Once ready to go, we realized we lacked a car seat. But Poppy went down the street to a house where she often babysat and came back triumphant with an old one. She buckled it into the wagon, I buckled Wulfie into it, and we set off. Wulfie decided he liked his car seat about as well as a trip to the vet. He started off with a mournful howl, and when that didn’t get him released, switched over to shrieking. Since the illusory windshield didn’t muffle werewolf shrieks, people turned to look at us.
“Can’t you turn him off?” shouted Poppy over the din. “I need my brain to drive.”
“You’re easier to take as a dog,” I told Wulfie. I dug one of the roofing nails out of the dash. I’d like to say the point was rounded down but, frankly, it was still pretty pointy. “Don’t poke yourself,” I warned. Wulfie immediately became engaged with poking it into the car seat.
“I hope they didn’t want that car seat back without holes in it,” I said.
“It’s all yours,” she reassured me.
* * *
Poppy followed the rest of my directions and we finally arrived at Rimelda’s rambly old house outside of town. Just in time, too, as Wulfie had gotten bored with his nail. We parked on the gravel drive, let the shrieking boy out of his Car Seat of Doom to go run off his energy, and went up to knock on the door.
And again. And again.
Rimelda was either gone or sleeping too soundly to come to the door. It was early for witches to be awake.
“Ugh, wasted errand,” I said. “And it’s nearly seven. Do you want to try searching on WitchNet for Esmerelda’s address?”
Poppy held up her phone, looking for a signal. “We’ve got to head back to town,” she said. “I’m not getting enough signal to stay online.”
“Or should we get you to school? Esmerelda is … well. Let’s just say I don’t think she’d put herself out for us if she knew we were in jeopardy.”
Poppy sighed and lowered her phone. “I know what she’s like,” she said. She pulled her pink linen jacket tighter. “It’s just … I only have so much time before my mom gets home, you know? And she’s going to forbid me from helping to stop this hex before it gets to her. The more information I can gain, the better equipped she will be. She won’t refuse to listen to what I’ve already learned.”
I could understand that. We both wanted to save our mothers, even when our mothers made it difficult for us to do it. “We press on,” I agreed. Only … how?
It was at this point that I realized we hadn’t seen Wulfie for quite a while. I also knew from last summer that Rimelda had a pool. I highly doubted that boy-Wulfie had any idea how to swim. I admit it, I swore—and I wasn’t much for swearing, since Sarmine generally made me scrub out the cauldron with lye every time I did it. But I was wound up. “I never had this problem when he was a dog!” I said. “He is impossible when he’s a boy.”
“Divide and conquer,” Poppy said simply.
We split up, covering the yard. I raced toward the pool area, scanning it, ears open for splashes. Nothing. I walked its length, just to be sure. Still nothing. My heart slowed, but only a little. He was still gone. Rimelda could have as many defenses as Valda for all I knew.
A shriek from the pool house.
I ran that way, heart racing again. The door was open.
Wulfie was on the couch, shrieking with laughter.
He was not alone.
7
Adventures in Babysitting a Werewolf
“Pink!” I said. “I mean, Primella.”
“Cam!” she said, turning from tickling Wulfie. Primella was ten, blonde, and clad in a pink nightgown, pink robe, and pink fuzzy bunny slippers. She was Esmerelda’s daughter, and Rimelda’s granddaughter. A pillow and quilt suggested she had been sleeping in the guesthouse until a small boy jumped on her. “Is this your werewolf?”
“He’s my adopted brother, yeah,” I said. My heart rate slowed. Wulfie was safe, and Pink was not a threat. Not unless she’d changed dramatically since I’d met her at Rimelda’s pool party last summer, when I helped her outwit a certain double-crossing witch. “How did you know he was a werewolf?”
She shrugged. “I know the signs.”
“But what are you doing at your grandmother’s?” That was when it occurred to me that she could help us find Esmerelda. “Where’s your mother?”
