Seriously Shifted

by Tina Connolly

  I took off down the street after Sarmine. The orange-SUV guy lived at the end of the street, so the massively oversized jeep was already parked in his driveway and he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Tears up and down our street at fifty miles an hour,” Sarmine spat as I arrived, panting. “It’s only luck that none of the kids have been obliterated.” She was mixing a powder up in the palm of her hand. “Can’t even fit it in his own garage.”

  “Sarmine,” I pleaded. “There are rules. You can’t just—”

  She touched her wand to her palm. “Excaliminivandervagon,” she said, and flicked.

  “Nooooo,” I said, lunging at her in slow motion.

  Time seemed to slow then, or perhaps it was my witch blood seizing the opportunity to demonstrate another of its capabilities. I watched in horror as the witch’s powder flicked out like powdered sugar—except more green and sparkly—coating the orange SUV. There was a noise like a beached whale groaning.

  And then with a creaking clunk, the SUV toppled over on its side. Its wheels spun gently in the November wind.

  “Oh god,” I said. “Run,” I said.

  “Nonsense,” the witch said crisply. She was calmer now that the destruction had occurred. She marched straight up to our neighbor’s door and rang the bell.

  A vaguely doughy, sort of ex–frat boy, thirtysomething guy peered out, five o’clock beer already in hand. That was fast. “I’m not buying whatever it is,” he said, and started to shut the door. Which: totally obnoxious. Even I knew he was our neighbor, so you would think he would vaguely recall our faces from having almost run over our pet-slash-preschooler moments before. I couldn’t tell from Sarmine’s face whether this pissed her off or pleased her to have confirmation of his obnoxiousness.

  “I simply wanted to let you know that your car has fallen over,” she said pleasantly. “Good day.”

  She turned and walked crisply down the sidewalk, her heels clicking in a crisp way that was probably magically enhanced. I followed, stunned. The neighbor followed, also stunned. As he stopped in his driveway, a small trail of smoke rose up from the tipped-over hood. The car made a noise like a sigh of giving up. Then its hood popped open and all of its internal organs belched out onto the driveway.

  An incoherent mumbling that sounded like what did you why did you how did you started, and then that escalated into a full-on pissy fit.

  Sarmine stopped at the end of the driveway and eyed our neighbor. “If you think a teenage girl and a little old lady could push that massive gas-guzzling elephant on its side, then you’re stupider than you look,” she said, almost pleasantly. “And yet, I’m not sure if that’s possible.”

  He began to turn a funny shade of red-orange.

  “As a general tip,” said Sarmine, “you might consider driving the speed limit on this pleasant residential street that we all live on.” She eyed the dead car with its puked-up car parts and gently spinning tire wheels. “Or, ride a bike. You might consider that. Good day.”

  She stalked off toward home, and with a final glance at the guy’s apoplectic face, I hurried after her. “So, uh. I think you might in fact know something about all the destroyed cars?”

  “Camellia,” she said under her breath. “I need you to find me a bug.”

  “A bug? What kind of—”

  “Immediately!”

  I scanned the sidewalk, quickly found a ladybug, scooped it up with a leaf. Sarmine was still walking home, hurriedly rolling something in a twist of paper as she walked. Our neighbor was stalking down the street after us. “Hey, lady,” he said in an angry voice. “Wait up.”

  “He wouldn’t do anything to us in broad daylight, would he? On our own street?”

  “Never underestimate a man who drives a car the size of a house,” said Sarmine. “Now squish the bug into the paper here.”

  I stopped holding out the leaf, drew back. “But … I don’t … I can’t—”

  “Camellia,” hissed Sarmine. “This is no time to get prissy. Squish that ladybug. Do it!”

  Our neighbor was getting closer. But … “I can’t do it,” I said. “I’m not going to kill things for magic spells. It’s not right!” I turned around to see the angry red face behind us, only a few steps away.

