Spells Like Teen Spirit Read online

  The van was parked outside, Dionless, awaiting Cass. She’d driven herself so she could go to her afternoon shift at the yogurt place after our meeting. “See you at school tomorrow?” I asked Cassandra as we crossed to it.

  She was about to climb into the van, and she shook her head. “I’m staying home. Dion has to work tomorrow, and we’re not leaving the house empty.”

  I nodded. At this point, Cassandra was going to end up being a junior again next year, but I didn’t argue with her. She pulled the door shut behind her. Janis and I quickly walked to the Honda, and she put the heat on blast as soon as she started the car.

  “This is exciting,” Janis said. “We’re going out this week. To a club.”

  “I don’t think it’s a club,” I said. “It had the word ‘grill’ in the name.”

  “Whatever,” she said, pulling out and nearly sideswiping a moped. “It’s something new and different.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m kind of tired of new and different. I’d like more same and predictable, please.”

  “Ha,” Janis answered. “Then you’re in the wrong line of work. For both your jobs.”

  * * *

  —

  When Janis and I had first started our babysitters club several years before, we’d had four members and one burner phone. Then we’d dropped to two members, and after a couple of scary Erebus-and-Dion-related experiences last fall, even Janis had decided it was time to move on. Now we were down to one member, me, and the burner phone was long dead. (I’d lost the charger.) Besides, now with the Depop store, Janis could put “CEO of One in a Million Vintage” on her college applications.

  I still babysat as much as I could, though. These days, between school and Sitting, that only amounted to about two times a week, but it was good money. Besides, I liked it, and unlike Cassandra’s job, none of my clients had ever made me wear a polo shirt. I was babysitting that afternoon, and so instead of home, Janis dropped me at Kaitlyn’s. Kaitlyn was almost three, and she had a promising future as a terrorist, a pro wrestler, or president of the United States of America. Babysitting Kaitlyn was like personally being in charge of a tornado, but I enjoyed the distraction.

  I rang the doorbell and heard Kaitlyn’s mom, Sharon, call to me to let myself in. Sharon was a real estate agent and had an open house that afternoon, and I found her in the kitchen with curlers in her hair, trying to remember where she’d put an air freshener. “It’s birthday cake scent,” she said, a note of panic creeping into her voice, “and it’s good luck! Every time I use it, the house sells for at least five thousand over the asking price!” She slammed a drawer shut and started to paw through a backpack.

  I left Sharon to it and followed the sounds of Daniel Tiger into the den. Kaitlyn was sitting with her back to me, but it seemed like she was licking a lollipop or something. “Hi, munchkin!” I said. “Ready to have some fun?”

  “Mesme!” she squealed, but not before she shoved whatever she was licking between two couch cushions to hide it from me. I walked over and gave Kaitlyn a big hug, then ran my hand between the cushions.

  “That’s mine,” Kaitlyn said as I pulled it out.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Do you even know what this is?”

  “Yes,” she said with a scowl. “Candy.”

  “Sharon,” I called out, standing up and walking toward the kitchen, “I found your air freshener!”

  * * *

  —

  Kaitlyn and I had a pretty good time. We played dress-up, a game of which I thoroughly approved, especially since she had a box full of sparkly princess dresses and eschewed them all in favor of a rubber sword and a tube of brown fabric so that she could be a “killing hot dog.”

  By midafternoon, the sun had warmed things up enough that outside was tolerable if we kept moving, so we packed up some Cheddar Bunnies and apple slices and walked to the park. She made a little boy cry in the sandpit, so we moved to the swings. I made a big show of pretending that she was so heavy that I could barely push her, and she screamed and cackled, but then we evened out into a nice rhythm. I pushed Kaitlyn higher than I would have most kids her age, because I trusted her sense of self-preservation. She was a daredevil, but she held on tight.

  She babbled and sang, and when she swung back toward me, I heard a snippet of her song, and it made me freeze. I caught her midswing. “Sweetie, what are you talking about?” I asked her.

  “Higher, Mesme,” she said. “More push!”

  “Okay,” I said, “but what were you singing?”

  “A song about blackbirds,” she said, which was exactly what I thought she’d been singing about.

  “Like four and twenty baked in a pie?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “That’s silly. A song about Fred.”

  “Fred?” I asked. “Who’s that?”

  “He’s a black bird,” she said. “And he’s my friend.” I had my arm out, ready to push her, but when she swung back, I just stood still and she hit me in the chest.

  “You mean you call all black birds ‘Fred’?”

  “No, I just call Fred ‘Fred,’ ” she said, “because he’s special.”

  “How do you know his name is Fred?” I asked.

  “Because I named him,” she said, kicking her feet.

  “Is Fred here?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “He followed us from home.”

  “Where is he now?” I asked.

  She smiled, and pointed toward a tree near the slide. “Oh no,” she said, her face falling, “He flew away.”

  “Come on, sweetie,” I said, my eyes scanning the trees. “Time to go.” Kaitlyn and I walked back to her house, and a few minutes later, her mom got home. She paid me, and as I left to walk home, I started to get that itchy feeling, the one that told me I was about to overthink something.

