B*witch Read online

  “No worries. Another time. Oops, I have to get this, I’ll see you at school!”

  Penelope turned and spoke softly into her phone. “Hey, Colter. No, I’m not home, I’m on my way downtown.”

  Colter. Right. Boyfriend. Instagram model.

  Ridley waved to Penelope and walked away. She felt exhausted suddenly; the Brandon encounters had wiped her out physically and emotionally, and then to pile on a chance encounter with Penelope? It felt like the universe was messing with her. Was this what everyday life was going to be like now? Having to be even more secretive and careful about her witch identity? Enduring ugly confrontations with Antima members? Casting memory-erase spells constantly?

  And why did Penelope have to have a boyfriend?

  Her phone buzzed with another text. She pulled it out and glanced at the screen.

  Now Hello Kitty was sinking her fangs into the neck of someone who looked a lot like Ridley.

  “Ha ha,” she said, cracking a smile.

  On the other hand, being a witch definitely had its benefits. Like having witch friends (especially ones who made her smile). Like being able to live as her true self. (She knew there were other paths to achieve that, but this was her path.)

  She hurried her steps toward Binx’s house, making a mental note to look up Penelope’s YouTube channel later.

  9

  BROWNIES, MILK, AND MAGIKARP

  The consequences of Magical work can sometimes be unpredictable; even the strongest intention can result in the unintended.

  (FROM THE GOOD BOOK OF MAGIC AND MENTALISM BY CALLIXTA CROWE)

  “Come on, ShadowKnight, where are you?” Binx snapped at her phone.

  “I do not understand what you are saying,” her virtual genie/assistant Uxie replied in a robotic voice.

  “I need to find ShadowKnight. Where is ShadowKnight?”

  “I do not understand ‘Shallow Night.’”

  “Never mind, Uxie.”

  Sighing, Binx sat down on her bed and scrolled through her DMagic app again. She’d developed it to send and receive encrypted messages. Not just encrypted, but super, super, magically encrypted. She’d sent her technomancer friend four messages in the past four days, and he hadn’t answered any of them—or even read them, as far as she could tell. (Read messages were indicated by a nerd-glasses icon.)

  Binx took a beat to fire off another enchanted Hello Kitty meme to Ridley, then checked the Witchworld Sub9 discussion board, which was deeply buried in the cyber-recesses of the game. It was where she’d stumbled upon the temporary link to C-Squared’s witchcraft book back in March 2016. It was also where she’d first met ShadowKnight, this summer. After a few weeks of group posting, the two of them had started sending private messages to each other. That’s when he’d revealed to her that he was a witch, and she’d revealed to him that she was a witch, too. (She didn’t know his real name or address or any other personal info about him, and vice versa.)

  There was no sign of him on Sub9, either. Although there was a semi-interesting debate brewing about the use of Witchworld hexing hacks. And also a link to an article about increased police crackdowns re: witchcraft across the country. Not. Good.

  Binx wasn’t a worrier; nevertheless, she was beginning to worry. Had ShadowKnight’s parents discovered that he was a witch… and not just a witch but the member of a secret resistance movement? Had the police?

  Or had the Antima? Binx really didn’t appreciate the fact that they suddenly seemed to be real and present and close by, not just bad news happening in faraway cities (although of course, Binx had no idea what city ShadowKnight lived in). The image of that Brandon guy’s hideous shoulder patch throbbed in her brain. The symbol of the cage over a bonfire. That was how they used to burn witches during the Great Purge, according to the history books.

  A sudden loud noise startled her, and she leaped to her feet. Oh, that. It was just the doorbell—some dumb classical music sound bite that her mom had downloaded to replace her previous dumb sound bite, from an old-person rock song. (Yoko Yamada, when she wasn’t teaching at the university or writing one of her boring academic treatises on gender equality, was way into the midlife-crisis home improvement.)

  Binx’s phone lit up with the security-video feed. Ridley was standing at the front door, biting her nails (was that a new bad habit?). Behind her, Greta was hurrying up the driveway, clutching an Organic Bliss canvas shopping bag to her chest.

  Binx would have to try to contact ShadowKnight again tonight. Pocketing her phone, she headed downstairs, crossed the vast wood-and-glass living room, and opened the door.

