Page 55 of The Tree of Spirits
“Seriously, what is up with Jareth?” she said. “Who knew he was such a dictator?”
“I don’t think he’s a dictator. He’s just enjoying himself too much. Of all the mentors, he’s the newest Knight. He was an Apprentice last year. I guess the memory of his suffering is still fresh in his mind.”
“Yeah, so he feels compelled to pass along that suffering to the new class of Knights,” Nevada agreed.
The other Apprentices joined us several minutes later. A few of them teased me about missing lunch. The mentors were there too. Jareth made a big show of very slowly eating my taco—and grinning at me the whole time he did it.
I wondered how he’d feel about some chili pepper powder on his toothbrush. The trick was sneaking into the Metamorphs’ castle and into his room…
“Savannah?”
Nevada’s voice pulled me out of my revenge plot.
“Sorry,” I muttered, grabbing a new spray bottle.
“Where did you go?” she asked.
“Everywhere but here.” I frowned at Dante. “Bro, what are you doing?”
“Magic.” He was moving his toilet brush in circles, creating a whirlpool in the toilet.
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’m trying out a super speed spell. Lately, the news has been showing a lot of videos of Knights fighting in the Park. One of them moved his arms around just like this.”
“Super speed, you say?”
“Yep.”
I continued to watch him, but I just didn’t see it. “Are you sure that’s how the spell works?”
“Of course. This is exactly how your boyfriend did it.” Dante winked at me.
Boyfriend? Good thing Kylie wasn’t within earshot.
Even though I’d gotten more than enough of that mortifying ‘boyfriend’ talk yesterday, I forced myself to smile and tease my brother back. “Dante really should concentrate on his work,” I commented to Nevada. “It kind of looks like he’s just movinghis hands randomly, sloppily back and forth. I don’t see super speed.”
But Dante was unperturbed. “That’s the thing about super speed, sis. It’s so fast that you don’t even see it.”
I gave my eyebrows a slow, skeptical lift. “So is all the toilet watersupposedto end up on the floor like that?”
Dante’s gaze dropped to the floor. With a grumble and a grunt, he redoubled his efforts, concentrating on performing the spell using some weird, elaborate hand movements that I was pretty sure were completely wrong. And not magical at all.
Nevada made a high-pitched trilling noise, and the water Dante had spilled streamed into the floor drain.
“Now that’srealmagic,” I told Dante, smirking.
He rolled his eyes at me.
“I’m not the only one who can do real magic,” said Nevada. “Savannah can do it too.”
“What kind of magic can you do, Sav?” Dante frowned when the head of his toilet brush fell off.
“I’ll show you, if you give that thing to me.” I pointed at the broken toilet brush.
Dante handed it over, perplexed.
I grabbed a screwdriver from our toolbox and reattached the brush to the stem. “There you go, good as new.” I handed it back to him. “Just like magic.” I tucked the screwdriver into the waistband at the back of my pants. I’d likely be needing it again.
