Potions and Pageants Read online

  “You don’t need to look so happy about it,” Percy grumbled.

  “What are you going to wear to the first round tomorrow?” Nan demanded.

  “Does it even matter?” moaned Percy.

  “Yes, it does. Didn’t we just say you need to make a good impression for Councilor Strickt? You’re not bad looking at all, you know. I wish I was as tall as you. And I wish my hair would grow as long as yours.”

  “Do you wish it would grow as green as mine?”

  “Oh shut up. It’s not even a bad green. And in some lights it just looks really dark brown.”

  “Nice try, Cherub,” grumbled Percy. “Next you’ll be telling me that green goes really well with pink, and start urging me to wear some frothy rose confection. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re angling for.”

  She mashed up the innards of her baked potato savagely with her fork, and then thoroughly mixed the resulting fluffy steaming mush with her pile of grated cheese. When she was satisfied, she topped it liberally with coleslaw, and shoveled a large forkful of the lumpy mixture into her mouth.

  Nan watched her with a look of mild horror. “Why can’t you do anything like normal people?”

  Percy jabbed her fork towards her plate. “See this big steaming pile of mush right here? It might look like barf, but it’s the darn tastiest pile of barf that you will ever eat.”

  Nan grimaced and looked away, and took a dainty bite of her pizza.

  “So anyway,” said Percy. “Points in favor of sabotage.”

  “Are we back on this?” said Nan, looking severely irritated.

  Percy raised a finger. “One. You know that my-mum-is-a-beauty queen-Bella would do anything in her power to win this pageant. Two,” — another finger — “Nilgun was clearly the front-runner and Bella knew it. You may not have seen the look on her face when Nilgun was chatting all buddy-buddy with the head judge, but I did.”

  “Will you speak quietly?” Nan hissed, looking around again. “Those aren’t points in favor. Those are just… Just random facts!”

  “Exactly, facts!” said Percy, vigorously nodding her head. “I’m glad you agree they are facts.”

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  Percy ignored this. “Three, now that Nilgun is out of the running, that makes Bella the front-runner. And Nilgun is out of the running isn’t she? It looked like her leg was broken.”

  Nan nodded miserably. “I cannot believe what happened to her. Talk about bad luck.”

  “Bad luck, or is it?” said Percy. “Four, Bella was stealing magical stuff from your mum.”

  “She was not!”

  “She might have been. Or she could have got it from wherever you said students have been getting bad magic juju from.”

  “I did not say that.”

  “You did. Five, I told you that I saw that strange black cloud hovering over Bella’s handbag. And then just before all of that so-called bad luck happened to Nilgun, I saw the same cloud of doom around Nilgun’s drink.”

  “Six,” said Nan. “You had a car crash just two days ago and banged your head and now you’re seeing things.”

  Percy slapped her hands down on the table so hard that Nan jumped, and several students at the nearest table looked over inquisitively.

  Some of the potato mush had flown off Percy’s plate and spattered onto Nan’s sleeve. Nan wiped it off carefully with a napkin.

  “Stop that,” she hissed. “There is no need to be so dramatic.”

  She nibbled at her pizza daintily, feigning innocence as if nothing of interest was going over at her table. She smiled blandly at the other students until they looked away.

  Percy took this opportunity to shove several more forkfuls of potato and coleslaw mush into her mouth.

  “Conclusion,” she said a little more quietly for Nan’s benefit. “It makes logical sense that whatever was in Bella’s bag must have ended up in Nilgun’s drink and then Nilgun suddenly had a series of really strange things happen to her that ended up with her being rudely yanked out of the competition. Tell me that isn’t a case for sabotage?”

  “It’s not even a case for coincidence,” said Nan. “Perhaps it’s just the effect of a former Lord of Hell stalking the school halls. He was there yesterday, remember?”

  “I doubt he was hanging around the beauty pageant. I would have seen him. And stop changing the subject. Are you going to take this seriously or not?”

  “What do you want me to do? Call the Sentinel Alliance and tell them we’ve got rogue eldritch teens on the loose?” Nan said sarcastically. “Have them come here and hunt our fellow students down?”

  “Maybe we should,” said Percy resentfully, though she definitely did not mean it.

  “That’s not funny,” said Nan sharply. “Stop seeing danger everywhere. It’s not there. Do you even know how mad you sound?”

  Percy glared at her. “As mad as a monster princess,” she said.

  “Don’t you dare threaten me with that,” said Nan. “You’d better get one of your mom’s really nice dresses for tomorrow. I’ve worked too hard on this pageant for you to make it into a laughing stock. Promise me.”

  When Percy refused to reply, Nan said even more insistently. “I only agreed to let you participate to keep you out of trouble with Councilor Strickt. Are you really going to make me regret it?”

  “You didn’t have a choice. Glory forced you into it.”

  “I can’t believe that you’re using that against me,” said Nan. “Promise me!”

  “Fine, fine. I promise to wear a nice dress tomorrow,” said Percy sulkily.

  “And to practice a talent,” said Nan quickly.

  “Whatever.”

  “Good,” said Nan, looking relieved. “You can do those magic tricks you used to do to entertain your mum’s friends at parties when we were little, remember?”

