Page 38 of Witch You Would
Storm things, go. I shook my brain and hoped something interesting would fall out.
We already had the spark lightning effects from the duskywing butterfly wing, but maybe quiet rumbling to go with it? Thatmight get annoying, but the extra sensory angle would make the spell more complex. Scent? Maybe alternating layers of petrichorand something else. Salt water and jasmine? Yes, that would be nice. But this was a lighting spell, so the lighting neededto go all out.
Leandro had mentioned the aurora borealis earlier, and I had asudden mental image of it raining down in streaks of color. Could work, but how to integrate it into the existing spell recipe?
“You’re halfway there, everyone!” Syd yelled from the front of the room. “Four hours remaining!”
Ew. Barf.
Leandro walked up to me slowly, like he was worried I would spook. “You okay?”
I ignored the question. “What do you think about adding scent and a color effect to this?”
“Like what?”
I explained my ideas, and we both drifted into brain land to think them over. We reached for the pencil at the same time,our hands touching, then flinched back.
“Go ahead,” he said.
Fine. I would. I did.
He didn’t read over my shoulder this time; he waited until I was done, then asked, “May I?” and gestured at the paper.
I handed it to him and waited.
“Crystal and mirror array for the infusion, do you think?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Okay. We’ll need a nine-point circle with at least four tangents—”
We fell back into our earlier discussion pattern, but the enthusiasm was gone. All business now, like two classmates assignedto a school project. A couple of times he wandered off to clown around—juggling plastic containers, joking with Doris Twist,sneaking up behind Syd with his rubber chicken—but otherwise the most ridiculous thing about him was his comemierda grin underhis curly mustache.
He didn’t touch me again. So much for flirting.
The clock on the wall ticked down, down, down. Crew rotated in and out on some arcane break schedule. Syd shouted again whenwe had an hour left, but I didn’t jump. I was in the zone.
With about twenty minutes to go, Leandro and I carefully combined our separate reagents into one of the teapots I’d foundin the supply area. It was plain white porcelain, to which I’d added some sigils that should give the spell an extra levelof cool if they worked properly.
Big if. I hated that we didn’t have the chance to test anything. It wasn’t like baking cookies, where we could make a doublebatch for backup. Everything had to work correctly the first and only time we cast this.
“Fifteen minutes!” Syd yelled.
We were finished, though. I glanced around the room and thought about all the times I’d seen casters rushing around as Sydcounted down from ten. No one seemed to be freaking out. Amy started to clean her area, but Tori barked at her to leave it.A messy counter was more dramatic, I guess. Maybe I should spill a few things on our table?
I thought of the fire and shivered. Nah.
The clock seemed to slow down as I stared at it. Leandro stood just outside my personal space bubble. I caught him lookingsideways at me a few times, but he didn’t say anything. Until he did.
“Do we want to do the secret handshake again when the time is up?” he asked quietly.
I thought about it. “Not at the end. They probably want us looking stressed and out of breath. If we win the round, let’sdo it.”
“Okay.”
No argument, no pressure, just “okay.” Why did that make me angry?
Because of the fire. It had set me off, and now I wanted him to be more of an asshole. I had built up a Leandro in my headfrom his videos, someone I didn’t like or respect, and I wanted the real guy to give me reasons to go back to feeling thatway. I wanted a clear Leandro-is-a-giant-jerk moment so I could shit-talk him to Rosy and my sister afterward.
