Fiction River: Hex in the City (6 page)

The myrtlewood staff gleamed brilliant red, the surface warm against his fingers. A fiery glow pulsed, rushing down the length of the staff and then rolling back again, turning deep orange, then gold, then white. And finally blue.

His hands shook as he took a deep breath, focusing all his concentration, and chanted the last symbols. Without a stutter or bobble.

Energy crackled, the sound like a gunshot. With tremendous force, the entire flow of magical energy contained in House Trenerry slammed into the myrtlewood staff and then Brant’s body. The impact threw him across the brick stairs and onto the cold, wet ground.

Dazed, Brant laid there listening to the staff sizzle as rain misted the air and grass.

The sudden flutter of wings startled him, a deep, thrumming purr resonating across his cheek. Something brushed against his leg, beating past his stomach to hover at his shoulder.

Zip! The winged tortoiseshell cat arched her back, wings thumping the cool air as she lifted a fat, cream-colored paw to her mouth and licked it with her tiny, pink tongue.

You fixed the spell, little wizard
, she said with a throaty purr between licks.
Well done
.

Brant reached out to pet the winged furball, but she slid just out of his reach.

“You did it,” said Willa, kneeling beside him. “Great job, Brant! It took courage to recast that spell.”

He smiled as she helped him up from the cold grass.

“I couldn’t have done it without your help,” he said. “And the library. How can I thank you?”

A gleam touched her deep green eyes. “Actually, you might be of some help at the library.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

Willa sighed. “A testimonial on having your family grimoire digitized might go a long way with your fellow wizards.”

Brant laughed. “You mean showing them it was painless and I still have the intact book?”

She nodded. “Exactly.”

“Anything to help,” he said. “It’s the least I can do.”

Reaching out, he stroked Zip who licked his hand then nipped it. He sighed.
Cats.

He stepped closer to Willa, staring into her eyes as he held her hand.

“As Seattle’s newest full wizard, I could give a talk reminding wizards to always um—update their spells.”

Willa smiled when her white dove landed on her shoulder. Laughing, she squeezed his hand and moved closer to him.

“I’d love to discuss it over tea.”

“Love to,” said Brant, squeezing her hand.

Tea and magic with a beautiful wizard? Best birthday ever.

Introduction to “
Thy Neighbor”

Nancy Holder is a friend of mine and deserves the title, Queen of the Dark YA. I’m never disappointed in the stories she conjures for me. “Thy Neighbor,” is essentially why I became interested in witchcraft in the first place: Knowledge really is power.

Nancy is the
New York Times
bestselling author of over eighty novels and two hundred short stories, essays, and articles. She has received five Bram Stoker awards, a Scribe award, and a Genre Pioneer Award (Young Adult). She is well known for her tie-in work for
Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
MTV
Teen Wolf, Hulk, Hellboy,
Zorro, Sherlock Holmes, and other “universes.” She edits comic books and pulp fiction for Moonstone Books. She also teaches for the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing Program offered through the University of Southern Maine.

“My wonderful editor Kerrie Hughes suggested a YA witch,”
Nancy writes,
“and my wonderful daughter Belle brainstormed with me to come up with something creepy. We talked about curses that come in threes. I originally planned to have my protagonist throw three random objects over the fence, including a tennis ball. Then I realized that tennis balls come in cans of three. The ending came to me as I worked on it, and I started laughing. Which is kind of mean, I think.”

Thy Neighbor

Nancy Holder

Brianna pulled her Yaris into the Goodes’ driveway and made a sour face as Kelsey got ready to get out.

“I hate this place. It’s so creepy,” Brianna said.

Kelsey saw a fairly standard two-story stucco house with a tall arched doorway and a brick wishing well in the grassy front yard.

“It’s a normal house in Normal Heights,” Kelsey replied. “Nicer than most. You don’t see a lot of wishing wells.”

Briana huffed. “They probably chose this neighborhood for the irony. These people are not normal.”

“They’re totally normal. They’re just workaholics.” Kelsey fwopped down the sun visor and checked her eye makeup. She was a freckle-faced blue-eyed blond. Brianna was the one who always got all the looks when they went to the mall together, dark and mysterious, wafting sexy perfumes with names Kelsey had never heard of.

“They’re freaky,” Brianna insisted.

“See, I don’t get that. They don’t seem freaky at all to me.”

“Weird. Well, fingers crossed that Three-Three-Three takes a nap. Then call me and we’ll avoid the flunkation of calculus.”

Kelsey shrugged, raised the sun visor back into position, and gave her friend a little smile. “You know that’s not too likely. He never naps.”

“Because he’s evil.”

“Lonely,” Kelsey countered. “His parents are never home.”

“Because they’re out worshipping Satan.” Brianna pointed through the windshield. “What the hell is
that
?”

Kelsey followed Brianna’s pointed finger. In the center of the brick walk to the arched doorway sat a sort of triangular bundle of sticks. They looked as though they had been tied together by leaves or twine.

“It’s a bundle of sticks,” she said patiently.

“It’s some witchy thing.” Brianna shook her head. “I wish you’d quit working for them. No one needs money this badly, not even you. There’s a bazillion childcare gigs in the job bank in Mrs. Meyerson’s office. San Diego is full of jobs. Go look.”

“No one pays as much as these guys,” Kelsey said. “College is going to be expensive. And their fridge is a fairyland of food.”

“They’re paying you well because they’re prepping you for sacrifice. They’re fattening you up for the slaughter. If you had any sense at all you’d give it up to Troy. They can only use virgins.”

Kelsey mocked-pouted as she opened the car door. “You make me sound so blonde and naive. I’m not. I’m totally in the know.” She wrinkled her nose as she got out. “And seriously,
Troy
? No one is that desperate, not even me.”

