Seriously Wicked

by Connolly, Tina

  “Your offense bores me,” said the witch. “You are contained in my pentagram, so you only have two choices. Accept my offer and have the mannequin for your earthly body. The goat’s blood will bind you to it so you cannot leave it for a human body. Or, go home. Which is it, Estahoth?”

  Estahoth put his arms out, as if testing the glass walls of the pentagram. Then the rainbow colors shimmered and his body dissolved. The rainbow lit up the glass like a prism for one gorgeous moment. Then with a swoosh, all the rainbow light went into the mannequin. It levered to its feet, awkwardly. Seemed to sniff the air. Sniff its fingers, like it was examining the spell that bound it. It pressed its stiff fingers against the glass.

  “I accept,” Estahoth said. The mannequin’s lips did not move.

  “Well chosen,” said the witch. She touched her wand to the glass and inscribed a door.

  The glass melted away and Estahoth stepped into our world. The rose/dragon/salamander smell dampened, replaced by a wet, moldy scent I last smelled when our basement flooded. Mold. Mold plus the sharp scent of firecrackers; that was the scent of this demon.

  The demon-mannequin creaked around the basement, testing his limbs. The mannequin’s cheekbones were chipped where she’d struck the floor, spots of white against the pink. Her painted eyelashes made her eyes seem wide with fear.

  I swallowed. “Doesn’t look very real,” I said. “How do you think he’s going to get around town looking like that?”

  The mannequin swung around to look at me. It fixed me with painted black eyes.

  Then it collapsed to the cement floor in a clattering pile.

  The rainbow light rushed out of it and against me.

  It was like standing in a tornado. The light had a force that beat against me like thunderous wind, battering me down with firecrackers and mold. I staggered, my back hit the wall, and then there was nowhere to go. “I thought … you said … goat’s blood would contain him!” Instinctively I pushed against the rainbow light as hard as I could. The witch’s demon was no way taking me over.

  My eyes watered from the strain. My bones felt like they were being both squeezed and ripped apart at the same time. I pushed and pushed and pushed—

  —and then suddenly, I tumbled forward onto the dusty basement floor as the demon withdrew, my hands smacking the cement. The rainbow light compressed, gathering force. “That wasn’t goat’s blood,” he said in a pitch like struck crystal.

  Then he rushed the witch.

  This shows you how strong the witch is. She beat that tornado-force elemental back with the kind of glare she gives me for breaking the dried snakeskins.

  The rainbow light filled the mannequin and it stood up. It wobbled on its jointed high-heeled feet, unsteady. If a mannequin needed to breathe, it would be breathing hard.

  “Oh, please,” said the witch. “You think we’re not both well shielded? I’d just like to see a demon get into anybody with witch blood. Now tell me, Estahoth. What kind of blood was it?”

  Stony silence.

  “What kind?”

  “Cow’s,” the demon said, and laughed sharply. “Not even strengthened with werewolf dung. I thought you knew bovines weren’t good for anything but love potions and lucky charms.”

  The witch didn’t spare the energy to look at me, but my jittery heart sunk to my tennis shoes regardless. Cow’s blood! Had Kelvin always been giving me the wrong stuff, or was that his mom’s doing?

  The mannequin rocked back and forth. “You can’t keep me away from humans forever.”

  “Yes, I can,” said the witch calmly. “I have plenty of control over that plastic carapace.” She pointed her wand at the demon. “Back in the pentagram you go. We will try this again tomorrow with real goat’s blood.”

  The mannequin rocked toward the pentagram. I could tell that the witch, despite her calm words, was under a tremendous strain. Her left hand, hidden behind her back, was clenched and knotted as she tried to drive the demon back into the pentagram through sheer force of will. And so forceful was Sarmine’s will that it seemed, almost, she was winning.

  I held my breath, not daring to disturb even the air in the basement as Sarmine pushed the mannequin toward the pentagram.

  And then the werewolf cub burst through the basement door and skidded down the steps, an entire bag of barbecued pig’s ears swinging from his jaws. A blond boy thumped down after him. “Not all of them,” he shouted. “I need those for Bingo! Heel, boy, heel!”

