Gotcha / Magic Camp #4
Angie’s breath came fast and hard. Her fingers formed fists in her lap. Her hair tingled and stood up on her neck.
The mean girls were angry, their power full of rage, their magic dancing with vivid orange mist and sparks. And they were looking at her.
The bald-headed girls surrounded the end of the table, blocking the aisle. They didn’t have eyebrows. Or hair anywhere Angie could see. Angie pushed away the thought that their baldness might be tied to her shadow intent.
The weird silence stretched, falling over the entire dining hall.
The only sound was the mean girls breathing, hard, raspy.
The girls were powerful, both magic-wise and in terms of witch politics.
They were at their final magic camp before being inducted into their family covens.
They were VIPs. And somehow they believed?
— that Angie had cast the bald-headed spell on them.
The girls shuffled closer, Carm putting her knee on the bench and leaning into Angie. The girl’s magic was bright green with traces of purple, but a single thread of Angie’s twisted marking working wove a pale red filament through them. The snake killer was leaning over her.
Behind Angie, Mud banged her oak walking stick hard on the floor, the thump ringing though the hall.
She pressed the stick against Angie’s back like an offering.
Mud had no witch magic. No protection. But she was standing up for Angie.
Tears threatened and a weird laugh scratched at the back of Angie’s throat.
Angie was little but she could use Mud’s stick.
She had been taught to fight by the queen’s guard, by Koun, Mud’s crush.
And Angie had magic. Which she was forbidden to use.
“What did you do?” Carmelina demanded, the same accusation Mud had made, but her words somehow hissed.
Angie shook her green-haired head. Denials froze in her throat, the laughter blocking them down.
“Alopecia universalis working,” a voice trilled through silent hall.
“Gone wrong. Just like the hair working that turned Angie’s hair green.
” The administrator, Dr. Jenkins, walked down the hallway, her heels crisp and sharp in the silent room, the stones on her stone-magic necklace rubbing together, clacking softly.
“Whose hair were you planning to make fall out, girls? Alopecia universalis is a curse working that results in an autoimmune illness, and curses often rebound on the caster. In the same way, the healing working to repair the curse and the illness has been known to spill over, resulting in Hypertrichosis, making the healer hairy all over. Is that what you planned for Angelina Everhart Trueblood? Your mothers and clans would be so disappointed in all of you, right now.”
Administer Jenkins stopped at the table, her presence forcing the girls from Cabin A back. Her eyes roved over all the girls, including Angie and Mud, her lips pursing.
One eyebrow went up. Angie’s Uncle Leo could do that, lift just one eyebrow.
Uncle Leo was a vampire and when she was a kid, he scared people, practically paralyzing them with fear with his voice and eyebrow thing.
Everyone but Angie, who had called him Unca’ Leo and smiled at him with her magic.
Dr. Jenkins had the same terror-inducing effect and Angie didn’t dare use magic on the powerful witch.
The administrator reached out a hand and lifted the red energy strand of Angie’s magic from Carm.
Angie’s stomach dove into her guts and her body went cold.
Unerringly, Dr. Jenkins lifted an orange energy thread from another girl. Jessamine.
Angie’s breath stopped totally and she thought she might puke.
“Interesting.” The administrator dropped the strands.
“Carmelina. Jessamine. My office. Now. The rest of Cabin A will take their breakfasts to their cabin and remain there until I send for them.” Her eyebrows now level, she turned her considering, evaluating expression to Angie and Mud and frowned.
Her eyes like glaciers, she called out, “As you were.” She walked away.
Shooting Angie glares of hatred, Carm and Jessa followed the head witch of Magic Camp out of the dining hall.
The other girls from Cabin A scurried to the food line to pick up their breakfasts.
Without their gang leaders, their hatred of Angie was less visible, and three of the girls who had participated in the working to cast baldness looked downright worried as they filled plates and left the room.
If they got caught for breaking rules this late in the year, it could reverberate onto their families and covens. And onto their own futures.
The rest of the witches were looking back and forth between the mean girls and at Angie and Mud. Angie’s body tried to look small, her shoulders wanting to draw in but she resisted the fear reaction and sat straight, rotating on the bench, back to her breakfast.
