B*witch

by Paige McKenzie

“Exactly,” Ms. O’Shea said, then held up her glasses. “And this is my wand, Theia, named after the Greek goddess of vision. Can I buy you guys another pretzel at Auntie Anne’s? We have a lot to talk about.”

  “I first noticed the three of you about a month ago. At Misthaven Beach,” Ms. O’Shea explained as she took a bite of her jalapeño pretzel. The three witches were sitting around a table in the food court, protected by a calumnia spell. “It was around sunset, and you guys were toasting marshmallows over a bonfire.”

  Binx thought back to that day. “But the beach was totally deserted.”

  “It was, except for me. I was taking a walk on the far north end. You wouldn’t have seen me. But I saw you.” Grinning, Ms. O’Shea pointed to her glasses. “Theia magically enhances my vision so that I can see across great distances. From where I was standing, I could tell that Greta was enchanting each of your marshmallows to make them perfectly golden-brown. You, Binx, were using a spell to stoke the fire. And you, Ridley, must have gotten concerned about privacy, because you morphed the air into a heavy fog and surrounded yourselves with it.”

  “Holy machines! You saw all that?” Ridley sounded alarmed.

  I so need to score a pair of those Theia glasses, Binx thought.

  “I did. And needless to say, you girls need to be more careful. Especially now that the Antima movement has spread to Sorrow Point.”

  “Is that why you came to our school?” Binx asked curiously.

  “Yes, in part. My coven and I—”

  “Oh my gosh, there’s another coven in Sorrow Point?” Ridley exclaimed.

  “Not here. Way north of here, in the mountains. I’m there every weekend. My coven’s mission is to keep a lookout for young witches and mentor them, help them. After I saw you guys on Misthaven Beach… well, the school needed a history sub, so I jumped at the chance.”

  “So Ms. Hua is really expecting a baby? She didn’t… she isn’t…” Ridley stopped and shook her head. “I thought that maybe something bad happened to her. Sorry, I guess I was just being paranoid.”

  “No worries. And yes, she really is expecting a baby. She was having a rough second trimester, though, so she asked to take her leave early. She’s fine, and the baby’s due around New Year’s.”

  “Oh, whew,” said Ridley.

  “I also know about Div and Mira and Aysha. Well, as of today, anyway,” Ms. O’Shea continued. “At lunch, I happened to pass by that little alcove with the vending machine, and I saw the two of you and Greta having an intense-looking conversation with them… except that from what I could hear, you all seemed to be talking about what to wear to the Homecoming Dance. I had a hunch, so I did a quick scrying spell and realized that calumnia was in effect.”

  “Huh!” Binx took a bite of her cinnamon sugar pretzel.

  “See, I told you! Calumnia isn’t perfect because it doesn’t scramble stuff visually,” Ridley reminded Binx. “In fact, we should all be smiling right now because all these food court people could be watching us!” She fake-smiled.

  Binx fake-smiled, too, wondering if Ms. O’Shea knew about Iris Gooding being a witch (according to Greta, anyway). She made a mental note to tell Ms. O’Shea about Iris after she’d had a chance to talk to Greta first and confirm that Iris was indeed one of them.

  As they snacked on their pretzels, Binx and Ridley filled Ms. O’Shea in on the shadow messages, the 1415 hexes, and the defaced gravestones, as well as their belief that Orion, Brandon, and Axel were Antima members.

  When they’d finished, Ms. O’Shea said, “Wow, those shadow messages must have been scary for you. The graffiti on the gravestones, too. And no, I didn’t hex the shadow messages, and neither did any of the other witches in my coven. Maybe I could take a look at Greta’s? And Div’s? And yes, those three boys are on my radar, too. Although…” She hesitated.

  “What?” Ridley prompted her.

  “It’s entirely possible that they’re just wearing the shoulder patch and acting like bigoted jerks, but not engaging in any of the more extreme and violent Antima activities. Not yet, anyway. We think, though, that there’s a more serious Antima presence in Sorrow Point. Some bigwig who is organizing and financing a powerful new Antima faction.”

  Binx would have said something smug to Ridley about how she’d been right—Orion and Axel were posers. Except she wasn’t happy to hear about this other news.

  “Who’s this bigwig?” she asked Ms. O’Shea.

