Wicked Cool (The Spellspinners) Read online

  I can’t imagine ever feeling confident about this spellspinner thing. But it would be excellent if I could. Not to mention a huge relief.

  On the other hand, if it means becoming a creature of the night, no thanks.

  On the other hand, Lance seems to pass for normal during daylight hours—at least as well as I do. He fooled Meg, and she’s one of the more perceptive people on the planet. So what am I afraid of?

  I better figure this out. Fast.

  It’s twilight again, and I feel him calling me.

  7

  This time I decided to be strong. It helped that I was still ticked off. Nothing like a little righteous anger to stiffen the spine. That conversation we had while Megan was in the kitchen rankled all day, niggling at the back of my mind. And Lance hung around and hung around and hung around, and Meg chirped and chattered and preened like a songbird in spring, and I thought he’d never leave. And then he finally did, and Meg went home, and I got, basically, a dinner break. And as soon as the sun started to sink, that Feeling started up again.

  It’s like being a smoker, I swear. I’ve always thought that would be a horrible way to live, having a craving sneak up on you every twenty minutes or so. Your life would never be your own. I’ve seen those poor sods sneak out of movies just at the most exciting part because they have to feed their stupid addiction, and I’ve always thought, I will NEVER smoke. Well, guess what. I can already tell that this compulsion to wander away from the house and meet Lance is almost as bad. I’ve got an itch I can’t scratch any other way, and it’s making me cranky.

  I marched out the front door and dropped into one of the wicker chairs on the porch. I sat cross-legged, with my bare feet tucked up under me. And I tried something I hadn’t tried before. You’ve heard the expression, ‘I’m gonna give him a piece of my mind’-? Well, that’s what I did.

  Go ahead, Lance. Read my mind. I double-dog dare you. And here’s what I was thinking, more or less: No semi-romantic meeting at the edge of the woods tonight, pal. If you’re going to invade my world, the least you can do is meet me on my turf.

  I’m not sure I expected this to work. I was mostly just venting, you know, and resisting the pull. But it did work.

  Just like that, he materialized in front of me. Like, snap. One second I was alone on the porch, fuming—and sending snarky thoughts at Lance—and the next second he was there, leaning against the railing just like I’d seen him this morning.

  I’m afraid I jumped. And squeaked.

  The squeak was undignified, but it could have been worse. At least I didn’t scream.

  “Be careful what you wish for, Zara.” He was laughing at me.

  I glared at him. “How did you do that?”

  He smiled and held out his hand. “You want to know? I’ll teach you.”

  “No thanks.” I crossed my arms over my chest so he wouldn’t see me shudder.

  Aw, nuts. Who am I kidding? I crossed my arms over my chest so I wouldn’t reach out and take his hand. The temptation was strong, but the alarm bells ringing in the back of my brain were stronger. My mind was racing a mile a minute. I was scared, I was confused, I was hopping mad. And underneath it all ... I felt incredibly drawn to him.

  Which was exactly why I felt scared, confused, and hopping mad, if you want to know the truth.

  Lance dropped his hand and just leaned there against the porch support, cool as an ocean breeze, watching me wrestle with my inner turmoil. And waiting.

  Eventually, out of all the different emotions vying for the top slot, curiosity won. He probably figured it would.

  I took a deep breath. “Okay.” I uncrossed my arms and placed my palms flat on my knees. “We need to talk.” I saw the tiny smile that flickered across his face, so I added: “Out loud. Stay out of my brain, Donovan. I hate that.”

  “You invited me.”

  “Yeah, well, the invitation’s expired. We’ll do our communicating the old-fashioned way.”

  “The other way is safer.” He spoke so softly, I could barely hear him. He glanced pointedly at the windows behind us, wide open to let the summer evening into the house.

  As if we should worry about Nonny lurking in the dark, trying to eavesdrop. I’m so sure.

  “Get real. We’re not going to shout, are we?”

  “I don’t know.” Laughter lurked in his voice. “You’re pretty pissed at me.”

  “You got that right.” I pointed at one of the other wicker chairs. “Sit.”

