So who all was stuck in the demon realms?
Thirteen years ago the demon had taken one group of people to his oubliette: Dad, Roberto the werewolf, Ed Quatch, and Mélusine. Then Malkin had trapped the demon in that lamp, keeping him in reserve for a day when she was ready to strike against the coven. My dad’s disappearance had probably kept Sarmine on high alert—better to wait a while. Witches are willing to wait. They live for so long. And just in case Malkin died before the time was right to send Sarmine her nasty present, she had it set up as a death trigger.
And who had been taken this week?
My mom, of course. Rimelda—that’s what had happened to her. She wasn’t hidden or dead or anything else.
And all of the prisoners could be gotten out. Sarmine had, for once, entrusted me with helping carry out her plan. I was almost giddy with it. I bring her enough teleportation ingredients for everyone stuck in the oubliette and we could all go home. I could save my mother.
I got out my phone to text Pink the good news and saw a pile of texts from Poppy.
Noon had come and gone.
And Lily had vanished.
* * *
I flew home on my bike. Literally. I hoped no one saw me, but I didn’t really care if they did. I had to get back to Poppy and Pink.
They were in the backyard, staring listlessly at nothing. Wulfie could tell something was wrong, that was obvious. He would come to their side and whine, then lope around the backyard, trying to throw himself the tennis ball. Back to Poppy and Pink.
“They are all fine,” I said breathlessly, jumping off my bike and letting it fall into the yard. “My mother, your mother, your grandmother.” Pink stood, hoping, hoping. “And we have the means to save them.”
I caught the girls up on everything. “So all we have to do is figure out how many supplies we’ll need,” I said. “And then we’ll get the three of them—no, there’s more—” I stopped, all of it finally hitting me.
“Your dad,” said Poppy. “You’ll get your dad back.”
I was as dazed as Poppy and Pink. I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to be at home with two parents, with Sarmine’s sharp temper tempered by the kindness and empathy that everyone mentioned when they spoke of my dad. I didn’t even know how to frame it in my mind.
“That’s what your mom was saying on the recording for us to do,” said Poppy. “Bring the jackalope whiskers and attar of roses and—” She made a horrified face. “A handful of Bigfoot claws.”
I shuddered. “Sam is never going to believe we were telling the truth last night. About wanting to help him.”
Poppy winced. “Okay, table that for a moment. Let’s assume we can get all the supplies somehow. Even if we can, you burn through that stuff like crazy just to stay alive in N-space and not turn into, like, a heap of crushed molecules.”
“Then…” I could barely say it. “Are they alive?”
“He promised us,” Poppy said firmly. “Demons will evade like crazy but they won’t break their contract. He said she was alive. But still. Humans aren’t meant to exist in the demon realms. I don’t know how we’ll possibly make it back without a demon guide.”
“And there’s only one demon who knows how to find them,” I said. “But I have to meet some specific conditions for him to take me, and I don’t know what those are. Although I guess we know there’s one thing a demon always wants.”
“A body,” said Pink.
“Yeah,” said Poppy.
“I am not giving him Devon’s,” I said.
Poppy paced. “We may not have a choice. (A) I don’t think he wants ours. He wants to be a rock star, not a witch. And (B)…” She trailed off, out of respect for me.
“You saw the music videos.”
“Yeah. How’s Devon going to let him go?”
“Call him,” I said. “Ask him to come over. We need to talk to him.”
Poppy obeyed. “He’ll be over in one minute,” she said as she hung up the phone, and the one great thing about demons is I knew that would be literally true. She looked down at her phone, then back at me. “Wait. Did you get a text about a coven?”
I looked at my phone and found I had one, too.
Cascadia Coven called for this Friday at midnight, at Ulrich’s ranch.
Let’s try to solve this terrible business of hexes, & additionally have martinis!
By order of Ingrid Ahlgren, Claudette Dupuy, and Ulrich Grey.
<|:-)
PS: If you don’t come, we’ll assume you started the hexes and destroy you.
