Witches for Hire (Odd Jobs #1)(38)
“What does it do?”
“If you want to contact me—say, at the same time on this road—unfold it and I’ll know.”
“You try anything, I’ll shoot.” Kearney came forward slowly and took the green paper frog whose legs twitched as if it wanted to spring out of his hands. He put distance between them again. “Try not to get yourself killed before I make up my mind.”
Clive nodded. “Thank you for hearing me out. May you enjoy the rest of your exercise.”
“You are a strange one,” Kearney muttered as he picked up speed and jogged past Clive.
Chapter 12
IN THE following weeks, Clive used their ever-more-frequent jobs to occupy his mind and let the information he had collected concerning the energy vamps and Levi simmer. Earth Realm inhabitants themselves were an exciting distraction, especially their present client who called to stop an impending disaster caused by his own son. They’d gotten similar calls, but those usually concerned unwanted suitors of their children.
As Clive surveyed the football stadium filled with people ignorant of the curse gathering from their emotions, he realized this was a real emergency. According to the client’s text message detailing the spell, one touchdown from the home team’s side would break it. The scoreboard read 0 to 62. Clive closed his eyes in frustration. Are they trying to lose? Football isn’t that hard a game. The crowd cheered as the home team fumbled again. Being outnumbered by away fans added insult to injury. He had been told about high school dynamics, but standing in a triangle around the football field during an active game, with Simone and Jeremy completing the points to prevent a level-four curse triggering was mind-boggling. The fact that a student had set the events into motion was even more unbelievable. Clive checked his phone again to see the boy’s diagram drawn like the crystalline structure of quartz. There wasn’t a single weakness to exploit.
An away player wearing the uniform marked by a grinning pirate, because the people in this world believed them to be a positive influence, ran with the ball after the last snap, slid wrong on the wet grass, and nearly collided into the Warriors’ defense, who hadn’t earned the name painted on their shirts the whole night. His opponents couldn’t quite get him to the ground, and he pushed forward. Another player from the Warriors blocked him, but he wouldn’t hit the ground. Across the field, Jeremy scrubbed his face in disbelief. That trip must have been his doing, and the home team somehow managed to bungle the magical help.
As if feeding off the Warriors’ weakness, the Pirates’ fans shouted down any attempts to start up a chant for the home team. The home fans were cowed into silence, and the Warriors absorbed their negative energy, failing to prevent their opponents’ next two touchdowns. Black tendrils of power waved in the corners of Clive’s vision, disappearing when he tried to look directly at them. Soon the curse’s stipulations would be fulfilled. Damn cutthroat fundraisers and bad economies inciting such ghastly behavior! Clive focused on the Warriors’ boy he heard everyone refer to as the quarterback. His back seemed fully intact, but the boy definitely didn’t have a full spirit. Closing his eyes, Clive squeezed the empty water bottle the client had stolen from the player’s side. Plan B.
Clive imagined Gulley before he died and replayed his body parts falling onto the ground, with more blood and viscera added for stronger effect. The quarterback looked over his shoulder in terror. The link worked! The quarterback lowered his hands and ran as fast as his legs could carry him, urged on by the hideous images only he could see. He skipped past the touchdown line, and his feet pounded the ground without slowing all the way to the parking lot. The Warriors’ fans broke out in shouts so loud that their voices overpowered the Pirates’ fans, who seemed confused about why anyone would celebrate an obvious loss once time expired. The magic streaming around them vanished, most of the crowd ignorant of the catastrophe that had been averted. Now for the client’s far too talented child, Clive thought.
ROWS OF desks facing a blackboard reminded Clive of the Orientation classes he had spent months attending. If this layout was used throughout regular schooling, Clive couldn’t fault the teen boy, Trey, for the boredom, which had encouraged him to practice dangerous magic. Across from him, Trey sat with his arms crossed, so his body was partially turned to Clive. Perhaps I shouldn’t be that gracious. “Do you know how many people you could have killed?”
With the brim of his baseball cap so low, Trey’s eyes practically disappeared when he rolled them. “It wasn’t a death hex.”
“No, but the spell’s power increased because of how much the other team scored. What did you base your spell on? Your school’s team losing by forty points like they did in other games?”
No answer.
“Your school lost by eighty. That doubled the effects of the curse.”
Trey removed his hat and bent the edge into a deep curve. “I would’ve stopped it if it came to that.”
“How?” the client, Mr. Hardy, Trey’s father, said from behind Clive, gripping a chair’s back so hard that his finger indents didn’t disappear when he threw his hands in the air. “The blowback trying to contain a curse that size would have killed you and those people out there!”
“Those football booster parents hexed our candy just because we win marching-band competitions. They brought it on themselves.”