“Not my mom.”
“—didn’t give a time for the pixies on Friday. And didn’t say ‘into my possession,’ like she did with the phoenix. So Friday morning we’ll simply set them free.”
“Very clever,” I said. “As good as a demon in wriggling around contract loopholes.”
He smiled. “Do you want to see them?”
“Totally. I haven’t been pixie-catching since I was a kid.”
He pulled the box from his backpack and gently set it on the ground. The bowl of water had sloshed all over and the bottom of the box was wet, but he didn’t seem to mind. He reached in and withdrew one tiny pixie, which he put in my palms. He didn’t bother to say, “Don’t let it escape,” but I kept my hands cupped over the tiny thing.
“The dark green ones are from the rocky stream just before the lake,” he said.
“That’s a good spot.” I petted the pixie’s tiny curved back. It was cool and damp. He hopped a little on my palm and flicked his wings, testing them out.
“There’s a footbridge there. It was just light enough to see a pair of hares. And then bats came swooping in to eat the mosquitoes, and then the pixies were swooping after the mosquitoes, too. Once the demon rubbed my eyes, I could see the pixies. See that they weren’t really frogs even though they could pass for frogs. They blinked on and off like turn signals.” He touched the top of my pixie’s head. “We should go back there sometime.”
“All right,” I said, warmed by the invitation. Devon talking about animals was an entirely different person than Devon talking about bras. I wanted to say he had a similar sort of confidence to what the demon displayed, though, duh, of course he wasn’t using it to try to make girls swoon, so I didn’t really know how to describe what I meant. Maybe it was just tough luck for Devon that he was an animal geek—and songwriter—born into a boy-band-boy body.
Devon tugged a pencil pouch from his backpack. “I found some spiders during gym,” he said, and tipped the crawly contents of the pouch into the box. “I wonder if pixies are amphibians like frogs.”
“I think so,” I said. “Sometime I’ll show you the witch’s taxonomy. It adds in the creatures regular humans don’t know about.”
“They don’t separate them out by the creatures with magic? Maybe they should be their own kingdom.” He picked out a tiny frog-pixie of his own and cupped it in his hands.
“All organisms have magic in them,” I said. “Plant, animal, human. Pixies have more than frogs, but they both have magic. Like you can use frog hops for bouncing, but it takes several hundred frogs, and how often do you want to be good at bouncing? But pixie wings can be used for buoyancy or for secrecy. Or sometimes you just use their light. Their light’s often used in spying spells. Capture one, get three blinks, and let it go. Witches combine ingredients through trial and error and add their own abilities to it. Scientific, really.”
“You’ve used their wings?” said Devon.
I could hear what he thought of that in his voice. I was sure he was imagining me pulling the wings off pixies, and I almost leaped on the attack and said, “Well, you give your dog pig’s ears to chew!” But then I pulled myself back from that paranoid response and said calmly, “Pixies die with the first snowfall. Their wings slough off. You gather them in the snow.”
“Could the demon use these little guys for spells, too?”
“I dunno if he’d bother,” I said. “Elementals don’t work magic, they are magic. Unlike witches, they don’t need ingredients to perform magic, because it comes from within. But I don’t know what the rules are right now, while he’s inside you. Witchipedia was vague on that part. And by ‘vague,’ I mean the article had been edited a whole lot, back and forth. I guess demons don’t like to have too much written up about them.”
Devon nodded. “He said he didn’t have any power, but I don’t think that’s true,” he said. “He already showed me pixies that I couldn’t see before. Who knows what else he can do.” His pixie blinked on and off in his palms as he gazed out over the city.
“Friday,” I said firmly. “You just have to make it to Friday.”
He nodded. “Just resist him, over and over. Not let him find my weak spots.”
“You think you can?”
“Sure,” he said. But his eyes told a different story, I thought. “He’s not going to get the best of me. He’d have to know—” He looked around like someone might be coming up behind him. “Stupid of me. I know where he is and he can hear everything. He knows anything we plan. He’ll be able to recall anything I say to you.”
