Under a Spell

by Amanda Ashby

  Sophie blinked. “Okay, so I’ve just spent an hour cleaning up a big mess all because you couldn’t find High School Musical Two, the movie that your döppelganger Zac Efron stars in?”

  “That’s correct,” Malik agreed before shooting her a reassuring smile. “But don’t worry, because in the end I found it stuck behind the DVD player and the crisis was averted. Though you really should talk to your sister about making sure she puts the DVDs away properly. It could’ve gotten scratched or something.”

  “I think that was probably the intention,” Sophie said, since their grandmother had given Meg all three movies in hopes of moving her away from her gruesome love of sharks. Unfortunately, Meg hadn’t been remotely taken with the all-singing, all-dancing teenagers and had stubbornly refused to watch them. Then Sophie noticed that Malik had pinned up a picture of Zac Efron over her favorite Neanderthal Joe poster.

  She was pretty sure that in some countries that was a crime punishable by death. She marched across the room and removed the offending poster so that she could once again see the Joes in their full glory. Then she turned back to Malik.

  “I’m starting to think it’s about time you changed into someone else besides Zac Efron.”

  “Why would I do that?” Malik wrinkled his Zac nose in confusion. “I mean, Zac is the man. He can sing, he can dance, and his hair is extraordinary. The only problem is that now that I’m no longer a djinn, Zac’s a lot oranger than I am. I think it’s his fake tan. I don’t suppose you could hustle me up some color, could you?”

  “What?” Sophie blinked at him, while secretly wondering how he could still manage to surprise her.

  “Color,” Malik repeated as he held out his arm and gave a decisive sniff. “I mean, if there’s one thing I resent about being dead, it’s that I’m no longer orange. I tell you, it’s a real blow. Anyway, I’ve been trying some different paints, but it’s just not the same.” As he spoke, Sophie realized that there was indeed a collection of paint pots sitting on her bookshelf and that Malik’s arm was dotted with various shades of orange, making him look like an anemic tiger.

  “I’m not going to turn you orange,” Sophie informed him in a blunt voice. “And you have to realize that you can’t just wander around the house as you please. My mom’s still totally stressed out, and until we find my dad and get him back here, I don’t want to make things any worse.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t do anything to make it worse. Your poor mother is totally overwrought. She actually just sent me a message on Facebook to tell me about the dreadful mess you made in the dining room.”

  “You made,” Sophie corrected.

  “Whatever.” Malik gave a dismissive wave of his arm before shooting her a serious look. “The point is that I would never do anything to upset her. Now, about the orange thing. It really is very simple, and it would only take you about an hour to do. Three tops. You do have some ground quartz crystals, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t, and please stop distracting me. I need to show you something,” Sophie said as she suddenly remembered that in all the drama of thinking her mom was sick, she still hadn’t shown him the letter from the Djinn Council. She carefully pulled it out of her pocket and held it out to him. When he finished reading it, he looked up, his Zac-like eyebrows knitted together and his lips in a tight line.

  “Outrageous,” he spluttered as he began to float around the room, his arms crossed in annoyance. “Those bureaucratic old women. I mean, seriously, if you’d seen how big a P78U is, you would understand why I didn’t fill it in. It was longer than War and Peace. And as for making you take a Phoenician test, that’s just plain rude.”

  “Yes, but what is it?” Sophie asked, not liking the way he was now chewing his lip. “Is it hard?”

  “Of course not…well, it wouldn’t have been hard for me, but then again, I was a djinn of exceptional abilities and—”

  “Malik,” Sophie cut him off. “I mean, will it be hard for me?”

  “Oh, right. My apologies. Anyway, it’s a rather old-fashioned test where the Djinn Council sit around like the overpaid autocrats that they are while fresh young djinns have to go and impress them with their dazzling transcendental conjuring skills. Er, so, remind me again how far we’ve progressed on your transcendental conjuring.”

  “My what?” Sophie looked at him blankly as she tried to imagine herself doing magic in front of a bunch of djinns. Her palms felt clammy.

