Seriously Shifted

by Tina Connolly

  Meanwhile, the only thing I found in Sarmine’s books was confirmation that unicorn hairs in green tea might work—that it had worked for the writer, once, but that very many other times it had exploded. So it was good that I had actually found some valid information on WitchNet, but bad that the substitution was not going to be as easy as I had hoped. In the margin of the book Sarmine had written notes like: Does the concentration of the tea make a difference? and: What about decaf vs caf? So basically, this would be a perfect spell to do a long experiment with—running through every permutation and making notes—except I didn’t have that kind of time or ingredients.

  Sarmine came into her study on a waft of rotten-banana stink that meant she had been working on her spell in the RV garage. She retrieved a book from her shelf, stopped to give me encouragement (“Give up, Camellia. You’ll never find a substitute in time”), and I brought her up-to-date on my encounter with the shrubbery witches. Sarmine lit up at the idea that ViciousMalk99 had once heard that lindworm scales might be used for amplification.

  “That must be the missing piece to the sympathetic resonance spell,” Sarmine said.

  “You keep saying that pair of words,” I said. “Would you care to explain what they mean?”

  Of course Sarmine did, because Sarmine loves to lecture. “Malkin was trying to create a spell whereby if you do something to one part of a set, you can do it to all the items in that set. For example, you kill one mosquito and all the mosquitoes in the area drop dead.”

  “That could be useful.”

  “She couldn’t ever get it to work for more than a few inches in any direction, though,” Sarmine said. “If a lindworm scale really is the catalyst to make it work on a large scale, it would explain why she’s spent her whole life hunting for one.”

  The thought was a little frightening. Whatever Malkin had in mind, it probably wasn’t killing off mosquitoes for the good of all mankind. And I still didn’t know how Leo was involved. Maybe she just wanted to turn him into an extramagical unicorn and shave him for his hairs. That would probably juice up her Power spell nicely.

  I sighed and closed the book of substitutes. “Right now I’m mostly concerned about Devon. Is this unicorn-hair tea solution really going to explode?”

  Sarmine considered. “I’d say your odds are eighty-twenty.”

  “Whee.”

  “Give up now while you can still get some sleep,” Sarmine said as she left the study. “Big day tomorrow.”

  “You’re telling me,” I muttered as I lugged the books up to my room. It might be a long shot, but still. If Jenah managed to get me some unicorn hairs, I would try it at least once in AP biology. It was my only chance to help Devon.

  * * *

  Friday morning dawned cold and clear. Yet again, Sarmine was nowhere to be seen. I guess she had given up on setting her alarm clock after I refused to use the eels and the pixie bone. No point wasting precious sleep on a daughter with an inconvenient ethical code.

  The eels themselves were still swimming around in the pitcher in the kitchen. I mean, I presumed. I poked at the pitcher. I wondered how long the eels would survive on our countertop. I should really return them to the creek before Wulfie decided to drink from that pitcher and make himself disappear. Yet another thing to do, I thought as I grabbed a Mason jar. Maybe Jenah was right that I needed to let everyone take care of themselves. I mean, I’d set Leo up with Sparkle, and Henny with Jenah … maybe nobody needed me anymore anyway.

  Somehow that made me even more depressed.

  Jenah still had my bike, so I walked to school, surrounded by loads of other kids. It was getting to be a more familiar sight. The parking lot was only half-full of cars, and several rows of parking spaces had been taken over by bike racks. A school cop patrolled the cars that were there, no doubt trying to see if there was something more than mere coincidence involved in their destruction. Although Sarmine had been overly dramatic with some of the cars, most of them she had simply encouraged to succumb to entropy. They wouldn’t start, the brakes went out, the wheels rotted away … some random reason they had to be towed. I doubted the cop would find anything, unless it was a trace of cinnamon or nutmeg.

