Witch Twins (3 page)

When the clock struck eight, the coven was still downstairs, hooting and hollering, eating bonbons, and talking all about Old School. They were telling Miss Buzzard stories. Miss Buzzard had been their Old School Head. “Twice as charming as a werewolf, and half as attractive,” Grandy liked to say about her.

The twins leaned over the banister and listened.

“Not now,” said Claire.

“Maybe in an hour,” agreed Luna.

When the girls crept downstairs at nine o’clock, Grandy was banging on the piano while Demeter, Isis, and Mikki sang three-part harmony to their favorite old show tunes.

“I’ve heard better voices from the seals at Seaworld!” Luna covered her ears.

“Daggers and druids, somebody stop them!” Claire covered her ears, too. “Let’s check back in an hour.”

But by ten o’ clock, the coven had gathered in the kitchen to play poker.

“Aces are wild, and bedtime for twins!” Grandy yelled up the stairs.

“She’s not even going to come up and tuck us in,” said Claire as they folded Grampy’s clothes and changed into their pajamas.

“What did I tell you?” Luna scoffed: “This was a bad time for us to visit. It’s mid month, and we weren’t invited.”

“We weren’t
not
invited,” answered Claire indignantly.

“Yes, but we weren’t
especially
invited,” said Luna.

“I don’t see the difference,” said Claire, who did, but hated to admit when she was wrong. “Anyway, we can ask what to do about Fluff tomorrow. We’ve still got plenty of time.”

But the next morning, Grandy slept late and came down to breakfast with an ice pack over her eyes.

“I can’t tie it on the way I used to,” she grumbled. “If only your grandfather were around. He had a good cure for morning headaches. Something with seltzer water and salt. I can’t remember. Oof, I’m hungry.” She raised her pinkie and cast a quick breakfast spell.

Hens in the hen house,

Chickens on the loose.

Fry my eggs and pour my juice!

But Claire knew immediately she’d got the spell wrong (it’s supposed to be
fox
on the loose) and Grandy was served a saucer of juice with a raw egg floating on top of it. The thing about those easy pinkie spells is that if one word is lost, a lot of mess is made.

Claire and Luna, who’d got up early to clean up last night’s poker chips, piano music, and bonbon wrappers, sat very still and polite at the kitchen table. After Grandy had recast the spell and taken a few bites of fried egg, Claire could no longer wait. As they had planned, she began one sentence, then let Luna take the next, and so on.

“Grandy, a very horrible thing has happened to us.”

“Dad is getting remarried.’”

“And Fluffy is from Texas, which is two thousand miles away.”

“And we know she’s going to want to move back there.”

“Especially after she has Houston, because she’ll want to raise him in the traditional Texan style.”

“With dogies and spurs.”

Claire took a deep breath. Here came the hard part, which Luna had been supposed to say—only she had lost her nerve and put in that unimportant piece about dogies and spurs instead. “And so, it behooves us to call on you, as Head Witch Arianna of Greater Bramblewine, to please help us with our trouble.”

“Please, Grandy!” Luna implored. “We don’t want Dad to have a new family. We were first!”

Their grandmother pushed back in her chair and frowned so hard it was as if her whole face had sunk into her mouth.

A bad sign, thought Claire. She should have known. There had been plenty of warning. First, she and Luna had come to visit on the wrong weekend. Second, Grandy was not feeling well this morning. Third, Grandy had just miscast a spell, which usually made her think that she was losing her touch. The saying goes that powers wane as wisdom waxes, but when all was said and done, Grandy liked her witch power better than her witch smarts.

Now Grandy cracked her knuckles.

“Hear me out,” she began in her forceful Head Witch voice that could freeze a summer raindrop in midair. “The fury of the moment plays folly with the truth. Keep your wits, Luna and Claire, before you speak so strongly.” Then in her regular, Grandy voice, she said, “Now who is this woman, this Fuzzy?”

“No, Fluffy. Fluffy Demarkle,” Claire corrected. “She’s a fashion editor. She eats mostly soy products. She’s allergic to bees. She calls us ‘sugar’ and ‘gals.’ And she is our soon-to-be-stepmother who is stealing Dad off to Texas.”

“Well, it’s of no interest to me. If your father wants to marry a pygmy and move to—wherever pygmies live—then by all rights he should.”

“If we could just learn a small spell, Grandy,” Luna pleaded. “Nothing against Fluffy. Just a simple Keep-Dad-in-Philadelphia spell.”