“Troy’s unit could save your life,” Brianna replied. She lowered her voice and affected a British accent. “Or your immortal soul.” She made the sign of the cross.

“He could give me a disease,” she replied and gave Brianna a wave. “I’ll walk home,” she reminded her. “It’s not that far.”

“No wonder my mother loves you,” Brianna said. “Text me every thirty seconds.”

“Drive carefully, Bree,” she said. “I mean it.”

Brianna nodded and Kelsey waved as Brianna backed out. She hadn’t even reached the front door when Three-Three-Three, AKA Jonah, pushed it open, shrieking with joy. They called him Three-Three-Three because he was too little to be Six-Six-Six.

He threw his arms around Kelsey’s legs as his mother appeared behind him, looking so young Kelsey wondered how on earth she could be his mother.

“Hi, Kelse,” Ms. Goode said. She was wearing a business suit and she was probably off to a meeting. Kelsey knew the Goodes had other sitters, practically around the clock. Both of Three-Three-Three’s parents were always coming and going and in the six weeks Kelsey had worked for them; their schedules had never been the same for two days running.

“Listen, I finally saw Mr. Bright and I asked him to give back Magic’s rawhide bone and he won’t.” She scowled as she fluffed up her hair. “He says that anything that lands in his yard is his.”

“Nice,” Kelsey said. Mr. Bright was their reclusive next-door neighbor. Ms. Goode had told her that she’d only seen him a handful of times since they’d moved in five years ago.

Ms. Goode grinned. “I hope I can hold him to it. I caught Jonah lobbing the puppy’s turds over the fence this morning.”

Kelsey cracked up. “That’s one way to clean up the yard.”

She sighed. “I suppose I should also tell you that my little angel stopped up the guest room toilet with his Legos.”

That’s why we call him Three-Three-Three
, Kelsey thought.

“Let’s go see the puppy!” Jonah shrieked, yanking on Kelsey’s hand.

“Anyway, so use our bathroom and be careful with anything going over the fence. Because that’s the last you’ll ever see of it.”

“Got it,” Kelsey said.

Ms. Goode bent to kiss Jonah, but Jonah grabbed Kelsey’s hand and bellowed, “Magic! Magic! Magic!”

Kelsey waved goodbye to Ms. Goode and she and Jonah zoomed into the back yard, where the little black Doberman was bounding around with a tennis ball in his mouth. He saw Jonah and yipped, dropping the ball. It bounced and rolled to Kelsey, and she picked it up. The dog sprang up and down like crazy, and she tossed it toward Jonah.

“Catch, Jonah!” she cried, gently lobbing the ball.

The ball slipped through Jonah’s fingers. He muttered, “Oops,” and scooped it up. Then he trotted over to the fence, grinned at Kelsey, scrabbled onto a white wrought-iron chair planted beside a matching table, and threw the ball as hard as he could over the eight-foot barrier. It just cleared the top.

“Jonah,” she protested mildly. “Why did you do that?”

He covered his mouth with both hands and giggled. Then he ran around in a circle making noises like an airplane while poor Magic kept his gaze glued to Kelsey, sitting down and chuffing when no tennis ball was forthcoming.

“Do you have another ball?” she asked the wee terror-boy. He shook his head.

Magic whined.

***

“I can’t believe you bought a can of tennis balls for their
dog
,” Brianna said the next day.

“You haven’t done much babysitting, have you?” Kelsey said. “Sitters do stuff like this.” She tapped the can. “Three bright yellow tennis balls cost two dollars. The goodwill? Priceless.”

“Well then, well done, old chap, well done. You are perhaps sneakier than I gave you credit for,” Brianna said in a snobby British accent.

“I am often underestimated,” Kelsey said, dipping her head.

“He’ll have them over the fence in five minutes,” Brianna declared.

“He’s grown as a person since you met him,” Kelsey assured her.

“Six weeks ago? When he
peed on my shoe?
”

“Yeah, well.” Kelsey made a “sorry” face. “He’s just feisty.”

“You got this job to
make
money, not to lose it,” Brianna reminded her. “Dogs can catch sticks. Sticks are free.” She pointed a finger at Kelsey. “Don’t be too soft-hearted.”

“Me? Never.” She got out of the car and put her hand on the open window. “Drive safely.”

“Text me if you get a break.”

“Give
me
a break,” Kelsey said, and they both smiled ruefully.

Then Brianna’s eyes widened and she jabbed a finger through the windshield. “Witch sticks! Witch sticks!” she said.

Another triangular bundle of twigs lay on the path to the house. Kelsey shrugged.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “God, Bree.”

“They’re freaky,” Brianna said, and she drove away.

This time one of the other babysitters was on deck; she gave Kelsey the lowdown on all the nefarious things Jonah had done that day.

“So far,” she finished. She couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

When Kelsey entered the house, she saw why: Jonah had used chocolate syrup—no, Nutella—to finger paint on the sliding glass door that led to the backyard. She examined the brown smears and found his name and some happy faces. And was that a pentagram?

She wrote “333” with her forefinger, then filled a bucket with water and found two sponges. Then she called Jonah in.

He protested, of course he did, and then he bargained:

“If we clean it all up, can we play with Magic for hours and hours?”

She grinned at him. “Sure, buddy.”

Jonah got bored and tried to quit more times than Kelsey could keep track of. But they finally got the Nutella cleaned up. She showed Jonah the can of tennis balls and encouraged him to make every effort to keep them on their side of the fence. But as if he really was possessed, he tossed them merrily over the fence into Mr. Bright’s yard.

As she’d known he would.

***

The next day, Ms. Goode met her at the door. She was dressed in a black business suit and there was a briefcase in her hand. Her face was drawn, her manner grave. She came out onto the porch and pulled the door closed behind her.