Seriously Shifted

by Tina Connolly

  Right now I was going to enjoy seeing the cutest boy-band boy in the world sing his music, and that was it.

  I sat down in the auditorium, near the front, far off to one side where I could duck out the door to go meet Leo. There were quite a few other people in the auditorium—the judges, other band members waiting to go on, and supporters like me. Devon and his band were setting up on stage. The curtains were open and I could see well into the wings.

  Devon fiddled with his guitar, tuning it, or pretending to. He looked a touch nervous to my trained-in-observing-Devon eye. But he was disguising it well.

  “Blue Crush?” said one of the judges. “If you’re ready?”

  Devon took his place at the front. He placed his hands carefully on the guitar, keeping them grounded to control their shaking. He grinned around at his band as if everything was totally cool. It was all going to be in the bag.

  And then, on the other side of the wings, I saw Malkin.

  She also had a grin on her face.

  Not a grin I liked.

  “And one, two, three,” shouted Devon. The drumbeat started.

  It was too late to stop her, even if I could think of a graceful way to do it. Still, I reached into my backpack for my fanny pack.

  Malkin waggled her fingers at me and I saw her hidden wand tucked under her rings.

  The opening chords came from the bassist and the other guitar. The riff into “Liontamer.”

  Malkin swept her palm across some powder in her other palm, and pointed straight at Devon.

  9

  Who Malkin Had

  I jumped up, fanny pack in hand. But I was far too late. Whatever the spell was, it had already been cast.

  Devon opened his mouth to sing the first line. “She’s a cool stick of butter—”

  But on the word cool his voice broke, suddenly and horribly. It skidded up in the air and then went silent, leaving him gaping, like a fish.

  There was giggling from the audience and his ears flushed red. Then he grinned, trying to make it a joke on himself, trying to be on the inside of the laughter. He tossed his hair back and did a goofy lion roar that drew applause and whoops while the rest of the band looped that section of music back to the beginning.

  He opened his mouth again—and this time nothing came out. Zilch. Zip.

  The band played a few more measures, and then, when it became clear that no singing was going to occur, petered out, one by one.

  Devon croaked into the microphone, “I’m sorry—” It broke off in a cough and he turned away, coughing more.

  The drummer stepped over the cords on stage and took the mic from Devon. “Sincerest apologies to all you party animals out there,” she said. “Our esteemed singer seems to have something stuck in his throat.”

  More laughter. Nnenna rolled her eyes and shouted, “Are you ready to rock?” into the mic.

  Whoops and cheers.

  She eyed Devon. He waved a hand in dismissal at her, still coughing.

  “We’re gonna take five, girls and boys,” said Nnenna. She looked up at the judges for confirmation. They seemed to be amused by her.

  They whispered something, and then one of them said, “We had a cancellation at four. You can return in that slot.”

  “If your voice is feeling better,” chirped the choir director. “We don’t want strain.”

  “No strain,” said Nnenna. “Got it.” She looked at doubled-over Devon for confirmation, and he gave them a thumbs-up. “Peace out,” she said, and put the mic back in the stand.

  The band began to gather their things. As much as I wanted to go give Devon a hug, I made myself follow up on my Malkin sighting. She had disappeared in the confusion, of course. But maybe she was still nearby. I ran across the front of the auditorium, up and into the wings. Not there. Out the back door of the stage. The parking lot was half full, and I ran down the main lane, searching to see if she was hiding behind any of the cars. It was hopeless. She was a witch. She could be anywhere.

  I went back to the auditorium. The next band was moving onto the stage, chattering, adrenalized by the sudden change of plans. Likewise, Devon was too wound up to sit down. He was pacing at the back of the house, drinking water. His band was setting down their gear a few rows away from him. The house lights were down and it was dim back there, lit only by the aisle lighting, and the ambient light from the judges’ table.

  I touched his shoulder. “Are you okay?” I said.

  He looked ruefully at me. “No.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I said. I debated whether telling him that Malkin had done it would make him more nervous or less. “A coughing fit could happen to anyone.”

