by Amelia Blake
“I’ll check the dresser myself,” I say.
Azzie shrugs nonchalantly. “I’ll check the desk then.”
I go to the dresser and open the top drawer. There are some sweaters and T-shirts in there, but no sign of a book of any kind. I move down to the next drawer, find nothing interesting there as well, just more clothes, and then I open the one that Azzie was looking at. Just as I suspected, it’s full of underwear. I want to close it immediately and check the next one, but then something nags at the back of my mind. If Ciara is hiding an important witchcrafty book somewhere around here, what better place to hide it than in her underwear drawer? So, setting my squeamishness aside, I dig into Ciara’s panties and brassieres and to my utter surprise find her diary, at least that’s what it looks like. It’s a small notebook covered in brown leather, a little worn on the edges. I feel very conflicted about whether I should open it and look inside or just put it back where I found it.
“Is that Ciara’s diary?” Jessie asks from behind me.
I jump in surprise and drop the diary back into the heap of Ciara’s undies.
“Let me see,” Jessie picks it up before I have a chance to protest—or decide whether I really want to protest. “There’s nothing here,” Jessie says, flipping through the pages.
She’s right. All the pages are blank.
“Maybe she hasn’t started it yet?” I offer a possible explanation.
“But then why hide it?” Jessie says, and she has a point. Why hide an empty diary? Besides, it’s worn around the edges, which makes it look like it’s been used for a while. Now it’s getting even more interesting: since I can’t read what’s in the diary, I realize that I really want to.
“It must be enchanted to only show the contents to her,” Azzie chimes in.
“Can you do something like that?” Jessie asks. She sounds impressed.
“I keep forgetting you know nothing about magic. Easy as taking a candy from a child. You can enchant it to only show its contents to you, or only to people of your bloodline, or only to witches. Whatever your heart desires. And whatever your magic ability allows,” he adds as an afterthought.
“So there’s no way to find out what she’s written here?” Jessie asks.
Azzie considers it for a minute. “Depends on what spell she used and how powerful it is, but it probably could be done.”
“Huh,” Jessie says thoughtfully.
“We’re not stealing Ciara’s diary, if that’s what you’re thinking about.” We’re just stealing her family’s Grimoire.
“It’s tempting, but you’re right. It will be better if she doesn’t find out that someone was in her room,” Jessie says, then hands me the diary.
I put it back at the bottom of the drawer and cover it with Ciara’s undies. I quickly check the last drawer in the dresser. It contains nothing but socks. We don’t find anything else in the room that could help us, no books of spells or any other magical attributes. It’s a little strange, considering that Ciara knows so much about magic and her grandmother is a real witch.
Since we haven’t found anything in Ciara’s room, it’s time to check the library, and then, possibly, Ciara’s grandmother’s bedroom. I do wonder what a real witch’s bedroom looks like.
“Azzie, can you hear where the dog is?” I ask.
Azzie listens for a moment. “He’s over there.” He points through the wall to our right. “I’m pretty sure he’s behind a closed door.”
“Pretty sure is how many percent sure?” I really don’t want to be running away from an angry dog. That just wasn’t part of the plan.
“I don’t know. Seventy-five percent?”
Jessie snorts. “Are you asking us or telling us? Anyway, there’s no point in waiting here. Since we broke into the house, we might as well check the library and anything else we have time for. We might not get another chance like this. Let’s go.” She opens the door and trots down the hallway. After a moment’s hesitation, Azzie and I follow her.
We get to the library without any adventures, and I’m glad we do get here, because it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. The room turns out to be much bigger than I originally thought. There are bookshelves all around the four walls and every one of them is filled with heavy tomes bound in leather with all kinds of ornate scripts, runes, and other symbols I don’t recognize written on their spines.
“That’s what I call a magical library,” Jessie says as she examines the room.
Azzie has already grabbed a chair, climbed on it, and is now reaching for Isabelle’s diary. At least that’s what I think he is doing. Jessie and I are just looking at the books on the shelves. I try to find something that has an English title written on the spine, but it’s a challenge.
