For Better or Cursed

by Kate M. Williams

  She does.

  “But…,” I started, not sure where I was going with this, and then it hit me. “But you have common enemies.”

  The icosahedron flipped again. True.

  Cassandra took the 8 Ball from me and shook it. “When I was in the Negative, the demons down there said you swear you’re innocent.”

  False, it said, just like Dwight Schrute.

  “So you’re guilty?” she asked.

  As charged, it said. Cassandra and I looked at each other. Mom was sitting on her bed, and I could tell from her stiff, straight spine and clenched fists that she was paying close attention. But I’m not the only one. Flip. They want the power. Flip. But I take the blame.

  Cassandra looked at me. “Who do you think he’s talking about?”

  I knew exactly who he was talking about. I just knew. And when I looked at Mom, her face still and blank, with all of her thoughts and emotions Saran-wrapped inside so tightly that they’d never reach the surface, I didn’t have any doubt.

  “It has to be the Synod,” I said, looking at Cassandra. “I mean, I always thought that maybe he just discovered Red Magic on his own.” I placed my hand over the 8 Ball’s window, just in case Erebus could hear me. “But I think that’s giving him too much credit. It makes a lot more sense if someone gave it to him.” I uncovered the window and then shook the 8 Ball so that he would hear me. “So the Synod had you training in Red Magic, and when they got found out, they cursed my mom and banished you, sealing the Portal so you wouldn’t come back and talk.” I shook the 8 Ball again. “Is that what happened?” I asked.

  You are smarter than you look, it said. I rolled my eyes and resisted the urge to smash the 8 Ball. I wonder whether this was how my mom felt—needing the help of someone she despised.

  “Why would they do that, though?” I asked.

  The answer was one word. Power. For a moment I was dumbfounded. That made no sense. Who could be more powerful than the Synod? They could erase an entire town’s memory. They could appear out of thin air. They had everything. Except…Beanie Babies. My mind flashed to Adrian telling me about Wanda, and how she was selling off her possessions so that she could buy more Beanie Babies off the internet. That didn’t sound powerful. That sounded pathetic.

  I looked at Cassandra, who walked over and slowly took the 8 Ball back. “I think we need to get back there. Now,” I said, then stood up and went over and threw my arms around Mom in a big hug. As I squeezed her, I didn’t want to let go. “I love you, Mom,” I said, pulling away. “I’ll see you soon.” She remained totally still.

  When we were in the hallway, I pulled the door to her room shut. There was no way to lock it, but I glanced up and down the hall to make sure no one was looking, then raised my hand and used my kinesis to slide her heavy dresser in front of the door on the other side. For now, that would have to do.

  Back at the front desk, we said goodbye to Marie. “You girls be safe,” she said.

  “We will,” I said. “You too.”

  “Rum ball for the road?” Cassandra asked.

  Marie smiled and held up the tin. “Oh, sure,” she said. “Go ahead and take two.”

  When we got back in the car, the street was just as quiet as when we left it. It was like all of Spring River had become a ghost town, not a single person or living thing to be seen. I could tell the demons were out there, though, by the emotional pull and the weird skittering feeling I’d get occasionally, like something was just on the other side of a wall or behind a bush. Then Cassandra turned a corner, about half a mile from the hotel, and in the distance I saw something that made me do a double take. A person walking alone.

  “Turn here,” I said. “There’s someone ahead.” Cassandra turned, and as we got closer to the walker, I could see it was a woman, her hair pulled back under a baseball cap. Closer still, and I could see she was about our age. At the sound of the car, she turned around, and that was when I could see her face. And it wasn’t just any girl. It was a girl I knew well: turtle-smashing, dodgeball-dominating Stacey Wasser, Spring River’s biggest bully, my own personal demon before I ever knew that real demons existed. She’d destroyed my projects in freshman-year art class, pelted me with sporting goods in junior-year gym and delighted in every sadistic second of it.

