“I am open to possibility, Cam,” Leo said. “I’ve been waiting to see if something revealed itself this week.” He looked at me in my lab coat and hideous goggles and there was an awkward pause.
I jumped into it with both feet. “Gosh, yes, ha ha, I’m sorry nothing’s worked out for you yet. I mean, you wouldn’t believe the troubles I’ve had this week with…”
“Yes?”
“Well, you know,” I said feebly. “I already told you, I mean. I have an almost sort of—” What did you call it? Boyfriend? Tentative baby steps thing? “Well, I have someone, you know. I told you that.”
“Right,” he said, but not like he understood and we were now done with the subject. Much more of a dismissive “right,” like maybe he’d never believed me to begin with and had always thought—or wanted to believe—that the potion was straight from me.
I couldn’t do this. This no-man’s-land of whatever this thing was with Leo. It wasn’t for me. I blurted out, “So, hey, how do you like that Henny who’s always in the computer lab. She’s nice, huh?”
He did a bit of a double take as he realized who might have asked me to make the love potion. “I am an idiot,” he murmured.
“Of course not.”
He looked a little angry, just the fraction of a tinge. “You know, we’ve never even met before this week?”
“Ah,” I said. I held the scalpel like a shield.
“Do you really think that’s fair? Does that seem right?” He squeezed the side of the table. “Does she even know me?”
There was a negative feeling in the pit of my stomach. I mean, he was right. Henny really did only like him for his superficial qualities … and that probably didn’t feel good to hear. “But you’ve gotten to know her a little bit now?” I said feebly. “She said she came up and talked to you yesterday.”
He sighed and let go of the table. “Oh, I suppose.”
“So you think she’s nice? Now that you know her?”
He smiled absently at me. “Sure, sure.”
“Well, good,” I said, fake-heartily. “That’s done and dusted.” Up front, the class was settling down at the lab benches and Ms. Pool was writing the first set of problems on the whiteboard. The bell rang. Leo should be taking his seat.
Instead he pulled a chair over to the second spot at my lab bench and sat down, opening his laptop to take notes like he belonged back here.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“Hush,” he said. “Go on with your work.”
I looked at his profile as he settled in. I have to say I could sympathize with Henny a little bit. He was in fact a very attractive sportsball person, with more intellect than I would have expected a sportsball person to have. Which is probably shortsighted on my part. But all the football players I knew were straight-up jocks. I wondered how well Leo got along with his team members. It probably helped that it looked like he could hold his own in a fight. I mean, not that I was looking at his arm muscles or anything. Man, this honey stuff was intense.
Leo looked sideways at me while sketching out the diagram for the first genetics problem on a piece of paper. “Cam,” he said. “I want you to come with me to the football game.”
“You do? Oh, right. For the witch business.” Concentrate, Cam. I slid the glass under the microscope and adjusted the focus. Delicately I teased at the seeds on the vanilla bean pod. Every last seed had to be removed, the Web site had said in blinky purple letters. I wasn’t sure my dexterity was good enough, frankly. They clung to my hands.
“I’ve been practicing with the cardamom,” Leo said. “I’m just not sure what’s going to happen on the field. If I suddenly turn into—”
“A bunny—” I said to the microscope.
“A majestic lion, proud and untamed—”
“Mm.”
“And then a squadron of witches—”
“A coven of witches—”
“Descends on me like I’m next up on the witch menu, then … I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Turn into a velociraptor and rend them end to end?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
I stopped then, and rested my scalpel on the table, thinking. Gently he touched one of my fingers with his own, then stopped and put his hands back on his work. I didn’t know what any of it meant but I did know that Devon had the Battle of the Bands at halftime during the game, and I couldn’t be in two places at once, even if I wanted to. “You need help,” I said. I began measuring out the parsley, rutabaga, and baking soda.
“Cam, I’m no weakling.”
“No.”
“I can hold my own in a fight.”