“Nonsense. Your father’s life is not a game, and you girls know very well that No Destiny Changing is almost as important a rule as No Telling. That’s all I have to say. If you need me, I’ll be in the greenhouse.” With that, Grandy stood up, collected her ice pack in one hand, Wilbur in the other, and stalked out the kitchen door.

“Grandy’s sure in a bad mood. I guess we could have waited until the right weekend.” This was the closest Claire came to a you-told-me-so apology, and she was relieved when her sister decided to take it as one.

“What are we going to do now, Clairsie?” asked Luna gently.

Claire walked around the kitchen in a slow circle, her hands on her hips and her head tilted back.

“Methinks we will have to put this one in the brewing vats,” she said. “And if Head Witch Arianna can’t help us, then we shall take matters into our own hands. But for the meantime, we shall boycott Fluffy.”

“Agreed,” said Luna.

“Let’s keep the boycott a secret from Justin. Because I think he likes old Fluff.”

“Agreed,” said Luna.

And they hooked pinkies on it.

“H
AVE YOU NOTICED THAT
Justin’s been in a bad mood lately? I think he’s in trouble,” Luna mentioned one morning as the girls walked behind Justin to school. All three Bundkins went to Tower Hill Middle School, but while the twins were in fifth grade, Justin was two grades higher.

“Fluffy trouble?” asked Claire.

“I don’t think so,” said Luna. She exchanged a frown with her sister. It had been over a week since Bad News Night, and neither she nor Claire had figured out a single way to stop their father from marrying Fluffy.

The problem was still brewing in the brewing vats.

Claire looked down the street. Even though Justin was supposed to walk next to them so they could all cross the lights together, he preferred to walk a block ahead. He said he was scouting for muggers, but the twins knew the real truth: a seventh grader didn’t want to be seen walking with a couple of fifth graders, even ones who came from his own family.

“What kind of trouble, then?” asked Claire.

“Well, he’s stayed inside the past two recesses.”

“Ugh!” said Claire. Both girls hated indoor recess. “How do you know?”

“Because sometimes when I leave lunch early, I go watch him play that game, Destroyer, and he hasn’t been playing all week. He’s been in the library.”

“Oooh, Destroyer!” exclaimed Claire. “I love-love-love that game.”

“I hate-hate-hate that game,” said Luna, who was terrible at all sports. “It hurts. I always get bopped on the head.”

“Justin’s great at Destroyer,” said Claire. “Kids sometimes cheer when he plays it.”

“Well, to get back to the point,” continued Luna briskly, because she did not like to be reminded that both her brother
and
her sister were more athletic than she was, “at first, I also thought maybe Justin was mad about Dad and Fluff’s engagement. But last night, he told me that Fluffy gave him her Dictaphone.” Luna shook her head in disbelief. “He thinks she’s a real princess.”

“If Justin’s in serious trouble, he’d never tell us,” Claire said. “He thinks we’re squirts.”

“I know. That’s why I was thinking how about we spy on him, like detectives?”

Spying on their brother was always an exciting idea, even if Justin wasn’t in trouble. So the girls hung back, waiting for their brother to cross the next light. When he walked through Tower Hill’s seventh-grade entrance, he was too far ahead to notice them following.

The seventh-grade hall looked different from the fifth-grade hall, thought Luna as they sneaked through it. It was more grown-up, especially since there were lockers in it. (Fifth and sixth graders kept their books in their desks.) Luna could not wait to be in seventh grade, when she would get her own locker. In fact, she already had cut out some magazine pictures of horses, and one of cleft-chinned Captain Xeno from
Galaxy Murk,
to decorate the inside of her future locker door.

When Justin got to his locker, he stopped and glanced around nervously. Then he hunched down and used his shirtsleeve to try to rub something off its surface. Finally, he gave up, grabbed his books, and slunk off to class.

The twins waited until he rounded the corner before they hurried over to his locker. Scribbled in sloppy blue marker, they read:

Bundkin’s my breakfast! S.Z.

“Who’s S.Z?” asked Claire.

“I don’t know,” Luna answered. “We’ll have to do more detectiving.”

Just then a couple of seventh-grade girls stopped at the locker next to Justin’s. They read the locker scribble and started to laugh.

“Poor Justin,” said one girl. “I hear Stew is going to
pulverize
him.”

“Over what?” asked the other girl.

