Kelly McClymer-Salem Witch 02 Competition's A Witch (14 page)

“Oh no, he’d never refuse an invitation given to him by a sweet girl like Prudence! We’re neighbors, after all. And we’re going to be volunteering together too. We’re neighbors.”

Neighbors. She said it like it meant “twins separated at birth.” I had a feeling that Mrs. Kenton was going to be hiring someone to take over Angelo’s weekend yard jobs just so he could come to our party.

After Angelo and his mother left—with promises that we would have the best volunteer gigs at Old Salem Village on Halloween—Samuel said, “So you’re going to mind-wipe them, right?”

Mom just shook her head. “I’m afraid not. We’re just going to have to figure out how to handle having a mortal at Pru’s party.”

Oh, joy. “Why did you make me invite him in the first place?”

“His mother wasn’t going to give up too easily, Pru.” Mom sighed. “She isn’t happy with Angelo’s school and she’s decided that the private school you attend would be perfect for him. She’s been nagging me to make an appointment with Agatha for some time.”

“Oh, boy. Well, at least if you cave, you know Agatha won’t.” I had to laugh at the thought of Agatha going headto-head with a determined Mrs. Kenton.

Maybe Samuel was right. Maybe if Mom wouldn’t magic us a solution, I should. A real witch would. But then I’d have to deal with the wrath of Mom. The evil part of me wondered if that would get me points with Agatha.

“We’ll manage, honey.” My lie detector bracelet tingled. Great. Another pep rally—worthy lie.

“It’s going to ruin everything.” But the bracelet works both ways. I can tell when other people are lying, but I can also tell when I am. And my bracelet said I didn’t mind that Angelo was coming to the party. Which was just plain insane.

“I’m not going to wipe all three of the Kentons’ memories about your party, Pru. Not to mention everyone that woman tells about it.”

“But I can’t do any of the really fun witch things we have planned if he comes,” I pointed out. “Sure, you can. I’ll cast a bemusement spell on him and he will think he’s imagining what he sees.”

A bemusement spell? “How is that better?”

“One mortal mind affected by magic, as opposed to three or more?” Mom said sharply, like I should have figured that out by myself.

Her snarkiness made me mad. “I guess you’re good at all this thinking about how to do the least damage to mortals, since you’ve had so much practice. But what about the witches at the party? Some of them have never seen a mortal before.” Okay. So that was an exaggeration. But, still. “What do you want me to do about them?”

“They’ll be fine, honey. You’ll explain what happened, and they’ll understand.”

Sure, they would. They’d understand what I’d come to realize. I was more mortal than witch, even if I did have some magical powers. I let my frustration show with a tornado of confetti in the middle of the kitchen. “They’ll understand I’m a total loser.” If Angelo came to the party, the kewl kids were going to get a chance to compare me to a regular mortal. And I was going to be outed. Big-time.

“Honey, I’m sure that’s not—”

“Mom!” I shouted it, even though I knew I risked having the party cancelled and being grounded until I was two
hundred years old. “I was always forbidden to use my magic, remember? I don’t have as much practice as you do. Maybe you should send me to a witch boarding school. That way I won’t have to come up against any mortals at all—not even Dad.”

We’d both forgotten about Samuel standing there. The party might have been history if we’d kept fighting. Fortunately, Samuel came up with an idea that made everything work: First, scrap the pool/bowling theme. Instead, Mom would find a big hall to rent for the party and we could create a paintball course in one room and a cheerleaders rock the universe main room. The paintball course would have magical hazards that Angelo would just think were special effects. I hoped. And the cheerleaders’ room would have a rock wall and climbing ropes so that Mom’s bemusement spell would only have to be minimal to keep Angelo from noticing that the flying wasn’t done on the ropes for anyone but him.

It looked like having to fit things around Angelo actually might make the party the kewlest thing ever. Sometimes intense pressure makes diamonds, or so I’d heard in seventh-grade earth science.