“Home, maybe?” Pink said. “I come out here most weekends, and it’s spring break for me. I like it better than my mom’s house,” she added wistfully. I was not surprised. There were a lot of bad mothers among witches, but Esmerelda stood head and shoulders above them for bad-motherness. “Grandmother went into town for doughnuts,” Pink said. “I’m sure she’ll be back soon, if you want to stay.” She tickled Wulfie again. “We’re having a good time.”
A brilliant idea dawned on me. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in babysitting?” I said. “My mom disappeared, and we’re going crazy trying to figure out what to do with him.”
“Oh!” said Pink. She went a little pink. “No one’s ever trusted me enough to do that,” she said.
Right about that time, Poppy appeared in the door, panting, her linen jacket flapping behind her. “He’s not in back,” she said. “Oh, good. You found him.”
“Poppy, this is Pink—er, Primella,” I said. “She might be able to help us out with Wulfie.” Right about then, the problem with my bright idea hit me. Money. My face fell. As usual, I didn’t have any money, or at least none worth mentioning. I pulled out a quarter and mentioned it.
“I’ve got thirteen bucks,” Poppy said. “But I’m going to need it for fuel if we keep driving everywhere.”
Pink looked shyly up at me. “You helped me once,” she said. “I’ll help you. You don’t have to pay me.”
I started to say “Are you sure?,” but I realized that she meant it and that pushing back would fluster her. So I didn’t point out that only crazy people volunteered to babysit a three-year-old werewolf, and instead said, “Thank you, Primella. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”
She smile-shrugged it off and said, “C’mon, Wulfie, let’s go do the rock climbing wall.”
He scampered over to it, shouting, “Rock rock rock!” It would be good practice for him to use his hands, I thought—even if he was going to be twice the holy terror after this.
We got Esmerelda’s address from Pink and stood to go. “Please tell your grandmother to be on the lookout,” I told Pink. “We think there’s a hex attacking everyone who was at the coven Saturday night. Probably Malkin’s doing. Every twelve hours around the circle.”
“I will,” Pink promised faithfully. Wulfie whooped with delight from the top of the wall. We hurried out the door before he could decide he wanted to come with us.
* * *
“Well done us,” said Poppy as we got back in the car. I could tell she was basking in the same glow of accomplishment that I was. Solving one of our tasks.
“Do you like checking things off too?” I asked as we drove to Esmerelda’s. “Writing them down and crossing them off?”
“You know there’s an app for that,” said Poppy.
But I could tell she was teasing me. Just then I was feeling pretty good about us and how far we’d gotten, all on our own. Sure, pride goeth before a fall and all that. This was no time to start totting up our accomplishments. And yet …
“Figured out that all the witches are getting hexed,” I said. “Figured out the first two—maybe first three—of them.”
“Figured out what time the hexes are firing,” said Poppy, who was quick to realize that I was self-buttressing and was happy to join in. “And now to check on Esmerelda and make her cough up the info about who was standing next to her, so we can warn them before noon.”
“You know, she and Valda were sort of friends with Malkin,” I said.
“Maybe she’ll have an insight into what Malkin might have done.”
“If she’ll share it with us,” I said.
Esmerelda l
ived in a fancy new development around a golf course. Her street was one of those with many huge, identical houses squished together. It probably cost more than both of our houses combined. The lawn—all the lawns—were pristine.
We parked the open-air station wagon on the street and crept up to the doorbell. I didn’t like the hushed street. Mine had a lot more noise, any time of day. Buses going by. Guys on skateboards. People getting into their cars in the driveway, and kids waiting for the school bus and complaining. Here, a grounds crew was working at the other end of the street, three men in one yard running their leaf blowers. But the rest was quiet. Every so often a garage door would open up and disgorge an SUV, then silently close again. I felt like people were inspecting us from behind their window shades.
“Here goes nothing,” said Poppy, and she rang.
And rang.
And rang.
“No one is going to let us in,” I said. “None of them.”
“Because they’re all guilty,” said Poppy. “Even if they didn’t do the hex, they all wish they had.” She pulled out her phone and scanned the door. “What happens if we try to force the lock, Phone?”
