Seriously Wicked (11 page)

But he staggered. His shoulders lifted one at a time, as if he was steadying himself, or stepping out of something. The black faded from his hair as he bent double over his backpack again, and the word groaned from his lips: “Cam?”

“Devon? Really Devon?”

He nodded. He had a weird expression on his face, like he was trying not to barf. You know when you’re concentrating so hard on not barfing that you don’t have any spare attention for anything else? Yeah. That.

“How are you doing?” I put a hand on his shoulder.

“All … all right, I guess.” He sat down hard on the roof, cradling the pixie backpack, stretching his neck from side to side, and the pukiness seemed to pass. “I think he’s asleep.”

I couldn’t say anything more intelligent than: “Again?”

“Yeah.” Devon stared across the city. “Cam, will you tell me the truth about something?”

“Yeah,” I said. The October air was brisk on my bare arms, full of leaf-scented winds that whisked across the tar paper. I sat down next to him, on the alert for any sudden movements. The roof was cold through the seat of my second-favorite jeans.

“Have I been an ass all day today?” asked Devon.

“Don’t you remember?” That would be creepy, if the demon was taking his memory.

Devon grimaced. “It’s hard to explain. I remember most of it. Though I fell asleep a couple times when I just couldn’t stay awake anymore. I tried to time that to those ancient videos in American history. I didn’t want him to be the boss here at school, but really, I didn’t want him to ever be the boss. I’m gonna be snorting caffeine by the time this is over, aren’t I?”

“Me, too,” I said.

“But the thing is, I dunno how much of what I did is stuff I would normally do. When he’s awake, he must have access to my brain and memory or something. Because he knows stuff that hasn’t come up. I mean, I think that’s what’s happening. Because this stuff comes out of my mouth that I don’t think I would
want
to say, but I don’t think he would
know
to say. Does that make any sense at all? And then thinking back on it, it’s confusing, like I see it all as a dream.”

“Weird,” I said.

“He’s asleep now,” Devon said. “I guess he knows I want him gone, too, so he thinks he can count on me to take care of these pixies.”

“Take …
care of
?” I said.

Devon’s voice was low, tense. “He says the only way to get rid of him is to finish the contract. Is that true?” I nodded and he groaned. “Then how do I get through this contract before he eats me?” His blond hair flopped as he shook his head. “I never thought I’d be forced to choose between killing things and, uh, me. Myself.”

I touched his shoulder. “I tried to stop the witch before we got to this point, but I haven’t done very well so far. I didn’t mess up her spell in any useful way. It’s partly my fault we’re here on the roof.”

It would’ve been nice had Devon disagreed with me at this point, but he didn’t. “You should’ve warned me,” he said.

I had told him to stay in the driveway, but I let that slide. He had a lot on his mind. “I should’ve told you we kept an ax murderer named Clyde in the basement,” I said. “That would’ve kept you upstairs.”

He didn’t laugh. He just stared into the blue-gray of the city. I guess he was savoring a moment of demon-free soul. He probably wasn’t thinking about me at all. I mean, between worrying about your soul and thinking about the girl right next to you, I suppose your soul takes precedence.

“It makes me wish I could run away,” he said finally. “Except he’d still be there.”

“I ran away once when I was ten,” I said. “Made it as far as the train station. They wouldn’t sell me a ticket without an adult present. While I was scoping out the likely-looking bums, the witch materialized in the middle of the station. Literally, I mean. Her hair was all wild and frantic. I saw the look on her face and for one beautiful moment I thought it would be all, ‘Oh Cam, forgive me.’ But no. It was, ‘Go clean the leprechaun castings out of the gutter.’”

“Cam?” Devon said.

“Yes?”

“Do you think the witch is going to kill the pixies?” he said.

I frowned, thinking of pig’s ears, and a silent suppressed memory. “Probably,” I said. “I mean, she said dead or alive, so that implies they’ll be dead when she’s done with them.”

He nodded and breathed. “Okay, so part of the day when the demon took over I took a break from fighting him saying stupid things and sat and thought about this. The witch said the pixies have to be at the school on Friday. So we just have to keep them contained until Friday, and then we can let them go. I thought up here on the roof is about the safest place. So I asked your friend Jenah if there was access—”

“When did you see Jenah?”

