Seriously Hexed

by Tina Connolly

  I snort-laughed at Poppy’s explanation. Maybe this girl was someone I could be friends with, after all. If only we hadn’t started out on the wrong foot.…

  “I have to charge it with my wand every day or two,” Poppy said. “I’d love to figure out a way to work some elemental power right into the electronics, but the phoenix feather made it run too hot and the dragon milk just soaked it. I lost a perfectly good phone that way. Thirty hours of babysitting down the drain.”

  Poppy set down the phone on the windowsill. The delight in her face dimmed as she switched over to concentrating on the warding spell. She carefully measured ingredients from her messenger bag straight onto the screen of her phone, using a teaspoon and a pair of tweezers. The app drew yellow circles around her ingredients, turning green when she had measured out the correct amount. In one case, the circle started flashing red. She didn’t look at me as she tweezed several grains of powder back off the phone and into the correct vial in her bag.

  “Wow, that’s precise,” I said. She shot me a look like I was being sarcastic, but I wasn’t. I could see how devoted she was to True Witchery. Sarmine would have loved having her for a daughter.

  Carefully, Poppy got out her wand and touched it to the phone. “You don’t have to watch me like I’m going to mess this up,” she said.

  “I’m not,” I protested.

  She paused, still not doing the spell. “I’m sure Sarmine has you doing stuff like this all the time.”

  “She tries to make me,” I agreed. “Like last month she filled my room with a mini blizzard and then left her voice on repeat, shouting the anti-snow spell at me. I had to dig the ingredients out of the drifts.”

  “Figures,” said Poppy.

  “Wait, are you saying you’ve never done this spell?”

  She glared at me through her glasses. “It is a very simple spell, and I have done it many times.” In a lower voice she muttered, “One of the few I’m allowed to do.” She moved her wand through the ingredients and blew the spell onto the window.

  Finally she tapped the screen on her phone and a recorded voice spoke the necessary magic words. That seemed clever to me, too. No need to worry about the correct pronunciation.

  “What now?” she said suspiciously.

  “Automated Witchery is the name of my new band,” I said.

  She harrumphed and went back to her phone. The avatar popped up, and this time when she scanned the window he said, “Warding. Fully operational.”

  We moved around the house, Poppy doing her carefully measured spell at each window. More than once I caught her checking her phone for texts, her lips pinched up with worry. I wished we didn’t both have to worry about our mothers.

  “So, your dad’s traveling, huh?” I said, trying to distract her with small talk.

  She raised her eyebrows over her phone. “What, did you think he, like, ran off on us or something?”

  “No,” I floundered. My small talk was terrible. Back to square one.

  She sniffed. “For your information, my dad is a poli-sci professor. He’s gone this week because he’s also a special education advisor to the governor and they had to fly to D.C. It’s a big deal for him, and we are not going to interrupt him.” She looked down at her phone. “Also, he’s a regular human, and you’ve got to work extra hard to keep them safe.”

  I groped for something to say. “So your mom’s been appearing to age along with your dad?”

  “She doesn’t seem to mind. Catch me doing that. I’m going to marry someone with witch blood. Won’t have to make that choice. Or lose him.”

  I nodded. Living twice as long as everyone else did have some drawbacks. I watched in silence as she measured and combined and blew.

  “One hundred. Percent,” confirmed the avatar after each spell. “Warding spell. Fully operational.”

  Finally we worked our way back down to the kitchen. I dug some dog treats out of my backpack for Wulfie and he wolfed them down. It was ten thirty. The idea of staying here all day, just … waiting to see what Lily found out, was equal parts appealing and terrible. Appealing because Lily was a skilled witch, an adult, and, frankly, we were two teenagers, one with a lot of knowledge and little practical experience and the other with … well, neither. Although I did have the turnip spell down pat.

  Lily was right—we were safer at home. Besides, the last time I had felt compelled to try to stop some witches, I had known that Sarmine was there, that she had my back. My mother might be irritating and cranky and overfond of horrible punishments, like magically making all my shoes two sizes too small, but she would not have let me actually get destroyed in an epic witch battle.

