“That’s horrible,” Mira scoffed. “I would have dumped gravy over his head.”
“Yeah, I came this close.” Aysha pinched her thumb and ring finger until they were nearly closed.
“I think Iris may be right. Good job, Iris,” Div said, which made Iris beam, which made Greta even more annoyed with Div. “Those numbers on the shadow messages that Greta and I received must stand for the New Order. And if there’s a chance the Jessups are connected with the New Order, then we need to check them out. Are we good with that, Mira?”
“I guess so? But I’m like a million percent sure you’re not going to find anything.”
“We still don’t know who enchanted our shadow messages and made those numbers appear, though,” Greta reminded Div. “Plus, who did all that magical stuff around Penelope’s body? It seems like our killer is a witch, but the New Order, the Antima, wouldn’t have witches.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t add up,” Div acknowledged. “We need to figure out who enchanted the shadow messages ASAP. Greta, you guys and Iris should get on that while we investigate the Jessups… Mira, do you have any ideas on how we could get close to the family?”
“Actually, yes!” Mira scrolled through her phone, then turned it so everyone could see a digital invite. “Tomorrow night is a fund-raising party for my dad’s campaign. They happen a lot, and this one’s at the Jessups’ house.”
“Great. Perfect. Can you get Aysha and me on the guest list? In the meantime, we should all continue casting protection spells on ourselves and on our familiars, too. I know they’re not perfect, but they’re better than nothing.” Div regarded Greta. “Speaking of familiars, how is yours? Did you ever figure out why he was with Penelope that night?”
“He’s much better, and no, we haven’t,” Greta replied.
Iris raised her hand again. “Excuse me… hey, Greta? Hi! I think I can help with that. Can I come over to your house after school?”
At four o’clock, the Navarro house was quiet; no one was home. Greta led Iris inside and then locked the front door behind them. She wondered why Div had suggested that Iris work on the case with her coven and not Div’s. Did she no longer want to recruit Iris? Or was she so confident about securing a yes from Iris that she didn’t care?
Or had Penelope’s death just put everything else on the back burner?
Whatever the reason, Greta was really annoyed with Div, and even more annoyed at herself for letting Div order her and her friends around. She should have said something. She should have stuck up for herself and her coven.
“I thought I could see if my touching-stuff-and-getting-weird-visions thing might work on your cat,” Iris explained as they went up the stairs to Greta’s room. She paused to study an old black-and-white photograph of a woman with Greta’s eyes and smile (Greta explained that it was a picture of her great-grandmother Adelita when she was in high school), then moved on. “No guarantees, though. So far, it’s only happened with objects, not animals. Or people.” She reached out and tapped Greta’s back. “See, I just touched you! No vision! Except maybe my brain just had a vision about popcorn, but that’s only because I’m hungry.”
“I’ll make you some after we see Gofflesby. With brewers’ yeast.”
“Yeast on popcorn? I was going to say melted butter and nacho-cheese-flavored salt, but sure!”
Upstairs, Greta unlocked her bedroom door with a reverse obex spell. Her palms were clammy, and her shoulders were tight with tension. On top of everything else, she’d been worried about Gofflesby all day.
“Gofflesby? I’m home!”
She pushed the door open and gasped.
Her familiar was lapping water and herbs from her scrying bowl.
“Gofflesby, no! You can’t drink that!” Greta cried out.
Gofflesby arched his back and hissed at her. He dipped one paw in the bowl and scooped the liquid into his mouth. Then he batted at the bowl and tipped it over, spilling its contents onto the wood floor.
“Gofflesby!” Greta grabbed a T-shirt and mopped up the mess.
“I’ve never seen a cat drink out of a scrying bowl,” Iris remarked. “Of course, I don’t know a lot of cats. I don’t know a lot of people who own scrying bowls, either. Well, just you guys, basically.”
“He’s never drunk from the scrying bowl before,” Greta said worriedly. “I don’t understand why.…”
She stopped as something across the room caught her eye.
“Oh, no!”
