to explosion. I’d better tear the witch away from Rourke.

  The witch had already come to the same conclusion and was stalking out of the gym just as I was returning to find her. Someone’s “spooky” playlist was blaring over the sound system, and I could see Blue Crush trying to tune beneath it.

  “I captured the demon,” I said breathlessly. “He knows where the phoenix is hidden and he’s trying to keep the explosion for himself. So he’s in a pentagram till we get down there.”

  “You tricked the demon into a pentagram?” A strange emotion crossed the witch’s face. It couldn’t possibly be pride, so it must be anger or jealousy. And then: “You did a spell?”

  “Yup,” I said. “Two, if you count the pentagram. Proving that anyone can do magic if you gather the right ingredients.”

  The witch shook her head. “Ingredients are only half. It takes your internal magic to push the rest.”

  “Right, but all organisms have magic,” I said. “Therefore all humans have magic, witch blood or no. So why not? What’s the difference?”

  “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.”

  15

  CASH

  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.

&n
bsp; 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.