  I had no such illusions about the other witches of the coven.

  At the same time, I might go crazy just sitting here, waiting. And Lily was gone, and my mother was missing. Time was of the essence, and Poppy and I were better than nothing.

  I looked sideways at Poppy, who was carefully cleaning her phone screen with a small blue cloth. How would she feel about her big detective plans now?

  “Come on,” said Poppy. She was giving me a mutinous, I dare you expression. “Who are we going to go visit first?”

  “Oh, thank goodness,” I said. “I was afraid you were going to obey.”

  Poppy rolled her eyes. “And leave this whole mess in the hands of my mother and mopey Aunt Jonquil? They’re not even going to talk to the other witches. I don’t care what Jonquil thinks she knows, I don’t see how teleporting across the country is going to help with what happened last night. Besides, if we don’t go now, then my mom will get home and stop us from going at all.”

  “She seems awfully protective for a witch,” I ventured.

  “Because Grandma Iris was not protective and my mom blames her for their youngest sister’s death as a teenager.”

  “Ah,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Long before I was born,” said Poppy. She slung her plaid messenger bag over her shoulder. “Look, I’m not an idiot. We’re probably in over our heads, too. But I’m not going to stay here. When you have power, any power, no matter how beginning a witch you are”—and here she looked at me, but somehow I didn’t take offense—“you have to use it.”

  “That’s remarkably similar to the conclusion I was reaching,” I agreed.

  * * *

  Valda lived in a small town about an hour away from us. I had wondered how we would find her address, but Poppy said anything was findable on WitchNet if you did a little digging, and after some creative sleuthing of social media, clickbait articles (“Five Weirdest Backfiring Spells!”), and news (“Witch Caught in Avalanche After Weird Spell Backfires”), she turned up the address to one V. Valda Velda. We let Wulfie out into the fenced-in backyard, with some water and a rubber bone to gnaw on, and we set off.

  I wouldn’t call the drive there particularly inspiring. Poppy asked me a number of questions about my abilities as a witch. I didn’t get the sense that she was impressed by my answers. She still seemed pretty ticked at me getting to be the chosen one of the coven, and I didn’t blame her. It would suck to spend your whole life working for something and have someone else who didn’t care about it be handed it on a spoon.

  After Poppy finished cross-examining me, I stared out the window and worried. So both parts of the drive were equally great.

  Valda lived at the end of a dead-end street. In contrast to the normal-looking houses of Sarmine and Lily, Valda’s was the first I’d seen that looked like it belonged to a storybook witch. It was a rickety old Victorian with sagging wooden trim and at least five turrets. The whole thing was shrouded in ivy and gloom. Since I knew Valda enjoyed riding around on a broom and favored brute-force methods of witchery like dropping magical anvils on people, I maybe wasn’t too surprised.

  There was a wrought iron fence, and weeds grew knee high behind and through it. It was a cool, drizzly spring day. I had pulled on my jeans from last night and borrowed one of Poppy’s suit jackets. This one was brigh
t yellow. I pulled it tighter as I waded through the weeds to the gate.

  “Must not be a homeowners’ association around here,” sniffed Poppy.

  The gate was locked. “Should we ring?”

  “I think, if she did do something to Sarmine, then our only hope is surprise,” pointed out Poppy. She pulled out her phone and scanned the lock. “Phone, identify spell,” she said.

  “What good will that do?” I said dutifully. Maybe I really was the sidekick of Poppy’s story. Of course, the main character is the usually the one things happen to, and so far I was the one with the missing mother and the hexed boyfriend. Poppy hadn’t even gotten to take part in the coven meeting. I cheered up.

  “I’ve been compiling a database of known spells,” said Poppy, “which includes as many antidotes as I’ve uncovered through my research. After he identifies the spell, he theoretically can spit out the spell to reverse it.”

  The avatar smiled in success and said, “A Verie Moderne and Clever Magnetized Lock.”

