Fang Ten

by Emery Belle

  Even Calvin had a hard time keeping a straight face as Pierre and I, looking equally bedraggled, returned to the group. As I tried wringing the mud from the hem of my T-shirt, Garnet leaned over and pulled a twig out of my hair.

  “Purgo,” Calvin said, aiming his wand at each part of my body and siphoning off the mud before doing the same for Pierre. I shot my familiar a dirty look as he took his place in line beside Midnight and Dolly, who both looked cherubic in comparison, and Calvin chuckled.

  “Believe it or not, I’ve seen worse. Like having a dragon for a familiar when your family owns a wood-processing business.” He shuddered. “Wands were in short supply that year, but at least the vampires were happy about the lack of wooden stakes. But I digress… Why don’t we see what your nightswallow is capable of?”

  He turned toward Garnet, and her whole body seemed to light up under his gaze. She walked over to Calvin, flipping her long auburn hair over her shoulders, and stood beside him, facing Midnight. I saw him lean toward her, and when he whispered something that I couldn’t make out, she let out a light, tinkling laugh that set my teeth on edge, because for the first time, Hunter seemed to notice the undeniable chemistry between them. His entire body wilted as Garnet shifted closer to Calvin until they were practically standing shoulder to shoulder.

  “What were you doing up there?” I asked Garnet a few minutes later once she and Midnight had finished their first test and Calvin dismissed us with instructions to practice building our connection to our familiars.

  “What do you mean?” she said, sounding distracted as she glanced back at Calvin. Hunter was walking a long way ahead of us, his entire body stiff, mechanical, as if he was forcing one leg in front of the other. Once the class was over, he had left without a word, and Dolly had followed—though I could have sworn she’d shot Garnet a filthy look before climbing onto Hunter’s shoulder.

  “I mean—” I began hotly, but stopped abruptly when I realized that Garnet wasn’t even listening. In fact, she wasn’t even standing beside me anymore. She had turned around and was making a beeline for Calvin, who was still on the academy’s lawn, waiting for his next class to begin. I watched as she approached him, toying with the ends of her hair nervously, and after a brief conversation she reached over and squeezed his hand, then practically skipped back to me.

  “He agreed to go to the coven’s dance with me!” she squealed. “I wasn’t sure if it was even possible, seeing as he’s an instructor, but he said since he’s not employed by the academy it’s perfectly fine…” She trailed off when she saw me staring daggers at her. “What?”

  “What do you mean, what?” I hissed, waving my arm frantically toward Hunter’s retreating back. “You already told Hunter you’d go to the dance with him, that’s what!”

  She stared at me, dumbfounded by my anger. “But Hunter’s not going to care!” she said. “You heard him, he just wanted to go as friends. He’s like you, he’s new to the island and doesn’t really have anyone else to go with. It’s not like it was a date… right?”

  She suddenly sounded less certain, but then her face colored with self-righteous anger. “And if it was, he should have made that clear! Don’t you think? Besides, I’ve already asked Calvin, and it would be humiliating to have to go up to him and say never mind. How would I ever be able to face him again? Hunter will understand. Right, Wren?”

  But I was already walking away. I’d been hurt before, and I didn’t relish watching the same thing happen to Hunter, who was one of the good ones. Girls like Garnet, girls who could have any man they wanted without even trying, would never understand that sometimes they left actual broken hearts in their wake.

  Chapter 7

  Pearl Dixon’s tiny wand repair shop was wedged between a werewolf-inspired sandwich joint with a questionable meat selection and a fairy dust supplier, and as Pierre and I approached, I was torn between pinching my nose shut to ward off the smell of rotting meat and squeezing my eyes closed to avoid the multi-colored clouds of dust wafting through the air. As we passed the fairy dust supplier, I heard a familiar voice call out to me, and through a haze of purple glitter I saw Glinna, the receptionist for The Islander Gazette, waving enthusiastically to me.

