Skylar robbins, p.9
Skylar Robbins, page 9
“I overslept,” Kat whispered. “I was up all night reading Diana’s Book of Shadows. You are not going to believe what we are going to do.”
“And you are not going to believe—this!” I said, whipping out my feather.
Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. “Is
that—?”
“Yes. I rescued this poor little blue jay last night. She was stuck in the attic for who knows how long. Probably flew in through the vent, and that’s what was clunking around up there and crying. She was flying into things trying to escape. It wasn’t Great-Aunt Evelyn’s spirit after all. So now we can finish the spell and get another clue to figure out what the key unlocks.”
“Girls, please,” Miss Yamato said, looking sternly at us. Today her new skirt and jacket were dark red and a little too big, like she expected to grow into them. Kat and I couldn’t wait for the break to start so we could fill each other in. Finally it was 10:20, and we walked across the grass together, looking at the blue-green ocean.
Kat started. “First we need to do the locating spell and find the lock that matches the rusted key. We need to unlock that box, container, or door, and see what’s inside. It could help us with our next spell.” She waited for me to ask.
“What’s our next spell?”
Kat lowered her voice. “There’s a whole section in Diana’s Book of Shadows on garden witchery. It tells how to prepare the earth, and in which phase of the moon we need to plant for the best results. Then, when we have our altar all prepared and the garden is ready,” Kat looked over her shoulder to make sure no one could hear her, then clutched my arm, “we are going to grow gems.”
“Grow what?” There was no way I heard her right.
Kat’s eyes gleamed. “Gems. You know, rubies, emeralds, sapphires? Gems! I copied all the instructions for the spell last night. That’s why I was up so late; I’m not sure when Diana will need her book back.”
“This sounds crazy,” I said.
But two days ago, so did finding a feather from a rescued bird. And I held one in my hand.
21
The Missing Lock Spell
The next morning on the bus Rudy Dean waved me over. “Yo, new girl.” He said it like we’d been friends forever and I wasn’t the new girl at all. He scooted over as much as he could, trying to make room for me.
I sat down next to him and pointed at his sketchpad. “Let’s see.” He opened it up and showed me his latest drawing: fairies flying around the head of a dragon. “That’s sick.”
“Thanks,” he said, frowning at it like he thought it sucked. “Nowhere near done.”
We turned onto Pacific Coast Highway and I looked at the dark blue ocean welling up past the sand. A wave broke, spraying foam. “What are you and Andy doing for your project?”
Rudy laughed. “Good question. That a funny dude.”
“It was nice of you to partner up with him.”
Rudy looked at me with his eyebrows pulled down. “Why? ‘Cause dude’s deaf?”
“Well, yeah. I guess,” I said, feeling small. “Like, isn’t it hard to work out what your project’s going to be?”
“No. Interpreter gets it all translated. Just Andy wants to make a model of this war, like my drawings, you know? Angels against demons and all that? But I’m like, Dude!” He mimed a bad imitation of sign language. “We got like pipe cleaners and pencils to work with. You crazy?” He laughed and so did I.
“Sounds ambitious.”
“Sounds impossible,” he said, riffling the corner of his sketchpad with his thumb.
The bus rounded a curve in the coastline. Across the street from the ocean I saw Shadow Hills rising up behind the houses and shops. “Hey Rudy, can I ask you something?” He nodded once. “I’ve heard rumors about things happening up in Shadow Hills at night. Evil things.” Rudy frowned. “Uh, do you know what really goes on up there?”
He looked past me toward the window on the opposite side of the bus. “Nothin’ good, that’s for sure.” The coast curved again and Shadow Hills were behind us now.
“Like what?”
“Don’t go messing around up there, new girl.” I expected him to add, if you know what’s good for you.
“Why not?” I pressed.
“Look,” he said, and now he sounded impatient. “I heard there’s druggies living in tents up there who’ll rob you blind. Or kidnap you. I also heard Devil worshippers, but I don’t believe in that nonsense.” Rudy frowned. “Best to just stay out of there, period.”
The bus pulled over to the curb and lurched to a stop. I waited for Rudy to continue but he was finished talking and stood up. He followed me into the aisle and we waited for the kids ahead of us to get off.
“’Scuse me,” Gwendolyn said loudly, right behind us.
Rudy Dean turned around very slowly and scowled at Gwendolyn. The smirk fell right off her face. “You in a big hurry or something?” he said, not moving. Gwendolyn actually seemed to shrink right in front of my eyes. Rudy didn’t budge. Kids squeezed around Gwendolyn and past Rudy and me to get off the bus, but he held her still with his dark stare. The bus cleared out and there was no one in front of us anymore. “Bus on fire?” He switched his sketchpad to his other hand and glared at my cousin.
Gwendolyn shook her head nervously. I smiled.
Rudy made her wait another couple of seconds. “OK then. Ready, new girl?” he said, holding out his arm like he was my date at the prom. I put my hand on it and we walked casually off the bus with Gwendolyn following silently behind.
