Spellcaster (27 page)

“No pouting,” I scolded, elbowing him with forced playfulness.

“I’m not
pouting.
You make it sound so self-indulgent,” Brendan complained, frowning. “I’m allowed to still be upset about hurting you.
You.
Of all people, I hurt the one person—”

“And if the tables were turned, you wouldn’t want me to keep kicking myself,” I interrupted him before he could sink further into his verbal self-flagellation. “Emo Mode better disengage, Brendan. What, are you going to start standing in the rain, taking self-portraits while you’re looking away?” I said dramatically, and the corner of his mouth pulled up in a smile.

“Thought so,” I said triumphantly, and he squeezed my hand before dropping it to open the car door for me. But when he slid next to me, I got a closer look at the side of his face—and it was my turn to feel guilty. An impressive purple-and-black bruise was radiating out from under his eye. No wonder my fist hurt so much.

“Did, um, your parents say anything about your eye?” I asked hesitantly, bracing myself for their reply.

“It wasn’t that bad last night. Just a little red and I had a baseball cap on. I don’t think they even noticed—honestly,” he assured me. “I just talked to them a little bit about their trip and went to bed.”

“That looks so sore.” I sighed, trying to keep the guilt out of my voice and failing miserably.

“Don’t
you
start with the navel-gazing sadness,” Brendan teased me as the car pulled into the flow of traffic on Madison. “What, are you going to start writing poetry in the dark? By the light of one flickering candle?”

“Yes. And I’ll extinguish it with my tears,” I said dryly. “Fine, deal. No more beating ourselves up. We don’t need the drama. Even though I do feel like I could star as the villain in a Lifetime Original Movie,” I added.

“What’s that?” Brendan asked, his black brows pulling together in confusion. I just shook my head, laughing. I was not about to explain the melodramatic made-for-TV movies my mom and I used to watch. But when Brendan strolled into English later, I definitely felt like the star of
The Accidental Abuser: The Emma Connor Story.
Even Mr. Emerson stopped in the middle of handing us back our essays to question Brendan on his shiner.

“What happened to you, Salinger?” he asked, his eyes darting around the classroom suspiciously to see if anyone else looked roughed up. It wasn’t the first time Brendan looked like he’d been in a fight—although from what I’d heard of Brendan’s first two years at Vince A, he usually escaped unscathed and the other guy looked a little worse for the wear—but Brendan just leaned back in his chair, casually twisting the silver hoop pierced in his cartilage.

“Caught an elbow during a pickup game last night.” He shrugged, for once managing to lie convincingly.

“In the quad?” Mr. Emerson asked, alarmed.

“Nah. Not here. West Fourth,” Brendan said, name-dropping the most notorious basketball court in the city, before adding nonchalantly, “We won.”

I hid a smile and poked him in the back.
Of course he’d find a way to look like a winner in this.

After class was over, Brendan turned to me and rapped his palms on my desk.

“Ready for some delicious cafeteria food?” He grinned devilishly. “I think today’s chicken fingers are really fingers.”

“Actually,” I said, lowering my voice as I realized Cisco was waiting for us at the front of our row of desks. “I have to meet Angelique in the chem lab. We’re plotting some anti-Megan strategies and I have to talk through them with her.”

“Ooo-kay,” he replied hesitantly, folding his arms across the back of his desk and resting his chin on his forearms. “Do you want me around?”

“I
always
want you around,” I said, couching my reply. “But I think we might get more work done if it’s just the two of us. This doesn’t have anything to do with yesterday, and I’ll tell you—”

“It’s fine,” he said automatically, nodding his head. I was taken aback—I’d expected more of a struggle, considering how he’d insisted on coming to Angelique’s house on Saturday. But I didn’t want him to hear my plan until it was a little more formed—and I was going to have to break it to him gently. As in, sit-him-on-a-pillow-fan-him-with-feathers-and-feed-him-grapes-while-giving-him-a-back-massage gently. He was going to
hate
my plan.

