Seriously Shifted

by Tina Connolly

  “Are you sure they are extinct?” I said. “What does she want it for?”

  Sarmine shrugged. “Supposedly a witch once used the fangs of the lindworm to cause the Black Plague,” she said. “Or something along those lines. Lindworms really are extinct, and I don’t pay any attention to ingredients that you can’t access.” Sarmine was practical like that.

  “Well, whatever she was doing in the past, now she’s here,” I said, trying to dismiss thoughts of a giant plague. “And she’s trying to get him. Random Do-Badders Club/nostalgia/old times’ sake: my foot.”

  “It does look that way,” Sarmine admitted.

  I rounded on her. “She was your friend once, wasn’t she? In college?”

  “More of a colleague,” hedged Sarmine. “Witches tend to clump together whether you want them to or not. We’re all from around here originally.”

  “I thought you moved us to this town when I was little because you were looking for a phoenix hidden somewhere nearby.”

  “Certainly,” said Sarmine. “And I wanted a fresh start, after we lost your father. But, you understand, we’re only talking a move of twenty miles. I enjoy this area. There’s a number of nice small and medium towns, and we can go to the city if you wish to meet more witches.” She sniffed. “Not that anyone would want to do that; I see quite enough of them as it is.”

  “That’s for sure,” I said. “Well, clearly it’s more important than ever that I keep Leo safe. Especially because at least one witch already knows about him, or has a good guess. So, ditch worrying about the rest of the nonsense and focus on Leo, at least until everyone leaves.”

  “I wouldn’t give up on keeping the other students happy,” Sarmine pointed out. “Considering what the prize for winning is.”

  “What if I just reject that?” I said. “You can’t win a person.”

  “Reject a handshake sealed with witch spit?” Sarmine looked shocked.

  “Sometimes it’s more ethical to renege on your agreement,” I said.

  “Fine,” said Sarmine, “but don’t blame me when you get seven years of bad luck.”

  “I thought that was breaking a mirror,” I said.

  “No, it’s breaking a witch spit bond,” she said.

  “Ugh, please stop talking about witch spit,” I said. “And, regardless, Leo’s life is more important than my bad luck. You can’t win a person.”

  Sarmine nodded. “That’s fine and ethical and all. But try telling that to Malkin. I’d say your best bet is still to win this game.”

  I groaned. “Fine, fine. I’ll continue saving the world. Happy? Just be sure to text me the Showstopper spell tonight so I have a chance at fixing Devon. I’m going to bed.” I plodded up the stairs and collapsed in a heap on the bed. Reached over to turn off the light, and as I flipped the switch, remembered that I hadn’t done any homework.

  My howls of frustration sounded about like Wulfie’s that night.

  * * *

  I woke Thursday morning with the uncomfortable feeling that things had gone really wrong. It didn’t take long for the events of yesterday to wash over me. “Ugh,” I said, and pulled the pillow over my head. Maybe I could just sleep until Saturday morning. Wake when the contest was over.

  Wulfie jumped into bed with me and nuzzled his nose under my elbow. I squeezed him tight. “Oh, Wulfie,” I said. “It must be so much easier to be three years old and not even be human most of the time. Being a human stinks.” He licked my face and it reminded me of Leo. I sighed. In the middle of everything else, I had to make the Leo thing stop. I was being put in an increasingly awkward spot. I had to be close to him to help him, but it was leading me into a place that I didn’t like.

  I got out of bed and trudged downstairs to let Wulfie out. Sarmine was still in bed asleep. I didn’t bother waking her. I didn’t have the energy to learn any new spells. Especially not if they were just going to backfire on me. The book with the Showstopper potion was open on the counter and I put a bookmark in and took that with me to work through later.

  I went outside to get my bike and remembered I didn’t have it. Excellent. Anything else the universe would like to throw at me?

  I decided to walk to school for a change. I mean, I didn’t have morning chores, didn’t have a witch to help me with spells … no point sitting around moaning, waiting for the bus. I had felt pretty good after the bike ride yesterday. More fully awake. Maybe walking to school would jog something loose in my brain.

