“Uh, yeah, you’re welcome,” I said, slipping out of his grasp and opening my door. “Anytime.”
He nodded at me, seemingly unaffected by my awkward rebuff. Grinned, even. “Another time, maybe.”
I let out a long whoosh of air as he drove off. Then turned to go to my front door.
Sitting on my stoop was Devon.
11
Things Suck
“Uh. Hi!” I said brightly. I looked after Leo’s retreating car, looked back at Devon. Devon had obviously very definitely seen me get out of Leo’s fancy, if a bit smashed up, car. I wondered how much else he had seen. “How are you, uh, doing?”
Devon shrugged. He stood as if to go collect his bike from the driveway, but I was standing closer to his bike than he was, so he stopped as if there was an invisible force field around me. He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I was going to ask you for some help.”
“Join the club,” I muttered.
“And you don’t have a regular phone, so—” He broke off and tried a smile at me. “Join the club, huh?”
It was clearly an invitation to tell him what I was doing with the guy in the fancy car. But I couldn’t tell anyone Leo’s secret, because the more people that knew, the less safe he was. It was a tailor-made situation for telling Devon something like, “I’m helping Leo with his biology homework.” But I wasn’t going to lie to Devon. “I am helping Leo with something,” I said, “but it is secret witch business and I honestly can’t tell you because the fewer people that know, the better. I would if I could.”
“Leo?” he said. “I think I saw him this morning, but…”
Sometimes it was hard to remember that Devon had just transferred to our school a couple weeks ago. So much had happened since then. “He is a junior who is on the football team,” I said. And then, awkwardly, I said, “And he is just a friend.” It seemed important to get that out there, but I will admit, I maybe blushed a little as I said it because it was becoming increasingly clear that Leo might not mind if it was something more. But it was dark, so maybe my awkwardness wasn’t as visible as I thought it was.
“Oh,” said Devon.
Maybe it was. I wrinkled my nose. How had I ended up with a football player, who—let’s be honest here—only liked me for the fact that I could save him from some wicked witches, and maybe also because I had given him a sort of love potion, and that was the guy who wasn’t afraid to flirt? And then there was Devon, my Devon, my sweet boy-band-boy Devon, who I thought liked me, but who maybe simply didn’t have the self-confidence of a Leo? Of course, that meant that Devon also didn’t engage in high-speed car race games of chicken. “You wouldn’t ever go seventy down a mountain just because some other guy was also doing it, would you?” I said.
Devon looked at me like I was nuts. “I don’t even have a car,” he said.
“Yeah.” I touched his arm, hoping that would defuse the tension. “So, what did you want help with?”
“Well, first to offer to help,” he said. “We could spray paint your bike this weekend. If you want. We’ve got a bunch of spray paint in the garage from one of my dad’s projects. You said you liked purple, I think…”
“I do like purple,” I said. “Particularly as contrasted with avocado green and burnt orange. That would be wonderful.”
“Not gonna lie, the retro look is amazing,” he said. “But maybe you need a fresh start.…” He trailed off, looking at me.
“Oh god, my bike,” I said. “My actual bike. I left it at the school when I got a ride with Leo. I guess I’m not used to having it.”
Hurt flashed across his face and was gone in an instant. Look, if you were chased by a bunch of witches down a mountain you might forget your bike, too. But the fact that he had just helped me fix it, late at night, and I had stranded it to go off in some boy’s fancy car … I didn’t even know how to fix all the mistakes I was making. You know? When you say something stupid, and you try to dig yourself out but you just keep going in further? That’s what this whole week was.
“So, uh. Why did you come by?” I said. “Right, bike. I mean. Well, I’ll get it back.”
“Also you said to come by later,” he said. “To tell you how we did.”
We were standing three feet apart but it felt like three miles. “I did want you to come by,” I said. “I mean, I do. I am currently wanting that. I want to know how you did.”
“We squeaked in. We got third. We get to play at the football game on Friday.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said.
“I know you helped me. Something with that hot tea, right? It was pretty cool. I just sang. Everyone was riveted. Standing ovation. We only got third because the rules said they had to dock points for the first disaster.”
“I will help you for the game,” I promised.
“You will?” There was relief on his face. “I didn’t want to impose, but…”
“Anytime,” I assured him. “Look, I mean, I want to tell you about Leo—”
He hurried on as if he didn’t want to hear what I had to say. “The band was great, too. They rallied around. Nnenna said she’d roar if I got stuck again.”
Was that code, bringing up Nnenna? Was he trying to tell me not to tell him I didn’t like Leo? Because he was going back to his old friend Nnenna? This was ridiculous. However painful a frank discussion was about to be—and it might be very painful—we should be able to cut through this whole mess by talking to each other. I wasn’t going to let Devon go without a fight.
I took a breath—
And that’s when a bicycle zoomed out of nowhere onto the driveway and came to a dead halt right between us.
A curvy, black-clad figure got off the bike. She looked mad.
“Henny,” I said. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“I think I’d better go,” said Devon.
“No,” I said. “Wait.”
“I can’t believe you,” said Henny to me. “You cheat, you liar, you, you … temptress!”
