“Is there a problem over there, Mr Darby?” shouted Principal Pakuna from the middle of the cafeteria. The middle-aged ponytailed woman marched towards them, her sleeveless cardigan swinging around her slight frame. She stopped halfway across the room, quietly daring the boys to make her walk all the way over there.
Lars dropped Milo, who felt the shock of the impact rise from his heels to his knees as he landed on the floor.
“No problem.” Lars tapped Milo roughly on the arm. “We were just horsing around.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Pakuna, hands on her hips.
Milo seethed as Lars walked off like nothing had happened. Straightening her cardigan, the principal tailed the bully out of the room.
Lucy, finally done coughing, knelt down to help Milo pick up his belongings. “Are you okay?”
He huffily packed away his papers. “Here we are messing around with a cryptozoological oddity, and an oversized twelve-year-old is what makes me almost wet myself.” He crumpled his maths homework and shoved it into his pack.
“I could kill that fewmet-flinging fool,” Lucy snarled. She picked up a small paper rectangle from the floor. “What’s this?”
Milo glanced over. “Oh. That.” It was the tarot card of the crumbling pyramid. He’d been using it as a bookmark. “I accidentally took it from this weird lady at The Woo Woo Store. Why?”
“Look.” Lucy pointed fiercely at the hand-drawn glyphs on the back of the card. “These are the same symbols as on the Siren Stone.”
Milo stared in confusion. “They are?”
“Why didn’t you mention this before?”
Milo rubbed his neck, still smarting from Lars’s grip. “I forgot about it. The woman told me it was just a Sticky Pines thing. Maybe she saw them on the stone and thought they were pretty?”
“Don’t you see, Fish?” Lucy’s face was so red he was worried her head might explode. “The tarot lady must know something about Thingus, about who made the symbols, about who knows what else? We need to go to The Woo Woo Store. Now.”
“But I still have three more classes,” said Milo. He scanned the cafeteria, clocking all the kids who were staring. A table of popular kids he’d thought were friends avoided eye contact when he looked their way. A blonde girl (what’s her name, Amy Something?), leaned over and whispered something into Joey Peluso’s ear, then they both laughed. Does the whole school hate me? It was certainly starting to feel like it. Flip it. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Demon Deluge
I can’t believe Milo may have discovered a WHOLE OTHER Pretender without even realising it! Lucy rode on the back of his bike seat, clinging to his middle as he bobbed up and down, pedalling through the rain while standing up. If only we’d been talking to one another, I could’ve known about this Marietta Corbin lady weeks ago. How many donkey-kickin’ Pretenders live in Sticky Pines, anyway?
They splashed through a massive puddle as they turned on to Main Street. Lucy was drenched from the waist down, but Milo was wearing a set of yellow rain gear he’d retrieved from his locker that resembled a hazmat suit. It was extraordinarily unattractive but very effective.
“You really think Ms Corbin knows about Thingus?” Milo tossed his oversized hood out of his eyes.
“I’d bet my boots on it,” Lucy responded.
They slid to a stop at the corner of Ravenstone Way. Lucy hopped off and jumped across the overflowing gutter while Milo locked his bike to a lamp post.
Lucy had never been in Ms Corbin’s boutique before. Mostly because it was called “The Woo Woo Store”, and Lucy’s skin hurt whenever she encountered ‘mystical’ mumbo jumbo like that. It was all so boringly human. However, she was now kicking herself for not realising that some of the weirdos in Sticky Pines might actually be, well, weirdos.
The bells on the front door chimed frenetically as Lucy burst through. “Hello?” she called, bumping into a rotating display of dreamcatchers.
Milo caught the stand before it could fall on her. “Calm down,” he warned. “People generally don’t answer questions after you’ve demolished their livelihoods.”
Be cool, Sladan. Lucy took a deep breath and shook out her hair, which had gone frizzy in the rain. Marietta Corbin, I predict your future involves answering a slugload of questions.
Lucy rounded the stand and stopped short. Instead of a woman with red hair, a man in a ruffly white shirt stood behind the shop counter. He was arranging a vase filled with black roses, his fingers adorned with silver rings and blue nail polish. A dark fringe fell jauntily across his forehead. “May I –” he glanced disapprovingly at the puddle gathering at Lucy’s feet – “help you?”
“We’re looking for—” Lucy slipped in the puddle, splatting on the ground next to a gnome statue.
Milo pulled her up by the sleeve. “Some supplies,” he finished. “For…” He looked to Lucy for help with what could possibly be done with the objects sold in The Woo Woo Store.
“Summoning demons,” Lucy offered.
Milo visibly shrank into his raincoat.
“Demons?” The man looked positively appalled.
Huh, thought Lucy. From the look of it I woulda thought this guy was into that sorta thing.
Milo laughed loudly. “She’s joking.” He glared at Lucy. “We were hoping to speak to the lady who works here. She has red hair and reads people’s fortunes?”
“I’m afraid Marietta’s out acquiring supplies for a private gathering this evening,” the man apologised. “You’re welcome to browse until she returns. Ouija boards are in the back.”
Lucy and Milo strolled stiffly to the rear of the shop, huddling between a bookshelf and a case filled with crystals.
“Can we just come back later?” Milo whispered. “This place creeps me out.”
“Maybe that emo guy can give us the address where we can find her.” Lucy took out the unicorn notebook and turned to a fresh page.
“Maybe he would have,” Milo chided her, “if you hadn’t told him we were demon-summoning warlocks.”
“Warlocks aren’t real.”
“Neither are transmutational lake monsters –” Milo
