Seriously Wicked: A Novel

by Tina Connolly

  Slouching behind him was Devon.

  Devon with the demon-black hair.

  I wondered idly how the demon had known that black would look totally hot on Devon. Estahoth must have learned something in his previous trips to Earth.

  “You’ve got two months of work to catch up on,” said Mr. Rourke in a low voice to Devon, “and the first thing you do is skip class? Perhaps we need to see what your parents have to say about this.” Visible Undershirt poured himself a slug of root beer and downed it.

  “It’s cool,” said Devon. “I was in Algebra Two at my old school. Give me the other chapter tests to take home and I’ll prove I’m caught up.” He set his overstuffed backpack on Rourke’s desk, scattering the aligned red pens.

  “Problem Four,” said Kelvin, clearing his throat.

  Devon looked down at us. “Why, Flower Girl,” he said. “Were you waiting for me?”

  I smiled sweetly. “Not for you, you devilish thing.”

  “I was a little tied up earlier,” he said. “Lots of new chicks to meet.”

  The words were obnoxious but I could feel the demon’s magnetism from across the classroom. I stared over the desks into his glinting green eyes, wondering if Devon could see me. If he was in there, clawing to get out.

  Desperate.

  “We’re doing multiplication of algebraic expressions,” said Kelvin. “Your input is not required.”

  “Really?” said Devon. He sauntered up to Kelvin and gestured an invisible line around the seated boy. “Math with this mustardy kid?”

  “How did you…?” I said.

  “I am completely unlike mustard,” said Kelvin, “unless you mean Colonel Mustard, in which case yes, I am proud to say I am.”

  “Here are the two study guides, young man,” said Rourke. “You may take the chapter one test in class tomorrow and chapter two after school.” He checked his cell phone. “I’d have you take chapter one right now, but I don’t have time to sit here and proctor. Lucky for you. I suggest you leave my classroom now and cease being a disturbance to my tutor.”

  “Anytime,” said Devon. He started to open his overfull backpack to put the handouts in, then stopped. He slung the backpack over one shoulder instead. It was an odd shape, big and bulgy, and the bottom of the pack looked splotched with wet. Devon tipped a hand at me, said, “Tomorrow, Flower Girl,” and slouched from the room.

  “Why does he call you that?” said Kelvin.

  “A camellia is a flower,” I said absently, still studying the retreating boy and his stuffed backpack.

  “Must be one that smells nice,” said Kelvin.

  Mr. Rourke crumpled his root beer cup and scooped his pens into his bag. He started for the door. Past his thin button-down and out in the dim hallway I saw Devon turn the corner. Then I saw a faint light blink on and off at the top of his pack and I suddenly knew what was inside.

  “Oh hells,” I said. I grabbed my backpack and ran for the door, ducking past Visible Undershirt.

  “Where are you—?” said Kelvin.

  “I’m sorry, we’ll have to work on it later, I’m sorry…” I called back as I dashed from the room.

  “Camellia?” said Mr. Rourke. “Camellia!”

  8

  A Hundred Pixies

  Devon vanished around the T in the hallway as I bolted from Rourke’s room. Where was he going with those pixies, and why?

  I was going so fast I didn’t see Sparkle standing stock-still in the hallway until I turned the corner and slammed into her bony side. She stumbled backward, and something flew out of her hand and shattered into a million pieces on the floor.

  “Oh hells,” I said. “What’d I break? Is that a mirror? I’m sorry.” I scooped up the biggest pieces, looking down the hall for Devon.

  “Leave it,” Sparkle said. I looked up and saw she was turned away from me, her hand covering her face.

  “I bet there’s a broom in the janitor’s closet,” I said. “Did you get cut?”

  “Go away,” she said. “Just go away.”

  I looked closer at her face, wondering if she was crying. Sparkle wasn’t much of a crier even when we were kids. She got mad instead, a cold-blooded mad in which she figured out what to do to the guilty party and then did it. Like once we were getting Popsicles from the ice cream man and this third grader pushed me down and took my Bomb Pop. Next day at school, Sparkle told everyone that he had worms in his butt like a dog gets, and that no one should use the same bathroom because they would get worms, too. The teachers were cranky when the boys kept trying to use the bathroom in the other wing. But he never picked on either of us again.