“Hey now,” said Devon.
“I trusted you,” said Henny, her voice rising. “I trusted you—”
But I knew where that statement ended and it was in words that rhymed with “dove notion.” I didn’t think it was going to help my case with Devon at all if he heard that I was busy giving Leo love potions.
“It’s okay, Devon,” I said to him. “I’ll be fine.” I waved him off.
He picked up his bike and started to wheel it down the driveway. But he didn’t move quite fast enough.
“I trusted you to give him that love potion,” Henny was shouting. “And as far as I can tell, nothing’s happened except you going off with him to his house. If anything, I think he likes you.”
At the bottom of the driveway I saw Devon freeze. His shoulders tightened.
“He doesn’t like me,” I assured her quickly and loudly. “He doesn’t.”
Devon swung one leg over his cargo bike and rode off. I guess he didn’t want to hear any more. My heart was cracking in a million pieces.
“Really, Henny,” I said on autopilot. My words were here but my heart was going down the street on a cargo bike. “He doesn’t like me. He just likes that I can help him.” I didn’t know for sure that that was all it was but it seemed like a good thing to say. True, things are never black or white, but frankly, I have a realistic assessment of my good looks and charm, which are perfectly adequate, but not necessarily “football star of the high school” level, you know? “Anyway, it’s not even a real love potion, Henny. I, uh. I decided that was unethical.”
Henny’s eyebrows shot up. “You didn’t think it was so unethical when you were begging me not to put you in my comic.”
This was totally unfair. I blinked back my tears and folded my arms. “Henny Santiago-Smith, it would be just as unethical for you to rat me out to the world and compromise my safety, and you know it. Now look, the kind of potion it is, is a sort of ‘opening you up to new possibilities’ potion. And it’s fine
. Leo made me try it, too…” Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t have said that.
“He did what?”
“And I can swear to you that it doesn’t cause any harm. It also doesn’t make anybody fall in love with people they can’t fall in love with. I can see that now. Maybe if you saved his life or something it would be different. But as it stands, I’m really truly sorry, Henny. He’s just not in love with you.”
Henny rocked back on her heels. Her black-clad shoulders slumped. “I know,” she said almost inaudibly. Oh good, now she knew how to be quiet. “It was too much to hope for, anyway. How could he be in love with me? I’ve never done anything awesome. Even my comic has hardly any readers.”
“Frankly, even if your comic had a million readers, I don’t know if that would be the sort of thing to impress him, Henny,” I said. “He’s not that sort of guy.” And then I had a really random, inspired brainstorm, the sort that comes around only once in a long while. “Henny,” I said. “You keep saying the problem with your comic is that you’ve been fixated on Leo for a year now. You need to move on. Your readers want you to move on. You know what you need?”
“A sudden plot twist involving witches?”
“You need to take the love potion,” I said.
She looked dubious. “But I already have someone I’m in love with.”
“And it’s not going to work. I’m sorry, but it isn’t. Sometimes you have to accept that and move on.” Big words coming from me, really. Was I supposed to accept that Devon didn’t like me and move on? But no, Devon did, really. Deep down, under all his worries and all my stupid missteps. Didn’t he?
I focused on Henny, because I might be able to solve her problems if I couldn’t solve mine. “This will open your eyes to who else might be around the high school. The high school is literally full of guys.”
“Half-full,” corrected Henny.
“At any rate, don’t you want to move on?” I said. “Don’t you want to see who else might be out there?”
“I … I … don’t know,” Henny said, a stumble in her voice. “I’ve been so focused on this one thing, I mean, this one person.”
“Henny,” I said. “You can’t do that anyway. You’ve got to live your life for you.” I had an eerie flashback to Halloween week, telling that to the zombie girls who were magically crazy for Devon. “Don’t think of it as letting something go. Think of it as an exciting new direction for your comic. Imagine what it would be like to have so much new material to write about. If you open yourself up to possibility, maybe you can go on a bunch of dates! You can write about them. Think how much fun that would be to read.”
“Well…” said Henny. And then she straightened up. “All right. I’ll try the love potion.”
“Good choice.” I pulled the honey bear with its last dose from my bag. There was a pang as I handed it over. It would have been nice to use it to smooth over my problems with Devon.
She tipped it into her mouth, squeezing to get the last drops.
“How do you feel?” I said.
She blinked at me. “Actually … better. Like anything could happen.” She looked at me with new eyes. “Anything at all.”
“Nothing needs to happen exactly right now,” I reminded the second person this week. Giving out love potions was getting tiresome.
“This could really open up new potentials,” she mused.
“You can’t mention the honey in your comic, though,” I said.
“What if I pretended it was a fantasy comic? Like magical realism?”
“Slippery slope,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m just trying to figure out how to throw this curveball at my loyal readers, all five of them. Like do I say one day I woke up and decided to date more people?
“Sure,” I said. “Like a New Year’s resolution, but in November. Or a bet. Or some final straw that happened.” I waved my arms, spitballing ideas. Anything to make her get the idea and go home and write her comic and stop destroying my life. “Like you pretend you saw your crush—I mean, you don’t use his real name, do you?”
Henny shook her head.
