Which she did now, since Mr. D. was busy emoting about immortality or Grecian urns or whatever.
Still no response from the Triad of Evil. Grrrr.
Binx had texted Mira (and Aysha, too) about a dozen times—before homeroom, during homeroom, en route to English, during English. But they hadn’t responded. Nothing. Nada. Had they blocked her again? She’d thought about texting Div, but… well, Div was scary. Especially with that familiar of hers, an albino Brazilian rainbow boa that sometimes traveled with her thanks to an advanced invisibility spell. (Binx did not like the way the snake looked at her.)
They had to have written the shadow message and then used a spell to make it magically appear in Greta’s pocket. Maybe it was in retaliation after the little incident at Starbucks last week? It had been so fun watching the expressions on Mira’s and Aysha’s faces when they realized their iced mocha fraps had been switched out for a powerful burping potion she’d whipped up. But maybe it wasn’t worth it, after all, if the consequence was the pretend-shadow note and Greta (and Ridley) getting all freaked out and paranoid.
“She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die!” Mr. Dalrymple exclaimed, shaking a fist at the outside world (or maybe at the scruffy pigeon on the windowsill?). Another drama moment… Binx took the opportunity to check on the status of her other project, i.e., her password-capture algorithm, which she’d supercharged with a special spell. She needed the password to the Sorrow Point School District server to gather intel on the girl with the dorky purple eye shadow and see if she might be one of them.
And if she was a witch, then what? On the one hand, yeah, it would be awesome to outnumber Div’s coven and dominate in the group spell department. (Binx knew Greta felt the same way, although not because she wanted power for its own sake, but because she disapproved of Div’s kind of magic.) On the other hand, a new member would alter the balance. Would Purple Eye Shadow Girl be a positive or a negative?
“Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips!” Mr. D. cried out.
Binx had the password. Sweet. A few more keystrokes, and ten seconds later, she was in the school district server. More keystrokes led her to the list of new students along with their ID photos.
Gotcha! The girl was a third of the way down the list. In the grainy photo, her eyes were averted, and her smile seemed strained:
IRIS EVANGELINE GOODING
SOPHOMORE
112 SYCAMORE STREET, SORROW POINT, WA
And here were Iris’s transcripts from her previous school in New York City. There were tons of medical records and other records, too. There was also something called an Individualized Education Program; apparently, she received accommodations like extra time on tests because of her generalized anxiety disorder and other special needs.
None of this told Binx whether or not Iris Evangeline Gooding was a witch, though.
No matter. At least they knew who the girl was now. Binx opened an app quickly that would magically download the files to an untraceable off-site server. She also sent a group text to Greta and Ridley with Iris’s name, grade, and home address along with the message:
Our Fluffy Bunnelby with the eye shadow. You’re welcome. (And yes, Greta, that’s a Pokémon reference.)
They didn’t text back. Of course. Ridley was too obsessed with rules to text in class, and Greta’s phone was probably buried in her vegetarian backpack under bags of herbs. They also refused to engage in hexting (hexing via text), which Binx did with Mira and Aysha regularly. (Last weekend, Binx had hexted them by making their outfits smell. They had hexted back by causing her to start doing jumping jacks where she happened to be standing, which was the movie theater downtown.) The Iris girl wasn’t a priority, anyway. The real priority was making the Triad confess to their latest crime.
Because it was one thing for the two covens to argue, disagree, throw shade, spell-block, hext, or perform more serious pranks. (Although Binx had maybe crossed a line when she’d pretended to kidnap Aysha’s familiar, Nicodemus, an Alaskan noble companion dog, for like five minutes; even though she didn’t have a familiar of her own, she was aware that witches and their animals had crazy-strong bonds.) It was another thing altogether to impersonate the Antima and issue threats. That was unacceptable, and they knew it.
Binx’s phone vibrated—not with an incoming text but an enchanted security alert she’d recently installed to warn her about hackers, intruders, and other potential dangers. Had the school district bureaucrats detected her unauthorized access? But that seemed unlikely, since their system was older than dirt. Still, she logged out of their server, just to be safe. She also went off-line in case her piggybacking had tripped any alarms—again, not possible, but it was always smart to be ultra-cautious.
Was the danger of a non-virtual nature, then? She casually put the phone facedown on her lap and glanced around.
Her desk neighbor seemed to be watching her; she didn’t know his name. He wasn’t spying on her, was he? He was probably just admiring her pink hair (it had been cyan last spring, and ice blue before that, and rainbow before that) and her super-kawaii good looks, right?
Binx knew how to handle boys. She went back online, pulled up an Instagram photo, and slanted the screen in his direction. It was a Crabby Cat meme that said: R U BOREDS 2?
Her desk neighbor blushed and smiled. Too easy.
Binx made a Crabby Cat face at him, which caused more blushing and smiling, then she picked up a pen and pretended to pay attention—now Mr. Dalrymple was pontificating about the concept of the sublime, which was the power to provoke ecstasy through art.
Her phone vibrated again—another warning? It wasn’t re: the desk neighbor, though; he was listening intently to Mr. D. jibber-jabbering about the sublime.
Binx
