Kelly McClymer-Salem Witch 03 She's A Witch Girl (24 page)

All of the council members looked skeptical, but Kilt Guy was the one to ask, “How is that possible that no one had noticed? The girl has a schoolful of teachers, and Agatha—”

Agatha broke in, her wrinkled jowls waggling happily. “I have seen no hint of a Talent. Unless you count mischief with mortals as a Talent.”

“It is a rare Talent,” my mother said, bowing deeply to first Agatha and then Old Lady in Red. “One that only the most powerful of witches possesses.”

“Impossible.” Every member of the witches’ council stood and spoke the word at once. It bounced into the gallery and back again. I looked at Mom, wondering when she’d lost her mind. But then I remembered how she’d been the one to spot Angelo as a witch. Maybe I did have some rare Talent. But I didn’t have a clue what it could be.

“Demonstrate this Talent,” Old Lady in Red demanded, looking right at me.

I smiled, as if I knew what my mother was talking about— this was definitely the time to have her back, even if I did think the stress had fried her brain. “I’m happy to. Perhaps we could arrange a time next week—”

“Now!”

I don’t think I’d felt as clueless since my sweet sixteen party, when I’d ordered pizza in a room full of witches by using the mortal telephone. No, this was about a hundred times worse.

I stood for a moment, mentally preparing myself just like I did for a game or a competition. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

I had no idea what I was going to do next, so I was grateful when Mom said, “Wait, Pru. Open your eyes and wait a moment.”

I happily obeyed, glad for a nanosecond’s reprieve from yet one more disgrace.

Mom whipped her arm up to the big, domed ceiling of the council chamber and suddenly there was a movie playing up there. Only it wasn’t a movie, it was the Nationals— it was us. It was me up there on the ceiling, right before we’d gone out to the floor to perform our award-winning routine.

“Do you know what they call her?” my mother asked. “They call her the cheer-whisperer.”

“I don’t see how that’s relevant—whispering is not a Talent.”

“Of course it isn’t a Talent. But it does give you a hint of Pru’s Talent.”

As my mom spoke, the movie Witches gathered in a circle to do our rally hold and chant. Mom waved her hand and stopped the action. “I’m going to enhance this, to make it clear to everyone in the gallery.”

I was glad. I hoped it would give me a clue too.

Suddenly, on the movie, all of our auras appeared. I guess Mom had done an aura reveal spell. I didn’t know you could do that on a movie of something that happened in the past. Which made me realize that not only did I not know what my Talent was, I didn’t know a lot of other kewl and useful things.

Mom started the movie going again, and I noticed a
weird thing: My aura danced and darted around with all the other girls’ auras, until all the auras were dancing and darting and braiding into one strong and united aura. The team aura, made up of all our auras, glowed brilliantly as we worked in perfect synchronicity, and—well, it made me so proud, I started to cry. Everyone else was buzzing, but I still didn’t see the big deal. So what if I had an aura that knew how to form a braid? So did everyone else on the team.

“How can you be sure that this is Prudence’s work? It could be Tara’s, or Coach Gertie’s.” Agatha leaned forward, clearly unwilling to accept that I was Talented.

Mom replayed the scene in slow motion. This time, there was no doubt that my aura began the dance, controlled the dances of the other auras, and was responsible for braiding everyone else’s aura together into one mega-aura.

Kilt Guy looked at me with new respect. “The Magic Talent of an aura braider hasn’t been seen since—wasn’t it your great-grandmother, Agatha?”

“Yes.” She didn’t sound happy to admit it, though. But she looked at me with something I’d never seen in her eyes before. Sing it with me now: R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

I not only had a Talent, I had the kewlest Talent ever. Only question was, would it save me?

Old Lady in Red didn’t bother with silencing the gallery crowd. She just waved them away. Back to whatever they had been doing, I presume, but I spent the next few
moments of silence wondering about it because to wonder about me was way too scary.

“I’m surprised you didn’t note this at once, Agatha, given your experience with the Talent.” She looked at me with a little shake of her head. “Not to mention Miss Stewart’s rather unprecedented talent—small t—for convincing the other students to work together. There was the fund-raising calendar they did at Halloween. I saw that in your evidence against her, did I not?”

Agatha nodded. “That was minor, compared to arranging for her team to practice in secret and sneaking off to a forbidden competition with mortals.” She sniffed. “However, it does indicate her lack of a proper witchly attitude.”

Stud in Black laughed. “Or perhaps it was the first warning sign that her Talent needed to be recognized and properly trained.”

Kilt Guy nodded. “Exactly. To have this child in your school, under your nose, and to miss this? Especially after the sit-in episode? Perhaps you have been headmistress too long.”

Agatha, for the first time since I had known her, turned a pale shade of pink. “I beg your pardon! I have done all I could to contain this girl. I insist she be expelled.”

Old Lady in Red turned to look at her. “Do you? Insist? How interesting.”

She turned back to Mom and me, still looking grave.
“Obviously, we cannot allow Prudence to continue to testify, given the powerful nature of her Talent and the fact that she has not been trained to handle it. We must continue our discussion in closed session, I’m afraid.”

Mom said, “I would like the chance to speak for my daughter, if she can’t do it herself.”

“No need. You have already spoken eloquently, with your demonstration.” Old Lady in Red raised her hand to dismiss us. “We’ll take your evidence under advisement and let you know our decision posthaste.”

We were back in the kitchen before the words had finished echoing around the council chamber.

Sassy leaped into my lap as I sat there, staring at Mom, speechless, clueless, and suddenly not so happy that I might be leaving this whole witch thing behind me.

The council didn’t call us back to let us know their
decision. Instead, Sassy coughed up a hairball at my feet. It rose into the air and formed the wiry message:

I blasted a shriek so loud through the house that everyone came running. We whooped as a family at the hair-ball/message from the council.