  Cassandra rolled down her window. “Hey!” she called to Stacey. “What are you doing out here?” Cassandra was not known for her grace, and I could almost see a ridge of fur rise up on Stacey’s back as she took the concerned question as an accusation.

  “What are you doing out here?” she shot back. And then I gasped. Not at Stacey, but at what had just appeared behind her. It must have been hiding behind a car, crouching, but now it stood and drew itself up to its full height, its claws like Argentine steak knives, its vicious face dripping goo, and the hole in its neck gaping. I recognized it from the demonology books—it had no eyes, so it went by smell. If Stacey moved a few feet downwind, she’d be fine, but right now, she was exactly in its line of sniff.

  I leaned over. “Stacey,” I said, keeping my voice steady, “move slowly and quietly and start walking backward. Do it, now.”

  The logo on Stacey’s baseball cap was a hand, made from a weed leaf, giving the middle finger. “Yeah, right, loser,” she said. “Since when do you tell me what to do?” Then, of course, she did the exact opposite of what I’d just told her to do. She took two steps in the wrong direction, turned, and that was when she saw the demon.

  I could see its face twitch as it took in her scent, and then it lifted a paw, claws flexed and glinting. Its swing cut through the air the same time as Stacey’s scream. She dropped to the ground and it just missed her, one of its claws catching on her hat. Cassandra and I were out of the car in an instant. Cassandra’s fire engulfed the demon, but it was so wet and sticky that it hissed and crackled like damp wood and didn’t catch. It was about to strike again, so I held out my hands and managed to grab one of its limbs with my kinesis. It was strong, and I grunted with effort as I pulled its arm and twisted it behind its back. The demon roared in pain, and Cassandra took advantage of its open mouth to shoot a ball of fire straight down its throat. Stacey was screaming a stream of expletives more creative than a comedy special, and this time when I told her to run, she didn’t argue.

  The demon was slippery, and Cassandra hit it with another fireball just as it wriggled out of my grasp. I managed to get ahold of its head and tried to push it to the ground. Stacey was running, but not fast enough. I could see a ripple of recognition move across the demon’s face as it got its bearings and figured out where she was and then started striding after her. Stacey was running at full speed. Faster, even, than I’d ever seen her move in gym class when she wanted to slam someone into a pole or elbow them out of the way. The demon threw one of its arms back, ready to strike. I tried to grab it, but missed. Fortunately, Stacey was kind of zigzagging, which caused the demon to miss. This also pissed it off. It raised its other arm to strike, and I knew it wouldn’t miss again.

  In that second, I didn’t even think, I just did. I raised both hands, mustered everything I had, and grabbed the demon’s head with the pure concentration of all my power. This time, I didn’t pull, or push. I twisted, and twisted, until I heard a snap, like chopsticks breaking in two. It took a second. The demon stood there, wavering, and then gravity took over. It fell to the ground in a pile like a dropped ice cream sundae.

  Stacey was on her butt, looking back and forth rapidly between the pile of demon, me, and Cassandra. I walked over to her and held out my hand to help her up. She looked dazed, and it was hard to tell what she was thinking. She took my hand, and when I pulled her to her feet, she still didn’t say anything.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She nodded, but she wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes were over my shoulder and moving, and I turned, wondering whether there was something else
coming our way. Cassandra was standing stock-still, staring at me. I met her eyes for a second, and then we both looked away. We both knew what I had just done, and we both knew I had no other choice. Stacey gave a little grunt of joy. She’d spotted her hat. She walked over, picked it up, and slapped it against her legs a couple of times to knock off any dust, then she put it back on, even though the top had been sliced to shreds.

  “What was that thing?” she asked, and I decided to level with her.

  “It’s a demon from the underworld,” I said. “They’re running rampant around these parts.” I sounded like a B-movie cowboy talking about coyotes. “Haven’t you seen the news?” She nodded. “Spring River’s kind of under siege right now. You shouldn’t be out and about.”

  “You’re out and about,” she said.

