Epithet Erased, page 23
She dropped another slice of dough. This one landed on the floor and accordioned into a useless pile.
“Shit!”
Feenie inhaled to squeak in horror but Trixie stuffed their sleeve into her mouth just in time. Naven let out a sigh. The sound spooked Lorelai so bad that she whipped that around and barked at him.
“What?! You got something to say?” Naven stared wordlessly with his ever-closed eyes, oddly piercing despite their absence. “Well?!”
“You made her cry,” he said.
She backed away involuntarily like a puppy from a firework. Then, regained her footing and bared fangs.
“Ugh. My sister is such a little tattletale. I never did anything!”
“And that’s the problem, isn’t it?”
“Shut up, you little green snotrocket. You might be Vincent’s co-judge, but this is my world, remember? I’m in charge!” Her words felt empty. Lorelai couldn’t shake the feeling that she was losing at something, somehow. She glanced at the crushed slab of dough on the floor next to her foot. “. . . You’re messing me up! If you weren’t here judging me the whole time I’d be nailing these cookies!”
“You know, Miss Blyndeff, it really is quite remarkable how nothing ever seems to be your fault, isn’t it?”
She was done listening to him. She flicked her hand in the air to summon a heavy cloth and tossed it over the top of the cage, blanketing Naven and obscuring him from sight. His muffled voice came from underneath.
“That’s a point deduction for using magic.” She slapped the side of the cage to punish him. It rattled angrily. No noise from the occupant inside. Trixie moved to burst out of the cupboard and smack Lorelai in the back of the head but Feenie grabbed them by the hoodie and held them back.
Lori stared down at the cage. Hmph. Good! He was quiet.
. . .
Maybe too quiet.
“. . . Hey.”
. . .
“H-Hey!”
. . .
“. . . Can you breathe in there?”
No response.
Lori gasped and ripped the cloth off of the cage, rocking it back and forth. Tiny teacups and papers fell off the doll-sized table but Naven was undisturbed. He was staring up directly into her face making the exact same expression as before. She snorted as if she’d been tricked and began poking a few air holes in the top of the prison.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
“Oh you really are too kind,” he replied, silver tongue dripping with salt. She harrumphed again, lifting the cage up in the air.
“I've had enough of your sass, you smarmy little yard clipping. I’m putting you in the Cauldratorium! Then I’ll be able to bake in peace!” Lori swung towards the door. Just before they disappeared from sight, Naven's face returned to normal and he flashed a meek smile and a thumbs up at the two fugitives hiding in the corner to reassure them.
The witch power-walked through the dining room and darted to the foyer staircase. When her foot touched the bottom step the entire staircase twisted upwards like a corkscrew-shaped escalator, scooting her up the newly made tower in an instant. Giovanni’s petrified form was still bubbling silently in the icy cauldron with a big dopey open-mouthed grin on his face like a kiddie ride asking you to feed him a quarter. He probably wasn’t able to transform out of stone on his own just yet, which she was thankful for.
She raised her free hand, beckoned to the ceiling. A hook on the end of a chain descended from the aether and dangled obediently in front of her. She lifted Naven’s cage and hung it at eye level. With a flick of the wrist the heavy blanket atop the cage parted like a theater curtain. Naven stared at her, looking thoroughly unamused.
“Listen, you. I don’t want you telling Vincent about anything that you think I did, okay? That’s sabotage! And that’s unfair. So if he thaws and you say anything . . .” The tip of her finger shone bright with angry, magnesium starlight. She leveled it at his head and held it inches from his face. “. . . You’ll be sorry!”
The light was so bright that a normal person would’ve had to shut their eyes, but Naven was way ahead of her. He looked into the light, unafraid.
“Will you murder me?”
She blinked.
“. . . What?”
“Will you murder me?” he asked again. “That is what you’re suggesting here, isn’t it? You’d do that for, what? Some cookies? Blow my brains out? It would be easy wouldn’t it? I’m so small and powerless. And you, you could do anything you want in here, couldn’t you?” He leaned into her. “. . . Have you done it before?”
She backed up a little.