  I didn’t see Jenah around the bike racks, so I went to our locker, hoping to find that she had managed to get the unicorn hairs. But it was a woebegone Jenah who met me there. Her thermometer bubble must be below the midline now. “My parents found out about me cutting class,” she said.

  I didn’t say I told you so, because a) she had been helping me, and b) nobody likes that.

  She looked at me, a little bit grumpy. “Yeah, yeah, I know,” she said. “But I was doing it for a powerfully good reason, and that’s more important than rules.”

  “But now?” I said. I hung my jacket in the locker and draped the scarf over it.

  “Now my parents said I can’t try out for the spring play if I have any more absences.”

  “I thought your parents were pretty loosey-goosey about that stuff?” I said.

  “They are, but all four grandparents are very strict, and two of them were in town last night visiting and after they descended on my father with, ‘We would never have let you do that’ he finally broke down and said that I have to shape up.” She massaged the bandage on her wrist while she talked.

  “Parental peer pressure, man,” I said. “It’s the worst.”

  Jenah frowned at me. “Have you ever met any of your extended family?”

  “A cousin, once, I think?” I said. “Sarmine hates her family, and my dad’s family hates Sarmine.” They still blamed her for not doing enough to find him, and for once I was on Sarmine’s side about that. She worked some pretty dark magic to try to track him down, and still failed. I shook my head, coming back to the hallway. “Look, I hate to ask, but were you able to get the hairs?”

  Jenah brightened. From her skirt pocket she produced six hairs and all the money I had given her. I boggled at her.

  “Well, you said he likes to haggle and cheat,” she said.

  “Like all witches.”

  “And also that he’s kind of a pervert,” she said.

  “Jenah,” I said sternly. “You did not barter him anything inappropriate, did you?”

  She looked offended and rightly so. “What I did,” she said, “is ask him to show me around the unicorn stables. And while I giggled at his dumb jokes, he totally did not notice me taking the hairs off of one of the brushes they use to groom them. And then I waved and left.”

  “Ah. You stole them.”

  “I helped maintain his brushes in perfect working order,” corrected Jenah. “And, I got one up on him for all the times he’s tried to cheat you.” She grinned. “It was fun. Next time he said he’d let me ride one. I’m sure I could get you a whole handful of hairs that way.”

  “Hmm,” I said. It was clear that Jenah and I were not going to share the exact same ethics in this matter. On the other hand, I now had twice as many unicorn hairs as I needed, which meant that if today’s test on them in biology worked, then I could use the other three to make into a potion for Devon tonight. I tugged the Mason jar out of its swaddle in my backpack and stowed it in the locker.

  “Forgive me for asking dumb questions,” said Jenah. “But why is there a jar of water in our locker?”

  “Remember the story about the invisible eels?”

  Jenah blinked at it.

  “They need to go back to the creek. So, you know, if anyone felt like taking them there after school…”

  “On it,” said Jenah. She poked at the jar, marveling at it. “By the way, how did the testing on the vanilla bean go?”

  “It was a prank,” I said. “Devon would bubble over.”

  “You never told me what the drawback to the unicorn hair substitution was,” she said.

  “He might go boom,” I said.

  “That would be a dramatic halftime show.”

  I squeezed her shoulder. “Thank you so, so much.”

  “See
you at lunch?”

  “I have to check on Leo,” I said. “See you after school?”

  “I have to take your eels to the creek,” she countered. “See you at the game?”

  “Done.”

  * * *

  So, at lunchtime I swung down to the football field and checked in on Leo and Sparkle. After I texted Sparkle like five times to see where they were, she finally responded that they were down in the boys’ locker room. She knew I was coming, and I presume they could hear my footsteps echoing long before I could see them, and yet somehow they still had to jump apart when I entered.

  I rolled my eyes and ignored whatever I had interrupted. “How’s it going?” I said. “Still using the cardamom?”

  Sparkle fixed her lipstick. Ostentatiously. “Please, Cam. He catches on quicker than any shifter I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t need cardamom anymore, do you, my little lion?”

