“Last night. Last night while I was worrying about him? While I was obsessing to you about how I could rescue him from Estahoth? That last night?”
“They didn’t kiss, if that’s any consolation. Francie said Reese kept trying to scoot in and tilt her lips into prime kissing position, but he blocked her. Checked her with his shoulder.”
“I didn’t get my English homework read because I was talking to him on the phone. He did not say one word.”
Jenah looked at me like, duh, of course he wouldn’t. “So were you making out on the roof?” she said. “Because we’re sharing everything now, you know.”
That made me laugh, despite the horrid shamed feeling. “No, we didn’t.” I pondered. “I guess he must’ve just flat out told Reese about the rooftop. How obnoxious. Because I could see some people in the park, but they were pretty far away, and they wouldn’t have known who we were, even if they saw us. Not that there was anything to see, because nothing happened.”
Jenah pursed her lips. “Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, maybe I believe you.” She said that matter-of-factly, like she was keeping me up-to-date on the situation.
“Hells, Jenah. I never lied to you about anything but the witch, and I just couldn’t tell anyone about that. What?”
“You didn’t tell me any of this roof stuff.”
I didn’t? I scoured my memory. “Ack,” I said. “Only because I got derailed by Sparkle’s nose, and then you interrupted to say that—” I lowered my voice—“Moonfire was talking to you.” And maybe also because the memory of poor Devon forced to destroy those pixies was so horrible that deep down, I hadn’t wanted to talk about it.
Crap.
I’d always thought of myself as honest. Why was my subconscious working against me? Why were some things so difficult to push past your lips?
“So I left Sparkle, and went into the auditorium—” I said.
“But first, you saw me,” said Jenah. She smoothed her filmy green skirt over her black leggings.
I endured the embarrassment. “Yes. I saw you. I’m sorry. And then I found Devon on the roof with the box you saw yesterday…” In a couple sentences I outlined the rest of that horror.
“Oh,” said Jenah. She swallowed. “Magic isn’t all fluffy butterflies, is it?”
“No. But please. I am telling you the truth. As quickly as I can. So bear with me.”
“I know,” Jenah said. She patted my shoulder a couple times. “Look, we’re going to be late to algebra. We better go.”
So that was like ice in my gut. Jenah did trust me and she didn’t, all at once. The frustrating thing was that her caution was, logically, the right thing. I could tell she wasn’t just trying to piss me off, trying to get back at me. She would try to take me at my word, but she wasn’t necessarily going to believe 100 percent of everything I said until she’d proven it for herself. Or maybe till great oceans of time passed and we were old and gray, or at least in college.
How the heck did I deal with that?
*
No Devon in algebra, and you’ll think I’m an idiot, but I slid the demon book into my binder and studied it instead of algebra. Okay, so I’m an idiot. But I had one day to put a spell together, and that meant I needed lunch today to gather any ingredients I might need.
I found the part about pentagrams straight off, and the good news there was that the spell didn’t need anything besides the pentagram itself, one breath from the witch, and the touch of her wand. It wasn’t even written in code, either. I guess because it was so straightforward—and so important. Besides demon-summoning, pentagrams could also contain witches, humans—even phoenix and dragons. The only catch for using a pentagram as a jail was that you had to get the entity inside first.
Some catch.
Still, it was the only plan I had. And the fact that a pentagram wasn’t much of a spell meant I really only had to figure out one spell, the big spell, the tremendous spell.
A spell to get the demon out of Devon.
If such a spell even existed.
I skimmed pages, looking. There were several pages of different summoning spells, and I thought I recognized the one the witch used, with the basil and salamander. Then several pages of how to lock demons into bodies. Was getting the demon up to Earth all that witches cared about? How could the book have pages and pages of how to get a demon here, but nothing about controlling your demon once you’ve got him? Nothing about damage control? I supposed because demons couldn’t get into witches unless they let them in, they didn’t give two hoots for the regular humans in danger. Typical.
On the very last page I found the spell I sought.
The title was: Ye Olde Demon-Loosening Spell for Feebleminded Witches Who Have Changed Their Minds About Which Puny Human Should Hold Said Demon.
Then there were the caveats, a whole bunch of “We’ve heard this works, but the demon had already gotten himself embodied so that’s probably why it failed,” and, “We’ve heard this works, but the witch disappeared and so did the demon.”