“Anything?” I said. My heart went patter-thud.
That needed no answer, I guess. Devon didn’t say anything. We sat on the edge of the rooftop together and watched the red and yellow trees sway against the blue sky. I could see small figures walking around in the park across the street. The box of pixies blinked.
“He thinks he can seduce me by making a hundred girls fall for me. I don’t care about that. Who’d want to be clung to by ordinary everyday girls?”
“Not I.”
“But then sometimes,” Devon said softly to the trees in front of us, “he’s got the confidence to say the things I maybe wanted to say, but didn’t have the guts. It gets very confusing.”
“Um, really?” I said. His hand was very close to mine on the rooftop. Our arms were so close that when we breathed out at the same time, my sleeve touched his jacket. There seemed to be electricity jumping that gap, from his arm to mine, heating my side. I wondered if he could see me breathing. The more I thought about the way our breathing made our sleeves touch, the more I seemed to mess up my own breathing patterns, making my breaths seem irregular and hugely obvious. Surely he could see the uncool way my chest lurched, just from our stupid sleeves.
Why couldn’t I just enjoy sitting on the school roof with a rather nice boy who had a few demonic issues? Why did I have to be thinking about my stupid breathing?
I blamed the witch.
“Hells!” I said as my pixie made a dash for it. I lunged and caught the little guy, placed my finger gently between his wings and held. He blinked faster, upset with me.
Devon yawned. “I haven’t been this beat-up since I tried to walk six dogs at once.”
“How’d that work out?”
“Got my arms and legs wrapped around a birch tree,” Devon said. “Sat there with six dogs licking my face while Dad untangled me. I got a song out of it, though.” He sighed. “We’d better get off the roof while the gettin’s good. Pack these pixies up.”
My mouth wanted to say something dumb like, “I hope you’re not bored with me,” but I kept my lips tightly sealed. “Did you have somewhere you needed to be?” I said lamely.
“Need to schedule practice with the band before Friday,” he said. “Demon or no, I don’t want us to suck.”
“I’m sure you won’t suck.”
“Not if I let him sing for me. Maybe I’ll get one good thing out of him.” Devon’s arm moved as he put his pixie in the box. The electricity left my space. “Cam?” he said. “About Friday…”
How dumb is it that I hoped he’d ask me to the dance? Very dumb. We had more important things on our minds. Anyway, I still liked him better with the black hair than with the blond, which meant I was all kinds of weird, liking something that was demon related. I had problems I wasn’t going to admit to Devon.
“You’ll be there, right?” Devon said. “Help me if things go haywire?”
Internally I sighed. “Of course,” I said. He reached for my pixie and I put the little winged creature into his hands. Our fingers touched as he took it from me. Electricity, bam.
I kept waiting for him to pull his hands away, but he didn’t. It was like we were both pretending that a pixie needed four hands to keep it from getting away. His face was so near to mine, his green eyes clear and deep. “Then … maybe after…”
I tumbled over sideways as the backpack I was leaning on was jerked out from under me. “What the
—”
Sparkle backed away, rifling through the swiped backpack.
“Get back here,” shouted Devon, and I heard him jumping to recapture the newly escaped pixie.
I started toward Sparkle, but she glared at me and I stopped, thrown.
Her nose was back to normal.
I mean current-normal. The nice straight nose she’d had the last two months.
“Erase the picture and I’ll go,” Sparkle said.
“It’s not in there.” I edged toward her. Sparkle hefted the backpack as if she would throw it. Her eyes were wide, darting. I knew it would be bad for me to show Sparkle any empathy, but I couldn’t help it. “Are you okay?” I said. “You seem really weird the last couple days. Weirder than normal.” The barb soothed the meaner urges of my soul.
“You’d know weird,” she sniped. “Where’s your phone?”
In my pocket, thank goodness, but I didn’t want another wrestling match. “In my locker,” I said. “Can I have my backpack?”
“Cam,” said Devon.
“Picture first,” Sparkle shouted. “I want it gone, gone, all evidence of weird stuff gone, do you hear? Gone for good! I want it to never have existed. Erase it!”
