Chapter 20
On Thursday morning—nine days before Halloween, six days before the town hall meeting—Pine Hollow woke up to a more magical version of itself.
Piles of fairy-tale pumpkins appeared in front of the post office.
Delicate and ancient-looking wind chimes sang hauntingly in the trees.
Stacks of old tomes held up elegant candelabras in front of the library.
A cauldron filled with dry ice huffed purple-hued mist by the grocery store.
Banners materialized everywhere, hung from the lampposts, trees, and flagpoles.
The blue-black fabric was emblazoned with familiar words.
But the way they had appeared overnight made people linger, savoring an anticipatory thrill of something extraordinary on its way.
“Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars?”
—Nora Roberts
“What you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
—John Anster
“The world is its own magic.”
—Shunryū Suzuki
Talula had rejected Dahlia’s vote to include a quote from Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn.
“Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else’s liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.”
“That’s so dark!” Talula had shuddered. They had reviewed designs on the café’s couch Wednesday afternoon before sending it all to Dahlia’s “emergency banner guy.” Buffalo chicken pizza had been delivered as the spicy inspiration food du jour.
“It’s romantic!” Dahlia had grasped at her heart dramatically, getting buffalo sauce on her shirt.
“You wouldn’t think that if it was your liver.”
“I’d give you my liver.” Dahlia had shrugged.
At that, Talula had found herself halfway between horror and, somehow, horniness.
Dahlia had continued, “It’s the only organ that grows back, no biggie.”
Talula, pink-cheeked, had accused, “You learned that from Grey’s Anatomy.”
“I absolutely learned that from Grey’s Anatomy.” Dahlia had laughed. “But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t give you my liver if you needed it.”
The urge to lean over and lay a big, full-lipped kiss on Dahlia had seized the young sorceress. As if he could smell Talula’s impulse, Simon had stopped gnawing on a pizza crust to give her a warning hrmph.
This was one of Simon’s conditions to their plan. He’d convinced the Council to send extra funds to support Dahlia and Talula’s schemes, but the four-legged sorcerer insisted on chaperoning all Save Samhain operations.
(“Your liver is probably gamey,” Talula had muttered to her canine mentor.
“And yours is full of lovey-dovey ooey-gooeyness,” Simon had hissed back.)
“No liver banners,” Talula had said firmly to Dahlia.
“Fine. I’ll save it for your birthday card.”
Talula had tried not to look too pleased.
On Friday morning—five days until the town meeting, eight until Samhain—Pine Hollow woke up eagerly to see what new surprise awaited them.
A large black box was set up in the center of the town square.
It was about thirty feet tall and wide enough to house a few elephants.
Black velvet curtains hung over one side of the box, swaying flirtatiously in the October breeze.
The area around the box was sectioned off with red velvet rope.
At the top of the structure, old-fashioned Hollywood lights spelled out:
THE MAGIC BOX
“I can’t believe you got that built so fast!
” Dahlia exclaimed as she and Talula strolled around the town square.
They weren’t alone. Curious Pine Hollow residents had come to take a look.
A few teenagers tried to limbo beneath the velvet rope, but a beefy security guard had appeared in the afternoon to dissuade any nosy passersby.
“I know people,” Talula said, shrugging.
By her ankle, Simon hrmphed. Probably because he was the one who knew people.
Specifically, craftsmen elves, who could build just about anything in the time it took Talula to fry an egg.
They were also known as brownies, sometimes known as gremlins.
Simon knew them as Dave, Roger, Pete, and Rowan.
“They’ll get it done,” Simon explained. “Just hide the milk before they arrive. It makes them a bit squiffy.”
The week had been a blur of all-day planning sessions, late-night missions, and lots of spicy food.
Now the town was abuzz with all the mysterious happenings.
Even better? No one had linked it to the Blue Moon.
Not as far as Dahlia or Talula could tell.
But the true test would come in the days to follow.
After their Friday morning stroll around the Magic Box, Dahlia and Talula split off to get some rest. When Dahlia was out of earshot, Simon said, “I’ll be damned. This might just work.”
“I hope so,” Talula murmured. Simon headed home so he could commune with the Council about their progress. Talula headed to the café, where her own mystery awaited—the cookbook/spellbook written in Jinn.
