Seriously Wicked: A Novel

by Tina Connolly

  “Yeah, Estahoth made a hologram of me while I was at band practice,” he said. “He was working on the tasks.”

  “Ah. Cool,” I said. There was so much relief at that, that I didn’t want to acknowledge the niggling question in my head that said—why on earth was the demon taking Reese to pizza as part of a task? “Well, you’re looking tons better. Which is great. Because like he said yesterday, he’s here till Halloween anyway. Tomorrow. And … well, I guess he can hear or remember everything we say—Hi, Esty-snookums—so there are certain topics I’m not going to go into.” I was dying to tell Devon of my plan to trap him in a pentagram, but obviously that would be the dumbest idea ever.

  “Er. That’s probably good,” he said.

  “Yeah.” I knew I should get going to get the ingredients, but you know how it is when you run into your crush. And fine, I admit it, the shy boy-band boy was becoming more and more my crush every time we talked. Which is why I was so glad that the thing with Reese wasn’t a real thing. You know how it sucks when you like something for its inner essence but then everyone else likes it for its superficial outer stuff? And you want to say, “But I’m not following the herd,” and then you feel like some sort of fakey hipster? That’s how I felt about falling for Devon. If he was a boy-band boy, then he was my personal obscure boy-band boy, and I wanted him to stay that way.

  “So … what about task three?” I said. “I think we might have to help Mr. Esty fill that one regardless.”

  Devon shifted and kinda looked down at the bushes and back. “Why?”

  “Because the, um, ‘woman’ says the, um, ‘bird’ is going to explode no matter what,” I said, quotation marking the substitutions for all I was worth. “And I think she’s telling the truth with this one. That energy has to go somewhere, and having it burst into flame on the school grounds would be … pretty awful. So it has to be found, and probably harnessed, because we can’t get old Rabby up to a barren mountaintop in time.”

  Devon was looking at the bushes again. “Are you really doing okay? Is there someone back there?”

  He looked up at me. “I’m going to make it to tomorrow. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Good,” I said. He looked kinda shifty, but I suppose it probably was taking a lot of control to keep the demon suppressed and their personalities nice and separate, no matter how slick he claimed it was going. “So what was the trick?”

  “No trick,” said Devon. “We’re just sort of coexisting. It’s going great.” His hair flopped forward.

  His black hair.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Your hair’s still black.”

  “I like it that way?”

  “It usually changes when you’re you.” I peered closer. “Is that lip gloss on your cheek?” I tried to laugh. “I mean, I know the demon likes changing colors, but surely he didn’t decide it would be cool to have a shimmery pink smear half on and off your ear.”

  “Camellia,” he said formally. “Do you know Reese?”

  12

  Zombie Girl

  A wobbly blond girl wobbled up from the bushes. “He kissed me,” Reese said dreamily.

  “Really,” I said.

  “Mmmmm,” said Reese.

  “But you just said you were Devon,” I said.

  “Right,” Devon said, and smirked.

  “Kissed me, kissed me,” said Reese. Her eyes crossed.

  “I don’t know who you are anymore,” I said. “If you’re the demon, then you’ve gotten really good at imitating Devon. If you’re Devon, then…”

  “Kissed me,” said Reese.

  “Okay, what’s wrong with her?” I said.

  Devon patted her shoulder. “It’s time to be quiet. Think quiet thoughts.”

  Reese swung around and looked vaguely off in the distance. She waved at a cloud. It was freaky, like she was some sort of zombie girl under the demon’s spell. But why would the demon need a zombie-girl minion? And then I realized that he didn’t.

  The witch did.

  “Holy hells,” I said. “Reese? What’s your name? What’s two plus two?”

  Reese looked slyly at me. She mimed zipping up her lips and shook her head. She made kissy faces at the cloud.

  “Squishing pixies, finding the phoenix, and collecting hopes and dreams,” I said to Devon/Estahoth. “This is what happens when you take her hopes and dreams?”

  “Kinda sucks, huh?” he said. “You think people are going to notice?”

