Seriously Shifted

by Tina Connolly

  “I know,” I said. “So actually the wi—I mean, my mom gave me her old bike, but it needs help, and I wondered if you would look at it with me. Since you, um, know about bikes.” I was not sounding particularly eloquent so far. Still, I hoped Devon would see that I did value him, for something that was definitely not demon-influenced.

  “Sure,” he said, and put down his backpack and came out to the front porch. His dad had helpfully faded away. Devon looked at the missing tire and bent handlebars. “Wow, that is old,” he said. “And, um … green.”

  “I can’t decide if the seventies look is a point of pride or if I should take some purple spray paint to it immediately,” I said.

  “It’s definitely retro,” he said.

  “Too retro to ride?”

  “Nah,” he said. “I can help you with it.” He lifted the garage door from the outside and let it roll up. It, too, was full of boxes. I wondered if they had had a bigger house when they had been out in the country, or if they were just the sort of family that collected lots of things. Or if it was just moving chaos. “I don’t know if we have any spare tires,” Devon said, turning on the light. “Everything’s still a disaster. I do know where my pump is, and there’s a pretty good bike store not too far from here.”

  “Hey, that would be great,” I said.

  Now was the moment. He was looking at me with his kind eyes. Like he was actually happy to see me. Like we could move on from last night.

  It shouldn’t be that hard to ask someone out who’s already kissed you, right? I mean, I think you have a better than average chance that they like you, even if you’ve since insinuated that their thriving social life was only due to demonic possession.

  “So, I thought maybe after you helped me, I could take you out for ice cream,” I said. “For a thank you.” So it wasn’t suave. I had made a step forward.

  His eyes fell. “I’d love to,” he said, “but—”

  Which is of course when the battered old minivan pulled into the driveway, honking up a storm. A girl stuck her head out the window and called in faux British, “Hurry up, you git!”

  “Nnenna!” he said. “Coming!” He looked at me. “I’d really like to,” he repeated, “but we have emergency band practice.”

  “Your mother was a hamster…” she said irrepressibly, apparently gearing up for a round of Monty Python taunting.

  Devon held his hand up, laughing. “Ten seconds.”

  I recognized the girl then as his drummer. I had seen her briefly at the school dance. She was a fine-boned black girl with piercings, and she made me feel—which was not in the least her own fault and had everything to do with me—about two inches tall. She cocked a salute at me as she waited for Devon to grab his stuff and get in the van. There was a kind of studying feel to it that I didn’t much like, as if she were assessing the current situation.

  “Look,” said Devon. “Leave your bike with me. I’ll look at it when I get home tonight.”

  “I don’t want to be any trouble.…”

  “No trouble.” He took the bike from me and wheeled it into the garage, then closed the door. He leaned in. “Look, I—”

  Nnenna honked the horn again. “Band practice waits for no man,” she said.

  “Going.” He hopped in the van, and Nnenna peeled out.

  I couldn’t even tell if he waved as he drove off.

  * * *

  I tried to review the Macbeth study questions that night while I stirred the witch’s brew, but my thoughts kept floating back to the witches’ plans. When they didn’t float back to Devon.

  Firmly I admonished myself to stay focused on the witches and on my homework. Devon was a distraction. If I was going to stop the witches—not to mention maintain my GPA—I had to keep on task. After I showered and got into bed, I pulled out my logic puzzle list.

  WITCHES

  VICTIMS

  HOW TO MAKE THEM HAPPY

  Esmerelda

  Henny

  Love potion (Is this ethical?) It is if you ask first.

  Valda

  Jenah

  Just keep her from getting killed

  Malkin

  Caden

  Car fixed; stay on lookout

  Sarmine

  Caden

  Sarmine’s taking care of it

  After that I flipped the paper over and added to my ethics list.

  Good Witch Ethics

  1. Don’t use animal parts in spells.

  2. Don’t cast bad spells on good people for no reason. Ask people before you work a spell on them (unless in self-defense).