  “Phone, supply antidote,” Poppy said.

  In his monotone, the avatar rattled off a list of ingredients, which Poppy combined on her phone screen and then blew onto the gate. She touched the wand to the lock and it immediately clicked.

  “Technology for the win,” she said, a bit smugly, pushing open the gate. It swung inward with a creaking sound.

  “I guess we’ll go in,” I said, taking a step forward.

  “Wait,” said Poppy, holding her arm in front of me.

  A spiked cannonball fastened to a chain came swinging out of nowhere and passed within an inch of my nose.

  “Booby traps,” said Poppy.

  “I should have known,” I muttered.

  My heart was racing as we made our way up the walk. I had been dumb to think that Valda, of all people, wouldn’t have booby traps. It was exactly the sort of thing she would enjoy doing. Probably a piano would fall on my head next. I looked up in the sky, checking for pianos.

  “At your feet!” shouted Poppy.

  I looked down to find a small cartoony bomb had sprouted in the yard in front of me. Its wick was sizzling down.

  Poppy yelled at her phone: “Anti-bomb spell! Phone, find anti-bomb spell!”

  “Ye Olde Aunty Mame Spell?” said her phone.

  “B … O…”

  “A Fancye Beehive Spelle for Manye Bees?”

  “Bomb!”

  “A Verie Explosive Bomb Spelle. Take one pinch cayenne powder—”

  I had a water bottle in my backpack. I dumped the entire contents on the cartoon bomb. It fizzled out and then melted into a pile of goo.

  Poppy and I looked at each other, panting.

  “Technology for the win?” I said, then immediately regretted being snotty. Poppy looked despondent. “It would have worked if you’d had more time,” I offered.

  “They don’t give you time during combat,” she said.

  “Epic witch battle,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Sounds less scary than combat,” I said. “I can handle the idea of an epic witch battle.”

  Poppy rolled her eyes.

  We pressed on, up to the door. It was a massive black door, flanked by diamond-pane windows. I reached for the doorknob and then stopped. See, I could learn not to be a total idiot. “It’s probably electrified or something,” I said.

  Poppy nodded and got out her phone again. She scanned the doorknob with the app.

  “Ye Olde Freezing in Place Spelle,” the avatar informed us.

  “We won’t be able to let go of the doorknob,” translated Poppy. “Phone, supply antidote.”

  “One pinch powdered wasabi. One pinch powdered egg. One pinch powdered pixie wing.”

  “Do you have all those?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “But I don’t want to spend next weekend at the creek gathering more sloughed-off pixie wings. I think we should try the doorbell.”

  The doorbell was large and prominent. So large and prominent that we simultaneously looked at each other and said, “Booby trap.”

  It was the first moment we’d done anything in tandem. But I ruined it by saying, “Jinx! You owe me a Coke.” Poppy ignored this.

  “Okay, no doorbell,” she said. She fiddled with her phone.

  “Different spell?” I said.

  “Megaphone app,” she said. Into the phone she said, “Valda, come out. I’m Lily’s daughter and this is Sarmine’s daughter.” The amplified sound boomed around the yard.

  “She knows me,” I muttered.

  “We just want to ask you a few questions,” continued Poppy. “Then you can go back to—”

  “To dropping anvils on kittens or whatever it is you do,” I put in. The megaphone app picked it up pretty well. My words echoed back: “Do-ooh-ooh.”

  Poppy wrenched the phone away. “You are such a dingbat.”

  “Valda, come out now. We have cigarettes for you!” I hollered into the phone.

  Poppy looked at me as though I were nuts. Which I guess I was, but sometimes your nerves get the best of you. “That is not how you do it, Dr. Watson.”

  “I suppose you know best, Poppy Sherlock.”

  The door swung open to reveal the familiar short, stout form of Valda standing there. With the familiar stench of Valda from the lit cigarette in her hand.

  “You don’t really have cigarettes for me, do you?” she said in her grouchy rumble. “I’m running low, and it’s so tedious to rub the invisible eels over the broom to fly to the store.”

