Undead Girl Gang(51)
Except now that job has been outsourced to June and Dayton.
“So, you don’t care if you get big results?” he asks, shoving his hands in his pockets. “How will you know if it works?”
“It depends on the spell,” I say carefully. “Not everything can have a definitive result. Most of witchcraft is just being present.”
“And grateful?” he asks. “Riley said it was about being grateful for everything.”
“Right,” I say. I love that he gets it. That he already knows. “Present and grateful.”
He leans over and bumps our elbows together, his face alight with mischief. “Do you think you could do some magic for me sometime?”
“It depends on what kind of magic you need,” I say. My whole arm tingles where he touched it, and I have to actively restrain myself from pressing against him again. “I’m better at the crafty parts. Like making flower crowns or pentagrams out of sticks.”
He smooths the hair out of his face, his lips pursed in momentary seriousness. I wonder if he was thinking of big magic—easing his grief or pulling lottery numbers out of thin air or even trying to bring Riley back. But instead he twitches a shrug. “Anything. Dumb stuff. Riley never wanted me around when she was doing spells. Do you think you could remove a zit with magic?”
I laugh. “Your skin is basically perfect. I’d have to find a spell to give you a zit before I could try to get rid of it.”
“Okay, then whatever kind of magic you want. Just let me know if you need someone to hold a sage brush for you. It’s the only thing Riley ever taught me to do.”
“I’ll consider it,” I say, knowing that it’ll be a while before I have a spell to do that isn’t life or death.
We wind through the crowd, Xander occasionally stopping to say hi to someone from school. Most of them I don’t know by name. None of them would know me as anything except the fat witch of the junior class. Yearbooks will be opened. Facebook stalked. People will tell the story with confusion and shock: Camila Flores, a Fairmont Academy junior, member of zero clubs, haver of no superlatives, was at the farmers’ market with her dead best friend’s brother, Xander Greenway. They were seen sniffing vegan soaps and guiltily taking business cards from shopkeepers.
Or maybe the only person who will tell the story is me, to myself every night before I go to sleep, because it might as well be a dream.
“Look,” Xander says, pointing ahead of us. “Isn’t that . . .”
I flinch as he trails off, terrified that he’s pointing to the reanimated corpse of his sister or his friends, even though I’d know if they were close. But instead I see a table draped in black velvet with no fancy tent over it like the other booths. Toby is sitting behind a collection of charm bags and cheap stone necklaces. Her motorcycle is parked behind her, shining as silver as a razor blade. She sees me and smiles with her teeth but not her eyes.
“Mila, good to see you,” she says as Xander pulls me toward the table. She tilts her face toward Xander. The movement flexes a muscle in her chest, making the snake tattoo on her boob seem to slither against her burnt skin. “And Riley’s brother. It’s been a while.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Xander says. We may be Californians, but Xander was taught to be Retail Southern. There’s something about courtly manners and a slight drawl that charms the mourners and makes them buy bigger caskets. “The girls stopped needing me to drive them around once Mila got her own car.”
“I’m glad to see you two have found each other in this terrible time,” Toby says, seemingly unswayed by Xander’s ma’am. She gestures at her wares with a sweeping motion. “See anything you need? I’ll give you the student discount. Luck bags for that next big test? A money charm? I have a beautiful iron rose hematite. They form themselves, you know, under high pressure . . .”
The muscles in my back turn to stone. The iron rose isn’t on the table. It’s in Riley’s grave with the rest of the ingredients for the Lazarus spell.
Oh fuck. She knows I stole it.
“We’re fine,” I say, already starting to pull Xander away. “Thanks, Toby! See you later.”
“Don’t forget to come in for Samhain,” she calls after me. “’Tis the season to reap what you sow! Blessed be!”
“Blessed be!” I call back, now pulling Xander’s hand in earnest. He opens his mouth, possibly to ask questions that I really don’t want to answer. Flop sweat is starting to gather in my baby hairs. Toby knows that I stole the iron rose. She might even know why. “Do you want to dance? I love this song.”
I don’t know what song is playing. We aren’t close enough to hear the words. I scurry through the crowd, Xander keeping pace with me easily.
There aren’t a lot of people dancing in the grass in front of the stage erected at the entrance to Aldridge Park, but there are enough that I don’t feel totally ridiculous when I join them. I’ve never considered whether or not public dancing is something I would be comfortable doing. Riley and I avoided every single Fairmont event that could even accidentally lead to dancing—homecoming, Sadie Hawkins, marching band concerts, speech and debate competitions where our team won—but I already asked Xander to dance with me, so I can’t back out now.
The band—a tsunami wave of white dudes, all of whom look like they might work with my mom at the bank—plays Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” with a full horn section. It kind of rules, actually.