  One step backward on the logic puzzle. One step forward in living up to my ethics list. Frankly, the list I needed right now was the list of how to make things work with Devon. But I didn’t think I’d learned enough in that area to start making any lists. Maybe I should have Jenah make one for me, because even though she didn’t really date, she understood people. Jenah could probably get any guy in school just by lifting a finger. Maybe I should ask her. I hadn’t really shared anything about the boy problems I was currently facing. I knew that’s what best friends were for, just … sometimes it was hard to open up about certain things.

  My thoughts never stopped running in circles, but my body was so exhausted that when I finally did put my head on the pillow, I went thunk.

  * * *

  Wednesday morning started off a lot better. This is because when I took Wulfie outside to do his business—staying with him this time—I found a note taped on our door. It was from Devon. Bike around back, it read. Didn’t want to wake you.

  A happy shiver ran down my spine, and not just from the frosty air. People do not fix bikes for you in the middle of the night if they don’t at least like you a little bit. I went around to the fence and found that he had unlatched the gate and rolled the bike inside.

  I was actually going to have a bike again. And not just any bike.

  A flying bike.

  I whistled as Wulfie and I went back in. We found Sarmine in the kitchen, peering into the coffeemaker as if angels would stream down from the heavens and remind her how it worked.

  “Allow me,” I said, rubbing the chill off of my hands. I measured coffee into the machine and poured the water in. She didn’t quite say thank you, but she did have a look on her face that was more grateful than I usually saw. Hey, you take what you can get. I rustled up some breakfast for myself, poured a bowl of kibble for Wulfie, and handed Sarmine the first cup of coffee as I sat down at the bar.

  “All right,” I said, picking up my spoon. “I know what spell I want your help on this morning.”

  She drank a long draft of what must be scalding-hot coffee, and then clutched her coffee cup as if it would protect her from having to get up and actually help me do anything. “Yes?”

  “Ye Olde Invisibility Spell,” I said. “So I can fly this bike of yours.”

  She raised her eyebrows behind the mug. “Nothing about stopping the other witches this morning?”

  I gestured at the glassware on the coffee table. “Everything’s bobbing along,” I said. “Knock on wood, I’m on track. Jenah is on guard against Valda, and is going to help take down Esmerelda. Back to square one with Malkin, but I can’t do anything about it here. Frankly, an invisibility spell would be pretty darn helpful for tracking her down—even without a flying bike.”

  Sarmine poured more of the coffee into her mouth. She looked like she might try that next with the glass carafe. She really was not a morning person. I wondered if she was regretting her rash promise to teach me spells every morning before school.

  “I don’t really need to teach you a spell as such,” she said, and stopped to yawn.

  I found myself getting grumpy. Sarmine was good at getting under my skin. “Look,” I said carefully. “You said this was my early birthday present, and that I could ride it if I made myself invisible. And now you say you’re not going to teach me a spell?”

  “Stop getting wound up,” she said. “
All I’m saying is that the invisibility tools are out there in nature. Anyone can do it. You don’t even need witch blood.”

  “Oh!”

  The witch downed the rest of her cup and crossed to the whiteboard. “The method of invisibility I am about to show you has one excellent plus side,” she said, and she drew a diagram. “Anything you bespell will have an invisible force field around it. For example, if you spread some invisibility ointment on a towel and cover yourself, the towel is unlikely to twitch aside and show your shoe.” She eyed me. “The force field extends for a short distance around the object, covering what is supposed to remain covered.”

  This was too good to be true. “So you could bespell the bike itself,” I said slowly. “Would it cover all of you if you were sitting on it?”

  “Very good,” said Sarmine. “Yes, it would.” She waited patiently. Sarmine likes the Socratic method of teaching, whereby I work things out for myself and she sits around and looks bored with how dreadfully long it’s taking me.

  “But if you could do that … you would have done that,” I said. “So I’m missing something.” Sarmine had said the force field was the plus side to this method of invisibility.… “What’s the downside?”