  “You could walk,” I said under my breath.

  Valda coughed contemptuously at me.

  “Look,” said Poppy. “We’re here to talk about last night.”

  “Not interested,” said Valda. She made to close the door.

  Poppy stuck a foot in. “Five minutes, Valda.”

  “Or I’ll turn you into a turnip,” I said. Poppy shot me a funny expression. It probably wasn’t that she was impressed with me, so it must be that she was annoyed that I was taking away the fun of letting her run the show.

  “Oh, very well,” Valda said with bad grace, and turned away. Poppy grabbed the door before it could close and latch us out, and we trooped into Valda’s weird old witch mansion. It absolutely reeked of cigarette smoke. “Back in my day, girls didn’t come around pestering their elders,” she said. “And definitely not at lunchtime. They had better manners than to interrupt meals.”

  There was a TV tray set up before one of those ancient, enormous, cube-shaped TVs. The picture was frozen in the middle of an episode of Demon Hunter, a trashy soap that Sarmine also enjoyed. And okay, fine, I did too.

  “That’s the episode where Maria-Elena and Felicia elope to Paris,” said Poppy. It seemed like it was everyone’s guilty pleasure.

  “Well, don’t ruin it for me,” Valda said. “Get on with it.”

  “So, Sarmine disappeared last night,” I said.

  Valda humphed. “And I suppose you think I did it?”

  “The thought had crossed our minds,” I admitted. “You were standing right next to her.”

  “How did you know?”

  I nodded at the cigarette in her hand. “You’re the only one who smokes.”

  “Hmph,” she said. “Back in my day—”

  “There were ashtrays everywhere and hostesses offered you boxes of cigarettes when you walked in the door,” I said. “But the point is…”

  “I did not hex your mother,” Valda said. “Not that I wouldn’t enjoy doing it, mind you. But frankly, it would be too much work. If I tried to hex your mother, she’d fire back, and then we’d be having a battle that nobody wins, and after we’re covered in warts and slime I’d still be stuck at the stupid witch coven making stupid laws all night when I just want to get back to Demon Hunter.” She cast an eye at the TV. “They’re getting to the point where Felicia’s finally going to dump Zolak.”

  I didn’t know about Poppy, but I believed Valda. Whatever her faults, she would probably
come right out and say if she had done it. She didn’t believe in beating around the bush. “Do you have any idea who might have done it, then?” I said. “Someone who might dislike Sarmine?”

  Valda laughed. “You innocent. Everyone dislikes Sarmine.”

  Poppy snickered, and I glared at her.

  I raised my wand threateningly. “Look, Valda, I’d rather you be helpful right now.”

  Valda shoved my wand out of the way. “She’s made more enemies than I have, and that’s a lot. The problem is, she’s changed over the years. She used to be sensible about things. So when Malkin’s mother recruited her to the coven several decades ago—”

  “Malkin’s mother?”

  “Well, she recruited Malkin and Sarmine straight off, see? After two elderly witches kicked it under mysterious circumstances involving poisoned mints at a bridge game. Esmerelda and I were brought on later. And Sarmine fell right in line with their goals.”

  I couldn’t imagine Sarmine “falling in line” with anybody, but I definitely could imagine that her ethical code was more flexible than mine and had involved things I would never agree to. “Go on,” I said.

  “The forties had been a real problematic time, you understand. No one could decide who owned the rights to shifters and weres and so on in their area. By the time Sarmine and Malkin and Esmerelda and I were in college, things were becoming more sensible. But it still took some activism. Your mom’s always been an activist, you know.”

  “I know.”

  Valda spread her hands. “So she’s the one who spearheaded the laws to divide up the assets fairly. If you laid claim to a shifter, then some other witch couldn’t come along and start fighting you. The shifter was yours, fair and square.”

  I was feeling sick, and Poppy looked nauseous. “You mean…” I swallowed. “My mother was in favor of treating people like … like that?”