“Um,” I said.
“I guess that proxy business really works,” said Poppy. Her face looked drawn and tired. “And we have to go, or you lose your spot and my mom loses her spot. Things will just keep getting worse and worse for the shifters and everybody else.”
“You got that place in the coven you wanted,” I ventured. It was the wrong thing to say. I knew that, the instant I said it. This wasn’t the way she wanted it, and Poppy gave me a look that confirmed it.
“My mom and I would have been allies,” she said. “You have to have someone to work with, to make votes go your way. I believe in the political process and all, but if you think I could simply convince Ingrid, Claudette, and Unicorn Guy that they should give up being rotten people, then you are fooling yourself. Besides…”
“Your mom,” I said.
“My mom!” wailed Poppy.
“My mom?” said Pink. She picked up her ringing phone with a hesitant, hopeful expression. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.… Okay.… Really?… Okay.” She put her phone down and looked at it as if it were a really confusing spell. “Um. My mom said she’s sending me her proxy.”
“Esmerelda said what?” I said.
“She says she’s too hideous to leave the house and I’d better make her proud and not vote for anything stupid.” She looked up at us, a crease in her forehead. “Do I have to vote the way she says?”
“If you have the proxy, you can vote the way your conscience tells you,” Poppy assured her.
“Just vote the way we vote,” I said flippantly. But Poppy was looking at me with a strange expression. “What?”
“Allies,” said Poppy.
“Oh no.”
“You, me, and Pink. That’s three of us. Three of us who could make a difference.”
“Three is not a majority,” I protested. “We walk into that coven, they eat us alive.”
“Ah! But are we only three?” said Poppy.
“Unless you count differently than I do,” I said.
“You go talk to Devon,” said Poppy, pointing past me. “Pink and I are going to look up some rules about parliamentary procedure.”
I turned to see Devon walking up the driveway, a bouquet of tulips in hand.
“It’s out of season for tulips,” I said.
“Not in Brazil,” he said. “I zipped there and back this morning.”
“What, between pulling Sparkle’s fingernail out and disappearing Pink’s grandmother?” I said.
He looked wounded. “I had to do those things,” he said. “I made a deal.” He moved closer. “You wouldn’t like me if I didn’t keep my promises, would you?”
“I don’t like you at all,” I said.
He looked actually hurt at that, and I took pity on him.
“You know what I mean,” I said. “I’m not dating you.”
“Oh, but Cam. Cam Cam Cam. You could be, don’t you see? Devon and I—we’re melding. The best parts of both boys. And you … you know Devon is crazy about you, don’t you? He always has been. Right from the beginning.”
“Continue?”
He took my hand, and—ugh—I let him. I was starting to lose it, I think. “Look, Cam,” he said earnestly. “I heard so much about you in the demon realm. Because Devon was crazy about you, and Estahoth felt all that. He said he was on the love roller coaster with Devon.”
“The love—? Gross.”
“A real emotion storm. He re
ally got the sense of what it is to be alive, you know? Can’t we … can’t you take pity on me and give me one kiss? Let me experience what it’s like to have someone love me?”
“I can’t do that.” I stepped away before I could do something stupid. “Don’t you want people to love you for yourself? For you?”
His green eyes were pained. “Hard to do that when you’re disappearing people for one witch and hexing them for anoth—” He broke off, the mistake plain on his face. “Uh. I mean.”
Poppy and Pink returned just then, Poppy waving an old hardback book of parliamentary rules as she ran. The back door banged behind them.
“Confirmation,” she said gleefully. “I have such a good idea—oh. Devon. I mean, Hudzeth. I mean … Wait, are we interrupting anything?”
I shook my head at Hudzeth. “You can stop pretending,” I said to him. “I know you promised not to tell, but we know everything now. I saw Sarmine’s recording. She let you out early and made a deal with you to hex all those witches.”