  Wulfie ran smack under the mannequin’s legs, jolting the demon out from what little control the witch had on him. Over they went in a pile, and the pig’s ears flung from the bag, skittered across the cement floor.

  Devon skidded to a halt and looked around in amazement at the scene in the basement. His eyes met mine. “Oh man,” he said. “I didn’t mean to come in, I mean, I was just chasing … I mean, your dog nearly took my thumb off grabbing that bag and—”

  The rainbow light surged from the mannequin, bigger, wider, flashier. It grew and grew toward Devon.

  “Devon! Run!” I shouted.

  He tried to obey, but his foot slipped on the pile of pig’s ears and he windmilled. Wulfie ran around his legs, howling.

  The witch grabbed powders from her fanny pack, shouting the first part of a spell—

  But we were all too late.

  In a stream of rainbow light, the demon rushed out of the mannequin and into the boy collapsing in a pile of pig’s ears.

  5

  Devon on the Loose

  Devon stood up slowly. He looked around at us and then he grinned.

  It was not any kind of bashful, blushing, boy-band-boy grin.

  It was pure malice.

  It was very strange to see that ferocious look on Devon’s kind face, and I have to admit that for a weird moment it made me realize how good-looking he was. He looked sure of himself, a boy that could do anything. Then I shook myself. This was no longer Devon.

  This was Estahoth the demon in Devon’s body.

  And he was very, very powerful.

  “Now Estahoth,” said the witch crisply. “You get right back in that mannequin.” She walked past me, wand out, and as she did she whispered fiercely, “See if he’s still in there.”

  “Ha!” said Estahoth. “I like this body.” He flipped up the collar on Devon’s polo shirt like dorks do to look cool. Except, with the sneer in place … he almost did look cool. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Into the nice mannequin and we’ll say no more about it,” said the witch. “You don’t want any trouble, do you?”

  The witch sought my eyes and jerked her head at Devon’s body. I swallowed. “Devon?” I said. “Devon, are you in there?”

  “Hiding like a scared sprite,” said Estahoth.

  That made me mad. Devon might be a sweet boy with stage fright, but any boy willing to dump water on a strange girl’s fiery butt is a boy with strong character. I knew he wasn’t cowering. He simply hadn’t been invaded by a malevolent elemental before. He didn’t know his options.

  I imitated the witch’s commanding tone. “Devon, come on out right now,” I said. “The demon doesn’t run your life. You can push your way out.”

  Devon’s body kind of sagged. The arms jerked and the evil look on his face flickered on and off. Then it faded completely and the boy-band boy returned. “Cam?” he said. “Wh-what do I do?”

  “We’ll get him out,” I said. “Won’t we, Sarmine?”

  “Of course,” said Sarmine. “But you’ll need to be brave for a while. Can you walk back to the pentagram?” If she could get Devon in the pentagram, she could seal it off. Of course, I didn’t know what that would do to Devon, to be stuck in the pentagram with an angry demon. It sounded like a dangerous plan to me.

  Devon took a ragged step, then another. It looked like he had invisible weights around his ankles.

  Then the demon surged back up and ran with Devon in the other direction.

  “Throw your shoe,” shoute
d Sarmine.

  “What?” But it’s best to obey the witch, no matter how crazy she sounds. I yanked it off, not even untying the laces.

  “At the demon! Do it!”

  I beaned Devon in the head with my tennis shoe. He yelped and spun, feeling the back of his head. “Werewolf dung,” the demon said slowly. “Strengthening the cow’s blood, locking me into this body.”

  “It was a long shot,” agreed the witch.

  The demon sneered. “Never you mind. I like this body. It’ll be mine by Friday.” He clattered through pig’s ears and up the basement steps. “Suck it, witches!” he shouted, and then he was gone.

  The basement was silent, except for the keening of Wulfie, who knew he’d effed up. The witch’s shoulders slumped. My chest still hurt from the demon’s attack.

  “This is all your fault,” I said to the witch. “What are you going to do?”

  Nasty silence, and then the witch drew herself to a ramrod-straight position and glared down her nose at me. “I am not the one who supplied cow’s blood,” she said. “As punishment, you may start by cleaning up the basement.”