“We have American history together,” he explained. “The demon insisted on being awake all through it because some girl named Reese had a white shirt on and you could see her”—his ears went pink again, which was the surest sign I was talking to Devon—“well, her blue … her blue bra. And she’s really, you know … Um. But. I got control long enough to talk to Jenah. She seems like one of those girls who knows everything that’s going on.”

“She is,” I said.

“So if we keep the pixies up here, they’ll be on-site but not dead. And your mom—”

“Not my mom.”

“—didn’t give a time for the pixies on Friday. And didn’t say ‘into my possession,’ like she did with the phoenix. So Friday morning we’ll simply set them free.”

“Very clever,” I said. “As good as a demon in wriggling around contract loopholes.”

He smiled. “Do you want to see them?”

“Totally. I haven’t been pixie-catching since I was a kid.”

He pulled the box from his backpack and gently set it on the ground. The bowl of water had sloshed all over and the bottom of the box was wet, but he didn’t seem to mind. He reached in and withdrew one tiny pixie, which he put in my palms. He didn’t bother to say, “Don’t let it escape,” but I kept my hands cupped over the tiny thing.

“The dark green ones are from the rocky stream just before the lake,” he said.

“That’s a good spot.” I petted the pixie’s tiny curved back. It was cool and damp. He hopped a little on my palm and flicked his wings, testing them out.

“There’s a footbridge there. It was just light enough to see a pair of hares. And then bats came swooping in to eat the mosquitoes, and then the pixies were swooping after the mosquitoes, too. Once the demon rubbed my eyes, I could see the pixies. See that they weren’t really frogs even though they could pass for frogs. They blinked on and off like turn signals.” He touched the top of my pixie’s head. “We should go back there sometime.”

“All right,” I said, warmed by the invitation. Devon talking about animals was an entirely different person than Devon talking about bras. I wanted to say he had a similar sort of confidence to what the demon displayed, though, duh, of course he wasn’t using it to try to make girls swoon, so I didn’t really know how to describe what I meant. Maybe it was just tough luck for Devon that he was an animal geek—and songwriter—born into a boy-band-boy body.

Devon tugged a pencil pouch from his backpack. “I found some spiders during gym,” he said, and tipped the crawly contents of the pouch into the box. “I wonder if pixies are amphibians like frogs.”

“I think so,” I said. “Sometime I’ll show you the witch’s taxonomy. It adds in the creatures regular humans don’t know about.”

“They don’t separate them out by the creatures with magic? Maybe they should be their own kingdom.” He picked out a tiny frog-pixie of his own and cupped it in his hands.

“All organisms have magic in them,” I said. “Plant, animal, human. Pixies have more than frogs, but they both have magic. Like you can use frog hops for bouncing, but it takes several hundred frogs, and how often do you want to be good at bouncing? But pixie wings can be used for buoyancy or for secrecy. Or sometimes you just use their light. Their light’s often used in spying spells. Capture one, get three blinks, and let it go. Witches combine ingredients through trial and error and add their own abilities to it. Scientific, really.”

“You’ve used their wings?” said Devon.

I could hear what he thought of that in his voice. I was sure he was imagining me pulling the wings off pixies, and I almost leaped on the attack and said, “Well, you give your dog pig’s ears to chew!” But then I pulled myself back from that paranoid response and said calmly, “Pixies die with the first snowfall. Their wings slough off. You gather them in the snow.”

“Could the demon use these little guys for spells, too?”

“I dunno if he’d bother,” I said. “Elementals don’t work magic, they
are
magic. Unlike witches, they don’t need ingredients to perform magic, because it comes from within. But I don’t know what the rules are right now, while he’s inside you. Witchipedia was vague on that part. And by ‘vague,’ I mean the article had been edited a whole lot, back and forth. I guess demons don’t like to have too much written up about them.”

Devon nodded. “He said he didn’t have any power, but I don’t think that’s true,” he said. “He already showed me pixies that I couldn’t see before. Who knows what else he can do.” His pixie blinked on and off in his palms as he gazed out over the city.

“Friday,” I said firmly. “You just have to make it to Friday.”

He nodded. “Just resist him, over and over. Not let him find my weak spots.”

“You think you can?”