  It was cold today, but not too cold. The kind of gray fall morning where you see your breath and you smell wood smoke and you remember that winter is on its way. Leaves rattled loose around me, yellow and orange and red, drifting down the gutters. I began walking up the hill. Surprisingly, I started seeing other students here and there as I got closer. I hadn’t realized so many people walked to school. There were bicyclists on the road as well, and I saw one of the seniors go past on a cute little motor scooter.

  And then I saw the broom.

  The translucent broom.

  I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t been walking. It was leaning against some tall bushes at the very edge of the school property, and between the wood color of the broom and the translucence, it blended in pretty well. I moved closer, cautiously, studying it. This must be what invisible eel paste looked like, after it had mostly worn off.

  But mostly, if there was a broom, there must be … yes. There was a translucent hand holding on to the top of the broomstick. Valda was conferring with someone in the bushes.

  Now would be a good time to have my own eel paste. Instead I moved as close as I dared, my ears pricking forward to catch the conversation.

  “… if you’re double-crossing me with Malkin again, I swear I’ll pull your hair out,” said the low, grumpy voice of Valda.

  “Daaahhling, when would I have time to do that?” purred the other voice. Esmerelda. “All my free time has been spent reading through those boring archived newsgroups on WitchNet, trying to find what ViciousMalk99 might have said once about a lindworm in the eighties.”

  “All your free time spent with the football team, more like.”

  Esmerelda’s voice changed to sharp. “I think it’s far more likely that you’re trying to get in with Malkin. What were you invisible for all night?”

  “Nothing that concerns you,” said Valda. “Now look, we agreed to trade what we’ve found out so far. In the archives you found…”

  “Not much,” admitted Esmerelda. “The bit of lore about the plague is repeated. ViciousMalk99 doesn’t seem to care about that. But then at some point she gets real excited about a rumor that lindworm scales were used in amplification of certain spells.”

  Silence, and then Valda mused, “Sarmine said something about that spellwork Malkin was doing in college.”

  “Trust Sarmine to remember a bunch of academic nonsense that never worked.”

  “Do you think Malkin finally tracked down that scale she was calling me about so long ago?” said Valda. “Or—more than one?”

  “I’ll tell you what she wants us to think,” said Esmerelda. “Is that—Who’s that?”

  Oh, crap. They must have spotted me. There was nowhere to go—

  “Whoa, dude,” said some dude from the far side of the bushes. “The art sub is kissing the lunch lady in the shrubbery.”

  There were indignant splutters from both witches as they emerged into a small crowd of teen boys grinning at them. Me, I hightailed it out of there, thanking my stars for nosy boys.

  My brain went around and around as I walked the rest of the way up to the school building, tackling the problem of the witches. The facts tumbled over one another with the locomotion of my legs. Wheels turned, gears clicked. Malkin had set this whole thing up. Malkin knew there was a shifter. Malkin was on the trail of something called the lindworm, which Witchipedia was now informing me was a disgustingly enormous white worm that used to live in caves somewhere.

  And then I stopped cold. If I had been o
n a bike I would have fallen over. Malkin was trying to track down a lindworm for some kind of spell. Malkin was now here looking for a shifter. The connection was obvious.

  Malkin was going to force Leo to turn into a lindworm.

  12

  Thirteen Ways …

  That had to be the key. Not just that shifters were generally valuable. No, Malkin had some specific spell in mind, or she wouldn’t have spent a decade looking for an extinct animal.

  But if you had a shifter …

  “You could get any animal you want,” said Jenah when I told her this before school. Her eyes were wide.

  “I’ve got to tell Leo,” I said. “I mean, he already knows he’s in danger, but…”

  “Whee, extra more danger,” said Jenah.

  “The problem is, I can’t be with him night and day.” I looked down at my fingers, which were really super interesting. “Or at least I shouldn’t,” I mumbled.