  “True,” I said. “But we’re equipped. We have special powers. Remember that time I threw a dodgeball at your nose without even touching it?” But of course, she didn’t, because her memory was wiped just like everyone else’s in our town. The Synod had done that for practically anything before—a few weird incidents that could have been explained away, and demons that didn’t even leave the mall. Now our whole town was being destroyed. What kind of heavy-duty spell would it take to erase all memory of that? Stacey was still looking at me blankly. “Never mind,” I said. “We’re kind of in a hurry. Where were you going anyway?”

  “I was going to the Kros N’ Go,” she said. “I want chips.”

  I grimaced, because I empathized. “You should probably just go home. Where do you live?” She pointed back down the street. “We can take you.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But I’m really hungry. And we don’t have any food at my house. I was going to get lots of chips so that I don’t have to go out again later.” She took a step toward me, and I instinctively flinched. But she was smiling, and she didn’t stop until she was standing really close. “Have you seen the Kros N’ Go?” she almost whispered.

  I looked at Cassandra, and then we both shook our heads. “Someone ran a car into it or something,” she said. “The front window is all smashed in, and the people who work there left. The Icee machine ran out, but other than that, you can just take whatever you want.”

  I felt my eyebrows furrow. “So this isn’t the first time you’ve come out of the house?” I asked, incredulous, and Stacey shook her head.

  “How many times have you gone to the Kros N’ Go?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “Whenever I want a snack.”

  “Stacey,” I said, “you’ve been risking your life for Cheetos?”

  “Of course not,” she huffed. “Cheetos are gross. I take the Funyuns.” Then she frowned. “Though I took the last bag of Flamin’ Hot yesterday, and I don’t like the original as much, but if that’s all they have left, that’s fine.”

  I sighed. “So you’re not going to go home?” I asked.

  “Not without a tasty treat,” she said. I looked over at Cassandra, and I couldn’t believe I was about to do this, but it seemed like the only option if we didn’t want Stacey Wasser to become the nibble.

  “Come on,” I said, “we’ll take you there. But like I said, we’re in a hurry, so you have to be fast.”

  “Oh, I’m fast,” she said, proudly, “ ’cause I don’t want to be there when the workers come back from their break.”

  Fortunately, the Kros N’ Go was only a block away, so we piled in Janis’s car and were there in two seconds. Cassandra parked on the sidewalk, and we entered the store by climbing through the broken window, which had been completely smashed out, and then Stacey walked behind the counter and grabbed a couple of plastic bags. She handed one to me, and one to Cassandra, and then she started walking up and down the aisles, filling her bag.

  At one point, she turned to me and smiled. “See, isn’t this great?” she asked. “It’s like shopping, but you don’t have to pay for anything.”

  I was about to tell her there was a name for this, and it was looting, when I looked over to see Cassandra, who was filling up her own bag. Then I spotted a bag of Gold-Bears, and my mouth started to water. Oh, what the heck? I’d already killed a demon, so today was not the day to stand on principle. I grabbed the bag, ripped it open, and shoved two greens and a white straight into my mouth.

  Stacey took all the Funyuns the Kros N’ Go had to offer, and also got several jugs of milk, a few packs of gum, and whatever else she could stuff into her pockets and bags, and then we all climbed back in the car to take her home.

  “This is me,” Stacey said, pointing to a house midway down an empty street.

  “Okay,” I said, as she got out of the car. “Be careful. And stay inside!”

  She stopped and turned around. “I’m gonna,” she said. “And I’d thank you for saving my life back there, but I guess we’re even now.”

  “Wait, what?” I asked. I had no idea what she was talking about.

  One of the bags of chips was starting to slip from under her arm, and she shifted a bit so that she could get a better hold on it. “I told you about the Kros N’ Go,” she said. “You probably got at least forty bucks of stuff there.” She shifted the chips again. “So, I don’t owe you nothing.”