  “We don’t know. We’re trying to find out who he—or she—is.”

  Ridley was tearing her pepperoni pretzel into tiny pieces. Binx noticed that her friend sometimes did that with food (or a piece of paper or whatever she happened to be holding) when she was anxious. “Can’t you and your coven just do a superpowerful scrying spell and uncover this person? You guys must be really advanced witches, right?”

  “I wish we could do that,” Ms. O’Shea said with a sigh. “But as you probably know from Callixta Crowe’s book, and from your own experiences, too, I’m sure, the practice of magic is imperfect. And unpredictable. Otherwise, we witches could just scry and memory-erase away the Antima. Disable them, even. Them, and all other evil in the world.”

  Binx began tearing her own pretzel into tiny pieces, too. It was kind of therapeutic. But it also made her feel more agitated. And angry. It wasn’t fair that she and other witches had to meet like this, in secret, strategizing ways to keep from being terrorized by a bunch of random witch-haters who had no reason for their prejudiced attitudes. Just before the Great Purge, there’d been a plague that had killed tens of thousands of people, and the government had decided (wrongly) to blame witches for it and order their arrests and executions.

  But that was then. This was now. Witches weren’t a threat to anyone, and they deserved to have equal rights.

  The Antima had to go. The 6-129 law had to go, too.

  Binx gathered all the torn-up pretzel bits and popped them into her mouth. She remembered to fake-smile. (Someone really needed to create a calumnia 2.0, to cover visuals.)

  And then she smiled for real. An idea had come to her.

  There was a way to fight back. ShadowKnight had told her all about it. She had to get in touch with him ASAP. If only she could figure out why the hex he’d disappeared.

  14

  THE SEARCH FOR LOLLI MCSCUFFLE PANTS

  The act of finding your Familiar is an individual endeavor.

  No spells are needed; just an open mind.

  (FROM THE GOOD BOOK OF MAGIC AND MENTALISM BY CALLIXTA CROWE)

  “You must hand over the Sapphire of Truth immediately or face the full wrath of the High Council!”

  “You mendacious maenad! You wouldn’t know Truth if it hit you over the head like Hedren’s Hammer of Halcyon Magic!”

  “How DARE you!”

  Iris pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and hunched over her laptop as Ilyara and Draska, the two most powerful witches on the Valkyrie Valley High Council, squared off. Should her own character, Skotadi of Sirren, intervene or stay hidden behind the Crystal Cauldron? The wrong decision could mean instant death, or worse, being demoted to her previous level. Death was the lesser of two evils here because she could just respawn at her prior position outside the Fortunale Fortress. Losing a level was a huge problem because it had taken her forty hours of play to achieve the jump.

  Her room was a crazy mess—clothes spilling out of dresser drawers, pools of hardened candlewax, and empty Pasta-in-a-Cup containers everywhere. Her gems, potions, and tarot cards (homemade by her… art wasn’t her strong suit, but oh, well) were all hidden away in her closet in an old cardboard box marked WINTER CLOTHES/DO NOT THROW AWAY. She really should do a major cleanup; she still wasn’t completely unpacked from the big move last month, and what she had unpacked was a chaos salad. But today was Wednesday, and Wednesdays from six to nine p.m. Pacific time meant triple XPs (Experience Points) for battle wins and double value for newly acquired Firx, which were the currency in the Witch
world world. Her character had already accumulated 1,200 XPs in the battle against the Enochian Elves and banked an additional 500 Firx—enough to buy a new scrying mirror at Beeble’s Bazaar or maybe even a Shadow Shield, if the merchant Mungledoc was open to bargaining.

  The IRL cleanup could wait. So could her English, history, and French homework. She—or rather, Skotadi—needed to come out of hiding, put on her big-girl pants (an expression her therapist Francesca used to use), and join the fight; the question was, on whose side?

  If Francesca were here, she would probably point out that Iris was in extra-intense gaming mode because she’d had an extra-intense day. It had been Day 1 at her new school. She’d been harassed and assaulted by three jerks (Antima jerks). She’d revealed to another human being that she was a witch. She’d received scary images (and the word no in secret code) from a shadow message.

  Experiences like this tended to fire up Iris’s anxiety, and gaming was a good way to throw a blanket on the flames.

