Turning left onto Lilac Street, she decided to distract herself by tapping a complicated bariolage rhythm against her leg. Bariolage was a violin technique that involved layers of sound—one line a steadily held note, another line a melody, and so on. This particular bariolage was from Bach’s Partita in E Major. Ridley hated Bach. She didn’t hate listening to his pieces, which were almost diabolically elegant, but she hated performing them, because there was no wiggle room for mistakes. Nowhere to hide. But her teacher, Mr. Jong, was making her learn the partita for next year’s competitions. In fact, she would have to play it for him at their lesson next week. All six movements, from memory.
Grrrr.
Ridley sighed and glanced around. The new development, called Seabreeze, was actually not on the sea (more obfuscation); she couldn’t even see Puget Sound from where she was. Only half of the houses were finished; the other half were still under construction. The finished ones were all the same—beige McMansions with faux-Greek columns, six-car garages, and pool cabanas that were nicer than a lot of people’s actual homes. The unfinished houses were in various stages of metamorphosis—everything from wood-beam skeletons on dusty, barren lots to almost completed structures with cheerful orange FOR SALE signs. There were short, truncated sidewalks-to-nowhere in front of the finished houses and no sidewalks at all in front of the unfinished ones.
Her phone buzzed as she turned onto Coyote Way. She paused the bariolage and blinked at the screen, which morphed from black to neon pink. Then rainbow. Then a demented Hello Kitty with bloody fangs. Then back to black.
What the…?
Ridley held the phone at arm’s length, wondering what Aysha and Mira were up to, and which counterspell she should use to negate whatever evil they had sent her way. Also, why were they pranking her? They usually went after Binx.
Hello Kitty popped up again, this time with a cartoon bubble over its head:
You’re on your way right?
Ridley exhaled. Binx. She should have guessed.
She typed a reply:
Nice special FX. Yup I’m on my way, there soon.
Great, I shall have the snax ready.
Ridley tucked her phone back into her pocket and continued down Coyote Way. She always looked forward to going to Binx’s house; it was big and beautiful and had an actual view of the sea, as well as a hiking trail down to the beach. Resuming her bariolage, she began leaping nimbly from one sidewalk-to-nowhere to another, which for some reason made her think about The Matrix (although honestly, what didn’t make her think about The Matrix?). The leaping added another layer of complexity to the already complex bariolage rhythm.
Just then, a silver SUV came speeding from the opposite direction, blasting EDM at full, earsplitting volume and killing Ridley’s musical groove. An empty soda can flew out of the driver-side window and landed in a sagebrush bush.
Ridley’s eyes widened. Really? Did everyone have to be so disrespectful?
Stepping behind a palm tree (Greta had taught her the name of this particular kind, a Chinese Windmill, which could thrive even in the Pacific Northwest), she shrugged off her backpack and rifled quickly through its contents. Random notebooks, a copy of Cloud Atlas, sheet music, her grimoire (which she’d disguised as a creative writing journal)… ah, there it was. Her wand, Paganini. (She’d made it herself, just as Greta and Binx had done with their wands, and enchanted it to look like a violin bow, in case any non-witches ever caught sight of it.)
Ridley generally limited her use of magic in public, but the SUV driver needed to be taught a lesson. Besides, there was nobody else around. She pointed Paganini straight at the soda can. Actually, not a soda can, but a beer can, she saw now. Figures.
She closed her eyes and mentally transformed the beer can into a flying object.
“Alata,” she then murmured under her breath. She pictured its aerial path back to the SUV.
She opened her eyes. The dented beer can rose obediently and rocketed toward the SUV. When it was parallel with the car, it curved right and shot into the driver-side window.
Yes!
The SUV braked with a furious screech of tires. The EDM cut out. Ridley thought she could hear a string of swears, and her mouth twitched up in a smile. Mission accomplished.
As she waited for the driver to leave, she ran her hand idly across the rough tree bark and wondered if she should add palm oil to her new healing potion recipe. She admired the new shade of red on her neatly trimmed nails: Crimson Secret.
Another string of swears, and the driver shifted into gear. Good riddance.
Except… the SUV wasn’t going away. It was going in reverse. Toward her.
No no no no no.
The SUV stopped near the palm tree. The driver jumped out of the car, slammed the door behind him, and headed straight for her hiding spot. “I can see you back there, you little witch,” he growled.
Little witch? Was that just an expression, or…
Ridley’s heart was pounding so hard in her chest that she could feel it drumming against her rib cage. She had to do something. Distract him, make an escape. She jammed Paganini into her backpack and stepped out from behind the tree.
“You must be confusing me with someone else,” she began.
Then froze.
It was him. Brandon Fiske. The guy who’d interrupted the two covens by the vending machine.
“You threw that can at my car, didn’t you?” Brandon demanded.
Ridley forced herself to smile. “What? No!”
“You did! And you’re not getting away with it!”
Brandon moved closer to her, so close that she could smell the sweat and grass and dirt on his lacrosse clothes. He raised his fist as if to hit her.
Ridley stumbled backward. “Muto!” she cried out.
A second later, Brandon vanished, and a stinkbug materialized on the pavement where he had been standing.
Ridley exhaled. Her entire body was shaking. Then she began running as fast as she could. As she