  I was sitting there, looking at Stacey Wasser, who was wearing a shredded baseball cap that was stupid even when it had been in one piece, her arms full of stolen snack foods, and I had a hard time remembering why I’d spent almost every day of my freshman year scared to death of this person.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’re right. We’re totally even. So, see you around.”

  I tried not to think about how much time Cassandra and I had lost to this insane interlude, but Stacey Wasser’s life was worth it. Anybody’s life would have been worth it.

  * * *

  —

  We zoomed back toward the hotel, and Cassandra was having fun with the fact that the streets were empty. How could I tell? Because she drove on the left side of the street and went the wrong way down one-ways whenever the opportunity presented itself. When we reached the hotel, she drove through the parking lot and slammed on the brakes, parking Janis’s car where we had first found it.

  Cassandra grabbed the 8 Ball and we got out of the car. As we ran toward the hotel, she started laughing. “I have to give you credit, Pearl,” she said. “I can’t believe you snuck an eighty-pound dog and a full-sized human in here.”

  “Seventy-two-pound dog,” I corrected her. “Pig is very svelte these days.”

  We ran for the hotel’s back entrance, which was, of course, locked, but I was able to use my kinesis to open it and Cassandra and I slipped back inside. As soon as we did, she turned and smiled at me. Our timing was perfect. The Sitter history lecture had just been dismissed, so everyone was milling in the hallways getting ready for the party.

  Ugh. A party that was supposed to be our responsibility. A party that I hadn’t even thought about all day. I wondered how much Brian hated me, hated both of us right now. Then again, maybe us shirking our soiree duties was the best thing that could have happened to Brian because it let him do what he loved.

  We ran up the stairs, exiting on the fourth floor like I was Bill Murray and it was Groundhog Day. The hallway was pretty empty save for a couple of girls at the other end, so Cassandra and I walked down it as calmly as possible and let ourselves back into our room.

  As soon as we stepped inside, I could tell something was wrong. It was too quiet, and there was no sign of Janis, Pig, or our feathered friends.

  “Janis?” I called softly, and then the closet door burst open and all four tumbled out. Janis looked terrified and she came running over to me.

  “There was someone in the room,” she said, half whispering and looking around like maybe they weren’t gone. “Someone came into the room.”

  “Maybe Amirah?” I asked. “Coming to g
et something she forgot?”

  Janis shook her head. “No, I’ve met Amirah, and she’s not quiet,” she said. “Whoever this was, they were sneaking. I couldn’t even hear their feet. But they moved stuff around, and then left again.”

  “Housekeeping?” Though from the looks of the room, it had not been housekeeping.

  Janis shook her head, grabbing the corner of a pillow and twisting it with her hands. “At first I thought so,” she said. “So I locked the big lock. But then they kept trying, and I could see that the big lock was starting to move on its own, so I grabbed everyone and hid in the closet.”

  Cassandra and I stared at her, not quite believing what she was saying. “You grabbed the chickens?” Cassandra asked, and Janis nodded. “Both of them?” Janis rolled her eyes.

  “That’s beside the point,” she said. She was starting to get frustrated. “I just pinned their wings, like you said.”

  “And they were quiet when you were in the closet?”

  “Yes!” she snapped. “They’re intuitive creatures! They knew I was scared, so they shut up. But can we stop talking about the chickens? I’m trying to tell you that someone broke into your room.”

  “Do you think they took anything?” Cassandra asked. Janis looked at her, and then straight-up chucked the pillow at her face.

  “Neither one of you is getting it, at all,” she said. “Someone unlocked the big lock to come into this room. Which means they had to know someone, or something, was in here. Because you can only lock that lock from inside the room.”

  “I could lock it from outside,” I pointed out. “With my kinesis.”

  “Of course you could, Jean Grey,” Janis snapped. “But why would you, unless you had something to hide? And as you just pointed out, the big lock doesn’t do a darn thing in a hotel full of people with superpowers.” She swallowed. “Someone knows you’re hiding something,” she said. “What if they know it’s me?” Pig let out a low growl, as if she was backing up Janis’s story.