  We have four of these chairs, facing each other across a low, square table—sort of a coffee table, except that it’s mostly used for lemonade. I pointed at the chair facing me, but he came over and sat in the one beside me.

  Uh-oh. Too close.

  I scooched my chair around to face him. We were still close, but at least we were facing each other instead of side-by-side. Then I tucked my feet up under me again. I didn’t want to run the slightest risk of our knees touching or anything. I think I suspected that if I touched him ... well, I don’t know what. I had a funny feeling about it, that’s all. So I kept some distance between us.

  Distance didn’t help much, because it was wicked romantic out there on the porch. There was a rim of purple and orange at the bottom of the sky. The summer twilight was soft and warm, with the day just barely clinging to the horizon. And I have to admit that Lance looked good. Worse, he smelled good. He doesn’t need cologne or body spray or anything phony. He has his own deliciousness, somehow.

  And there is something about Lance Donovan that I’ve never encountered before ... never known and never imagined. Even with space between us, I can feel him.

  Most unnerving.

  Lance, of course, didn’t seem the least bit unnerved. Far from it. He relaxed into that wicker chair like it was a La-Z-Boy. I don’t know how he does it.

  “Okay, Zara. Your call,” he said. “What do you want to talk about?”

  Can you believe this guy?? What did he think I wanted to talk about—politics?!

  I choked for a few seconds. Then I managed to come out with, “I want to talk about you. You invade my life without any warning—I don’t know who you are, or where you’ve come from, or what you want—you let me believe that you’re here to teach me a bunch of super-secret stuff on the sly, and then, presto, you suddenly start hanging out at my house in broad daylight—chatting up my friend—”

  He raised a warning finger to his lips. “No shouting,” he murmured. “Remember, no shouting.”

  “I’m not shouting!” I struggled with myself for a second or two. “Okay. Let’s go back to square one. Forget about Meg. Let’s talk about you.”

  He stretched his long legs out and rested them on the glass-topped table, crossing his ankles. Making himself completely at home. In my world! Grrr.

  “I’m not that interesting,” he said. “Let’s talk about you.”

  “You said it was my call,” I reminded him. “And excuse me, but I think you’re interesting. In fact, you’re a little too interesting.”

  He shook with silent laughter. I ignored it. “I thought this was supposed to be a secret? Your coming here. The spellspinner thing. All that jazz.”

  “Sure.”

  “Then what are you doing in my LIFE? How can we keep this on the down-low if you’re hanging around??”

  He wasn’t laughing any more. “What am I supposed to do? Hide down by the creek all day, like the Swamp Thing?”

  Actually, it hadn’t occurred to me that he needed to be anywhere. Lance seems so alien, I think I pictured him materializing at will. Like a genie. Hadn’t he just done that, about five minutes ago? I struggled to keep him from seeing this in my mind, because I realized right away how lame the genie thing was. But I think he caught a glimpse. Certainly his expression turned wry. “That’s exactly how you figured it. Am I right?”

  I hunched one shoulder. “I don’t care what you do during the daytime. And I don’t care where you do it. Just do it somewhere where I’m not.”


  “Zara, you can’t keep me like a pet. I’m not going to show up whenever you whistle.”

  You did tonight.

  “I wanted to.”

  I gave him a hard look. “Stay out of my brain,” I warned him. Again. (Knowing he would ignore it. Again.) “And I don’t want you for a pet. I want you for a fairy godmother.”

  I felt his exasperation. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Teach me. Train me. Be my Hogwarts.” I was trying to sound flip. But inside, my feelings were ricocheting around like popcorn in a microwave bag. I wanted this so badly ... and I feared it so much. I was excited and scared and hopeful and furious. And I hated that I had to ask Lance for anything.

  Lance is not a guy who does favors for free. He was going to want something; some payment for his trouble. I don’t even want to think about what that payment might be.

  But apparently I had said the right thing. He smiled a hot, slow smile. His voice was so soft I could barely hear him. “In that case,” he said, “you want what I want. I told you that’s why I’m here. Let’s get started.”