  “Hey, guys!”

  “Sorry I’m late. I had to stop by my house first,” Greta said breathlessly. She held up the Organic Bliss canvas bag. “I come bearing fresh herbs from my garden for our ritual. Also a contribution to the coven meeting snacks… brownies!”

  “Thanks. Are the brownies from Organic Bliss? I bet they’re made from hemp dust and pinecones and recycled dairy-free cardboard,” Binx joked. She stuck a finger into her mouth and pretended to gag.

  “Ha ha. They’re actually yummy. Wait till you try them.”

  “If you say so. Come on in, you guys. It’s just us; the parental unit is at work.”

  Binx waved them inside and closed the door, then cast a quick obex spell to make sure that no one could enter while they were having their coven meeting. She noticed that Ridley was still biting her nails.

  “You seem stressed. Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Well, not really.”

  Ridley told them about a run-in she had with an SUV driver who turned out to be Brandon… again. “He called me a ‘little witch.’ I don’t know if he meant an actual witch or if it was just a random insult. I had to cast praetereo on him.”

  “Oh, Ridley!” Greta leaned over and hugged her. Greta was a big hugger. “I’m so sorry. You must have been scared.”

  “I shouldn’t have used alata on his beer can. I should have just let it go,” Ridley murmured.

  Binx was not a big hugger, but she joined in anyway. Her best friend and witch sister was upset. “I probably would have done the same thing. And not reversed the muto. That way, he’d stay a stinkbug for all of eternity.”

  Ridley snort-laughed into Binx’s shoulder. “Yeah. Maybe that’s our solution. Maybe we should just morph all the Antima members into stinkbugs.”

  After a moment, the hugathon broke up, and Binx led the others into the kitchen. “Let’s grab some beverages to go with the non-animal-cruelty brownies. I think we just got a big Fresh Delivery order, so we should be set. I have popcorn and pretzels upstairs.”

  Inside the kitchen, Binx opened the enormous La Cambusa refrigerator and peered inside. “We’ve got like six different kinds of fruit juice, ginger ale, root beer, regular seltzer water, flavored seltzer water, caf and decaf iced tea, caf and decaf iced coffee, lemonade, limeade, sports drinks. And milk. Milk goes with brownies, right? We’ve got regular milk, chocolate milk, and almond milk.”

  Greta chose almond milk, and Ridley and Binx both chose chocolate milk. They carried their beverages and the brownies with them upstairs.

  Ridley paused in front of a painting on the second-floor landing.

  “Is that a Robert Rauschenberg?”

  Who? “Sure. Yup,” Binx replied.

  “Is it new? I never noticed it before.”

  “I guess?”

  “Wow, I’ve only seen Rauschenbergs in museums.”

  Ridley always seemed to be in awe of Binx’s house and the fancy possessions that her parents had accumulated over the years. Binx didn’t really care about stuff like that, as long as she could decorate her own room however she wanted and have her privacy. Strangely, Binx had never been to Ridley’s—Mr. Stone apparently needed a lot of peace and quiet at home because he worked different shifts for his paramedic job and slept at odd hours—so she had no idea what it was like. She had been to Greta’s house; they used to hold their coven meetings there because
her parents were aware of Greta being a witch (and Binx and Ridley, too) and wanted to be supportive. But Teo, Greta’s twelve-year-old brother, had walked in on them once while they were setting up a spell, and Mr. and Mrs. Navarro didn’t want him to learn about the girls’ witch identities in case he might accidentally spill the secret, so they’d decided to move the default location to Binx’s. Binx’s mom was clueless about her being a witch and was hardly ever home (her dad, ditto, plus he lived in Palo Alto now), so that was a plus.

  Once inside Binx’s room, they assumed their usual places on the pink shag rug. Binx had arranged cushions in a circle: a Japanese wave one for Ridley, psychedelic flowers for Greta, and a purple crocheted one for herself. (She’d made it over the summer while watching wild animal documentaries on TV… because, bored.) She had also arranged the candles—tall beeswax tapers in mismatched silver candlestick holders as well as small votives in little glass cups. As she closed the curtains and proceeded to light the candles, her pink room glowed gold, and the girls’ shadows danced silently on the walls.

