by Anita Oh
“Hey,” I said, waving my hand in front of her face. “Are you in there? Hey, Fatima?”
She made no sign of hearing me at all, just stared straight ahead with lifeless eyes.
The forest thinned out as we came to the lighthouse. The blue light swirled around the lighthouse, those tiny specks that had been like fireflies but now seemed so much more sinister. Just as the specks swarmed the light, the students blocked the lighthouse, making it difficult to see what was going on. I pushed my way toward the front of the crowd.
The ocean roared below and the blue light gave off a hum, but once again, almost as if I was expecting it, there was that shattering noise, and all sounds stopped.
Everyone around me stepped back, arranging themselves in an intricate formation, some lying down, some contorting into strange poses, twisting their bodies into unnatural shapes in a purposeful way. I was sure if I viewed it from a distance, it would make some sort of sense, but standing in the middle of it, it just seemed surreal.
And as everyone moved away, I could see who they had been moving toward. The spell caster. The fisherman who had landed their catch. The one person I’d never really suspected. The one I’d trusted without question.
“Lucy O’Connor, of course it’s you,” said Mr. Porter.
Chapter 18
The specks moved away from the top of the lighthouse and began to swarm around Mr. Porter, glowing brighter the closer they got to him.
“You cast the spell?” I asked. “You’re the bad guy?”
“I’m not a bad guy,” he said, shaking his head. “A person can do something bad for the right reasons.”
I tilted my head to the side, watching him. “That sounds like something a bad guy would say.”
The specks swarmed more frantically around him, and then moved as one, entering his body, filling him with a blue glow.
I really didn’t want Mr. Porter to be a bad guy. I liked Mr. Porter. He’d given me an A on my pop quiz and he made scathing jokes about Hemingway. I didn’t want him to be all hopped up on magic and evil.
“What are the right reasons?” I asked, needing to know why he’d done it, why he’d cast a spell that hurt everyone.
“The truth,” he said, tilting his head toward the sky.
I took a step closer. I don’t know why. It wasn’t as if I could exactly take him down with my smooth ninja moves, on account of I had no moves, either smooth or ninja.
My movement made him snap his attention back to me.
“The truth,” he repeated, and for a moment the glow dulled and he sounded almost like himself. “The truth is everything. Every work of art aims to reveal the fundamental truths that we all yearn for. We study them to uncover the truths we’ve not yet discovered for ourselves.”
I snorted. “I study to get an A and keep my scholarship so I can grow up to earn more than eight dollars an hour,” I said. “I don’t care about the truths of old dead people.”
But I wasn’t sure if he even heard me. The glow grew brighter again, until it was hard to see Mr. Porter through it.
“Reveal the truth,” he muttered, in a voice not his own. “Reveal the truth at the heart of the being. The wolves who are howling show their true form. The students who sleep through life lose their awareness. The true form is revealed.”
I glanced around, not sure what to do. Everyone was still bent up in weird shapes, and though I didn’t care so much if Astor slipped a disc in his back from holding the scorpion pose for too long, it wasn’t right that he didn’t have a say in it. Mr. Porter thought they were sleeping, but he was wrong. Fatima wasn’t asleep. She worked harder than anyone to get what she wanted. Hannah wasn’t asleep. She’d been kind enough to stick with me through all the bullying. Milo wasn’t asleep. He barreled ahead at full steam. Mr. Porter had no right to judge them. His truth was not the actual truth. His truth was poppycock.
Even if I took down Mr. Porter with my smooth ninja moves, would that help everyone, or would they be stuck like this forever? There was no guarantee that taking down Mr. Porter would get rid of those little blue buzzies either; they might just swarm on someone else. They might swarm on me and make me do their evil bidding instead. I didn’t really want that.
What I needed was a handy local werewolf pack to jump in and sort things out. That was what Hannah’s Netflix queue had led me to believe would happen. They’d jump in, rip off their shirts and set things right. But from what Mr. Porter said, it sounded as if they had their own problems to deal with, and no matter how long I stood there, no buff werewolves showed up to save the day. I was going to have to sort this out myself.