  Sarmine seized the leaf with the ladybug in it, and squished it firmly into her twist of paper. She muttered some words, and then turned and flung the paper directly at our neighbor’s feet.

  A hundred ladybugs climbed up his shoes. Up his socks. Up his legs.

  “What the—”

  A thousand ladybugs slithered all over his body. He danced around, squealing. Then staggered for home, trying frantically to scrape them off of him.

  “That will take care of him for a while,” said the witch. “And his SUV.”

  “Aren’t you afraid he’ll, you know, report us to the police?”

  “And say we sicced some ladybugs on him?”

  “Good point.”

  “Where’s Wulfie?”

  “I put him inside,” I said.

  “Hmm,” said the witch as we crossed the doorstep back into our home. “I have a spell to take scratches out of hardwood floors. I’ll text it to your phone for you to study. I expect the floor restored to its pristine state by the end of the week.”

  “You’re welcome for rescuing Wulfie,” I said. He was now curled up on the couch, nose draped over his favorite stuffed bear.

  “You’re welcome for attempting to restore order to our block.”

  “Well…”

  “And furthermore, Camellia,” she went on, “this is nonsense about you not being able to squish bugs. I refuse to raise my daughter to be that squeamish.”

  “I’m not squeamish,” I said. “It’s just not right. I’ve told you several times now.”

  The witch dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “The world out there is not kind to prissy witches, Camellia. They will eat you alive. Other witches, I mean.”

  “Look,” I said. I was trying not to raise my voice. “I admitted that I have witch blood and all that. I agreed to try some spells. But I absolutely did not agree to kill anything for it. If I’m going to be a witch, then I’m going to do good things with my magic.”

  The witch raised a pointy eyebrow. “Such as?”

  “Well. Making people’s lives better.”

  She dismissed this with a wave and went to pull the lasagna out. “I believe I made everyone else on the block’s lives better today when I destroyed that horrible orange thing.”

  “No no no,” I said. “You are not going to twist my words around. I mean a proper good-fairy sort of witch. That’s how I got muddled up in this bet this week, after all. Unlike basically every witch I ever met, I’m going to do good things for people. Ask them if they want help. Ethical spells.” I trailed off. “You know. Helping people,” I finished lamely.

  “People,” said Sarmine, “are morons.” She set the beetroot lasagna carefully on the table and served me a large helping. “I know you’re determined to believe the worst of me, Camellia,” she said, “but I do believe in making the world a better place.” She stared me down. “The difference between us is that I’m not going to pussyfoot around in order to do it.”

  “The ends justify the means?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And you’re some sort of benevolent dictator, who best knows how to run things?”

  “Why do you think I keep trying to take over the world?” A glimmer of amusement was in her eyes. Sarmine would never laugh at herself, so I assumed she must be laughing at me.

  I sighed. At least Wulfie was all right. I scooped him up and petted his fur. He licked my hand. “Backyard for you for a week,” I told him. He whined. Poor thing. If I hadn’t missed the bus I would have been home watching him. “Sarmine,” I said slowly as I sat down at the dinner table.

  “Yes?” she said over bites of her lasagna.

  I tried a bite and made a pleasant face. “Very nice,” I said with as much enth
usiasm as I could muster.

  “Thank you, Camellia,” she said. “You are welcome to take the leftovers for lunch if you wish.”

  “Very kind of you,” I assured her, “but I wouldn’t dream of depriving you.”

  “Mm.”

  “So,” I tried again. “Sarmine. Mom.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well.” There was no way to make this any easier. “So Devon has this bike. And it’s extra long and he can carry stuff on it. So he doesn’t have to take public transit everywhere but he can still get around, without burning fossil fuels, right?”

  Sarmine steepled her fingers. “You want a bike.”

  “I used to have one. The dragon sat on it last winter solstice, after you gave her a saucepan of fermented pixie juice.”

  She nodded, considering. “I suppose you have worked rather hard this year.”

  “You suppose?” I said. She raised her eyebrows and I shut my mouth.

  “Your sixteenth birthday is approaching in February.”