  “Oh.” Malik paused for a moment before taking a deep breath and speaking in a bright voice. “Well, let me tell you about transcendental conjuring. It’s exactly like what you do now, but instead of just wishing for an object to come out fully formed, you are trying to control something that already exists and make it bend to your will.”

  “Hey, I could’ve used that in gym today when I was trying to stop a basketball from hitting me in the face. All I could do was make it stop in the air. Are you saying that I could’ve done other things with it?”

  “Absolutely.” Malik nodded. “You could’ve sent it up toward the ceiling or in the other direction. Or, if you were Zac Efron, you could’ve made it spin on your finger.”

  Sophie was about to explain that making a ball spin on your finger wasn’t actually magic, but she thought better of it since she didn’t want Malik to go off on another tangent. “And the third moon of the Agate quarter? What’s that in plain English?”

  “Let’s see. Diamond, quartz, silver,” Malik chanted as he began to count up his fingers before finally nodding. “By my calculations it’s the first Tuesday of the year 2058.”

  “What?” Sophie yelped before putting her hand over her mouth to stop herself from screaming. Finally, she calmed down long enough to speak as she shot him a pleading look. “No. I can’t wait that long. I might be immortal, but my mom and sister aren’t. Surely this is some kind of mistake.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve made a mistake,” Malik agreed before suddenly seeming to notice her panic. “But relax. I have a buddy on the inside. I once helped him do a halstic curse on a sahir who was giving him grief, and let’s just say that as far as halstic curses go, I totally rock. I bet a collector’s edition of Charlie St. Cloud that I can get your appointment changed.”

  “That would be fantastic.” Sophie let out the breath that she didn’t know she had been holding. “So, in the meantime, do you think you can show me how to do this transcendental conjuring?”

  “Of course I can. After all, I am a djinn guide of exceptional talents.” He patted his chest as he glanced around the room before nodding in the direction of her bed. “Oh, I know, why don’t you make that deformed creature fly?”

  “What?” Sophie blinked before realizing that Malik was looking over to where her favorite childhood toy was sitting. It had once been an overstuffed pink pig, but over the years it had lost an eye, most of its stuffing, and half an ear. However, despite its battered appearance, it had also helped her through a lot of hard times when her dad had first left. She defensively picked it up and gave it a hug. “You want me to make Mr. Pugsy fly?”

  “Ah, yes. Isn’t that what I just said?” Malik looked confused for a moment. “Anyway, the trick to doing transcendental conjuring is concentration. You need to really focus on what you want to happen and then visualize every last detail, leaving absolutely nothing to chance. Oh, and I always like to snap my fingers. It just gives the whole demonstration a bit more pizzazz. So go on then, why don’t you try it?”

  Sophie had many reasons why she didn’t want to try it, not least because it seemed impossible, but since that wouldn’t help her find out about her dad, she pushed her concern to the back of her mind and nodded. Then she took a deep breath and settled Mr. Pugsy back down on the bed. As she stared at him, she tried to imagine him lifting off the bed and up toward the ceiling. She regulated her breathing and waited until a familiar tingle went racing through her.

  Once she had the image firmly set in her mind, she snapped her fin
gers and opened her eyes to see Mr. Pugsy lift an inch off the comforter before falling back down.

  “Still keen to have your appointment date changed?” Malik raised an eyebrow, but Sophie ignored him as she closed her eyes and tried it again. This time Mr. Pugsy lifted at least four inches before tumbling back down. But as a positive person, Sophie could only assume that this meant she was getting better.

  She was just about to try it for a third time when the cordless phone, which was sitting by her bed, rang. She picked it up, pleased for the distraction, since her brain was already hurting.

  “Hey, it’s me,” Kara said from down the other end of the line. “I was getting worried that I hadn’t heard from you. Is everything okay?”

  “Sorry, I should’ve called you, but I had to spend an hour cleaning up the gigantic mess that Malik made.” Sophie shot the djinn a pointed look. At the mention of his name Malik looked up with interest.