Just as I was about to jump to action, Mr. Porter turned to me.
“The true form is revealed,” he chanted. “Reveal your true form.”
I couldn’t reason with him while that blue glow was all up in his business, and I didn’t know what other weapons I had in my arsenal. Not that reason had been doing much for me lately.
I had to get rid of the blue glow. I didn’t know if it was sentient or alive or what even it was, but if you wanted something to lose its power, you had to cut off its power source, right? They’d come out of Professor Amaris in the first place, out of that orb thing. I knew that didn’t necessarily mean anything – I’d been born of my mother and she wasn’t exactly a power source for me – but it was a place to start. I had to get back to the Zen garden.
“Reveal the truth,” Mr. Porter repeated.
I moved away from him. I hoped he’d be okay if I left him for a while to foil his evil plan, and didn’t fall over the cliff or anything — he was clearly a little messed up but that didn’t mean I wanted him to die. I’d nearly reached the forest when something reached out and grabbed my ankle. I looked down to see that blonde girl who had skipped out on the quiz, Stephanie Von Thingie. She held on to my ankle, her perfectly manicured nails digging into my leg. I tried to pull out of her grasp but her hold was too strong. It was super creepy, the way she stared ahead blankly, eyes unfocused, but moved on some external command. Her hand glowed faintly blue where she held me.
When I looked up, Mr. Porter was standing in front of me. I hadn’t heard or seen him move. So much for smooth ninja moves.
If I shielded my eyes from the glow, I could see his face, but his features all seemed different, distorted. The skin stretched tightly over his skull and his eyes and mouth seemed strangely magnified. I wasn’t sure that Mr. Porter was still at home in there, or how long since he had been.
“You will not leave,” he said. “The true forms are revealed.”
As he spoke, a howl ripped through the air, startlingly close, and I remembered the way that Althea had been forced to change. I probably needed to do something before that became an issue.
“No offense, sir,” I said to him. “But that is BS.”
The howl was answered by another, and another. I was surrounded.
“They might be wolves, but they’re not beasts,” I said, hoping that it would get through to them, at least. Mr. Porter was obviously too far gone.
“The true forms are revealed,” he said again. It was worse than talking to Tennyson Wilde when he got an idea in his thick head. “They will be exposed. The wolves and the sheep.”
That didn’t sound good. Wolves and sheep weren’t exactly buddies.
“You’re going to make them… eat them?” I asked, pointing between the forest where the wolves howled and the students.
“The wolves will devour the sheep,” he said. “The truth will be revealed.”
Okay, that was more than a little messed up.
“Wow,” I said. “For real? You think the truth is that important? You’d let a bunch of innocent kids get munched on?”
He glowed brighter, and I knew there was nothing I could say to get through to him. I had to get to the Zen garden. It was my only chance. I didn’t know if Mr. Porter was counting me as a wolf or a sheep, but I was fairly sure I came down on the “getting devoured” side, and if I w
as going to get ripped apart, it might as well be while doing something useful.
Time to break out the smooth ninja moves. I’d just make them up. Who would know? It wasn’t as if I was being assessed by ninjitsu masters or something.
I dropped into a crouch and twisted to the side, using my body weight to break Stephanie’s hold on my leg, and bringing me closer to the tree line. I snatched up a fallen branch and swung around to clock Mr. Porter over the head with it. I felt kind of bad, because he was super smart and I didn’t want to hurt his massive brain, or my chances of getting an A in English, but I definitely didn’t feel bad enough to let myself get eaten.
I’d thought the force of my hit would knock him out cold, but he just staggered and then righted himself.
“Oops,” I said, and then ran.
I got to the forest, but any relief I felt was short-lived. The safety of the forest was an illusion – a dumb illusion, given my history with it, though still better than magic-riddled English teachers and their creepy puppet armies, I supposed.
