Hexes and Exes

by Sarina Dorie

  Miss Periwinkle chanted in a voice that didn’t belong to the elderly matron before me. She half sang with sweet high notes that could have belonged to a siren. The sunlight died away, and the room darkened. The spiral grew bright with stars. Pricks of light lifted into the air around us, and I had a moment of vertigo as stars spiraled around me.

  The pattern reminded me of the cosmos. The more I sank into the cold nothingness of the magic, the more certain I was that this was Celestor magic. Warm colors streaked from one arm of the galaxy around me. I spun toward the center of the spiral, sucked into Miss Periwinkle’s event horizon. I willed my energy into her, pouring it from my hand into hers. I grew closer and closer to the center of the universe, almost touching it, but not quite. A strange feeling of being upside down washed over me.

  Her magic tasted like water and moonlight and stardust. It washed over me, intensifying. Her song smelled like classical music. My senses jumbled together in confusion.

  A bright light flashed. The force of the explosion sent me tumbling back. Miss Periwinkle screamed. I tried to blink away the spots dancing before my eyes, but I couldn’t. Miss Periwinkle shrieked again. I could barely make out her body, twisting and writhing on the floor, scattering candles and books. She covered her face with her hands.

  Dread roiled in my belly. I knew this wouldn’t go well.

  “I’ll get help,” I said.

  I rose to my feet, staggered toward what I thought was the door, crashed into the wall, and fell back onto my butt. I felt along the floor, trying to see. Spots blinking before my eyes blocked everything other than my peripheral vision. I groped my way out of her room, along the hall, and back into her office, accidentally knocking books from her desk. I tried the door to get out of her office.

  It was still locked.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I’ll See You in My Dreams

  I tried to push my magic and my will into the door. Electric-blue crackles flared out of my hand. The handle glowed with heat. That didn’t look safe.

  I pounded on the door. “Help! I can’t get out! Is anyone in the library?” If only I’d brought my lockpick kit.

  By now, enough of the spots had faded from my vision that I could see more clearly. I pushed aside the open door to Miss Periwinkle’s private quarters that blocked her desk and tried the drawers, finding a ring of keys in one.

  The door to Miss Periwinkle’s chambers clicked closed behind me. I tried that handle, not wanting to lock myself out, but I was too late. The door sealed back into the wall and shifted into brick.

  Great. I didn’t know how I was going to get to her now.

  I held up the first key and inserted it into the lock of the door that kept me trapped in the library office. The metal wasn’t glowing anymore, but it still gave off heat, and I was careful not to touch it. The key got stuck. As I wiggled the key out, the metal ring grew hotter. I used both hands to pull on the key. The tip of the key stretched like a string of melted cheese. I dropped the ring of keys to the floor, unable to endure the heat.

  I pounded again. Behind me, through the wall to her quarters, Miss Periwinkle’s cries were distant and muffled. I sat in her chair, trying to think about the spells I knew and what might help me: cleaning, taping posters, fire for warming and light, and some sophomore-level medicinal-plant magic. I also theoretically knew how to call people with my subconscious mind. I had called Thatch while dreaming anyway.

  I closed my eyes and tried to sink into a meditative state, not the easiest thing to do when someone was sobbing in a room nearby, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what my magic had done to her face now. I kept seeing that failed pig-snout surgery from The Twilight Zone.

  “Please help. Library,” I tried to call out in my mind.

  Nothing happened. Of course, before I hadn’t called out to him. I’d gone to him or drawn him to me. I visualized traveling across the desolate landscape of dreams. I flew from my mind across a moonlit horizon of rocks and dust. Prickles of light that reminded me of stars danced in place on the desert surface. The brightest light glowed on the horizon.

  Was that Thatch? I glided toward it, willing him to come to me. The light grew brighter as I neared. In the side of a hill, sunshine glowed from an open door. Within the hill was a sunlit garden that looked as though it went on forever. I stepped through, hesitating at the door, not wanting to invade his privacy. It was one thing to invite him into my dreams, it was another to invade his.