  “We’ve missed you around the office!” she squealed, grabbing me and pulling me into a bone-crushing hug. Her ubiquitous pouch of fairy dust hung from her arm, and I could see her fingers inching toward it, so I ducked away from her before she could douse me in it. She seemed not to notice, though, for she nudged me in the side and gave me a sly grin. “And there’s a certain someone who misses you more than anyone else, if you know who I mean.”

  I did, but I hadn’t spoken to Sebastian since Sandrine had suspended me from the newspaper… which, according to Glinna, had angered many of the other reporters. “Merry even talked about taking up a collection to help tide you over until Sandrine reinstated you, but she caught wind of it and threatened to fire him and anyone else who added money to the pot.”

  Glinna’s turquoise eyes clouded over with anger. “She’s a complete dictator, Wren. Our old boss Percival may have been a raving, murderous lunatic, but at least he was nice to us.” She sighed, then squatted down to pat Pierre on the head. “Anyway,” she said when she straightened up again, eyeing me with keen interest. “I heard that the coven was having a big dance next weekend. May I ask if you’re taking Sebastian?” She batted her eyelashes teasingly at me, and I cringed.

  “No, I, uh, I’m actually hoping to go with someone else.”

  I involuntarily clenched my hands around the strap of my bag, where I’d stashed my container of courage a few days ago while I worked up the, well, courage, to pay a visit to the man in black’s house… wherever that might be. I still hadn’t figured out the details yet, but I knew I could only stall for so much longer. The dance was quickly approaching, and I didn’t want to have to take Pierre as my date—he’d almost certainly gobble down my dinner the second my back was turned, though, to be honest, that wouldn’t be the worst date I’d ever had.

  “Oh.” Glinna frowned. “Well, I suppose Sebastian will find another date. He’s always been pretty in-demand.”

  I gave her a tight smile, then looked at my watch pointedly, hoping she would take the hint. She didn’t, and after enduring another fifteen minutes of office gossip, during which I grew increasingly antsy, she finally waved goodbye and disappeared back inside the fairy dust shop, saying she needed a new pouch of rainbow-colored glitter.

  Pierre and I continued on to Pearl’s shop, ducking through the gauzy curtain that covered the entryway and stepping into a tight workshop roughly the same size as a postage stamp. Wands of every color and make—wood, pewter, and even one that looked to be solid gold—were stacked in teetering piles all around the rickety desk, where the woman I presumed to be Pearl was helping a tiny wizard holding a wand that was making a rather alarming sizzling noise.

  “I don’t know what’s gotten into it,” he fretted, gripping the wand with both hands as it began trying to buck out of them. “I was using it just last night to work on a few new spells—top secret,” he added with a frown, casting me a suspicious look before turning back to Pearl.

  The wand, sensing his momentary distraction, took the opportunity to launch itself out of his hand and careen through the shop’s front window, shattering glass and sending Pierre and me running for cover. The tiny wizard ran outside after the wand, shouting at it and waving his arms in the air uselessly as it soared over the palm trees and disappeared into a passing cloud, and Pearl gave a small sigh as she emerged from her hiding spot beneath her desk and began repairing the window.

  “Welcome,” she said, smiling kindly at me as she collected the shards of glass off the floor with a wide sweep of her wand. I smiled back, covertly eyeing her up and down—everything about her screamed eccentric, from her tie-dyed, hippie-style skirt, to her long, straggly gray hair, to the pair of enormous rainbow-colored hoop earrings she wore… except the hoop in her left ear
was missing. When I politely pointed that out to her, she waved away my concerns with an airy, “Oh, it’ll turn up somewhere.”

  She motioned for me to join her at the front desk, where she put on a pair of bottle-lens glasses that made her amber eyes look enormous. After rummaging around in a drawer for a moment, she produced a vial stuffed with tea leaves and plunked it down on the desk. “You don’t mind, do you?” she said, using the tip of her wand to light the tea leaves on fire.

  “Actually, if it’s all the same to you—” I began, breaking into a coughing fit as the acrid smell lodged itself in my throat, which suddenly felt like it, too, was on fire.