  The memory made me remember some of the good times we’d had, and I stayed rooted, wanting to help. Sparkle wasn’t really crying, but her fingers moved just long enough to wipe one half tear, and then I saw it, though I didn’t understand what I was seeing at first.

  “Did you bump your nose?” I said. “It’s swelling.”

  Sparkle’s fingers left her face. She clutched the cameo necklace she always wore and glared at me. “Go ahead and laugh,” she said. “Everything worked out fine for you, didn’t it? Nobody cares that you don’t have a dad, that you don’t invite people over, that you never throw parties.”

  “Whoa,” I said. “I don’t think anyone gives two cents about your home life. It’s not like you have anything to hide.” But I still didn’t understand the way her nose looked crooked to one side. “It looks like your old one,” I said unthinkingly.

  Sparkle raised a hand. “Get out of here now, you witch, you—”

  I went from concerned to enraged. “Don’t ever say that again,” I said, “or you’ll be sorry.” And why should I apologize for breaking her mirror, anyway? She’d broken my phone yesterday and hadn’t been a bit concerned.

  “What are you going to do, hex me?” jeered Sparkle.

  “Maybe I will,” I said darkly.

  Sparkle was on a roll now, venomous and stinging where she knew she could hurt me. “Did your witch mommy teach you how to work her evil spells? She’s probably got you down in that basement, training to help her. With her goat’s blood and her animals—”

  “Stop it!” I said, trying to cover up her words, her knowledge. They bit into buried memories I refused to think about. And then I knew what I could do, and before she could hide her face I whipped out my phone and took a picture of Sparkle, upset and angry, wearing her old, bent nose. Her jaw fell open, the stream of words stopped. “That’ll stop you from trying anything,” I said. “Now I’ve got ammunition, too.”

  “Give me that,” she said.

  “No,” I said. I held the phone out of her reach, danced backward on broken glass as she lunged for it. “Keep away,” I said, jumping as her purple nails raked my bare arm. It was childish, but we were both mad and taunting each other, just like we were little again, angry over some toy.

  I’m tall, but so is Sparkle. We’d both kept growing over the summer, and I don’t think either of us was finished. I had maybe a half inch on her. But I used that for all it was worth and held the phone over my head, fending her off with my other arm. She backed me into the lockers and my wrist banged the wall, but I held on. “Real mature,” I panted. “If I could work spells, you’d be the first to find out. I’d cast a spell to show the world what you’re like inside.”

  Her teeth bared. And that’s when the weirdest thing happened. We were both on our tiptoes and her fingers were touching my wrist. And then—I swear—she grew.

  Not, she jumped, not, she leaned forward. She grew. And I can tell you why I know it wasn’t just leaning forward. Because I swear, in that moment, her chest grew, too. It was the weirdest thing.

  “Holy hells,” I said. She would’ve totally gotten the phone away from me then, except she was equally shocked.

  “What now?” she cried, and then I blinked, and she was back to normal, and I still had my phone. Sparkle stumbled back.

  “Are you—?” I think I meant to say “okay.
” What had just happened to Sparkle? Was it something I had done? She seemed totally freaked out.

  Not looking at me, Sparkle said venomously, “You show that picture to anyone and you’ll regret it until you graduate.”

  “Then I’m keeping this until I graduate, just in case I need it,” I shot back. “Call me when you grow up.” I stomped down the hall, grinding bits of mirror under my heels.

  I think she said, “Cash,” softly, but I didn’t turn around. I was keeping my strange piece of blackmail. I was tired of always knowing that she held something over me.

  It wasn’t just the fact that I was a stupid kid who thought the witch was my mother and that I wanted to be just like her. That stuff fades in memory.

