The Fairytale Curse (Magic's Return Book 1) (7 page)

“Hi, Dad.”

He came over and gave us both a kiss.

“You two look cozy there,” Mum said, coming in behind him.

“How was work?” I asked.

“Busy,” she said. “Don’t I get a hug?”

I held my arms out. “Don’t make me walk all the way over there.”

She shook her head and muttered something uncomplimentary about teenagers, but came over to give us both a hug. While she was bent over CJ the toad decided to add to the moment by croaking loudly.

“What was that?”

“I think the springs might be going,” I said, bouncing violently to produce a few squeaks from the couch.

“That’s a shame. I thought we might get a few more years out of it yet.”

Mum headed upstairs to unpack.

“Fancy a cup of tea, love?” Dad called after her. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

Behind his back, the toad emerged from under the couch and hopped across to the round table where we ate our meals.

“I’ll do it!” I said brightly. “You go upstairs and help Mum.”

I rushed into the kitchen, willing him to go away before the damn toad moved again.

“Thanks, sweetheart.” He smiled at me, then looked at CJ. “You’re very quiet this morning. Feeling all right?”

She nodded.

“Cat got your tongue?” he teased.

She jumped up and came into the kitchen to help. Out of sight behind the bench she stretched her foot out to touch mine as she got two cups out of the cupboard.

“Just a bit tired,” she said.

He frowned. “Are you limping?”

“She’s fine.”
Go away, Dad
. I didn’t dare look at the toad. “Just slipped on the stairs last night.

“I’ll see if I can find a bandage. You should be resting it if it’s that sore.”

“I’m okay, Dad, honest. Don’t fuss.”

He smiled. “Well, look at you two—so domesticated. I’ll just duck upstairs for a minute and then you can tell me all about your weekend.”

“Sure.” I kept the grin plastered on my face until he disappeared around the bend in the stairs. Then CJ let her head drop on to the bench with a thump and I dived under the table.

I had to get rid of that toad.

I spent the rest of the day on the internet, reading all I could about magic. Maybe I could find someone who actually knew enough about this crap to help us, though most of the “magicians” I found were the kind who did children’s parties. I didn’t give up looking, though; I had to find some way to lift this curse. In the
Toads and Diamonds
fairy tale the fairy had called it a gift, but maybe fairies had a different definition of that word than the rest of us mere mortals. It certainly didn’t feel like a gift to me. Even CJ’s diamonds, now I’d had a chance to calm down, were no picnic. How could we have any kind of normal life like this?

The only people I found who seemed to be able to do “real” magic were illusionists like David Copperfield. I’d never believed it was real before, but maybe it was time to be a little more open-minded. Wouldn’t it be cool if their tricks were all true? What else might they be able to do? Most of the famous ones were running shows in places like Las Vegas. How were two seventeen-year-old girls supposed to get themselves halfway around the world to meet someone like that?

We played the antisocial teenager card and hid from Mum and Dad in our rooms, only emerging for dinner, and then it was easy enough to make sure our feet touched under the table. I’m not sure Mum and Dad would have noticed if one of us had slipped up, to be honest. Mum looked exhausted, and they both seemed preoccupied. They left for work so early on Monday morning neither of us was even out of bed.

“So far, so good,” I said to CJ as we left the house. I had my hand on her shoulder as she locked the front door behind us. “But how are we going to handle school?”

Our new school had a draconian roll call system—students’ names were checked off at the beginning of every lesson, and parents were contacted the minute someone didn’t show up for school—so hanging out at home all day wasn’t an option.

“Well, we can sit together for Maths and English,” she said, as if that answered the question.

“No, we can’t. Maths maybe, but Mrs Harcourt won’t let us change seats in English. You know she insists on splitting up the boys and making them all sit with girls. Besides, we couldn’t talk in two classes and refuse to speak in all the others. How would we get away with that?”

The bus stop was just around the corner from our house. We stopped on the footpath and looked at each other.

“We’ll just have to keep quiet all day, then.”

I laughed. “You? Not speak? What if a teacher asks us a question? You can’t not answer.”

“We’ll tell them our throats are sore. Well, not
tell
them, obviously. Mime it or something. We can pretend we’ve got laryngitis.”

