“Oh. Um, yeah.” Jeff lifted it and stared – three feet long, shiny black, two inches thick at the base and tapering toward the top.
“This could be like, a duke’s walking cane or something,” Jeff said. He stood up and struck what he thought was an aristocratic sort of pose.
“Don’t purse your lips; you look like a dork,” Suzy laughed. “And the whole shirtless thing – not classy.” Jeff looked down at his bare abdomen and frowned. When did I lose my shirt? “Hey,” Suzy went on, “So what happened to the alien? Did you move him somewhere?”
Jeff spun, his heart leaping. The alien warrior was gone. And Peter! Looking to the school, his classmate was nowhere to be seen, but two guards were just stepping into the open doorway.
“Griggiax!” He yelled, and the guards scrambled back around the corner to dodge the massive spell. “We’ve got to finish this NOW,” Jeff said.
Suzy staggered over to where the alien had dropped his shield and picked it up. She nodded back to Jeff, her face tired, but set with grim determination. “Alright. Let’s go home.”
FORTY FIVE
Jeremiah crouched, breathless, into the window nook where Lori was hiding. “Okay,” he panted, reaching for the wand, “Should we try it?”
Lori handed it over slowly. “You really think you know what you’re doing?”
Jeremiah shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I know the, uh, magic word. But who knows? Maybe a muggle like me can’t even use a wand.”
Lori shot him a stern look but softened when she saw his expression. She squeezed his hand. “You’ll do it, honey.” Jeremiah nodded, steeling himself, then lifted the wand and opened his mouth. “Wait!” Lori put her hand over his mouth.
Jeremiah listened. “Did you hear someone?” he whispered.
“No, just… shouldn’t we be outside when you do the switch?”
Jeremiah opened his mouth, then closed it. “Wow. That could have been bad.” He stopped talking at the sound of approaching footsteps. They passed down the hallway.
“Okay,” he whispered. “So we’ll have to sneak out.” He looked Lori up and down and frowned; most of her green makeup had rubbed off, leaving her looking more sickly than alien. As he considered her, she wrinkled her nose.
“Something smells like pee here, too.”
“Huh. Weird,” said Jeremiah, turning away quickly. “Okay, what’s the fastest way out?”
As they burst outside a few minutes later, Lori pulled up short, and Jeremiah ran into her.
“Jer!” she breathed, her arms spread out as if to shield him. Looking past her, he saw the wall of tanks assembled, a huge mass of black, gleaming military power. Behind them, silhouetted by the earliest, faint glow of the dawn, was a veritable FLOCK of black military helicopters.
Even as he watched, they grew larger, larger, until they passed directly overhead. He thought he heard, distantly, the guttural shout of an alien’s spell, followed by the thunderous percussion of automatic gun fire as the helicopters opened up on whatever was on top of the castle.
As if that were the cue, the tanks boomed, flashes of light and sound too huge to process. “DO IT NOW!” Lori screamed. Jeremiah spun back to the castle, pointed the wand, and –
“School to castle, castle to school, switch,” Jeff chanted. He was just inside the door of the school, the guards forced back around the corner into the hallway, at least for the moment. Suzy was using the shield to give them cover.
Holding the enormous wand, Jeff had the feeling that he wouldn’t have to build up the spell much, but he wanted to get it right the first time. “School to castle, castle-”
“Jeff!” Suzy yelled. The bloody-footed warrior from earlier had snuck in from the courtyard and made a dive for the wand.
Jeff half turned before the alien collided with him. Jeff was knocked backward into the wall, the alien pinning him, groping for the wand. They wrestled with it back and forth, each trying to point the tip toward the other. Slowly, jerkily, it swung toward Jeff.
Dropping the shield, Suzy hauled back her fist and punched the alien in the face with every ounce of strength she had.
As the alien reeled, Jeff whipped the wand around and shouted. “Switch!”
The spell hit the alien point-blank in the chest, and he was gone. In his place, another alien appeared. A dirty, disheveled alien with smudges of brown on his green skin. Or smudges of green on his brown skin. Jeff narrowed his eyes. “Dad?”
Jeremiah was holding, inexplicably, a wand, and Jeff watched his expression shift comically from fierce determination to confusion to utter astonishment. “Jeff?” He said. “Suzy?” His mouth opened and closed, then opened and closed again, as if someone had pushed his mute button.
Suzy gave a little cry as a spell hit her from down the hall, and she collapsed to the ground.
“Suzy! Shoot! Dad, point that wand down the hall and yell ‘Griggiax’, okay? I’m getting us out of here.”
Jeremiah sputtered, struggling to process what was happening, but then a spell came rippling down the hall, missing his head by an inch. He threw himself down and began shouting the spell.
“School to castle,” Jeff began once more. He held the wand up to the wall of the school as he chanted. In his mind, he pictured his school where it belonged in the heart of Alpharetta. He pictured a castle here, where it belonged, surrounded by the courtyard and the stone wall.
“Castle to school, switch. School to castle, castle to school, switch.” He heard his dad cry out as a spell hit him. It was time. “Castle to school, switch. School to castle, castle to school, switch! Oqur!”
The air
