Witch Doctors Inc: SEASON ONE (Completed!)

Part 5.3

My coolness charm looks down on Addy with an air of superiority. It's a testament to her good nature that she puts up with that thing. I would've drowned it in a cauldron.

Addy's eyes are currently glued to her communications monitor. "Awww," she says. It isn't a that's-so-adorable "aw". It's more like an oh-come-on "aw."

"What's the matter?" I press, swatting away the scarlet phoenix trying to nip at my shoulder. Me and Addy can never agree on the temperature, so we've decided to meet each other halfway. I make up for the difference with my coolness charm, a peppermint-coloured hummingbird that breathes ice. Addy's heat charm, the scarlet phoenix, blazes itself into oblivion and rises from its own ashes every two minutes. Extremely annoying.

"I never win," Addy pouts. She holds the monitor out to me. It's frozen on a list titled "Flying Cart Winners".

"Flying carts?" I question.

"Maya Cerberus has purchased a set of flying carts," she explains. "Fire quartz-powered and made entirely of magnamite. There are only a few in Kadrea."

"You're saying that Maya Cerberus has crystal carts that fly? As in, in the air?"

"Yes! You can zoom around the city in them, in and around the skyscrapers. Imagine that, Lily!" She draws her palm across the air in front of us, eyes wide with wonder. "It's nighttime. Everywhere, the glitter of crystal and glass. And us, shooting along in beautiful carts that never touch the ground. It'll be like flying a spaceship."

Well I've been in a spaceship, but I don't say this. "So what's the problem?" I say instead.

"Maya runs a weekly competition where the winners get to drive the carts around the city on a guided tour. I've been entering for weeks!" She slumps into a tumble of glitter-pink pillows.

We're in Addy's room, of course. I'd never get such pretentious pillows.

"Keep entering," I suggest. "One day we'll all have them, I guess." Inwardly I groan at the thought of zipping around Zilitron in a slab of crystal. I don't like heights. The memory of falling from the sky a thousand years ago is still seared into my mind.

Addy sighs. "I suppose," she relents. "Hey...where's my heat charm?"

"Argh!" I cry, peeling the stupid phoenix off my skirt with a finger of witchy ice mist. No wonder my legs were getting hot.

"You," I growl at the hummingbird, currently shimmering in the air above Addy, "over here. And you, phoenix - I see you on my clothes again, you're going back in the cauldron. Got it?"

The hummingbird zips to my side with an uncharacteristic squeak, while the phoenix blazes a path back to Addy.

"Are you sure we shouldn't save a cupcake or two for Onyx?" Addy's gaze hovers over one with strawberry icing and stars made of fizzing toffee.

"Nope," I reply. "He doesn't get rewarded for being a bad teacher."

Again, no guilt. Why anyone would want that part of their heart, I don't know.

"Oh Lil, let's leave him one at least! You know how he loves them."

"Whatever," I say. "Now tell me about this Ruby thing."

Addy picks a toffee out of the icing and pops it in her mouth. "Oh Ruby. She's so hung up on this witch thing, you know? I can't believe she took a trip to Ta-Mamau just to check out the rumours about you."

That girl really is a pain. The Mamauri, Addy's people, are a pain too. Thanks to them, rumours about witches in the rainforest are starting to gain traction among conspiracy theorists. And thanks to those rumours, Ruby decided to travel to the Forest of Sorrows herself to see what the fuss was about.

Queen Irine, Addy's mother, forbade her tribe to give Ruby any information at Addy's insistence, but still. Can't the idiot mind her own business?

"Tell me she didn't find out anything," I say. "Although she already knows I was there right before the rumours about witches started to resurface. Even if no one talked, she'll never let this go."

"I haven't spoken to her," Addy admits. "She's feeling ill after getting back. I might visit her with some of Hami's soup later."

Ah, the all-powerful Mamauri soup. Known to cure absolutely nothing, but revered all the same.

Barely a half hour after she mentions her mother's fabled soup, there's a rapping at the door.

"Adamantine!" comes a sing-song voice from beyond the frame. "Adamantine!"

Addy skips over to open the door and throws her arms around her mother. "Hami!"

Queen Irine wears a long sleek skirt made of silver snake scales, and a sleeveless blue silk blouse with two large emerald leaves shaping the bust. The leaves are made of crinkled silk. Her waves of blue hair are strung with berry charms of the same green as the leaves.

"I'm sorry I haven't been to visit this week," Addy says, her voice muffled by her mother's shoulder. "I've had the most baffling clients lately. There was one who can't stop hexing spiders, and another one who says she needs to swallow a fire quartz fragment a day to survive."

"I am sure you have handled them wonderfully, Adamantine darling." She sees me and straightens. "Good evening, Lily. I hear your friend is ill."

Firstly, Ruby isn't my friend. Secondly, it's amazing that she can make even that sound like my fault.

I paste on my fakest smile. "That's right. She became sick after visiting your forest." I place an ever-so-slight emphasis on the word your.

Queen Irine strolls in like this was her room, ignoring the phoenix flapping behind her. "I have made some soup for her. She took very well to our cuisine, my advisers tell me."

Why doesn't that surprise me? Ruby's always been insane.

"Nobody said...?"

She turns to me sharply. "You have my word."

I'm not sure how I feel about this woman knowing I'm a witch. She's never liked me, yet she's taking the fact that I'm the reincarnation of the witch who burned down her ancestors' home amazingly well. When I first told Addy I was a witch she took it amazingly well too, but that was because she thought I was lying.

Queen Irine positions herself on Addy's velvet sofa. A smile glimmers on her lips. "I have a surprise for you," she says.

"Oh Hami, I really don't need any more eye glitter. The tub you sent me'll last me a lifetime..."

"No more eye glitter." Queen Irine throws up her hands. "I promise." The berries in her hair bob up and down as she leans forward. "This is much better."

Another trip to her smelly rainforest? Pass.

"You're going to take a flying cart tour with Maya Cerberus."

Addy squeals. "What?! I can't believe it! Really? But how...?" Her excitement fades just a little bit.

"It was easy." Queen Irine flicks a strand of hair behind her ear. " I simply approached Ms Cerberus at a convention and told her of the situation."

"Hami!" Addy stares at her mother in open-mouthed horror. "Hami, you didn't!
What did you say?"

"Nothing embarrassing," she insists. "I simply told her how much you wanted to drive a flying cart. She remembers you from the case you worked for her some time ago."

Addy's cheeks have turned as red as the phoenix blazing next to her. "Oh Hami," she says. "How did you even get an audience with her? She always has so many fans lined up."

"I simply told her guard that I was Queen Irine of the Mamauri, and I wished to speak to Ms Cerberus immediately."

Addy looks at me helplessly.

I shrug. Hey, she's not my mother.

And I guess Addy's getting her crystal spaceship ride after all.