Besphinxed

  “There’s no one else in the diner!” Owen seethed.

  “It was a carryout order. Totally my bad.”

  Owen resisted the urge to yank every last tooth out of that perky smile.

  “Owen thanks you, José. Don’t you, Owen?”

  Owen growled again, this time without words.

  “It’s sweet that you don’t want me to be upset,” Kai told the cook. “But you really don’t need to worry. Owen’s my best friend. I promise I won’t kill him.”

  “It’s not just you, Miss Kai,” said José. “Your mother is an Ara and my wife is a Huntress. None of you suffer fools. Especially male fools. And it’s only me here tonight to clean up. Owen’s arrogant, and lazy, and not the best busboy in the world, but despite all of those things, he really is more use to me in one piece.”

  Kai chuckled. “I promise not to add to the stress of your workload. Or your marriage.”

  “Thank you, Miss Kai.” As José walked away, he added to Owen, “You mess with her and I will hurt you.”

  Owen picked up the cheeseburger and saluted the cook. “Get in line,” he said before sinking his teeth into the bun.

  “I’m going to say something now that your mouth is full,” said Kai.

  I don’t need my mouth to talk to you, Owen sent through their psychic link.

  Shut up. I’m trying to make a speech, she thought back.

  Shutting up now. Owen took another happy bite of the burger and praised José for every mistake he’d ever made—intentional or not.

  “Look, I don’t know what Heather’s deal is. I’ve never wanted to know, since she has a history of being pretty much the most horrible person ever. But I know she’s not an idiot. Stupid people don’t usually wield as much power as she does.”

  Really? I never really considered that, he thought to her as he chewed. I’m sure there are exceptions.

  “Not many. Just look at Poppy and Oleander. Poppy is a ditz and Oleander is lazy. Their power is nothing compared to Heather’s. The point is, I’ve always known there was more to Heather than what she lets other people see, but I’ve never wanted to care. Now that I know she’s tied to your destiny—ugh, I hate saying those words—”

  Hearing them’s no picnic either, he said.

  “—I will give her a chance. A small, begrudging chance. Because I love you, and Mom and Dad made it my job to look out for you. And when all is said and done, I want you to be happy.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “But honestly, Owen, I can’t imagine Horrible Heather making anyone happy. She’s got to want to change…”

  “I think she does, deep down.”

  “…and if she hurts you, I have no qualms about ripping her face off. Let me make that clear right now. I care about your happiness. Not hers.”

  “I know.”

  “And you really suck at the whole shutting up thing.”

  Owen merely grinned in response.

  “So are we good?” Kai asked. “For now, anyway? I mean, apart from the fact that you still have to make chocolate chip cookies for your Consumer Magics final.”

  There was a burst of laughter from the kitchen. “Dude, you are so screwed!”

  Owen looked up at the ceiling. “José, have you been able to hear everything we’ve said this whole time?”

  There was a pause. And then, “Yes.”

  Owen shook his head. “I love you, man.”

  “Right back atcha,” José called from the kitchen. “And good luck. You’re going to need it.”

  “Are chocolate chip cookies truly that hard to make?” Owen asked Kai.

  “They’re hard to make well,” she replied. “I can’t imagine having to try and make them with someone as…challenging…as Horrible Heather.”

  “We should probably stop calling her that.”

  Kai sighed. “I know. That was the last time. Maybe.”

  “And speaking of Consumer Magics…”

  “Hold on.” Kai took another giant sip of her milkshake, closed her eyes, and swallowed. “I need to brace myself if we’re going to keep talking about Heather.”

  “This isn’t about Heather,” said Owen. “But you won’t regret the whole bracing thing. Turns out, our new substitute teacher is one of the Arachne sisters. They’ve found me.”

  “Oh, crap,” Kai said again.

  “Indeed.” Owen finished off the burger, in case it was his last meal. Every meal he ate from here on out might turn out to be his last meal. He intended to relish every one of them. Fitting that, after so many years of borderline starvation, he should end his very long life as an employee of the best diner in town.