Between concocting schemes and benevolently vandalizing the town with Halloween decor, Talula picked through the translation away from Simon’s observant eyes. The second recipe proved as baffling as the first.
Near and Far Chicken Sandwiches
Wildflower honey from the comb
Pickles from the back of the cold box
Cabbage from the garden
Secret butter from the baker
Crispy fried chicken from Big Blue Restaurant, Venice, California
Brioche from A Sweet Affair Bakery, Brooklyn, New York
1 wild chili from Pran Buri, Thailand
Fresh mango picked from Belém, Brazil
Mayo
Salt and pepper
The names of the cities were spelled phonetically and had been a bear to translate.
But now that the list was complete, the whole thing was an even larger, more complex puzzle for the young sorceress.
Pickles and cabbage, Talula could handle.
But fried chicken from a restaurant hundreds of miles away?
Mangoes from Brazil? The ingredient list was a geographical paradox.
Talula squinted at the hint in the margins. The world is closer than you think. Just knock.
She knew the recipe was about conjuring. But it wasn’t asking her to bend reality to her will or twist the fabric of space around her finger. It was asking her to knock. Knocking implied a door.
At a loss, Talula pictured the door to the Voltlette, where she kept a jar of honeycomb.
She pictured the chipped paint of the pantry door, how the top hinge was always a little askew.
Focusing on the mental image calmed her.
Her shoulders melted down her back; her breath came in slow, meditative pulls.
Details filled themselves in. The scuff mark on the floor near the Voltlette’s door.
The splintering paint spot. The faint, fresh-snow smell of magic that always clung to the wall.
It was such a familiar picture in her mind, she could practically feel the cool metal of the knob in her hand.
Knock knock, she thought.
In her mind, the door opened, tinged with that strange blue of Volta magic. A sprig of dill floated lazily across her vision.
What’s that doing out of the herb drawer? Talula thought to herself. On instinct, she reached for it—
Something feather-light tickled against her palm.
“Yeaaauuughh!” Talula yelped, snapping out of her reverie. Convinced a spider had somehow fallen right into her palm, she shook out her hands and jumped backward. She looked for the spider but instead, found something else.
A bright green frill of dill.
Talula knelt to the floor and gingerly picked up the herb. She took a sniff. On an absurd whim, she looked up at the ceiling.
Nope, no dill leaks in the roof, she thought.
Talula held up the herb, examining it with a little awe. It wasn’t an apple, like Simon had hoped for. Or even the thing she’d been trying to conjure. Still, Talula couldn’t help but clutch the little green sprig to her heart and laugh victoriously.
The world was closer than she thought.
Grinning, Talula tried again. Her gaze softened as she pictured the door to the Voltlette. She let the details fill up in her mind, as if she were standing right in front of it.
Knock knock.
In her mind, the door opened. Talula realized her perspective was moving, like she was watching a movie. The drawer where she kept her honey stash appeared. Talula reached for the honeycomb—with her magic, she realized, not her hand—and blinked back into herself.
A faint mist of blue twined around her fingers.
For a moment, the air over her open palm looked smudged, like the space above her hand had gone out of focus.
Just as soon as it had happened, the world pulled itself back into definition, bringing with it a jar of honeycomb.
Talula held it up, like a trophy shining in the morning light.
Feeling a little buzzed from the magic, she checked the list and reached again.
Soon, Talula had conjured a honeycomb, a jar of pickles (from her fridge at home), and a cabbage (with a bit of dirt on it from one of the house’s overgrown planter boxes). She arranged them on her countertop. Now that the first ingredients were checked off, “secret butter from the baker” was next.
Talula bit her lip. She remembered the farmers’ market rumor she’d heard about what made Mrs. Bochart’s pastries so incredible.
According to market myth, Mrs. Bochart made her own butter from organic milk from local grass-fed cows.
This butter was supposedly the dairy product of the gods, always so fresh that it could turn even the stalest bread into a sensation.
But the ancient spellbook couldn’t mean Mrs. Bochart’s secret butter…could it?
Chills crept over Talula’s skin. Come to think of it, how did a book that looked so old contain the names of modern countries and cities?
It could only be one thing—time magic.
Time magic was one of the rarest, wildest kinds of sorcery. It showed up seldomly, and when it did, big things happened. Big, reality-obliterating things.