  Greta reached into her Organic Bliss bag and set out the brownies; they were in a hatbox covered with old-fashioned-looking bird stickers. Binx picked up a brownie and bit into it. Huh. It was actually pretty good. Maybe she could get the recipe? She scarfed down the rest and chased it with chocolate milk and a handful of popcorn.

  “You both did the pleukiokus spell on yourselves, right?” Greta asked.

  “Yup,” Binx replied. Ridley nodded.

  “Good. Keep repeating it every day, for protection.”

  Greta next pulled out the clear bag with the shadow message. She extracted the note carefully—the sharp smell of rosemary filled the air—and laid it down in the center of the circle. The glossy black words—YOU AND YOUR KIND NEED TO DISAPPEAR—looked even more ominous by candlelight.

  “Let’s start our group scrying ritual. The Goddess may be able to help us figure out the shadow message’s true origin.”

  “Yeah, her, or maybe Victini,” Binx said, picking up her Pokémon deck. “I usually use Charmander for fire, but today, I’m going with Victini because it’s a psychic type plus a fire type.” Quickly scarfing down a second brownie, she crisscrossed her legs and fanned four cards in her palm. “I have another substitution, too. For water, I’m going to use Magikarp instead of Squirtle. People always say Magikarp is useless, but I think it has potential. Like, it’s kind of an underdog. Or underfish, I guess.”

  “Underfish, that’s hilarious!” Ridley said, cracking up. But Greta just looked confused. She was not up on Pokémon characters and lore. (Also, being a coven leader and a perpetual worrier, she was kind of like a stressed-out mom with no sense of humor.)

  When calling the quarters (their coven always commenced their magical gatherings with this ritual, which they’d adapted from C-Squared’s book), Binx usually liked to begin in the South. The South was fire, an element she could relate to; it was a powerful tool if you knew how to tame it, but it could burn you if you weren’t careful.

  Binx knew that a Pokémon deck wasn’t a standard witchcraft item. But there was no “standard” in magic, with the exception of C-Squared’s book, which hadn’t really been available until that descendant of hers put it online for like a minute. And still, most likely, not all witches had a copy or had even seen a copy. (Binx, of course, had managed to download it onto an untraceable off-site server.)

  Also, she’d known about her witch identity since she was thirteen. So between then and the appearance of C-Squared’s book, she had (like many witches?) developed her own magical methods and magical tools (in her case, her phone, her computer, and her Pokémon cards).

  Binx turned to face southward, which meant orienting her body toward the pink NOT UR BABE poster above her bed; Ridley and Greta followed suit. “Go, Victini!” Binx said, laying the card on the floor.

  “Be with us, Michael,” Ridley murmured under her breath. She believed in angels, and the archangel Michael corresponded with the South and with the fire element.

  “We honor you, Pele,” Greta added quietly, invoking the Hawaiian volcano goddess. Greta, who was way into goddesses, rotated through different ones that represented the elements; sometimes, she even made up ones of her own, like when she went through her “Ignisia the Flame Goddess” phase based on a short story she’d written in elementary school. She placed a sprig of peppermint next to Victini. (Greta used both fresh and dried herbs, but she preferred fresh because she felt they were more powerful, more closely connected to nature.)

  Next was the water element in the West. Binx pivoted toward the window; the curtains had parted slightly, revealing a dark gray sliver of the Puget Sound in the distance. “Go, Magikarp!” she said, placing the card. She briefly touched its long, whisker-like barbels to give it extra strength. These barbels were white, which meant this Magikarp was a girl; the boy Magikarps had tan barbels. Girl power! she added silently.

  “Be with us, Gabriel,” Ridley chimed in.

  “We honor you, Aphrodite,” said Greta. The Greek goddess had been created out of sea foam. She placed some lemon balm leaves next to Magikarp.

  North was the earth element. “Go, Diglett!”

  “Be with us, Uriel.”

  “We honor you, Gaia the Earth Mother.” A sprig of vervain.

  And finally, the East, the air element. “Go, Spearow!”

  “Be with us, Raphael.”