  “Humble magic tricks?” said Percy savagely. “I’m never doing those again!”

  “Okay, what about a dance routine? We did them all the time back in the day.”

  “Yeah, two cutesy little girls doing synchronized dance to impress mummy’s high and mighty friends. I’m done with that.”

  “It doesn’t have to be cutesy,” insisted Nan. “There are all sorts of trendy new routines that you can find on the internet. You have good coordination. All you need to do is spend this evening practicing something.”

  “No way,” said Percy savagely. “I’m not doing some stupid girly sexy dance for everyone to look at me while dressed in one of mum’s slinky dresses. Who do you think I am? I’m going to do a reading. A recitation. I’ll find the most miserable passage from Shakespeare and read it aloud to everyone. Or maybe a eulogy. Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  “The hell you will. You are going to do something happy and cheery. Tap dance!” Nan said jubilantly. “Remember that one routine that you spent hours practicing? That’s the one. That’s what you’re going to do.”

  She stood up abruptly before Percy could object.

  “It’s decided,” she said. “And just being a participant isn’t going to be enough for Councilor Strickt or Headmistress Glory. So you can spend the rest of lunchtime helping me sell more tickets.”

  She got a large envelope out of her satchel, and handed over a thick wad of tickets to Percy.

  “Get busy,” she said firmly.

  Percy spent the rest of lunchtime walking around the dining hall, waving her tickets around, shouting, “Pretty girls prancing. Prancing and dancing. Get your tickets here!”

  She had thought she might have to forcibly press them upon reluctant buyers, but as it turned out word of Nilgun’s horrible accident had got around and people were now eager to attend the shows in the hopes of seeing something similar happen.

  Percy suspected that if Lucifer attended, they might get their wish.

  10. The Sentinels

  By the time lunch was over, Percy was feeling far too unsettled for her liking. The problem was that speaking
to Nan had made Percy even more certain that her sabotage theory might be true, and she was getting that uncomfortable feeling that she might now have to do something about it.

  If only Nan had taken it seriously, then Nan would have been the one who had to deal with it. But Nan was so wrapped up in making the beauty pageant a success that she couldn’t see what was right in front of her eyes.

  As Percy trudged to her last lesson of the day, Double Science, she had a sinking feeling in her stomach. She had only got her dad back. She didn’t want him to get into trouble and get carted away so soon. And he was bound to get attracted to any trouble that went on in the pageant. Percy could not shake off the idea that something sinister was at play.

  So when Percy spotted Headmistress Glory stalking down the corridor in front of her, she raced after her.

  “Headmistress!” she panted, coming to a stop next to her.

  Headmistress Glory merely raised an arrogant eyebrow as if she was not particularly impressed at having been waylaid in this manner by a mere student.

  “What is it, Miss Prince?” she snapped.

  Around them other students were hurrying to their lessons, but some near the lockers against the walls were listening in. Clearly they still had not figured out the new headmistress, so were curious to see how this interaction was going to go.

  Percy lowered her voice. “That thing you said to me yesterday. I think you were right. Something not good might be happening in school. You should look into it.”

  Headmistress Glory’s eyes narrowed. She now glared at all of the students nearby and said sharply, “What are you loitering for? Get off to your classes at once!” She shooed them with her elegant hand.

  The students snapped to attention as if stung by a whip. Every one of them scarpered.

  Headmistress Glory gave Percy a chilly smile. “I believe I said that you were the one who would need to stop any of the things that might be going on.”

  “How am I supposed to do that if, er, Lucy is making weird things happen? Or making students behave weirdly?”

  “So you think that it really is him, then? I suspected this might happen.”

  Percy shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Be certain, Miss Prince. After all, anything that makes Lucy stronger can’t be a good thing for any of us, can it?”

  “It’s not really my problem,” said Percy heatedly. “He only wants to get stronger because you’re trying to control him. He doesn’t like it.”

  “I am not the problem here. Lucy’s presence anywhere in this realm is going to be disruptive, and so the Powers That Be have confined him here at the school for now. Lucy’s mere presence is going to make things happen. You say they already are. But the worse things get, the stronger Lucy gets. And the stronger Lucy gets, the worse things get. At your school. That your friends go to.”

  “I don’t have any friends here.”

  “Not even Nan?”

  Percy glared at her. Nan had always been Percy’s weakness, and she had forgotten how Glory had always used this against her.

  Knowing that her point had been made, Glory stalked off.

  “But what am I supposed to do?” Percy shouted after her.

  “Find a way to deal with it, Miss Prince,” said the headmistress’s cool voice. She didn’t even spare Percy a backwards glance.

  Percy ran into her last lesson of the day feeling extremely irate. It was Double Science, and it took some time for Percy to find the laboratories.

  When she arrived, the first thing she laid eyes on was Felix sitting at a desk at the front of the class. She hurried over to him. The ghost of an idea had started forming in her mind, and she plonked herself down next to him before she even knew what she wanted him for.

  He looked mildly disconcerted to see her. “Er, that seat’s taken,” he said.

  “Looks empty to me.”

  “No really. Octavia sits there.”

  “Where is she then?” Percy asked irritably.

