Onny, along with the rest of the class, was already angling toward her backpack, ready to race out of the room.
“Oh. Yes,” said the mayor. He took a bow. “CLASS DISMISSED! And Happy Halloween!”
As everyone stampeded out of the classroom, Onny felt strangely aware of the new silence between her and Byron. She glanced at him, and he held out the tomato pencil. His mouth wasn’t completely sneering at the moment, which was a change.…
Byron shook his head a moment, then said, “Onny, you know—”
But at that moment, someone else stopped by her desk. Onny looked up to see Alexander the Great-Looking grinning down at her.
“So, will I be able to recognize you at the party tomorrow, or is your costume complete and total camouflage?” asked Alexander.
“I don’t know about recognizable, but it’ll definitely be eye-catching,” said Onny, grinning.
“I’d expect nothing less from a girl who performs human sacrifice,” said Alexander, winking before he smiled at Byron. “See you later, mate.”
Byron looked oddly stiff. A determined look crossed his face as he quickly gathered his things and stood up to leave.
“See you tomorrow,” he said briskly.
“What, that’s it?” asked Onny. “You’re not going to wish me luck on my nightly séance or dancing around a campfire with the rest of The Coven?”
Byron smirked. “I need all the luck I can get, so I’m going to hold on to it for myself.”
And with that, he left.
Onny stared after him. Huh. What did that mean?
By then, she was one of the last stragglers. October sunshine spilled through the windows. On the other side of town, herlola’s love potion was calling to her, and Onny’s blood practically popped and fizzed with dreams.
As she stepped into the crisp, autumn afternoon, Onny’s breath plumed into the air. She stared around the honey-cobbled streets of Moon Ridge. Sugar maples and hickory trees lined the streets and swayed in the wind, as if caught up in the unmistakable rhythm of Moon Ridge’s Halloween magic. The world seemed to sparkle with enchantments. Perhaps there really were blue-lipped ghosts resting in the shadows of forests, girls with autumn leaves for hair slipping behind buildings, or scarecrows waltzing across fields. It was the kind of magic that promised alchemy and wonder, where a kiss by midnight really could melt into true love.…
Tomorrow night, that magic would be hers, too.
True had once described Onny’s house as “the kind of place that makesGossip Girllook like it was about peasants.” Much as she hated that sentence, it wasn’t… wrong. Onny’s mom had hired an architect who specialized in medieval revivals, so their home looked like a fifteenth-century Normandy castle. Ivy and wisteria wrapped around the gray turrets and hewn stone walls that sat on seven acres of forests and creeks complete with an actual moat and a drawbridge.
When they were kids, Onny, True, and Ash had unleashed a bunch of frogs into the moat because Onny had been convinced one of the frogs would grow up to be a prince. After Corazon Diamante gave up trying to get the frogs off the property, the amphibians’ musical belching became the soundtrack to their summers. Sure, the frogs never turned into princes, but their music made Onny believe in magic anyway. The Coven would camp outside, lulled to sleep by the symphony of cicadas and violin-legged crickets, the delicate wind chimes tucked into the branches of the willow trees. The only night-light they needed was the winking shimmer of fireflies. It was a magical childhood, one that Onny knew wouldn’t have been possible without the privileges afforded to her by her parents. Despite their wealth—and Corazon’s definitivelyunsubtletaste—her parents had always emphasized humility, charity, and the reminder that no riches compared to the love of one’s family and friends.
What you have is nothing if you give nothing back,her father liked to say.
Onny thought of the love potion waiting for her in her bedroom and grinned.You’re welcome, friends, she projectedinto the universe. Onny could have sworn she heard a growl of thunder that sounded like True and a faint sighing breeze that might as well have been Ash. She’d read somewhere that focusing on what you wanted manifested it in the universe, and so she tried it as she walked up the driveway. She tried to hold, in her heart, the little glass chalice she’d used to make her grandmother’s love potion. In her head, she pictured Alexander Abernathy’s gorgeous face and bite-me shoulders, but because her brain was insistent on annoying her, Byron Frost’s gray eyes kept intruding into her thoughts. He’d looked so weird when he’d left biology class. And then he’d been all brisk and not at all insulting, which almost made her feel like her whole week had been thrown off.
They had a quota of bickering to fill! He’d neglected the quota! He was throwing off her groove! And why? What did that have to do with her parents’ Halloween party? Onny sighed, stepped inside the house, and immediately dropped her book bag onto the floor.
“Hoy!” hissed her mom. “No bags on the floor! That’s bad luck!”
Onny grumbled. For some reason, Corazon Diamante could wave away her grandmother’s powers but believe that literally every action summoned bad luck and could only be remedied with a handful of salt circled around her face and thrown over her shoulder. Onny picked up her bag and was on the verge of an extremely dramatic eye roll when she looked up to see her family kitchen… demolished.
“What… is happening…?” said Onny.
The kitchen was lost under a sea of… things. Staff for tomorrow bustled through the kitchen carrying swans and bears carved out of ice, cauldrons covered in gold foil, chalices designed to look like bones, and glitter skulls; and their oak dining table was covered in smoke machines, silver streamers, antique lace, and long blood-red candles sitting inside gold-clawed holders. A man whose shirt saidMR. DJyelled at an assistant: “I have a strict limit on how many times I’m going to play ‘Monster Mash,’ Karen, so don’t start with me.”
Corazon Diamante poked her head out from behind several carved pumpkins. Onny’s mother was usually impeccably dressed in head-to-toe black, with her pixie-cut hair artfully tousled so that she resembled an elfinengkantofrom the stories Onny heard growing up. But right now, she looked a lot more like a rabid fairy. Without looking up at Onny, Corazon vaguely gestured to the fridge.
“I madearroz caldofor you, and there’s cold green tea in the living room,” said Corazon. “I love you, I’ve fed you, now go away; I have a party to decorate.”
Onny bit back a grin. “School was great. I mean, the army of cannibals was annoying, but they only ate Byron, so it’s fine.”
“Mmph,” said Corazon, fiddling with a string of popcorn.