“W-What?!” she asked again, louder this time. She didn’t fully register the words that he was saying. Molly’s speech teacher was a wimpy little fop with the constitution of moldy seaweed. Who was she even talking to right now?
“Have you done it before?” he asked, unmoving. “I wonder . . . Could you do it? Do you have the spine?” He reached up and took her finger in his left hand, pressing it against his forehead like the barrel of the gun. “Well? Go on. Do it.”
She backed away. It took considerable effort. His tiny little hand was so much stronger than it should’ve been, like it was made of metal or something. Her finger wasn’t even glowing anymore.
“No . . .” he decided. “No, I didn’t think so. But with your powers, maybe you didn’t need to. Maybe it just happened anyway. Maybe . . . it was an accident—”
Lori dove forward and threw the curtain back over his cage.
She tugged down on the chain like a pull cord and the cage was yanked up into the air, dangling high over the cauldron just obscured by the smoke. She extended a spell around the cage so Naven wouldn’t be asphyxiated. That was important. The smoke was often more dangerous than the fire. More people died from the smoke than the fire.
Lorelai raced down the stairs hyperventilating. She tried to avert her eyes from the spot where Rick’s body had been lying prone just minutes earlier.
It’s okay.
It’s okay.
It’s okay.
It’s okay.
It’s okay.
It’s okay!
It’s okay!
It’s okay!
It’s okay! It’s okay!!!
It had to be okay!
He’s gone so it’s fine. Out of sight, out of mind.
“. . . You’re bad, Lori! . . .”
N-no . . .
“I hate you.”
Her sister’s little voice echoed in her head louder than a warning siren. You’re bad, Lori! I hate you.
No!
She wasn’t bad! S-she didn’t deserve that!
She was the good guy. Good guys are good and the good guys always win. That’s the rule! She told herself that it was true. It was true because it had to be.
Because if it wasn’t . . .
If it wasn’t . . .
* * *
Trixie and Phoenica peeked out from the fridge top. They were safe.
For now.
“What are we supposed to do?!” Feenie cried. “Molly and Rick have vanished and there’s no way we can defeat a witch by ourselves!”
Trixie breathed hard in and out like a fish on dry land. “I dunno! I . . . I dunno! I’ve never had to fight a giant witch! . . . I’ve never even fought a regular-sized witch!!!”
“Neither have I . . . B-But I guess this could make for good training?” The two girls scrambled like chickens. They had no idea what the rest of the house’s layout looked like, no idea where anyone was, and no epithets to speak of. Trixie pulled at their strawberry hair.
“Hhh . . . I wish Naven told us what to do . . .”
“. . . Maybe he did! He gave us a thumbs-up before he left! Perhaps that was a clue! Let’s look at the ceiling!” They both did.
It was a ceiling!
“Hm. Perhaps we should just . . . hide until Molly comes back?”
“No way, that’ll take forever and a half!” They both fell silent and gazed into the middle-distance in front of them, like children in a convenience store hoping that someone would talk to the clerk and buy their candy for them. Usually that someone was Molly.
“Well,” Trixie grumbled, “I dunno what we’re s’posed to do. But I know what we’re s’posed to not do! Gio said Lori needed to make those cookies for something . . . something important . . . So maybe if we keep messing with them . . . Maybe that’ll be . . . good?”
Phoenica nodded. That made sense. The two of them fluttered over to the dough on the counter. Trixie landed in it and began stamping around like a kid in the mud. They fell over backwards and waved their arms up and down through the mixture.
“Feenie. Look. Dough angel!” Phoenica giggled and Trixie beckoned her over. “C’mon, you try!”
“O-okay! I’ll try my best to be . . . bad!” She leaned down and wrote the word Hello! in cursive and followed it up with . . . a smiley face!!! Truly a heinous criminal.
The clomp-tromp of angry footsteps echoed in the distance. Feenie retreated towards a hiding spot but Trixie cried after her.