  “The invisibility doesn’t last very long,” she said.

  “Ah.” That sounded like a witch trick if I ever heard one. Amazing, incredible, just the sort of power you need! Fails when you least expect it! “Why?” I finally said, after trying to come up with a supposition and failing.

  “Because it’s run on invisible eels,” she said simply, or as simply as you can say a statement about invisible eels.

  My dreams of riding a flying bike to school were rapidly decaying. “And, pray tell, how do you use these invisible eels?”

  She lit up. “Well, they’re quite small,” she said. “About the size of minnows. They’re quite delightful. In fact, I have a whole pitcher full of them to show you. I went out fishing for them last night after I gave you the bike.” She pointed to a glass pitcher of water sitting on the bar. It was full of water but otherwise empty.

  Except, I was pretty sure it wasn’t otherwise empty. “Invisible eels?” I said.

  “At least a dozen,” she said.

  I was glad I hadn’t decided to drink from that pitcher. “So how does it work?”

  She stuck her hand in the pitcher, searching. Her fingers flickered back and forth. And then she, and the pitcher, disappeared.

  “That is so cool,” I said.

  “It is rather delightful, isn’t it?” said the disembodied voice of Sarmine. She reappeared, her hand coming out of the water. She gave me the slight smile that was the Sarmine version of beaming as she dried her fingers on the kitchen towel. “Rite of passage for witch kids. Spending long, hot afternoons down at the river catching eels.”

  “Of course, holding onto an eel would be hard to do on a bike,” I mused, and Sarmine gave me the good student nod of approval. “Is there another method?”

  “Definitely,” said Sarmine, and she ticked the three options off on her fingers. “Tickling, mashing, or ingesting.”

  “Ingesting?”

  “That is the one I recommend,” said Sarmine. “And swallow them live—they last so much longer that way.”

  “Swallow. A live eel.”

  “It confers complete invisibility for approximately four hours,” she said. “Plenty of time to fly around and see things. Then you slowly become visible again over the next three to five hours while your system finishes breaking down the eel. I usually recommend being home then so no one notices your translucency.”

  I shook my head, my hopes falling. “I can’t use eels.”

  “Eels are a dime a dozen, Camellia,” she said. “You can find them in any stream, if you know how to tickle them up.”

  “I’ve told you, it’s not right to use living creatures for my spells.”

  “You eat fish! How is this different?”

  I didn’t know, but I felt sure that it was. It didn’t matter that Sarmine could talk rings around me. I was going to stick to my guns regardless, and by guns I definitely meant my morals, because I don’t approve of guns, either. Sarmine probably did. Like witch guns or something.

  “If you don’t care to swallow them, you can mash them up into a paste and rub the resulting ointment thoroughly over the object,” Sarmine offered. “Or dry the eels and incorporate them in a reconstitution spell. The advantage to the paste is it lasts approximately twice as long; the disadvantage is that the fishy smell permanently saturates your object. Hard to stay unnoticed if you reek of anchovies.”

  I pushed the pitcher back to her, feeling sick to my stomach. “I will not use your eels,” I told her.

  The delight in her face fell. “Really.”

  “In fact, I think you deliberately introduced this lesson today to ‘toughen me up,’ as you’re so fond of saying. Now that I think about it, you didn’t offer to give me a bike until after I made my stand about the ladybugs.” My anger was rising but I tried to stay calm. If I flew off the handle at the witch her punishment would be swift. I couldn’t afford to miss a chunk out of this week. “I’ve told you over and over, and you need to respect my decision. I’m not going to use animals in spells.”

  “You used pixie dew in your so-called ethical love potion,” the witch pointed out.

  “I mean I’m not going to take anything they need to live,” I said. “I’m not trying to be vegan, just vegetarian.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Then no more ingredients for you.” She picked up the pitcher and returned it to the counter.

  The witch was so maddening. “Is there any other invisibility spell I can use?” I said.

