As did the little girl she compelled to walk with her so she did not look out of place. “I’m your Auntie Yaga,” she instructed her. Glassy-eyed, the girl nodded. She was costumed in a beige sleeveless top, slim cut cotton trousers, and a wool hat with pom-pommed ties. Her hair was slicked back in a tidy tail.
“I’m a space warrior,” the girl told her. She twirled her staff like a baton.
“Ah,” Baba Yaga said. Like full-sized candy bars, this seemed a good thing.
“Your dress is beautiful,” the tiny warrior told her in between bites of a fun-sized chocolate bar with almonds. “But can you fight off the Evil Empire?”
Baba Yaga considered this. The sugary chocolate aroma mixed with sweaty child was making her hungry. She nibbled on a sour candy, then popped a whole handful in her mouth and chewed blissfully.
“Absolutely,” she said, mouth full.
They passed the rest of the night in companionable silence, chewing and filling their pillowcases with sweets.
Once in a while, the young warrior attempted to run, but the compelling spell held fast and the sugary treats kept her mouth occupied each time she tried to scream.
At 9 PM, the crowds of costumed revelers had thinned. A haunted house was still going strong a couple blocks over, but the rest of the neighborhood was growing quiet.
“So tell me about this Evil Empire,” Baba Yaga said.
“They’re a bunch of guys in capes and helmets. They make people do things that they don’t want to do.”
“Well, that’s nothing new,” Baba Yaga said. “That’s as old as time.”
The girl shrugged. She readjusted her pillowcase over one slender shoulder. Her staff was dirty with mud on the bottom from where she’d dragged it as the evening had worn on.
“But not this space warrior,” she told the witch. “She’s brave and smart and tough. I think boys like her, but she doesn’t care.”
“Clever girl,” said Baba Yaga.
“You’re pretty,” the girl told her then, but only because the witch compelled her to say it.
“I’m not,” Baba Yaga said. She shook her head and the glamour lifted. She stood in the darkened street as her true self.
The girl’s eyes went wide as saucers. She made a high-pitched, startled sound, like a mouse catching its tail in a trap.
“Run,” Baba Yaga commanded her. “If you’re a warrior, fight me or run.”
The girl dropped her pillowcase of treats. Then she stood her ground, her chin held high, her flimsy staff held higher.
“Are you afraid of me?” Baba Yaga asked.
The girl nodded. She did not lower her staff.
They both knew it was an empty gesture. But even empty gestures can have power.
“You remind me of someone,” Baba Yaga told her.
“I’m still afraid,” said the girl, and something in this touched the witch’s stony heart. Fear was sometimes a smart thing. Admitting it even smarter.
Baba Yaga lifted all her spells. “Oh, go on with you,” she said.
The girl ran.
For now, for this one night, Baba Yaga let her go.
Joy Preble is the author of several young adult novels including the Dreaming Anastatia series; the Sweet Dead Life series; and Finding Paris, which SLJ called, “An intricate guessing game of sisterly devotion, romance, and quiet desperation.” Her newest novel, It Wasn’t Always Like This, was called “epic and addictive” by Beautiful Creatures’ author Kami Garcia and “a suspenseful treat with a gooey romantic center” by the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books. In no particular order, Joy is fond of her family, her basset-boxer, clever cocktails, crazy road trips, and people who don’t whine. She’s also the Children’s Specialist at Houston’s Brazos Bookstore and on faculty at Writespace Houston. Visit Joy at joypreble.com or follow her at @joypreble on Twitter.
Some Like It Hot
Mari Mancusi
No doubt about it, thought Ashlee Firebreath as she pushed open the door and scrambled down the front steps of what was once, five minutes, thirty three second ago, Stanley Rosenblum’s family’s ancestral home. I am destined to be the last girl to be kissed at Brackenridge High.
From the sidewalk she glanced back at the house. Or what was left of it, anyway—its second story now completely engulfed by flames. The thick smoke clouded her view and filled her lungs, causing her to hold back a choke. Not that her lungs couldn’t take a little soot, but still. She was more used to exhaling it than breathing it in.