  “Um. Yeah,” I said. Reese took Devon’s arm and kissed his shoulder. He patted her head. “Yeah, I think people are going to notice. I think lots and lots of people are going to notice.”

  “Sit down,” Devon told Reese. “Pat the mousey statue.”

  Reese fed it ivy and whispered, “Kissed me, kissed me,” to it. There were grass stains all over her white T-shirt. The damp spots showed that today her bra was orange, which was just totally annoying. The smell of the wet ivy drifted up from the damp earth. Or was that mold and firecrackers?

  “So you were lying before,” I said. “I mean Estahoth. You were lying.”

  “About which thing?”

  I ignored that, because the demon was obviously trying to provoke me, just like Sparkle’s girls had been. “When you told Devon you didn’t have powers while you were inside him.”

  “Oh, that,” said Estahoth. “No, I didn’t at first. But I have them now that Devon is sharing more and more with me. We tried them out last night. We’re trusting each other now, and I’m learning how I can help him.” He smiled wryly at me. “I know I was kind of a jerk at first.”

  “Kind of!”

  “But think of my disadvantaged background! Stuck in the fires of the Earth, able to learn only little snippets about life on Earth from those who went up and came back. You know, it’s a pretty funny sight, now that I think about it. All the demons sitting around, waiting for whoever was called to come back and tell us every detail. One demon told us all about Elvis. We all practiced shaking our pelvises after that. Well, in our imaginations we did,” he amended. “Demons don’t normally have pelvises.”

  “How many times have you been up here?” I said.

  “Three,” he said, and there was something venomous in his tone. “I almost had it the second time. Sixteen ninety-two, Massachusetts. I almost made it.”

  Involuntarily I took a step backward. “If you’d made it then, you’d be dead by now,” I said. “Isn’t that the catch?”

  “But I would’ve lived,” he said. He seemed to notice my expression and plastered a grin back on his face. “But you’re right. I wouldn’t be here helping Devon. He gets to kiss five girls, I get to suck away their ‘hopes and dreams’ to fulfill my contract. Win-win. And this is a glorious little spot of history you’re in.”

  “You are not helping him,” I said. “And why did you set it up so kissing a girl is the way to work the spell?”

  “To reward him, of course.”

  “He doesn’t want your rewards. Does he?”

  The demon grinned. “Here, we’ll ask him. I’m not trying to suppress him, you know. We’re friends now. Hey, ask him if he wants to go as Elvis for Halloween tomorrow. I think I could really get the moves right.”

  The demon shook his head—and his pelvis—until he blinked and spoke in a different tone. A different tone, but the same hair color, the same stance. It was getting harder and harder to tell when the two of them shifted—or if any of the shifts were real.

  “It’s not a reward, Cam,” he said earnestly. “I don’t want to kiss five girls.”

  “Oh, please,” I said. “Be reasonable. Who wouldn’t?” The words came out more sarcastic than broad-minded.

  Devon stepped over Reese’s muddy legs and took my hand. Electric fire tingled up my hand and I almost jerked away. “Really,” he said. “I’m just playing along to make it out of this alive. I wouldn’t have ended up in the bushes with Reese on purpose. Reese is a nice girl, but a little…”

 
“Kissed me?” Reese suggested.

  “Repetitive,” Devon said.

  I laughed and he pulled me closer.

  “I want you to go to the dance with me tomorrow,” he said.

  “To be there if you need help, you mean,” I said.

  “No, to go with me. To be my date. You,” he said.

  “I could go for that,” I said, heart bursting into song and sunshine.

  “I’ll show you that there’s only one girl I want to kiss,” he said, smoothly, calmly, delightfully.

  I melted, melted—and then—hells! I stuck my hand straight out and stopped him an inch from my lips. Shoved him backward. He stumbled against the mock-orange bush. “I am so not your little idiot,” I said. But I almost had been.

  Whoever he was, he waggled his fingers and grinned cheekily at me. “Four more to go,” he said.

