Chapter 12

“I overheard one of the girls on the phone,” Kate said when she met Laurel at a restaurant next to campus. “She was inviting girls from other Sigma Psi Rho chapters to come visit. Is that how this thing reproduces? Will the impregnated girls give birth to more plants like this one?”

“I don’t know,” Laurel admitted. “The blog I got the spell from written in the 90’s and she didn’t know English very well, and she was writing in code.”

Kate scowled. “You summoned a demon based on a blog post that’s older than you?” She asked forcefully, although not especially loudly. “Without even knowing what would happen?”

“Don’t yell at me!” Laurel whined. “This wasn’t supposed to happen! I took precautions!” She started shaking with nervous energy.

Kate put her hands up in submission. “Okay, chill, I’m sorry. How did you learn all this anyway?”

Laurel shrugged nervously. “I was home schooled until high school,” she said as if that answered the question. Kate gestured at her to go on. “Well, my mom taught me, originally. But just plant stuff. And then I met this really nice demon, Alison, and she taught me other stuff that my mom wouldn’t. Sex magic, and how to trick people into thinking I’m pretty.”

“You are pretty,” Kate interrupted reassuringly.

“No, I’m not. Everyone just thinks I am,” Laurel argued.

Kate was still turning that over in her head when Laurel continued. “Except Alison tricked me and did bad things, and so my mom teleported home from Europe to kill her, even though it wrecked her body. She was always sick after that - always going to the hospital. But she started teaching me grown up spells: how to protect myself, and how to trap demons. Then when she died, her friend Richard took over teaching me. Until I screwed that up.”

“So can this Richard guy help us?” Kate asked.

Laurel shook her head vigorously. “No - I can’t. Not after what I did to him. I would rather let the coven kill me.”

“And they won’t be lenient if you turn yourself in?” Kate asked.

Laurel shook her head. She was beginning to cry.

Kate spoke decisively: “Okay, so I guess it’s up to us. How do we kill this thing?”

Laurel sniffled. “Gasoline? Fire works,” she said. “Maybe you can sneak in in the middle of the night when nobody’s there?”

Kate smiled. “As much as I’d love to be your wheelchair ninja, that won’t work,” she said. “I looked at the schedule: there are going to be girls fucking that thing twenty four hours a day. Martina said they’re actively recruiting burly guys as guards.” She added, “I don’t suppose you can wave a wand and paralyze them all?”

Laurel rolled her eyes at Kate.

“Well I don’t know how this shit works!” Kate complained. “Like, can anyone learn it or do you have to be from a special wizard bloodline?”

“Anyone can learn it, but you have to start really young,” Laurel explained. “It’s not like the movies where just saying specific words causes things to happen. It’s sort of like calculus: a spell isn’t an equation, it’s a set of techniques that help you find the solution. But it’s not just like math either - it’s also sort of like poetry or painting or dancing, too. And then sometimes biology or physics depending on what you’re doing.”

“So the words and the hand gestures?” Kate asked.

“They let you sort of nudge the energies around you into different shapes, so that you can fit them together better,” Laurel told her. “And they also help you keep track of it all while you’re figuring out a solution.

“But it’s different every time,” Laurel went on, glad she had someone she could actually talk to about this part of her life. “It’s like, the thing I did to make that second guy come really fast?” She began.

“That was your doing?” Kate interrupted. “Thank you!”

“It’s okay,” Laurel said, smiling for the first time that day. “But it’s like, he could come over tomorrow and the next day and the next day, and every time I’d have to do the spell differently, because of the tides, and what he had for breakfast, and whether he walked over any power lines, and what color you were wearing. A thousand little things.”

“Damn - sounds like hard work,” Kate said.

“Well, I mean, it’s kinda fun,” Laurel confessed. “But yeah.”