Seriously Hexed

by Tina Connolly

  “I gave my grandfather my proxy vote,” Sparkle said. “So I wouldn’t lose my place.”

  “Proxy vote?”

  “Ooh, ooh,” said Poppy, briefly putting her hand up. “I get to explain something.”

  Sparkle rolled her eyes.

  “There are strict attendance rules to keep your spot,” said Poppy, “because otherwise everyone would be too lazy to attend. It takes three witches to call a coven, and then, if someone doesn’t show, they get to vote in someone else.”

  “Like when my father didn’t show up, they could put Unicorn Guy in his place,” I said.

  “Right. So the loophole is, if you can’t go to a meeting—”

  “Because you’re off hunting baby rocs in Paraguay—”

  “You can send someone you trust to vote for you.”

  “I bet that always goes over really well, with no backstabbing,” I said dryly.

  “Yup,” said Poppy.

  “Still. Thirteen years without any meetings.”

  “Witches live a long time,” chorused Poppy and Sparkle from the front.

  “I guess we do,” I said.

  We turned into my neighborhood. The invisible figure next to me tensed as we neared my house. I couldn’t blame him. It had been the site of too many dangers for him.

  Maybe it wasn’t just the witch world that would be better off without me. Probably Devon would be, too. He could find some other girl who didn’t continually drag him into jeopardy.

  Because danger seemed to go hand in hand with dating a witch.

  My father, Jim—vanished trying to help people to safety. Lily was protecting Poppy’s dad by not informing him of anything going down this week. Leo’s bio parents were long gone. And Sparkle’s grandmother—what about her?

  I leaned toward the front seat. “Did your grandmother, um, pass away before we were born?” I said to Sparkle.

  “Not before I was born,” said Sparkle. “Obviously.”

  “Ah, right, I forgot,” I said, and helpfully explained to Poppy, “It’s a long story.”

  “I call the person I live with my grandfather,” said Sparkle, “but he’s actually my father. I’m on my second round of growing up.”

  “So who’s the witch? Your mom or your dad?”

  “My dad has witch blood, but he kept it secret. My mom was straight human. When I was four the first time, my mom was shocked by the magic coming out. She ran off with me and joined a cult. They said they could train it out of me.”

  She said this quite matter-of-factly. Poppy and I caught each other’s eyes in the rearview mirror and looked at each other in horror. “Are you kidding me?” I said.

  “We were there till I was eleven,” Sparkle continued, “and then my father found me and took me home. She stayed. But I gather I was unmanageable, and he’s not a practicing witch. So he sent me to live with my great-aunt up in Seattle and she trained me for real, but she was totally paranoid, certain everyone was out to get us and we’d better get them first. It was just the two of us in this tiny basement apartment festooned with booby traps and skulls—super unhealthy.”

  “I take it that’s how we got GothSparkle,” I said.

  “Yeah. I was researching elementals and I found out about the power of the phoenix rebirth that was coming up in the next couple decades. Later on, after I had left her—wrangled my way into the coven and all that—I ran across the amnesia spell. And my life kind of hard-core sucked at the time, so I made an extraordinarily good plan”—this was said with a lot of sarcasm—“to go crawling back to Dad, take a dozen years out of my memory, and forget who I was until it was time to remember and harness the phoenix.”

  “It was a good plan, babe,” said Leo. “Because now you’re with me.” He didn’t seem surprised by her story, which must mean that Sparkle had finally confessed to him that she was—shudder—old.

  “True,” conceded Sparkle.

  “And then no one got the phoenix power,” I explained to Poppy. “Well, I helped our dragon go off and find some companions with it. But the witches made off with a few feathers is all.”

  “Man,” said Poppy. “I had heard about some phoenix stuff going down last fall but I did not know the whole story.” She glanced at Sparkle. “And I cannot believe you hid it that well. Up until recently, I thought you were just a cheerleader. But I guess you mostly thought that too.”