Dad hugged me. “I knew you would do it, Pru.”

Mom waved the hairball into a frame. “Just to preserve the evidence,” she said, when we all looked at her like she was crazy.

So I was reprieved. Me. Innocent. I should probably have been relieved, but Sassy’s hairball had interrupted a session of summoning that Angelo, Samuel, and I were into in a very intense way. Not to mention I had a whole new action item to add to To-Do: learning how to manage my Talent.

Hey. Guess what! I’m Talented. Me. At last. And, best of all—it’s a good one. I’ll be able to stand out at the Graduation Talent Pageant. What a load off my mind.

Life is easier when you know your Talent. Especially when it’s a rare and kind of kewl Talent like mine.

Take school, for example. The same teachers who looked at me as if I might be too dumb to pass a class now think I’m a star witch. If I get something wrong, they give me the benefit of the doubt. It feels a little strange, since I’ve gotten used to having to prove myself every day—heck, every hour. But it also feels a little bit back to the way it was in Beverly Hills, where the teachers took it for granted I was smart and capable.

There’s one difference, though. Now that I’ve seen the way my aura can reach out and snag other auras to get
something done, I realize I have to be careful that what I want done is a good thing. It’s a lot of responsibility. But the council has already sent notice that they’ve found someone to teach me to use my Talent wisely. I hope it’s someone cute, like Mr. Bindlebrot. Probably, though, it will turn out to be Agatha. Shudder.

Mom and Dad have let me know they’re proud of all my hard work. Mom’s not working in the library anymore. She says it’s because she doesn’t want to discourage me from doing my homework research and reading good books. I’m not sure that’s true. Lately, she’s been spending a lot of time with the head ghost in our house.

I think she may be about to uncover some of the secrets buried in this old place. There’s a rumor that if a witch makes friends with a ghost, they’ll find out secrets that are not often revealed. Whatever. I’m just glad she isn’t at the school, checking books out to my friends. That was just more weirdness than I wanted to deal with.

The only one who isn’t impressed by my new Talent is Dorklock. But his girlfriend makes up for that. She thinks I walk on Perrier.

I guess I caved to Dad’s notion that friends shouldn’t become enemies when I flashed that good luck sign to Maddie. All the anger I had toward her melted away when she flashed one back without a second’s hesitation.

I knew things were never going to be the same between us, but that didn’t mean I had to give her up as a friend. So I invited her to come out for a visit during school vacation week. Apparently, Armand and her mom had broken up and her mom was going on a singles cruise with some friends. She’d wanted to bring Maddie along (is that weird or what?... so Beverly Hills), but she hadn’t objected when Maddie asked to visit me instead.

Just as I’d known she would, she loved the turret in my room. It was almost like old times, except that the magic was a lot harder to hide. Mom had to bind Dorklock’s powers to get him to stop floating things to freak Maddie out. Fortunately, we didn’t need to mind-wipe her. I just explained the house was haunted. She bought it. She’s always been a horror movie fan.

She finally even managed to apologize. “I’m sorry about Brent. It was so lame. It’s just that you weren’t there, and things were really weird with Armand moving in and all.”

“The worst thing was that you didn’t tell me. Didn’t you know I’d give you the ‘full steam ahead’ sign?” I asked.

“Maybe I was jealous. You’d always had everything, and—” she stopped, as if there were no words.

I stopped the torture. “I get it. I felt that way too. I didn’t know about Armand and your mom either.”

“It’s all good.” Especially now that she’d apologized at
last. “I bet you’re glad your mom dumped Armand. He seemed like a stinker to me that time I met him.” I couldn’t resist a bad pun. After all, there was no way Maddie would ever know what I’d done for her. It was just one of those things we couldn’t talk about.

“I can’t believe you’d forgive me for poaching Brent and lying about it,” she said as she painted red stars on my already gold-painted toenails.

“I’ve learned a lot of things in Salem,” I told her. “And mostly I’ve learned that friends come in all sizes, shapes, and levels of kewl. And they’re all valuable, but none of them are perfect.” Especially not the mortal friends.

“You’ve changed a lot, Pru.”

“Is that bad?”

“No. It’s good. I don’t think you would have understood about Armand before.”

“Not like I do now. It sucks to have your mother stolen by an alien with a hot bod.”

“It does. I think that’s why I was so happy to stop talking to you. Your life sounded so great and all.”

“Even though I told you I was in some remedial classes?”

She blushed, remembering how she’d served that up to Chezzie. “Man, I was really a beeyotch to you when you so didn’t deserve it. I’m glad you guys won Nationals.”

“That makes two of us.” I couldn’t help asking . . . “Was Chezzie spitting fire or what?”

“She said you cheated.”

“We didn’t.”

Maddie looked at me. “I know. And so did Coach—she suspended Chezzie for two games for saying so.”

Whoa. That was a cheery thought. My old team
did
remember me fondly—except Chezzie, who probably was more convinced than ever that I was the devil. Oh well, can’t win ’em all.

“I wish I could have seen that.” I wondered if I could scry it.. . not that I’d do it while Maddie was around. Really talented witches could scry the past as well as the future. I might as well give it a try after Maddie went home.

“I wish you could have too. My closet’s still available.”

“No. I’m good here. It’s only for another year and a half. And I still have to whip the Witches into shape for next year’s competitions.” I grinned.

Maddie grinned back. “Next year, we might not let you off so easy.”

“I guess we’ll have to see.” Mom had already warned me that I couldn’t compete unless I could control my Talent so I didn’t use it to unfair advantage against mortals. There was more than a chance that my old team would win. But I was okay with that.