  I will note at this point that witches definitely do not celebrate any sort of winter holiday-giving. Sarmine occasionally joined some other witches at the solstice for some sort of sitting-on-a-hill-drinking-martinis thing, but there was definitely no gift-giving. Birthdays, however, they were fond of. But Sarmine’s idea of a good present was rarely my own.

  “I had planned to procure you two ounces of powdered hen’s teeth.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I have saved every little powder and spellbook you’ve gotten me over the years but none of them were something that I could use to go out and see my friends, you know?”

  Sarmine looked offended. “It is an extremely complicated undertaking to procure powdered hen’s teeth. In the first place, there’s only one witch in the continental U.S. that farms hen’s teeth, and he makes you meet with him in person.”

  “Oh, I am sorry,” I said. “You mean you would have to talk to him?”

  Sarmine shuddered.

  “Well, look,” I said. “Take this as the gift it is. You can actually go down to the bike shop and purchase me one bike. No weirdo hen’s teeth farmers required. And then, I won’t try to borrow the car next year when I learn how to drive.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “I have in fact been thinking I should get rid of that car. It goes against everything I stand for.”

  “It might not be around much longer the way cars are exploding all over the place,” I said dryly.

  “True,” Sarmine conceded. She stretched. “Very well. Your sixteenth birthday present will be a bike.”

  “Yes!” I said. “Can we go to the store now? I mean, as soon as we finish this lovely beetroot?”

  Sarmine shook her head slightly. “Not a new bike, Camellia. You must remember that it is far better to reduce, reuse, recycle than to purchase new.”

  “Uh, okay,” I said. “Is this a working bike? Are we going to find one here in town? Or … no, you have something in mind, don’t you?”

  “Let me show you,” she said.

  We finished dinner and got in the station wagon—surprise number one, because the witch really does try to limit vehicle usage—and drove to a storage facility—surprise number two.

  “I had no idea you had a storage unit,” I said as we walked up to it. The winter sun had set and it was dark except for the facility’s lightbulbs, half of which were burnt out. It was definitely not one of your high-end storage facilities, not that I had any experience with either kind. I half-expected someone to jump out at us.

  “Certain compounds are too volatile to be stored on premises,” Sarmine said.

  “Bikes are volatile?”

  “And certain things I have no room for,” she admitted.

  “I thought one of your regular rants about McMansions was how people should reduce their possessions and live minimally and so on?”

  “Did you want a bike or not?”

  I shut up.

  She heaved open the garage door and the smells rolled out as the air was disturbed. Dust. Old books. Oregano. Lemon. Compost.

  She rubbed a few ingredients from her fanny pack together on her palm and tapped her wand against it. The wand clicked on like a flashlight. She swept the inside of the facility with the light to reveal what must be the holy grail of treasure-hunting, to a witch. Rows and rows of boxes—some wooden, some metal, some cardboard, all neatly labeled. It was too dark to see much, but the label on the metal box nearest me said, 1961, Wich, Kan.—Blk Recluse, petrified. 1 doz. There were hundreds of boxes like that.

  “How do you keep this all safe?” I said, starting to go in.

  Her arm stopped me. “It is extremely well warded, Camellia. If anyone besides me goes in I can’t be responsible for how it protects itself.”

  I stopped.

  Sarmine petted the side of the storage building and then stepped inside. The flashlight disappeared into the gloom and there was the sound of someone going down a long flight of stairs. A distant splash. That seemed pretty impressive for an eight-by-ten storage facility, but maybe one of her treasures was a secret portal to a cave somewhere. Probably somewhere disgusting with leeches and river monsters, and not anywhere nice we could go on holiday.

  The stairs noise reversed itself and a minute later she came out, wheeling a burnt-orange-and-avocado bike. By that I mean that one of the remaining, paint-flaking colors was burnt orange, not that the bike had been in a fire. But it could hardly look worse if it had. One tire was missing and the handlebars were bent. Rust ran up and down the frame. A spider was living in the bell. It did not look as though it had been ridden in at least twenty years.