“You said something once about not being able to concentrate when I’m around you and Angelique.” His gaze flickered to my knuckles then he looked back at me. “I want you to be able to concentrate.”

“Thanks for understanding,” I said, smiling gratefully.

“I’ll walk you to kickboxing after school, okay?” he said, standing up and throwing his backpack on his shoulder.

“Okay,” I agreed, and headed down to the cafeteria with him and Cisco. I grabbed a bag of chips and a gummy-looking BLT before running down to the empty lab to meet Angelique, who was sitting at our table with a black-covered book under her chemistry textbook.

I looked jealously at her fresh-carved turkey sandwich, clearly brought from home, then back at my sandwich, which I was tearing apart into pieces on a napkin.

“How bad is the food in this place that they screwed up bacon?” I asked, poking the pale piece of pork with my finger as if it might slither across the table. “I think they boiled it.”

“Bacon is the nectar of the gods,” she said seriously, adding, “it’s blasphemy what they did to it.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I brought it to the chemistry lab, since that thing is definitely a science experiment.”

Angelique just rolled her eyes and handed me half of her sandwich.

“Thanks,” I said gratefully, taking the sandwich after tossing the shredded remains of my BLT in the trash. “If I ate that thing, I wouldn’t have to worry about Megan. I’d die of dysentery before tomorrow night.”

“So, speaking of our friendly neighborhood psychopath,” Angelique began. “I read your email. Considering that you sent it at three in the morning, why don’t you tell me what you dreamed?”

I swallowed a big bite of the turkey sandwich, and rehashed the terrifying account of how I’d died in a past life.

“And that’s when my aunt shook me awake,” I concluded, punctuating the end of my story with another bite of the sandwich.

“By the way, nice touch with the bread-and-butter pickles,” I added, savoring the sweet and salty crunch. “You’re pretty much my sandwich goddess.”

“Enough with my tasty pickles! Oh, that sounded dirty.” She paused, laughing. “Get back to our problem. What’s the plan you’re thinking of?”

“It’s rough, but this is what I’m working with,” I said, launching into an outline of my very thin plan.

When I was done, Angelique exhaled, her eyebrows furrowed in worry and she shook her head.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, popping a chip into my mouth.

“I had been hoping that I read your email wrong, or you wrote it incoherently because you were so exhausted,” she admitted. She took off her bangle and spun it around her index finger like a silver hula hoop. “That’s not the case at all, is it?”

“Nope. I was pretty much wide-awake at that point,” I said, my eyes following the bangle as it spun around and around. “I’m amazed I somehow made it back to sleep.”

“It’s a really simple plan. Not a lot of moving parts, not lot of pieces that need to fall into place. It’s just…simple—as long as you can pull it off,” Angelique mused, pursing her lips in thought as she spun the bracelet faster.

“I know. I can’t decide if that’s the beauty of it, or if it means it won’t work.” I had to look away—the bangle was making me dizzy.

“I mean, it
can’t
be that simple,” she protested, twirling the bangle so rapidly it was just a silver blur. “And it’s crazy. It’s
so
crazy.”

“I know, but I think it’s our best shot.”

“Is it?
You’re
the only one who can pull this spell off. Randi and I will figure out what we can do to help, but I mean—this is a lot for a brand-new witch to do in one night. By herself
. Alone,
” she emphasized, and the silver bangle spun right off her finger and flew across the classroom. It hit the blackboard with a sharp metallic
ping
that startled us both. I got up to retrieve the thick bangle, using the eraser to smudge the scrape the bracelet made on the board.

I looked down at where the bangle was now bent, before turning back to my friend from the front of the classroom. Angelique’s shoulders were hunched forward, and she hugged herself as she perched on the high lab chair, the stiff black tulle she wore under her skirt puffed out and making her look smaller, almost fragile.