But there was one last detail I needed to attend to. I waited till Mom hurried off to make all the last-minute arrangements for the new party theme. Then I turned to Samuel and, stopping myself just before I unclasped the
bracelet the mortal way, sent it flying toward him with magic. It stopped just short of his nose. “Can you make sure this thing is working?”

“Why?”

“I just want to double-check—for practice tomorrow,” I lied. No way was I going to tell him that the bracelet was telling me I was secretly happy to have a mortal at my party when I was trying to turn my back on all that. It had to be broken. It had to be.

“Sure. Just a sec.” He popped away and returned thirty seconds later, with metal shavings in his hair. He handed me the bracelet. “Works great.”

“Perfect.” That is, if courting disaster by having a catastrophic crush on a mortal counted as perfect.

The party went pretty well. Angelo may have been a mortal, but he sure had charmed the pom-poms off the cheerleaders. I guess I wasn’t the only one who was susceptible to the smile and the dimple.

I didn’t have time to be jealous, though. I was too busy having fun. Mom had done such a great job making the magic elements look almost special effects—possible that for one second I wished I had been talking to Maddie and could have invited her to come.

Angelo had needed only the lightest of bemusement spells, and I bet we could have gotten away without it if Mom wasn’t in overprotective mode as usual. Amazingly, he’d
charmed a group of witch girls without making enemies of the kewl guys from school either.

The only one who didn’t say his name with a smile was Samuel. He kept watch on Angelo from across the room, telling me, “I don’t want him ruining anything—or flipping out if he figures out this is all magic and we’re witches.”

All I said was, “Thanks.” With guys, when they get into big protector mode, all you can do is say thank you and stay as far away as you can.

I have to confess that even though I defended him to Samuel, I had been worried that Angelo’s presence might ruin the party. But by the time I said good-bye to everyone but the cheerleaders who were staying for the sleepover, I knew he’d done just the opposite. The token mortal had been a hit. Whodathunkit?

The cheerleaders were still talking about him when we all changed into pajamas and gathered in my living room—which had been carefully furnished with big, soft pillows and lots of cuddly blankets so everyone could curl up however they liked.

“What do we do now?” Yvette asked.

“I know. I know. Let’s play Truth or Dare.” Elektra had a half smile on her face when she looked at me that made me just a touch uneasy. But the whole party had gone so well that I decided it was not worth worrying about.

Everyone else agreed enthusiastically, so I didn’t object
despite the unfortunate fact that Truth or Dare was one of those games I both loved and hated. Loved it when I was hearing something juicy that I never would have heard if the teller weren’t more scared of what dare she’d have to risk than of answering a personal question. Hated it when I was the one in the hot seat and I had to decide whether I’d rather confess to being a fool or just act like one.

Of course, my previous experience had been playing with mortals. With witches, things got way more interesting. So what kinds of dares were fair in a game with witches? Anything goes. Turn someone into a toad? Pop them an ice-cream sundae with sardines and earthworms and require them to eat it, slowly, with their fingers? You name it, and the witches thought of it.

It quickly became clear that certain girls were out for blood. While I asked a very mild question when it was my turn to Truth or Dare Yvette, the rest of them didn’t hold back. At all. I found out more about the love lives and indiscretions of teenage witches than I had in weeks of listening to locker room gossip. It was quite amazing how many innovative ways these girls had found to outwit, outlast, and outplay their parents’ protective spells, charms, and potions.

I was the one everyone really wanted to know the dirt about, of course, being the new girl with a mortal twist. Which really put my rep on the line in a way that I had no
idea how to control. Should I take the dare or risk telling the truth to an embarrassing question? I didn’t have a clue. Not being a complete dunderhead, I realized that first thing—when Charity chose Dare over Truth and Sunita commanded her to turn herself into a mouse and pluck a hair from the cat.

“You’ll have to choose a new dare,” I interrupted. “We don’t have a cat.”

You would think I’d said we didn’t have a bathroom, the way they all stared at me.