  “Does she—they, whatever—still expect you to kill me?” Kai asked breathlessly. “Does she—they, whatever—plan on killing me?”

  Owen licked his fingers clean. “I told her good luck trying.” There was a guffaw from the kitchen. “José knows what I’m about.”

  Kai cocked her head. Owen could tell she was contemplating hair-snakes, her mother, her friends, the town, and other equally deadly assets. “True,” she said. “But Owen, what about Heather?”

  Owen dried his fingers on a napkin. “You said you didn’t want to talk about Heather.”

  “I don’t. But Finn gave her the Fury’s feather, remember? As punishment for the curse she put on him. He wanted its presence to…I don’t know…loom over her or whatever. Be her conscience. Threaten her to do better.”

  “For the rest of her life? Isn’t that a bit much? Finn was only cursed for a few months.”

  “He only had to be cursed for a day before his cousin died.”

  Owen grimaced at the harsh truth. “So Heather has the feather now?”

  “Professor Blake took it,” said Kai. “She said she was putting it in the vault—you know, the one in the lower library. She said it was too dangerous otherwise.”

  “Well, if it’s in the vault, it’s safe, right? No need to worry about it.”

  “He doesn’t get it,” José called from the kitchen.

  “No, he doesn’t,” said Kai. “You’re adorable, cat, but you can be seriously clueless sometimes.”

  “Help me out then, oh great and powerful Snake-Headed One.”

  Kai shook that head, as if her long brown hair might suddenly rear up and speak in tongues at any moment. “I wish I could put you in a vault, doofus, but I can’t. And as fun as it would be to lock Heather up, we can’t do that either. You’re both in danger until we figure out how to deal with this Arachne chick.”

  “And that means…”

  Kai shook her head. “That means, until further notice, you’re going to need to be Heather’s knight in shining freaking armor.”

  “Oh, crap,” said Owen.

  “Now you’re getting it.” Kai sucked down the rest of her milkshake.

  José stuck his head out through the service window. “You’re a good kid. Try not to die.”

  “I’ll do my best, José,” said Owen. “The odds aren’t exactly on my side.”

  “Yeah,” José called back. “But we are.”

  6

  Heather lingered behind while Professor Blake opened the lower library vault. There wasn’t so much as a creak of hinges as the enormous stone door swung open. The cool air that escaped from behind it was musty and had the metallic tang of old magic. Strong magic.

  Ambrosia Hayden had summoned for her daughter, so the professor was obliged to trot down all those stairs (considering the massive amounts of money Heather’s parents had donated to the school over the years, you’d think they’d have installed an elevator or three) and dust off the magic mirror. Thankfully, the Head Witch no longer made scolding remarks to Heather in reference to her mother’s flagrant disregard for school rules. Ambrosia Hayden listened to the Harmswood administration as little as she listened to her middle daughter.

  “Come in, Miss Hayden. It’ll be just a moment while I get the spell calibrated to the location your mother specified in her summons.”
r />   Heather hadn’t been called home to the lonely house in Massachusetts, thank the goddess. She was going to Vermont.

  Vermont.

  Just thinking about it made Heather’s heart feel ten times lighter.

  Impatiently, she scanned the shelves while she waited. When students spoke about this vault it was in whispers, as if it were some architectural wonder that Indiana Jones might discover, full of columns, stained glass, elaborate carvings, and mysterious treasures. How disappointed they would be if they could see the dank and dirty thing first hand. It was little more than an oversized stone closet. Or a tomb.

  A crypt for mysterious treasures.

  She could make out a block, some sort of egg, and a winged spherical thing…most of the items slept like corpses under a thick layer of dust, rendering them all bland, ash-colored lumps. Except that annoying feather, of course—the silver-gray of its edges twinkled in the shaft of light that slipped in through the open door.

  I wonder if I’m the most powerful talisman in the room now, thought Heather.

  Doubt it, answered the voice in her head.

  On the off chance that any of the magical objects around her were remotely active, Heather closed her eyes and wished the feather out of her life, once and for all. But when she opened her eyes again the feather remained there in its lucite box, cheekily wafting in that invisible wind.

  No such luck.