  Leo grinned at me. “I don’t, actually,” he said. “It’s amazing how quickly you can learn this stuff when you have such a good teacher.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said.

  “Oh, no offense,” he hastened to add. “But you and me, we were kind of stumbling around in the dark. And now—look at this.” He started bouncing on his toes, like he was raising his energy level. Getting his heart rate going. Up and up—and suddenly there was a potbellied pig in his place. It wriggled out of his jeans with a snort.

  “We drove out to the petting zoo to get some more samples,” explained Sparkle. “We need to find a way to get him acquainted with some more … dangerous creatures. Then he’ll have a better ability to protect himself. Why, I remember this one time…” She closed her mouth again.

  “Sparkle,” I said. Leo was running around grunting and looking for leftover food. “How do you know so much about being a shifter? Do you have a secret history of making shifters change for you? Using them to get extramagical unicorn hairs?”

  Sparkle sighed. “Well, yes and no. Promise you won’t tell?”

  I held up my little finger. “Pinky swear.” We locked fingers like we used to when we were kids.

  “I used to know a shifter girl, long ago. Back when I was Hikari. When I was a teenager the first time.”

  “And what did you do to her?”

  Sparkle held up her hands. “Nothing, I swear. We were really close. And she told me everything she knew about shifter lore, and I helped protect her. She would also donate hairs and scales to me for the spells I was working on.” That sounded awfully nice of Sparkle. I narrowed my eyes at her and she added, “Well, and I wouldn’t have done anything to her, I swear, but you have to admit, that was a pretty good incentive to keep her secret.”

  That sounded more like the Sparkle I knew. I supposed Leo would be donating hairs to her before too long. She already had him eating out of her hand, and I don’t mean while he was a bird or cat. “Then why didn’t you say that before? Why is it such a big secret?”

  Her eyes flicked over at the pig rooting around. “Because she disappeared on me. When she was pregnant. She went into hiding and I never saw her again. And I think—”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “You think it was maybe Leo’s mother?”

  “Hush,” she said crossly. “That would weird him out. I’m determined to be a normal teenager.”

  I sobered up. “I suppose you practically are anyway, if you witches all live at least a couple hundred years.”

  Now she was the one to laugh. “You know that means you, too, don’t you?”

  My mouth fell open. I had only started admitting I was a witch a couple weeks ago. I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about the implications.

  “It comes with the package. You’re going to be around a couple centuries as well. You’ll see humans come and go. So I wouldn’t make too much fun.”

  I could hardly take it in. What would it be like to live—not eighty years, but two hundred? I counted the decades on my fingers, looking forward into the future. What kinds of changes would I see? Changes in technology, in the world, in the environment … And how many people would I lose along the way? Put that way, it made sense that witches paired off with other witches. I mean, I didn’t know many male witches but there must be some. My dad had been one. “Are there more female witches than males?”

  “Starting to think about breeding, are you?” said Sparkle, leering.

  “I thought you were trying to sound like a teenager and not like a two-hundred-year-old witch,” I sniped back.

  “Ugh,” she said, and waved her hands like she was shaking me off. “Yes, there are more women practicing witchcraft. But that’s just because having witch blood isn’t enough; you still have to actually study the spells. Male witches tend to breed unicorns and whatnot instead.”

  “Ah.”

  “Point is,” said Sparkle, “have fun with your human boyfriend now. He won’t be around forever.”

  “At least mine isn’t busy rooting in the trash can,” I said. It fell over with a clang and Leo squealed and dove for a crumpled-up fast-food sack.

  Sparkle went around the trash can to Leo and ran her hands over his snout. “Come on, sweetie, do you remember how to snap out of it? Let’s lay down calmly, let instinct turn you back…” Under her touch the pig gentled. He lay down on the ground. And then, with very little transition, there was a boy curled up behind the trash can.

  I sighed and tossed him his jeans, turning away so he could get dressed. Honestly, it seemed like somebody else could worry about general decency beside me. Leo seemed to think it was hilarious. Were all boys secretly ten years old inside?