“It will take days just to read through the titles,” I say as I pull out a book that looks promising, but turns out to be written in runes.
A growl sounds from the doorway. I drop the book in surprise, and from another thud that accompanies it, I know I’m not the only one who is caught off guard. I turn around slowly. I’ve heard somewhere that you shouldn’t make sudden movements in front of an angry dog. Or was that a bear? Or should you scream at a bear? And what should you do with a dog who catches you snooping in its mistress’s library? All these thoughts rush through my head as I slowly turn around to face the growling dog. Only what I end up facing isn’t a dog at all. It’s not even a bear. It’s something much, much worse.
Chapter Twenty
The thing is a demon straight from hell. If Azzie looks a lot like a human (he has a face at least), then this creature is a cross between a wolf and a crocodile, only with burgundy skin and no fur. Its hide is a darker shade than Azzie’s, but you can tell that they are from the same dimension. The demon is the size of a Great Dane, has giant paws with long claws, and razor-sharp teeth. It’s snout is elongated, ears long and flappy. The body is pretty thin for its size and ends with a large, fleshy tail that could probably hurl me into the nearest wall if I ever stepped into its wagging area. To top it all off, the creature has some kind of cold or something, because its snout is producing inordinate amounts of mucus which drip to the floor and form a small puddle of icky yellowish goo.
“Well, well, well, who do we have here?” Ciara’s grandmother appears behind the creature from hell. She looks familiar, probably because I’ve seen her before, although I can’t remember where. She has very dark, almost black hair with no streaks of gray, piercing green eyes, and the same haughty curl to her lip as Aunt Krista did.
I don’t know if I’m petrified or relieved when I see her standing there. I suppose it depends on whether she is going to keep the demon from hurting us or whether she will just let it eat us so that she doesn’t have to deal with filing a police report. Right now spending a night in jail seems like the end of a rainbow. At least as opposed to being eaten by a demon-dog while being covered in its mucus. I don’t even know what would be worse—being eaten or being snotted on.
The demon must be reading my thoughts, because it turns its half-open snout in my direction and releases a noise that sounds like what I imagine it would sound if an elephant barked.
I gulp. Eaten. Definitely eaten would be worse.
“Pick those books up. Well, what are you waiting for?” Ciara’s grandmother says when we don’t react at first.
Jessie and I spring into motion and pick up the books we dropped. I end up just holding mine, not sure what to do with it.
“And you”—the witch points a finger at Azzie—“put that back, now!” She doesn’t even need to raise her voice, because the creature’s growls add just the right amount of inflection to her words.
Azzie very reluctantly places Isabelle’s diary back on the shelf.
“Now would you care to explain to me,” the witch says in a lazy tone of voice that sounds exactly like Aunt Krista’s, “what the devil the two of you are doing in my house and why did you bring that spawn of Satan here with you?”
“
For your information, Satan doesn’t have any offspring,” Azzie says matter-of-factly, although I can tell he’s a little offended by the treatment he received. Not that any of us can complain, since we weren’t exactly invited here in the first place.
“It’s an expression, you dolt,” the witch says. “And why the hell are you still here? Zap yourself out, shoo!” She waves her hand to indicate she is done with him. When he doesn’t disappear that very instant, she looks at him suspiciously.
Azzie looks down at his feet and starts drawing half-circles on the chair with his big toe.
“Um, he can’t do it, Mrs. Richards,” I interject on Azzie’s behalf. “We kind of broke his witchlight and he needs a new one.”