Tara said, very slowly, “You don’t have a familiar?”

“No.” Uh-oh. Had the great party already turned bad? I knew about familiars from TV. And Grandmama had one of those little dogs she carried in a purse. I think it was a teacup poodle. But it was scared of everything, so I’d never seen more than its shivering little head peeking out at me. “Do I need one?”

“Duh.” Elektra was always happy to point out my cluelessness. “How else do you get messages from the high council?”

Was she teasing me? Leading me on to see how much I’d believe? I hated the feeling of not knowing which way was up. “Why would they want to talk to me? I’m just a kid.”

Yvette looked at me with alarm, and I realized that Elektra wasn’t kidding. “Well, your mom, then. She has to have a familiar.”

I resorted to the oldest excuse in the book. “We don’t have pets. My dad is allergic.” It always worked back in Beverly Hills.

Elektra sighed. “Here, then. I want to see a mouse pluck a hair out of the cat.”

All of a sudden there was a kitten in my life. A real, live, coal-black kitten with the sweetest little face. I looked up, “But my dad—”

“I put a dander-free spell on it.” Elektra sighed like I should have already known that she would have done that. Which, I suppose I would have—if I’d known it was even possible.

I don’t know whether I would have been in trouble for not having a familiar or not, because just then one of the ghosts came in and dropped a note in my lap. It read, “Happy Birthday!” with a red neon glow, and then smoked away before any of the girls crawling over their pillows toward me could read it.

Several girls asked in chorus, “Who’s that from?”

“Anonymous.” It had to be Daniel again. But I wasn’t about to share my suspicions with anyone. I’m quite certain that Agatha would not be happy to hear that her grandson was sending me notes, even if I wasn’t sending replies (not that any reply seemed to be required, of course).

Elektra was impressed. “How cool. The ghosts in our house won’t talk to me.”

“Why not?”

“They’re mad at my dad for trying to have them exorcised, I guess. Which they deny—they try to claim they won’t speak to anyone too young to show proper respect for ghosts. But they really mean Dad’s age and anyone younger—which is about him, not me. Or so Mom said when she kicked him out.”

Finally, something I could sink my teeth into. “Your parents got divorced? Who got custody of you?” I still didn’t understand how this whole marriage/divorce thing worked in the witchworld—I mean, some people can’t even last ten years in a marriage when they’re mortal and live for less than a hundred years. What happened to the whole “till death do us part” thing when you lived centuries instead of decades?

She looked surprised, though, when I said the word “custody.” “I live with my mom, of course. Nobody goes to live with their dads—that would be insane.”

“Why insane?” I wouldn’t have minded a bit if my dad had divorced my mom instead of moving to Salem. I would have stayed with him. Maybe then Maddie would never have betrayed me. Maybe. “Samuel lives with his dad.”

“That geek? He’s the exception, not the rule. His mom died.” Tara dismissed him with a flip of her hair.

“Can we talk about interesting things, please? This is Truth or Dare, not Bore and Snore,” Celestina said.

It was my turn to tell the truth or take a dare. It was
Jakeera’s turn to ask the question. I didn’t know her well, except that I’d seen her signature move at witch games—a twirl from floor to ceiling that started out slow and stately, went to whirling dervish speed, and then slowed as she floated to the floor. It was an impressive move, but I’m not sure what it had to do with cheering, because she couldn’t cheer as she twirled.

“Pru. Truth or Dare?”

I decided it was time to put Samuel’s bracelet to good use. After all, it had noted several times when the “truth” some girl was telling us was actually a lie. “Are you going to ask me something so awful, I’ll need to move to the moon after I tell you the truth?”

Jakeera laughed. “Of course not.” The other girls just grinned.

My bracelet didn’t tingle, so I decided to take a chance. “Truth.” Probably the only time in the history of Truth or Dare that the truth was less likely to steal my status than trying to fulfill a dare that my magic skills weren’t up to.