  “I really am getting better at it, Cam,” Leo said from the locker room floor. “Problem is, once you’re a pig, you kind of enjoy being a pig. Or a dog, or a bunny, or whatever.”

  I stared at a poster taped to the tiled wall. NO HORSEPLAY, it read, and showed a bunch of wild horses wearing football jerseys. They didn’t know the half of it. “Just don’t turn into an elephant at halftime,” I said.

  * * *

  All too soon it was fifth-period AP biology, and one last chance to try the unicorn hair recipe before the game tonight. Sarmine had said that basilisk urine had to be flown in from a witch who was breeding them in Peru, so that was definitely out. Unicorn hairs it was.

  Leo had returned to his old seat, which was good. No distractions.

  I laid out the ingredients and boiled some water over a Bunsen burner to steep the packet of green tea. Apparently the mixture was volatile enough that Sarmine’s book had also given directions for neutralizing the mixture, should you produce an explodey one. Simply use your wand to inscribe a pentagram around your sink drain before pouring it out. I patted my disguised wand, making sure it was close at hand.

  I measured out the rutabaga and parsley, and stirred them in. Carefully turned my back to the classroom to spit in the mixture. Lastly I slid the unicorn hairs in.

  The potion was quiet. It looked good so far. But the explosion was supposed to happen on contact with the actual victim, er, human.

  I was going to have to test it.

  This is where a regular wicked witch would test on humans, and a regular human scientist would test on animals. But I didn’t want to harm anybody. I had started this whole crazy scenario to make sure that I wasn’t harming anybody. So animal testing was not in the cards. Not to mention the fact that all the animals that lived in the biology lab had names, and if I blew up Fluffy the Frog I was going to hear about it for the rest of my school career and beyond. Anyway, I liked Fluffy.

  I liked me, too, but there didn’t seem to be another alternative.

  I lifted the beaker to my lips, then stopped. I didn’t have to test this with my face, right? Or test the entire mixture? Or use a glass beaker? C’mon, Cam, I admonished. Use your brain.

  I carried the beaker over to one of the fume hoods against the wall. It had a glass shield, so I could keep my hands and the mixture away from the rest of me. First, though, I tested a drop with a pH st
rip. It was right in the middle. Too bad there wasn’t a way to test magic as scientifically as you could other things. If the spell said it might explode on contact with a human then that’s what it might do.

  One drop, in a small metal bowl. Place the bowl deep inside the fume hood, behind the tempered glass.

  I pulled out a pair of yellow rubber gloves to sacrifice to the cause. I cut the fingertip off the left index finger. Maybe if it exploded I would only get a tiny burn. (But what if it was like napalm, I asked myself. What if it stuck to my skin? Or what if it ran up my glove and ate me alive?) I almost dumped the mixture out in the hazardous-waste bin right then, except the spell had specifically said to dispose of it with a pentagram and the sink, and anyway, darn it, I was going to try it first. I was.

  Nerves of steel, Cam.

  I reached out with the tip of my finger and touched the drop of potion in the bowl.

  It exploded in a yellow burst of flame.

  I jumped back.

  Everyone turned to look. Ms. Pool swiftly crossed the room, ready to douse the lab or me with the fire extinguisher. Thankfully, since I had only used one drop, the fire had already burned up. There was nothing in the sink, nothing to see. “I, er. Got the results I was looking for,” I said. My finger smarted like anything.

  “Any injuries?” she said.

  “No,” I said. “I know how to dispose of it correctly,” I said. “And then I’ll come sit in my regular seat,” I said.

  “Good,” Ms. Pool said.

  She returned to the front of the classroom and I inscribed a careful pentagram around the drain with the hand soap before using my gloves to pour down every last drop. I rinsed the beaker with water and poured that down too, several times, and finally I dared to touch the beaker with one of my nonburned fingers.