Realization dawns on the witch’s face, quickly followed by a trace of distaste as the side of her mouth turns up into a nasty half-grin. “I see,” she drawls smugly. She turns towards me. “And if you call me Mrs. Richards again, I’ll have Dorian lick your pretty face right off. You can call me Adelise or Ms. Grenaux. I prefer Adelise,” she adds, and it’s pretty obvious from her tone that if I call her anything else, I’ll be Dorian’s dinner. “Richards is the name I do not want to hear in this house. I deplore that stubborn girl for sticking with it,” she says more to herself than to us. “Anyway,” she continues in her drawling voice, “so that’s why descendants of witches sneak into someone else’s house and snoop through a library that does not belong to them? Didn’t your grandmothers leave you spell books to play with in your free time? Oh, don’t answer that. That’s a rhetorical question,” she snarls when Jessie opens her mouth to say something. “But colluding with demons”—she gives Azzie a disdainful look—“is beneath even you.”
That sounds a little hypocritical, coming from a woman who has a demon for a pet, but I keep that thought to myself. I’ve already called her Mrs. Richards, of all things, when I know very well that’s not her name.
“How would you even know who we are?” I ask.
Adelise looks at me like I’m too stupid to understand what she is going to say, but then continues talking anyway. “Really, child, you’re a dead ringer for your grandmother. Hasn’t anybody ever told you that? And you”—she jerks her chin at Jessie—“you look like a midget version of your brother.”
Jessie snorts. She does look a lot like Logan, and she is a foot shorter than him. But how does Adelise know what Logan looks like? Has he been here?
Azzie shifts on the chair and it squeaks.
“Oh, for goodness sake, get off that chair,” Adelise snaps at him. “It’s a hundred years old and is worth more than either one of your horns.”
Is that also an expression or are demon horns actually worth something?
Azzie gets off the chair. He has been awfully quiet this whole time. I hope he isn’t scheming how to steal Isabelle’s diary from under the witch’s nose or something else equally stupid.
“Now let’s go to the living room where you can explain to me how you managed to get yourselves into such a mess.”
“So you’re not going to call the police?” Jessie asks tentatively.
“Police?” Adelise raises her eyebrows in surprise. “What good are the police when I can zap you into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? Now off to the living room, and don’t make me repeat myself twice.”
That would actually be three times, but I keep that thought to myself as well. It’s probably not a good idea to irritate a witch who can—or at least says she can—zap you into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
We start towards the doorway, but Dorian blocks our way. The puddle of either snot or drool under his snout has grown even larger in the time we were talking to Adelise.
“What about the hellhound?” Jessie asks. “Can you make him move?”
“Hellhound? Really? You watch too much Supernatural, silly child. That show warps all perception of witches. It’s just ridiculous what you kids do with your time. Dorian is a demonguard. Come on, baby,” Adelise calls, and the two-hundred pound baby turns around, wags its enormous tail in front of our faces, and skips eagerly after its mistress.
Jessie and I exchange a look.
Jessie leans in my direction and whispers, “If she thinks Supernatural is such a good-for-nothing show, how come she knows all about it? I bet she has a poster of the Winchester brothers somewhere in her bedroom.”
“Shh,” I say, but grin at the same time. I was thinking the exact same thing.
Ciara’s grandmother seems to be quite the character.
We spend the next half hour explaining to Adelise how and why we ended up in her house. Unfortunately, we have to tell her about Ciara’s involvement in all of this, because without her involvement we wouldn’t have a reason to sneak here in the first place. At some point in the story, she calls Ciara and tells her in no uncertain terms to be here right away, so that’s who we are waiting for right now, sitting awkwardly on a faded green sofa, with me in the middle, flanked by Jessie and Azzie on either side.
When we finish telling the story, Adelise gives us all an appraising look, quirks her mouth in a distasteful smirk, shakes her head disapprovingly, and says, “Witches with your heritage and to mess up such a simple spell.”
I can almost see her spitting on the floor in disgust.
“You keep saying our heritage. What does that even mean?” Jessie asks, a little irritated.
“You are completely clueless, aren’t you?” the witch says after a long pause. “And I thought Ciara was exaggerating,” she mutters to herself. She obviously isn’t going to explain anything to us.
