Page 33 of Witch You Would
“Broken pencil.”
Hah. “Broken pencil who?”
“Never mind, it’s pointless.”
I snort-laughed. “That was so bad. Hashtag dad jokes.”
“Made you laugh.”
“I wasn’t laughing, I was choking on how terrible that joke was.” I did feel better, though. He’d fixed my brakes, and nowthe car was moving again.
Was that flirting? I didn’t know.
I wrote “LIGHT” at the top of the paper. “Okay, brainstorm time. Lighting methods, no fire. Has to be awesome.”
“Don’t worry about awesome yet,” Leandro said. “For now, just ideas.”
I could do that. Let’s see... chandeliers, fairy lights with residual memory-echoes of cucuyos inside instead of bulbs,those glass ocean floats that lit up when they touched water... Leandro’s jellyfish. Cool, even if the underlying spellwas flawed. I didn’t want to copy his work, though. Plus the glow hadn’t been very bright; I could picture Hugh Burbank givingme his hard stare as he said something like,Lighting should actually light up the area around it, Ms. Delmar.
I shivered.
“Are you cold?” Leandro asked.
“Yes.” Also catastrophizing. I wrote “jellyfish” and tapped the page with the pencil’s eraser. “Thoughts?”
He smoothed his mustache. “Aurora borealis?”
Fun. I wrote it down. Still not bright enough, but maybe with stars . . . Oh god.
“Sparklehair,” I said.
“Sparkle... hair?”
“I had a jerk customer the other day. He screwed up a hair spell and ended up with fireworks on his head.”
Leandro’s lip curled like his mustache. “How did he do that?”
“Broken duskywing butterfly wing.”
“Ooh, those are fragile.”
“Right? But he tried to play it like I messed up his reagents.”
“You? No me diga.” Leandro dramatically covered his mouth, then leaned against the counter on his elbows. “I bet you’ve nevermessed up a spell in your life.”
“I wish.” I’d learned to be careful the hard way.
“So, sparkly hair?” he asked. “Turn everyone into a walking light?”
“Has to be environmental. The sparkles, though...” I tapped the pencil against my mouth. What could we pair with sparkleslike that?
A crack of thunder outside made me jump. Miami weather. If the storm hadn’t hit us yet, it would soon.
Storm. Hmm. I wrote that down.
“Storm, like clouds?” Leandro asked. “What about party fog?”
Party fog! “If we could make that glow brightly, and add the sparkles to simulate lightning...” I started scribbling ingredientsthat might work for the spell.