  “Hmm,” said Jenah. “I’m not sure how you keep getting yourself into these … interesting situations.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said. “My best friend is supposed to build up my faith in my good looks and charm.”

  “Which you have in abundance,” she assured me. “But you have to admit it’s a little odd to have like three guys asking you out in the space of a month.”

  “Coincidence,” I said. “That statistics thing Kelvin was trying to explain to me where something looks like a pattern but it’s not.”

  She shook her head. “No, it is a pattern,” she said. “People are suddenly realizing how awesome you are because you are realizing how awesome you are.”

  “This sounds awfully woo-woo,” I said.

  “Look, Cam,” she said. “There is only one witch in this school and you are it. Don’t you think people would notice? I mean, even if they can’t read auras like me. They can notice that you look like someone they shouldn’t piss off.”

  This was all very nice and flattering, but something Jenah said made me sit up and listen. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I’m not the only witch in school.”

  “Oh right,” Jenah said, wrinkling her nose. “Sparkle. You really want to ask her for help?”

  “It might come to that,” I said soberly. “If we want to save Leo’s life.” I closed the locker, which ordinarily was the cue to head down to math. Instead I thumped my head into the crook of my elbow and stayed there. I could stay there all day.

  “Are you okay?” said Jenah.

  “No,” I said flatly. There was too much. Jenah had built Henny up yesterday, but then she had found out about Leo. She needed some new boy options to cheer her up. Valda was still trying to throw Jenah off a bridge, and I couldn’t be with her every moment to protect her. Malkin suspected Leo was the shifter she was looking for and was trying to frighten him into changing. I couldn’t be with him every moment, either. To top it off, Devon probably thought I was playing him, which couldn’t be good for his happiness level. And if I didn’t fix all those things, then one of the witches would win Leo and turn him into a lindworm and pull out his teeth. And I’d be their servant, so I’d probably have to watch. “Even my lists aren’t helping me fix all this,” was what finally came out of my mouth.

  Jenah gently turned me around. “You’ve done a good job so far this week,” she said, like you would to a three-year-old. “Now it’s time for you to get some help.”

  “What, from Sparkle? I don’t know any other witches.”

  “No,” said Jenah. “Well, maybe. But first we’re going to see what some humans can do. I’ll text Henny to meet us at lunch. You”—she eyed me firmly—“are going to go clear the air with Devon and make him come to lunch, too.”

  “How do you know there’s air to be cleared?” I said.

  She stared me down. “Did you tell him about Malkin being after him?”

  “No,” I said in a small voice.

  “You see?” Jenah said. “You’re evading again. When you get into a tight spot, you start—well, not lying, exactly—”

  “I haven’t been lying to you!” I burst out. “I’ve been trying to tell you the truth, even when it’s hard.” Jenah might understand lots of things, but she did not understand how thoroughly I loathed talking about my personal life.

  “I can tell,” Jenah said. “Thank you. But you do evade, you know. So you don’t look weak.”

  “That’s not fair,” I protested.

  More gently she said, “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. But you want to take care of everything, and have it look smooth and easy. Which means that you start dancing around the truth if you think we won’t like it. You shut us out, and you overstep. Tell me that doesn’t relate to your current problems with Devon.”

  It did. Still … “I’m trying to help him.”

  “I know,” said Jenah. “You are very good at being kind and helpful and caring and not at all good at letting other people take care of you. Or even see that you have weak spots.”

  “I have loads of weak spots,” I said.

  “Yes, and one of them is communicating,” said Jenah. “So please. Go communicate to Devon that Malkin is after him so he knows exactly what he’s up against. He’s not a damsel in distress, Cam. He can help us.”

  She nudged me into algebra. Devon was already there, pretending to be really interested in his textbook. Or maybe he was.

  I stared hard at my own textbook. Jenah was right. I was a pretty straightforward person in general. But when it came to my personal life—i.e., witches and crushes—I didn’t like showing my soft underbelly. If I told Devon that Malkin was trying to crush him like a bug, then guess what? I was responsible for him getting involved in a horrible witch mess for the second time.

