Poppy and I looked at each other, horror in our eyes. This is what we had used to teleport ourselves.
“I thought Bigfoot claws were like a fingernail clipping,” whispered Poppy.
“I’m just a thing to all of you.”
I rubbed my eyes. Strike Bigfoot claws off the list of ingredients I was willing to use.
“And don’t cry about it, either. I saw you at the pizza place. Spare me.”
“I’m not,” I retorted, and blinked furiously.
“All I want is to go to school, and get through my studies—”
“What are you studying?” said Poppy. It was clear she was as affected as I was, but she had better control over her feelings than I did.
He shot us a dirty look. “Jazz piano. And I have a concert coming up next week, and I needed that money. But the witch that caught me Saturday—was she satisfied with a toenail? Of course not.” He tucked his hands in his armpits. “I’ve never had someone pull all ten at once.” He leaned back in his chair. “So you’re too late. You might as well go. Go on … get.”
Silently, Poppy took a bottle of ibuprofen out of her messenger bag and passed it to him.
“Thanks,” he said, and dry-swallowed two of them.
“Why … Wasn’t there anything you could do to stop it?”
Sam gave me another dirty look. “As strange as I’m sure it sounds to you, this is preferable to the alternative. When the alternative is that someone else in your family tree has to suffer. But I wouldn’t expect a couple of witches to know anything about protecting your mothers.”
Ah. “We might know something about that,” I allowed.
“Protecting,” said Poppy. “Finding. Rescuing.”
We wound down, all three looking at each other across the card table. I could see him considering the puzzle of us, filtering the actuality of us through his anger at what we represented.
“Poppy,” I said. “Couldn’t we … couldn’t we do something about this?”
“Great minds think alike,” she said. To Sam: “Give me your hand.”
“What, you want my fingers next?”
She gave him a look, and he reached out, placed his hand in hers.
There was suddenly a moment when, I swear, the straight-A student of True Witchery noticed that Sam was cute, and the lumberjack mountain man piano player noticed that Poppy was cute. It was like this electric moment where you could feel the balance of the room shifting into new alignments. God, I was starting to sound like Jenah.
But Poppy merely said, “Phone, tell me the ingredients for Jenni’s Totally Tubular Super Quick Regrowing of Your Awesome Manicure Spell.”
“I take it you found that in another decade?” I said.
“Written on a hot-pink index card, stuffed inside a Wildfire teen romance,” Poppy agreed.
The avatar recited the ingredients, and Poppy let go of Sam’s hand and combined the ingredients on her phone screen. “Remove your bandages,” she told Sam. She dusted her spell on the tips of his fingers, then delicately touched each fingertip with her wand. “Now hold your hands out.” She came around the table and gently took each hand, one at a time. Carefully, she blew the ingredients off his fingers, adding her witch’s breath to complete the spell. She looked at him, and I could almost see the electricity. “That, uh. Should do it,” she said, maybe a wee bit flustered.
Sam reluctantly slid his fingers out of hers. Held them up.
We could all see that they were healed. Tiny nails were already starting to creep back, little moons at the base of each fingernail bed. “They don’t hurt anymore,” he said, and then, looking at Poppy with gratitude and disbelief: “Thank you.”
Poppy shrugged. “I, uh. Should leave you my number. You can text me if it happens again.”
“I will,” he said, reaching for his phone.
“Although…” Poppy said, and she started to pace. “Maybe that’s not what you want.”
“No, I think I’d like that.”
“I mean. As soon as they grow back, you’re at risk again. Would you like us to find a way to stop them from ever growing back?”
Startled, he said, “Maybe.” He caressed his healed fingertips. “What’s the point of having power that only other people can use? All they can do is take it from me.”
That was one of those moments where I loathed my membership in a group that contained all other witches. “I swear,” I said, “Poppy and I will find a way to stop them growing forever, if you want. Then the witches will have no reason to bother you again.”
“Could you do that?” he said. He was still looking at Poppy.
“We will try,” she said.