I’d been hoping she’d come up with something brilliant, but laryngitis looked like the only answer—apart from convincing our parents we were both deathly ill, which had been my preferred option, only they’d left home so early I hadn’t been able to put that plan into action.

I’d have to check how long laryngitis lasted. There was only a week left until the holidays, so if we could stretch it to three days, we’d only have to skip the last two days of term. Hopefully we could convince Mum and Dad we were sick. Then there was just the little matter of finding a way to get rid of this curse … So far my research hadn’t turned up anything useful, but that was a problem for the holidays. We could go check out that mysterious clearing in the Blue Mountains, see if there were any clues that might help us. But first we had to make it through the last week of school.

Ashleigh and the girls crowded around CJ with their usual exuberance at the bus stop. They were like a litter of puppies, falling over each other and wagging hysterically. All they could talk about was the party, but they soon ran up against CJ’s silence.

“What’s wrong?” Ashleigh asked, her last question hanging in the air while they all waited for CJ to answer. “Can’t you talk?”

CJ patted her neck and mouthed the words
sore throat
until they got the message.

“You’ve got a sore throat? Have you lost your voice?”

CJ nodded violently.

“Oh, you poor thing! When did this happen?”

Ashleigh looked at me for the answer, so I had to go through the same patting and mouthing routine. Her eyebrows drew together in a suspicious frown.

“You’ve
both
lost your voices? Really?”

More violent nodding from both of us, but I could see she wasn’t a hundred per cent sure we weren’t pulling her leg. Which we kind of were, I guess.

On the bus I was fine until Sona got on. Despite convincing her I couldn’t talk, she insisted on firing off questions about the party.

“So how was it?”

I held my hand out flat, then wobbled it from side to side.

“Only so-so?” Her eyebrows flew up. “I stayed at home and studied algebra! You get to go to the biggest party of the term—of the year, maybe—and you think it was only so-so? What a waste! Did you dance?”

I nodded.

“Who with?”

I pointed to myself. Even if I could have found a way to tell her I’d danced with Zac, I didn’t want to say anything until I saw him again. Maybe that moment in the car hadn’t meant what I’d thought it did. Better to play it cool.

“By yourself? Well, you’re no fun. Couldn’t you find a nice boy to dance with? Wait—did you kiss anyone?”

I rolled my eyes.
God, don’t blush now, you idiot!

“Oh, this is too frustrating. Zac!”

Zac had just got on. He lurched down the aisle as the bus set off again and took the seat in front of us. He was even cuter in the flesh than I’d remembered, and his dark eyes were warm as they smiled at me.

“Hey. How was the rest of your weekend?”

“Tell me about the party,” Sona demanded. “Vi’s lost her voice, and I want to know
everything
.”

Thank God she’d saved me from going through the whole miming a sore throat thing again.

He was still smiling at me, and I couldn’t help smiling back.

“It was good,” he said.

She waited, but there was nothing more.

“Oh, come on, Zac. Details, man, details!”

He shrugged. “It was just a normal party. Lots of music, dancing—”

“Did you dance?”

“A little.”

I grinned and started forming the letters Y-M-C-A with my arms.

He laughed. “Hey, I said I couldn’t dance.”

“Did he really have a keg there? Did you drink?”

“
I
didn’t. I was driving. I’m a responsible Boy Scout. A few other people did, though.” He looked at me. “How’s your sister?”

I gave him the thumbs-up, but Sona was staring in shock.

“Did CJ get drunk?” she hissed.

I mimed throwing up and her dark eyes grew so huge she looked like an Indian Bratz doll.

“Wow. I wish I’d been there.”

“You probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it,” Zac said. “A lot of idiots got drunk and made a lot of noise. I spent most of the night talking to the guys from the robotics club.” That was all true, but it wasn’t the whole story. Guess the rest of it was our little secret. “You would have been bored.”

She gave him a pitying look. “I don’t
think
so.”

We got off the bus and Zac walked with me to our lockers. An awkward silence stretched between us without Sona to fill every moment with chatter. Stupid bloody frogs. If only I could speak to him!

I sneaked a glance up at his face and found him looking down at me.

“So,” he said, “I was wondering … if you wanted to meet up after school.”

