“Whoa,” I said. “I don’t think anyone gives two cents about your home life. It’s not like you have anything to hide.” But I still didn’t understand the way her nose looked crooked to one side. “It looks like your old one,” I said unthinkingly.
Sparkle raised a hand. “Get out of here now, you witch, you—”
I went from concerned to enraged. “Don’t ever say that again,” I said, “or you’ll be sorry.” And why should I apologize for breaking her mirror, anyway? She’d broken my phone yesterday and hadn’t been a bit concerned.
“What are you going to do, hex me?” jeered Sparkle.
“Maybe I will,” I said darkly.
Sparkle was on a roll now, venomous and stinging where she knew she could hurt me. “Did your witch mommy teach you how to work her evil spells? She’s probably got you down in that basement, training to help her. With her goat’s blood and her animals—”
“Stop it!” I said, trying to cover up her words, her knowledge. They bit into buried memories I refused to think about. And then I knew what I could do, and before she could hide her face I whipped out my phone and took a picture of Sparkle, upset and angry, wearing her old, bent nose. Her jaw fell open, the stream of words stopped. “That’ll stop you from trying anything,” I said. “Now I’ve got ammunition, too.”
“Give me that,” she said.
“No,” I said. I held the phone out of her reach, danced backward on broken glass as she lunged for it. “Keep away,” I said, jumping as her purple nails raked my bare arm. It was childish, but we were both mad and taunting each other, just like we were little again, angry over some toy.
I’m tall, but so is Sparkle. We’d both kept growing over the summer, and I don’t think either of us was finished. I had maybe a half inch on her. But I used that for all it was worth and held the phone over my head, fending her off with my other arm. She backed me into the lockers and my wrist banged the wall, but I held on. “Real mature,” I panted. “If I could work spells, you’d be the first to find out. I’d cast a spell to show the world what you’re like inside.”
Her teeth bared. And that’s when the weirdest thing happened. We were both on our tiptoes and her fingers were touching my wrist. And then—I swear—she grew.
Not, she jumped, not, she leaned forward. She grew. And I can tell you why I know it wasn’t just leaning forward. Because I swear, in that moment, her chest grew, too. It was the weirdest thing.
“Holy hells,” I said. She would’ve totally gotten the phone away from me then, except she was equally shocked.
“What now?” she cried, and then I blinked, and she was back to normal, and I still had my phone. Sparkle stumbled back.
“Are you—?” I think I meant to say “okay.” What had just happened to Sparkle? Was it something I had done? She seemed totally freaked out.
Not looking at me, Sparkle said venomously, “You show that picture to anyone and you’ll regret it until you graduate.”
“Then I’m keeping this until I graduate, just in case I need it,” I shot back. “Call me when you grow up.” I stomped down the hall, grinding bits of mirror under my heels.
I think she said, “Cash,” softly, but I didn’t turn around. I was keeping my strange piece of blackmail. I was tired of always knowing that she held something over me.
It wasn’t just the fact that I was a stupid kid who thought the witch was my mother and that I wanted to be just like her. That stuff fades in memory.
But we’d seen the witch work a spell, and that was the sort of thing you never forgot. Not when you saw the woman you thought was your mother carry a small furry creature into the basement …
I stuffed down that memory, swallowed it whole. I’d refused to think about that day ever again and I wasn’t going back on that now. It was time to stop Devon.
Except I had lost him.
Hells.
How was I going to find him? He could be anywhere, and the strange things that had happened around Sparkle made me horribly confused. Did the witch leave some spell on me that was going off without my knowing it? Was my close association with elementals causing rogue magic to fire, and was that even possible? The witch had said that the mannequin, with its decade of daily dragon milk, had taken on certain properties. Maybe touching the elemental in our garage day after day had left me the same. Like long exposure to radiation.
As much as I loved Moonfire, that thought made me shiver. No wonder Sparkle was freaked.
Without quite knowing where I was headed, I found myself in the drama wing. On one side of the hall was the door to the auditorium; on the other was the theater classroom. That door was half ajar and I could hear Jenah’s laugh floating out. Her drama class was Sixth Hour and she often hung out afterward with the theater kids, doing those improv games I could never get the hang of.
If I went in there I could share all my problems with her. As she’d wanted me to do.
But then she’d know all my problems.
But they’d be shared.