“Well, pretend you saw him with another girl.”
“Like you?”
I reddened. “Not like me,” I insisted. “The point is, you despaired, you moaned, you whined, you carried on.” A lot. “And then you went home and broke all your colored pencils in half and decided it was time to move on.”
“Do I really have to break my pencils in half?”
“No,” I reassured her.
She sighed. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
“Yeah,” I said, trying not to think about Devon. “Just go home and get some sleep.”
She cycled off and I trudged up the steps to go inside. Everything that had just happened hit me like a ton of bricks: a cascade of little adrenaline crashes from the aftermath of the car chase, of seeing Devon, of the argument with Henny.
The witch was inside, reclining on the couch with a martini, watching the glass tubes as if they were the most epic soap opera that ever soaped. Wulfie was curled against her leg, conked out for once. “Goodness, that was exciting,” Sarmine said. “First Esmerelda’s plummeted—”
“That would be Henny, when she found out that I was off somewhere with Leo,” I said.
The witch raised her eyebrows at me. “Leo?”
“The shifter.”
“My word, how cliché.”
“Whatever, go on.”
“Then a few minutes ago, Malkin’s sunk like a stone—”
“Devon, also finding out that I was off somewhere with Leo,” I said.
“And then Esmerelda’s bobbed up and down in the glass and finally went to a middling level.”
Well, that was good, I guess. “I gave Henny a plan of action,” I said. “But I didn’t have a chance to explain to Devon. He was probably pretty high earlier, after placing in the Battle of the Bands finals.”
“Oh yes,” said Sarmine. “He’s been bobbing up and down all afternoon. Better than TV.”
She sipped her martini and I laid down flat on the floor. Worst. Day. Ever. And Devon would probably never forgive me. I groaned, staring up at the ceiling.
“Do you want a martini?” said Sarmine.
“No,” I said. “God, what is wrong with you?”
“It is far more important for witches to learn how to hold their alcohol than to learn … oh, what are those boring things you do at school?”
“Biology? English?”
Sarmine swept this aside. “I can’t tell you one good thing I learned in high school.”
“Except how to make money selling love potions,” I said. I covered my eyes. “Oh god. This is the worst week ever. Why did I even get involved?”
“Ready to give up being a good witch?”
“No,” I said to the ceiling. “It’s just a few roadblocks.” I tried to find my inner optimism. “Look, if I got Henny pointed in the right direction, then all that’s left to win the bet is to fix Devon and everyone will be above the midpoint. And if I make Devon a new packet of Showstopper for Friday and that unbeatable charisma helps him win the band battle, I bet he’ll forgive me. Do you have the actual spell for me? I need to start labeling my pouches.”
Sarmine nodded. “It’s in one of my books upstairs. I’ll leave it out for you.”
“Good,” I said. I propped up my head and watched the soap opera of thermometers. Malkin’s was pretty low, Esmerelda’s was middling, and Valda’s was reasonably high. But Sarmine’s was the highest. It made me glad to know that she was telling the truth, that we were repairing our relationship. Amid all the disaster, there was one thing I could count on. My own mother did not have it in for me.
Whee.
There was a white rectangle on the table next to the thermometers. Out of the corner of my eye I thought it was somebody’s playing card for a moment, until I realized it was the envelope that Malkin had tossed on the table. I stared at it. Why hadn’t she told us what
she was putting in the pot?
“Sarmine,” I said slowly. “What is in that envelope?”
Sarmine was instantly alert. She picked up the envelope, carried it over to the kitchen light, and peered through it. I followed her. “I can’t make it out,” she said finally.
“I feel like it’s a clue.” I took it from Sarmine.
“It’s sealed against magical tampering,” she pointed out.
“But not against mundane tampering,” I said, as I put the kettle on to boil.
A few minutes later I was holding the envelope over the steam coming up from the teakettle. “They always say this works in books,” I said. “Ouch.” Funny thing about steam. It’s hot. I nudged the flap back and forth until finally the glue loosened enough for me to slide it open. “We have a glue stick somewhere, right?” I said. “So I can reseal it?” Sarmine nodded.
Carefully I reached in and found a piece of thick, glossy paper. My heart was beating more quickly than it should be. I mean, it probably just said, “Congrats! You win a kraken tentacle,” or something. I slid it out.
It wasn’t a piece of paper. It was the back of one of the playing cards.
I flipped it over. Instead of a picture of a student there was a big question mark.
Underneath it read: Shapeshifter.
* * *
“Malkin knows,” I said. “She knows he’s been here all along.”
Sarmine paced. “Why would she set this all up?”
“Maybe to get close to him. Maybe she doesn’t know who he is yet.”
Sarmine looked at me. “Do you think she does now? How careful have you been?”
“Very,” I said. I tried not to think about all the times I’d said “were-rabbit.”
“You know it’s not just him in danger,” Sarmine said. “It’s his fathers, and everyone he cares for.”
I breathed. I thought maybe pacing would be good for me, too. “She set this whole game up to distract us,” I said. “You haven’t seen her for years, have you?”
“No,” said Sarmine. “She’s been trying to track down the last known lindworm for ages. A fool’s errand.”
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