“Definitely.” I dropped the vanilla bean pod into the vinegar and studied it. What sort of a minor natural disaster were we talking about, really? “Maybe you should put some goggles on, too.”
He ignored this. “You know who I need in my life right now? Not just someone who cheers me up, or is fun to talk to. Definitely not someone who just likes me for my triceps presses, or the number of touchdowns I made last year.” He looked right at me. “I need someone who can protect me.”
“First step in that is safety goggles,” I said.
“Fine,” he said, and reached for a pair.
This love business was in fact tricky. We had just determined that it wasn’t the best that Henny only liked him for his good looks and superstar prowess. But why did I like Devon? He was also good looking. That was okay, right? I thought about his kindness to people and animals, his sweetness. The way he had fought against the demon inside him. Leo was like that, too—stubborn, a fighter. But Devon thought more about others. About his own ethics and morality. Sure, Devon and I had been thrown together when I had to save him. But I liked him for who he was inside … and I hoped he felt the same about me.
Now here Leo and I were in a similar position. But my instincts about Leo told me that this was a boy who—as much as he was complaining about Henny crushing on him—he was a boy who was used to being liked. Used to having girls fall at his feet. That made you a different person, in the long run. You couldn’t help it. He gave his heart lightly and easily, certain it was not going to get broken. He didn’t fall hard for people. And if he did think he liked me, it was only because he liked the new possibility—and because he liked having a protector.
I felt certain that he didn’t really, truly like me, any more than Henny really and truly liked him. It might be one step up to like me for my witch skills instead of my looks. But it amounted to the same thing in the end. He didn’t really know me.
I held my breath as I dropped the powder mixture from my glass bowl into the glass beaker of vanilla-vinegar. The mixture was smooth and still. Would it work? I had been as careful as I possibly could with the equipment that the school had.
A tiny whirlpool opened up in the beaker. This did not look promising. The liquid began bubbling up out of the center as if pushed by an invisible volcano. It rose to the top of the beaker, and then bubbled over in an endless cascading head of foam. I couldn’t give this to Devon. It would be like turning him into a washing machine with too much detergent.
“Are you making a baking soda volcano?” said Leo.
Ah. I had been punk’d by a witch. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
I pulled out my list and crossed off vanilla beans.
Leo had gone back to his genetics problem, but it was clear in the set of his shoulders that he was still waiting for a response to his earlier question.
Very slowly I said, “I do see what you mean. About needing a protector.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.” It was clear that Henny’s hopes were going to be dashed. But as interesting and charming as Leo was, I knew this was the moment for me to bow out. He needed someone powerful to watch over him. And he didn’t care how old she really was. “Meet me after school at the food carts,” I said. “I know just the girl for you.”
13
Sparkle to the Rescue
<
br /> “Sparkle?” said Leo. “I’ve known Sparkle for years. What makes you think we should go on a date? She’s kind of, um … intense.”
“Ah,” I said. “You only think you know Sparkle.”
Sparkle was the most popular girl in the junior class, and she was my ex–best friend from grade school. Our falling out had been replaced by increasingly vicious bickering over the years. And then a couple weeks ago I had discovered that she was actually another witch. An older witch, forty or so—which, for a witch, is practically a teenager—who had put an amnesia spell on herself and come to live with her Japanese grandfather here in town, waiting for a magical plot to come to fruition. Since witches look the age they feel inside, as long as Sparkle thought she was six, seven, eight … she appeared to be a normal kid growing up.
She knew who she was now, of course, but she—like me—had decided that she was less than thrilled with the idea of being a wicked witch. She had grown up as normal Sparkle for so long that she had decided to try to continue being a regular teenager for a while, and maybe take a different path in life this time through.
She still ruled the school, though. She hadn’t changed her personality one bit.
But she did remember all the spells from her former life as Hikari. You can’t keep your witchy side suppressed completely. So far she had—from what I could tell—used her newly refound magic to a) make her magical nose job permanent, and b) magic herself up an impressive new wardrobe.