  “Lovely,” she said over my hacking, making no move to put out the leaves. Then her eyes bugged out and she shouted, “Stop that!”, her gaze never leaving my face.

  “Er… stop what?” I said, staring back at her in alarm.

  “Not you.” She tipped her head to the side. “Him.”

  I followed the direction of her head to a shelf packed with boxes of wands piled on top of each other precariously, and there, at the bottom of the shelf, trying to clamber up the side, was Pierre. I gasped and launched myself out of the chair, dragging him away from the shelf and ignoring his howls of protest as I forced him to sit between my feet, which I locked on either side of him. Pearl gave the dog a long, searching look, then reached into the vial of smoking tea leaves, crumpled a few between her fingers, and sprinkled them over Pierre’s head.

  I opened my mouth hotly, intending to give her a piece of my mind—no one but me was going to sprinkle tea leaves on my familiar’s head, thank you very much—but she smacked her hand against the desk, causing me to jump about a foot, and said, “Show me what you’ve got.”

  She looked at me expectantly, and it took me a few seconds to realize she was talking about my wand—why else would I be visiting a wand repair shop? I settled back in my chair, intending to launch into the questions I’d prepared about her fight with Hattie, but another, more urgent question that had been playing at the back of my mind since my hearing before the High Court popped out instead.

  “Are all witches and wizards able to perform magic without a wand?” I asked, remembering the shocked look on Lady Amabelle’s face when she learned that I’d inadvertently cast the emerald fire spell during my battle against Wendall without using my training wand.

  Pearl raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Why no,” she said, studying my face. “It takes powerful, powerful magical abilities to get to that level. Most of the coven members could never hope to reach that level of achievement. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” I said quickly, an uneasy feeling settling in the pit of my stomach. It had all been a fluke, probably born out of fear, I was sure of it—I hadn’t displayed any extraordinary feats of magic either before or since. Just ask Lady Winthrop.

  But Pearl continued watching me, her amber eyes as wide as saucers, and I shifted uncomfortably in my chair and decided to change the subject as quickly as possible. “How do you know Hattie Bumble?” I asked, intentionally throwing out the question without any preamble so I could gauge her reaction.

  And I was glad I did, because she reared back in her chair, clutching the edge of the desk so hard her knuckles turned white. Then her eyes began watering and her bottom lip trembling, and before I could ask what was wrong, she pressed her forehead against the desk and started wailing at the top of her lungs. Pierre began howling along with her, their voices mingling in an awful symphony that had the owner of the sandwich shop next door peering in the door in concern.

  “Hush, it’s okay,” I said, giving her a tentative pat on the back that only caused her to wail even louder. I looked around wildly, hoping someone else would hear the commotion and come to my rescue, but the sandwich shop owner had already slunk away, and the few passersby on the sidewalk quickly averted their eyes when they saw me trying to get their attention.

  After a good ten minutes, she finally hiccupped herself into silence and raised her head from the desk before wiping her nose with the sleeve of her tie-dyed robes. By now, I was feeling like a horrible person—even Pierre was giving me the side-eye.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, handing her a tissue that she promptly ignored in favor of her sleeve. “It was insensitive of me to bring up Hattie out of the blue like that. You must be very upset that she’s missing.”

  Pearl narrowed her eyes, still rimmed with red, and yanked open her bottom desk drawer. She removed a tall bottle of clear liquid that was smoking slightly, poured some into a small vial, and tossed it down her throat in one swift movement. She pulled a face, then helped herself to another vial of the stuff before dropping the bottle back into the drawer and kicking it shut again.

  “I don’t care that she’s missing,” she said, a small wisp of residual smoke from the drink escaping her lips as she spoke. “I care about… about…”

  Her lips wobbled dangerously again, and she gave a hearty sniff and squeezed her eyes shut. “About Arthur,” she finally whispered, so low I had to lean forward to hear her.

  I frowned and glanced down at Pierre, who looked equally puzzled. “Who’s Arthur?”

