“All living things have a tiny bit of magic,” she said. “Including…”
“Animals.”
She nodded. “Most creatures just have a little, like frogs and rabbits. Some have a whole lot more, like pixies and unicorns. A shifter is in the latter category. He has as much magic as a unicorn simply because of who he is. If he shifts into frog shape, suddenly that frog is many times as potent. If he shifts into unicorn shape…”
“It’s even more powerful than a regular unicorn. And so are his hairs.” I took a deep breath, trying not to worry about Leo when I couldn’t help him at this exact second. “But if he’s so valuable, surely they’d keep him alive,” I said.
“Certainly,” said the witch. “Threaten him or his family till he shifts into a snake, gather his snakeskin when he sheds it. Force him to shift into a unicorn, shave him for his hairs.” She stopped, pivoting to hold my gaze. “But now use your imagination and think what the most unscrupulous witches might do if they needed, say, a particularly potent eye of newt.…” The normally stoic Sarmine looked extremely upset, which means that there was the faintest trembling of her fingers.
I swallowed hard. My knees were wobbly and I actually thought I might faint. “Surely that’s illegal,” I said in a croak. “Doesn’t anyone try to stop it?”
“Your father, for one,” said Sarmine. Anger flashed over her face, as it generally did on the rare occasions she was willing to talk about losing him. “You see where it got him.”
“But I have to help Leo…” I whispered.
She threw up her hands. “Leave him alone! Get out now. This is dangerous, Camellia.”
My voice grew stronger. “Dad wouldn’t have run away and neither will I.”
“You want me to lose both of you?”
Small, quiet voice. “I want to fight for what I believe in. Just like you do.”
She stopped cold. Silence as she wrestled with her own thoughts and fears. Finally she said, “I can’t stop you.”
“You have always told me the witch world is dangerous,” I pointed out. “Yet you always send me into it—to deal with the creep who raises unicorns, to courier ingredients home from Brazil. To try to find elf toenails, which I am still positive are mythical.”
“You’re correct,” Sarmine said. “Not about elves, but about my usual parenting strategy.” It was just like Sarmine to talk bluntly about her parenting strategy. “You are correct.” She thumped one fist into the other. “I should stay the course.”
“The course?”
“Why, to let you handle your part of the bet in your own way,” she said. “With minimal assistance from me.”
“Ah.”
“I simply have an overreaction to this one issue. After all, you could have died during any number of the tasks I have assigned you in the past.”
“Good to know,” I said dryly. “Now. Please tell me how to protect Leo from the witches.”
Sarmine considered. “I don’t believe Esmerelda and Valda would torture him,” she said. “They might force him to turn into a unicorn and shave him. But the temptation would always be there to go … one step more.”
“And Malkin?”
Sarmine shook her head. “There are wicked witches and then there are wicked witches,” she said.
I knew what she meant.
I hugged the horrible book to my chest. I had to get to Leo. I had to save him. But from what? Surely his best chance was obscurity. I couldn’t tell him to leave town. Where would he go?
He needed protection, night and day, until Sarmine’s friends left town. They were too close to the high school with their little game. There was too great a chance they would pick up on it somehow. Sense his presence. And that was even if he didn’t accidentally turn into a rabbit.
“I need to tell him how to not shift,” I said. “Can you help me with that? He’s been doing it accidentally.”
But Sarmine shook her head. “That’s not in witch lore, as you can imagine. Our manuals discuss how to make them shift. The best person to tell him would be another shifter. I’m presuming he doesn’t know his birth parents?”
“His mother left him with his dads under mysterious circumstances,” I said.
“Mm,” said Sarmine. “I hate to tell you this, but your best bet is WitchNet.”
Of course. I could google it, just like I’d said to Leo yesterday. But … “Why do you hate to tell me that?”
“Because you don’t know who anyone is on the Internet,” Sarmine said. “You might go to a page that appears to have helpful information, but it was instead put up expressly to monitor who might be searching for that knowledge. And then, that person would track your computer’s location and know that someone from this town is looking for it. And who else would be looking for it but a shifter?”
My stomach flip-flopped further. “I hate to say it then, but people may already know. He’s been researching this ever since it started happening a few weeks ago.”
“On the human Internet?”
“Yeah.”
She nodded. “He might be safe, then. There’s so many fantasy books written about shapeshifters out in non-witch world that real queries may be lost in the shuffle. But I wouldn’t count on it.”
I straightened up. “What do I need to do?”
“Get him to stop shifting. And get these witches out of your high school before they discover him.”
* * *
I was so glad to have a bike again. The transit system wasn’t bad—but you were at the mercy of its schedule. I wanted to get to school now, where I could do something about my worries.
The morning was frosty. I tucked my scarf into my jacket, dug my lock out of the RV garage, and wheeled the bike down the driveway. Devon had done a nice job fixing the tires and handlebars for me. I couldn’t wait to find him and thank him. I might not be able to fly it yet, but I could ride.
Bike to school.
