Then in response, a bunch of them immediately swarmed up to where this little snitch sat, on the tip of a leaf. Most of them clearly furious, some of them already carrying tiny weapons, others wearing bits and bobs as armor. Like they had a little defense force, she thought, and tried not to marvel over it all.
Because right now, she really needed her wits about her.
Seth was already getting up. And he was dragging her with him.
“Okay, we have to run,” he said. “We have to run this instant.”
Then suddenly they were barreling through the undergrowth in what felt like the wrong direction, with a fairy army hot on their heels. And itwashot and itwasheels. She could really hear the fairies now, loud and clear.I claim their butt cheeks for my next batch of bottom soup, one of them yelled.Get his shoes, another cried. Then ridiculously, inexplicably:Dave needs a new house.
So of course all she could think was:One of them is calledDave?
As she tried to avoid crashing into a tree.
In fact, she only managed because Seth grabbed her. He got hold of her arm and hauled her left, just as she tried to go right. And when she almost stumbled into a hole covered with rotten wood, he did something even wilder. He somehow grabbed her around the waist, a millisecond before she went in, and lifted her over it.
All in one smooth motion.
Like he didn’t just have feet that were on wheels.
Every part of him was. Right down to his senses.
“Duck,” he said, and she did, narrowly avoiding a branch that would have whacked her in the face. Then just before they reached the veil, he called out a warning. But it was okay, it was fine, because that sense warned her first. She felt it ring through her, loud as a gunshot.
Then she held her breath. She plunged through.
She made it to the other side, and safety.
And was surprised to find it was actually safety, too. The fairy armed forces hadn’t come through. It was just them, breathing hard, half terrified, half laughing. His hands on his knees, hers on her hips. Everything as it had been before.
Yet not the least bit the same at all.
Oh, she knew it wasn’t the same. She could feel it clearly in everything they did, from that point on. It was in the easy way they walked back to the gorge together, and jumped over. And in the look on his face, when she told him she’d make more potion for him. And how, as she walked up the steps to her house, he briefly caught her hand and clasped it.
Like it was nothing now, to touch her.
Then just as she was feeling overwhelmed bythatgesture, he spoke. He said, “Oh wait, I almost forgot. I got this for you.” And he took a book from his back pocket. A guide of some sort:Taking Your First Steps into Accidental Witchery.
Nothing, really, on the surface.
But underneath, she knew what it meant.
She felt it immediately, keenly: the deal didn’t matter to him.He didn’t care if he was no longer the only source of help to her, and so might possibly lose what she did for him. All that mattered was that he had something she needed—and oh that thought made her heart ache. It made her almost burst with the need to say,I would do the same thing for you.
But by the time she looked up, he had gone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
She knew exactly what she was going to do the second she got in the house: use everything she had so far learned, and this book, to work out how to prepare awesome potions. And then make Seth an extra-strength, super-long-lasting potion that communicated to him exactly what his gift of the book had communicated to her. That told him she would do what would help him, even if it meant she got nothing from him ever again.
I won’t let you think that’s all this means to me,she thought.
Then started in on the book right there, while standing in the hallway with her jacket still on and mud and twigs in her hair.
She examined the cover first—which was just as bonkers as the title suggested. The background was a sickly cream color, with a swirling pink title at the top, and the strangest-looking illustration in the middle. A smiling moon, hugging a fabulously overdone purple flower, above a name—Dr. Annie Taylor Watts—that felt strangely but powerfully familiar.
Though if she was being honest, everything about the cover gave her that same feeling.
But it was only when she opened the book that she realized why. Because there was a tasteful black-and-white photo on the inside flap. And in it, Dr. Watts seemed to be wearing an enormous pair of glasses, and a turtleneck, and a big, floppy wig of the sort Cassie remembered from so many sick days and summers spent watching daytime TV.