A wolf jumped out at me as soon as I got under the cover of the trees, landing on my chest and sending me sprawling. I pulled myself up as quickly as I could, my heart racing. Eyes glowed out at me from the darkness. Three sets of eyes, glowing the unnatural blue of the spell.
I was so screwed.
Chapter 19
It had been bad enough when I’d only had one wolf to run away from, but three was impossible. They backed me up against a tree, surrounded me completely. Sam was still only partially transformed, stuck between wolf and human, but there was no human awareness in his eyes, no recognition. It wasn’t the blankness of the puppet army; he looked feral, dangerous. The tawny wolf snarled at me, fur bristling. I assumed it was Nikolai because of the coloring, and that the smaller gray wolf was Althea.
They moved in closer, circling me. I’d seen nature documentaries; I knew how wolves attacked. Any second they’d start lunging at me, working together to bring me down. I looked around for an escape route, but I was completely hemmed in. There wasn’t even any way I could climb into the trees from where they’d herded me. I wondered vaguely where Tennyson Wilde was, if he was about to appear behind me and rip out my throat. I hoped it would be fast. I didn’t really want to lie there for hours watching them chew on my entrails while I bled out.
“Sam,” I said, hoping my voice would trigger something in his brain. “You can beat this, come on. Don’t let some jerk control you. You don’t want to eat people, I know you don’t. You don’t even like bacon.”
Which, let’s be real, was weird in itself.
If my voice triggered something, it was nothing good. He lunged toward me, his teeth bared. I moved away, but that brought me closer to Althea, who nipped at my heels.
“Quit it, you jerks,” I said, skipping away from her.
I tried to think of something I could do to fend them off. Althea had said they were scared of saltwater, but what was I going to do? Make a break for it and jump over the cliff? That did not sound like fun. There had been nothing in the lycanthropy book about what to do in case of attack. It had all just been scientific theory. Thanks, Dad. Thanks for the big fat nothing, to go with the rest of the big fat nothing you left when you walked out.
I tried to remember what I knew from TV and movies, but the buff guys kind of blurred all the details out. Silver, I thought. And wolfsbane. Well, I had nothing silver and wouldn’t know wolfsbane if I was staring right at it, and knowing my luck it was different in reality and actually like caffeine for wolves or something instead of a deterrent.
If I survived this whole thing, I was going to find out everything possible on werewolves, and then I wouldn’t get into these situations.
It seemed like a big if. The wolves tightened their circle around me, and in the distance I could see something moving through the trees. The creepy puppet army, moving toward me, blocking me in, and making themselves easy targets at the same time. Once the wolves were done with me, they could just turn on everyone else right there. It would be a bloodbath.
I tried to make a break for it, to push my way past the wolves, to get back to the school, but they were so big, so strong, they drove me back with minimal effort.
Sam bared his teeth and I could see him tensing, ready to pounce. I clenched my fists. No way would I go down without a fight. Not to Sam Spencer. Not to the boy who’d eaten too much cake at my fifth birthday and thrown up on my new dress, then cried himself to sleep in my bed because he thought he’d ruined my party. Not to the boy who had brought me puddings every day for a week after my mom got sick so that I wouldn’t be sad. I would not let him kill me. He’d never forgive himself.
I didn’t want to look but I couldn’t take my eyes off him if I wanted to survive. I had to see the exact moment he launched himself at me.
But he never reached me.
Suddenly, there was a wall between me and the wolves.
A Tennyson Wilde-shaped wall.
“Stand down,” he snarled, and the wolves cowered.
I could only see his back, but he seemed to be in human form. He stood on two legs and wasn’t furry. And he apparently had free will. Plus, he wasn’t actively trying to kill me, so he was currently my favorite person in the whole forest. Which was a sign of how dire the situation had become.
“Why do you continue to get yourself into these situations?” he said to me over his shoulder.