  Sparkle stared off into the rearview mirror. “The thing is, I got to live my real life this time around. Not my crazy mom one that set me on a bad path. A second chance. It’s not something everyone gets to do.” Her eyes met mine in the mirror. “I even had some better friends, this time around.” She smiled, almost wistfully, and I had a sudden sharp memory of us playing together in grade school. When she was loyal to you, she was fanatically loyal. Like the way she was with Leo. The friendship had had its good points.

  For the first time in a long time, I regretted that we had grown apart.

  I wondered if it was anything that could be put back together.

  Because it wasn’t just me and Sparkle. There was an unusual sensation in the car; I could feel it. A growing bond. I had never been part of a group like this. Poppy. Sparkle. Leo. Devon. Me. It was weird and strange and amazing. Frightening—it could slip away and I wouldn’t understand how to make it stay. How could I capture it? How could I keep it?

  How much had I missed by being a loner all those years, turning only to Jenah for friendship, keeping even her at arm’s length about my home life?

  Maybe second chances were possible for more than just Sparkle.

  We were pulling up to our house now, and Poppy parked the SUV in our driveway. She turned to face us and, as one, we waited expectantly.

  “Okay, everybody,” Poppy said. She eyed each of us in turn. “We’re going to trap the demon in a pentagram.”

  “With what?” Sparkle said.

  “I will now take your brainstorms,” said Poppy.

  “Chalk on the garage floor,” I said immediately.

  Leo: “Etch the floor with magic lasers.”

  Poppy: “Broomsticks.”

  Devon: “And there are five of us.…”

  “Let’s do that,” said Sparkle. “This is the sort of thing best solved by nonmagical means. The demon is more likely to pick up on a spell being cast. We have a greater chance of him sleeping through a few brooms being moved around a garage.”

  In the end, we got a broom, a mop, a shower curtain rod, and a snow shovel that Sarmine had been using for who knows what in the basement. I knew there was a push broom just inside the RV garage. I would grab that.

  This was the scariest part of the whole operation. If we got the pentagram around the demon before he realized what we were doing, then we were safe. Poppy could call him out of the gravy boat and he would be contained. He might not answer all our questions, but he would be contained.

  I carefully turned the key in the side door to the garage. Through the little window, I could see the votives on the floor around the cauldron. The first six were burned out—Esmerelda’s and Valda’s shattered, Ingrid’s apparently melted. Sports Team’s looked as though it had been mauled. I hoped she had gotten away. The remaining seven votives were still lit white, tangible symbols of hope.

  “Should we pretend we’re here on other business?” I whispered. “Like last time?”

  “Let’s just do it,” Poppy whispered back. “As silently as possible. You all ready?”

  “No,” I said. “But who is?” I clenched my hands into fists to stop their shaking. We were going to do this. On purpose.

  “On the count of three,” said Sparkle.

  She counted, and on three I eased open the door and got out of the way, feeling around for the push broom. The others crept inside and arranged themselves into four parts of a pentagram. Devon’s side looked like a floating mop.

  Where was that broom?

  “Uh-oh,” said Sparkle.

  “The lamp,” hissed Poppy. “It’s glow
ing!”

  There was no help for it. I would move faster in the light. I flipped the switch on. The broom was on the floor in the middle of the melted packing peanuts, where Lily had dropped it. I raced for it, seized the handle.

  “Cam!” shouted Poppy. “Cam!”

  I flung myself into the remaining place in the pentagram. The brush whacked against Leo and the handle slammed into Sparkle’s side. It was a testament to the gravity of the situation that she didn’t snap at me. We pressed in together, focused on one thing only. Would it hold?

  The lamp glowed bright red.

  We weren’t going to have to summon the demon.

  He was coming out.

  The air filled with sulfur and gunpowder and smoke, and then there was the elemental. He was seven feet tall, nine feet tall. He was every color of the rainbow. He dazzled up and down. I was having flashbacks.

  “Who dares disturb my slumber?” he shouted in a tremendous, vibrating, sepulchral voice. It shook the RV garage.