  “Right when it matters most?” He sank into a seat in the back row and my heart went out to him.

  “Devon, I—I’m sorry.”

  Devon straightened. “You’re not responsible.” He attempted a smile. “Throat’s feeling better already. It can’t happen twice in a row—right?”

  An idea was growing in the back of my head. Malkin might think she could ruin this boy’s week, but he was indomitable. She hadn’t even seen him with a demon in him. Devon was the most resilient boy I knew. Probably an odd thing to admire about your crush, but there you go. I liked the way he stood back up again, you know? Smash him, bash him, humble him, and up he got.

  But even the most resilient guy could do with a bit of help.

  “You stay here,” I said. “I’m going to get you a hot tea with honey from the food carts. It can’t hurt.”

  “All right,” he said, and he took my hand. My hand suddenly felt very cold in his warm one, and I thought, is this the first time he’s really touched me since that kiss a couple weeks ago? I mean, I held his waist on the bike, but now he was deliberately holding my hand. What does it mean if someone takes your hand? It is kind of intimate, isn’t it? I mean, I might grab Jenah’s hand, but I don’t normally grab, say, Kelvin’s. Devon squeezed my hand and released it, just as I thought that I was overthinking all of this and I should sink down in the chair next to him and never let him go. “Thanks,” he said.

  I nodded, quick, short, confused, then turned and fled. My breathing only started to calm as I left the building.

  Malkin was not going to get away with this. She thought she could make his life miserable? I was here to prove her wrong.

  I texted my mother as I walked over to the food carts. This was her chance to help me when I really needed it.

  Need to help Devon recover singing confidence. Malkin destroyed it.

  Would the Power spell work for him?

  I walked past a red truck that was laying on its side, apparently abandoned. A blue sports car that sagged like Jell-O. I sat down at the table I had cleaned yesterday. There were new scribbles of graffiti on it—a set of initials in a heart, a doodle of a car going up in a mushroom cloud. My phone cackled with the witch’s text.

  POWER SPELL USES THE PERSON’S OWN HAIR

  THEIR OWN *WITCH* HAIR

  THINK ABOUT IT

  I guessed that meant no.

  Do you know a spell that WOULD work? Can you text it to me?

  SHOWSTOPPER SPELL

  GIVES YOU UNBEATABLE CHARISMA

  ONE PINCH PARSLEY

  ONE PINCH POWDERED RUTABAGA

  Wait a minute … These things AREN’T LABELED

  HOW DO I KNOW WHAT POWDERED RUTABAGA LOOKS LIKE????!!

  *AUDIBLE SIGH*

  ONE PINCH GREEN CURLY STUFF IN FAR RIGHT POCKET

  ONE PINCH TAN POWDER IN FIFTH POCKET FROM LEFT, MIDDLE ROW

  ONE PINCH WHITE POWDER IN BLUE GLASS VIAL

  ONE DROP WITCH SPIT

  I waited to see if any further directions were forthcoming. When nothing more appeared, I figured that dosing Devon with my spit was as bad as it got. I texted a thank you to the witch, then ordered a hot tea from the coffee cart, finally breaking my ten. I took the paper cup back to my table to add the ingredients.

  If it weren’t obvious by now, the
fanny pack the witch had given me didn’t have just four or five pockets like regular people’s packs probably did. It had been modified to have a ton of tiny pockets, some Velcroed, some snapped, some open. The pocket closest to the stomach had a row of tiny stoppered vials. There were a couple pockets empty, including a nice medium-sized one on the end that would be just right for that bottle of unicorn sanitizer I was always losing in my backpack.… No, no, no, I was not going to carry around a fanny pack. Just—no.

  I measured the ingredients into the tea, and then—with a sigh—spat in it as well. Frankly, this was not the way I had wanted to exchange spit with Devon. I looked up to see the coffee cart guy looking at me with a frown. I looked away.

  It was a quarter to four, so I hurried back to the auditorium. Devon was sitting in the back row, listening to the band play. Nnenna was sitting right next to him, which made me take an enormous dislike to her.