Mud accused loudly to the retreating backs, “My waffles are gonna be cold.”
Eventually the sense of dark silence lifted and the murmuring began again, but no one returned to their table. Mud and Angie sat alone, Mud eating, Angie all but choking on her food.
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“The Alopecia working’s been attributed to Blythe, not Carm,” Mud said softly. “She’s being sent home in disgrace.”
“Blythe? No. That can’t be right,” Angie said, closing her math book, a finger stuck in the pages to hold her place. “Wait. The administrator took Carmelina and Jessamine to her office. They accused her, didn’t they?”
“Nobody’s saying, but yeah. Blythe says she didn’t do it.”
Angie leaned against the tree at her back, rocking her head into the bark, thinking it through the way Koun always taught, trying to consider the opponent’s strategy. “Why would Dr. Jenkins take their word for that?”
“You’re gonna get chiggers or ticks,” Mud said, taking a seat beside her.
“Nah,” she said, her mind on the sticky problem. “I made ’em all go away.”
“Nice trick. Can you teach me that?” Mud asked.
“No, but I can give you a family amulet when we get back to the cabin. You think Carm and Jessa’s witch clans, or their parents, have something over Dr. Jenkins? Or maybe over the school?”
“Or maybe whatever it is originates with the school. My internet and cell phone hour is before lunch. I’ll get my sister to run a search on the board of directors and the school’s financials. And on Dr. Jenkins.”
Angie sat up straight and scowled at Mud. “You know stuff. Secrets. Politics. Who’s your sister?”
Mud had the grace to look embarrassed. “Ummm. Nell’s a special agent with PsyLED.”
PsyLED, the Psychometric Law Enforcement agency that policed paranormals.
And . . . worked with the queen’s people to keep tabs on dangerous paranormals.
It occurred to Angie that she could contact her Uncle RickyBo.
He wasn’t an uncle by birth, but was chosen family, and .
. . he worked at PsyLED. Little bits of information fell into place and left Angie instantly suspicious.
Her eyes narrowed. “What office does your sister work from?”
“Knoxville.”
The answer stabbed Angie. That was the same office where her uncle worked. Maybe Mud wasn’t her friend after all. Softly she asked, “Are you keeping tabs on me?”
Mud’s embarrassment vanished beneath a glare of fury. “What! No. That’s an awful thing to say.”
“How did you know so much about witch politics?”
“I looked you and your clan and your family up on the internet, like any sensible person would do when there was so much gossip. Gossip is evil. I don’t gossip,” Mud said, her voice harsh and her accent coming in stronger.
“And it’s not like you’un ever asked about my family or my secrets, ’cause iffen you’un had I’d a tole you. ”
“Oh. I’m . . . You’re right.” Her fear of betrayal vanished, to be replaced by a different fear, this one almost numbing. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Are we still friends?”
“I don’t know.” Mud crossed her arms over her chest, her face still tight with anger. “But . . . I reckon you’re all I got.”
Angie spluttered with laughter. “That’s mean.”
“It’s deserved.”
“Okay. I agree. I really am sorry.”
“You get so suspicious because of you’un being the queen’s goddaughter? People wanting to be your friend to get to her?”
“Or wanting to kill me because of her.”
Mud didn’t react the way Angie expected.
A single leaf unfurled in her hairline but there was no shock.
Instead, her eyes narrowed in what might have been anger.
“That sucks. Good thing you got ways to protect yourself. Magic and all. I got nothing except to give people a severe case of poison ivy.”
Angie snorted with laughter. “That’s a good defensive move, though. It’s nearly eleven. You gonna contact your sister for the search?”
Mud stood and adjusted her overalls. “You really are a piece a work. But I reckon you get a lot of people wanting to use you for your relationship with the queen and digging into your business.” Without waiting for Angie’s reply, she trotted away, her overalls making a scritch-scritch sound as she jogged.
Angie realized the anger in Mud’s eyes had been protective anger. Protective of Angie.
To the empty air around her, Angie said, “I’m stupid.” Then she stood and tucked her math book under her arm. She didn’t need math to go talk to Blythe. With no one in sight, Angie pulled an obfuscation working over herself and headed to Cabin A.
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