Page 10 of A Cursed Noel

“Ah, shad up,” Mimimutters. “I need to focus. Evil wants her dead. Good needs heralive. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.”

“You’re riskingunleashing the apocalypse or some other crazy to save one girl?”

“And a weird one atthat,” Mimi agrees. She shrugs. “What can I do, life as we knowit won’t go on without her.”

“Who?” I demand.“What girl is so special everything will die without her?”

“I never said we’regoing to die,” she replies. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

“Oh, good,” I say.

“It’s more like thepower of darkness will overtake us, force us to feast on our eyeballsuntil evil finishes us off and wears our remains like jewelry,” sheadds.

“What?” Ispit out. “Mimi, this isn’t a joke. What exactly are you tryingto do here?”

She waves me off with abat of her hand. “You’ll know when you need to and forget whenyou have to.”

I was wrong. Mimi isn’tcrazy.

Crazy is too soft aword.

I writhe back andforth, trying to break through the last few layers of her hex.

Mimi ignores myefforts, focusing on the lines she constructed in the dirt. She tapsher finger against her long chin, mumbling to herself.

“I’ll kill us,”she says. “I’ll blow us all to oblivion if I mess this thing up.”

“No kidding,” I sayin that same, slow-mo way.

“Our intestines willshoot out from our groins wrapped like bows around our hair.”

“Mimi!”

Mimi shakes her head.“And it just gets merrier from there.”

“Then stop!” Iyell. “For the love of all, Mimi, don’t—”

“Unless, I get lucky.Reallylucky.” She gives it some thought. “Never mind,we’re all gonna die.”

I stop moving. “Ifyou’re trying to make me feel better, it’s not working, hag.”

She pauses, her neckmaking an odd creaking noise when she turns her attention back to me.In a rush of gray smoke, Mimi pounces and yanks a few hairs clean offmy scalp.

“Ow!” I growl.

She eyes the strandspieces like a precious trophy. “That should do it,” she says.

She returns to thefirst line, starting from the beginning, sprinkling my hair as shehovers. “Evil is eating away at the tigress and those she mostloves.” Like an old-time cartoon, a light bulb appears over Mimi’shead and flickers on. “And when darkness tips the scales in itsfavor, light is needed to even the odds.”

The smoke clears andthe ley lines Mimi drew become nothing more than etchings in theearth. I all but keel over with relief. Still, I can’t let this go.Dad wouldn’t.

I humor her, trying toget a sense of what she’s up to before I pounce. “Right,” Iagree. “You’re always right. But what does that have to do withme?”

Mimi’s smile is sofull of wicked glee I’m certain she only spared me just to eat me.“It means to come out of your darkness, you must become her light.Only then will you vanquish her torment and yours.”

The rows of ley linesspark to life with a sinister gray glow. Birds take flight from theirnests, screaming. I don’t mean they chirp or caw. I mean theyshriek like children running from a clown with red balloons.

Frogs and cricketsbounce by me, snakes emerge from holes, racing past them.