  I had seen her a couple times now—the minivan yesterday, a brief glimpse at the Halloween Dance. She was the sort of person—like Jenah—who seems so completely, self-sufficiently cool that you have no idea how to measure up to them, and you feel way awkward by comparison. I mean, I don’t feel that way with Jenah herself, because she’s my best friend, but this was like a Jenah I didn’t know.

  Nnenna cocked her fingers at me as I approached but she didn’t get up or otherwise acknowledge me. I guess she was focused on the music or something. I sat down across the aisle and waited patiently for the music to be finished. I don’t really know music, I guess. They were loud. Nnenna seemed fascinated. Devon seemed fascinated. I seemed like a moron, sitting there with my doctored-up tea to help Devon.

  After ages and ages the current band finally stopped. Nnenna leaned over and whispered something in Devon’s ear and he laughed. Finally, finally, she got up. She had no idea that at that point, I loathed her.

  She smiled pleasantly at me and said, “Staying to watch us?”

  “Gee, I really wish I could,” I said, “but I have to be somewhere else in about, oh, three minutes. I just wanted to bring over this ‘tea’ for you, Devon,” I said. I had sworn that being an ethical witch meant I was going to ask everyone’s consent to do things. But I couldn’t exactly say it openly with miss super-cool drummer standing right here and not going away. “It’s uh, my mom’s secret recipe for singers,” I told Devon, raising my eyebrows at him. He of all people should understand that code. “You know, to help soothe your throat and stuff. Get your, uh, confidence back.” Malkin had tried to shake his confidence with the coughing. But she was gone now, and “unbeatable charisma” should solve any of Devon’s problems. Heck, even if she did come back, maybe the judges would find his coughing compelling. Exciting. Musical.

  Devon nodded at me, looking at the cup like he was trying to decide how much he trusted me … and how much he trusted my mom. Then he shrugged and took a big swallow. “Pretty good,” he said.

  The drummer grabbed his sleeve. “Come on,” she said. Over her shoulder she said, “Bring me one next time, too, willya?” She towed him up to the stage.

  “Swing by tonight and tell me how you did,” I said to his back, but I didn’t know if he heard.

  I really wanted to see him play. But I knew there was at least ten minutes of the judges scoring the last band and Blue Crush setting up and tuning again and everything else. And I had a shifter to save.

  I turned and hightailed it back to the parking lot.

  Leo was just trudging up the hill in the company of a lot of other football players. They sounded pretty cheerful, talking about the game on Saturday, the practice today, how many of their cars had suddenly died, et cet, et cet. A bunch of them peeled off to the bike rack as Leo came up to me.

  “My savior,” he said.

  “Hush,” I said. In a whisper I outlined what Sarmine had told me and watched his face fall. “So we really, really need to stop you from shifting,” I said. “We need to figure out how you accidentally became a bunny. Where can we go to experiment?”

  He wrinkled his nose. “My house is probably safe,” he said. “Just, uh. Don’t judge me by my house or anything.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “When your mom is someone who hangs snakeskins from the rafters, then you become the literal queen of not judging people by their parents.”

  Still, I wondered what his dads’ house was like as we made our way out to Leo’s car.

  When I saw his car I started to get an inkling. I mean, I don’t know cars or anything, but even I could tell that this was a very … shiny one. With a convertible top and a little pouncing jaguar figure on the hood. He looked at me looking at the car. “Don’t say anything,” he warned.

  “Lips. Zipped.”

  We left the school property and drove higher into the hills, winding around until we turned off onto a side road that immediately ended in a gate. So maybe not so much a side road as a personal road. Leo pushed a button on the control panel of the car and the gate opened. We drove along a long winding drive dotted with tall black lampposts, until we arrived at a very lovely old house. He parked the car on the curve in the driveway and we got out.

  “The rustic look,” he said.

  “It’s nice,” I countered. It really was; a century-old brick house with a long green lawn that disappeared into forest. “What do your dads do?”

  “Software,” he said. “I didn’t get the gene.”

  “Ha ha.”

