Page 53 of Witch You Would
Hah. Me, stop thinking.
“Werewolf?” Leandro said finally.
“Man turning into a wolf? Hmm.” I wrote it down, though it didn’t sound party-ish. “Maybe something from a story? Lots oftransformations in folktales.”
“Or magical girl animes?”
I groaned and nudged him with my hip. “Don’t start with the body pillows.”
Leandro laughed. I tapped the pencil on the paper. Tap, tap.
“Are flowers and butterflies too obvious?” he asked.
Was he teasing me? Reminding me of yesterday? I gave him a quick side-eye. His mouth was too close. I blushed and looked downat the paper again.
“Those definitely transform,” I said. “But they’re pretty basic. We’d have to make it really cool.”
“Like that sculpture.”
“Yes! But we can’t copy it. We can totally say it inspired us, though.”
We started sketching out more ideas: what to make the original piece look like, how the first transformation should work,then the second.
“So many people are late to parties,” I said. “We should make it repeating.”
“Maybe make the catalyst something that can be re-added?” Leandro suggested.
“Right, like a seed bomb.” I wrote down a list of possible tropical flower options based on what we’d seen at the gardens. Somewould be tricky, since they were usually propagated with cuttings or offshoots instead of seeds. Maybe a wrapped leaf ball, like a blooming tea?
Leandro stepped away to get our tools ready. I kept sneaking looks at him. Partly I wanted to know what he was doing, butalso I kept thinking about yesterday. His eyes. His chest. His mouth. Even with that silly mustache, his mouth was a totalfantasy. And I was pretty sure a certain part of him I had sat on was not a pocket banana.
Truly, I had lost my brain. Possibly the butterflies had taken it.
Why couldn’t we have kept our damn hands to ourselves? Ah! I didn’t need this. I needed to finish this recipe.
Forty-five minutes slipped away. I had ingredients and most of the methods, at least. I just wanted to run a few things byLeandro before finalizing.
And of course he had snuck off, to do a scarf summoning trick for Amy and Jaya, who seemed to find it adorable. I wanted tobe mad, but after what he’d said about working with kids, I knew he enjoyed this. Recording a video to release into the wildsof the internet was one thing; seeing the happy faces of the people you were doing magic for was another.
That was—had been—one of the few things I liked about working at Espinosa’s. When someone came to me with a question or aspell problem and I was able to answer it or fix it for them, and it made them happy, that made me happy, too.
Maybe I would volunteer to teach kids magic when this was all over. I could use a little joy in my life, even if it didn’tpay.
Leandro came back, grinning. “Did you figure everything out already? Or did you leave something for me to do?”
I booped his nose with the pencil’s eraser. “Slacker. What do you think about these sigils?”
“Hmm.” He stole the pencil and started making his own notes. “We want to link the repetition to the cutting ball, right? Whichmeans at least partially dispelling the original manifestation so it doesn’t double or cause a corruption.”
“Right,” I said, “that’s why I added the Klein symbol here.” I tapped the squash-shaped figure.
“A coiled ouroboros might be best, though?”
We debated a little longer, settled on a final circle diagram, and off I went to the supply room. I wasn’t sure they’d haveall the fresh flowers we wanted, and I wasn’t wrong, but they had a lot. Then there were the herbs, and the other reagents...
Amy passed me, looking lost again. We had a quick chat about where to find bone ash—aisle two—and whether wing feathers ordown would work better for manifesting a bird when considering the law of synecdoche—wing feathers for sure, in my opinion.Felicia stomped past, grabbing a bunch of herb jars from the shelf and leaving. By the time I realized she’d taken all thetarragon, which I needed, it was too late.
When I got back, the wall clock said an hour and a half had passed.