“Calm, calm,” I said. “What’s really going on here, Sparkle?”
“Cam,” repeated Devon, lower and deeper.
One hand flew to her cameo, the other pointed past me. “Tell me what’s really going on with him.”
I whirled and there was a different Devon standing there. He fell into a crouch, his eyes were hard. Black hair flopped, fingers curled into claws around the recaptured pixie.
The demon had woken up.
9
Squash
“Thanks for filling the first task,” the demon said. He stretched. “It’s a rather odd and tingly feeling, being bound to a contract. I’ve done it before, of course, but it’s new and different every time. Isn’t it?” He leered at Sparkle.
“We wouldn’t know,” I said. “Your ‘frogs’ are up here, so why don’t you come down off the roof and go home for the night? Sparkle, I suggest you move along, too.” I motioned us all across the roof to the trapdoor, but nobody budged.
“Task one is not entirely complete,” Estahoth said.
“Aha,” I said. “Devon figured out that the ‘frogs’ just have to be here till Friday, then we can let them go. You should be in favor of that, because as I understand it, your kind likes to avoid completing contracts. Now off we go, down from the roof.” I had to get the demon away from those pixies.
“Quite right,” said Estahoth. “But the reason we like to avoid completing contracts is so we can stay longer. Your mother has worked in a time limit of Halloween. No extensions. Thus all my energies are focused on him.” He thumped his chest and a scent of firecracker and mold wafted out.
“Camellia?” said Sparkle. “What on earth is the new boy going on about?” She clutched her cameo necklace like a security blanket.
“Please. Go,” I said. I crossed to the trapdoor and motioned her down it. She stepped onto the rung of the ladder, but didn’t go any farther. My nerves were on edge and the little hairs on my arms stood upright. “Devon, you come, too.” I tried the witch’s firm tone.
The demon pointed a finger at Sparkle. “I know something you don’t know,” he said in a singsongy taunt, and as his finger stayed on her, her face seemed to change, but not just her nose this time, not just her height. Her face aged rapidly, wrinkles forming, jowls drooping. He waggled his finger and then she went back the other way, younger, younger, shrinking. Back up.
“I’m … going to…” Sparkle said, all green and white, and then she slid/fainted down the ladder into the costume room.
“Hells,” I said. “Sparkle?” I stepped onto the rungs of the ladder to see if she was broken or bleeding.
But the instant I did that, the demon laughed and swooped down on the cardboard box.
“You give that here,” I said firmly. “We told you the contract was safe.”
“Just as the old phoenix has to die so the new one can be born,” said the demon. “Just so, we will remake Devon in a new image.” He uncurled his hand and revealed my dark green froggy pixie, dangling by its leg. It blinked rapidly, its wings fluttered. “Crush the old.”
I grabbed for handholds to climb back up, but the demon was suddenly there, and he kicked my shoulder hard. I slammed down onto the ladder, my armpit hitting the roof.
The demon loomed above, his hair rippling wildly. “No,” said Devon, forcing the words out of unmoving lips. His eyes were ringed in stricken white. “No!” His hand closed around the frightened pixie. Closed tighter, tighter. A small leg waved frantically.
“No!” I shouted, and grabbed Devon’s pant leg, tried to haul myself out, tried to stop the inevitable. But the demon kicked me free, and then a horrid pressure feeling settled on my head, as if I were being pushed down by hurricane winds. The pressure shoved me, shouting, down the hole and slammed the trapdoor on my head. My fingers slipped on the scarves and beads draped over the ladder. My feet skidded to the floor—I thought I would land on Sparkle, but there was no one there. A wire clothes hanger gouged my arm as I tumbled backward onto my hip.
I heard a muffled squeak—and then the pixie was silent. Everything was silent. Then came a strange sound of hysteria—like someone caught between tears and savage laughter, switching between the two.
I stormed up the ladder and pushed and shoved on the trapdoor. Pried with a coat hanger around the edges. Banged on it with a cowboy boot.
The trapdoor would not budge.