On top of her art table, empty potion bottles lay cracked and broken. Clumps of herbs collected in wet pools.
Lying in one of the pools was an old notebook with its pages splayed open.
No.
Heart pounding, Greta ran over to her desk and picked it up. Her grimoire! She flipped through it frantically. Some of the pages had been scratched and ripped and streaked with thin spiderwebs of… was that blood? Or was it one of her potions that she’d made out of beets and berries?
“Gofflesby!”
He ignored her and lapped at the scrying-bowl water on the floor.
Greta clasped the grimoire to her chest. “Reparati,” she murmured.
The pages made a shuffling noise and quickly restored themselves. Greta sighed, relieved. She put the grimoire in a desk drawer, locked it, and hurried back to Gofflesby.
“What’s wrong, my love? Why are you doing these things?”
Gofflesby continued lapping at the water.
“Gofflesby! It’s me!” She scooped him up in her arms and curled herself over him. He hissed and thrashed; she held him tighter, as if her embrace might lull him back to sanity. “Why are you acting like this? Why are you trying to destroy my things? What’s wrong?”
Iris stood next to Greta. She reached out and laid a tentative hand on Gofflesby’s soft orange head… and flinched.
“What is it?” Greta demanded.
“You can’t feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“He’s so hot!”
“No, he’s normal. You must be sensing something I can’t.”
Iris touched him again, more tentatively, and closed her eyes. “What’s the matter, Mr. Gofflesby? Is something upsetting you?”
Greta felt Gofflesby’s body relax ever so slightly.
Iris stroked Gofflesby’s head with her fingertips and nodded to herself.
“It’s working! I’m having a vision!” she told Greta excitedly. “All righty, so… I’m seeing a man… no, a woman. She’s standing outside a window—wait, that looks like your house. She’s talking to Gofflesby through the window… and he goes to her. Now she’s taking him somewhere…”
“Who is she? What does she look like?” Greta asked.
Iris continued stroking Goffleby’s head.
“I don’t know. She’s wearing a cape, and the hood is covering her face.”
“Where is she taking him?”
“She’s taking him to a house. A little gray house. But now I’m seeing another house… it’s that Seabreeze-y house that’s still not finished yet, the one where we found…” Iris paused and whooshed out a deep breath. “I’m getting dizzy, I think I need to stop.”
“Hang on. Did she take him to a little gray house or the Seabreeze house? Or both?”
“Both? Or maybe one is in the past and the other is in the future? I don’t know.”
“Why is she taking him there? Why is she taking my familiar anywhere?”
“I’m not sure. Wait. I think they have some kind of—”
Gofflesby growled suddenly. In the same instant, his body glowed and crackled… and a bolt of electricity shot out of him and through the two witches.
The girls screamed and stumbled backward, falling to the floor. Gofflesby landed gracefully on all four paws and circled back toward Greta.
“What… was… that?” Iris panted.
Gofflesby climbed onto Greta’s lap and rubbed his head against her arm, purring.
Acting perfectly normal, as tho
ugh nothing had happened.
24
SECRETS
Secrets cannot be kept securely where Magic has a presence.
Withhold, or lie, at your own risk.
(FROM THE GOOD BOOK OF MAGIC AND MENTALISM BY CALLIXTA CROWE)
“And… send!” Binx said as she hit the return button on her encrypted e-mail to Div.
Satisfied, she leaned back in her desk chair and hugged one of her stuffed Pikachus. (She had a small one, a medium one, and a large one. This was the small one, which was her favorite; she’d found her at a garage sale, missing one arm, and repaired her with a sana spell—Binx knew it was a her because of the heart-shaped tail tip.) After school, Binx had come home to do some research—magically hacking into the server at Mira’s dad’s campaign headquarters, scoring their guest list for tomorrow night’s party at the Jessups’, and cross-referencing it against various Antima sites to see if there might be any overlap.
Of course, there was no obvious reason to think that there would be Antima members at the event, since it was a political fund-raiser for Mr. Jahani and not a New Order meeting. But Binx had figured it wouldn’t hurt to check, especially given what Ms. O’Shea had told her this morning.
