Seriously Wicked (16 page)

“I talked to your aunt last night,” he said. “She was kind enough to stop by.”

“Crap, you saw her?” Rourke frowned. “Er. Sorry. I mean, I figured you would’ve gone home. How late do you stay here?” I didn’t say, Don’t you have a life? but I was thinking it, along with, WITCH HERE WITCH HERE OMG OMG.

His eyebrows merged quizzically. “Football practice? I’m the assistant coach.”

Pride absolutely suffocated his voice, so I managed, “Of course! I knew that. We’ve got a great team, really great.”

“Your aunt watched the entire practice. She was really enthusiastic. Kept asking me all sorts of questions about the school’s history.”

“Mmm,” I said.

“Look. The point is we’ll try this once more tonight. Your aunt pled your case, and against all odds, your tutor pled your case,” said Rourke. “Your aunt said you had been busy of late helping her out on a project. She is quite charming, you know. Why haven’t we seen her around here more often?”

“She’s been in Nepal. She’s not that charming once you get to know her. She’s busy trying to overthrow the government. She’s shy. She’s frightened. She’s frightening.”

Visible Undershirt actually laughed. “I see where you get your sense of humor,” he said. “Well, tell your aunt I look forward to seeing her tomorrow.”

“Righto. And why will you be doing that?” If Visible Undershirt had asked Sarmine out on a date, I’d never live it down. He must be really lonely to even think of it. And where would he take her? I guarantee you there was no restaurant in town that served both two-liters of root beer and roc eggs on toast points. I could only think of one thing worse than the two of them dating, and that was …

“She was interested in being a school parent for the Halloween Dance,” he said. “I sent her over to Miss Crane to sign up. I expect she’ll be delightful company.”

Crap.

Crap.

Crap.

“I expect,” I said.

*   *   *

I am normally very organized, but events this week had gotten a little out of hand. I made a list in English class while everyone else read out loud from the play.

•
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

In a bleak moment I thought that no matter how many of those things I managed successfully, it didn’t matter, because the witch was going to show up at the dance on Friday and make whatever social life I had left a living hell. After my classmates found out I lived with somebody who chanted nonsense words and wore a fanny pack full of spices and, oh yeah,
hexed people
every time they looked at her wrong, my life would be shot. It would be worse than ten girls teasing me one day about a boy and forgetting about it the next. The humiliation would never end.

And now I was going to try a spell, which I’d sworn I’d never do.

As you can see, I was a little overwhelmed at this point. I’d gone my whole life managing to handle everything the witch threw at me. Fulfill crazy-ass demands for eel and unicorn hairs and pur
é
ed Chinese gooseberries. Juggle home life and school life and keep the two completely separate, one never intruding on the other.

I guess this time I was just in over my head.

But still, I knew deep down that taking a step toward evil witchdom was worth the risk to save Devon. And not just because I liked him, either.

Because it was
right
.

I was still stressed about it, though.

I desperately wanted to find Devon at lunch and find out if the story about Reese was true, but instead I set off for Celestial Foods. No matter how many fluttering doubts were building up inside me, I was going to stick to my plan. If I
could
work spells, then I was going to get that demon out of Devon and nothing was going to stop me.

I hurried out the side door, past the metal T-Bird, jumped over the little mouse. I had tripped on the mouse sculpture once and gone sprawling into a total make-out session. I swear, the school has this ivy and stuff pruned all the time to cut down on people sneaking over here, but it seems to grow back overnight. So I avoided the mouse and two different couples, but then my foot slid on the wet leaves and my next step took me into the bushes and sprawling over a leg.

A leg attached to a boy who stood up hastily out of the shadow of the overgrown bushes.

A boy I recognized.

A boy-band boy.

“Are you all right?” I said before I thought. “I was worried about you.” Then my face fell. How much was he hiding from me … and who was standing in front of me, hiding it?

I peered into kind green eyes, searching. Devon smiled the typical Devon shy smile and I was instantly relieved. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m doing much better.” He brushed wet leaves from his shirt.

“I was worried when I didn’t see you in algebra,” I said. And then forthright me just had to say it: “Look, I heard you were out having pizza with Reese last night. I mean, it’s none of my business, but I guess I was curious because you said you were at your band practice? Was that some sort of Estahoth-related thing, maybe?” Sure, I had reason to find out what the demon was up to, but the question came out all weak-sounding and I hated it.

“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.