  “Is that Kara on the phone? Ask her if she thinks Zac Efron is a good dancer,” he said, but Sophie ignored him as she put her hand up to her ear to cut out what he was saying.

  “Anyway, it turns out that Phoenician test is something I need to do to impress the Djinn Council with my magic.”

  “Oh, well, that’s a good thing since you rock at magic,” Kara said in a supportive voice, but Sophie shook her head as she looked over to where Mr. Pugsy lay on his side, his single eye peering out at her.

  “This is different magic. But don’t worry. I’m definitely getting the hang of it. I just need to keep practicing,” she said. Then she remembered that she’d left Kara and Harvey in the library, and a flash of guilt went racing through her. “Anyway, enough about me. What happened this afternoon? Was Harvey okay?”

  “He’s pretty stressed about the project, and you know what he’s like when he worries,” Kara said, and Sophie nodded her head since, when it came to worrying, Harvey was a gold medalist. None of which was helped by the fact that his folks were on the verge of getting divorced and things were tense at home. “And to make it worse, I had to leave him early to go and see how Colin was getting along.”

  As part of the stage crew for The Wizard of Oz, Kara was working on most of the sets, but she’d taken total ownership of Colin, a very large papier-mâché winged monkey statue.

  “It’s so weird that Harvey can be so good at math and so bad at history,” Sophie noted.

  “I know, right,” Kara agreed from down the other end of the phone. “Anyway, I told him to IM or call us tonight if he gets stuck on anything and we can…hey, why did Malik just send me a text message asking me if I thought that Zac Efron was good looking?” Kara asked in a surprised voice as Sophie turned around to see that Malik had his cell phone out and was busy texting.

  “Ignore him,” she said as she stalked over and plucked the cell phone out of his hand.

  “I was using that,” Malik protested.

  “Yes, well—” Sophie started to say before she caught sight of a large orange Italy-shaped stain on her carpet just by Malik’s foot. Then she spotted a tub of orange pottery glaze that someone (she was going to go out on a limb here and say Malik) had kicked under her dresser. Sophie let out a long groan as she realized it was the pottery glaze her mom had been looking for all afternoon. “You took my mom’s glaze?” she squeaked at him.

  “Yeah, and you know, I had really high hopes for that one,” Malik confided as he held out his stripy arm. “But unfortunately, it didn’t look so good once I got it on. I guess it’s made for clay, not ghost skin.”

  “You think?” Sophie lifted an eyebrow at him, but before she could say anything else Kara piped up.

  “What’s going on?” her friend demanded in concern.

  “Malik’s what’s going on,” Sophie retorted as she told Kara exactly what her troublesome djinn guide had been doing.

  “He did all of that in just one day?” Kara exclaimed once Sophie had finished. “Is there a spell to make sure he doesn’t cause any more trouble at home? Or maybe send him on vacation for a few weeks just until your mom has finished her pottery order?”

  The idea was more than a little tempting, especially since a little bit of Malik could go a long, long way. But before she could say anything she caught sight of the safe-deposit box that her dad had given her just before he left home four years ago. Of course it wasn’t until last week that she had learned that her dad was a djinn or that the answers to his mysterious disappearance might be within the small silver box.

  Sophie tucked the cordless phone under her ear and wistfully ran her fingers across the box’s surface so that the delicate engravings rubbed against her skin, as if willing the box to open up. But no matter what she did, it stayed annoyingly shut.

  “I can’t.” Sophie let out a reluctant sigh. “Since there is no way I can learn how to do this transcendental conjuring on my own. Plus, I need him to try to get my appointment moved forward.”

  “I guess.” Kara let out a frustrated sigh. “It’s like a Catch Twenty-two because you need him to be close by but you can’t afford for him to cause any more trouble for your mom. Still, I suppose there isn’t much you can do except hope he behaves himself while we’re at school each day.”

  “That’s it!” Sophie cried. “Kara, you’re a genius. I know exactly what I need to do.”

  “Turn me orange?” Malik asked in a hopeful voice, but Sophie just shook her head.

