The Witch's Key

Episode 3: Like Any Good Witch

As the others talked, I watched. 

If anyone was paying attention, they would just think I was your average teen with a major crush, staring at the object of her desire. At worst, they would think I was a stalker.

I could live with that, as long as no one suspected what I was really up to.

Basically, I needed his DNA, which sounded a lot more disgusting than it was.

Since I'd never even spoken to him before, and since he was obviously keeping an eye on me, I needed to be sneaky about it.

So, I watched his every move from the corner of my eye.

I did my best to be discreet about it, but I nearly jumped out of my seat the minute I saw him step into a back room and take a sip of a drink with a white straw.

"You okay?" Brandy asked.

"I have to run to the bathroom," I said. "Be right back."

I started toward the front of the cafe, and Peyton called out after me. "The bathroom's the other way."

"I'll find it," I called back, waving my hand over my head.

With any luck, they'd go back to their discussion about Peyton's epic birthday party plans coming up, and they'd forget all about me for a minute.

Thanks to my spell from this morning, most people took no notice of me at all. I was just a blur in the crowd. Kai, of course, seemed to notice me just fine, but he was back on the registers now, and the cafe was swamped.

In fact, there were so many people inside, it was probably some kind of fire code violation. Wall-to-wall teenagers hopped up on sugar and first-day-of-school nerves.

Slowly, I inched my way closer to the door marked "employees only" and watched the patterns of anyone who came in and out of that door.

From what I could tell, there wasn't an actual kitchen in this cafe. There was just a back store room where employees could go to take a break or grab things to restock the main room, like straws, napkins, flavorings for the coffee, and stuff like that.

Besides the manager, who Olive had called Melvin, there were four other employees working. Olive and one other girl were making coffees and packaging cupcake orders. They were also managing orders coming from the tables. Kai was obviously on the register for now, and there was a younger guy bussing tables and restocking the napkin stations.

The manager and the young guy were the two who went into the back room the most, so I kept an eye on both of them from my hiding spot at the end of the bakery counter. I waited for a moment when the kid had just started to empty the trash and the manager was dealing with a couple of very obviously upset girls complaining about the quality of their iced coffees.

I bent down as if I needed to tie my shoes and whispered, "Tacitus."

Casting a spell on my boots was likely overkill, but hey, I'd been denied the use of my magic for the past three months. Now that I had my key back, I was going to use it.

The simple spell made my boots silent, so between that and the spell I'd cast on myself this morning, I was able to very quickly and easily slip through the employees-only door, grab a napkin, and lift Kai's straw from his drink. With what I'd like to think of as ninja-like skills, I slid the wrapped straw into my bag and got the heck out of there.

No one suspected a thing, and I made my way back to my table with a smile on my face.

"That must have been some bathroom break," Brandy said. "You were gone for twenty minutes."