Page 41 of Witch You Would
Finally the door opened, and Little Manny stuck his head inside. “Meal is over. Time to go—”
We all jumped up like our butts had springs in them.
“—to hair and makeup for touch-ups.”
Quentin laughed, and it cracked ice we didn’t know had frosted over us. The rest of us laughed, too, except Felicia, and wefollowed Little Manny to our doom.
Chapter 9
Gil
Why did I give Penelope that flower?
We stood at our stations, waiting for the judges to call us to the pentacle-floor demonstration area. An extra camera hadbeen brought in, and both of the shoulder-mounted camera operators stood by, waiting for instructions. Everything had to belit differently since we were all doing lighting spells, so the grip and electric crew had turned off the floodlights andran new cables for the smaller spotlights they’d brought in. Isaac Knight squinted at everything like it had personally offendedhim, and barked orders at Tori until he finally stomped outside to his special showrunner’s chair area. Chairea? Heh.
Random numbers had been assigned to us for presentation order; Penelope and I were going fourth. She fidgeted with somethingin a side pocket of her apron, probably a pencil. The gardenia was still in the front pocket, its white petals peeking out.Had she forgotten it was there, or left it on purpose?
I had made that particular plan last night, before Isaac dumped his flirting thing on us. Freak-out countdown runarounds werepopular on the show, even if they had to be edited in after the fact. I figured it would be fun to surprise Penelope withsomething nice.
After how she reacted to the fire “accident,” I should have yeeted my plan into the sun. I don’t know what exactly set her off, but her skin had turned as white as the gardenia petals. She acted like she was in shock—not surprise-birthday-party shock, just-got-in-a-car-accident shock. Couldn’t talk, dilated pupils, full wreck. Everything had been going well, and then she turned into a completely different person. Or herself, but with all the life sucked out.
I had to fix it. I didn’t know how yet, though. And if we lost now, I’d never get the chance.
Charlotte checked her watch. Jaya hid a yawn. Zeke rubbed his head. Tanner had his eyes closed, like he was asleep standingup, or maybe meditating. Dylan just stood there looking chill, Amy kept blinking behind her glasses, and Quentin had wrappedhis arms around himself in a nervous hug. Felicia had a smug smile. I did not like it.
And Penelope kept fidgeting with whatever was in her pocket. I wanted to grab her hand and hold it so she’d stop. Or maybeso she’d mess with my fingers instead.
That couple of minutes during the blackout when I’d hugged her... Okay, so I’m a nerd. In my nonexistent spare time, Iread articles about the latest magical advancements, and books with titles likeHistorical Studies of the Properties of Intangible Spell Components in Caribbean Cultures—which I then reviewed on myDoctor Witchblog. I like comedies and action movies with badass fights. I don’t watch romantic stuff on my own, but I’m down to cuddle with a period drama where everyone should fuck already but they never do. I’d pretty much stopped dating when Leandro Presto got big enough for strangers to start getting parasocially weird—I hadn’t even told Penelope about the Stalker Incident, and I probably never would. I’ve had girlfriends. I’ve used the L-word andmeant it. I’m twenty-eight years old, not sixteen, and this is not my first crush.
But hugging her was an Experience. It shouldn’t have been! It wasn’t even a real hug, just me trying to keep her from hurtingherself. And then I sniffed her hair like a creeper. I’d spent months refusing to look Penelope up online out of some sensethat I’d be invading her privacy, and the first chance I got, I was all up in her personal space being weird.
Something was wrong with my brain, and I didn’t know whether it was stress from the competition, not getting laid enough,or months of accumulated feelings from emailing a smart, funny person suddenly leading to... this arroz con mango. Probablyall of it.
Tori yelled, “Quiet!” and the command was repeated by various voices. A camera assistant stepped in front of the camera aimedat Syd and the judges, snapped the slate, and left.
Syd waited about a ten count, then smiled. “Welcome back toCast Judgment. It’s now time for our contestants to present their spells. They’ll be judged based on how well they conform to the brief,how technically challenging their work is, and how creatively impressive and innovative the final product is.”
There was a point system, but we wouldn’t get our scores. That was for the judges and the lawyers making sure this contestwasn’t rigged.
“Our first contestant and Spellebrity pairing is... Amy and Jaya!”
Together, Amy and Jaya carried their spell to a table placed in the center of the pentacle. It looked like a piano made ofpaper, one of the self-playing kinds with a rotating drum covered in musical notes. Beautiful calligraphy sigils covered theoutside, mathematically precise in their distribution. Really cool stuff.
“Tell us about your spell,” Syd said. Jaya gestured for Amy to go ahead.
Amy cleared her throat. “Our novel lighting method is a piano that activates when music is played.”
“Let’s see it,” Syd said.
With a nervous smile at Jaya, Amy touched the middle key and stepped back. The spotlights dimmed so we stood in darkness almostas deep as when the power went out.
Music filled the room from unseen speakers, a simple classical tune. After a few seconds, the piano started to glow a softwhite, with the light concentrated in the keys. Each note and chord lit up in a pale yellow, then drifted up and floated inthe air, until a wide area was literally bright from the song. When the music ended, the piano stopped glowing, but the notesremained.
Shit, that was impressive. I recalculated our odds of winning and did not love them.
“Does this complete your spell?” Syd asked.
“Oh yes, sorry!” Amy said. “That’s it. The notes will fade in about ten minutes unless the music starts again. Thank you.”
