“He looks so sweet when he’s asleep,” I mused. “Not like a holy terror at all.”
“Same with puppies,” she said.
“True.”
We drove back to Poppy’s home in silence. The stars were out, and the cool spring air filled the car. Wulfie’s moon shone brightly down on us. Poppy turned on the heat, letting it fight back against the wind. I would have nodded off if Poppy hadn’t told me at the beginning of the drive that I was under no circumstances to flunk my duties as driver-keeper-awaker.
We pulled into the driveway, drove down its long path into the garage at the back of the lot. Wulfie was snoring softly. Poppy carried our backpacks, and I picked up my brother, cradling him against my chest. He really was a sweet boy. It was funny how mixed up my feelings for him were. I knew he wasn’t just a puppy dog, but I mostly only saw him that way. It made it hard to think of him as a person. But person or puppy, he was still my brother. I kissed his forehead gently, careful not to wake him.
We walked through the fenced backyard, up to the back door. I hadn’t noticed before that their back door had a fancy door knocker—a bitey, eagley looking thing. “Did I leave the kitchen light on?” said Poppy as she reached for the doorknob.
I suddenly remembered what we had been doing yesterday morning. “The wards!” I shouted, too late.
As her fingers touched the doorknob, a roar sounded out of nowhere. Not nowhere—there was a transparent lion-eagle thing, as big as the house, suddenly swooping down on us with a giant hooked beak. Another guardian, like Sarmine’s, only Sarmine hadn’t drilled me in how to disarm this one.
“Poppy!” I shrieked. “What is in those wards of yours?”
“Gryphon!” she shouted back. She was busy digging for ingredients. “Carrot juice everywhere … Glass everywhere—Ow!”
Wulfie stirred in my arms. His eyes popped open. “Cam!” he squealed, clambering up my shoulder.
“Afraid of mice,” panted Poppy. “Afraid of…” She combined and threw some mixture all over the gryphon. It turned into a shower of tiny mice as it fell. The gryphon reared back in horror and shrank away, turning back into a plain brass door knocker on the door.
“You are definitely improving on doing spells in the heat of the moment,” I said.
“You really think so?” A smile flickered over her face. “Practice helps, huh?”
Wulfie bounded off of me and began chasing the mice through the grass. “I thought you were a wolf, not a cat,” I said.
“There goes that nap,” said Poppy.
But the mice were way too fast for his boy form, and he zoomed back, knocking me over. “Cam Cam Cam!” He started to lick my face, and I laughed and gently rolled him away, tickling him instead. Wulfie might technically be a three-year-old, but he didn’t speak like one, undoubtedly due to spending so much time in puppy form. Whatever he was trying to tell me about his day with Pink, it came out in monosyllables. “Cam!” he said as I stood up. “Pink!” Then: “Cam Cam Pink Pink Cam!” He clambered up me like I was Pink’s rock wall.
“Wulf Wulf Wulf,” I hollered back, as he lodged one foot on my elbow and swung a leg onto my shoulders. Puppies with hands are a bad combo, I tell you.
“Uh-oh,” said Poppy.
“Pop mom,” said Wulfie.
“Pop mom” was right. Lily stood in the kitchen doorway, in a billowy cotton nightgown. Her arms were folded and her expression was severe. She didn’t look quite so loosey-goosey and hippie at the moment. There was a tense moment where I imagined everything Sarmine would do to me if she found me disobeying her like this.
And then Poppy ran to her mother and hugged her tight. “I was so worried about you,” she said. Lily squeezed her daughter, and I saw her melt for a moment. “You didn’t even answer the phone.”
Lily stiffened up and drew back. “Speaking of that, I’ve been home for twenty minutes. And where were you girls? I’ve been calling and texting.”
Uh-oh. “Uh, that’s my fault,” I said. “Poppy’s app wouldn’t stop buzzing at me, so I shoved it in my backpack.” I pulled it out and saw eleven missed messages. I handed it to Poppy with a grimace of apology.
She sighed. “Cam, I know you’re not my daughter, but I do feel responsible for you right now. And Poppy … Poppy, I was very clear about my expectations while I was gone. Fix the wards and stay behind them.”