  Sure, Kaitlyn was a kid with a psychedelic sense of reality, and maybe she had just picked a large black crow to be her not-entirely-imaginary friend, and then she’d named him “Fred.”

  Yeah, right.

  The bird hadn’t been an average, everyday, ordinary crow, and Kaitlyn had recognized that. And then she’d named him “Fred.”

  Burying things I didn’t want to think about was one of my greatest talents. My mind had tons of rooms and other dark corners where I could file something away, slam the door, turn the key, and then throw the key into a trash can so that I never had to think again about what was in that room.

  But lately, it seemed like my system wasn’t working like it used to. I had picked a big drawer, nice and comfortable, for Adrian. It had taken quite a bit of shoving, and he hadn’t wanted to go in, but eventually I’d gotten him in there, and thought that was the end of it. After all, he was a guy who’d flown away—like, he’d literally turned into a crow and taken off—from confrontation, and I had enough going on without a bird boy in my life. Or at least, that’s what I kept telling myself.

  But…he’d made me a mix CD. Not sent a link but burned an actual compact disc and left it on my front porch. Even with a million locks on the door, I was still going to think about that.

  The afternoon sun had made the day seem warmer than it actually was, which I realized about halfway through my walk home, as the sun went down and I started to shiver. In a weird way, I appreciated the cold on my cheeks, and my breath puffing out in crystalline clouds, because it gave me something concrete, right in front of my face, to be angry at.

  Adrian was in Spring River. That much was pretty obvious. So then why the heck wasn’t he getting in touch with me?

  I was halfway home when Jim Halpert called me. Back when I’d been hiding everything Sitter-related from Dad, I had saved Brian’s number under “Jim Halpert” in my phone. It still said that when Brian called me now. Not because I was trying to hide anything anymore, but because I t
hought it was funny.

  “Hi, Jim,” I said when I answered. “How’s Pam?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Brian said. “Are you with Cassandra?”

  “No,” I said. “She’s working the closing shift.”

  “Then I feel sorry for the openers,” Brian said. “I’m calling because I have something that I think you will be interested in. When she gets off work, see if the two of you can come by my place.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Just come over,” he said.

  “I don’t like surprises,” I said, and he responded by hanging up. I texted Cassandra.

  Brian has something he wants to show us.

  Wut is it?

  Dunno. He’s being sneaky. Pick me up when you get off work?

  I’ll come now.

  Aren’t you closing?

  Yeah, but I’ll just close now.

  I knew better than to argue with her, so I sent her a pin and blew on my hands to warm them while I waited. Somehow, Cassandra had managed to hold on to her Yogurt Haven job for almost three months, even though she was doing everything she could to drive the customers away. Like, for example, closing a couple of hours early or making up the most disgusting, off-season handle combos she could possibly think of. I wondered how she hadn’t gotten fired yet.

  Though, there was the fact that Cassandra looked how Cassandra looked, and the dude who ran Yogurt Haven was a dude. Oh yeah, that’s why she hadn’t gotten fired.

  I found a nice tree to lean against, and less than ten minutes later, Cassandra pulled up. I opened the door and climbed in, knowing better than to ask about the large tub of fro-yo she had sitting on the dash. It only took us a few minutes to get to Brian’s house, and Cassandra grabbed the yogurt before she got out of the van.

  We walked up to Brian’s front porch and rang the doorbell. Brian’s cover for being our Counsel was that he was the head football coach at Spring River High School. In our town, being head high school football coach was basically like being a celebrity, but Brian’s heart wasn’t in it. He’d rather have been picking out throw pillows and comparing paint swatches. He was really an interior decorator, and the creative force behind what I was convinced was the most post-worthy fireplace in town. When he opened the door to let us in, I noticed that it was decked out with a tasteful arrangement of roses—red, pink, and white—for Valentine’s Day. Brian loved a holiday like a cupcake mom loves a bake sale.

  “Brought you something,” Cassandra chirped, holding out the tub of frozen yogurt to Brian.

  “Oh, thank you,” Brian said with fear in his voice. “What flavor combo is it this time?”

  “Pineapple jalapeño and peppermint chip,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Brian said again, opening his freezer and popping it in. “I’ll just, uh, save it for later.”

  “So, what’s up?” I asked him, and he motioned for us to follow him. At the back of Brian’s bedroom, through a closet full of nothing but tracksuits and maybe one turtleneck sweater, there was a door to his secret Sitter lair, and that was where he took us now.

  Once the door shut behind us, he motioned for us to sit down in the chairs that were opposite his desk. He typed a few things out on his keyboard, and a giant electronic map of Spring River appeared on the wall behind his desk. It looked like a weather map, and I was pretty familiar with it, as it was sort of a demon Doppler that tracked Negative activity around town.

  “Something’s different,” Cassandra said, pointing to it. “Where’s all the green and yellow?” Normally the map showed green in places where a demon had just been Returned, and yellow in places where it seemed like one was about ready to show up. On the map, the demons themselves looked like tiny orange Tic Tacs, but now, the map was a blank slate.