Oh, no. Of course I wanted to meet up with him, but …

I grimaced and patted my throat, trying to ignore the blush I could feel creeping up my cheeks.

“Oh. Right. Maybe when your throat’s better.”

I nodded vigorously. I didn’t want him to think I was trying to give him the flick. Then I opened my locker and hid my hot face inside. He opened his too, and I could hear him rummaging around inside.

“Damn! Where the hell is it?”

I peeked around my locker door.

“Can’t find my calculator,” he said, “and I’ve got a maths test in period 2.”

Wordlessly I took mine out and offered it to him. His face lit up.

“Thanks! I’ll get it back to you at lunch.”

The bell rang and we split up. First period for me was English with Mrs Harcourt. I used to like English at my old school, but Mrs Harcourt was quickly changing my mind. We were studying
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, but so far her idea of studying it was to have us read the whole thing aloud in class. Given that some of the Einsteins in our English class seemed to have a reading age of two, it was pretty slow going.

Today she chose people for the parts and the torture resumed as normal.

“Tarry, rash wanton—am I not thy lord?” Rob Burke read, stumbling over every word longer than one syllable. “What’s a wanton, miss? Aren’t they those Chinese things like spring rolls?”

At least Bottom wasn’t in this scene. Every time he appeared most of the boys collapsed in helpless sniggers. Apparently body parts were just as funny at seventeen as they’d been at three. And the fact it was all about
fairies
with stupid names like Puck and Peasblossom —well, the laughs just never stopped.

Julie Lee was his Titania today. She read well, but in such a tiny little voice that Mrs Harcourt kept bellowing at her to speak up, which only made her more mouselike.

I was bored, but congratulating myself on having made it through, when Mrs Harcourt stopped the readers.

“Thank you, everyone. Okay, now we’ll have Violet as Titania and Eric as Oberon. Rob, you read Puck.”

I shook my head, but she ignored me. Eric read his lines and then it was my turn. Titania had an enormous speech. Mrs Harcourt waited, giving me the evil eye.

“Well, Violet? From
These are the forgeries of jealousy
, please.”

I patted my throat and pulled faces of terrible pain. A couple of the boys laughed.

“I think she’s got laryngitis, miss,” someone said.

Her overplucked eyebrows disappeared into her fringe. “Is that true, Crystal?”

CJ pointed to her own throat as more of the class started laughing.

“She’s got it too, miss!”

“I see. I assume you have a note from your parents explaining this sad state of affairs.”

Damn. Should have thought of that. I could have forged one before school. Too late now. I had to shake my head.

“In that case, you can both spend lunch in detention.” She fixed me with an icy stare. “Unless you feel a miraculous recovery coming on, Violet? No? Very well, report to E23 at the start of lunch, please.”

She picked someone else to read and the class settled down. CJ shot me a disgusted look, as if it were all somehow my fault. Hey, at least it solved the problem of lunch time. No one was allowed to talk in detention anyway. Maybe we should just aim for detention all week.

It wasn’t a good start, though. First period and already teachers were suspicious. How long could we get away with this laryngitis thing? If only we could hide in the girls’ bathroom all day. But Mrs Harcourt would notice if we didn’t show up for detention. And then there was that stupid mark-the-roll-in-every-period thing.

Next period was Maths. I kept my head down and the class passed without any unpleasantness. In Physics Mr Dunkley talked about force and vectors of acceleration in his usual dry way. I could see people’s eyes glazing over.

“And who remembers the unit of measurement for force?” he asked brightly.

Silence. My arm twitched, but I remembered in time that I couldn’t speak.

“Violet?” he asked.

Even in the short time I’d been in his class he’d discovered he could usually rely on me to know the answer. This one was so easy I hated to look like an idiot, but I shook my head and he moved on. Nevertheless I was glad when the bell went for the end of the period.

I grabbed my books and hopped down off the lab stool—and walked straight into the corner of the bench.

“Ow!”

Oh, hell. A little green frog puffed into being on the benchtop, his orange toes spread out like fingers. I looked around, but everyone was busy shoving to be first out the door to recess. Mr Dunkley had his back to the room, cleaning formulae off the board. No one noticed my frog.