“Er, it might be next week,” I said, “because we have to rescue her mom first, and, um, ourselves.”
He sighed and held his hand out to us. “And you needed a claw for this?” he said. “To rescue the three of you?”
Poppy and I looked at each other in horror. “Oh, no,” I said.
“We were just coming for information,” she said.
“We didn’t heal you just so we could take them from you.”
“We’re not like those other witches.”
Sam spread his long fingers on the table. “Look,” he said, and I think at this point I can stop telling you that this was said to Poppy, it was all to Poppy, and he never stopped looking at Poppy until we left. Which was fine and great, obviously, only I was starting to feel like a third wheel. “It would be awesome to fix this problem permanently. I could get my life in order. I could focus on my career and not get derailed every couple months. If you can stop it, you can have anything you need in exchange.”
“Information,” I reiterated. “Just information.”
“Look, here’s what we need to know,” said Poppy. “Who is it that’s been coming?”
“There were several witches at first,” said Sam. “When I was little. But when I was ten I made a deal with one of them and after that it was just the one.”
“Which one?” I said.
“I don’t know her name,” Sam said. “But you saw her, Saturday. She has a French accent.”
“Claudette,” I said.
“That was easy,” Poppy said. “Too easy?”
“It could be that some other witch has been casting suspicion on Claudette for a decade by mimicking her accent, so when we tried to solve the mystery today we would be confused,” I said.
“Let’s go with Claudette,” said Poppy.
“She told me I was the only one who could protect my mother,” Sam said. “She said she didn’t want anything to happen to her, like the way my uncle Ed disappeared when I was little. She said if I gave her what she wanted, then in exchange she would keep other witches away from the two of us.”
“Protection racket,” said Poppy.
“So I made the deal. And it’s never been particularly terrible, until this last year. She’s been coming more and more frequently. Threatening me when my nails don’t grow faster. Like I can do anything about that. I told my mom to go into hiding and not tell me where she is.” He looked up at us. “Claudette can read your mind, you know.”
“We’re going to take care of her,” Poppy assured him. I didn’t know how we were going to do that, but I certainly didn’t say it. Sam was looking at Poppy like she was the best thing to walk into his life, and I knew better than to interfere with a chance at a little happiness, even in the middle of tragedy and despair and woe. I had my own boy who was the best thing to walk into my life. If I could get the demon to walk out of his life first.
My phone beeped with a text. Poppy’s deedle-dee’d. “Hang on,” she said to Sam, and we both looked down to find a text from Sparkle. I was worried she was getting into trouble at Unicorn Guy’s place, but it was something entirely different.
All over social media on WitchNet:
“Witches Chased by Single-Minded Predators in Strange Hex.”
“It was one witch, earlier,” I said.
Poppy was f
rantically Googling. “And now it’s three,” she said. “A lion, a tiger, and that grizzly bear. Tracking the trio of Canadians through downtown Vancouver. Their wands aren’t working, and they’re forced to use their wits.”
“Such as they are,” I muttered.
“The New England Coven has been summoned to help, since the Cascadia Coven is not responding. Well, yeah.”
“But it’s not midnight.”
Poppy looked up at me, eyes wide. “Now that we let the demon out, he’s not bound by the twelve-hour rule anymore. He has a human host. He has all Devon’s strength to draw on. The hexes are speeding up.”
“Hang on,” I said. My phone had escalated to ringing. “Pink?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Cam,” said a small, scared voice. “My grandmother and I were eating and then a, a … a ghostly figure appeared. And it said, ‘Witch Rimelda, prepare thyself! Your doom striketh at midnight!’ in a really awful voice, and then it just disappeared. And her eyes went huge and she aged like fifty years and just fainted. I tried calling my mother but she said she wasn’t leaving the house even for the queen of England and just hung up. Oh, Cam, I don’t know what to do.”
“Hang on, Pink,” I said. “We’re coming.” I hung up and turned to Poppy. “We’ve got to get out to Rimelda’s,” I said. “And we’ve got to warn your mother.”
