And she’s one of their pride
When she finds me at the bus stop
I’m a loner with a mane
The world wants to cage me
’Cause they think I am insane
But she shoulders up her tranqs
To put the whole world down
She stands next to me
When the bad guys come around
She’s a lion tamer, a lion tamer
She’s on my side
She’s a lion tamer, a lion tamer
And I’m one of her pride.
“Good night, Cam,” he said.
“Good night,” I whispered back.
Homework not done. Spellbooks not researched. I had to be up at five-thirty for my regular chores.
But oh … my silly, fluttery heart made it hard to care.
I set the alarm an hour early and plunged into lovely demon-free dreams.
*
In the morning, it was pouring rain. The garage was leaking onto Moonfire, sizzling where it hit her scales. I ran around nailing tarps and stacking up pans, and my extra hour didn’t buy me a bit of time. When I finally got to the ten minutes I was supposed to spend on deciphering that spell for self-defense, my mind was elsewhere.
I suppose that’s why, when I looked down at my sheet of scratch paper, I realized I had started by carefully writing out the list of things I knew.
“Hells,” I breathed. Spells really were just like a big word problem.
I studied the spell further. It certainly wasn’t like any algebra problem I’d worked last night, because of all that stuff about ingredients higher than nine starting with P and so on. But if you considered that that part was like a logic problem … and that other parts were like crosswords or anagrams … I started lining up the things I knew about the ingredients. Turning them into equations. Crossing off things as soon as I knew I didn’t need them.
And then I had it.
Two and a half tablespoons chopped pear, two tablespoons water, three tablespoons maple syrup, and one pinch each pepper and paprika. The only necessary gesture was to make sure you chopped the pears with both hands. It even sounded tasty.
The witch had said it was a beginner’s spell, and I’d never believed her.
Now that I’d figured it out, I almost wanted to try it. But the bus was already coming down the street. I stuffed the self-defense spell and the witch’s books in my backpack, and ran through the rain to the bus stop.
“Almost didn’t make it,” said Oliver as I climbed aboard.
“Then you wouldn’t have this,” I said, and handed him a tiny mister for his windshield.
“Whatta girl,” said Oliver as he accelerated. “I’ll put it on soon as I make up the time I lost. That stuff’s magic.”
“Yup,” I said. I wiped rain from my frizzing hair, looking over his shoulder for Devon. After last night, I was dying to see him in person. To see what his face would reveal when he saw me. But yet again, no Devon on the bus. I hoped the demon wasn’t making him walk the four miles to school in the pouring rain.
“I already saw your friend this morning,” Oliver said. “He got on when I swung through here an hour ago.”
I looked quizzically at him.
“You know, your friend that poured water on my nice dry bus,” he said. “I saw him.”
“How’d he look?”
“Dry,” said Oliver. “I particularly noticed that. Everyone else looked like they’d been through a car wash, but not him. I almost didn’t recognize him. You know I recognize people by the tops of their heads as they come up the stairs, and now his hair’s changed color…”
“Thanks, Oliver,” I said. “You ever stop driving buses, you can take up a career in espionage.”
“Espionage,” he said, trying out the sound of it. “Double-O-Oliver.”
No Devon on the bus, no Devon by the dripping-wet T-Bird, and certainly no Devon by my locker in the tenth-grade wing. Demons made it hard to have a smooth social life.
But a group of girls was clustered around a dim blonde and a black-haired girl in sparkly black, and when they saw me, the snickers erupted. I ignored that, because obviously when someone looks at you and snickers, it is on purpose to be super-annoying. I concentrated on toweling my hair with my hoodie as I went past.
I got along well enough with those girls when they weren’t under Sparkle’s influence—as in, we weren’t BFFs, but we were friendly enough. I knew one from biology, a couple from grade school, and I’d shared a laugh or two with all of them at one point.
So whatever their deal was today, I refused to play those Sparkle-driven games. I tied my damp hoodie around my waist and opened my locker.
“Was it second base?” said Reese.
Go back four places and lose one turn. “What did you say?”
“Don’t play dumb, Camellia,” said Reese. I should have been alerted by the open hostility in her tone. “We all know you were on the rooftop making out with Devon after school.”
And then, the double whammy.
“How’s it feel to be left for someone more popular?”
11