Hudzeth sagged with relief. “Oh, good,” he said. “I’ve never been good at keeping secrets. And I’m a little frightened of your mom, even stuck in the oubliette of doom.”
“It was awfully nice of you to help her.”
“I know, right? And for only a chance at a body. I can’t tell you any other demon who would have taken that deal. But I trusted your mom and it all worked out. I think things work nicely when you can trust each other, don’t you?”
Pink and Poppy and I stared at the demon. “Hudzeth,” I said slowly. “Exactly what did my mom promise you?”
“Well, that Devon lived nearby, right? And that he was susceptible to demonic influences, having had a demon in him before, and he’d probably wander right into my grasp, yeah? It all happened as she said it would and—Oh, I wasn’t supposed to tell you all that, was I. But you saw the tape. You said you saw the tape. It wasn’t on the tape. She turned off the tape before she said that, so you wouldn’t know. Oh, Fudgsicles.”
“How could she have done that?” I said. “To me? To him?”
“It was only a chance at him,” the demon backpedaled. “Only a chance.”
“This is the last straw!” I shouted. “She can rot in the oubliette! I am never going to go get her! Never, never, never!”
That is when I finally broke down, throwing myself on the ground like I was Wulfie. All my unshed tears for her death came swiftly and thoroughly at her betrayal. How could she have done that? I howled out my misery until I finally wore down, hiccuping into the grass.
A light touch on my shoulder. Poppy.
She sat down next to me in the grass, right on her nice, neat slacks. She squeezed my shoulder and said, “I’m here for you, and I’m on your side. I will also list a couple facts and see if they help. One, she was trying to get eight people out of a trap. Two, she didn’t have time to figure out a better plan.”
Another figure sat down next to me. It was Devon, actually Devon for the moment, and he had a haunted look as he said, “She knew I had a weak point, and she exploited it.” He looked down at his hands. “But she’s not responsible for my having a weak point.”
“And Hudzeth did help, as much as he could,” said Pink. “He sent out warnings. My grandmother took her ingredients and wand because he had said to be prepared.”
“Same with my mom,” admitted Poppy.
I stood up, wiping my eyes with my sleeve. “Hudzeth,” I said. “Come clean. What do those three wicked witches want you to do?”
“I’m old,” he said in a quavery voice. “I’ve been weakened by my time in the lamp. I need a body or I’m going to waste away to nothing.”
“The full story, please.”
The quavery voice vanished. “I know how to track down all Sentient Magicals,” he admitted. “I’ve been working on my ability in the lamp for the last thirteen years, and I can now do it. In exchange for me magically tagging all the Sentient Magicals so they can be permanently tracked, the witches promised me I can pick one of the Bigfoots for a body.”
“Hudzeth.”
“I won’t hurt it!” he said. “You know that. I’m just going to make it famous, that’s all. Just like me and Devon have been doing. I’m a very good steward.”
“You can’t tag all those people.”
He raised his hands. “Hey, I’m not the bad guy here. I’m just recording some information.”
“It means their death sentence.”
“You can’t hold me responsible for that.” His face was guilty but stubborn. A demon’s Good Ethics list was absolutely not my own.
I groaned. “Then what.”
Hudzeth volunteered, “But if you got me a body before the coven meeting at Ulrich’s tomorrow, I could take that one instead. I would much rather have—”
“A body for free than a body you have to do work for, forever? Bully for you.”
“Ask Devon,” Hudzeth said. “Maybe he’ll let me stay and we can avoid this whole unpleasant mess. We’re bonding nicely.” He shifted again, let Devon look out of his own body.
“He is better than Estahoth,” Devon admitted. “We have the same goals. He’s helping me do the things I wanted to do anyway. My anxiety feels so much better.”
“Devon,” I said. “You can push him out. Remember? You’re stronger because you’ve done it before. You can do it again.”
Devon kind of sidled away. “But then Hudzeth will be free to go to the coven tomorrow,” he said. “Wouldn’t you rather he not take that deal? I should at least work with him until next week, when all the witches have given up and gone home.”
