Seriously Wicked: A Novel Read online

  This is the point where usually I say, “not a witch,” but I didn’t want to get sidetracked down that conversation. “Just curious about demons,” I said. “You never had me learn about them.”

  “Camellia,” said the witch in her most aggrieved tone, “there are so many things that you have not learned about that we cannot possibly encompass them all in the short time I get with you each day. Now, if you would just apply yourself, or give up going to that useless human school—” She brushed a bit of lint off my shoulder, and I tweaked the laptop so she wouldn’t see what I was looking for.

  “I love that school; you can’t stop me,” I said automatically. This was familiar territory and I’d just reached “The best way to stop a demon is …

  “… not to summon it.”

  Hells.

  “Of course, today you will watch a most ingenious exhibition of demon-summoning,” said the witch, sailing past me to close the open front door. “Perhaps that will finally be the magic to inspire you. This will be an excellent lesson for you to view. I expect this is the goat’s blood?”

  The ingredients. I had to destroy the ingredients.

  I lunged for the front door. We reached the cooler at the same time and she scooped it up.

  “Repeat after me,” said the witch, cradling the cooler and rose bouquet as she returned to the kitchen. “Goat’s blood is used for binding, winding, and minding, in processes with tin, and as a substitute for Irish whiskey.”

  “Um, what about the weather? Have you checked the forecast?”

  “The forecast?” Sarmine peered out the kitchen window at the bright blue sky.

  I lunged for the cooler, trying to tug it from her arms. “Giant thunderstorms predicted,” I panted, even as my ribs fell asleep and then my nose. “Electric interference. Everyone knows … don’t summon demons … in storms…”

  She was strong, but I was younger and stronger. Her feet skidded, she staggered, her hands slipped off. I stumbled backward on the linoleum, clutching the cooler.

  The witch’s silver eyebrows drew to a point.

  She took a pinch of red powder and a spoonful of bread crumbs from one of the pockets of her fanny pack, spat on her hand, and touched her palm with her wand.

  My mind raced, but this time there was no escape. My eyes were frozen, and clever words and maneuvers deserted me. I clutched that cooler tighter.

  She flicked the wand at me and my hands turned into cooked noodles.

  Seriously. Cooked noodles. Limp and soggy and rippled around the edges, like lasagna. Wobbly orange-painted fingernails marked their edges. My noodle hands slid right off the cooler handle and the cooler crashed to the linoleum floor.

  I squeaked.

  “A good self-defense spell would have been your best friend just now,” lectured the witch, picking up the cooler. Her heels clicked on the linoleum as she retrieved the fallen rose bouquet and set the roses carefully in a crystal vase full of water. “Why, I remember when I was eight, and a rogue wizard loosed the last orc on earth into our basement…” She patted her fanny pack. “But I had my ingredients and my wand! Oh, I was in top form.”

  I lunged for the roses to destroy that possible ingredient instead, but my wobbly noodle hands missed the roses and smacked the crystal vase. The vase toppled over, rolling toward the floor. Self-preservation surged again. What would the witch do to me if I broke her crystal vase? Instinct made me launch my whole body underneath the vase as it fell.

  Water soaked me for the second time that day. Rose thorns smacked my face.

  But my body broke the vase’s fall. I lay on the cool linoleum floor, shaky, my limp noodle hands flopping back and forth.

  “Impressive,” said the witch, as she grabbed the three roses between thumb and forefinger. Her skin was so dry and dessicated that the thorns didn’t even draw blood. “Did you remember the rhubarb?”

  “Yes,” I said from the floor. It smelled like lemon cleaner.

  “Very well.” Wand flick. “You may have your hands back.” The witch turned to the basement steps. “Oh, and Camellia? Bring the pig’s ear down with you. Nasty thing. I don’t want to touch it.”

  Pig’s ear. Pig’s ear! Stupid witch and her stupid, stupid, evil things. I was so mad that I forgot all about the werewolf pup in the front yard, and my appointment to meet Devon in the driveway. I ran soaking wet after her and down the cement steps to the basement. “You can’t treat me like that!” I shouted. “I’m a person, too, you know!”

  Sarmine raised a silver eyebrow.

  “And pigs! You can’t treat pigs as things to just chop up for your stupid summoning. Pigs are living beings! They have rights, too!”