  “That should do it,” said Professor Blake. The magic mirror shimmered with a silver blue light. “Are you ready?”

  She doesn’t want the truth, said the voice.

  “Yes,” Heather told the professor. “I’m ready.”

  “Please give your parents my best,” Professor Blake lied in return. “And be sure to send me another summons when you’re ready to come home, so I’ll know to meet you.”

  It wouldn’t be the first time Heather had arrived back at Harmswood to an empty vault. She always wore a pashmina and packed a protein bar in her purse when she traveled this way, just in case.

  She did not want her deep breath to be obvious, so Heather inhaled slowly, touched the not-a-talisman at her neck, and stepped into the mirror. There was another rush of cold wind—it smelled like fresh-cut grass and sugar this time. Tiny bolts of energy shot like warm needles through her skin. When her foot touched down on the other side, it was the hardwood floor of the dress shop in Pinetree. The mirror behind her now was just like all the other mirrors in the place, only this one had her reflection in it. The rest of the mirrors had the honor of beholding the image of Heather’s most excellent mother.

  Heather slowly, quietly, exhaled. “Hello, Mother.”

  “It’s about time.” Ambrosia Hayden’s blood red nails curled around what was surely not her first glass of champagne. “Every time I have to deal with your Head Witch, I have half a mind to have that woman fired.”

  “Fine with me,” said Heather.

  “But her reign will end at the end of term, just like all Head Witches,” Mrs. Hayden went on, as if Heather hadn’t spoken at all. “Shame, really. I don’t have time to educate yet another administrator on the nuances of keeping my wayward daughters in line.”

  Every move her mother made looked like a pose from the cover of a magazine. Every inch of her was flawless: soft, white gold curls, Hermès scarf, ivory silk blouse and pants, rose gold Jimmy Choos. Taylor, Heather’s older sister, sat prettily on the brocade settee across from the bank of mirrors. No one took center stage when Ambrosia Hayden was present, but it didn’t take a trained eye to see that Taylor was cut from the same (very expensive) cloth. She wore pink flats and a sundress covered in yellow peonies, and her hair was strawberry blonde where Mrs. Hayden’s was paler than lilies, but everything about Taylor was still immaculate from head to toe.

  More precisely, everything about Taylor was just a little bit better than anything about Heather. No matter how hard Heather tried, Taylor had been there and done that, and was three hundred times more successful. After seventeen years of attempting to be a perfect daughter, Heather had long since become resigned to second place.

  The only reason she hadn’t given up altogether was because of Katy. Rebellion was Katy’s domain. Heather didn’t have the stamina to play second fiddle to both of her sisters. So she remained lovely and less-than-perfect, unheard and invisible.

  “Hi, Taylor,” Heather said to her sister. “Congratulations.”

  Taylor skipped the greeting. “You haven’t seen Katy, have you? We need to fit you both for bridesmaids dresses today, or the whole wedding will be thrown off schedule.”

  Seriously? Part of Katy’s rebellion was refusing to go to Harmswood. At what point was Heather supposed to have seen her? “No,” was all the answer she gave. And then she spotted the mug in Taylor’s hand. “Is that cider? Can I have some?”

  Heather didn’t miss much about up north while she was away at Harmswood, but she missed real apple cider. Hot, cold, frozen, in donut form…she didn’t mind how it came, as long as it was fresh from the mill.

  “No time,” said her mother. “We can’t wait all day for Katy. You may as well start trying on gowns. If we find one that suits you, it will be her loss. Emily? Show my daughter to the dressing room.”

  As if by magic, a plain shop girl in a dress the color of dead leaves appeared to usher Heather into an adjacent salon. Seven gowns hung on separate hooks around the small room. They were all sleeveless halter tops in varying shades of pastel, save for one that was a beautiful, rich turquoise. That was the dress. But it wasn’t Heather’s choice to make.

  Three witches. Seven dresses. Apples. The voice inside her head laughed. This place sort of feels like a fairy tale, doesn’t it?