  She poured herself another cup of coffee. “You know how vegan marshmallows don’t taste as good as the real thing?”

  “I suppose,” I said. I couldn’t remember the last time the witch had bought marshmallows, period. Oh yes, I do remember. She needed them for a spell once. It was definitely not a spell involving me getting to eat any of them. “Are you saying that there’s another spell that doesn’t work as well as live eels, or that it literally tastes worse than live eels?”

  “Both,” she said. “As I’ve said before, Camellia, the spells are the spells. I do not go off into my little laboratory and come up with a spell designed to annoy you. You want some other spell, you’ll have to make it.”

  I looked at the eels swimming around in the pitcher. Or, rather, looked at the pitcher of water and imagined the eels swimming in it. “I suppose.…” I said hesitantly.

  She tapped her fingers, waiting for me to give in to the inevitable.

  “I suppose I could carry a jar of them around with me,” I said. “And then return them to the river so they can live happy, eelish lives.”

  She snorted. “If you want to go through all that. First off, how are you going to steer and tickle eels at the same time? And second, good luck carrying around a tank of eels on your bike.”

  “I could use a Mason jar,” I hazarded. But then I realized the problem with that right as I said it. “Oxygen, right. But if I poked holes in the lid it would work for a while, and then I could return them to the stream?” I sighed. It would be a lot of work just to take a bike ride. I could see that it would be much easier to either a) swallow a live eel, or b) rub your bike daily with eel paste.

  The options made me mad all over again. “How am I supposed to be a good witch when you won’t even help me?” I thumped the counter. “Other people’s parents help them be good people,” I said. “I am trying to figure out the right thing to do, like stopping Valda from killing Jenah and fixing Henny’s love life, which, right, brings up a whole slew of questions you don’t even care about, like not dosing Leo, who’s got enough problems with becoming a bunny every five minutes, and—”

  The witch pivoted slowly to look at me. “Becoming a what?”

  “Um. A bunny? He’s not a were-bunny, though. He’s a shape—”

  Sarmine gra
bbed my hand and pulled me up the stairs into her study. She slammed the door, closed the blinds. “This room is shielded,” she said. “Are you saying you met a shapeshifter?”

  “Yes?”

  “Have you told anyone else? Who else knows?”

  “Well, Jenah,” I said. “I mean obviously I don’t think he wants people knowing. I don’t even think he’s told his dads.” My heart was starting to race. What was up with shapeshifters?

  “This is serious, Camellia,” she said.

  “I am seeing that,” I said. “But why?”

  By way of answer she crossed to her bookshelf and pulled out a book. She dropped it in my lap. Its title: Thirteen Ways to Force a Shifter to Shift. I opened it up to the first page. The black text read, starkly, “Way 1. Torture.”

  8

  Being a Wicked Witch Isn’t All Fun & Games

  I slammed the book closed. “What is this? Who is he?”

  Sarmine paced her study. “I’m going to tell you one of the less pleasant aspects of witch history, Camellia,” she said. Seeing as there were already plenty of unpleasant aspects to being a wicked witch, I got even more nervous. “Shifters are an endangered species. It’s a recessive trait, and there are hardly any left.”

  I knew what recessive was from the genetics part of AP biology. It was kind of like the way blue eyes worked. It meant that if both parents were shifters, their children would definitely be shifters. But it also meant that the unexpressed shifter genes could be lurking in regular folks, and if two seemingly normal humans had a baby, there was a chance they could suddenly end up with a shifter on their hands.

  “But if those genes are out there, they can still combine,” I said. “It’s hard to eradicate recessive genes.”

  “It gets easier if they all end up slaughtered.”

  My heart sank to my stomach. “Why?”

  Sarmine shook her head. “Consider the spells we’ve done together, Camellia. What do we use for ingredients?”

  “Well, apples, pears, cinnamon … Uh, so that’s plant things. Salt, chalk … that’s minerals, I guess. Lizard scales. Unicorn hairs…”