  Of course, Francesca didn’t know that she was a witch. Iris had always been super-extra-cautious about keeping that part of her life a secret, even from her therapist, who was a cool person, and even from her family members, who were (besides her little sister Nyala) mostly cool, too. She didn’t want to take any chances that someone outside her family-therapist circle, someone not cool, might find out.

  Iris cranked up the volume on her Tegan and Sara album just as the song “I’m Not Your Hero” came on. Argh. Not exactly the right sentiment for dealing with this stuff. Or for going into a nasty cyber-battle.

  Although it occurred to Iris, not for the first time, that Witchworld was the one truly “safe” place to be a witch. The world seemed to be fine with witches as long as they were fictional.

  “Lollllllli! Lolli McScuffle Pants!”

  “Shut up, Nee-Nee. I can’t hear my movie!”

  Nyala and Ephrem were yelling and fighting downstairs. Sighing, Iris typed an AFK (away from keyboard) status, paused the music, and rose from her desk chair. Mom was working at the diner with Grandma Roseline, which meant that Iris was officially in charge, i.e., she had no choice but to intervene in this battle. Stepping over a pile of yesterday’s (or last week’s?) clothes, she trotted down the carpeted stairs.

  “But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t brave,” she sang under her breath. “Oh yeah, ooo-ooo, la la la la la la… I’m glaaad no one can hear me siiinging… oh yeah…”

  Her siblings were in the living room. Ephrem was sitting about six inches from the TV set—which was playing Jake and the Neverland Pirates, one of his favorite shows—and slurping from a grape juice box. Nyala was on her hands and knees, peering under the ancient brown corduroy couch.

  “Hey, guys, what’s up? Ephrem, that’s way too close to the TV.”

  “She’s bothering me!” Ephrem exclaimed, pointing a stubby finger at Nyala. His lips were ringed with purple juice.

  Nyala glared at Iris over her shoulder. “Lolli’s missing. Did you take her?”

  “Um, no? Why would I take your pet mouse?”

  “’Cuz you would, jerkface.”

  “Do not call me that. Seriously, what happened? When did you see her last?”

  “I was cleaning out her cage, so I put her in a little shoe box with the rest of my banana from lunch, but now she’s not there anymore and what if she’s dead? What if Oliver P. and Maxina ate her?”

  “Cool!” Ephrem said excitedly.

  “Shut up, you stupid brat!” Nyala shouted.

  “Guys! Okay. Plan. Nyala, check and make sure Lolli’s not in the bathroom, then put Oliver P. and Maxina in there and close the door. You can lure them in with the cat treats—there’s some in the kitchen drawer with the Tupperware lids. Ephrem, stay here and watch another episode of Jake and, um, keep an eye open for Lolli.” With the tiny creature loose, Iris didn’t trust her clumsy little brother not to accidentally step on her if he moved from his spot. “I’ll search the rest of the house. Everybody watch where you walk.”

  “What if Lolli’s already squashed?” Nyala wailed.

  “She’s not. Calm down, okay? I’m going now; you guys have your orders.”

  Retracing her steps out of the living room, Iris looked right and left and down (and even up—what if Lolli was a climber?). She tried to remember the spell Jadora used whenever her familiar, a Bothnian bird-cat, went missing (which was often because the superwitch’s many enemies were often snatching Baxxtern as a way of weakening and distracting her); maybe she could use it for inspiration? (There was a finding-lost-familiars spell in Callixta’s book, but she couldn’t recall that one, either.) Iris had no idea what it felt like to be so bonded to an animal. She had yet to meet a familiar of her own. Maybe it was okay, though; not all the witches in Witchworld had a familiar, and Greta had mentioned that Callixta said it was okay to be familiarless (was that a word?).

  She remembered Greta mentioning her familiar. Goffle-something. Did the other witches in her coven have familiars, too? Did most witches IRL?

  Iris proceeded to search the rest of the house—kitchen, dining room, the den with the futon couch (Kedren’s new “bedroom” for whenever she was home from college), Nyala’s room (she touched Lolli’s cage, to see if that might trigger a helpful vision… but nothing), Ephrem’s room, the room Mom shared with Grandma Roseline, the hall closets. Nyala had holed herself up in the upstairs bathroom with the two cats; she could hear them howling angrily about being separated from their food bowl or water bowl or litter box or whatever. Major cat drama.