We found her at the football field. Sparkle is, among her other ruling-class traits, head cheerleader, and when we got there she was busily and happily ordering the other girls around. What grown-up office job could compete with that?
I was about to go up to her, but Leo stopped me. “I need to wrap my head around this,” he said. “You say she’s a witch, too? How many witches are there at this school?”
“Oh, that’s it,” I said. Although I guess I couldn’t be sure. Still, no need to make him more worried. “Sparkle and I are the only two I know of.”
“And of course that substitute teacher.”
“Don’t forget the lunch lady.”
“But then … how old is Sparkle really?”
“That’s your first question?”
He shrugged.
“Maybe forty? I dunno. I get the feeling it’s rude to ask. Like they aren’t maintaining their mask well or something.”
“She definitely doesn’t look it,” said Leo.
I could tell he was more interested in her than he had been when he thought she was just an ordinary cheerleader. Of course, she had probably always thought he was an ordinary football player.
Which meant …
“How do I know she won’t try to cut me apart for her spells?” said Leo. “I mean, I trust you. But her?”
I paused. This was, in fact, a good point. Sparkle had been a classic mean girl for so many years that it seemed like you couldn’t trust her anymore for anything. On the other hand, her mean-girl ways were focused on running the school, and you could be someone who wanted to run the school and not someone who wanted to torture the local football champ.
Plus, I knew Sparkle from when I was five and she was six. One of the main things that had started us drifting apart was when we saw the witch work a horrible spell. She had helped me believe that I must be adopted, frankly, because we were both so appalled by what a wicked witch would do.
Slowly I shook my head. She had changed over the years.
But she wouldn’t condone torture.
“She’s safe,” I said finally. “We might have to talk her into it. But she won’t go after you.”
Sparkle had been glancing over at us. I waved at her the next time she looked our way. She rolled her eyes, but she called a halt to practice. The girls went for their water bottles, and she came over. “Hi, Leo,” she said. “What are you doing with her?”
Ugh. “Sparkle, I know we haven’t been friends for a long time,” I began frankly.
Sparkle waved a hand to cut me off. “Nuh-uh, Cam,” she said. “I have no interest in talking about what happened on Halloween. Brushed under the rug. Never happened.” She stared me down. “Things are going on as normal.”
I sighed. I wondered if we could ever go back to being friends. “Okay,” I said. The wind whipped around my ears. “But things can’t go on precisely as normal, not right now. I need your help.”
Her eyes flicked to Leo and back. “You have ten seconds to make your case,” she said.
“He’s a shifter.”
Her eyes went wide. She grabbed our arms and dragged us off the track and into the stone cave of the bleachers. “You shouldn’t say that out loud, Cam,” she scolded. “Especially not if it’s true.” She looked at Leo with new eyes. “Is it true?”
He nodded.
She looked him up and down. “But I’ve known you for years,” she said.
“I’ve known you for years and I didn’t know your secret,” I said.
“Hush,” Sparkle said absently. She was studying Leo like he had suddenly turned into a cheese plate. She brushed back her black ponytail and moved a little closer to him. “How is it,” she said, “that we’ve never dated? The head cheerleader, the star quarterback?”
Leo shrugged. But his eyes were interested.
She was practically purring. “I mean, I would have had your secret out in a red hot second,” she said. “And then you would have been under my thumb.”
“Sparkle,” I said. “I do not want him to be under your thumb. I want you to protect him. From the other witches.”
Her head went up sharply. “Other witches? Who else knows about him? Your mother?”
“Yes, but she isn’t going to harm him,” I said. “There are these other three witches in town, and they’re here till tomorrow night for sure. Esmerelda, Valda, and Malkin. Do you know any of them?”
She got a faraway look like she was accessing her old witch memories. Slowly she nodded. “Malkin in particular is bad news.”