  “I’ve momentarily turned the Negative settings off,” Brian explained. “I’ll get to that in a minute. In my career as Counsel, I have previously encountered very little information about Red Magic. I came into the Sitterhood after Erebus was banished, as you know, which was a few years after Wanda had become the Premier,” he continued. “But apparently, before Wanda’s tenure, Sitters were quite familiar with Red Magic. Wanda, however, put a stop to that, no doubt because a general ignorance of Red Magic would better allow her to cloak her own use of it. But, if you’re willing to do some digging and piece things together from multiple sources, there’s a lot of information to be found. The basic gist is this: Red Magicians perform a ritual, which supercharges a talisman with powers. Those powers allow the magician to do all sorts of things that are outside the realm of Sitter magic. Things like curses, manipulation, increasing personal wealth, infringing upon another’s will. You name it, Red Magic can do it.”

  “What’s a talisman?” Cassandra asked.

  “It can be any material object of the magician’s choosing,” Brian said. “Though, the more valuable the object is to the magician, the more powerful it will be.”

  “And people—I mean, Sitters—used to know all about this?” Cassandra asked.

  “It appears so,” Brian said.

  “Every day, something new we’ve missed out on,” Cassandra said, and Brian nodded.

  “Not just you. Everyone,” he said. “But that is changing going forward, for all of us. Which brings me to this.” Here he turned to look at the map, and even smiled a little. “With a few technological updates and a bit of reprogramming, we are now equipped with this.” He hit a few more keys on the keyboard, and the map shifted.

  Now several spots glowed red, like the map was dealing with a serious acne break out.

  I gasped. We didn’t need Brian to explain what he’d done, because it was obvious he’d rigged the map to track places where Red Magic was being practiced.

  “No friggin’ way,” Cassandra said.

  “Way,” Brian said, rolling back in his chair so that Cassandra and I could come around and get a closer look at the map.

  Not that a closer look really told us anything, as the map was a cryptic thing—without any designated landmarks—that only Brian could interpret. He stood up from his chair and walked over to stand behind us.

  “I’ve been able to pinpoint most of the red spots,” he said, pointing to a blob of pale pink. “That’s the Riverbend Hotel. It appears there’s still a bit of residue surrounding the place, which probably accounts for the really bad Yelp reviews they’ve been getting lately.”

  “We should do something about that,” Cassandra said. “The people are nice, and they make good pasta.”

  “I’ll look into it,” Brian said.

  “What are all those tiny dots?” I asked, as parts of the map looked like they had been dusted with sugar sprinkles.

  “Nothing major,” he said, “just small bits of Red Magic being practiced by normal people. Someone with a voodoo doll of their ex, or someone trying to hex a rival.” He tapped one of the dots with a finger, and as I looked at it, I could see that it glowed a smidge brighter than the rest. “I did a little investigating into this one,” he said. “It’s a dry cleaners, and a new dry cleaner opened up across the street. The owner has been trying to work up a curse but so far hasn’t gotten further than a few pointed Google searches.”

  “And what’s that one?” Cassandra asked, pointing at a red dot that was significantly larger than most.

  Brian cleared his throat. “That’s what I wanted you both to see,” he said. “Cassandra, that’s your house.”

  “Wh-what?” I stammered, and Cassandra’s face went pale.

  “I swear,” she started, “I’m not doing anything other than the spells I cast on Dion. You know about those, and I’ve even been letting up lately because—”

  “I know,” Brian said, holding his hands up and stopping her. “It wasn’t there yesterday morning. The first time I saw it was when I ra
n the program this afternoon.”

  “The break-in!” Cassandra and I said at the same time.

  “The what?” Brian asked.

  “We got robbed last night,” Cassandra said.

  “Oh Lord,” Brian said. “I’m so sorry. What did they take?”

  “That’s the thing,” Cassandra said. “Nothing.” We filled Brian in on the details, and how we thought the burglars were looking for something, and he nodded as he listened.

  “The whole thing just felt off,” I said, “and my Sitter sense was firing the whole time. It almost seemed like it could have been just a super-destructive demon, but they left some clues.” At this, Cassandra pulled out her phone and showed Brian a picture of the body spray, the wallet chain, and the band flyer.

  “Those clues definitely point to someone with bad taste,” he said.

  “And if this is right, then it was someone with bad taste who also practices Red Magic,” I said, pointing at the screen. “And we all know someone who fits that description.”

  “Erebus,” Brian said, and Cassandra nodded. “But that’s not possible,” he continued. “There’s been no sign of Portal activity, which means he is still locked up.”

  Brian sat back down in his chair, picked up a stress ball, and started to squeeze it. “That’s interesting that you think whoever broke into your house was looking for something,” he said. “Do you have any idea what that would be?”

  Cassandra and I both shook our heads, and Brian nodded. He had a far-off look on his face, and just kept abusing the stress ball. It looked like a duck, and its eyes bulged out of its head with every squeeze. “Interesting, interesting,” he said.

  “What?” Cassandra said. “Spill it, now.”

  “Wanda was looking for something too,” he said. “We don’t know what it was, but it appears it was very important to her, and it was stolen many years ago.”