  “Where are you? I need your help,” I said. “Thatch?” I corrected myself. “Mr. Thatch?”

  An old man sat in the garden, reading a newspaper. He wore a bow tie, and his plaid suit reminded me of Doctor Who. An old woman in an old-fashioned dress reminiscent of the fifties walked along the path, carrying lemonade.

  This didn’t feel like Thatch’s head. I was in someone else’s subconscious, in someone’s dream. But it had been the brightest light I’d seen from the landscape of dreams.

  “Where am I? Who are you?” I asked the man.

  The man looked vaguely familiar, someone I had once met in my teenage years. The garden reminded me of my mom’s garden back at our old house, only wilder. Our old picnic table Dad had built was almost out of view around the hedges of rose bushes. My mom would never have let her flowers get this overgrown.

  The sky was blue with happy little clouds drifting by. I walked through the garden. A girl was talking somewhere nearby.

  “Hello,” I called.

  I ran around a wall of sunflowers, nearly walking into myself. It was a younger version of me, wearing the white-and-silver dress I’d worn to homecoming. My hair was blonde, though pink roots showed, not my natural auburn. The other me laughed, juggling bowling pins. Was this my dream? My subconscious?

  Someone clapped. Derrick stood next to a towering beanstalk that hadn’t been there a moment before. He was a younger version of himself, the way I remembered him in high school with his mismatched plaid shirt and pinstriped pants. My heart ached with longing.

  His smile faded as he looked from the younger version of me to me. He tilted his head to the side. “How is this possible? Am I dreaming?”

  I didn’t think this was my dream. It certainly was too light and pretty to be Thatch’s subconscious. That only left one possibility. I had walked into Derrick’s dreams. Or did I just want him so badly I’d constructed this fantasy in my own mind.

  “I think you’re dreaming.” I tried to smile, but my face felt stiff. “Is this one of those Jungian dream interpretations where you’re everyone in your dream except yourself?”

  “Wasn’t it Freud who said that?”

  “Am I speaking to Felix Thatch’s subconscious?” I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. I was too afraid to ask what I really suspected, as if voicing my hopes would shatter them.

  He chuckled. “This is the most hilarious dream ever. I’m Derrick.”

  Tears filled my eyes. This was torture, to see him and to be with him, but for it not to be real. He didn’t look tortured or haunted, like someone under the Raven Queen’s control.

  “Come here often?” Derrick asked.

  Those had been his very first words to me in the cafeteria at Oregon City High School. I said the words as though I were reading a script from that day. “It’s my first day here.”

  “You are hilarious. So . . . what brings you to my dreams?”

  Yes, there was a reason I was here.

  “Where are you? Are you locked up? Can you wake up and call Mr. Thatch and tell him I’m in trouble? Or anyone? Can you call anyone?”

  “Why would you think I’m locked up? I’m sleeping. Probably in my room.”

  I grabbed him by the shoulders, which was way easier in a dream than real life, considering how tall he was. I shouldn’t have been able to stare into cerulean eyes that matched the sky, but I did. “I am trapped in the library office. Miss Periwinkle had an accident. I need help.”

  “Oh, sure. I can get someone. I’ll just wake
up.” He squeezed his eyes closed.

  I wasn’t sure if he would be able to help me even if he could wake up. Thatch had implied he’d been secreted away somewhere.

  Giant teddy bears paraded across the garden behind the juggling version of myself. The stuffed animals ignored us and continued their migration.

  Derrick laughed and shook his head. “I’m not very good at waking myself up.”

  As nice as it was to see Derrick, I wondered if it was better to withdraw from the dream and enter someone else’s subconscious. Then again, there had only been one bright light on the horizon, one doorway into someone else’s mind.

  “I have an idea. I always wake up when my dreams are . . . getting good, if you know what I mean.” He winked at me.

  “Like sex?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “It’s my subconscious. I don’t have a lot of control over it.”