And she’d struck gold. Or a few little nuggets of it, anyway. Orion Wong and his parents were on the guest list. So were Brandon Fiske and Axel Ngata and their parents. Were the moms and dads Antima sympathizers, too? (So heartwarming… families doing Antima activities together!) She’d also found three people on the guest list who’d posted to a new video sharing site, Whatznow, that seemed to be popular with the Antima; their names were Sarabeth Lash, Keemo Malifa, and Essie Tranh. (They didn’t go to Sorrow Point High, though.)
Her phone buzzed. Div had texted her.
I didn’t realize you were working on this. Thanks, great job!
Binx grinned and typed:
You’re welcome!
Div replied:
I’ve been following the Antima on social media, but I didn’t know about Whatznow. Thanks for that, too. No wonder Greta values you so much.
“Yeah, I don’t know about that,” Binx whispered to her stuffed Pikachu.
She wrote:
The videos on Whatznow will make you barf. Or scream. Or smash your device against the wall. Or all of the above.
Worth it, though, to know everything we can about those losers.
You mean those ignorant, hateful, bottom-feeding, dumpster-fire, if-one-of-them-was-drowning-I’d-throw-the-life-preserver-in-the-other-direction losers.
Exactly!
After saying goodbye, and with a promise to send along cyber-research updates if there were any, Binx set her stuffed Pikachu down, then got up and walked over to the window. She felt lighter than she had all day… all weekend. It was nice to be appreciated by someone, even if that someone was Div.
Maybe Div wasn’t as bad as she’d thought? Maybe she’d let Greta’s negativity about the girl cloud her own impressions and opinions?
At the window, Binx parted her curtains, which were pink with dangly bead trim. The beads made a swishy, plinky waterfall sound that she always found soothing.
Pool. The Jacuzzi twins. Japanese Zen garden. Meditation hut. Tennis court. The beach in the distance.
She leaned farther forward to zero in on the dish of gourmet dog kibble she’d left on the pool deck. Still full. Obviously, the dirt-colored puppy was just gone for good. She’d posted its photo on various pet websites, too, and there had been no hits. Blurg.
Her newly lightened mood grew a little heavier again.
Downstairs, the front door opened and shut. Was it the cleaning lady? If so, she was a day early; she usually came on Tuesdays.
Binx stepped into the hallway. “Helloooo?” she called out loudly. “Kathy?”
“Hi, Binxy, it’s me!”
Her mother? What was she doing home?
Binx went downstairs, her mood deteriorating by the second. Yoko Yamada stood in the foyer dressed in a sleek black pantsuit, riffling through a handful of mail.
“Why aren’t you teaching?”
Yoko chuckled. “Hello to you, too. I teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester, remember?”
“Oh. Right. Okay, bye!”
“Bye? Where are you going?”
“Back upstairs. I’m in the middle of a, um, homework thing.”
“Binxy.”
“What?”
“How are you doing? You must be feeling so awful about that girl from your school. Do you want to talk about it?”
“Nope. I’m coping just fine, thanks,” Binx lied.
“Are you sure?”
“Yup.”
Yoko reached out and tucked a strand of pink hair behind Binx’s ear. Then she stepped back and gave Binx’s pink miniskirt and Jigglypuff T-shirt a once-over. “By the way, I hope you don’t mind a piece of friendly advice?”
“Actually, I do.”
“You’re sixteen.” Yoko plunged on. “So I don’t want to dictate what you should wear—”
“Then don’t.”
“—or how you should spend your free time—”
“Again, don’t.”
“—but honestly, and I’m saying this because I’m your mom and I love you. I don’t understand why you feel the need to succumb to these superficial Asian American stereotypes. Dressing like that”—she waved at Binx’s outfit—“and your obsession with anime and video games. You’re better than that.”
“Wow, this is so none of your business.”
“I’m trying to help you. You have a brilliant mind. Your grades are excellent. You could be an academic if you wanted.”