  “Don’t drip on my pentagram.”

  Angry as I was, I did step back at that. If the witch was going to summon a demon, I sure didn’t want him to escape his pentagram prison. I shoved my wet hair back and glared at the witch, who ignored me. Prickles went up and down my ribs as feeling returned.

  The pentagram was a blue chalk outline on the cement floor. It was big enough for several people to stand inside. It had one of our banged-up card table chairs in it, and on the chair was the old mannequin on which the witch usually kept a pointy hat. The mannequin was wearing a faded red T-shirt that said, VOTE HEXAR/SCARABOUCHE 1982. It stared blankly at the wall, its body tilting to the left.

  I felt a kinship with the mannequin. It didn’t have any idea what was about to be done to it. “I’m a person, too,” I muttered again as I scratched my shins.

  The witch knelt on the stone floor in her skirt and support hose and ruffled salmon blouse. “Isn’t my pentagram lovely?” she said reverently. “I haven’t drawn one in ages. Since before you were born.” She tapped it with her wand and blew on it gently, but the chalk dust did not budge.

  “Why break a winning streak?” I said.

  “Last time I summoned a very minor demon. Nikorzeth. He barely had enough power to heal the dragon’s broken wing.”

  No wonder Moonfire kept one wing shuttered closed when the weather turned chill. Maybe if the witch would heat that damn garage for her … “Broken wing?”

  “That’s when I found her,” the witch said absently. “She was at the end of a long flight and a storm moved in. She got tangled in a power line. And only another elemental can use magic on a dragon.” Sarmine’s eyes gleamed as she warmed to her lecture. Gods, that woman loves to lecture. “You know how powerful Moonfire’s milk is, and that’s just her milk. Why, the list of elementals is one of the first things I taught you. ‘Dragon, phoenix, and demon fell; these three a witch cannot bespell.’”

  It was cool in the basement, in my damp shirt. I wrapped my arms around my waist. “Why do we call it milk?” I said. “She’s a reptile, not a mammal.”

  “To be precise, she’s neither. Elementals are not part of the animal kingdom, as none of the three are mortals which feed on organic matter, as humans and elephants and werewolves do. Moonfire is of the class Draconis, which is another thing entirely,” said the witch. “But to answer your question more fully, I suppose we call her tear secretions milk because we always have.” Sarmine rocked back on her heels and studied her gold bracelet watch. “Three forty-one. We’d better get a move on.”

  The witch crushed the petals from the three roses with a mini–food processor. She scraped the mixture into a porous stone bowl that usually holds bus tickets. Then she added one drop of dragon milk. The sweet scent of roses mingled with a fiery, coppery, dragony smell.

  The witch walked around the pentagram three times widdershins and added a chiffonade of basil. Three times back and a pinch of dried salamander from her fanny pack. The salamander dissolved in a gunshot bang and shot up a purple cloud of smoke. My stomach was cold and knotted, and my wet hair hung in chill coils against my neck.

  Watching the witch work a spell this dark and complex made me feel sick inside, and a long-ago memory of sneaking downstairs with Sparkle beat against my brain. I swallowed the memory, closed my mi
nd against its darkness. Put my shirtsleeve up to my mouth, trying to clear my breath of the taste of salamander smoke.

  “I love the purple smoke part!” shouted the witch. “I hope you’re watching, Camellia. Someday I’ll teach you all this.”

  “Not a chance,” I said, thinking of all the animals that had to snuff it to make this spell of Sarmine’s. “I wouldn’t summon a demon for anything. You can’t make me into a witch. You can’t make me be like you.”

  The witch’s exaltation dissipated and her spine stiffened. “Recipe done,” she said shortly, not looking at me. “Now the words.”

  “Except for the pig’s ear, right?” I said. My voice hardly wobbled.

  “The what?”

  “Except for the pig’s ear. I didn’t get you the pig’s ear. So you can’t summon the demon, because you’re missing an ingredient.”

  The witch laughed from deep in her gut, her salmon ruffles shaking. With effort she composed herself. “I shouldn’t laugh—it’s too ignorant to be funny,” she said. She wiped her eyes with a bit of lace and explained, “The pig’s ear is for Wulfie to chew on. So he’ll stop chewing my good shoes.”