“And the week after that, and the week after that,” I said. “If you start down that path, you will never want to make him go. And you can do it on your own, without him, Devon. You can.”
An undecided Devon face flowed into a Hudzeth face, stubborn and self-satisfied. “If you’ll excuse me, I have one more hex to cast. I need to take care of Claudette.”
“And then you’ll come back and we can go rescue my mother?” I said.
Hudzeth looked shifty. “Next, we’re going to meet with a man from an indie label about recording our songs.”
“And when after that?” I said bitterly. “Don’t I even get a warning note?”
“Oh, do you want one?” he said.
A flapping piece of paper unfurled in front of me. “Camellia Hexar,” it read. “Thy doom striketh at midnight.”
“Midnight is a good time for dooms,” Hudzeth said. “Besides, Devon has an invitation to play at a house party at nine and I don’t want him to miss out on that.” He waved fingers at us. “Toodles.” And then he was gone.
Poppy and I stared at each other blankly.
“My brain. Is mush,” I said. “It will never be unmush again. And I don’t care if it isn’t.”
“Let’s list out our problems,” Poppy said.
“Our mothers are gone,” I said.
“My grandmother, too,” said Pink.
“Hudzeth wants to stay on earth and become a rock star,” said Poppy.
“He’s not going to take us to find our mothers,” I said.
“So we’ll wander through N-space looking for them, use up all our ill-gotten Bigfoot claws, and then burn to a crisp,” said Poppy.
“Meanwhile, the bad witches got rid of all the good witches—”
“Sarmine, Rimelda, and Lily,” put in Pink.
“So they can vote to make Sentient Magicals into property, and make it binding,” I said.
“Then they’ll trade a body to Hudzeth, and he’ll work for them forever, until all the Sentient Magicals have gone extinct.”
Pink shuddered.
“And that’s why they called a coven for as soon as everyone was gone,” finished Poppy. “‘Try to solve this terrible business’ my foot.”
“But what can we do?” I said.
“If we could at least get our mothers back—” said Poppy
“Oh, I wish,” I said.
&nb
sp; “The three of them, plus you, plus Sparkle—theoretically, you might have a fighting chance to stop the coven from making those laws. Maybe one or two of the witches wouldn’t show, what with the hexes and all. If Esmerelda keeps wimping out … then you’d be six, with Pink.”
“You’re forgetting I don’t want to go to that coven at all.”
“Theoretically,” said Poppy.
“Well, theoretically we’d still have to get Hudzeth a body, or he’ll just go back to the demonic realms, where any of those witches could call him and make him a deal in the future. We would only have postponed our problem.”
“Hmm,” she said, tapping her chin. “Where to get a body.”
“And not Devon’s,” I said.
“When I don’t know something, I Google it,” said Pink helpfully.
“I think the Secret Service people come and get you if you Google that,” I said.
“Too bad my avatar isn’t a real help desk, like Devon thought,” Poppy said.
“‘Phone, where do we get a body?’” I said, imitating the requests Poppy had made to it.
“One that Hudzeth will use,” said Poppy.
“One that he’ll want.”
“One boy. Requirements. As follows,” said Poppy in a monotone, mimicking her phone. “Must be cute. Must be musical.”
“Must be a rock star,” said Pink.
“Must be human,” said Poppy.
“Must be—”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Wait wait wait. Are you certain he needs to be human?”
“Well, we’re not going to give him a shifter,” said Poppy.
“Poppy,” I said. “You want a big magical working for Larkspur. Do you think making a really cool app would do it?”
“I’ve already got my spell database,” Poppy said. “But Larkspur has an amazing tech program. I’m probably not the only witch to think of it.”
“How about an app that would hold a demon?”
17
Apps, Allies, and Turning Points in History
Poppy stared at me, her face blank. I didn’t know if that meant she was thinking how great an idea it was or how stupid an idea it was. “Say that again,” she said.
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