There was a funny clicking to the gears. I didn’t mind it. The rhythm took my brain to another place.
click CLICK click click CLICK click click
save LEo save LEo save LEo save LEo …
The houses whisked by like they were on wheels, rolling away from me. It’s true, you know. You don’t forget how to ride a bike. You might forget the hand signals—and I reminded myself firmly to google them at school—but you don’t forget how to go through the streets, on your own, around the hills and up. And up … Boy, I was out of shape.
I ended up walking my bike up the last hill to school. There … there really were a lot more bikes than normal. I wondered how many cars Sarmine had been exploding. I saw three more bike racks that I was sure hadn’t been there last week, and they were completely full. Kids were laughing and chatting as they rolled up on their bicycles and locked them.
There was a pang as I suddenly thought that I could be like all those carefree kids, if my mother weren’t a wicked witch. Goof off … Heck, I could still be like those kids. All I would have to do was decide I didn’t care about the chaos caused by my mother’s friends. I shook my head as I locked up my bike. No. When you live that close to evil, you see the world differently. Evil was not an abstract to me. I had tried to get off the wicked witch roller coaster before but it wasn’t going to happen. I had a duty to help fix things.
Once inside, I cornered a sportsbally sort of guy and got directions to Leo’s locker. I walked down to that wing—and saw the guy I really wanted to see at the end of the hall, stowing his guitar inside his locker.
This was where I wanted to be. This was what I wanted to be doing.
He looked up at me as I approached. “Devon,” I said. “Thank you so much for fixing my bike.”
A slow smile lit his face. “Happy to. I owe you one anyway.”
I shrugged this aside. “You don’t owe me anything.”
He was smiling at me as if he couldn’t look away. “Well, then. I wanted to.”
That answer I liked a lot. It was a metaphorical step toward
me. A step in the right direction. “I rode it all the way here,” I said. “Except the last hill.”
“Easier going home.”
“Maybe we can race each other,” I said, taking my own step forward. “Loser buys the winner ice cream.”
“You are awfully fixated on ice cream for November,” he said, teasing.
“Come back in summer and I’ll race you for hot chocolate.”
“Run through the sprinklers like we’re kids again.”
“Waiter!” I said in my best snooty voice. “Bring me another and don’t skimp on the marshmallows.”
“Mademoiselle is busy working on her tan. Requires cocoa.”
“A bikini, a jug of cocoa, and thou,” I mused, and I got that slow smile back from him.
“Hot chocolate and bikinis is the name of my next song,” he said. “Not too racy to get past the censors…”
“… but ever so slightly cheeky,” I said. “So yes? The race is on?”
“Today’s the tryout,” he said. “We’re first on the schedule if you want to come watch?”
“Of course!” I said. “If that won’t throw you off?”
“I’ve been practicing,” he said. “I’ve got this.” He picked up his backpack. “Off to algebra?”
“Yes,” I said. And then, of course, who was finally coming down the hall but a slightly-running-late Leo. “I can’t,” I amended. “I have to talk to Leo real quick.”
He glanced at Leo in a way that I could only interpret as assessing the competition, then back at me. There were lingering traces of that smile I liked so much. “See you soon,” he said.
Leo reached me right as Devon left. Perhaps there was a lingering smile on my face, too, because he also turned to look at Devon as if assessing the competition. “New guy?” he said.
I nodded. “Devon. Sophomore.”
He shrugged dismissively and opened his locker. “What’s up? Find anything out?”
“I don’t have any good way to tell you this,” I said in a low voice. “But I asked about the … thing you told me about yesterday?”
His face grew serious, matching mine. “And?”
“And you’re in a lot of danger.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to help?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But right now I’m your best bet.” I patted my backpack. “I’ve got a book with me that might help us. But we’ll need to go somewhere private. Do you have time after school?” Oh no, wait, I had agreed to meet Devon at three.
“After football practice, yeah,” he said, shutting his locker. “They’re short at this point in the season. So say, four?”
“Perfect.” I turned to go and found he was falling into step beside me. Ugh, was this going to be one of those awkward, have-to-walk-down-the-hall-at-the-same-time things? And why were people smiling at us as we passed? Oh, they were smiling at him. He was popular. This was getting odd. “So, uh, where’s your class?” I said. It was terrible small talk.
“East hall,” he said as he waved back at a cheerleader.
Near mine. Crap.
I mean, not that he wasn’t cute and all. And he seemed nice, I guess? But it was weird, weird, weird.
“So that guy you were talking to,” Leo said. “I saw him with a guitar yesterday.”
“Yep,” I said. “He does that.”
Silence between us.
A blonde in a pink suit with a green handbag fluttered her fingers at him as she sashayed past. She didn’t even notice me. Leo whistled a low, appreciative whistle.
“Stop it,” I hissed. “One of them.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Tell you later.”
More silence. More high fives from preps and jocks. “Yo,” one said to me.
“Yo,” I said back.
It had been easy to talk to Leo yesterday, when I was helping him with his problem. Was that because I was the one in control then? I was the one trying to assess the situation and solve the problems. I was in my element.
Now I watched him work the hallway and felt insignificant.
It was a relief when we arrived at my algebra class. Leo waved at me as we parted, and I ducked into the classroom, feeling weird as hell and awkward as anything. At least Devon hadn’t been watching. He was sitting at his desk, writing something on a piece of paper. He passed it underhand to me as I sat down and I unfolded it.