  “Um, we didn’t mean to wake you?” I said. “It’s just, we want to ask you—”

  He whirled and glared. His rainbow light swooped straight toward me. I leaned back, arching, pressing my broom against the other two as hard as I could. “What is this?” he shouted in my face, great hot gusts of sulfur and steam. “What have you dared to do?”

  “Pentagram,” I squeaked.

  He whisked around the star and came back to me. The bright shifting lights faded to a dim purple. His face solidified and he said grumpily, “Very well. Tell me what you want to know and we will see if we can reach an arrangement.”

  “You won’t just tell us?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because we have you trapped.”

  He smirked, and his next words sent chills down my spine. “Or perhaps you merely think you do. Your pentagram has certain … limitations, you know.”

  I looked sideways at the others. I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Demon,” said Poppy.

  “My name is Hudzeth.”

  “Hudzeth,” she acknowledged. “We have several things to ask you. We think that when Sarmine opened the box on Saturday, that she accidentally summoned you from the lamp. We think you hexed her and all the other witches in the circle. And—”

  I couldn’t bear it any longer. “Did you take my mother somewhere?” I said. Oh, how far I had fallen in a few days. Now I was busy hoping that a demon had taken my mother somewhere. Better that than that he’d obliterated her.

  The demon slid over to face me. “So this is the witch whelp,” he said. “Missing its mommy?”

  “I want to know how to get her back.”

  He yawned. I didn’t think demons needed to yawn, so he was obviously doing it to be super annoying. “So you’re interested in making a deal with a demon, then.”

  Did that mean he could retrieve her? “So she’s not … dead?”

  A long pause, while the world hung in the balance.

  “No,” he said.

  My heart began to beat again. She wasn’t dead! The holo had misfired! She was alive! But where was she that she hadn’t already come home? “Wh … wh … what would you take to bring my mother home?” I said. Stupid quavering voice.

  “Oh oh oh, let me see,” said the demon, mocking me. “Maybe just your life.”

  “That is too much,” Poppy leaped in. “You can’t ask that of her.”

  The demon shrugged. “Demons want bodies. You know that.”

  We did.

  “But you haven’t told us if you can bring Sarmine back,” said Poppy. “And if you can stop the hex before it gets to…”

  “Before it gets to me and Lily,” said Sparkle.

  The demon whirled, turning to look at Sparkle. “Yes, you were in the circle on Saturday, weren’t you?”

  “We need answers,” said Poppy.

  “And you aren’t going to get any until I get a body,” said the demon. “Snap snap. Pony up.”

  I swallowed. Maybe I could offer myself up for a short time—like a day. Maybe that would satisfy him. I had handled a demon inside me before. For ten minutes.

  And then, from the other side of the pentagram: “I’ll do it,” said the invisible figure holding the mop.

  The demon whirled. His eyes flashed green. “Well, well,” he said. “Whom do we have here.”

  Audible gulp. “I … I’m Devon.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You can’t have him.” This was giving me serious déjà vu. “He has already been there and done that and he is not strong enough—”

  The demon interrupted me. “Oh, I know about him. I know all about him.” The rainbow shimmered and resolidified as a plump, smoky, hobbity sort of figure. He bounced on his toes in excitement and I reminded myself firmly that he was a killer elemental from another astral plane. “Estahoth has been dining out for months on stories of his time with Devon. Is it true that you front a band?”

  “Yes?” said Devon.

  “You sing?” said the demon. “You play the guitar? You make girls swoon?”

  “Yes,” said Devon, “yes,” and “I suppose.”

  “Oh, he does do that,” said Sparkle. She fluttered her eyelashes, and I don’t have to tell you that the adverb to describe that eyelash flutter was mockingly.

  “Now wait a minute,” I said. “This is not a good idea.”

  “Hang on,” said Poppy. “He’s got that hex on him. This could be key to driving it out.”

  “Good idea,” said Sparkle.

  “Over my dead body,” I said.

  “I can arrange that,” said the demon, and his pleasant hobbit face flashed razor-sharp teeth.

  “Cam,” said Devon. “Cam.”

