My wand was in my backpack, along with Tupperwares full of ingredients. After I had had my eggplant breakthrough last night, I had started mixing the demon-loosening spell. By lunch the apple-oyster mixture had steeped for twelve hours, so I used part of lunchtime to stand at my locker and stir in earwigs and dandelions and so forth.
“Any luck?” I asked Jenah when I finally got to the cafeteria. I had put her in charge of identifying the five girls whom Devon had kissed. As far as I knew, the demon hadn’t handed the “hopes and dreams” off to the witch—however one did that—so he must still have them all, somehow. Devon, plus a demon, plus the important parts of five girls—that poor boy was stuffed.
Jenah was sitting next to some girl whose head was cradled in her hands, obscuring her face. I plonked down whatever it was the lunch lady had handed me, and started scarfing it.
“Yes, in fact,” Jenah said. “I’ve located all five zombie girls. The two you saw, plus Avery from the tennis team and two seniors.”
“Wow. Moving up in the world.” The girl next to Jenah had limp blond hair that dragged in her lasagna, turning the ends tomato red. “Um, your hair…” I said.
Jenah gently shook the girl’s shoulders. “Hey. Sit up,” she said.
The blond girl shook her head, further moistening her hair.
Jenah pushed the girl’s tray away, took her paper napkin, and began cleaning tomato off the girl’s hair. “I was briefly distracted when I heard a rumor that he’d gotten Miss Crane,” she said to me. “Can you imagine?”
Even in the middle of disaster I could see the funny side of that. “I would pay to see that.”
“Apparently she’d gone to the dentist and that’s why she was drooling,” said Jenah. “It’s been tricky sorting out who the girls are when no one knows the real story. But with little hints—this girl seemed high, that girl was singing ‘Kiss Me’ in the halls—I tracked all five of them down.” She put the tomato-ey napkin back on the tray. “There you go, Reese.”
The girl finally looked up at the sound of her name. Her eyes were dull and forlorn. I had not even recognized her. “He’s all I want,” Reese said.
“Oh, no,” I said. “She’s worse.”
“It’s like she needs her fix,” Jenah said. “She was dreamy Reese before school. Said she saw him at his locker. Then he disappeared and won’t answer her texts. Now she’s like this.”
“What do I do without him?” Reese said.
Despite knowing that the hope-stealing was magically induced, I tried reasoning with poor Reese. “Remember he’s just a boy,” I said. “He’s not worth it. You have so many other things you want to accomplish.”
Brief life snapped in Reese’s eyes. “He’s not just a boy and you know it.”
Jenah and I exchanged a look, but we knew Reese didn’t mean what we were thinking.
“Just a boy,” I repeated. “No boy is worth giving up your self for.”
Reese looked down at her tray and her lip trembled. “The lasagna looks like Devon,” she said. Her hair tumbled back into her tray, covering her face. Jenah tried to sit her up, but she wouldn’t budge.
“Add that to the list of tasks,” I said. “We’ve got to reverse this horrible process before the witch gets ahold of their hopes and dreams and steals them for all time.” Reese’s state was so disturbing that I covered up my fear with flippancy. “I don’t want to hear that she’s seeing Devon in pieces of toast.”
*
So Devon was definitely on my mind, but I didn’t see him close up till just after lunch. Till just after the American history video about All Hallows’ Eve got interrupted by a frog jumping out of nowhere.
A frog with wings that only I could see.
I jumped from my desk and grabbed the little thing out of the hair of a squealing girl.
“I think it escaped from Ms. Sanghvi’s biology lab,” I said. “I’ll take it back to her.”
Mrs. Taylor squeaked, “Just get it out of here.”
So one pixie had escaped the rooftop massacre. To fulfill the witch’s contract, the demon needed one hundred pixies at the school by Friday. It was Friday, so that was fulfilled. Now, if I could get this little guy out of the school, then that was one less pixie that the witch would have for her Ye Olde Becoming the Mayor Spell. Without all the ingredients, she couldn’t take over the city, no matter whether I succeeded with my other plans or not.
I took the little pixie down the hall. It was a rich green color, speckled with tiny green dots like flecks of ash. It fluttered in my hand. I almost didn’t see the pink flash that illuminated an empty classroom down the side hall.
I nudged open the door. “Devon?”
Devon was up on a table, running his fingers along the ceiling. “I know the phoenix is on the property,” he said. “I can feel him. He’s somewhere cold. But when he got put here fourteen years ago, he got loose from that demon and zoomed around the school first.”
“What demon?”
Devon rolled his eyes at me. “Dragon, phoenix, and demon fell—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” I said hastily. “You mean, that witch who transformed the phoenix, had to summon a demon to do it for her? Just like Sarmine did with you.”