  “No, I told you I’m not going to turn you orange, but there’s no way I can leave you at home causing all sorts of problems. My mom’s stressed out enough as it is, and I can’t let anything happen until I find out more about my dad. I mean, imagine if I got grounded when I was meant to be seeing the Djinn Council? It would be a disaster. Which means there’s only one other solution.”

  “What?” Kara asked in a cautious voice.

  “It’s simple. Starting tomorrow Malik will be coming with us to school.”

  4

  SOPH, ARE YOU SURE YOU’VE THOUGHT THIS through?” Harvey asked the next morning as he and Kara congregated around Sophie’s locker before the first bell. Thanks to Meg’s feud with Jessica Dalton, her sister was refusing to be driven to school by Mrs. Dalton. This meant their mom had to drop Meg off, and she had decided that Sophie should go with them. However, judging by Harvey’s worried expression, she guessed that Kara had filled him in on what had happened yesterday.

  “Of course I’m sure,” she assured him.

  “But if Malik caused so many problems at your house, can you imagine what he could get up to here?” Harvey continued as he pulled a packet of M&M’s out of his pocket and started to fiddle with it (a sure sign he was worried since normally he would just eat the candies).

  “It had crossed my mind,” Sophie admitted. “But really, the main thing is that my mom can get her pottery order finished without getting stressed out or doing anything crazy like grounding me. It’s just I’m so close to finding my dad that I can’t afford for anything to go wrong at home. And speaking of my dad, look at this.” As she spoke, she nodded for them both to peer into her locker.

  Once they were next to her, Sophie concentrated on her science book, which was sitting at the bottom. Just as Malik had taught her, she cleared her mind and felt her breath rising and falling. Then she visualized the book floating into the air. Finally, she clicked her fingers.

  She didn’t open her eyes, but by the excited gasps next to her, she could tell it was working. She pictured the book opening up and the pages flicking from one side to the other. Again her friends gasped, and then Sophie let the book float back to the bottom of the locker before opening her eyes and grinning at them. She still hadn’t managed to get Mr. Pugsy to lift up more than a foot from the bed, but when it came to making books fly, she ruled.

  “Wow,” Kara said in awe, while next to her Harvey was nodding his head in agreement. “You learned how to do that in one night?”

  Sophie nodded. “I had to bribe Malik with far too many Cheetos and Zac Efron DVDs, b
ut he eventually managed to talk me through it. Now I just need to keep practicing as much as I can. Apparently, the next step is to move from inanimate objects like books and pens to myself. I’m not really sure I want to float, but Malik has assured me that’s the best way to impress the council.”

  “Floating?” Harvey looked excited. “Can you make me float? Because I’d definitely be interested in that, and…hey, why is Ben Griggs waving at you?”

  “What?” Sophie and Kara immediately glanced over to where Ben was most definitely waving at her like they were long-lost BFFs. Unlike Melissa Tait, who was standing next to him looking all sour and ticked off.

  “Okay, so that’s weird,” Kara said in surprise. “Since when do you know Ben Griggs?”

  “Yeah, because I don’t mean to be a downer, but that guy is a total contender for Moron of the Year,” Harvey informed her. “Not to mention that he likes beating up on sixth graders. Oh, and don’t get me started on his aggressive body language. I mean, look at the way he’s standing, and how his eyebrows are cocked. You really shouldn’t hang out with people who have cocked eyebrows, Sophie.”

  That was the other thing about Harvey. Ever since his folks had started fighting he had become obsessed with body language and trying to figure out what it all meant.

  “I don’t hang out with him. I don’t even know him,” Sophie protested before suddenly remembering what happened on the way home yesterday. “Well, I didn’t, but when I was walking from the bus, he kind of heard me doing some affirmations. Anyway, we talked for a couple of minutes, but I don’t get why he would be waving at me.”

  “I think you’re going to find out really soon.” Harvey nodded as Ben Griggs started to jog toward them. “But if he says anything about beating up sixth graders, I think you should turn him into a toad. Okay?”