  I swear, something about this boy makes my heart go pitter-pat.

  Too bad I can’t tell whether it’s from lust or fear.

  At any rate, I sort of wasn’t mad at him anymore.

  So I sat up straight and tried to be matter-of-fact. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll get started. But there have to be ground rules. Because after today, frankly, I’m not so thrilled about having you around.”

  “Aw, Zara. You’re breaking my heart.” He placed his hand over his heart, but he didn’t look heartbroken. So I muttered, “Yeah, right,” and went on.

  “Rule number one. Don’t encourage Meg.”

  One of Lance’s eyebrows went up. “Dare I hope that you’re jealous?”

  “No,” I said sweetly. “But you can hope that I’m a good and loyal friend.” I batted my eyelashes.

  “So you’re looking out for Meg.”

  “Right.”

  He sighed and settled back against the chair again. “How disappointing. Okay, what’s rule number two?”

  “If you come around here during the day, it’s strictly to keep you occupied. We’re not going to get close. I already have a best friend, thank you very much. I can see why you wouldn’t want to lurk in the bushes all day—”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “—but I want a teacher. Not a buddy.”

  We both saw the word boyfriend? hovering in the air between us like smoke. I don’t know whether the half-formed thought was mine or his. Or both of ours. But I hardened my mind against him, just in case. And hoped it was too dark for him to see my blush.

  I had the oddest impression, then, that part of him was laughing at me ... and part of him was angry. Nothing showed on the outside. He was as cool and unruffled as the proverbial cucumber. “Are you always such a control freak?”

  The question surprised me, because I think of myself as a follower rather than a leader. Meg is my decider, and that’s fine with me. The last thing anyone would call me is a control freak. Usually.

  “I guess you bring out my inner dictator.”

  “Well, that’s just fine.” His voice was smooth and pleasant. “We’ll follow your rules, and go over my rules some other time. Because I do have a few, Zara.”

  Uh-oh. I thought my most dignified option was to ignore that last bit. So I did.

  “Here we go,” I announced, giving him a bright, determined smile. “I'm ready for Lesson One. You’re a spellspinner. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “And so am I.”

  “Right.”

  “Which means what, exactly?”

  I sounded all brisk and businesslike, but I wasn’t feeling so brash. I mean, this was the sixty-four thousand dollar question.

  You know what I was most afraid of? That Lance would tell me we weren’t human. That would have just about killed me. Can you imagine? Wouldn’t that be the worst?

  He didn’t say we weren’t human, though. He just said, “We spin spells.” As if it were the simplest concept in the world.

  I cocked my head like a baffled puppy. “Spin them?”

  “Yeah. As opposed to cast them. We don’t need to cast spells to make things happen. With us, it’s ... I guess you’d say ‘organic.’” He shrugged. “We spin spells the way spiders spin webs, or the way silkworms spin silk. It just comes naturally.”

  His examples were from the insect kingdom. Great.

  “So ... what? We’re witches?”

  “No.” He gave me a crooked little half smile. A secret smile. “You and I, Zara ... we’re what witches dream of being.”

  Wow.

  We’re what witches dream of being.

  I actually felt the hairs lifting on the back of my neck.

  Part of me thought: Is that cool, or what? And part of me thought: I knew it. And part of me thought: Wait a minute. Do I even want to go there?

  Because that led to the next sixty-four thousand dollar question. “Are we good?” I asked. “Or bad?”

  This puzzled him. “Nobody is all one thing or the other.”

  “I mean, not us, necessarily. The ... the powers. The gifts. Whatever they are.” It was still hard for me to say these things out loud. “Are they evil?”

  There. I had said it. I had asked the biggest question of all. The one that had haunted me all my life. I think I held my breath, I was so anxious to hear his reply.

  If I was hoping for a yes or no—and, of course, I was—hoping for a NO, that is—I was in for a letdown. I could still feel puzzlement emanating from him. What he said was, “That’s like asking if air is evil.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Your question doesn’t make any sense.”