Stanley Rosenblum stood a few feet away, also staring up at the raging inferno, a look of ultimate dismay on his admittedly pig-like face. She’d made sure he gotten out first, of course. That he didn’t burn any essential body parts or pass out on the stairs from inhaling too much smoke. Sometimes that happened, forcing her to fly them out to safety.
From the look on Stanley Rosenblum’s face now she could tell he’d rather die than let her fly him anywhere. So it was fortunate for him he had good lung capacity.
“You!” he cried, turning to face her now. He shook his fist at her, his chubby, freckled cheeks burning red with rage. “You’re a monster!”
Hm. She studied him skeptically as the fire engines wailed ever closer. He certainly hadn’t thought that five minutes thirty four seconds earlier. When they were on the couch, pretending to watch Netflix as he slobbered on her neck like a St. Bernard who had just discovered a raw rib eye ripe for the taking.
Bleh.
To be fair, Stanley Rosenblum wouldn’t have been her first choice for her first kiss. In fact, he pretty much bottomed out a really, really, really long list. But he had been there, he had been willing, and she had been desperate.
Not to mention it was rumored at school that Stanley’s mom had once been married to a were-salamander and that Stanley was the progeny of that unholy union. And weren’t salamanders supposed to be fireproof or something?
She sighed. Well, Stanley might have been. But his house clearly wasn’t.
The screeching wail of Ladder 45 was getting closer and she knew she had to vacate the premises ASAP—before she was forced to face some awkward questioning from the authorities. Walking over to Stanley, she grabbed him by the shoulders and caught his angry hazel eyes with her own deep golden ones.
“You will remember nothing!” she told him. “Nothing!”
She let him go. Then she waited. Right on cue, Stanley’s eyes went blank. His mouth went slack. His hands dropped to his side. She nodded grimly. It was always slightly disconcerting to realize how easily human eyes could lose focus and glaze over. But it was certainly necessary, given the circumstances.
She poked him a few more times, to make sure he’d achieved the necessary catatonic state she needed for survival, then took off down the road, praying the fire department might arrive in time to find something salvageable.
Ugh. She had to stop doing this. The local news reporters had already declared there was a serial arsonist loose in town. The Brackenridge Burner, they’d dubbed her. Four houses in three months. All damaged by mysterious fires that broke out at odd times (though almost always after school or on weekends). Each time a resident of the house in question—always a high school boy, usually good looking but sometimes less so—was found outside the home. But each time that hot (or not so hot) boy just drooled and pointed at his former residence, remembering nothing of how it had been torched.
And each time, Ashlee Firebreath remained unkissed.
Turning the corner, past the old Opera House, she entered a small park at the center of town. There, she leaned over, front claws on her back haunches, attempting to catch her breath and stop the burn. A moment later she felt her talons receding into her fingers and the scales on her chest melting back into her skin. Her ears shrank back to normal person size and her nose back to normal Ashlee size (which was admittedly a bit larger than your average person’s, but save a nose job, what could she do?)
She looked down into the fountain, sighing in re
lief as her reflection stared back up at her. The reflection of a normal eighteen-year-old girl. Blond hair, blue eyes, a cute figure. The kind of girl any boy would have loved to make out with. If only she could manage to control herself long enough to allow him to do it.
Seriously, sometimes being a were-dragon was a tough break.
Because, you see, ever since Ashlee had hit puberty when she became hot, she became very hot. Which caused an instant shift into dragon form—and often a burp of fire to boot. Which, as you might imagine, could cause quite a problem when it came to making out with cute boys. And thus, at practically the old maid age of eighteen years old, she still had not managed to achieve that perfect first kiss.
It wasn’t for lack of trying, either. Her first attempt had been in the back of Lester Birnbaum’s mother’s ancient station wagon. You know the type, the kind with wood paneling on the side that they haven’t made in like fifty years? Well, turned out the wood was fake. But the vinyl seats still melted alarmingly quickly when you applied a little heat. Lester—a total Ryan Reynolds lookalike she’d been dreaming about for weeks—only had to touch her shoulder when she first felt it. A change deep inside of her. A growing heat that threatened to consume her. She stumbled out of the car, luckily before the shift was complete (or else she might still be stuck inside to this day!), then opened her mouth to release the pressure building inside like a volcano.
