There was no sign of him on Sub9, either. Although there was a semi-interesting debate brewing about the use of Witchworld hexing hacks. And also a link to an article about increased police crackdowns re: witchcraft across the country. Not. Good.
Binx wasn’t a worrier; nevertheless, she was beginning to worry. Had ShadowKnight’s parents discovered that he was a witch… and not just a witch but the member of a secret resistance movement? Had the police?
Or had the Antima? Binx really didn’t appreciate the fact that they suddenly seemed to be real and present and close by, not just bad news happening in faraway cities (although of course, Binx had no idea what city ShadowKnight lived in). The image of that Brandon guy’s hideous shoulder patch throbbed in her brain. The symbol of the cage over a bonfire. That was how they used to burn witches during the Great Purge, according to the history books.
A sudden loud noise startled her, and she leaped to her feet. Oh, that. It was just the doorbell—some dumb classical music sound bite that her mom had downloaded to replace her previous dumb sound bite, from an old-person rock song. (Yoko Yamada, when she wasn’t teaching at the university or writing one of her boring academic treatises on gender equality, was way into the midlife-crisis home improvement.)
Binx’s phone lit up with the security-video feed. Ridley was standing at the front door, biting her nails (was that a new bad habit?). Behind her, Greta was hurrying up the driveway, clutching an Organic Bliss canvas shopping bag to her chest.
Binx would have to try to contact ShadowKnight again tonight. Pocketing her phone, she headed downstairs, crossed the vast wood-and-glass living room, and opened the door.
“Hey, guys!”
“Sorry I’m late. I had to stop by my house first,” Greta said breathlessly. She held up the Organic Bliss canvas bag. “I come bearing fresh herbs from my garden for our ritual. Also a contribution to the coven meeting snacks… brownies!”
“Thanks. Are the brownies from Organic Bliss? I bet they’re made from hemp dust and pinecones and recycled dairy-free cardboard,” Binx joked. She stuck a finger into her mouth and pretended to gag.
“Ha ha. They’re actually yummy. Wait till you try them.”
“If you say so. Come on in, you guys. It’s just us; the parental unit is at work.”
Binx waved them inside and closed the door, then cast a quick obex spell to make sure that no one could enter while they were having their coven meeting. She noticed that Ridley was still biting her nails.
“You seem stressed. Are you okay?”
“Yes. Well, not really.”
Ridley told them about a run-in she had with an SUV driver who turned out to be Brandon… again. “He called me a ‘little witch.’ I don’t know if he meant an actual witch or if it was just a random insult. I had to cast praetereo on him.”
“Oh, Ridley!” Greta leaned over and hugged her. Greta was a big hugger. “I’m so sorry. You must have been scared.”
“I shouldn’t have used alata on his beer can. I should have just let it go,” Ridley murmured.
Binx was not a big hugger, but she joined in anyway. Her best friend and witch sister was upset. “I probably would have done the same thing. And not reversed the muto. That way, he’d stay a stinkbug for all of eternity.”
Ridley snort-laughed into Binx’s shoulder. “Yeah. Maybe that’s our solution. Maybe we should just morph all the Antima members into stinkbugs.”
After a moment, the hugathon broke up, and Binx led the others into the kitchen. “Let’s grab some beverages to go with the non-animal-cruelty brownies. I think we just got a big Fresh Delivery order, so we should be set. I have popcorn and pretzels upstairs.”
Inside the kitchen, Binx opened the enormous La Cambusa refrigerator and peered inside. “We’ve got like six different kinds of fruit juice, ginger ale, root beer, regular seltzer water, flavored seltzer water, caf and decaf iced tea, caf and decaf iced coffee, lemonade, limeade, sports drinks. And milk. Milk goes with brownies, right? We’ve got regular milk, chocolate milk, and almond milk.”
Greta chose almond milk, and Ridley and Binx both chose chocolate milk. They carried their beverages and the brownies with them upstairs.
Ridley paused in front of a painting on the second-floor landing.
“Is that a Robert Rauschenberg?”
Who? “Sure. Yup,” Binx replied.
“Is it new? I never noticed it before.”
“I guess?”
“Wow, I’ve only seen Rauschenbergs in museums.”
Ridley always seemed to be in awe of Binx’s house and the fancy possessions that her parents had accumulated over the years. Binx didn’t really care about stuff like that, as long as she could decorate her own room however she wanted and have her privacy. Strangely, Binx had never been to Ridley’s—Mr. Stone apparently needed a lot of peace and quiet at home because he worked different shifts for his paramedic job and slept at odd hours—so she had no idea what it was like. She had been to Greta’s house; they used to hold their coven meetings there because her parents were aware of Greta being a witch (and Binx and Ridley, too) and wanted to be supportive. But Teo, Greta’s twelve-year-old brother, had walked in on them once while they were setting up a spell, and Mr. and Mrs. Navarro didn’t want him to learn about the girls’ witch identities in case he might accidentally spill the secret, so they’d decided to move the default location to Binx’s. Binx’s mom was clueless about her being a witch and was hardly ever home (her dad, ditto, plus he lived in Palo Alto now), so that was a plus.
Once inside Binx’s room, they assumed their usual places on the pink shag rug. Binx had arranged cushions in a circle: a Japanese wave