  A dog toy. A stinking dog toy. “And the rhubarb?”

  She shook her head. “‘Stiffening, straightening, sharpening,’ Camellia. You claim to do so well in that school. Don’t they teach critical thinking? The rhubarb was just a red herring.”

  That was it. That was my last chance, and the witch was starting her incantation. “AH-beela AH-beelu, aBEElu, aBEElu…” she repeated. Blue smoke gathered in the pentagram. It coalesced from the chalk dust, rose up in the air, and filled an invisible pentagonal column with thick blue gas.

  The scent of sulfur and rose petals filled the air. It grew very hot and my damp shirt clung to me. I sweated buckets, though the witch stayed dry as dust, her silver hair as crisp as ever. “Is this how it’s supposed to go?”

  “Progressing nicely!” shouted the witch. “Now watch this!”

  She flicked her wand at the pentagram and a prism of glass shimmered into view, enclosing the pentagram and the blue gas. One more flick and the blue gas shot upward as if sucked into the ceiling by a vacuum cleaner.

  When the gas cleared, there was the demon.

  4

  Boy-Band Boy

  The demon was nine-feet high. He had orange horns circled by a brush of thick red hair. No, wait. They were green horns circled by a brush of thick blue hair. His skin was yellow, then it was turquoise, then it was baby blue. His size and shape didn’t change, but all his colors did. It was like watching a living rainbow.

  “Estahoth Elemental, Demon of the Fourth Layer, Second Earl of Kinetic Energy, do you agree that this is your correct and full address?” said the witch in a resonant voice.

  “I do,” said the demon in a voice like thunder.

  “Then I propose to you the binding by which you may spend a short time on earth. One, I need a hundred pixies in Hal Headley High School on Friday, dead or alive. Two, I need precisely what this spell is asking for when it says, and I quote, ‘the hopes and dreams of five.’ Three…”

  There was a taut silence, and then Sarmine continued. “You are no doubt familiar with the air elemental known as the phoenix, though you spend your time in the Earth’s fiery core. As phoenix keep to the mountaintops, they have not been destroyed by humans as so many of the dragons were. Still, they live where we cannot reach them. Witches have named and numbered them over the centuries, tracking their hundred-year cycles. There were very few that lived at the altitude of this city.”

  “I am familiar with phoenix, yes,” said Estahoth. “Do not presume that you are the first witch to summon me. I am no virgin.”

  He leered at us, and despite the danger, the expression reminded me of someone imitating Elvis Presley. I clapped my hand to my mouth, choking down a burst of hysteria.

  “Quite,” said Sarmine. “Then you know how much power is contained in the phoenix’s hundred-year death and birth.”

  “Atomic,” the demon said simply.

  “There is a phoenix known as R-AB1 which is due for its hundred-year explosion on this Halloween. This Friday evening at eight-forty. Indeed, Camellia and I settled in this town fifteen years ago to keep an eye on it. But fourteen years ago this phoenix disappeared.”

  “It could be anywhere in the world,” scoffed the demon. “That’s a needle in a haystack.”

  Sarmine raised a finger. “I have recently learned that when the phoenix disappeared, it was transfigured and hidden somewhere on the grounds of Hal Headley High School. You will find it by Friday, and then funnel the force of its magical explosion into my spell at my command.”

  “Pixies, hopes, and Phoenix Rabby,” said the demon. “Check, check, check. Anything else?”

  “Hold up,” I said. “Just what do you mean by this ‘hopes and dreams of five’ stuff? And a what, a frikkin’ atomic phoenix explosion at my school? What exactly is your plan here?”

  The witch ignored me. Of course. I get no say in anything.

  “Anything else?” repeated Estahoth.

  “Well, since you asked so nicely—Moonfire’s chest has been bothering her,” I said. The witch glared at me, but I glared right back. “He’s here, isn’t he? And you said only an elemental could work magic on another elemental.”

  “I’m not glaring; this is my happy face. I’m pleased you’re taking an interest,” said the witch. Which of course made me bonkers because she knows perfectly well the only thing of her world I love is that dragon. “Estahoth, would you mind taking a look at the dragon’s lungs?”

  “Dragons, phoenix … nothing I’d rather do than play vet all day,” said the demon. “Still, as long as I get my chance at embodiment I’ll shake on it. Oh, I have such plans to rule your funny little world.”