Right after school Kat and I headed for the forgotten garden. We carried ingredients for the locating spell and items that symbolized the four elements. The feather from the rescued bird was tucked inside an evidence envelope with a mussel shell. I had some knotted rope, our sword, and the wand. Kat carried a plastic pitcher, a packet of salt, matches, and a purple candle. We stopped at the stream and let water trickle into the pitcher. Then we hopped across the stones, passed through the rusty gate, and filled the chalice. After circling it with the rope, we were ready to perform the spell to help us find the missing lock.
I’d never believed in magic before, but I was starting to get a tingling feeling. A locating spell couldn’t actually work. Could it?
Kat dropped a sacred stone into the chalice to represent earth. I tossed in some sage and jasmine for air, and added the mussel shell for water. She lit the candle and splashed some purple wax into the water for fire. Then we sat down next to each other on the old stool. Kat handed me the wand, and I stirred the water clockwise while she held the burning candle. When the water was moving fairly quickly, I dropped in the feather from the rescued bird. Then we recited the spell.
“Feather from a rescued bird, in deosil swirling water bind; the correct direction it will point, and the missing item I shall find.”
A bank of fog passed in front of the sun. June gloom. All of a sudden the garden was shrouded in shadow. We watched quietly as the feather spun around and around, finally coming to a complete stop. Kat touched my arm and we turned around and looked up at the small dark window. “You see where it’s pointing, don’t you?”
I nodded. “The rusted key opens something that’s locked up in the attic.”
A chilly breeze blew into the garden. Flowers bent on their stems, and the pile of weeds flew off the wooden box. Kat and I stared at each other. “I told you the vibrations are incredible in here,” she whispered. “It’s like there’s a spirit that’s speaking to us.”
I found an old hose coiled in the corner hidden beneath big nasturtium leaves. “Hold this over the pond,” I said, handing it to Kat. After tugging on the handle, some brownish water squirted out of the hose. “Let it run for a minute and it will probably get clearer.” Sure enough, the murky water got lighter and lighter and soon it was coming out clear. After we filled the pond, we spent the rest of the afternoon pulling weeds and clearing out more dead branches. We watered whatever was still alive, and tried to figure out how we could sneak into the attic to search for the missing lock.
Late in the afternoon a chilly ocean breeze blew into the garden. Kat looked at me and grinned. “Look around,” she said with satisfaction. “It’s starting to look like a genuine magic garden.”
“We made it our own sacred place.” A creepy feeling started to come over me as I looked into the shadowed corners. “The doorway. Like you said.”
Kat nodded. “To another dimension.”
Then the wind blew harder and the feather began to move. It spun around and around, finally coming to a stop. It pointed toward the gate. I looked at Kat and her eyes narrowed.
We heard footsteps coming across the steppingstones.
22
The Easiest Thing to Steal
Kat turned toward the gate and drew huge stars in the air with the sword. I blew out the candle as we heard Aunt Caroline shout, “Gwendolyn? Gwendolyn!”
“Oh no,” Kat cried, her green eyes fierce. “Your cousin can’t find out that we’ve turned the forgotten garden into a sacred place; that will ruin everything.”
“I don’t want my aunt seeing it either,” I said as Kat tossed jasmine branches and sage toward the gate. Then she pointed her ring finger at it and made the sign of the pentacle. Like that could really keep my cousin or my aunt from barging into the garden. I held my breath, sure that any second their voices would grow louder and the gate would swing open. Gwendolyn would point at the chalice and laugh, making fun of the circle of rope surrounding it.
But as I stared at Kat’s angry face, the footsteps retreated. “That was close,” I whispered.
“Too close,” Kat answered. “We have to do something right away.”
“What should we do?” I had Gwendolyn’s fingerprints on file, proving she had stolen my diary. But that wasn’t exactly the crime of the century.
“We’ll do an incantation to render Gwendolyn harmless.”
“A what?”
Kat looked at me like I was four years old. “A spell.”
Relying on witchcraft didn’t make me feel very confident. “Do you know one that actually works?”
Kat ignored the doubtful look on my face. “I’ll ask my sister.”
I took a breath. “This is white magic, right?”
“Relax. It’s nothing evil.” Kat looked at me like I was annoying. “Anyway, I know one thing for sure: we’ll need something personal of Gwendolyn’s.”
“That’s easy. What should I get?”
“Hair out of her brush is the easiest thing to steal.”
“That’s gross.”
Kat stared at me with her hands on her hips.
“Oh all right, I’ll get some.”
“We need to do the incantation before we try to get into the attic to look for the missing lock,” she said.
“Good idea. Aunt Caroline already told me to stay out of the attic. So we need to sneak up there when she isn’t home. We don’t want to have to worry about Gwendolyn spying on us too.”
“Get the hair tonight and we’ll do the spell after school tomorrow.”
At that point I still thought witchcraft was probably fake, and that casting spells was just for fun. I had no idea how dangerous the incantation would prove to be.
23
Incantation
Kat came over after school the next day. Rosa was vacuuming downstairs, and my aunt and uncle were both at work. After checking in from the house phone, we crept down the hall to my bedroom. I hoped Gwendolyn wouldn’t hear us and come galloping out of her room for a confrontation.