“I was definitely getting that idea,” I said. “Look, I think I know part of Malkin’s evil plan. She’s been trying to find a lindworm for years.” I rounded on Sparkle. “Do you know anything about lindworms? So far the suggestions are maybe she wants its fangs for a plague and maybe she wants a scale for unspecified witchy mayhem.”
Sparkle shook her head. “I never studied mythology.”
“Well, at any rate,” I said, “obviously it occurred to Malkin that if she could find a shifter, she didn’t have to find a lindworm. She could make him turn into one and pluck off a few lindworm scales or something.”
Sparkle looked at me funny, and Leo said, “What is a lindworm?”
I shrugged. “Big white worm. I guess she’ll show you a picture?”
“But that’s exactly it,” Sparkle said. “He can’t turn into a lindworm.”
“Why not?”
“He can only turn into animals he’s touched before.”
Leo and I looked at each other. “Of course,” I said. “The rabbit. Your neighbor’s dog. A giraffe—?”
“At the zoo once,” he said. “Pops knows a zookeeper who let me pet it when I was little.”
“That’s why you couldn’t turn into a bear,” I said.
“No velociraptors, either,” he said. “What a shame.”
I shook my head. I had been so certain the lindworm was part of Malkin’s plan. That explained why Sarmine had been so dismissive of the idea. There must be something I was missing. “So how does this usually work?” I asked Sparkle. “A shifter would need to go around and build up a collection of animals, so to speak, that he’s touched?”
“Yeah,” said Sparkle. “That’s why every so often a shifter will die under mysterious circumstances that have nothing to do with evil witches and everything to do with the fact that they tried to get into the polar bear cage.”
Leo swallowed. “But if a polar bear started to bite me, that’d be touching, right? And then I could become one, too
.”
“True, but the other polar bear might be better at being a polar bear,” said Sparkle. “You do get some instincts—” She broke off. “I mean, from what I’ve heard.”
I refrained from asking. I mean, Sparkle was my only hope. I had to trust that she wasn’t going to turn him into a frog and go poking around for his magical spleen. “You’ll protect him?” I said. “Teach him everything you know?”
Sparkle patted his arm, practically purring. “Study partners.”
“You can help me stop it?” Leo said.
“Oh, yes.”
“Good. I didn’t like the idea of being witch mincemeat.”
She slipped her arm through Leo’s. “You’ll be safe with me,” she cooed. “I will attach myself to you. By your side night and day. We’ll get through this.”
I grimaced and looked over at Leo. Surely he wouldn’t be crazy about that part of the plan. Sparkle was so … obvious.
But he was grinning like anything. That honey potion must have opened him up to all kinds of possibilities. It was a good thing he wasn’t forlorn and forsaken over me. I mean, it really was. Really.
“Save me, Sparkle,” he said, grinning. “Save me from myself.”
* * *
This is what I did Thursday night while other kids practiced their trombone and drew comics about superheroes and kissed each other and prepared for the Battle of the Bands. I stirred banana-smelling cauldrons, rotated the jars of pickled herring, and then combed through all of Sarmine’s bookcases looking for any other solution to my Showstopper problem. A different potion I could do, or another substitute I could use for the pixie bone.
I also texted Sparkle several times to make sure she was still shadowing Leo. She had a WitchNet phone, and I had made her trade numbers with me. I got the feeling that she was simultaneously annoyed that I was checking up on her and delighted to rub in the details of everything she was doing with Leo. Things like, “playing pool w/ Leo, probly hot tub next,” and “omg u didnt tell me his dads were such amazing cooks + the caviar lol.” All accompanied by selfies, of course. I wanted to tell her that if she was trying to make me jealous she was barking up the wrong tree, only she wasn’t, not exactly. I hadn’t completely fixed things with Devon, and until then, I was going to continue being jealous of the way Sparkle could take her romance from zero to sixty in one afternoon.
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