  “I’m going to give this dream five more seconds before I see if I can find someone else.” I grabbed him by the bowtie—Huh, I would have sworn a moment ago he hadn’t been wearing a tuxedo. I yanked him down to my level. I circled my arms around his neck. I pressed my lips to his.

  It wasn’t a romantic kiss. It wasn’t anywhere as nice as the time we’d kissed after homecoming. Still, it must have been enough.

  The bright cheery light of the dream dissolved around me. The door I had entered through was shrinking. I had a bad feeling about what would happen if I didn’t exit right now. I leapt out of the portal and into the moonlit landscape beyond. I snapped back across the expanse of barren rocks and into my own body.

  I stood up, feeling groggy and out of sorts as I blinked at the sight of Miss Periwinkle’s office. I tried the doorknob. It was hot, and I drew my hand away from the metal. My fingers were red but not blistered.

  I pounded on the door again. Probably not many students would be in the library this early. Teachers would be in their rooms or away for the day. I sat in the chair again, trying to immerse myself in a meditative state, but I couldn’t do it. My feet kept fidgeting, and my stomach churned with worry. I pounded on the door again.

  “Is anyone out there?” I shouted. My fist felt bruised from hitting the door so many times. I switched to the other fist.

  Wind whistled from underneath the door, pushing into the room. Loose papers on the desk fluttered into the air and danced before being smashed against the bookcase. My hair rushed away from my face.

  The push of wind slowly faded. The howling started up again a moment later. Papers fluttered again, but this time they plowed into the door to the library instead of away from it. One of them was sucked under. The force of the wind rolled the chair closer to the door. I braced myself against the desk and inched back. The air in my lungs felt like it was being sucked out. The suction of wind faded away, only to start up again. A faint perfume of fresh-cut grass and springtime gusted into the office. The spices of faraway places and other times rushed over me. I knew this smell. It was Derrick’s magic.

  I had woken him, and he’d come.

  I didn’t know if this was good or bad. Thatch had said we couldn’t be near each other, that Derrick would kidnap me, and take me to the Raven Queen or hurt me.

  The breeze pushed the chair back into the bookshelf. The wood of the door groaned. I got what he was doing now: I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow this door down.

  I ducked under Miss Periwinkle’s desk, curling myself up against the wall and covering my head with my arms.

  The door creaked and groaned loader. The chair skittered back. Books from the desk fluttered open before tumbling into the floor and smacking against the glass case. The door exploded with a deafening roar. It crashed into the glass case, splintering. Glass sprayed onto the floor.

  Miss Periwinkle was going to be soooo mad about those books if they were damaged.

  The wind died down. I crawled out from under the desk, trying not to touch any shards of glass. I ran out of the office, whirled around, but I didn’t see Derrick anywhere. Had he done this from his prison?

  I ran through the library, looking over my shoulder one last time before I pushed open the door and ran to the dungeon. A small group of students worked along the back counter of Thatch’s classroom, using cauldrons to brew some kind of horrible-smelling potion. I covered my nose with my hand, trying not to gag at the stench of rotten eggs and burnt hair.

  “If your spell doesn’t smell like roses, it isn’t working,” Thatch said from his desk.

  “I’m trying!” an acne-faced boy said. “I can’t remember what ingredient to add.”

  “Give us a hint,” a girl begged.

  Thatch huffed. “It isn’t my fault you didn’t take notes.”

  I leaned against the doorway, panting. “Thatch—Professor Thatch—I need your help.”

  “Of course you do.” He set down his quill and folded his hands across his desk. “What did you do this time?”

  “I’m being serious.”

  “So am I.” He leaned back in his chair, making no effort to move.

  I tilted my head at the students and to the door.

  He rolled his eyes and trudged away from his desk. “Keep working on your project,” he said to the students.

  “It’s Miss Periwinkle.” I grabbed him by the sleeve, tugging him out the door. I lowered my voice. “She told me I had to help her. She told me I was going to fix her face.”

  He twisted his arm away from me. “There’s nothing you can do for her. You don’t know that kind of magic.”