“What did you steal?” Kat asked with her eyes shining. I pulled out the envelope containing the frizzy hair I’d taken from Gwendolyn’s brush, and held it open. Kat looked inside, giving me a sly smile and a quick nod.
I locked my bedroom door and led the way outside. When we got to the garden Kat walked through the gate first and cried, “Sky, look.” A pair of ducks floated gracefully on the pond.
“It sure didn’t take very long for them to find the water.”
“Can we get something to feed them?” she asked.
“Do you think they would eat oats?”
“Probably.”
“There’s a ton of them in the stable.” I led the way through the pines and we crossed the lawn.
Her eyes lit up. “Is Carlos working today?”
His golden retriever raced across the grass, wearing a red bandana around its neck instead of a collar. He spun around suddenly and looked at us, his long pink tongue hanging out of the corner of his mouth. “Well yeah, Carlos lives in the guest house. He’s in charge of the horses and my cousin’s goats. He’s probably working in the stable.”
“Let’s go!” Her smile was so intense it was scary. We walked past the pool and Kat fluffed her hair. She reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a tube of lip-gloss, put some on, and handed it to me. “It’s chocolate-mint flavored. Want some?”
I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup yet. But I figured if my parents didn’t care enough to take me to Europe with them, it was too bad if I wore makeup behind their backs. Besides, it was just clear gloss. It wasn’t like I got a tattoo. I pictured my mom lifting her wineglass in a fancy French restaurant, toasting my dad for taking her on such a wonderful trip. They obviously weren’t worrying about what I was doing in Malibu. “Sure,” I said, grabbing the lip gloss and smearing it across my lips. Handing the tube back to Kat, I rubbed my sticky lips together. It smelled a lot better than it tasted.
Sure enough, Carlos was in the stable brushing a sweet horse named Brownie. According to the house rules I wasn’t supposed to go inside the stable without an adult present. But I felt like breaking the rules, so we walked inside. It smelled like animals and grassy hay.
“Hi Carlos,” Kat said, giving him a flirty smile.
“Hola. Hallo Skylar.” He glanced past us through the shadows and looked outside. I followed his eyes and realized he was staring at Gwendolyn’s goat pen with his eyebrows scrunched.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, stepping closer to him.
Kat got a strange look on her face, like she wanted to elbow me out of the way and pounce on him. She walked forward and stood slightly in front of me. “Yeah, Carlos, what’s up?” she asked, touching his arm.
He backed up a little, so Kat took another step closer to him. “Nada,” he said, and went back to grooming the horses.
Turning around, I walked over to the bin and grabbed a handful of oats. When Kat heard me cross the stable, she followed me and took some too. The big white horse, Lightning, stomped her foot and snorted and I jumped. Kat noticed and laughed. She watched Carlos for another minute before we walked back outside. “He’s too cute,” she said, looking at me for a reaction.
“I guess.”
Kat frowned at me. “You don’t think so?”
“He’s just been around for so long he’s like another cousin.”
“OK good.” Kat smiled, but I saw the warning in her eyes. “So you’ll keep your hands off him.”
Back in the garden, we tossed oats to the ducks and watched them snap them up. Then Kat announced, “It’s time to do the spell. Let’s do it under a weeping willow.” We walked out of the garden and passed the stream. “This thick one makes a perfect circle.” Parting graceful willow branches, we crawled into the shadows.
Long skinny leaves made a moist green igloo all around us. We sat down on the damp earth next to the trunk. Kat lit the candles, and then looked at me very seriously. “You do believe in magic, right? Because if you don’t….” she trailed off, like we were little kids and she was about to pick up her toys and go home.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I guess I just don’t understand how it could work.”
Kat looked at me intensely. Halfway between mad and excited. “OK. I’ll prove it to you. Hold your hands up, palms facing each other, about half an inch apart. You’ll feel your energy arc back and forth.”
I held up my hands with my palms facing each other, and brought them slowly together. When they were half an inch apart, I almost fell over. The shock must have showed on my face.
“Feel that?” she said excitedly. “You just created an electromagnetic field.”
OMG, I thought. I did feel it.
“Everything around us has positive or negative energy. You just disrupted its natural flow.”
I quickly dropped my hands into my lap. This was amazing. I couldn’t wait to hear more. “Go on.”
“We all radiate energy. When you concentrate your energy and learn to use it, you can submit another person to your will. Make them do what you want. Make them disappear, if you want. It’s all energy,” she said simply. “You felt it.”
“Yeah I did.” I faced my palms toward each other to be sure. And felt my own energy again.
Kat looked at me like she was calculating something. “OK,” she leaned forward like she was about to tell me a juicy secret. “I’ll give you a demonstration. I’m going to use positive energy to control your body.”
No way, I thought, pressing my hands against the garden floor, ready to stop Kat from controlling my body. There was no way she could make it do something I didn’t want it to do—was there? “OK, go ahead,” I challenged her.
“Um,” Kat touched her chin and looked up into the tree like she was thinking about what she should make me do. “Stick out your right foot and make clockwise circles with it.”
“Deosil?” I smiled.
“Deosil.” Kat nodded as I stuck out my foot and turned it in circles. “I will now make it change direction.”
“Yeah right,” I said, spinning my foot around.