To be fair, she tried to turn her head away. But at the last minute Lester, understandably terrified, had stumbled out after her and had inadvertently jumped right into her path, just as the flames shot from her mouth. They ignited his hair, his mother’s station wagon, and a few trees nearby. (Though technically speaking those trees were on their last legs anyway, so it wasn’t truly fair to count them as part of the destruction tally, in Ashlee’s opinion.)
“It’s not me, it’s you,” Lester informed her a few minutes later, breaking up with her as they waited for the fire department to arrive, clearly more than a little annoyed by the fact that he now looked more like Deadpool Ryan Reynolds versus, say Green Lantern.
To be honest, she couldn’t really blame him. And unfortunately back then she didn’t even know how to hypnotize guys into forgetting the unfortunate events that had transpired between them. And the next day at school Lester told everyone who was anyone about her little smoky snafu, which sadly led to some very lonely Friday nights for Ashlee sophomore year.
Junior year wasn’t much better. That was the year of the exploding chem lab that had sent her home with a week’s suspension. Which was completely unfair, by the way, seeing as Federal regulations clearly state that all flammable chemicals should be stored in flameproof cases. Which had led her to the very logical assumption that sneaking into the chem lab closet to make out with Buster Brim would be perfectly safe. After all, how was she to know Gary Gorisnky, in a hurry to get to football practice after class, had forgotten to put away all those pesky bottles of nitroglycerin?
And so it continued. Guy after guy, near kiss after near kiss, the pattern as endless as it was predictable. They’d hold her hand. She’d spout flames. They’d go running in the other direction. She’d go get a snow cone to cool off. Depressing, really.
It was her parents’ fault, in case you were wondering. Her adopted father, St. George, had shown up just a tad too late to save her virgin mother—whose village had decided to sacrifice her to a local were-dragon to keep the peace. St. George, who always had a crush on her mom, went all knight in shining armor on the place, determined to go and rescue his true love.
What he didn’t realize was she and the were-dragon had been getting on like a house on fire (so to speak) and would have been quite content to play happily ever after in the dragon’s den for all of all of eternity. (Which was warm and safe and filled with enough gold to buy out an entire shoe store!) Unfortunately George—having the best of intentions, but not a ton of smarts—hacked her new boyfriend in two without bothering to ask if that was cool or not. Before she could protest—the damage was done. The dragon was dead.
George, feeling more than a little guilty (not to mention embarrassed) by the incident had tried to make the best of things by asking her mother for her hand in marriage. She somewhat grudgingly accepted (her only other option being to go back to the village who sold her out to a dragon in the first place) and nine months later a little were-dragon named Ashlee Firebreath (after her dear old dad) was born.
Ashlee loved both her parents and honestly had had a very pleasant upbringing overall, here in Brackenridge Falls—a place where thankfully you didn’t have to be human to fit in. There were witches here and vampires and werewolves and countless other creatures all making their homes in the town. There were even a growing number of were-armadillos on the east side who had recently opened a Medieval Times. While in other places being a were-dragon would cause you to stick out like a sore claw, here she barely registered on the weird scale.
Still, that didn’t make the kissing thing any easier.
Sighing, she turned the corner and walked down her street, headed home. When she got to her front door, her mother was standing there, arms crossed over her chest and a disapproving look on her face. Uh, oh.
“Ashlee Firebreath,” she said in a tight voice. The one she reserved for when her daughter was in big trouble. “Why do I hear fire engines and smell smoke?”
“Uh, because there’s a fire somewhere and our brave Brackenridge firefighters are valiantly dousing the blaze?” Ashlee tried in her most innocent voice. Too bad her mind control tricks didn’t work on family.
“And who might be responsible for that fire, may I ask?” Her mother raised an eyebrow, peering at her with suspicious eyes.