  The demon melted back, and the mop was speaking to me from across the pentagram. “Cam,” he said. “I may be invisible. I may have stage fright. But I’m not helpless.”

  “I never said you were.…” I protested, untruthfully.

  “I want to help, just as much as Leo. You have to let people help.”

  “We are witches,” said Sparkle sharply. “You are a guitar player.”

  “Witches are better able to resist demons,” I said. “We have natural shields. You—”

  “Have already done it once.” He said it in a significant tone that made me stop and think. Was he trying to communicate that he thought he could better resist the demon since he’d done it once already? Maybe I was thinking about this all wrong. Maybe Devon wasn’t a delicate flower, already weakened by one attempt. Maybe demon-carrying was like a muscle. The more you did it, the stronger you got.

  Still, I was the witch. And as long as I was going to be a witch, then it was my job to protect him. “I’m going to invite the demon in, not you.”

  “Look, Cam,” the mop said pointedly. “I trust you to get me safely out of this. And in the meantime, what’s worse: a demon with mad guitar skills or a demon with mad witch skills?”

  “The boy has a point,” said Poppy.

  “I can’t let you do this,” I said.

  “I’m not staying if you don’t,” the demon said.

  “At least have a time limit,” I said desperately. “The demon—”

  “Hudzeth.”

  “Hasn’t promised us anything real. Just that he’ll answer questions. I’m not giving up your life for some questions.”

  “Good point,” said Poppy. “What about one hour, Hudzeth? One hour of freedom.”

  “One week.”

  “The curse will be over in a week and you know it. Five hours, and you also agree to take his hex off of him.”

  “One day, and that’s my minimum offer,” said the demon. “I’ll throw in the hex removal for free.” I suspected he thought a day was enough to worm himself inside Devon permanently. Devon had lasted three days at Halloween. But was he weakened or strengthened by that experience? Which of us was right?

  “One day then,” said Devon simply. “It’s my turn to step up.” Before I could do a
nything else, he dropped his mop with a clatter and stepped into the center of the now useless pentagram. The demon was right. Human pentagrams did have limitations. They were pathetic, really. I dropped my push broom to the floor. I couldn’t do anything to stop this.

  The demon flowed straight into Devon, a waterfall of rainbow light. As he did, Devon began colorizing again. Toes, feet, knees—up and up. It was as if Devon was an empty glass pitcher and the demon was filling him up with apple juice. No, that was a weird metaphor.

  Devon’s head snapped up. He was all visible again, and glorying in it. Light was in his eyes. A light of happiness, and confidence, and self-assured joy. “And now I can do this,” he said, and he stepped across the push broom and kissed me.

  14

  Some Boys Have No Sense, That’s All

  “He really likes being visible,” Sparkle mused dryly.

  “I should try hexing and unhexing my next crush,” said Poppy.

  Their comments recalled me to my senses. We had been here before. This wasn’t Devon anymore. It was Hudzeth.

  “Very funny,” I said, stepping back from the demon’s embrace. “Now, can I talk to Devon, please?”

  “This is Devon,” said Hudzeth.

  I waited.

  “Oh, very well,” he said with bad grace. The color disappeared from Devon.

  “You’re still invisible,” I said.

  “Apparently.”

  “You’re otherwise fine?”

  “I am,” he assured me, and his hand found mine and squeezed it. That reassuring touch told me more than any words could. He really thought he could do this.

  I squeezed back, then hollered, “Hudzeth!”

  Devon colorized again. “Oh, goody, we’re holding hands.”

  I let go. “You promised to take the hex off of him.”

  Hudzeth huffed. “Work, work, work. Maybe next time you’ll avoid putting curses on us.”

  “On him, Hudzeth,” I said. “There is no ‘us.’”

  “There could be,” he leered again.

  “I mean you and Devon are not an ‘us,’” I said. “You are not a single entity and you are not going to—Oh, why am I wasting my time arguing with you? Fix him.”

  “Fine,” he said, and Devon’s face went entirely blank, with no one looking out of it at all.