Poppy grimaced. “We did the wards,” she said, gesturing at the door knocker. “But we couldn’t sit here and do nothing. You know that.”
Lily rubbed her forehead. She looked worn out. “I can’t have anything happening to you girls. You don’t understand. This is how…”
She looked at me, and my heart beat faster. This was how what?
Her eyes fell and she turned away, headed into the kitchen. We trailed along behind her, Wulfie on my shoulders. “This is how it begins,” Lily said. “This is how it always begins. The coven starts to disagree. People stand up for what they believe in. And you think you’re having a civil discussion, and then people start disappearing. Jim—a thorn in their side from day one—vanished. My sister Jonquil, advocating on behalf of her girlfriend Mélusine for better rights for mermaids—so they just vanish Mélusine. Jonquil gets depressed and moves to New Hampshire. Bam, bam—inconvenient people drop off the face of the earth and—Surprise!—new people are installed into the coven.” She wrung her hands, pacing. “But what is it this time? The only thing Sarmine did was try to install Cam.” She looked at me. “Unless someone else coveted that spot. Someone besides Poppy.”
“Sit down,” said Poppy. “You’re not making sense. Who else wanted that spot?”
Lily shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Poppy flicked a glance at me. Though I barely knew Lily, I had never seen her this flustered. I bet Poppy hadn’t, either. I swung Wulfie down from my shoulders and handed him a chew toy. I hoped that would keep him occupied for a few minutes. “What did you find out?” Poppy said.
Lily took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Finally, she appeared to come to a decision. “If I tell you, perhaps then you’ll understand the danger,” she said. “I went to talk to your aunt Jonquil. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to text you. We ended up having to summon … well…”
Poppy’s eyes were big. “You summoned a demon? You’re always telling me never to mess with them.”
Lily shook her head. “We had questions to ask. Anyway, I didn’t dare leave Jonquil alone with him to check my phone. Never turn your attention away from demons. You don’t know how tricky they are.”
“I know,” I murmured, having seen them in action. It was probably the one bit of knowledge I had over Poppy.
“But why did you run off to talk to Aunt Jonquil anyway?”
In response, Lily went to the living room and came back with her satchel. She didn’t even make any fuss about the dolls, which is how I could tell how distracted she was. She pulled out a large coffee table book titled Antiquities & Artefacts. “It took a long time to convince the demon to give up the information,” she said. “But finally Jonquil traded him one hour inhabiting the local weatherman—I know, I know—and he produced this book.” Lily put her glasses back on, then flipped through the book till she found what she was looking for. She slid the book over to us.
There on the page was a grainy picture of the exact gravy boat that Sarmine had produced during the ceremony. No, not a gravy boat at all. “Bronze lamp, 225 BCE,” I said, reading the caption. “Continually misplaced, current whereabouts unknown. Useful for storing—”
But I didn’t like the looks of the last word, and my tongue just stopped.
Poppy whispered it into the silence. “Demons.”
10
Lily Puts Her Foot Down
“Are you saying…” I said. I gulped and tried again. “Are you saying a demon was in that thing? “That was the green flame that came out? A demon took Sarmine?”
“Oh, Cam,” said Lily. She gave me a hug, as tight a
s she had given Poppy. But the hug couldn’t change what she had learned. “I’m afraid … I’m afraid that’s a possibility we’re going to have to consider.” She looked at my stunned face. “Let me get you girls some hot chocolate. Wulfie, would you like some cereal?”
Poppy tugged on my arm. “Sit down,” she said. “You look like you’re going to fall over at any minute.” She moved me to a kitchen chair.
I had not realized until then how much I had hoped this was just one of Sarmine’s crazy stunts. Make yourself disappear under suspicious circumstances. Hex all the witches you hate. I had half thought the curse would peter out by the time it reached our side of the circle.
“Teaching activity,” I muttered. “I’m supposed to level up, or something.” I groped for a way to make it familiar, make it all okay.
“What was that?” said Lily.