  So what if I hadn’t technically lied? I had avoided telling him things he needed to know. It was the same thing. And as for telling him … it shouldn’t be that hard, right? And yet it was. I poked at that a bit. Was it because I was afraid, deep down, that he’d be angry? And then he’d threaten to turn me into a solar panel?

  Urg. This was a can full of worms if I ever saw one.

  I pulled out my list.

  Good Witch Ethics

  1. Don’t use animal parts in spells.

  2. Don’t cast bad spells on good people for no reason. Ask people before you work a spell on them (unless in self-defense).

  3. Don’t lie to people.

  “Working out the problem, Miss Hendrix?” said Rourke.

  “Yes, sir,” I lied. Then made one more change to my paper before putting it away.

  3. Don’t lie to people. friends.

  When class was over, I walked straight up to Devon. Jenah shot me a sympathetic look of encouragement as she hightailed it out of there. Traitor. Your BFF should at least stick around to see your potential humiliation. What if I needed a shoulder to cry on afterward? Where would she be?

  Devon was looking at me.

  “C’mon,” I said. “I’ll walk you to your next class.” I picked up his textbook so he couldn’t get away.

  He ran a hand through his hair and fell into step beside me. I didn’t have any bubble tea to put off the inevitable this time, so … we were just going to get it over with. The crowd noise should cover our discussion if I kept a low voice. “I’ve messed up this week,” I said. “And I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to explain anything,” he assured me. “We’re not—it’s not—”

  “Now hang on,” I said. “If I lose my focus I can’t get through this. Now look. First off, I know I say stupid things sometimes, like that crack about the demon on Monday night. So first, I’m apologizing. It comes from having an upbringing that consists entirely of dusting salamanders and talking to unicorn breeder creeps and being dragged to witch parties where everyone says rude things to each other for the fun of it. But”—and I looked him in the eye, at least for a second—“if I say stupid things I want you to straight out tell me. And then I can try to fix it. So, that’s uh, a thing I needed to say.” I
wound down.

  He looked at me without saying anything, so I took a breath and jumped back in. “Okay, and a second thing I needed to say is that you remember the bet thing I told you about? Well, I discovered one of my mother’s ‘friends’ picked you.” His eyes widened. “And that’s why you choked on Wednesday; it wasn’t anything to do with you. And that’s why I got you that drink, and I’ll get you another for Friday night, because that’s not fair. But, uh, you need to know, too. So you can help look out for her. And, uh, help us with the rest of the problems. If you’re not too mad at me for destroying your life, take two.”

  There was another pause and finally he said, “Can I say something now?”

  “Please. Anything.”

  “Of course I’ll help you.”

  “You will?”

  “Of course I’m not mad at you.”

  “Oh thank god.”

  “I probably say as many stupid things as you do.”

  “I highly doubt it.”

  “I think we have a lot more on this topic to discuss,” he said, and he was looking at me with a peculiar mixture of seriousness and hope. “But not in the hallway.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Maybe this Saturday?” he said. “After this is all over?”

  I was beaming, I’m sure of it. “Saturday.” We stopped outside his classroom door. “Oh, but will you come to lunch with us today to make battle plans? You are in ‘A’ lunch, aren’t you?”

  “I am, but I can’t come,” Devon said. “Miss Crane, the choir director, said she’d give me some coaching on dealing with, er … vocal anxiety, is I think how she put it. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” I said. “Sing well.” The bell was about to ring. There were a couple freshman girls across the hall; no one else. I squeezed his arm—and then, daringly, brushed his cheek with my lips. Then dashed down the hall to a chorus of “oohs” from the girls.

  * * *

  “You are the best,” I told Jenah as I sat down at lunch. “I went from feeling like everything was broken to feeling like there’s only one problem. And that’s Leo, who’s a big problem, but still. Way better.”