  It was time for the lesson to begin and snooty Octavia Smythe-Smith did not strike Percy as the kind of person to be late to class.

  “She had to make a phone call,” he said, looking towards the doorway through which Octavia was now entering.

  Octavia charged over to Percy, and said, “That seat’s taken.”

  “By me,” said Percy.

  “Felix doesn’t want to sit next to you,” said Octavia coldly. “So why don’t you crawl over to that empty seat in the back corner? It’s perfect for you.”

  Percy glanced back. The empty seat was in a dark corner where a cupboard blocked the light from the window. She saw that Nan was sitting at the desk in front of it, next to Shara Greyshale.

  Shara was grinning at Percy. Clearly she was enjoying this little confrontation between Percy and Octavia.

  In fact, Percy now noticed that Shara was not the only one. Nearly everyone in the class was looking their way. A table full of girls nearby were glaring at Percy as if it was stupid of her to dare take Octavia’s place next to Felix.

  Great. Now everyone thought they were having a tiff over a boy.

  Percy wanted to snap at Octavia that if anyone belonged in a dark corner it was her, the half vampire, but instead she took a deep breath. Her mother would be very mad if she knew even such a thought had crossed Percy’s mind. Gwendolyn had some vampire friends who she claimed were lovely people.

  Percy made herself say in a very reasonable tone, “Look, Octavia, you can have your seat back after today. But right now I need to speak to Felix. So unless you can’t live without him for this one lesson, can you please go find some other place to sit?”

  Octavia tossed back her glossy raven hair in a very attractive manner. She skewered Felix with a look, and unspoken words seemed to pass between the two. It was probably a demand that he better tell her everything Percy said the moment the lesson was over. Then Octavia shrugged as if Percy was beneath her contempt and went to find another seat.

  There was a murmur of muttering in the classroom as if what had happened had been more noteworthy than Percy thought it was.

  “I can’t decide,” said Percy, “if everyone is cliquey in this school or if it’s just me that’s the problem.”

  She grinned at Felix, inviting him to banter back that it was most definitely her, but he said nothing.

  “Dude, chill,” she said. “I already said you could sit with your girlfriend next time, didn’t I?”

  “I can sit with her today if I want,” he said softly. “And she is not my girlfriend.”

  “Say it a bit louder,” she said, “and those girls over there will throw a party to celebrate.”

  He did not smile.

  “My mum would chub your cheek and say you’re such a serious young chappie,” she told him.

  “Then I’m grateful your mum isn’t here.”

  The teacher arrived and for the third time that day Percy was asked to get up in front of everyone and introduce herself to the class.

  She stood. “Persephone Prince,” she said. “Call me Percy. Not a witch, in case you were wondering. Not a werewolf, succubus or vampire either. I think that covers the main points.” She sat down.

  Half the class, the eldritch half, laughed. The other half looked at her and her green hair as if she was off her rocker.

  “Bonkers,” said one of the girls at the nearby table.

  “Call me Percy,” muttered another mockingly. “As if she was Bond. Mosshead more like.”

  Percy groaned. Mosshead had clearly launched itself into a level of popularity that would not soon be squashed.

  The teacher was busy talking about the forthcoming chemistry lesson, and had not heard the girls. Not that Percy wanted what they had said pointed out to anyone. Felix however had heard and he didn’t look too happy about it.

  “Do you think they’d like me better if I dyed it?” she whispered to him.

  This time he smiled, then said softly, “They wouldn’t care if you weren’t so abras
ive.”

  “I’m not abrasive!” she protested.

  He raised one cynical eyebrow.

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, fine, maybe I am.”

  The class was told they would have to do an experiment, so after collecting their equipment and ingredients from trays at the front of the class, Felix and Percy returned to their desk to get started.

  Percy watched Felix for a few minutes as he hooked up the Bunsen burner to a nozzle that he explained to her was a tap for gas.

  He arranged all the flasks and crucibles and test tubes into his order of preference, and began pouring liquids and powders into them. He was meticulous. It reminded her a bit of Mrs Gooding making potions up in her workshop.

  The teacher started patrolling the class to help students who seemed less certain than Felix did with what they were doing.

  Percy took the opportunity to whisper to Felix, “So a little birdie tells me that you know Councilor Strickt from the Eldritch Council.”

  Felix frowned. “What little birdie?”

  Percy grinned. She tapped herself on the chest. “This little birdie. I saw you at Luca’s Café doing amazing things with a piece of shimmering silver net remember?”

  She flung her arms outwards, imitating the flourishing gesture with which Felix had impressively thrown his net.

  “You were a proper professional,” she said with mock admiration.

  His jaw tightened a little, and he looked around the classroom to make sure that no one else was listening.

  “So what of it?” he whispered.

  “So I have a very important matter that I need to discuss with the councilor in private,” she said. “Little old me has no way of getting in touch with such a lofty personage, but I suspect you do. So you’re going to put me in touch with him. In fact, I need to speak with him urgently. Will you take me to his office, wherever he works, after school today?”

  “No way,” he said. “You can’t go without an appointment.”

  “Aha! So you do know where his office is. I knew it. You work for him.”