I buried my face in my hands. Much like Esmerelda would never have hexed herself with that particular curse, not even for a red herring, Sarmine would never have let herself be seized by a demon. She just wouldn’t. She couldn’t give up her power like that. She couldn’t stand to not be in control. The only way she would have let a demon seize her is if she had no choice. No warning. No nothing.
“But how do death triggers work?” Poppy was asking her mother. “Like, was Malkin’s package set up to go specifically to Sarmine, or was it set to go more generally to the witch that caused her death—” She broke off, looking wide-eyed at me. “I didn’t mean—”
I wailed, I admit it. “Do you think that lamp was meant for me?”
I dug my fists into my eyes. Lily was right. Poppy and I didn’t know what we were up against. We had started on a lark, really—the junior detectives go around on an Easter egg hunt to all the witches. Sarmine was missing, but surely if we followed the steps of her treasure hunt we would solve the clues and bring her home.
And now I was facing down the reality that she really had been stolen, by an evil elemental.
And it was all my fault.
Lily set the hot chocolate down in front of us. “Cam,” she said, “I want you to listen to me.” Her kind face was stiff with worry. “You did not cause your mother’s disappearance. You are not responsible for all the evil in the world.”
“No,” said Poppy softly from the other end of the table. “But we are responsible for fighting to make it better.”
Her mother flicked her a glance. It was clear this was an old argument. “Yes, when you have taken care of yourself and your family first, when you are fully trained, when you are an adult.”
“Evil doesn’t always wait for good to be prepared,” said Poppy.
“Evil can take my family from me,” said Lily, strain in her voice.
Poppy crossed to her mother and seized her hands. “You don’t know everything we’ve learned. We’ve been sleuthing. We can be a team, Mom.”
“We aren’t a team; I’m your mother, and I’m responsible for keeping you safe.” There was a warning hint of danger in her voice. When you live with someone who regularly threatens to turn you into a rechargeable battery, you are on high alert for those things. I could sense a temper about to blow from ten feet away.
Poppy could not. “But you were gone,” she said. “And we had to drive out to Rimelda’s anyway. We had to get someone to babysit Wulfie.”
“Rimelda babysat Wulfie?”
“No, her granddaughter did,” said Poppy. “And you know Rimelda wouldn’t hurt us. She’s grumpy, but not mean. And we checked on Esmerelda—but of course we could handle her, Mom. And it was worth it, because we learned—” She broke off, remembering what we had learned. We stared at Lily, fearful of what she would tell us when we told her what we had learned.
“What did you learn?” Lily said evenly.
Poppy fidgeted with her phone. I closed my hands on my hot chocolate. Neither of us wanted to come out and say it, because then we were going to learn something, and that was going to change everything.
But it was Poppy’s mother. It was my turn to help Poppy. “So, uh, we think the spell might be homing in on something bad you did once.” I stumbled through the words. “Like, the worst spell you ever cast on someone. Because, uh, Esmerelda was old and ugly and getting older and uglier by the minute and she, uh, confessed that she did that to someone once.”
Lily said, “But that could be coincidence.”
My eyes met Poppy’s. Our other confirmed example was Ingrid, but I didn’t think we wanted to tell Lily we had been teleporting.
“We drove to Valda’s, too,” said Poppy. “Her house attacked us. It shot all its windows at us, and then an enormous boulder—”
“Came hurtling down the stairs at you?” said Lily. Her voice was remarkably even, like she was super controlling it.
“Yeah!” I said. “Hey, how did you know?”
Poppy shot a look at me that told me my brain was being mushy again. “We thought we’d better warn everybody. Bad things are happening to people, Mom. Every twelve hours, going around the circle, starting with Sarmine, Saturday midnight. We didn’t know they were things that they deserved.”
“Deserved!” said Lily, with a funny catch in her voice. “Yes, I suppose they are that.”
There was silence in the old kitchen as I thought through the ethics of a karma hex, of people getting exactly what they deserved, smack out of the blue. Were Poppy and I supposed to keep intervening, now that we knew? Or were we supposed to stand back and let justice be served? My Good Witch Ethics List didn’t have anything about this.
Poppy stared at her mother until the question finally had the strength to slip from her lips. “So what have you done?” Poppy said in a tiny voice.