“Bad hair and ten pounds,” came back the robotic voice of the avatar.
I rolled eyes. “Esmerelda.”
“Plus, I know there’s human eyeballs on us from all those windows,” said Poppy. “Ready to dial nine-one-one if we explode her doorknob.”
“Let me text Pink,” I said, and did, my fingers flying over the phone. The message came back immediately. “Mix two shavings red crayon with one pinch of glue stick. Shake over doormat, tap doorknob with wand. Don’t let neighbors see you.”
“I have those,” said Poppy, who was apparently prepared even in the matter of elementary school supplies. She shook and tapped. Instantly the door opened to a vision of Esmerelda, shining in motherly splendor. I say “vision” because it was immediately obvious to me that this was not the actual Esmerelda. Esmerelda would never have worn that high-necked shirt, or those mom jeans. Esmerelda would never have had a pan of cookies in one hand or leaned down to coo, “Welcome home, darling.”
Poppy and I followed the illusion inside the house. It smiled and waved at the blank windows facing the house. Then it shut the door, still smiling and holding the cookies. I wondered what would happen if I tried to eat one. The lock clicked and the vision melted away.
Poppy looked at the door, agape. “Okay, that’s an impressive holo for a ten-year-old. My car illusion doesn’t wave or speak. We were obviously just activating something Pink has done many times before. I wonder how she created it.”
“Poor Pink,” I said, imagining her carefully planning out how to transform Esmerelda into the mother she wanted. Sad that she needed to do it at all.
“Probably doesn’t want the neighbors to know she’s a latchkey kid,” said Poppy. “It’s not really legal anymore.”
“And it’s embarrassing, you know. Legal or not.” I wasn’t the best at understanding people, but this sort of thing I understood perfectly. Covering for your mother’s faults. Poppy looked at me strangely, like she didn’t understand why I’d be embarrassed about something someone else did, but I just shrugged. “We’d better find Esmerelda,” I said. “School starts in twenty-five minutes.”
Just like the street, the house was hushed and pristine, all gleaming hardwood and catalog furniture. It made me think of horror movies and jump scares.
I swallowed. “What do you think ‘shattered’ looks like?”
“Maybe the spell didn’t get her,” Poppy whispered back. “It missed Valda.”
“So if it did get her, we try to help her. And if it didn’t…”
“We make her tell us who’s next. And any others she knows.”
We finally found Esmerelda in the place we should have expected her: the master bathroom, the one with all the mirrors. What we didn’t expect was to find the counters covered with lavender and paprika and elf toenails and everything else, and a fully dressed Esmerelda, who shrieked and covered her face with a bath towel when we walked in.
“What are you doing here?” she shouted. “You little brats, get out of my house!”
“She’s not shattered,” I said. “You’re not shattered.”
“Then maybe she’s the one who did it,” said Poppy.
“Did what?” said Esmerelda, taking the bait. She still wouldn’t look at us.
“We found out that the spell that disappeared my mother is still going,” I said. “Going off every twelve hours and hexing a new witch. Did something happen to you at midnight?”
“I don’t have to tell you what happened at midnight,” said Esmerelda. “Now get out of here.”
Poppy was stubborn. “At least tell us who was standing next to you. We need to warn everybody, but we don’t know who’s next.”
“They can fend for themselves.”
I tapped my phone. “School’s in twenty minutes,” I said.
“Right,” said Poppy. “Time for desperate measures. One … two…”
On three we each grabbed a corner of the towel and uncovered her face.
Esmerelda, who would like to look twenty, and definitely no more than thirty, looked about a hundred and twenty. She looked older than her mother, Rimelda, and that was saying something, because Rimelda didn’t particularly care how she looked. Not only that, Esmerelda didn’t even look like an old version of her Barbie doll self. Her ears were big, her nose was hooked, there was a hairy wart on the end of her chin—a more Halloweeny witch could never have been devised. The network of wrinkles that crossed her face reminded me of something—
“Shattering glass,” I breathed.