“Ah! H-Help! I can’t move! The dough is too sticky!” Trixie wriggled like a gnat on fly paper, useless limbs flailing in the air. Feenie grabbed onto their arms and pulled as hard as she could, but the little angel had far more enthusiasm than muscle mass. It was no good. Trixie was stuck fast. “You’ll have to bite me out! Quick! Chomp through the cookie dough!”
“What?! You . . . you’re not supposed to eat raw cookie dough! That’s against the rules!”
“What are you, a cop?! Just bite!”
“But—!”
“I sold my soul to save you from lizard-tongue friendship, Feenie!”
“Ohhhh, alright! For my best friend, I shall chance the salmonella!” Phoenica slammed her face down into the dough and began to nibble like the world’s tiniest caterpillar. “Nom. Nom.”
“Bite faster! It’s cookie dough, it’s good! They make ice cream out of it!!!”
“I’m trying!” Phoenica squeaked. “I’m not used to eating with my hands!” This was true. Phoenica was the kind of person who ate pizza with a knife and a fork.
“Just . . . bite my arm free!” Phoenica bit as ravenously as possible, which was about as ferocious as a toy dog in a rich woman’s purse. Still, she managed to nibble through just fast enough that Trixie was able to rip their hand free. The two skittered back to their hiding spot atop the fridge just as the stomping of boots reached the door.
Lori huffed and puffed into the room, skidding to a stop in front of the oven. She looked even more disheveled than before. She glanced down at her perfectly serviceable pink overalls and combat boots.
“. . . Ugh, I look like garbage. Can’t let him know anything’s wrong . . . should be better if . . . yeah, that’ll work.” She reached her hands out in front of her and mimed a new wand into existence, pinching and stretching it from the aether. She bippity’d a new hat, boppity’d a dress, and booed an apron down her front. It was more or less the same as the outfit she’d been wearing before. “Yeah, that’ll work,” she said again, steadying herself. She pivoted back to the countertop and her dress swiveled around her like an elegant ball gown.
Somewhere in the depths of the house there was a clattering noise, like a stack of pots and pans falling over. Lorelai perked up like a deer in headlights, terrified that Vincent might be about to round the corner. The tense moment of silence that followed was broken by a second bout of uncharacteristically rude clamor. It couldn’t have been her crush, he was much too considerate a houseguest. She clicked her tongue.
“Ugh. Blugh. It must be him. Well. It’s fine. He’s . . .” She trailed off before her mouth stumbled past the word “harmless”. It didn’t matter. She had a job to do. One by one she cut squares out of the cookie sheets, somehow too frazzled to even notice the damage the pixies had done to it. Her attention was laser-focused on the recipe.
“Bake!” it offered.
Wow!
Helpful.
She sighed and slipped the baking sheets into the oven. There wasn’t room for all of them at once so she popped her smitten on and reached inside. As she pushed her hand deeper into the oven its metal backside extended further and further into the darkness, tripling its volume. She tossed the sheets into its happy mouth in rainbow order.
Normally you were supposed to preheat the oven for a few minutes, but her excursion with Molly had cost her a lot of time and the sand in Giovanni’s hourglass was more than half up. She cheated again and snapped her fingers, flaring the oven to life at a cool 350 degrees. That’s what the temperature had been for the last bake, so this would probably be the same. Lori crouched down and stared through the oven window, eagle-eying the cookies. She definitely wouldn’t let this batch burn.
As her eyes adjusted, she saw the hint of a reflection on the glass’s surface. Lori quickly dragged her mitt across the oven, squeegeeing the reflection away like unwanted dust. The glass shimmered with magic and now it reflected nothing. Good. She could focus on the cookies.
. . . Huh.
Wait a second.
She squinted her eyes at the green dough. Something was wrong with it. There was a little something smashed into one of the squares. No, hang on a second, there were a lot of little somethings smashed into the squares! What the heck was that? Footprints?!
She flung open the oven door and scanned the baking trays. Autopsy report showed signs of itty bitty feet stamping all over her hard work, and some kind of . . . trail of bite marks around a giant hole? Ew!!!
Molly’s stupid friends. This was all their doing!