  “But—”

  “As further punishment, mosquito bites,” she said. She flicked her wand and itchy spots splattered my forearms like water droplets.

  I shrieked and covered my arms. “But Devon!” I shouted, before she could think of more punishments. “You can’t leave him like that. The demon will eat his soul.”

  The witch shrugged. “Not if Devon’s strong enough. I once heard of a woman who lasted eight days. Estahoth is contractually bound to fulfill my agreements. When he’s done, he has to go home. He can’t break those rules.”

  Eight days could work. Devon only had to last three. “But what’s typical?”

  “One.”

  I scratched my arms. “I can’t believe you,” I said. “Causing all this chaos to find one lousy phoenix. Heaven knows what you’re going to do with it.”

  “It’s a brilliant spell,” said the witch. “Everyone will remember having elected me as mayor last November. Manipulating minds takes a lot of power when you’re talking one person. But when you’re talking an entire city and a year’s worth of history? That takes more juice than the dragon could cry in a hundred years. They won’t vote me in; very well, I’ll vote myself in.”

  “That’s not how democracy works,” I said. I couldn’t believe the whole reason the witch moved us here was because there was a phoenix at my high school. So much for choosing your town for a good school system. “Look, why would an air elemental want to live here when he could go home to his mountaintop? The dragon would be off in a minute if there were any others like her.”

  “The phoenix R-AB1 has always lived in this area, long before this city was built,” said the witch. “It stayed here even after the roads went in and the buildings went up. Ninety years ago there was an enormous city fire. Those deluded humans said it was started by a cigarette, but we know the pattern, and it was phoenix fire. Several of us moved here in the last two decades. It was a good place to source phoenix feathers; you could always find a dropped one here or there if you knew how to look. I’ve been storing them.

  “But fourteen years ago the phoenix disappeared. The witch community broke up somewhat after that; a lot of us moved on. It’s been a bad century for witches. We keep to our tract houses, try to look normal. Witches all around the world are waiting for a rallying cry like mine, ready to bring us out of hiding.” Sarmine’s teeth bared. “Because I would do great things with this phoenix. Not like Kari.”

  “Kari?”

  “She’s the one who summoned a demon fourteen years ago and transfigured this phoenix so no one could find it. I had my suspicions, but recently my fears have been confirmed. She hopes to use the phoenix flame to her own disgusting ends, which I believe involve making herself very, very rich. This, I will not let her do. A phoenix flame is a powerful force, not to be used for something as déclassé as money.”

  “That’s all well and good,” I said. I picked up my shoe, which looked clean enough. I tried not to think about the werewolf poo molecules that were apparently lurking in its treads. “But you’ve now ruined this innocent boy. You have to help Devon.”

  The witch brushed dust and petal bits off her skirt. “If you wish to help your trespassing friend, then I suggest you help Estahoth carry out my demands,” she said. “The quicker he’s done here, the more chance your boy has.” Her gaze raked the basement. “And don’t skimp on the bleach.”

  * * *

  The blue chalk pentagram had adhered to the cement. It took three hours to scrub it clean, and then I still had to take dinner to the dragon. Moonfire ate an entire sheep twice a week, and the process consisted of hefting one from the big basement freezers and setting it out to defrost, then taking the already defrosted one and slow-roasting it in the basement oven for twelve hours while I was at school. (Sure, lots of apex predators eat their meat raw. Not dragons.)

  But I loved Moonfire. I hefted the sheep in its battered roasting pan up the basement steps and out the back door to the RV garage. Moonfire rumbled inquisitively at me as I backed through the door with my pan full of sheep.

  Moonfire is hard to see. Like all female dragons, she’s part blue, part translucent, and part invisible. Trying to see her is a little like looking at one of those old-timey Magic Eye pictures. If you figure out how to focus, then suddenly the little blue bits and the translucent bits and the way that things are slightly warped when viewed through the invisible bits combine to make a dragon. I had painted the garage sky blue long ago to give her extra protection in case someone ever peered in to see why the garage had a smoking chimney. I’m used to her, though, and when you’re used to something it’s more obvious.