  Heather scowled into the mirror. She’d been hearing the voice in her head more and more since that meeting with Professor Blake. She’d written it off as her subconscious or something…something who called itself her guardian angel and spoke words Heather didn’t know the meaning of.

  Heather tossed her black pashmina and purse on the bench and lifted a mauve dress from its hook. If she put the turquoise one on first, Mother would dismiss it immediately. Heather had to be strategic about this.

  “I’d like some cider, please, Emily,” she asked the shop girl. Based on past events, Heather knew that no one else would see to her refreshment if she didn’t do it herself.

  “I’m afraid there’s none left,” the shop girl said quickly.

  Heather might have been powerless inside her messed-up family, but the same could not be said outside of it. Heather turned and gave the shop girl her iciest stare. “Then send someone down to the mill to fetch it. Someone other than you, because you will need to come back here and zip me up.”

  Emily’s eyes widened. “Yes, miss,” she said, and then scampered away.

  Heather shimmied out of her own short black dress, but left her shoes on. They were sandals—adequate for a Georgia spring, but completely inappropriate for both a bridesmaid’s dress and Vermont’s mud season. If she’d worn boots, Mother would have suspected that Heather wanted to stay—she’d brave whatever nonsense her family threw at her and ruin a decent pair of sandals for the chance to spend the night at Brighton Lodge. If she’d worn heels, it would have looked like Heather was trying too hard. Mother would have made countless snide remarks about Heather’s lack of fashion sense. Sandals were the wisest option—Mrs. Hayden would simply call her middle daughter stupid and move on from there.

  Preparing for Hayden family gatherings gave Heather the edge in every mind game. It was also incredibly exhausting.

  It’s not supposed to be like this, you know, said the inner voice. Most families aren’t this difficult. Even families full of witches.

  Every family is unhappy in its own way, Heather responded. She remembered a professor quoting something like that from a book during one of their lessons. I know my family, at least. That makes it easier.

  Does it?

  Instead of answering the voice, Heather grinned
at her reflection in the mirror. The mauve dress looked terrible on her. She took out her severe ponytail and finger-combed her hair while she waited for the shop girl to return. As soon as Heather felt the zipper slide up her back, she walked out of the dressing room.

  “Ben!” It was so nice to see a handsome face in the shop that wasn’t part of her family…yet. “Is Bright with you?”

  “Took you long enough,” Taylor said.

  Heather crossed the shop to greet the groom and ignored her sister, the usual response every time Taylor tried to act like their mother.

  “Hey there, little almost-sis!” Ben caught Heather up in a bear hug. The strength and unconditional joy of his embrace made her feel amazing. “Bright is parking the car.”

  “That color is awful,” said Mrs. Hayden. “Thuban, put the child down so she can try on the next dress. I’d rather not be here all day. And Heather, your choker is all wrong for that neckline. Take it off.”

  Dutifully, Ben gently lowered Heather to the floor and adjusted his glasses. With his dark hair, square jaw and gray eyes, Ben reminded Heather of every incarnation of Clark Kent she’d ever seen. He even had a newspaper job and everything.

  The Brighton elves and the Hayden witches had spent almost every major holiday of Heather’s life at Brighton Lodge. Taylor, Heather, and Katy grew up right alongside Polaris, Thuban, and Alrai—or Bright, Ben, and Ali. The nicknames the girls had given the boys stuck all too easily. They’d made up games, chased each other through the woods, huddled around campfires, rolled down grassy hills, ate apples fresh from the tree…every wonderful childhood memory Heather had originated here.

  As soon as Ben and Taylor got hitched, Heather would have a reason to keep coming back to Vermont forever. Few things in life brought her joy, but this was one of them. Brighton Lodge was so huge that Heather could choose almost any room and hide away forever. Taylor would never even know she was there. And vice versa.

  It made sense that from these two affluent families, at least one of the boys and one of the girls had ended up together. The crazy part was, Ben was so nice. He knew very well just how insane the Haydens were, but he’d chosen to tie himself to them anyway. Taylor was pretty enough, sure, but Heather couldn’t imagine anyone loving her big sister that much. Heck, Heather couldn’t imagine anyone loving anyone that much.