Already out of the car, Nick had his hand raised, patting the air in front of him like he was trying to soothe the woman from a distance.
“Ma’am, ma’am,” Nick said. “I’m going to need you to calm down.”
She screamed again, but what I’d taken for rage was more complicated than that. The spell flowed out of her like a spider spinning a delicate web. It was invisible to the eye, but I felt the threads of magic like spider silk brushing my skin.
“Nick,” I said, my voice low. “She’s casting.”
“Do you know what spell?” Nick asked.
Shaking my head, I looked around us, waiting to see what her witchcraft would do.
“You come tomyhouse? Threatenme?” the woman said, pointing at us again. She pulled a wand from a pocket in her mumu.
Then, with the grace of a conductor, she brought every ornament on her lawn to life.
“Is that—?” Nick broke off as a pink flamingo launched itself at him, scratching across my hood with its bound plastic feet. Its beak pierced the metal like a can opener.
An infantry line of plastic gnomes began marching through the gate and across the street toward us.
“Why is she attacking us?” Nick asked.
“Versus ignoring the two strange men lurking in the car across from her house, watching her?” I asked. “Or maybe she knows something about what Griffith is doing.”
I swore and dragged Nick with me behind the car.
Reaching up, I grabbed the scrabbling flamingo by its neck and dragged it over the hood of my car. With some effort, I held it down. Still, I couldn’t use my magic right away.
“Nick, can she see me?” I asked.
Nick’s eyes went wide, and he understood immediately. It was one thing to do fae magic and call it witchcraft when the only people around were alchemists or people who didn’t practice at all. It was an entirely different thing to do magic around a witch of her caliber who would know for certain that what I was doingwasn’twitchcraft.
Her witchcraft was phenomenal, and it used the sort of delicate spellwork my sister Laurel would’ve loved to see. Laurel was the head of her own coven, and loved seeing other witches at work.
I didn’t even know what kind of witch the woman was, although my money was on elementary witch. They’re not as flexible as a kitchen witch like Laurel, but they’re better at bringing things to life.
Either way, no matter what kind of witch she was, if she saw me doing magic, I was going to be in a lot of trouble.
“You’re good,” Nick said, his eyes coming back to me. He was drawing an alchemy circle without even looking at it, and his eyes dropped to the paper to begin the detail work.
The plastic bird under my fingers squirmed, snapping at me, but I focused on the concrete underneath it. With a brush of magic, it woke. Concrete is malleable, its personality matching its use. You can shape it into anything, but for the most part concretesettles. It relaxes into its form and then hardens and stays that way forever.
“Hey,” I said to the concrete. “Wow, I can’t believe you haven’t hardened yet! Just my luck, since I need something that will hold this bird still. I knew I could count on you.”
There was a hesitation. This concrete had been poured decades ago and didn’t remember anything about being soft. I pushed more magic in.
“Yeah, and you didn’t even get any kids writing their initials in you. Wow, you’re holding this bird so tight! You’re awesome.” The concrete softened just enough to envelop the bird and then it was solid again. The bird snapped and struggled, but it was buried in concrete and couldn’t touch me or Nick.
This was what I couldn’t let the witch see. Me talking concrete into softening was going to raise all sorts of red flags with her.
I began digging through my bag, although I had a sinking sensation that I was going to be doing magic with both hands tied. The leaves I’d usually grow into plants were too fae, the jar of sand the same. I didn’t have anything in my bag that I could disguise as witchcraft.
Nick had already drawn three alchemy circles. As he sketched, he kept looking up, quietly counting our plastic enemies.
“Twenty gnomes,” he murmured. “I count five more flamingos.”
There was a shriek like the sound of a horse being ridden by Death himself.
We’d forgotten the reindeer. It was floating above the street, and when it saw us, it dove. We were about to be impaled on tiny plastic horns.