  But we’d seen the witch work a spell, and that was the sort of thing you never forgot. Not when you saw the woman you thought was your mother carry a small furry creature into the basement …

  I stuffed down that memory, swallowed it whole. I’d refused to think about that day ever again and I wasn’t going back on that now. It was time to stop Devon.

  Except I had lost him.

  Hells.

  How was I going to find him? He could be anywhere, and the strange things that had happened around Sparkle made me horribly confused. Did the witch leave some spell on me that was going off without my knowing it? Was my close association with elementals causing rogue magic to fire, and was that even possible? The witch had said that the mannequin, with its decade of daily dragon milk, had taken on certain properties. Maybe touching the elemental in our garage day after day had left me the same. Like long exposure to radiation.

  As much as I loved Moonfire, that thought made me shiver. No wonder Sparkle was freaked.

  Without quite knowing where I was headed, I found myself in the drama wing. On one side of the hall was the door to the auditorium; on the other was the theater classroom. That door was half ajar and I could hear Jenah’s laugh floating out. Her drama class was Sixth Hour and she often hung out afterward with the theater kids, doing those improv games I could never get the hang of.

  If I went in there I could share all my problems with her. As she’d wanted me to do.

  But then she’d know all my problems.

  But they’d be shared.

  Hells.

  The classroom door moved and a flash of yellow-and-black neared it. Quicker than thought, I ducked into the auditorium and stood there, breathing. I closed my eyes and sighed. Something was deeply wrong with me. Who ducked away from her best friend like that?

  As I pondered what combination of nasty ingredients made up my soul, I heard a soft thump above me. I looked up and saw the light in the costume shop was on, up in the back of the balcony.

  I had been to the auditorium only a couple times to see Jenah perform, so it took me a moment to remember where the backstage stairs were to the balcony. I banged my shins into a pile of empty paint cans, which clattered all over the black stage floor. Some sleuth I was.

  By the time I got up to the costume shop, it was silent. I peered left and right down the crammed length of the shop, but no one was there. I had no idea how creepy costume shops were when you were in one all by yourself. I shoved aside rows of bright polyester dresses from the sixties and satiny poof dresses from the eighties, all the while thinking a boy with a demon inside would suddenly be revealed behind a pink floral gown. Dress … dress … dress … demon, right?

  But nothing.

  I’d lost Devon, and somewhere the demon inside him was about to do something with those hundred pixies. And I was worried about what that might be.

  I was about to leave when a thin draft down my rainbow T-shirt made me look up.

  There was a trapdoor open to the blue October sky.

  “The theater kids have roof access,” I said softly. “No frikkin’ way.”

  I climbed up the scarf-and-necklace-festooned ladder leaning against the back wall and then I was out on a tar-paper roof, staring down at the valley of the city. The city looked oddly small, a mishmash of green yards crossed with gray cement buildings and darker-gray streets, tumbling down the hill toward where I lived with a crazy witch.

  But I didn’t look long.

  Because on the edge of the roof, arms spread wide, was Devon.

  “Hells,” I whispered like a prayer, and then I ran in silent, ever-quicker leaps toward the edge of the second story. Grabbed Devon’s coat and toppled him sideways and backward.

  Devon fell down with me, and for a moment we were entangled. He shook me off as he stood. His fingers trembled as he clutched his backpack of pixies, leaning over it like he was going to puke.

  “Are you all right?” I said.

  He straightened up. Raised one cool eyebrow, and for a moment I thought he was going to laugh me off again. Lie and say he was plain old Devon and then look down my shirt.

  But he staggered. His shoulders lifted one at a time, as if he was steadying himself, or stepping out of something. The black faded from his hair as he bent double over his backpack again, and the word groaned from his lips: “Cam?”

  “Devon? Really Devon?”

  He nodded. He had a weird expression on his face, like he was trying not to barf. You know when you’re concentrating so hard on not barfing that you don’t have any spare attention for anything else? Yeah. That.

  “How are you doing?” I put a hand on his shoulder.

  “All … all right, I guess.” He sat down hard on the roof, cradling the pixie backpack, stretching his neck from side to side, and the pukiness seemed to pass. “I think he’s asleep.”