“It’s
a lot
for you to undertake,” she admitted, looking at me with worried, red-eyeliner rimmed eyes. “I don’t know that
I
could pull it off. Hell, Randi and I couldn’t manage to put together a proper binding spell. What if Megan’s just too good?”

“I’ll just have to be better,” I replied simply. I tried to sound confident, but I was sure Angelique could feel the waves of insecurity and doubt beaming out of me as clearly as if I had just performed an “I’m Terrified” interpretive dance—complete with trembling jazz hands. Especially now that Angelique reminded me that she and Randi, two much more experienced witches, failed at a binding spell.
Who are you to think you can pull off something like this? That’s like Picasso not being able to paint something, so you bring in some kid that draws a bitchin’ stick figure.

“You’re doubting yourself,” Angelique observed.

“Yeah, I am,” I admitted as I walked back across the classroom, leaning forward on the lab table to face Angelique.

“You know, Brendan isn’t going to like this plan at all,” she said, jabbing her finger onto the black tabletop for emphasis. “He’d probably rather shave his precious hair off than go along with this plan.”

“I know,” I agreed, momentarily distracted by the thought of a clean-cut Brendan.
So not him.
“But honestly, what other option do I have?”

Angelique pressed her black-painted lips together in a thin grimace and tilted her head sideways, as if she were considering this. Then she sighed, almost in defeat, pulling out her phone to begin texting. When she was done, she held it out to me.

“By the way, just typing those words made me want to gnaw my own fingers off,” she scowled. “Does that sound good?”

I read the text to Megan and smiled grimly. “It’s perfect.”

Hey assface. Emma will meet u tmrw. Give us the time and the place. You win.

We spent the rest of our lunch rehashing the spell I had in mind, which Angelique promised to talk about with Randi later that afternoon. I briefly considered cutting kickboxing class—but realized if my plan didn’t go well, there were worse things I could do than have some sweet moves fresh in my head. And according to my teacher, I had a lot more than just kickboxing on my mind when she complimented me as I roundhouse kicked the weight bag.

“I don’t know whose face you’re picturing there, but I sure don’t envy them,” she said as I punctuated another kick with a satisfying punch. Brendan had insisted on waiting for me—“I’ll do my homework in the lobby, it’s not a big deal,” he’d promised—even though I could pretty much guarantee that Megan wouldn’t be waiting around for me anymore. But I hadn’t had the chance to tell him why as we raced to make my three-thirty kickboxing class, and now, I was procrastinating telling him until we were back at my aunt’s. Fortunately she was at a meeting of the Vince A school board until seven, so we had the place to ourselves. I had barely locked the front door before Brendan confronted me, arms folded.

“Spill it. What’s going on?” he asked bluntly, giving me a knowing look as I kicked off my shoes and settled onto the pink floral couch, my back against the arm of the chair. I hugged my knees to my chest as Brendan joined me on the couch, sitting cross-legged so he could face me. It felt a little like a standoff, and not at all like the relaxing, comforting, slightly ass-kissy way I had wanted to break my plan to him.

“We have an idea on how to beat Megan at her own game,” I said, taking a deep breath.

He broke out into a relieved smile before studying my serious expression. “Why don’t you sound happy about this?” he asked suspiciously.

“I have to meet her during the lunar eclipse like she wants.”

“You mean,
we’re
meeting her,” he corrected me, raising a jet-black eyebrow, but I just shook my head.

“No. This is something I have to do by myself,” I stressed, and Brendan stared at me, confused, until he realized I was serious. And then his green eyes widened in horror.

“Emma! You can’t say, ‘Oh, hey, I have an idea on how to beat Megan, so I’m just going to meet the evil witch all by myself,’ and then expect me to be all, ‘That’s cool, baby. What’s on TV?’” Brendan said sarcastically, running his hands through his messy black hair. “You’re not going to meet her by yourself!”

“Brendan, be logical—”

“Oh, yeah, like there’s really anything logical about you voluntarily going to meet someone who attacked you with a knife,” he said bitterly.