  “That?” I said. I was feeling a little hurt, even though I did know what the witch was like. This was the kind of bike you’d give someone as a hand-me-down to tide them over if they were desperate. It was not any kind of sixteenth birthday present.

  The witch ignored me. “Let’s get it adjusted to you,” she said, tinkering with the seat height.

  “If you haven’t noticed, I can’t go anywhere without at least two tires,” I said bitterly. “And maybe some air to pump them up. And with the handlebar like that I’m only going to go in circles anyway.”

  Sarmine sighed a put-upon sigh.. “And now I’ll teach you how to use it,” she said.

  “Step one. Pedal the pedals. Oh no, wait, step one, put on a freaking tire.”

  “Language, Camellia,” she said. “Now, you see these shifters here.”

  I nodded.

  “This side controls the bike on the ground. And this side controls the bike in the air.”

  7

  Bikes and Boys

  I goggled for a full minute. “This thing actually flies?”

  “You will have to first learn the technique for making it invisible, Camellia,” the witch said. “I can’t afford to have you flying all over the city and make our presence known. Someday we witches will be able to come out of hiding and rule the world as it should be ruled. I live for that day. I long for that day. But today is not that day.”

  I sat down on the bike and put one foot on a pedal. I did want to try taking it for a spin. But … “I’ll still need a tire.”

  “Correct. You will need to be rolling to get off the ground. For that you will need to replace the front tire. You cannot try the shifters while you are stopped because that would damage it. But yes, Camellia. This bike will fly.”

  I threw my arms around the witch, surprising both of us. “This is even better than a cargo bike.” I couldn’t wait to show Devon. He knew about all the witch stuff. So I could totally show him.

  The minute we pulled into the driveway, I hopped out of the car, lifting out my new-to-me bike. “I’ll be back soon,” I hollered to Sarmine.

  “Did you hang up the snakeskins?”

  “Do it when I get back,” I said. I wheeled my new bike down the street. I’d been telling Henny that people didn’t like her comics because she never made them interesting. Well, just like Leo said about the honey spell
: if you’re going to go dishing things out to people you should be willing to take it yourself. That included advice.

  I was going to go ask Devon out.

  The missing-tire wheel made a clankety clank on the asphalt as I walked. Cool, he would hear me coming. It was full night now, even though my phone said it was only five to seven. There were porch lights, though. Several of the neighbors still had their jack-o’-lanterns out—now drooping at the mouth and falling in. Straw bales. Corncobs. It’s a very family sort of street.

  I stopped on his block, trying to remember which house was the one that sold last month. I was pretty sure I had the right one, but I had never technically been told the address or invited over. But I was bringing a bike, and a request for help, and Devon liked bikes and maybe would also like helping me? It was worth a shot.

  I rolled into his driveway. I had hoped that Devon would be outside and then I would know for sure it was his house and I also wouldn’t end up in any embarrassing parent interactions, but after all it was November, and he wasn’t. So I stood in the glow of the porch light and rang the bell.

  The door opened to a hallway full of cardboard boxes and a man I presumed was Devon’s father. He was wearing paint-covered jeans and an old flannel shirt, and he looked as if he were busy thinking about something else that was not the doorbell. He looked nice; sort of rumpled and kind. He didn’t look a ton like Devon, but I thought they might have the same eyes, especially when it came to the absentminded look. He smiled at me. “Are you here to pick up Devon?”

  Pretty much exactly, I thought. “Um,” I said helpfully. “I’m Cam. Is Devon home?”

  “Sure, kiddo,” he said. He hollered over his shoulder to his son. To me he said, “Have you had dinner?” The garlicky aroma coming from inside smelled way better than beetroot lasagna, but I assured him that I had eaten.

  Devon came running up to the door. He had his backpack with him, and lit up when he saw me, though he looked over my shoulder. “Cam!” he said. “I didn’t expect you.”