“I would rather become a circus clown than do what you do, no offense to circus clowns.”
Yoko drew her lips into a tight, thin line. Binx could practically hear her counting to ten in her head, although not in binary because she wasn’t cool like that.
“Perhaps it’s your father’s influence.”
“Please leave him out of this.”
“You’ve always been obsessed with him, with his work… although I’m not sure how churning out a bunch of mindless, violent video games can be called ‘work.’”
“O-kay. This conversation is so over. Bye now.”
“Binxy—”
“I’ll be busy for the next couple of hours, so don’t bother me, please.”
Before Yoko could reply, Binx ran up the stairs, two at a time, and into her room.
“Obex,” she said. The doorknob turned and made a clicking noise.
Finally. Freedom.
If Binx had been interested in having a real conversation with Yoko (which she never would, ever), she would have told her that one, she legit liked the K-pop fashion, the anime, and the video games. She wasn’t pretending to be someone she wasn’t. And, two, she used her image as armor, as a disguise. As long as people thought of her as a “shallow Asian girl” with “shallow Asian-girl tastes,” they wouldn’t suspect what lay beneath the surface—i.e., a powerful cyber-witch.
So whenever someone at school said something idiotic to her (“Is Binx a popular name in Korea?” “Do they like Pokémon in China?”), she just shrugged and smiled and made a kawaii hand heart gesture. She didn’t throw shade at them or kick them in the shins because they thought all Asian countries were the same, or because they assumed that she wasn’t “really American,” and that her cultural touchstones were from “over there” instead. She turned their ignorance and bigotry into currency, into a secret weapon. You have no idea, she would think as she passed them by.
(Also, FYI—For Yoko’s Information—Binx liked Witchworld for Witchworld, and not because Stephen Kato—her dad and CEO of Skyy Media and Yoko’s husband before their bitter, bitter divorce—was its creator.)
Binx listened for a moment at the door. Her mother had not followed her upstairs. Good.
A quick glance through the pink beaded curtains… still no mutt. Fine, whatever. Binx sat down at her desk and put on her
noise-canceling headphones. She would spend a little time on her project for ShadowKnight now. She also needed to get back to her other projects, like finding out if there were other witches in Sorrow Point. She wanted to do some digging on the Jessups and New Order, too.
She’d already come up with a few ideas for adjustments to ShadowKnight’s genealogy app. As she implemented them now, the program spat out a list of names. Patricia Meeks, Dominick Trovato, Eleanor Guzman, Norman Smythe, and Adelita Suarez. Binx sat up a little straighter. Nice! Did that mean the app was working? But after a moment, the names shimmered and disappeared. Did that mean the app wasn’t working? She opened her note-taking app on her phone and quickly typed in the names before she forgot them.
A faint knocking sound permeated the silence. Binx groaned and whipped off her headphones. Her mother was at her door. “I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed!” she yelled.
“Binx, it’s me.”
Ridley?
“Just a sec!”
She reverse-obexed the door. Ridley walked in, rainbow-waving.
“Your mom let me in. She told me you were up here.”
Binx sized up her friend. She looked tired, and her eyes were bloodshot.
“You look terrible.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“How’s your flu?”
Ridley shrugged. “Better. You said you wanted to talk to me in person, so here I am. I figured I couldn’t just lie around in bed forever.”
“Actually, you could, but then you’d miss out on so much. Like our excellent trips to the mall.”
“Good point. Hey, is that a new lipstick?”
“Shut up.”
“No, it’s pretty.”
“Um, thanks. So are you okay? I was worried.”
“Thanks. Yeah, I’m not really okay, but I’m managing. Sort of. Kind of.” Ridley sniffled. “I really liked Penelope.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Binx sat down on the pink shag rug, and Ridley did the same. Ridley picked up a stuffed Eevee and hugged it against her chest. “So what did you want to tell me? Is it about her? Did they catch whoever, um…” Her voice caught in her throat.
B*witch Page 19