They must be in here somewhere! Lorelai stood up and scanned the room like a meerkat. She held her hand in front of her eye in an OK shape and looked through the hole between her thumb and her forefinger like it was a monocle. An invisible flash of light shined across the empty space and a reticle appeared, scanning the room. Not here . . . not there . . . Ah! There! Two bratty little heat signatures were hiding behind the basket on top of the fridge. Nice try!
“Do you think she sees us?” Feenie whispered.
“Shhh!”
The brim of the witch’s hat rose above the fridge and cast a shadow over the girls, an impending tsunami. The Hare-idan’s tri-dotted eyes zeroed in on the fairies like a laser sight.
“THERE you are!” she shouted, raising her wand. The bunny ears at the wand’s tip stretched and meshed into a wire frame pattern as it transformed into a flyswatter, buzzing with enough energy to slap them straight out of the bubble once and for all! “C’mere!”
“What’re you doing?” asked a confused, scratchy voice.
Lori whipped around, terrified. Giovanni was standing in the doorway, completely unpetrified. He ducked his horns under the doorframe and looked around.
“Ooh, you find a bug? I can get a cup if you want me to take it outside.”
Trixie opened their mouth to shout to their cousin for help, but Lorelai subtly flicked her fingers upwards and an invisible wall of hard air divided the room, silencing the little imp.
“Oh!” Lori said, loud enough to cover their muted screaming, “You’re back!” She hid the buzzing magic wand behind her back and hoped that he didn’t see.
“Yeah,” Giovanni waltzed over, “I was planning to stay petrified long enough to get optimal chill time for the dough. But I guess you took it out early?”
Shit, that was early?
“Uh . . . yeah!” she started sweating. “I have a LOT of decorations I wanted to add and only so much time to add them, so . . . you know!” She glanced at the hourglass. The red sand was more than halfway down to the bottom.
“Hmmm . . . well, I’m always down for creativity, but the goal of this part of the challenge is to follow the recipe.” She clenched up. He looked at her sternly with his hands on his hips . . . then threw them up in the air. “But! Rules suck. We can fudge ‘em a bit, provided the cookies turn out good.”
“So I can use magic again?” she beamed.
“Hah! No way! But if you want to put your own spin on the recipe, go for it. Your mission is to make some tasty surprise cookies. If you wanna graffiti the heck out of them or something, that’s up to you. I’m not gonna stop you. I’m no baking narc.” He looked around the room. “. . . Hey, where’s Naven?”
“Oh! He . . . left!”
“He left?”
“Yeah!” One of the imps banged on the glass behind her. Lori raised her voice again. “He said!!! Uhhh . . . He said it would be more genuine if neither of the judges saw the cookies until the end!” Bang, bang. “IT IS A SURPRISE, AFTER ALL!”
“Oh, dope. Makes sense. Okay, master chef! You do your thing and tag your cookies with spray paint and stuff. I’m gonna head back to the Cauldratorium. I wanted to try something. Y’know how there’s, like, fire potions for heat and ice potions for cold? I wanna see if I can make a medium temperature potion. Feels like untapped territory, y’know? I wanna find out what happens if you hit an enemy with the raw power of sheer, unadulterated normal.”
“H-hang on!” she slid in front of him. “Naven’s in the Cauldratorium!”
“Cool, he can help.”
“NO!” she shouted. “He said that you should . . . stay separate for now! Because . . . it might affect . . . the judging . . . ?”
“If the judges can talk to each other?”
“. . . Yes?”
“Hmm,” Giovanni considered, “I don’t really get it, but if Naven said so then I guess I’ll believe him. He’s Bear Trap’s teacher so that basically makes him my co-boss-in-law.” Lorelai didn’t understand what half the words he just said even meant, but that didn’t matter.
Oh! She just remembered!
“Hey!” Lori asked, “W-What’s your favorite flavor?”
“Crunchy!” he grinned.
Crunchy?! Crunchy isn’t a flavor!!!
“Haha great! I love it!” she said, screaming internally. “Okaaay, let’s go this way now!” She grabbed Giovanni by the waist and pushed him through the door and out of sight. It didn’t matter how, but she needed to keep him away from those pixies! At least until the contest was over!