  I plopped the warm sheep in front of her. Moonfire nuzzled my hand in thanks and I skritched her scales. She was definitely my favorite member of the household. I sunk to the painted concrete, leaned back against her warm side, and stretched out my legs till they met the garage wall. My still-damp tennis shoes were tufted with straw and dust bunnies, and they wafted bleach back to my nose.

  I’d forgotten The Crucible to read to her, so I told her a story I’d told her over and over since I was little.

  “Once upon a time,” I said, “there were a mommy and daddy who were very excited to have a baby. An innocent little baby, who would soon have blue eyes and a smooshed nose that everyone says someday she’ll grow into, though she’s wondering how much someday is left, since she’s already fifteen.

  “Anyway. There was one thing the mommy wanted, and that was chocolate pickles. So the daddy went out to find them. He tried the corner mart, he tried the twenty-four-hour drugstore. And just when he was about to buy pickles from the deli and dip them in melted candy bars, a long-nosed old woman appeared out of nowhere and offered him a whole container of chocolate-covered pickles in exchange for cash. Proud of himself, he ran home to his wife, beamed with fatherly pride, and said: ‘You know, it was the strangest thing. She said she’d take cash, but she said she’d come for it later.’”

  I rubbed Moonfire’s scales hard with the scale brush she likes. She coughed bits of roasted sheep at me, then purred.

  “Four months later the mommy had a baby girl, with nutmeg hair and blue eyes. And in the tired haze she named it Camellia after her mother and Anna after his mother and Stella because she wanted her little girl to be a star.

  “And when an ugly old woman picked Camellia Anna Stella Hendrix out of the baby room and took her away forever and ever? Well, nobody lived happily ever after. The end.”

  The dragon purred some more and rolled so I could reach her belly. Dragons don’t talk, but they’re not animals. They’re elementals, and all three elementals are smart, even if the dragons don’t communicate in the same way humans do. If you get close to dragons you can pick up their emotional vibrations, and sometimes even pictures. It’s usually nostalgia for the old days mixed with I miss my dragon sisters, but when I�
��m there, she sends me extra thrums of comfort, almost like I’m her kit.

  I stroked the dragon’s neck, then flicked messy bits of sheep back into the roasting pan. “Think to me of the old days,” I said, warm against her hide. “Think to me what you miss.”

  The dragon’s pictures are like dreams. The more you try to focus on them, the quicker they fade. This story was the one she’d told me the most, so I’d pieced it together over all our years together. I saw it more clearly because I could practically tell it to myself.

  She showed me an old world, a world with no paved roads, no buildings, no radar to mark the passage of unidentified flying dragons. Hills and hills of rolling green and gold, and here and there the passage of people, the smoke of campfires. She soared high, with a daughter behind her, and their sky-blue bellies reflected light. Their translucent limbs disappeared in the atmosphere. From below, they looked like bits of glittering sky, invisible unless you knew how to look. They landed in the plains and ate buffalo; they landed in the mountains and ate nuggets of gold. Male dragons were uncamouflaged. They were bright: reds and oranges. They fought each other, and then there was flame, and forest fires.

  “Why can’t female dragons spit fire?” I said. “Doesn’t that make you mad?”

  She thought of a male dragon, searing a female who would not mate. She thought of herself and her sisters, surrounding him, tearing him to bits. She thought of more and more male dragons dying in their own wars, until they had all gone. She thought of her sisters, caught and destroyed one by one by men in green and brown, all over the world. She used to think she caught a wavelength, a rumble of Draconis late at night … but even this had faded in recent years. Hard to know if they were all truly gone, or merely impossible to hear in the modern crush of sound and radio waves.

  Dragon milk welled in her eyes and dripped into the glass jam jars that hung around her head to catch the excretions. Her neck sagged and she coughed, her wheeze shaking the jam jars against her side with clink-clinks. “We’ll get your chest looked at, I promise,” I said. I leaned my head into her rough scales and sent back images of one of my plane trips. I’d been sent to Brazil at thirteen to courier ingredients home for the witch. I showed her our plane flying through gold-lit clouds, I showed her tops of textured green trees, and I felt her warm rumble of enjoyment beneath me.