“Sure,” he said. But his eyes told a different story, I thought. “He’s not going to get the best of me. He’d have to know—” He looked around like someone might be coming up behind him. “Stupid of me. I know where he is and he can hear everything. He knows anything we plan. He’ll be able to recall anything I say to you.”

“Anything?” I said. My heart went
patter-thud.

That needed no answer, I guess. Devon didn’t say anything. We sat on the edge of the rooftop together and watched the red and yellow trees sway against the blue sky. I could see small figures walking around in the park across the street. The box of pixies blinked.

“He thinks he can seduce me by making a hundred girls fall for me. I don’t care about that. Who’d want to be clung to by ordinary everyday girls?”

“Not I.”

“But then sometimes,” Devon said softly to the trees in front of us, “he’s got the confidence to say the things I maybe wanted to say, but didn’t have the guts. It gets very confusing.”

“Um, really?” I said. His hand was very close to mine on the rooftop. Our arms were so close that when we breathed out at the same time, my sleeve touched his jacket. There seemed to be electricity jumping that gap, from his arm to mine, heating my side. I wondered if he could see me breathing. The more I thought about the way our breathing made our sleeves touch, the more I seemed to mess up my own breathing patterns, making my breaths seem irregular and hugely obvious. Surely he could see the uncool way my chest lurched, just from our stupid sleeves.

Why couldn’t I just enjoy sitting on the school roof with a rather nice boy who had a few demonic issues? Why did I have to be thinking about my stupid breathing?

I blamed the witch.

“Hells!” I said as my pixie made a dash for it. I lunged and caught the little guy, placed my finger gently between his wings and held. He blinked faster, upset with me.

Devon yawned. “I haven’t been this beat-up since I tried to walk six dogs at once.”

“How’d that work out?”

“Got my arms and legs wrapped around a birch tree,” Devon said. “Sat there with six dogs licking my face while Dad untangled me. I got a song out of it, though.” He sighed. “We’d better get off the roof while the gettin’s good. Pack these pixies up.”

My mouth wanted to say something dumb like, “I hope you’re not bored with me,” but I kept my lips tightly sealed. “Did you have somewhere you needed to be?” I said lamely.

“Need to schedule practice with the band before Friday,” he said. “Demon or no, I don’t want us to suck.”

“I’m sure you won’t suck.”

“Not if I let him sing for me. Maybe I’ll get one good thing out of him.” Devon’s arm moved as he put his pixie in the box. The electricity left my space. “Cam?” he said. “About Friday…”

How dumb is it that I hoped he’d ask me to the dance? Very dumb. We had more important things on our minds. Anyway, I still liked him better with the black hair than with the blond, which meant I was all kinds of weird, liking something that was demon related. I had problems I wasn’t going to admit to Devon.

“You’ll be there, right?” Devon said. “Help me if things go haywire?”

Internally I sighed. “Of course,” I said. He reached for my pixie and I put the little winged creature into his hands. Our fingers touched as he took it from me. Electricity,
bam.

I kept waiting for him to pull his hands away, but he didn’t. It was like we were both pretending that a pixie needed four hands to keep it from getting away. His face was so near to mine, his green eyes clear and deep. “Then … maybe after…”

I tumbled over sideways as the backpack I was leaning on was jerked out from under me. “What the—”

Sparkle backed away, rifling through the swiped backpack.

“Get back here,” shouted Devon, and I heard him jumping to recapture the newly escaped pixie.

I started toward Sparkle, but she glared at me and I stopped, thrown.

Her nose was back to normal.

I mean current-normal. The nice straight nose she’d had the last two months.

“Erase the picture and I’ll go,” Sparkle said.

“It’s not in there.” I edged toward her. Sparkle hefted the backpack as if she would throw it. Her eyes were wide, darting. I knew it would be bad for me to show Sparkle any empathy, but I couldn’t help it. “Are you okay?” I said. “You seem really weird the last couple days. Weirder than normal.” The barb soothed the meaner urges of my soul.

“You’d know weird,” she sniped. “Where’s your phone?”

In my pocket, thank goodness, but I didn’t want another wrestling match. “In my locker,” I said. “Can I have my backpack?”

“Cam,” said Devon.

“Picture first,” Sparkle shouted. “I want it gone, gone, all evidence of weird stuff gone, do you hear? Gone for good! I want it to never have existed. Erase it!”