  “I imagine,” said the witch dryly. “Just don’t think you’ll get to fulfill any of those plans.”

  “Out of curiosity, why didn’t you call the demon you called last time?” said Estahoth. “Nikorzeth’s biggest hope in embodiment is to be another WitchNet star like Chadzeth.”

  “Because I need someone who can control a phoenix explosion,” said Sarmine. “Such an opportunity comes rarely. I intend to combine one phoenix explosion plus the pixies plus the hopes plus many other secret ingredients to work the most powerful spell ever seen in this town. And to control this explosion will take not just an elemental, but a powerful elemental.” The witch did not flatter or butter up, so I expected all this was nothing but the truth. “It takes someone more clever and powerful than Nikorzeth, poor fellow.”

  “Nikorzeth wouldn’t know his own rear end if it were transformed into his elbow,” Estahoth said. He smirked and it seemed like the demon and the witch shared a moment together, amused at the weakness of poor Nikorzeth. “Is that all?” Estahoth said.

  “With one clause,” said the witch. “Whether or not you complete my tasks, you will leave the instant the explosion of R-AB1 finishes. I’m aware that demons are bound by their own natural laws to complete contracts. But even if you fail at my tasks, you don’t get to stick around.” She drummed her fingers on her arm, considering. “That is all.”

  The demon puffed up, chest out, rainbows rippling. “Fantastic,” he said. “Now do you want to hear my plan? My plan is to set up shop in the nice new body you give me and eat its soul.” He pointed a sunshine-yellow claw at me. “That one looks young and healthy. Good choice. Once I achieve embodiment, I’ll take over the world. Demon power here on earth, with no restrictions? I’ll be unstoppable.” He mwa-ha-ha’ed very impressively. “I’ll outlaw all the witches so no demons can follow me. I’ll control everything. How do you like my plan?”

  “Hmph,” I said. “I may not agree with her methods, but the witch will make you do as she says. I wouldn’t mwa-ha-ha so fast if I were you. Right, Sarmine? Right?”

  The demon smirked.

  Sarmine shook her head. “No, Camellia. I cannot compel an elemental to
do my bidding. What I can do is create an agreement we both bind ourselves to. If he wishes to spend time on earth, he will accept the obligation I wish him to fulfill. As demons think, quite incorrectly, that they are smarter than mortals, they always accept these agreements in hopes of stretching their contract long enough to achieve embodiment.”

  “Your souls are puny,” growled Estahoth. “To let me roam around, you have to give me a body. Once I have a body, I can seduce that body’s soul and then I am free. Free to live on Earth!” He roared the last line.

  “Which is why I have procured you a mannequin,” said the witch. Her heels clicked as she crossed to the pentagram. Her finger stabbed at the red-shirted figure slumped in the card table chair. “I have fed that mannequin one drop of dragon milk each day for the last twenty years,” she said. “It has enough elemental magic to mimic a human body for three and a half days. That will be exactly enough time for you to complete the work I expect of you.”

  “This?” Estahoth peered down at the wide-eyed mannequin in the T-shirt. He poked her plastic shoulder. She tilted on the chair. “Are you as mad as a hatter? No. Can’t be done.”

  The witch’s dry lips cracked a thin smile. “I’ve done my research,” she said. “In 1211, a demon named Hebroth was able to live on earth in an elemental-infused golem for one week. In that case, the golem was stuffed with phoenix feathers.”

  “Really?” said Estahoth.

  “The demon might have been able to stay longer,” said the witch, “except that, unfortunately, the mixture was not pure. There was a match mixed in with the phoenix feathers. As it jostled around, the feathers burst into flame and destroyed the golem. And, regrettably, the demon.”

  Estahoth’s chest rippled red, purple red. He circled his pentagram prison, shimmering red hot. “Your kind does not call us so often anymore. I have been waiting to be released from the tormenting fire of the Earth’s core. Waiting for my chance to live.” His voice rose. He had great vocal support for someone with no diaphragm. “And now, you offer me this thing with no soul? Bah.” He backhanded the mannequin and it smacked to the floor, bounced against the glass wall of the pentagram. “That is not playing the game fairly. I am deeply offended, Sarmine.”