  The litter box made her think of… ugh, the basement. Iris hated it down there; it was dark and damp and smelled like mothballs and cat pee and decay. She would save it for the very end of her search. Or better yet, she would manage to avoid it altogether because Lolli was sure to turn up any second now… right?

  Just as Iris was finishing up with the last hall closet—it was stuffed to the gills with mismatched sheets, threadbare towels, and about a hundred rolls of discount toilet paper (because, Grandma Roseline)—she remembered the finding-lost-familiars spell from Callixta’s book. Yes!

  Making sure Nyala and Ephrem were out of earshot, Iris clasped her smiley-face moon pendant for extra magical effect and whispered: “Sortis.”

  Nothing.

  “Sortis,” she repeated.

  Still nothing.

  She knotted her fists in frustration. Breathe, she told herself. She reminded herself that magic was mainly about intention. If the mental intention wasn’t there, a spell was pretty much useless.

  “Lolli McScuffle Pants, you dumb mouse, where are you? Sortis right this second or face the full wrath of the High Council!” How was that for intention?

  Sssstttt.

  A strange, barely-there sensation tickled Iris’s brain. Like tiny whiskers grazing against her cerebral cortex.

  “L-Lolli?”

  Another tickle—this time, stronger. Iris continued repeating the spell (quietly) and calling Lolli’s name (loudly), and the tickling sensation intensified. It was almost like a weird kind of radar. She moved slowly, carefully in what seemed to be the right direction.

  After a moment, she found herself back in her own room. What the hex?

  “Lolli?”

  On top of her dresser, a fringy black scarf trembled and fluttered, revealing an empty Pasta-in-a-Cup container underneath. A tiny pink nose emerged from the container and sniffed furiously at the air.

  “Lolli?”

  The white mouse skittered out of the bowl and dashed across the dresser, nimbly navigating a maze of Pokémon figurines and origami dragons.

  “Were you in here the whole time? Nyala was super-worried about you! We all were!” Iris scolded.

  In response, Lolli skittered to the floor, crossed the room, and skittered up Iris’s leg. She settled herself in the pocket of Iris’s baggy plaid button-up: a small, warm lump.

  “W-what are you doing?”

  Lolli stared up at Iris with her beady red eyes
and sniffed. Iris wasn’t sure what to do—she’d never had physical contact with Lolli before—so she stroked the mouse’s minuscule head with her index finger.

  Happiness radiated up from the tiny creature.

  “I knew it! You stole her!”

  Nyala stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips. Her face was hard with fury.

  “Oh, hey, Nyala! I just found her, like right this second. She was hiding in my dresser… well, on, technically, except she was inside a… never mind, here.”

  Iris reached into her shirt pocket and cradled the soft, warm mouse with her fingertips. She transferred her ever-so-gently to her sister.

  Cocooned in Nyala’s hands, Lolli McScuffle Pants blinked up at Iris. Iris blinked back. She felt sad all of a sudden… why?

  Wait. Could Lolli be her familiar?

  No way.

  Or maybe yes way?

  Iris coughed. “Yeah. So, hey, Nyala? You should close your door whenever you clean her cage, and make sure the cats aren’t in there with you.”

  “Thank you for stating the obvious, Ms. I’m-the-Boss-of-Everybody!”

  “Thank you for finding Lolli McScuffle Pants, Iris. You’re welcome, Nyala.”

  “Ugh! You are such a—you know what!” Nyala whirled around and stormed out of the room.

  Argh… little sisters.

  Iris knew she should cut Nyala some slack, though, considering. She and Dad had been extra-super-close. But honestly, Nyala had always shown Iris attitude, and now that she was in middle school, it was probably going to get worse. (Iris had to admit that she may have been that way herself, with Kedren.)

  Sometimes, a dark mood bubbled up inside Iris and she wished that their parents had never adopted Nyala and Ephrem. Well, Ephrem, maybe, but not Nyala. In any case, whenever she had this bad, terrible thought, she would immediately chase it away with a reversal spell from Callixta’s book; Iris was irrationally afraid that her own magical powers, her intention, might make her anger-wish come true. And she obviously didn’t want that. She loved her brother and sister. Most days.