  * * *

  I booked it to Celestial Foods. Grabbed the ever-growing list of ingredients for various spells off the metal shelves, panting. I had no idea how many oysters or eggplant the demon-loosening spell needed so I grabbed a tin of the former and ten of the latter. I desperately wanted a new jar of peanut butter so I could eat some lunch, but I didn’t have enough change. As it was I had to put one of the eggplants back.

  “Another trip for your aunt?” said Celeste. Her wooden hippie necklaces clacked reassuringly as she leaned over to scan my produce. It was a homey sound.

  “The weary grind never ceases,” I joked.

  Celeste studied the display screen while sliding my grocery items across her scanner. “I suppose things change all the time,” she said casually. “You know, back when Alphonse was at Hal Headley they had half an hour lunch breaks.”

  “Oh?” I said. I had no idea where she was going with this.

  “Well, you know my boy. He’s always been an activist, always taking up someone’s cause. At that time they didn’t have a vegetarian option in the cafeteria, except for a pathetic salad bar containing wilted lettuce and soggy veg. Can you imagine?” She shook her head, graying ringlets bobbing.

  “No,” I said. “They’ve got several options now. Every day.”

  “That’s all Alphonse,” Celeste said proudly. “He didn’t have all sorts of time, because he helped me after school for an hour and a half each day, and he had his homework. So he had to balance school and helping his mum just like you do. But he took part of his lunch break every single day to work on it. He researched what other cafeterias across the States were doing. He took polls of students. He blogged about it. He made friends with the cafeteria workers and got their input. It was nobody’s idea but his own. It was something he was passionate about and he spent all his spare time doing it.”

  “That’s cool,” I said. I didn’t know what she was getting at but I liked hearing stories of her family. “Go Alphonse.”

  Celeste handed me my bag of ingredients. “I hope your aunt appreciates everything you do for her,” she said.

  * * *

  I barely made it to American history and yet another scintillating video. I tuned out and tried to decipher what Celeste was trying to say with her Alphonse anecdote. That she appreciated him? That she let him live his own life? Certainly she thought the world of Alphonse, even when they disagreed. I knew she hated the dangerous tactics he and his friends used. She was terrified that he would come to harm. But at the same time she was proud of him for standing up for his beliefs. It must be hard to be a mom in those gray situations, where nothing was black-and-white, and nobody was 100 percent right or 100 percent wrong.

  I didn’t know. It was so hard to concentrate on anything without lunch. I was so hungry I was seriously starting to think about eating the spell ingredients.

  By gym I was so desperate for food that I ate an airline cracker pack I found squashed at the bottom of my backpack. I shoved my feet into my gym shorts and hurried out to see if Zombie Reese had made it to gym class.

  Reese was cross-eyed, but she was there. We were still doing track, so even Zombie Reese could handle a slow jog around the track, telling all her friends, “He kissed me.” They swooned.

  I guess I was wrong that people would notice.

  Reese jogged next to me for a while in happy cross-eyed silence. I’d been pissed at her this morning, but it’s impossible to be angry at a blissful zombie. At least she’d been taken in by a punk-band demon and not a pelvis-shaking demon.

  “Soooo. How’re the plans for the dance going?” I said through my panting. “The Halloween Dance Committee has everything under control?”

  “Dunno,” Reese said.

  “Blue Crush still the band of choice?” I said.

  “That’s Devon’s band,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. It was hard to talk to zombies. “What do you want to do with your life?”

  “Kiss Devon,” she said.

  That sounded like a hope and a dream to me, if a dumb one. “Do you remember what you used to want to do?” I said.

  Reese looked up at the sky and stumbled a bit. “Um,” she said. “Be a kindergarten teacher?”

  “But now?”

  “Kiss Devon,” she said firmly.

  “I hear you,” I said.

  “You want to kiss Devon, too?”

  “Look, have you thought about this?” I said. “Maybe what you think you want isn’t really what you want. Maybe what you want is just someone else telling you that that’s what you want. And what you really want is buried so deep that it’s hard to figure it out. You can barely remember what you want, because other people’s needs and wants are so squashed on top of it.”

  “They are?”