Poppy and I looked at each other. It was clear we could cross Esmerelda off our list. Never in a million years would she have done this to herself. Not even as a red herring.
Esmerelda grabbed for the towel, which Poppy held out of reach. She spat at us. “You little … witches.”
“Answer a few questions and we’ll get out of your hair,” I said, rising above her insults.
“Horrible, awkward, unfashionable teenagers.”
Still, how mature did one have to be? I opened my mouth and saw Poppy subtly shake her head at me. Right. We were detectives with a mission.
“Did this happen last night?” said Poppy, gently.
Her tone must have disarmed Esmerelda, whose anger deflated. “Around midnight,” she admitted.
“Witch number three,” said Poppy, tapping the screen of her phone. “Right on cue.”
“The box Sarmine opened seems to have triggered one last spell,” I said. “Something from Malkin that’s hexing the whole coven.”
“Ooh, another possibility is that someone else sent that box,” said Poppy. “Pretending to come from Malkin.”
“Seriously, stop pointing out loopholes,” I said to Poppy. I turned to Esmerelda. “You’ve known Malkin since college. Do you think she would have set up a coven-wide hex like this? That would get triggered after she died?”
“She could, of course,” said Esmerelda. “But I don’t know that she would. It’s not exactly her style. She always liked to witness the damage she inflicted.”
I shuddered.
Poppy nodded at Esmerelda. “More to the point, does that particular hex look like Malkin’s work?”
I was dubious. Making someone wrinkly seemed too superficial for Malkin.
I pulled out a piece of paper to write down what we knew, but Poppy forestalled me and showed me her phone. She had been busy.
Hexes So Far
1. Sat Midnight: Sarmine. Vanished
2. Sunday Noon: Valda. House tried to destroy her
3. Sun Midnight: Esmerelda. Old and ugly
In that moment I felt a tremendous kinship with Poppy. Staying organized. Making lists.
“That particular hex, you said.” I tapped the phone thoughtfully. “Do you notice a pattern to these?”
“Besides the one we’ve already est
ablished, of anti-widdershins around the circle?”
“Leaving Sarmine out of it for a minute. Throwing bricks and boulders at someone is exactly the sort of brute-force thing Valda would do. And this mean girl hex”—I gestured at Esmerelda—“is exactly the thing she would do.”
Poppy pursed her lips. “You might be right. Excellent work, Watson.” She eyed Esmerelda. “Is this a favorite spell of yours?”
Esmerelda tossed her gray wisps of hair. “I have too much class,” she said loftily. “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.” But something about the way she said it made me suspicious.
“Or perhaps,” I said, “you have wished this on your worst enemy.” I considered her. “You do a lot of petty, nasty spells. Is this among them?”
Esmerelda scowled. “Did it once to a girl in college,” she said. “Too nasty to do again.”
Poppy nudged me. “Anti-widdershins,” she said.
“By the way, Esmerelda,” I said. “You wouldn’t happen to know who was standing next to you, would you?”
“Masked, you morons.”
Time to lay on the flattery, and I had a good idea about how to do it. “Ah, but that’s exactly why I thought to ask you,” I said. “You’re the only one of us who knows about fashion and style.” Poppy poked me. I figured it meant that she was willing to play along, but she resented the insult to her fashion sense. “Everyone’s wearing black robes and masks, sure. But you, of all people, would be able to tell a cheap dime store mask from … well, whatever you were wearing.”
Esmerelda sniffed. “Like the knockoff robes Ingrid was wearing? All that black market money and what does she buy? Not the real thing, that’s for sure.”
“Exactly. You can tell.”
Indecision warred in Esmerelda’s face. She could see right through the flattery, of course. And yet … she did know, and this was her only chance to show off her knowledge. “I was wearing cocktail robes from Gramerina Gris’s spring collection, in midnight charcoal,” she said, “and a custom, hand-painted mask in lacquer black.”
Poppy whipped out her phone and made a show of getting all this down.
Seriously Hexed Page 10