As much as I detest Ciara after she attacked me with a spell, I really want her to be here right now so that she can confirm our story and we can leave. That is, of course, if she doesn’t ask her grandmother to get rid of us by zapping us into the ocean, which would be unfortunate.
“Where did you get that necklace?” Adelise asks me.
“What?” I ask, surprised, and automatically check the necklace, which was supposed to be tucked under my shirt, but somehow managed to escape. “Oh,” I say. “It’s, um, a family heirloom.” It is a family heirloom, just not from my family. I catch Jessie and Azzie staring at my neck, so I tuck the necklace back under my shirt.
“I see,” Adelise says. Her eyes twinkle with some kind of emotion I can’t quite decipher, but I’m pretty sure it’s not something I want to be directed at me.
I feel like a mouse being watched by a hawk. I wonder what Adelise does with her time, considering that her daughter—Ciara’s aunt—spends hers in a demon dimension. I have a suspicion Adelise might be up to something even more sinister than that.
At that moment Dorian, who has been snoozing a few feet from us for the last half hour, lifts his head from his paws, his tiny eyes become withdrawn as his snout opens and the tip of it twitches.
“Duck!” Azzie yells, but it’s already too late.
Dorian gasps and sneezes, sending a shower of snot our way.
“Ugh!” Jessie and I say as we look at the yellowish goo dripping from our clothes. “Gross,” I say at the same time as Jessie cries out, “Oh, no, he’s doing it again!” We brace ourselves for the next round of snot flying our way, but right before Dorian sneezes again, a hand with a white lacy handkerchief appears in front of Dorian’s snout and catches everything that spurts out of it.
“Nice boy,” Ciara pats Dorian on the head and he rubs his head against her thigh, depositing whatever liquids the handkerchief didn’t catch right on her cheerleading outfit. She doesn’t seem to mind.
“I called you half an hour ago,” Adelise says. She doesn’t seem to be bothered by the snot at all. But none of it got on her, even though she is sitting in an armchair right beside Jessie and Jessie’s—and mine—clothes look like we just came out of a jelly fighting pit. And Azzie has been our referee.
“You know I was at the game. I couldn’t just leave in the middle of it,” Ciara says as she sits on the arm of another armchair and folds the handkerchief very carefully
in front of her.
“And you know what I think about all this.” Adelise jerks her head at Ciara’s outfit. Huh, she’s not a fan of cheerleading? Maybe we have more in common with her than I originally thought.
Ciara’s face turns slightly red. “Well, I’m here now. What’s going on?” She finally takes us in—snot and all—and a thousand different emotions appear on her face.
“So the girls told me all about your little ritual and how it went badly.” Adelise nods in Azzie’s direction, and Ciara turns even redder than before. The look she is giving us is like that look that Parker gave me when I tried to protect Azzie from him—of total and utter betrayal. I want to say something, to explain that we didn’t just show up on her grandmother’s doorstep when she specifically asked us not to and told her everything. Now that I’ve met her grandmother, I can understand why she felt the way she did (not that I forgive her for putting a spell on me though).
“And apparently they couldn’t think of a better way to fix it than to break into my house and try to steal a spell on how to make a witchlight,” Adelise finishes.
A part of me feels relieved that she told Ciara about the breaking in part, while another part of me cringes at the thought that we actually did something that stupid and hoped to get away with it.
“But…” Ciara starts as she looks at me in total shock. “I made you forget all about it. You were supposed to not even remember the ritual.”
Now it’s my turn to stare at her in total shock.
“You did what?” Jessie exclaims on my behalf, because I am simply too speechless to say anything.
“Really? All that jumping and screaming must really mess with your brain if you tried to put a mind spell on someone wearing a dragon’s eye,” Adelise scoffs.
“A dragon’s eye? You have a dragon’s eye?” Ciara’s eyebrows rise almost to her hairline.
“I have what?” I have no idea what they are talking about.
“I think they are talking about your necklace.” Jessie catches things quicker than I do.