Which was totally unfair. It had only happened like once before. Maybe twice. I screwed up my face at his back and poked out my tongue. He began to walk forward, forcing the wolves back toward the lighthouse. I stuck as close as possible behind him. The creepy puppet army didn’t move, their eyes unseeing as they stood among the trees.
“I should’ve just stood back and let your wolves eat the whole school?”
“You should’ve not caused any of this trouble to begin with!”
I gasped with outrage. If he wasn’t the only thing standing between me and certain doom, I’d have punched him.
“You are such a jerk,” I said. “This is your fault, not mine. If you weren’t such a dick, people wouldn’t want to cause trouble for you and your kind.”
“If it’s not your fault, why are you the only one not changed?” he asked. “Why aren’t you over there with the rest of them?”
Which was a fair question, and I had no answer for it.
“Clearly because I’m too awesome,” I said. “And you’re not changed either.”
“That has nothing to do with this.” He put out a hand to halt the wolves and they stopped moving, their heads bent in submission. “We need to end the spell.”
I rolled my eyes. “Obviously. I think if I get back to the Zen garden, I can break the connection between the magic and Mr. Porter.”
“How?” he asked. “If it was that easy, don’t you think I would have done it by now? The statue is indestructible. It’s solid gold, and my people have tried to de-spell it. Nothing in the Zen garden can help us.”
I folded my arms over my chest, glaring up at him. “Well, Mr. Porter tried to stop me from going there, so it’s obvious I’m on the right track.” I thought for a moment, but it was hard to come up with anything with all the creepy puppets hovering around, waiting. “Did you try melting the statue down? Tipping it into the pond? If it’s underwater, the magic won’t work, right?”
“We don’t have time for this,” he said. “The spell is strong. I can’t hold the wolves back forever. We need to find another way.”
“You want to take down Mr. Porter?”
I couldn’t see the blue glow through the trees, even though we were close to the lighthouse. I didn’t know what that meant but I was sure it was nothing good.
“The teacher is irrelevant. He is just a tool of the spell caster.”
“Wait, what? Mr. Porter cast the spell, didn’t he?”
Tennyson Wilde huffed. “No. Pay attention. He was affected by the spell – the spell focused on him, used him t
o carry out its will – but he did not cast it.”
“He’s like… possessed?”
One of the wolves began to growl. Nikolai, I think.
“If that makes it easier for you to understand, but not really.” He gave an exasperated sigh. “The blue light is energy. It is the energy of the spell caster, their essence. Their will. We need to break the connection between the energy and the spell caster.”
It was my turn to huff. “Wasn’t that what I said in the first place?” Well, slightly differently, but only because I didn’t know about that “Mr. Porter being a tool” business. “Look, you do what you can here, and I’ll go try to drown that statue. We don’t have any better ideas, and when I fix everything and save the day, we can reopen negotiations on that briefcase of money.”
He made no reply as I walked away, which I took as agreement.
It seemed to take forever to get out of the forest. It didn’t help that I jumped at every little noise and movement, not forgetting for a second that there was a puppet army on the loose, not to mention feral wolves and a deranged teacher. I lost my way a few times, but I knew that as long as I kept moving forward I’d make it. I’d been lost in the forest enough times to have a general idea now, and eventually I came out near the Red House and hurried along the path to the Zen garden.
As I walked, the adrenaline faded and events of the past few days started to catch up with me. Battling evil was no joke. I dragged my feet and a couple of times caught myself vaguing out. What I needed was a very long nap. A nap and maybe some French toast. With bacon and maple syrup. I would definitely feel better after that. I wished evil would take a dinner break.
A wolf howled in the distance. I didn’t know how long Tennyson Wilde could hold off the wolves for. He was obviously the top wolf, but I didn’t know if that trumped witchcraft. I picked up my pace, just in case the wolves were in the process of eating Tennyson Wilde and planned to come for me next. If they were, it probably wouldn’t take long. He didn’t have a lot of meat on him.