  We walked around to the back, where there were bushes and hedges and little nooks for patios and more long green lawn. Several more lampposts lit the way. The late afternoon was already shading into dusk; they would soon click on. There was a gazebo thing way at the back, only half visible in the forest. “This is pretty private,” Leo said. We hiked around the hedges, up the slope of the lawn to the gazebo. It had been cold and windy all day, but the gazebo had some shelter for us.

  I plopped my backpack down on an iron table and rubbed my hands. The gazebo had a porch swing and several cushioned chairs with old blankets on them and even a brazier in the middle that we could light if it got too cold. A box of long matches was tucked underneath it.

  “Okay,” I said to Leo. “Rabbit. Go.”

  He got a kind of funny look on his face, like he was trying to remember where he’d put a box of cereal. Finally he came back to reality. “Anything?”

  I shook my head. “No little cotton tail. No long floppy ears. Nothing.”

  He sighed. “The times it’s happened I’ve been … afraid.” He looked down. “Tough to say that, but you know. I was definitely afraid.”

  “You think fear might be a trigger?”

  “Something like that. Makes instinct take over.”

  “Hmm,” I said. Then I lunged at him. “Boo!”

  He took a step back, looking at me like I was crazy. But he didn’t look afraid, and he didn’t turn into a rabbit.

  “You need to get into a state where you’re not thinking about it,” I said. “So your regular brain shuts down and your primal instincts kick in.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Primal instincts, huh?”

  I held my ground. “That is just the possibilities potion talking,” I admonished him. “You don’t mean that.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Now look,” I said. “I’m going to try a spell on you.”

  He squared his shoulders. “It’s weird,” he said. “I feel an instinctive response to that. Like deep down inside I know you’re my enemy.”

  “Well, I’m definitely not your enemy,” I said. “But good. Maybe that will kick in.” I pulled out the fanny pack from my backpack. He smirked at it. “Look,” I said, and lied: “I need two red maple leaves and a pinecone with no pieces missing for this spell. Can you find me those things?” That would get him out of my hair.

  He nodded and headed off, leaving me alone.

  I pulled out a glass measuring cup from my backpack and measured the thyme and ginger for Ye Olde Mystikal Spelle of Great Power and
Stuff into it. Now that I wasn’t being attacked by a tornado or a Valda, I was going to try the improvements Sarmine had suggested.

  I added the hair, the dragon’s tear, and a couple tablespoons of unicorn sanitizer. The way that was disappearing, I would need more soon. I pulled out my disguised wand and stirred the mixture several times counterclockwise in the measuring cup. Maybe someday I could trade up to something more dramatic. Like … a copper bowl, shimmering with fire! A basin of hammered silver, said to have been used by the witches of Salem! The holy grail! But for now it was measuring cups.

  I lit a match and dropped it in.

  The unicorn hair vodka flamed off and died away. Scents of ginger and match fire wafted up to me. This time the combination smelled good.

  The first time I had tried breathing in the powder, as the book had said. The second time I had tried ingesting it, as Sarmine had said. This time something else was suggesting itself to me.

  I held the measuring cup to my face and breathed in the smoke and steam. The wind whipped around my face, fanning my hair back. I was seized with a sense of power, hard and fast this time. I could do anything, beat anyone. I could bring them to their knees. I could crush them like a bug.

  My conscience flickered deep inside, appalled at my violent thoughts. I squashed it down. I was doing this for Leo right now. I was trying to frighten him. Let the spell do its job.

  I bent my head and breathed again. The smells of the spices filled my nose, my lungs, my hair. I was invincible.

  I looked down at my ordinary outfit of T-shirt and jeans, my ordinary beat-up jacket. Even those had changed. They shimmered in the twilight, turning to black, to leather, to silver studs that ran up and down the sides of my legs. Perhaps the spell was pulling from my personal mental images of powerful people, people who didn’t care what others thought. From Zolak the demon hunter. From Malkin.

  Was this how Malkin always felt? That she could crush the world?

  I am on the tall side anyway, but I felt even taller. As if I was both centered in my body and yet could see myself from above. As I moved, a shadow of myself flickered out behind me, moving in tandem with my arms and legs. I was darker, more substantial.