Samba for a Contrarian
I know a girl, when we’re together
she’s sunshine in tornado weather
a palm tree in the purple heather
hot chocolate in bikini weather
I looked up to find him with his head half-cocked, waiting to see if I liked it. “How are you this fast?” I said.
“Doggerel,” he said. “Dashed it off.” He buffed his fingernails on his shirt and blew. “By the way, did you know it’s hard to rhyme things with weather?”
“Feather?” I said. “Leather?”
“Pleather?” stuck in the guy sitting behind me.
“Fine, fine,” Devon said, holding up his hands and laughing. “You guys write the next verse.”
“What’s a samba?” I said.
“Oh. Like ‘The Girl from Ipanema,’” he said, tapping out the rhythm for me. “I know a girl, when we’re together…”
“And a contrarian?” I grinned up at him. “What exactly are you implying?”
“Not that you have unusual taste in drinks,” he said. “Never that.”
“Unusual taste in friends, more like it.”
“Excellent taste in friends,” he corrected me. “Charming and witty…”
“And not the slightest bit geeky,” I teased.
“I know a guy, who sings the samba…”
“If you’re quite through drumming,” said Mr. Rourke to Devon, “will you please come to the front and work problem one? Only if the jam session is done, of course.”
Devon went to the front, and I drummed the samba rhythm while I watched him work.
* * *
Halfway through algebra I realized Jenah wasn’t in class with us, which was worrisome. Had Valda gotten her overnight, at home? The idea nagged me all the way until lunch, when I found her in the cafeteria, chatting with a happy-looking Henny.
“You look like you’re up to something,” I said. I plonked my tray of vegetable soup on the table and sat down with them.
“Jenah is the best,” said Henny fervently, gesturing with her spoon. “The absolute best.”
“Well,” said Jenah modestly.
“She’s mine,” I said, teasing. “You can’t have her. Now what happened?”
“Well, Jenah skipped her first hour for me,” said Henny. She tore open her cracker packet, scattering crumbs. “And we made a plan of attack to first, talk to Leo, and second, bring down that horrible witch. Jenah said you gave Leo the love potion so he’d be, um … receptive. But I had to actually talk to him.” She looked at Jenah for confirmation.
“Correct,” said Jenah.
“So I did! I cornered him at his locker after first hour, and then I said, oh, I don’t know everything I said, it’s a blur. But I talked to him!”
“You did?” I said. “That’s fantastic.”
“And the best part is,” Henny said, “that Jenah said that Adri said that Rafe said that Leo’s been talking and texting about some new girl all morning. So that seems positive, right?”
“Er,” I said. “Yes,” I said.
“And then! Then Jenah came to my art class third hour—”
“How many classes have you skipped?” I said to Jenah.
Jenah waved a hand in dismissal. “One does the things that are important,” she said.
“So she waltzed right in,” said Henny. “And then Jenah started saying all this funny stuff to Esmerelda.”
“Making up slang,” said Jenah.
“And the class started laughing but you could tell Esmerelda didn’t get it.”
“I remembered
something you told me a couple weeks ago,” said Jenah, “about how witches look the age they feel inside.”
“And then the boys begged to draw her again, and she ‘gave in,’ and then Jenah started asking all these drawing questions—”
“Like, do you want me to leave your eye bags in or take them out?” said Jenah. “What about the neck wrinkles? What about the liver spots on your hands?”
Henny was doubled over with laughter. “You had to be there,” she said. “Especially when those things just started appearing. Finally someone held up a mirror.”
“She ran right out of the room,” chimed in Jenah with satisfaction. “Serves her right.”
“Looked about like this,” said Henny, holding up her tablet. The sketch showed a wrinkly old hag posing in a pink bikini, surrounded by dubious art students, including Henny. “Now that, I can post online. Everyone will think it’s social commentary.”
I high-fived Henny and Jenah. “You two are a great team,” I said.
“I haven’t even told you the best part,” said Jenah. “After we left art, Henny came back with me to my locker. And there was a freaking bucket of bricks inside, ready to fall on me.”
“I caught it,” said Henny. She rubbed her shoulder. “Ow.”
“We looked around for Valda in the kitchens just now but we couldn’t find her—”
“Or smell her,” said Henny.
“—and they shooed us out,” said Jenah.
“Too bad,” said Henny. She hefted up a brick and set it on the table. “I wanted to drop this on her toe.”
“Second round of high-fives,” I said. “I could not do this without you. Either of you.”
“Honorary witch sidekicks?” said Henny.
“Honorary champions of the world,” I said.
* * *
I whistled as I made my way to the auditorium after school. Devon was going to perform. Henny and Jenah had teamed up to fight crime. Sarmine had agreed to stir her own cauldron so I could talk to Leo. Everything was tentatively on track for the moment. Well, except for Leo. I squashed those fears firmly down. I couldn’t be near Leo every second. He had, like, twenty football dudes surrounding him right now. I mean, sure, they weren’t as powerful as a witch, but maybe they could tackle her.
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