  Pearl took a deep, shuddering breath and opened her desk drawer once more. This time, she didn’t pull out the bottle; instead, she reverently removed a framed photo from the drawer and held it flat against her chest with a sigh before pressing a gentle kiss to the glass and passing it to me. I glanced down at the man staring back at me—he was unremarkable-looking, with close-set brown eyes, pouches around his cheeks, and a receding hairline. But he had a kind smile and a friendly face, and I couldn’t help smiling back down at him before setting the frame on the desk, facing Pearl.

  “Arthur was my fiancé,” she said, tearing her eyes away from the man’s face and swiping at the lone tear still making its way down her cheek. “He was the love of my life. We met when we were just kids—we were in the same class at the academy—and stayed friends for centuries until our feelings blossomed into something more. It was… magical. But then I lost him, and I haven’t been able to recover.” She stared out the window, her eyes glazing over.

  My heart twisted. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “How did he die?”

  “Die?” She jerked her head up, her long gray hair whipping around her shoulders. “He didn’t die. He took up with my best friend… my former best friend. Hattie.” Her lip curled on the name. “I started suspecting something was going on between them when they always seemed to be busy at the same time—if Hattie had a lunch date with a friend, Arthur had a business meeting; if Hattie was going to a charitable event for displaced ogres, Arthur was off to the unicorn races. Finally, I followed Arthur one night, and he… he...”

  She swallowed. “He took her out for dinner and dancing.” Her eyes flashed with anger. “You know how many times I begged him to take salsa lessons with me? But he always said he had two left feet. Well, not with Hattie. So I confronted her, paid her a little visit at work one night.”

  I shook my head, anger welling up inside me on her behalf. “So you had it out with her at the daycare?” Pearl was undoubtedly the woman Astrid heard arguing with Hattie after hours.

  She nodded gravely. “I did. Gave her quite the piece of my mind. Not that it mattered—Arthur was already in love with her. He moved out of my house the very same day, and I haven’t spoken to either of them since.”

  “They both betrayed you, and it didn’t even work out between them,” I said, thinking of Glenn and the ring he was preparing to give Hattie. “What a waste.”

  Pearl eyed me beadily. “Didn’t work out? I wish! No, I saw them together only two days ago. Hattie and I are in the same quilting club, and we just had our annual festival where we display all the quilts we’ve made for the year and vote on which design to submit to the International Witches Sewing Society’s Annual Quilt-Off. The two of them were cozied up in her booth all afternoon making goo-goo eyes at each other. It was a disgusting display.�
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  “But what about Glenn?” I said, outraged. “She was his lady love, he told me so!” And based on everything he’d said about Hattie, there was no way he knew she was seeing another man. The thought of Hattie sneaking around behind sweet Glenn’s back made me sick to my stomach.

  Pearl shrugged. “What about him? Hattie’s shown that she doesn’t care for anybody but herself, so it doesn’t surprise me that she wants to have her cake and eat it too.” Then she added, more softly, “So you’ll understand why I’m not crying rivers of tears over Hattie’s disappearance. She stole everything from me.” Her gaze hardened. “What goes around comes around. Everybody knows that. And now, Hattie does too.”

  I bowed my head. “I understand.” And I did—it had only been a few short weeks since my own fiancé had dumped me for another woman, even though it felt like a lifetime had passed since then. But nowadays I barely even spared a thought for him, and I knew that Pearl would eventually feel the same way about Arthur. Someday, he would be a distant memory, his betrayal of her nothing but a bad dream that faded with time—and when I told her that, she offered me a small, shaky smile.

  Then, when she turned her attention back to the task at hand—the repair of my nonexistent wand—I made a big show of rummaging through my bag for it before sighing and shaking my head. “I’m so sorry, I must have left it at home. I’ll have to bring it back another time.”

  “I’ll be here,” she said, then waved goodbye as I stood up and grabbed Pierre’s leash. We headed for the door, but before I stepped through it, I turned back.

  “You and Hattie,” I said tentatively. “I saw your picture in a quilting magazine for winning last year’s annual quilt-off…” I let my sentence trail off, waiting for her to fill in the blanks.