  “You know what I mean. You must know.”

  “Well, I don’t. So why don’t you explain it to me?”

  This wasn’t going well.

  I gripped my hands tightly in my lap. “Okay. Some people think there is no such thing as good witchcraft. That no matter what you’re trying to do with it, it’s wrong, because you’re playing God. So how can our powers be good?”

  “We don’t use witchcraft.”

  Was he deliberately being dense? I couldn’t tell.

  “We don’t use witchcraft because we’ve got something better. That doesn’t make it right. If the point is that people aren’t supposed to mess with the reality they’re given—” I stopped, because Lance was laughing again. “What’s so freakin’ funny?”

  “What you said.” His shoulders shook. “We’re spellspinners, Zara. We mess with reality. And that IS the reality we’re given.”

  I thought about it for a moment. Light started to dawn. “You mean ... it’s wrong for other people, but not for us?” That didn’t sound right. But still, muscles that I hadn’t known were tense suddenly let go in the back of my neck.

  “Sure.” It seemed to me, from what I was picking up, that Lance had never pondered the question before. But that didn’t stop him from talking like he actually knew. “It’s like, we have to be true to our natures. People who can’t do it, shouldn’t try. That’s why witchcraft is wrong.”

  “Hm. Maybe.” I tucked the question away, to ponder later. Much later. When Lance wasn’t around to distract me.

  Lance uncrossed his ankles and returned his feet to the floor. We were getting into serious territory. His eyes were intense, glowing lime green in the fading light.

  “I know you’re afraid.” His voice was soft. “Now that I’ve seen what your life is like, I get it. You have a lot of ingrained ideas that are all wrong. Or maybe not wrong, but wrong for you. And what you just asked me proves it.” He leaned toward me, resting his forearms on his knees. His eyes bored into mine. “You’ve spent your whole life denying what you are. Trying to fit in, because this is the only world you know. But Zara, it’s no use. You’ll never be one of Them.”

  That’s how he said it: Them. And that one word, utter
ed with just the faintest tinge of contempt—or was it pity?—told me exactly what he thought about people. About everyone on the planet other than, apparently, us. He lumped them all together and dismissed them. They were Other. And they were Less.

  So I guess, in a way, he was telling me we weren’t human. Only he seemed to think that was a good thing. Something to congratulate each other about.

  And the minute he said it, I knew it was a crock.

  My voice went very cold. “What do you mean, ‘Them?’ Who is ‘Them?’ And why shouldn’t I fit in?”

  He moved impatiently. “Ungifted people. The people you’ve been surrounded with, your whole life. We call them ‘sticks.’”

  “Sticks? Why?”

  “I don’t know. What difference does it make? That’s what we call them.”

  Them again.

  “Sticks. I don’t get it. Is it because ‘sticks and stones may break my bones?’”

  He gave a kind of snort. “More likely because they’re stuck without any power.”

  My eyes narrowed. “In other words, it’s not a compliment.”

  “Not hardly. But what do you care? Come on, Zara. You know you’re not a stick. And you never will be.”

  “I may not be a stick, whatever that means. But what if I don’t want to be a spellspinner, either? Are those my only choices?” My hands had curled into fists. “I happen to like sticks. Everybody I love is a stick. What if I say, ‘Thanks anyway, Lance, but no thanks.’ Maybe I don’t want to learn this spellspinning thing. Maybe I’m better off, not knowing.”

  His exasperation pulsed in the air between us. “Knock it off. Of course you want to be a spellspinner.” He steepled his fingertips together, like a kindly priest addressing a deeply troubled parishioner. “Let me put it to you this way. You’d better want to be a spellspinner. You’ll be much happier that way. Because you are one.”

  “Not if I don’t spin spells. Right?” I definitely sounded hostile. I bounced out of the chair and started pacing. “You called the sticks ‘ungifted people.’ So we’re gifted people, right? But we’re still people. People can be whatever they want. I have a choice. Just because I can do something doesn’t mean I have to do it. It’s like—okay, maybe it’s like an addiction. People recover from addiction every day.”