Page 48 of Big Little Spells

“Go,” Ellowyn says, and waves at the crowd with her water bottle. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

I feel like I’m a bad friend for pretending I believe her, but it’s not puking that I’m afraid of here. I’m much more worried about an accidental spot of arson, courtesy of yours truly. So I move through the crowd of pulsing visions and chatter, Georgie at my side. My head pounds, but I don’t feel sick. It’s not that I think I might puke. I’m just...overwhelmed. Maybe a little claustrophobic.

I figure I’ll step outside and enjoy some fresh air, unpolluted by teenage pheromones, when I notice Gil Redd, the Joywood’s Praeceptor, standing at the door I was hoping to use as my escape. Standing there and very clearly telling anyone who ventures near to turn around and go back into the sweaty dance.

“We’re stuck,” Georgie tells me flatly. “The Joywood are clearly prepared to keep us here by any and all means necessary. But I do know a hiding place.” She takes my arm and we weave through kids and more static, younger teachers I don’t recognize, and older ones I do. Eyes seem to follow us as we go, but that could be the paranoia talking.

We get to a little corner where there’s an old-fashioned silver bowl filled with red punch that can only be made entirely—and jubilantly—of chemicals. There are also little plates of cake. The sign beside the table reads Enjoy the 1950s!

Georgie pulls me behind the table into a little alcove where we’re hidden from the crowd, currently out there enjoying a disco inferno, goddess help us all.

“Add a tiny little hiding spell and this is a good place to read,” she tells me.

I study her for a second, then grin. “And maybe hide from Emerson when she wants you to parade around handing out flyers.”

She shrugs, but smiles. I investigate the punch bowl, wondering if anyone’s thought to spike it. “You wouldn’t happen to have a bottle of gin hidden in your dress, would you?”

“Uh, no.”

“Bummer.” Magicking one up myself feels a bit too much to ask in my current state. Besides, I would hate to do something the Joywood would expect me to do.

We stand next to each other, not hidden by a spell but half hidden by the alcove, surveying all the sad gym pageantry. I can tell that Georgie has something on her mind. I assume that in a perfect world, she’d like to talk to Emerson about it. They’ve always been tight. But Emerson and Jacob are on Ellowyn duty—which, when I look over, looks to be more about being cute with each other.

I should find that annoying or maybe gross, but I don’t.

“You can actually talk to me, you know,” I say without looking at Georgie. Only then do I glance beside me. “I don’t bite. Anymore.”

Georgie looks at me, and I assume she’s going to pass on my offer and wait for Emerson. Instead, she looks surprised—maybe that I could tell she’s bothered by something. She chews her lip, then leans closer to me, conspiratorially. “You know what’s weird? The opening spell was different.”

“It’s the same dumb one I remember,” I say, magicking myself a cup of the punch and downing it. I’m hideously disappointed that it’s just punch. What’s the matter with these kids? Then again, I flush with an immediate chemical sugar high that makes me feel like I might actually be seventeen again, so maybe gin would be superfluous.

Georgie is shaking her head. “It’s the one I remember from our first prom. But when I was doing some research in that book Frost gave you, it showed a different incantation for the Beltane celebrations that turned into proms. Not anything off the wall different, just fewer lines and different wording. And then when I cross-referenced, I could find no evidence that there’d been a change. No petition, no law, no nothing. Whoever changed it did it off-the-record.”

“Does there have to be a record?” I ask, only half listening as I stare morosely at the teenage horror around me. The sugar high buzz can’t change the fact that high school is still high school. The same peaking-too-soon guys. The same obviously mean girls. The same pretending-they-don’t-care groups clustered here and there, sending longing glances into the most unlikely places—

I treat myself to more red dye forty.

“There’s supposed to be a very strict record. There are rules that have been in place for centuries.” Georgie is about to say more to me, but someone clears their throat. We both turn and look at a tall, slender man in a pinstriped vest and a bow tie that doesn’t quite match. He’s standing in our exit, blocking us into the little alcove.

We both stare at him, but he doesn’t look remotely familiar to me. Georgie seems as lost as I am.

“Hello,” the man offers. He holds out a hand. To Georgie. “I’m Sage Osburn. I’m a teacher. You’re not students.”

“No, we’re agents of the demonic horde,” I reply, but with a daisy smile, because that’s creepy. “Behold us in all our dark glory, etcetera.”

“Oh. Ah. Well.” His cheeks begin to turn a little pink, but he’s mostly looking at Georgie, who, it has to be said, looks good in her flowy white dress with red ringlets everywhere. Clearly Sage thinks so. “I...was wondering if you wanted to dance? Chaperones can, of course. It’s permitted. Even encouraged.”

He says that last part as if she might have been all for it, if not for the inappropriateness of it all. And like knowing the rules might tip her over and into his arms.

Then again, it’s not like I know what Georgie gets up to around here. She’s a Historian, and everyone knows Historians tend toward the duller side of witchcraft. They know everything but never do anything, I once heard my father bellow at a neighborhood block party.

There’s a beat. Then another. I’m not sure if it’s uncertainty or something else from Georgie, but it doesn’t look like she’s repulsed. So I give her a little nudge, and it seems to knock her out of it. She smiles, wide and beautiful, at the nervous teacher’s bow tie.

“Sure,” she says. “I mean, I’d love to dance. To...”

She tilts her head to one side, and Sage Osburn laughs. Nervously. “We’ve made it to the eighties, I believe,” he says, even more nervously. “This is something of a classic.”

“‘Lady in Red,’” I announce as the song wails all around us, bouncing off the walls as horny teenagers pretend they’re not straight up rubbing themselves against each other out there beneath the spinning disco ball. “Cheek to cheek, Georgie. Get in there.”