  “We honor you, Feng Po Po.” Parsley.

  The three witches sat very still, eyes closed, taking in the magical energy that was being generated by the ritual.

  The first few times Binx had participated in the calling of the quarters with Ridley and Greta, she hadn’t felt a thing except maybe sore and cranky from sitting cross-legged for so long or bored by the repetitive incantations. She’d even had (brief) second thoughts about having joined a coven. Then one day, at the fourth or fifth or sixth coven meeting, it had happened—the electric thrumming in her chest, the adrenaline jolt, the sense of power and purpose… and at the same time a sensation of being surrounded by a palpable white light of protection. It had been… amazing. Epic. Better than reaching Level 20 in Witchworld and acquiring the Staff of Immortality.

  Not to mention it was nice to have other witches to hang with. (Real witches, not virtual ones.)

  After a while, Greta broke the silence.

  “Goddesses, angels, and Pokémons—”

  “For the hundredth time, Poké-mon, no S,” Binx corrected her.

  “—Pokémon, please help us solve the mystery of this shadow message. Who sent it, and why? And please help protect us from whatever malicious intent is behind it. Love and light.”

  Binx cracked open one eye. Greta had steepled her hands in prayer and was murmuring something under her breath. “Sorry. I’m adding a prayer for Gofflesby. He’s been sick,” she explained without looking up. Ridley reached over and squeezed her arm. Binx did the same. She knew how Greta felt about her familiar—a cat with the weirdest name ever.

  After a moment, a breeze materialized from nowhere. The curtains fluttered. The candles flickered and danced.

  A tiny spark flew through the air and landed on the shadow message. A glowing orange fault line began to sizzle across the paper, sprouting baby flames.

  “Uh… people? Hello? We have a little problem,” Binx announced.

  Greta and Ridley opened their eyes, too.

  “Holy machines!” Ridley cried out.

  Without a word, Greta pulled her wand, Flora, out of her sleeve and aimed it at the quickly escalating flames. “Restinguere!” she commanded, her face tight with concentration.

  But instead of extinguishing, the fire cascaded up, up, up like a slo-mo volcano eruption. All three girls jumped to their feet and backed away. Ridley grabbed Paganini from her backpack. Binx found her wand Kricketune (which looked like a gaming console, for disguise purposes) among the strawberry-shaped twinkle lights and anime indexes on top of her dresser. “Restinguere!�
� they shouted in unison, brandishing their wands at the fire.

  In response, the mini-inferno hissed and shrieked… but continued to rise.

  Binx turned and directed her wand toward Magikarp. Help us!

  In response, the Magikarp card shimmered—or maybe it was just the flames reflected in her UV coating?—and in the next instant, the three glasses of milk (almond, chocolate, chocolate) began to levitate. When the glasses were a foot or so above the fire’s apex, they tipped over.

  Milk gushed out. The flames sizzled and faded and died with a gasp of gray smoke.

  Binx exhaled and nodded gratefully at Magikarp. “Thanks for putting out the fire, buddy.”

  Magikarp stared up at Binx with her large, vacant eyes.

  Next to Magikarp, the shadow message was perfectly unscathed, the paper a pristine white.

  “Why didn’t it burn?” Ridley asked nervously.

  “I don’t know.” Greta bent down to study the shadow message. “Wait… what’s happening?”

  Binx and Ridley bent down, too. Whoa. New letters were materializing at the bottom of the paper—faintly at first, then clearer and clearer.

  No, not letters. Numbers.

  1415.

  “What the—” Binx began.

  Just then, the classical-music doorbell chimed through the house.

  Greta yelped in surprise. Ridley spun around on her heels and aimed Paganini at the window, then the door. Binx grabbed for her phone and checked the security camera feed.

  Div, Mira, and Aysha stood at the front door.

  Div seemed to be shouting up at the security camera. Binx activated the audio.

  “… need to talk. We have a serious problem!” Div yelled.

  “Um, we’re kind of busy at the moment?” Binx replied curtly.

  Greta shook her head. “If Div is coming to us for help, there’s something really wrong,” she whispered to Binx and Ridley.

  On Binx’s phone, Div was holding up a piece of paper to the security camera.