  I wiped sweat from my forehead. “You spend all your life reacting to what this other person wants of you,” I said. The words bubbled up from the deep, a carbonated explosion. “Fulfilling their needs and helping them, or stopping them, but either way it’s all about them. When is it going to be about you? You’ve got to ask the questions in life. New questions. ‘Where are my hopes and dreams?’ Do you know what I mean, Reese?” The words tore through and out of me until I felt empty, exhausted with the effort.

  Or maybe that was the jogging.

  “That cloud looks like Devon,” said Reese.

  I stopped dead in the path and grabbed her shoulder. “Is that him down there?”

  Reese squealed and ran down the hill in the direction I’d pointed. There was a boy at the bottom of the hill with a younger girl, one I didn’t know. I hurried behind Reese as she plowed down the hill and smacked full stop into Devon, wrapping her arms around him. I skidded on the wet grass and almost fell into both of them, but I stumbled back against the side of the hill instead, muddying my butt and hands.

  The other girl reeled away. Her eyes were crossed.

  “He kissed me,” she said.

  “He kissed you?” said Reese.

  “He kissed me,” said the other girl.

  This could get tedious. “Reese, you need to finish jogging,” I said. I tried to brush off my gym shorts but the mud and grass smeared the shiny polyester. “And you, what class should you be in right now?”

  “Computer Programming Three,” the girl said.

  “So you like software?” I said. “You want to be a hacker? You’re clever with code? It’s your whole life, right? All the hopes and dreams you have are centered around computers?”

  “I like him,” she said. “He kissed me.”

  “Yes, we know. Both of you, scoot.” I pried Reese from Devon and shoved both girls up the hill. Luckily, they didn’t seemed inclined to fight. I just heard them informing each other that they’d been kissed as they wobbled up the hill.

  I turned back to Devon, but he was gone. Vanished, and I think literally. All that was left was an echo of a voice saying, “Two down.”

  Hells.

  I trudged up the steep slope to the end of gym class and the showers. What was I supposed to do, quarantine all the girls in school until I could get Devon into a pentagram? I pulled my l
ist out of my backpack and made some notes.

  • Solve Ye Olde Demon-Loosening Spell (MOST IMPORTANT)*****

  • Get demon-loosening ingredients and self-defense ingredients

  • Retake algebra test

  • Figure out how the demon is planning to steal “the hopes and dreams of five”

  • Figure out why Devon is hanging out with Reese and her blue bra

  • Trap Devon in a pentagram

  Well, there was one thing I could do now. When the bell rang, I crammed my muddy gym clothes in my bag, went straight to Rourke’s classroom, and laid it out for him.

  “Mr. Rourke,” I said. “About the test I bombed…?”

  “Work your session with my tutor this afternoon and I’ll let you retake it tomorrow. This once. And don’t think you’re getting away with anything. I know you were an A student in math last year, so I assume there’s hope for you.” Rourke chugged the last of a two-liter and tossed the bottle in the trash can.

  “Right.” I twisted my fingers and wondered if it would’ve done any good to buy Rourke a bottle of root beer. “So Kelvin’s a really good tutor. After he explained it yesterday I really got it. I went home and worked.” A few problems plus a self-defense spell was work. “I may be a bit slow, but … I’d like to take that test now.” The thought made me nervous, but I hoped my show of confidence would convince Rourke to let me get this situation over with.

  “Right now,” said Rourke. “Really.” He grabbed another two-liter and thoughtfully twisted the cap back and forth, loosening it in tiny crack-cracks. “This would be your only chance.”

  “Once you understand that algebra’s logical, then it’s just working through the steps,” I said. “Even with word problems.”

  “A plodding approach, but true enough,” conceded Visible Undershirt. “All right then. Your gumption hurts no one but yourself.”

  Rourke handed me a new test from a locked drawer and I sat down at my desk. There was a moment of panic—why did I think this would be a good idea?—but then I stopped. Swallowed.

  Compared to a self-defense spell written by a paranoid witch who added in seven extra ingredients and used jokes about body parts to solve steps, algebra was nothing.