  I couldn’t say anything more intelligent than: “Again?”

  “Yeah.” Devon stared across the city. “Cam, will you tell me the truth about something?”

  “Yeah,” I said. The October air was brisk on my bare arms, full of leaf-scented winds that whisked across the tar paper. I sat down next to him, on the alert for any sudden movements. The roof was cold through the seat of my second-favorite jeans.

  “Have I been an ass all day today?” asked Devon.

  “Don’t you remember?” That would be creepy, if the demon was taking his memory.

  Devon grimaced. “It’s hard to explain. I remember most of it. Though I fell asleep a couple times when I just couldn’t stay awake anymore. I tried to time that to those ancient videos in American history. I didn’t want him to be the boss here at school, but really, I didn’t want him to ever be the boss. I’m gonna be snorting caffeine by the time this is over, aren’t I?”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  “But the thing is, I dunno how much of what I did is stuff I would normally do. When he’s awake, he must have access to my brain and memory or something. Because he knows stuff that hasn’t come up. I mean, I think that’s what’s happening. Because this stuff comes out of my mouth that I don’t think I would want to say, but I don’t think he would know to say. Does that make any sense at all? And then thinking back on it, it’s confusing, like I see it all as a dream.”

  “Weird,” I said.

  “He’s asleep now,” Devon said. “I guess he knows I want him gone, too, so he thinks he can count on me to take care of these pixies.”

  “Take … care of?” I said.

  Devon’s voice was low, tense. “He says the only way to get rid of him is to finish the contract. Is that true?” I nodded and he groaned. “Then how do I get through this contract before he eats me?” His blond hair flopped as he shook his head. “I never thought I’d be forced to choose between killing things and, uh, me. Myself.”

  I touched his shoulder. “I tried to stop the witch before we got to this point, but I haven’t done very well so far. I didn’t mess up her spell in any useful way. It’s partly my fault we’re here on the roof.”

  It would’ve been nice had Devon disagreed with me at this point, but he didn’t. “You should’ve warned me,” he said.

  I had told him to stay in the driveway, but I let that slide. He had a lot on his mind. “I
should’ve told you we kept an ax murderer named Clyde in the basement,” I said. “That would’ve kept you upstairs.”

  He didn’t laugh. He just stared into the blue-gray of the city. I guess he was savoring a moment of demon-free soul. He probably wasn’t thinking about me at all. I mean, between worrying about your soul and thinking about the girl right next to you, I suppose your soul takes precedence.

  “It makes me wish I could run away,” he said finally. “Except he’d still be there.”

  “I ran away once when I was ten,” I said. “Made it as far as the train station. They wouldn’t sell me a ticket without an adult present. While I was scoping out the likely-looking bums, the witch materialized in the middle of the station. Literally, I mean. Her hair was all wild and frantic. I saw the look on her face and for one beautiful moment I thought it would be all, ‘Oh Cam, forgive me.’ But no. It was, ‘Go clean the leprechaun castings out of the gutter.’”

  “Cam?” Devon said.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think the witch is going to kill the pixies?” he said.

  I frowned, thinking of pig’s ears, and a silent suppressed memory. “Probably,” I said. “I mean, she said dead or alive, so that implies they’ll be dead when she’s done with them.”

  He nodded and breathed. “Okay, so part of the day when the demon took over I took a break from fighting him saying stupid things and sat and thought about this. The witch said the pixies have to be at the school on Friday. So we just have to keep them contained until Friday, and then we can let them go. I thought up here on the roof is about the safest place. So I asked your friend Jenah if there was access—”

  “When did you see Jenah?”

  “We have American history together,” he explained. “The demon insisted on being awake all through it because some girl named Reese had a white shirt on and you could see her”—his ears went pink again, which was the surest sign I was talking to Devon—“well, her blue … her blue bra. And she’s really, you know … Um. But. I got control long enough to talk to Jenah. She seems like one of those girls who knows everything that’s going on.”