“It’s not,” he said. His lips brushed my cheek and I closed my eyes, blood rushing hot and loud through my skull. That’s when I lost all my common sense. If he had decided to follow up the cheek with the lips, I would’ve been a total goner. I know, I know. I have no shame. I’m just telling you how it went down, and as often as not, how it went down is embarrassing.
I was at his mercy and he didn’t kiss me.
I don’t know if that was good or bad.
When I finally opened my eyes he was standing across the room, at the classroom door.
I hadn’t heard him move.
“That’s another chance you missed,” he said softly. He tossed a dry-erase marker at me and then he was gone. The marker slipped through my fingers and clattered to the floor. I looked down at my feet.
On the floor where he had stood was a loosely sketched red pentagram. As I watched, a breeze slipped through the open window and, impossibly, blew it into fine red dust.
*
“His powers are developing and he knows I’m trying to trap him in a pentagram. We’re screwed. How am I going to trick him inside of one now?” Jenah and I cut Sixth Hour and holed up in the second-floor rest room with my backpack of swiped books. I dosed the tiled floor liberally with unicorn sanitizer before we sat.
“Give me another of those books and I’ll keep looking,” said Jenah. “Think outside the box. What’s like a pentagram that’s not a pentagram?”
“If math were my strong suit, I’d have goat’s blood ready to go,” I said. I leaned back against a bathroom stall. The tile was cold on my back and butt and I could smell the janitor’s antiseptic mixed with my own, more powerful one. I shuffled the Tupperwares of spell ingredients around in my backpack until I found the book about demons. I set the heavy book on my knees.
“Mustard flickered in your aura right now,” said Jenah, “so I don’t really want you to explain that cryptic statement. We’ll leave our galactic jump rope tangled this time.”
“He’s really very nice,” I said. “Maybe you’d like to go to the dance with him tonight.”
“Say no more. I see how it all went down between you and Mustard Man,” said Jenah. She cradled a tall skinny book between her crossed legs. She had on an orange cotton skirt and red tights, and the tights went pink where they stretched over her knees. “Anyone could’ve seen it coming a mile away.”
“Well, I didn’t,” I said glumly. I flicked over several pages and wondered why I never got around to wearing skirts. “So I’m almost ready with the demon-loosening spell, but unless we can find a substitution for goat’s blood, we’re screwed. What’d you find in there?”
“Substitutions for goat’s blood,” said Jenah.
“Brilliant,” I said. “Read it off.”
“‘Cow’s blood, though your spell will be weaker,’” read Jenah. “‘Antelope blood, though your spell will be meeker. Donkey blood, though your spell will be bleaker.’ Bleaker? How can a spell be bleak?”
“Some witch was too fond of being clever, if you ask me,” I said. I shifted my butt on the cold tile. “We’re not going to find any of those any more quickly than the goat’s blood. Well, we could buy a package of hamburger, but trust me, we don’t want the spell to be weaker.”
“Do you know anyone else with goats?”
“Yeah, I finally thought of one,” I said. “The guy who raises unicorns also has goats. The thing is, he’s seriously creepy, and I really don’t want to call him except as a last resort.” I looked at the clock on my cell phone. “Unfortunately, the time is last-resort o’clock.”
“Unicorns?” said Jenah. “Unicorns are real? Are they elementals, too?”
“Nope, just the three I told you about. ‘Dragon, phoenix, and demon fell…’ Unicorns do have a lot of magic in them, though. They get used for spells, like that vodka purifier I cleaned you with. Once a witch puts the ingredients together, anyone can use that spell because it stands alone pretty well. Vodka, one drop of dragon milk, one unicorn hair.”
“I guess I’m fuzzy on the difference.”
“Unicorns may be all purifying and stuff, but they’re just animals,” I said. “They’re mortal. Unlike elementals, they can be changed by witch magic—that’s the main spell performed on them, in fact, to hide their horns so they can pass. If they weren’t full of useful sheddy bits I don’t know who’d bother to keep them. They’re not very intelligent and they’re mean as all get-out.”
“You’ve seen one?” said Jenah. “Out at Creepy Guy’s place?”
“Seen one just last month, disguised as a llama,” I said. “Nearly took my arm off.”
“Wouldn’t it be smarter to disguise them as horses?”
“A common mistake,” I said. I hadn’t told anyone witch stuff since Sparkle, when I was five. I’d forgotten how much fun it was to be the expert on a subject others found fascinating. To be able to shatter the myths they thought they knew. “Unicorns actually look a lot like llamas.”
“Unicorn llamas,” said Jenah, eyebrows up. “Fuzzy? Woolly? Soft?”