“Oh, who cares? Dumb guy-stuff.” The girls giggled some more and then glided away like a pair of swans. Luna watched them go. Oh, she couldn’t wait to be in seventh grade!

“Stew
Zumback
,” she said, tracing her fingernail over the initials. “He’s on the snow chain list. You know who he is, Clairsie. He’s big and plays basketball and he has a little mustache that looks like his lip needs dusting.”

“Anyone who wants to eat our brother for breakfast should be boycotted,” Claire said sternly.

“The problem is, you plus me equals a whole lot less than Stew.”

“I’m going to do something, anyhow!” Claire slammed her fist against Justin’s locker. It made a crash of noise, and some seventh graders turned to look. “Whoever wants to eat my brother for breakfast has to answer to me first! I’m gonna confront him!”

“I wouldn’t if I were you.” But Luna was not Claire, and once her sister decided to do something, Luna could count on her to do it.

That afternoon, the twins spied Stew Zumback at the bus line. He was stuffing chips into his mouth as fast as he could before the line monitor caught him.

“Now let me do the talking.” Claire grabbed Luna’s hand and marched up. “Are you Stew Zumback?” she asked.

Stew turned, mid-chew, and frowned. “Who’s asking?”

Claire’s mouth snapped shut. Under Stew’s beady eye, she seemed to have lost her nerve. Luna felt an odd and sudden surge of bravery. She stepped forward in front of her sister.

“You keep away from our brother, Justin Bundkin,” she squeaked. “Or one day, you might live to regret it.”

Stew gaped, giving a full view of the potato chip paste inside his mouth.

“Get lost, twins,” he said. “I’m gonna give Bundkin a black eye, just for your trouble. That kid’s got it coming.”

“We mean it!” squeaked Luna, after Claire still had not said a word.

Stew stepped closer. Luna saw that her height stopped at his armpit.

“And
I
mean, get lost!” he roared.

The twins ducked and ran.

“Now you’ve done it,” huffed Claire. “A black eye! Poor Justin!”

“
I’ve
done it?
You
did it! You and your bad idea!”

“Was not!”

“Was, too!”

“At least I did the talking! At least I didn’t just stand there!”

“So?” But Claire looked so embarrassed that Luna decided to drop it.

“Clairsie, I think that instead of looking for fights, from now on we should proceed with caution,”” said Luna. (To proceed with caution, in Luna’s mind, was always the best way to proceed.) “Starting with going home and asking Justin
why
he’s Stew Zumback’s breakfast.”

“Good idea!” Claire started to run down the street.

“Proceed with caution,” Luna warned.

Claire took off like a shot. Luna trailed her all the way home, through the front door, and up the stairs to Justin’s room.

“Justin-Justin-Justin! Why is Stew Zumback going to pulverize you? Why are you his breakfast, huh? Why-why-why?” shrieked Claire, taking a flying leap onto the middle of Justin’s bed.

“Hey! Out of my room, squirt!” Justin ordered, looking up from his homework. But he didn’t say it with his usual Justin energy. He didn’t even make a grab for Claire, who, after finding his hacky sack under his pillow, began playing a lying-down version of the game.

Luna hovered in the doorway. “Is every thing okay, Jus?” she asked.

“It’s nothing. Stew wants to beat me up ’cause I slammed him out of Destroyer three times in one day,” Justin mumbled. His face was red. “I can’t help it if I’m awesome at that game. And Stew’s an easy target. He’s big, and he moves slow. I’d have a harder time hitting a parked car.”

“Is that why you’ve been staying inside at recess?” Luna asked. “Is that why Stew wrote that stuff on your locker?”

“Yeah,” Justin admitted. “The guy’s just a jerk.”

“Poor you, Justin,” said Claire. “We tried to warn him off you today.”

“You didn’t have to do that. I can take care of myself,” Justin answered stiffly. “I’m kind of known as a lone wolf around school, you know.”

“You are
not
,” Luna corrected. “You’re hardly ever alone.”

“Well, if you ever wanted to call me Lone Wolf, though, you could. It’s kind of a nickname I’ve been working on.”

“Okay,” said Luna. She didn’t want to point out that most nicknames were given by others, not self-started. Justin seemed depressed enough as it was.

“Are kids really talking about it?” he asked. “Jeez. Even in fifth grade.” He looked sad. Then he looked grouchy. “Okay, squirts, you have five seconds left in my room before I start hollering. Four, three, two—”