“It’s really not that big of a deal, Mom,” Ashlee protested, realizing she was busted. “It’s just a teeny, tiny thing, really. They’ll be able to put it out easily. Why, I bet it didn’t even cause any real damage.”
To the first floor, anyway. Maybe …
“You’ve been dating boys again, haven’t you?” her mother scolded. “What have I told you about that?”
“I’m eighteen years old, Mom!” Ashlee cried. Seriously, sometimes it sucked to have an ex-professional virgin as a mother. “Everyone else at school has been dating for like three years now.”
“Everyone else is not half-dragon,” her mother reminded her. “I’ve told you a thousand times. When you reach the age of dragon maturity, we’ll be happy to find you a suitable beau.”
“That’s almost a thousand years away, Mom! I can’t stay a virgin for another millennium.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being a virgin,” huffed her mother.
“Oh yeah, it worked out real great for you. Your village sacrificed you to a freaking dragon.”
“Obviously no one does that in this day and age, Ash,” her mother said. “You know that. And besides, it was a great … honor to be selected as a sacrifice to Drake,” she added.
Even under the dim glow of the street lamps, Ashlee noticed her mother’s cheeks flush as she voiced her dad’s name aloud. As much as Mom professed to loving St. George, the woman never failed to blush and stammer when someone brought up Drake. Guess even professional virgins could have a thing for bad boys ….
Ashlee looked down at her phone. “Mom, I gotta grab my bag and go. I’m late to meet Sarah at the library. We’re supposed to work on our history project.”
Her mother reluctantly stepped aside, allowing Ashlee to enter the house and grab her school bag. While she didn’t approve of Ashlee having a boyfriend, she thankfully had no issue with her hanging with her best friend Sarah. Sarah was apprenticing as a demon slayer while taking part time classes at Brackenridge High. The two girls had first bonded over a shared love for Supernatural (Sarah was a Dean Girl while Ashlee had always swooned over Sam) and the rest was history.
Until recently, when Sarah had gone and rubbed an old lamp at an antique swap. (She claimed it was just to see if it was real silver, but Ash
lee didn’t buy that for one second.) In any case, a moment later a totally hot genie named Trevor had popped out and instantly professed himself Sarah’s love slave for all eternity. Which, in Ashlee’s opinion, was so not fair. Especially since Sarah claimed she wasn’t even interested in the guy, yet he followed her around like a lovesick puppy everywhere she went.
While Ashlee walked around with the dragon equivalent of boy-repellent.
She headed out the door. “Bye, Mom,” she called, swinging her bag over her shoulder.
“Bye sweetie,” Her mom cried back, waving. “Have fun. And remember—no boys!”
Groan. “Yes, mom.”
Shaking her head—Mothers!—Ashlee headed down to the public library where she found Sarah sitting in a corner table, dressed in her usual hipster homeless apparel that somehow didn’t manage to detract from her supermodel good looks. Even her ridiculous t-shirt (“I’m a Slayer, Ask Me How!”) looked good on her and made Ashlee suddenly realize she should have glanced in a mirror or at least run a brush through her own hair before meeting up with her friend. After all, a dragon shift, not to mention a five-alarm fire and an almost kiss, could leave a girl looking a little less fresh and fabulous than normal.
Sarah caught her eye and waved her over. The two girls exchanged hugs then sat across from one another, pulling out their homework.
“So how’s Trevor?” Ashlee teased, knowing the devoted genie was a sore spot for her friend.
Sarah rolled her eyes. “I’m trying to forget he exists, thank you very much.”
“At least you have a love slave. I can’t even get someone to kiss me.” Ashlee quickly gave her friend the rundown on what had had happened with Stanley.
“Wow. That’s rough, Ash,” Sarah said when she’d finished. “Seriously, I’d never guess someone like Stanley Rosenblum was capable of getting you hot enough to spout flames. After all, he’s not exactly Chris Hemsworth.”
“He’s not even Chris Christie,” Ashlee agreed miserably. “Clearly I’m so repressed that even a freaking were-gerbil would turn me on if he stuck his buck teeth out in my direction.”
Dragons and Witches Page 3