* * *
I had to wait twenty minutes for the next bus, and then it was another fifteen to get home. Devon didn’t show up at the bus stop. I sat by myself on a mottled brown seat and brooded, near tears and rage all at once. Whenever I calmed, the memory of Devon’s stricken face as the demon made him kill the pixie would set me off again. I was so furious at the witch I wanted to scream, long and loud without stopping.
I didn’t. I made it off the bus without breaking down in public. I even said thanks to the bus driver.
But the rage and tears coursing through me explained, though not excused, why I was horribly rude to the small form in yellow and black waiting on the doorstep.
“What do you want?” I said.
“Sunshine and butterflies,” said Jenah. She snapped the knees of her fishnets, adjusting them as she got up. “Pretty rose-colored auras shot with streaks of gold. But mostly, to talk.”
“Thanks,” I said, spitting the words out. “I have nothing to talk about.” I just wanted her to go. Everything the witch touched turned to disaster, and it was now spreading rapidly. Anyone that tried to help me would get brought down by my home life. Jenah needed to give up on me and go.
“Your hair looks like flying pigs hit it,” said Jenah.
I ignored this and put my key in the lock.
“Did you hide from me in the auditorium earlier?” said Jenah.
“What? No.”
“I thought I saw the back of your shirt.” She touched it. “I called after you.”
“Not everything’s about you,” I said, the desperate words tearing out. Couldn’t she see that she was going to bring trouble on herself? My secrets needed to stay secret. Jenah eyed me and I calmed my voice. “I have to go,” I said, trying to squish down the storm of feelings. “Really. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I ducked in and shut the door on Jenah. I didn’t expect to be in trouble with the witch for being late, because I’d texted her about staying late for algebra tutoring. No, the latest problem was Moonfire. The witch’s horrible tasks for the demon meant I was late for my chores with the dragon for the second day in a row, and Moonfire couldn’t take care of all her needs stuck in that garage. I let Wulfie out the front door to find his favorite bush, and hurried out the back.
Where I ran smack into the witch. Fury flamed. “You horrible, horrible—” I started.
“Your al
gebra teacher called,” said the witch. She rose from the stone bench near the pumpkin vines and dusted off her peach pencil skirt.
“Hells,” I said, derailed.
“He wants me to come in and talk about your grades,” Sarmine said. “He says you’re too good a student to let algebra slide.”
“I am not letting it slide,” I said, aggravated. “I did badly on my test but I went in to study with Kelvin. But I had to leave studying with Kelvin because of your demon problem, and that’s when Rourke got cranky enough to call you. He’ll never let me make up the test now.”
“Why didn’t you just leave a doppelgänger to sit with this Kelvin person while you did the important things? I know you know the doppelgänger spell. You helped gather the ingredients when I used it to avoid that dreadful neighborhood block party. Five werewolf hairs, easily collected from Wulfie. One pint of cream. One huff of dog’s breath. Two—”
Her list infuriated me. The witch could get under my skin faster than anybody in the world. “For your information, you have to be a witch to perform that spell. And are you seriously saying that my solution to algebra is to skip out on the tutor? What kind of crazy person are you? You don’t care two cents what happens to my grades, as long as I gather your ingredients and keep track of your demons.”
“I merely pointed out the way to keep this Rourke character from being angry at you,” said the witch. The October wind whisked around us. “As I judge your developing character, you are determined to keep your grades up whether or not you have my support. Thus I save my energy for making you realize that there are other things in life besides human schooling.” She frowned. “As for your chores, I don’t understand your position. I give you all the best tasks and take the mundane ones of cooking and dishwashing myself. Do you know that my mother used to have me scrub out the bathtubs? Like a regular human? With a sponge?”
Sarmine on a rant about her mother could go on for ages. I interrupted this digression. “So you think other things in life are more important,” I said. “Like what, settling scores against old enemies? How does causing chaos at school—my school—give you the moral high ground? Just so you know, your tasks are wreaking havoc on Devon. I have half a mind to thwart the demon by stopping him from completing his tasks.”
Seriously Wicked Page 9