Lily was still. Too still. Too not answering us immediately with a laugh and a joke. If the answer was “Nothing,” wouldn’t she come right out and say it?
She raised her head and seemed to recall that we were watching and waiting. A smile pasted itself on her face and she said with a laugh, “Oh, well, there was that time when I was seventeen that I lost my temper and turned my obnoxious ex-boyfriend purple. That’s not too bad, right? I can take being purple for a few days. I remember it wearing off pretty quickly. It was a lovely shade.”
“Mom,” said Poppy.
Lily rose from the table. “Now you two need to be in bed. Hex or no hex, school goes on. Good thing the college is still on spring break—I can watch that boy of yours tomorrow.” Lily puttered around the kitchen like everything was normal, wiping the counters with a dishrag. “After Jonquil finishes shepherding the weatherman–demon business, she’s flying out to help. She’ll be here Friday morning, and then, purple or no purple, we’ll go find Sarmine and this whole business will be solved.”
“Mom.”
“I’ll email the coven and tell them to be on the watch for things at—what did you say? Midnight and noon? They won’t believe me, but we’ll have done what we can.” Wulfie looked up from his dish and yawned. “Are you done with your rice puffs, honey?”
“Mom!” said Poppy.
“What is it?” said Lily. The chatter of words ceased and danger was back in her tone.
“You can’t do this,” said Poppy. “Something is going to get you on Thursday midnight. Even if Aunt Jonquil is coming, it will be too late. You have to let me help you. You can’t fight this alone.”
“I do not have to do any such thing,” Lily said, eyes flashing. “Now get to bed, both of you.”
“You know I’m capable,” Poppy said, not moving. “You know how hard I work to learn everything I need to know. You know—Gah! Your mother wouldn’t have kept you from helping.”
Lily flung the rag in the sink and turned on us with blazing eyes. “And that is exactly why Jonquil and I no longer have a little sister. Because my mother never lifted a finger to protect us. Because she wanted us to go out there and defend ourselves against the witch world.”
The anger was plain in her voice. Wulfie dropped his rice puffs and ran to clamber up int
o my arms.
Poppy closed her eyes. She looked like she knew she had taken her argument one step too far. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you think this is fun for me?”
“No,” said Poppy, and a flash of the fire returned. “But keeping me safe behind some window wards won’t do any good either. It won’t make the bad things go away. And you know this.”
Lily shook her head and crossed to Poppy. “Car keys,” she said. Poppy looked back, mutiny in her eyes, and Lily waved her hand impatiently. “You should be glad I’m not taking your wand.”
Shock and anger. “You wouldn’t.”
Danger in Lily’s tone. “I will if you cross me,” she said. “I’m doing this for your own good.”
“No, you’re doing it for Rose’s,” said Poppy as she dropped the keys in Lily’s palm. “And she can’t come back to thank you for it.”
Poppy stormed upstairs, and Lily dropped heavily in her chair.
I shifted from side to side, unsure what to do or say. “I’m sorry Wulfie destroyed your house,” is what I settled on.
“I can fix it,” she said. She looked up at me shouldering the squirming three-year-old. “Here, give him to me.”
“Oh, I’m sure I can…” I demurred, but Wulfie slid off of me and onto her lap.
“I remember how exhausting it is to have a little one,” she said. “And you girls need sleep.” She looked at Wulfie, who was busy reaching for the salt shaker. “Come on, you,” she said. “You’re going to run around the living room twenty times and then we’ll try B-E-D again.”
I dropped a kiss on Wulfie’s thick hair, grateful for Lily’s help with him.
Slowly I went up the curving stairs, mindlessly straightening plastic dolls as I went. My heart seemed to have exploded in my chest. If a demon had taken Sarmine, what could I do? How could I get her back? Not only that, but something terrible was going to happen to Lily in three days. You could tell from her story about the purple boyfriend.
I found Poppy in her room, her back to me, staring through the wall of certificates. Her arms were wrapped around herself and she was whispering something. I moved closer and found it was, “She’s lying, she’s lying, she’s lying.”
Seriously Hexed Page 14