  “You don’t understand. I did help her. But it didn’t work. She made me sit in this big spiral and hold her hand. Something went wrong and now she’s locked in her room and she was screaming.”

  His face blanched. “Will you ever learn? You’re lucky she didn’t drain you. What were you thinking?”

  “She didn’t give me a choice. She told me she was going to tell Jeb what I am if I didn’t help her. She saw what I did last night in the forest with the lightning.” I swallowed.

  “And you didn’t try to make up some kind of excuse of using Elementia lightning magic?”

  “I might have loaned her my powers last night too.”

  He walked briskly now, his strides so long I jogged to keep up. His poker face of calm was gone, replaced with anger. “Let’s just take an inventory of all the people who know what you are and who have seen your magic—who might someday use you or tell someone else who will then use you: Hailey Achilles, Madison Jennings, Imani Washington, Miss Periwinkle. Anyone else?”

  “Bart the unicorn. Greenie will probably guess at some point.” Then there was Vega. She probably had guessed, although she hadn’t threatened me or used me for my magic. That was the kind of thing she would do.

  Thatch made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat.

  “And you,” I added.

  He took the steps to the ground floor two at a time. “I am the least of your worries.”

  I was panting by the time we reached the library. Thatch surveyed the busted door to her office. “Miss Lawrence, was that truly necessary? Do you think I can just fix everything with magic?” He tapped his wand against the brick wall behind her desk, the invisible door appearing again.

  I waved a hand at the door. “I didn’t do that. Derrick did.” I bit my lip, knowing my admission wasn’t going to gain me any favors.

  He froze, his hand on the door.

  “It was an accident.” I could tell I was just digging myself deeper. He had opinions about accidents.

  Slowly, he turned to me. “Did I not tell you to leave Derrick alone? He has a curse that will put your life in danger. If you see him, you will make his condition worse.”

  I held up my hands in an effort to stop him from jumping to conclusions. “I was locked in here, and I couldn’t get out to get help. I was trying to reach you through my mind—like I did while I was sleeping—but I found Derrick instead. I told him to wake up and get someone. But I guess he didn’t. He busted down the doo
r. When I came out, he wasn’t anywhere.”

  “Merlin’s fucking balls. Why must you do this to me?” He shook his wand in the air at me. “I’ll deal with you later. If you know what’s good for you, you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”

  He opened the door to Miss Periwinkle’s quarters. It was quiet. I poked my head inside. She was gone.

  Thatch said he would look for Miss Periwinkle. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had already finished planning lessons. Josie wasn’t in her room and there was a note on Khaba’s door saying he was filling in for another teacher’s duty. I went to the admin wing and used the steam-powered printing press to make copies of handouts for the following week.

  In my classroom, I drew a picture. It was of Derrick, of course. Nothing magical happened. I didn’t have any visions and see him. I considered how much I wanted to look for him, but I didn’t know if I would be able to stop myself from throwing my arms around him and kissing him. Thatch had warned me away from Derrick for a reason.

  After lunch, I swung by Josie’s classroom. Her head was bent over a stack of papers. She readjusted her black-rimmed glasses when she saw me in the doorway.

  “I thought I would see if you wanted to take a walk and get out,” I said. “Maybe we can see if Khaba wants to come with us, and we could go to Lachlan Falls.”

  Josie waved a hand at the mess of papers on her desk. “I’ll be lucky if I get through this stack of essays and get a lunch break at all.”

  I ate with the students at lunch. I brought Josie lunch from the cafeteria, but I didn’t linger. I knew she didn’t want to be disturbed. If I had been able to see Invismo, I would have gone to him to thank him for helping me the day before, but if he was around, he didn’t make his presence known.

  The afternoon silence was occasionally broken by a student whooping or hollering in the student lounges or playing outside. I returned to my classroom, practicing remedial spells and charms and looking for a spell on how to get puke out of coats. The closest I found was for stains. I wanted to make sure I returned Miss Periwinkle’s coat to her clean.