Sam looked at us blankly. “You’re helping people. You really are different.”
Poppy squeezed his arm. She looked small next to his lumberjack frame. “We’ll be back to help you, too,” she promised. She gave him her phone number, I scooped Wulfie off of the couch, and we hurried out of there, me catching her up on Pink’s conversation as we ran.
We raced down the street to Ingrid’s SUV, Wulfie joyfully leaping and yapping as we went. No matter how much you wore a small boy out, there was always more wearing to be done. Our car seat was with Lily, so I buckled Wulfie into the back, ordered him to stay, and hoped Poppy’s “don’t look at us” spell was still holding.
Poppy tossed me her phone as I got in the passenger’s seat. “Will you text my mother for me?”
“What should I say?”
“Hexes speeding up,” she said tersely. “Rimelda next.” As an afterthought, she added, “Also say that we learned it on social media like good little teenagers, so don’t get all huffy about it.”
I typed that in, too.
“If she’s home she’ll know we’re not,” she said. “But one can hope. Anyway, if the curses are speeding up, she won’t be around much longer to tell me what to do.” She said it sarcastically, but I knew how she felt. After a moment, she added in a small voice, “I guess we did wrong to let the demon out.”
“We now know the four witches who set up the original hex,” I said. “We have a pretty good guess that Claudette may have double-crossed Ingrid and Unicorn Guy and added them to the hex. And, in other news, we know that all the Sentient Magicals are in danger.”
“But what does that get us? I mean, really.”
“More people to protect.”
She nodded.
We drove in silence to Rimelda’s house. Wulfie, for a wonder, conked out and began snoring in the back. It was twilight and getting to be his bedtime.
Poppy drove up the long gravel drive to Rimelda’s. We found an anxious Pink waiting for us. She led us to the pool house, where her grandmother was sitting up on the couch, looking dazed.
“That was Malkin,” Rimelda said to me. “That was Malkin. I saw her.”
“Malkin’s dead,” I said.
“I know, I know. But it was her anyway. Some spell of hers.”
I sat down on the coffee table next to Rimelda. “How much has Primella told you?” I said.
“We’re all getting hexed. And mine’s coming tomorrow night—right? Midnight, like the voice said. Nice of it to give me time to prepare,” Rimelda added glumly.
“Okay,” I said. “Two changes to that. The hexes are speeding up. Yours is coming at midnight tonight, I bet. Two hours from now. And the other thing: the hexes aren’t random. The hex is going to be the worst thing you ever did to someone.”
Rimelda was silent for a moment. “Well. It’s been a good run.”
Horror filled me. “You don’t mean—You didn’t kill anyone, did you?”
She sighed. “Who hasn’t?”
Poppy, Pink, and I raised our hands.
“I’ve been carrying it around on my conscience all these years,” said Rimelda. “I just never thought that defending someone would come back to haunt me.”
Poppy and I looked at each other. “You mean … you didn’t do it out of evilness?” I said.
Her wrinkled hands smoothed the afghan that Pink had placed on her. “No—no. But I never wanted to be that kind of a witch, you see. I didn’t want to kill anyone. It was an accident.”
“But then, you might be all right,” I said. “I don’t want to give you false hope—”
“We’re thinking the spell is designed to punish anything bad you did on purpose,” said Poppy. “That’s our guess, anyway. How did it … how was it an accident, if you don’t mind telling us?”
“It was a long time ago,” said Rimelda. “My boyfriend was … well, he was a werewolf.” A flash of defiance crossed her old face as she admitted her secret.
We shrugged.
“Hmph. That kind of thing is nothing to you youngsters, I suppose, but you have to understand … witches live a long time. My mother was born three hundred years ago, if you can believe it, and she had some very old prejudices. So she forbade it. And his parents weren’t too happy, either. We were always on the run—never had help. And then Ingrid’s mother sent someone after us to bring him in. Because, as far as she was concerned, he was just more breeding stock. Ingrid is just like her mother—two peas in a pod. We don’t speak. At any rate. I tried to hide John, but … the thug found him. I tried to save him … there was a battle … I accidentally killed the thug.”
