I swear, it was like she had radar, like the dragon.
I grabbed the wand from the shelf and closed the glass door. Then hightailed it back to my room and shoved it and the books under my bed, just as her heels clicked down the hallway. They went past my room to hers and I breathed a tentative sigh of relief.
I was dying to look at the books, but I still had the second half of The Crucible to read, a chapter of biology, and two work sheets for French I. Not to mention that stupid algebra. Boldly, I decided to do algebra first, and started off on problem four of the study guide for the test I hoped Rourke would let me retake. Now what had Kelvin said? He’d said I could do it if I went slow, right?
Laboriously, I wrote down all the things I knew. Crossed out all the things I didn’t need. Then arranged the problem into the equations I needed, using my finger as a placeholder.
By problem six I was starting to think that Kelvin was right.
I’d thought of algebra as something requiring great intuitive leaps and an inner aptitude, because that’s the way Rourke had been doing it. But all this was step by step. Anyone who figured out how to slot all the witch’s bizarro demands into one streamlined schedule and then check them off could do something that was step by step.
Thank you, Kelvin, I thought. I was going to have to tell him tomorrow that I appreciated him.
I started on problem seven, and then there was a sort of ringing noise in my backpack. Everyone else in the entire world would have known what it was immediately, but do you know why it took me forever to figure out what it was? Because I’d never had a single solitary phone call on my cell phone before. Because—as you probably remember—my phone was hooked in only to the witch system. Sarmine hated talking on the phone, so she only texted me those awful BRING ME A BIRD sorts of messages, and like, what, was I going to give the number to the creepy witch guy who raised unicorns and once drooled on my shoe? I thought not.
Big surprise number two: It was Devon.
“How on earth are you able to call this phone?” I said.
“The demon arranged it,” Devon said. “He had some charming doublespeak for his new strategy with me but basically it’s carrot and stick. He does something awful, then he gives me something I want. Back and forth. He said he’d go to sleep now but he hasn’t yet. Maybe we’ll have to bore him into it.”
I laughed, warmed at the idea that calling me was something Devon wanted. Then sobered. “How are you doing since the rooftop?”
Pause. “All right,” he said.
He clearly didn’t want to talk about the pixies, so I changed the subject, even though I didn’t know if it was better for him to ignore it or not. “Did you have a lot of homework?”
“No,” he said. “Estahoth did it. It was one of his carrots.”
“Are you sure it’s right?” I said.
“Yes, because the interesting thing is, I remember doing it. I have all that information in my head. It just didn’t take time. About five minutes to do everything assigned, and then I could get back to my music. I have to admit I could get used to that.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” I said.
“Joking, joking.”
That left an uncomfortable silence, and then I added to the awkwardness by saying, “So what else did he help you with?”
“Got me to my band practice an hour away,” Devon said. “I was going to take the bus but he moved me there in the space of a heartbeat. Pretty cool.”
“Public transit is cool, too,” I said. “Extremely cool.” The demon’s favors were worrying me.
“Um, right,” said Devon. “Well. I was there an hour early, so I had time to work on the new song.”
“The butter one?”
He laughed. “You have to remember, we’ve been playing a lot of schools and churches,” he said. “Emo songs don’t make it past the review committees. So far this year I’ve written one song about Saturday afternoons at the dog park, one about unicycling giraffes, and one about a mopey Batman in love with Superman. Well, that one is kind of emo. Anyway, this one isn’t about superheroes or giraffes or anything else. It’s simply about a girl.” His voice dropped down into that velvety thing it does when he’s singing.
“Is that so?” I managed.
“A plain ordinary girl.”
“Oh.”
“Well, maybe not very plain at all.”
“Oh?”
“And maybe not very ordinary in the slightest.”
“Tell me more.”
“It was going to be about a girl who tamed demons, but demons never make it past the censors.”
“So what does this not very plain, not very ordinary girl do?”
He sang, soft and in my ear.
“She’s a cool stick of butter
With a warm warm heart
The Serengeti loves her
’Cause she takes their part
She shoulders up her tranqs
To put the humans down
She stands with the lions
The bad guys hit the ground
She’s a lion tamer, a lion tamer
And she’s on their side
She’s a lion tamer, a lion tamer