“Oh yes, you are,” Sarmine said grimly. “And I bet you have another note that you were supposed to follow today, to summon a demon to control the phoenix. Did you balk at that spell?”
Sparkle looked at me, and I think in that moment we both remembered tiptoeing halfway down the basement stairs, curious. Holding on to the cold railing and each other. Watching pretty red smoke curls, watching silver stars. Then watching Sarmine sacrifice a ferret in a pool of crimson blood.
“The spell called for goat’s blood,” Sparkle whispered.
Sarmine looked at her bracelet watch. “Six minutes till the explosion.” To me: “Get your wand out.”
“How did you know I’ve got—” She glared and I shut up. “Right.”
“You never were a very clever witch, were you, Hikari?” Sarmine was needling Sparkle, throwing her off balance. In a low voice she said: “To find the phoenix, I have to lift the spell so she remembers everything.”
I could tell from Sarmine’s posture that she was braced. Hikari might not be the best witch in the world—and she probably didn’t have a store of ingredients close to hand like Sarmine did—but she was about to have all her power and memory back, and she wasn’t going to like us very much. I gripped my wand.
Sarmine’s free hand was rummaging through her fanny pack. “A sprig of parsley,” she muttered. “Three alder leaves … we’ll substitute elm. Four faux gems…” She ripped off the two pearl buttons on the high neck of her shirt. “Cam, six elm leaves and two more things like gemstones. Now.”
Of course you know where the gemstone-like things were. In what I supposed was irony, I tackled Sparkle, who was busy watching the witch root through the fanny pack. “I’m sorry,” I gasped out. “But otherwise the phoenix … will incinerate … us all.” I grappled for her tiara, but she wouldn’t let it go.
“You’re as bad as she is,” hissed Sparkle, which made me lose the sympathy for her I’d just had. Honestly, she was as aggravating as Sarmine Scarabouche. Why couldn’t people be all good or all bad? This business with feeling sorry for someone who could turn around and be obnoxious the next minute made things so complicated.
The witch pulled off her shoe and pulverized her ingredients in it. “Counterfeit money would work, too,” she said. “Something that imitates something valuable.”
“Oh, that’s you, all right,” I said to Sparkle. She bit my arm.
“Humans invest belief in fakes,” the witch lectured. “We agree to regard Hikari’s tiara as imitating something expensive. And the expensive item itself is something that’s only expensive because we believe in its value. A gemstone rarely has intrinsic worth, except for diamonds, which are used to cut things, and opals, which will keep all insects from biting you.”
Sparkle shoved me off and I fell, cradling my arm. One last ploy to prevent that phoenix explosion. “I’ve got my phone in my pocket,” I told Sparkle. “You want your picture back? So you can go back to pretending your nose didn’t straighten out magically?” I held it out, and when she brought the tiara up indecisively, I grabbed it and dropped the phone into her hands.
I tossed the tiara at Sarmine, who caught it. With her wand she poked two jewels from it and they fell in her shoe.
“Press seven-oh-four to unlock it. Then scroll and delete,” I told Sparkle.
Sparkle’s fingers flew. I don’t think she even cared as Sarmine threw the contents of her shoe at Sparkle and traced the air with her wand in a star pattern.
The air whirled around Sparkle. For a moment, she lost all color, like she was a sepia photograph. “Whoa,” said one of the zombie girls. Then Sparkle colorized, in pieces, and as she did her head jerked up as if she was remembering things, great gallons of things, all at once. The phone dropped to the ground and blinked off, dead.
“Not again,” I said.
And while Sparkle was distracted, Sarmine shouted, “The phoenix is exploding!”
Which made Sparkle jump backward.
And look directly at the ground in front of the T-Bird.
Sparkle’s head shot up again and she sneered, but it was too late.
“The mouse,” I said. “It’s the mouse statue! That’s almost clever.”
“What would you know, Cash,” said Sparkle.
She was growing taller now, filling out. She was a college chick, she was an adult, she was older and older. Her waist thickened, then silver threaded her hair, then tiny creases sprouted under her eyes and on the backs of her hands.
Until at last she looked the same age as Sarmine.
Sparkle stared in disbelief at her hands. “No,” she whispered. “No, this is not me.”
“Did you really try to convince me I was normal?” I said.
“We are normal,” she said, voice screeching upward. “I don’t want to be Kari. I don’t want these memories. I don’t want to be evil.”