I drew in breath. There it was.
“And I still couldn’t save John,” continued Rimelda. “He … he died in the fight.” She made a face. “I guess I gave up on the struggle to be good after that. Except for when the coven gets up in arms about shifters and werewolves. I can’t bring myself to vote to divide them up.”
Poppy and I looked at each other. Poppy reached across and took one of Rimelda’s hands in hers. “We’ll stay with you,” she said gently. “We’ll stay until midnight.”
I took Rimelda’s other hand, and she squeezed both of ours. I felt like, if she weren’t a witch, she would have quavered, “Bless you, children.” But she was a witch, and witches definitely do not quaver or say “Bless you.” So, instead, she let go of our hands and said, more briskly, “Who wants to take a dip in the pool while we wait to see if I’m going to croak?”
* * *
Rimelda made a pitcher of margaritas and cast a spell on the pool to warm it up to hot tub temperature. Poppy conjured us both bathing suits. We politely declined the margaritas, so Rimelda drank most of the pitcher herself as she told us stories from the last century of being a witch.
She filled in details about the leaders of the Sentient Magicals groups. Apparently, after my dad had disappeared, they had all gone underground. Sam’s uncle Ed Quatch had been leading the Bigfoots, and Jonquil’s girlfriend Mélusine had been speaking for the mermaids. My dad, of course, had been advocating for the shifters, because it was too dangerous for shifters even to reveal themselves. Someone named Roberto had been the head of the werewolves—a “fuzzy hunk,” said Rimelda—and that started Rimelda off on a new round of reminiscences about her fabulous romantic escapades, most of which had occurred in the sixties. I asked Pink if she wanted to cover her ears, but she said she’d heard it all before.
Rimelda had her fanny pack of ingredients buckled on and a good grip on her wand—“Hey, the voice said ‘prepare thyself,’” she quipped—but mostly she used the wand to stir her drink and resalt the ri
m of her glass. Wulfie snoozed under Rimelda’s afghan, and Pink sat curled up by her grandmother’s side, unwilling to leave her.
At last it was 11:58 … 11:59 … and then the alarm on Poppy’s phone struck midnight. It was a totally incongruous sound, a deedle-deedle-dee instead of the sepulchral bong bong bong that a midnight death toll should be. It in fact distracted me enough that I looked for the phone first, then heard the shattering sound of what I slowly realized was a glass pitcher of margaritas crashing to the cement. I whirled, seeking Rimelda in the dark.
She was gone.
15
A Phone Call from Sparkle
We took Pink with us, of course, and the four puppies from Ingrid’s. We couldn’t not, even if it would require explanation. But Poppy’s phone started ringing on the way home and it was clear there was going to be explanation, regardless. Poppy listened in silence to her mother’s scolding and then dropped the phone in her messenger bag without a word.
She parked the SUV in the driveway—in for a penny, in for a pound—and we carried the puppies inside.
Lily sat us all down at the kitchen table. Wulfie curled up in my arms, his curly head heavy against my chest. The puppies flopped on the floor. “Now, I want the whole story from beginning to end,” Lily said. “And don’t you dare leave anything out.”
Poppy told the whole story, with a few additions from me and Pink. Lily sat through most of it, though at the part where the demon went into Devon she got up and paced the kitchen in frustration before sitting back down.
“I figured out the same thing you girls figured out,” she said to Poppy, “and I went to the garage tonight to contain the demon in a pentagram. I would have gone sooner except for Wulfie. I didn’t figure there was a rush as long as I went before the next hex fired. The pentagram would stop the hexes until Jonquil could help me deal with him. She has loads of experience.” She threw up her hands in frustration. “What on earth possessed you to let him out?”
Poppy shrugged. I was ready to cry.
“We needed answers,” I said. “And we weren’t getting any. We put a time limit on him. He has to be back in the pentagram by four p.m. tomorrow.”
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