Which Witch Switch - Julie Steimle (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud .TXT) 📗

have talents that we appreciate, skills that would be very useful in the future. Certainly you want to reach your goals in life.”
Thinking about it, I leaned back. “My goals…. Yeah. Of course I do. But Mom won’t take us to Hawaii for vacation so there is no way I’ll ever be able to enter any of the surfing competitions over there until after college.”
The woman blinked at me. “What?”
“You did say my talents, right?” I glanced to Jane who was pressing her lips together to keep from laughing. Then I looked to Dawn who rolled her eyes at me. “I’m not extraordinary at anything at school, though my computer class grade is pretty good. You must be talking about my surfing…. Oh! Or maybe you’re talking about my being the understudy majorette this year! You know, I can twirl three batons at the same time even while they are on fire.”
I could see the woman’s eyes droop down as she stared at me with uttermost dismay, the desired effect I was aiming at. I knew the other woman that had come to our school was in the car, even though the back windows were tinted. Her imps shouted for her jump out and try to schmooze me.
“I think your talents could be expressed in a more useful way.” The businesswoman gave a long-suffering sigh.
“Like how?” I chuckled.
But Dawn grabbed my arm and started to pull me back towards the sidewalk. “Let’s go.”
Jane nodded, reaching for my other arm to do the same.
The businesswoman hopped onto the curb and followed after us. “You were born for a purpose. I invoke the right of the coven that you come with us now.”
She then snapped her fingers and flicked something into the air before tracing the design of an inverted five-pointed star. I don’t know what she expected to happen, though her face showed that she expected something dramatic. What I do know is what I felt.
It was like a sudden wind had blown by me. In that wind were strings, thin as spider webs and just as sticky. Each of those tiny thin threads clung to me as if to pull me towards her like a marionette. But, like a spider web, I batted it off and waved it away with a shiver. Then I turned to go with my sister and my best friend down the road.
“No! You’re supposed to come with me!” The woman shouted after me as we walked away.
I glanced back only once, waving goodbye. “No, thanks. I promised my teacher I wouldn’t walk off with the likes of you.”
And that was that. That woman stood there for a good ten minutes before getting in to her car to go. By then I no longer heard the shout of her imps telling her to draw a gun to take my sister or Jane hostage. I suppose she didn’t do it because it wasn’t in her plans to cause a stir in our town. Either that or she didn’t want to get me angry, somehow knowing what I could really do.

Dawn and I told my mom what had happened on the street, and then I let her know about Jane and I seeing the three women at the motel the two days previous. My mother just stared at me, blinked as she processed what we had described, and then she sat down in a kitchen chair.
“And you think she tried some kind of…spell to make you go with her?” She murmured aloud.
Dawn looked to me, biting one of her lips.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It was weird, all that finger waving and the stuff she tossed up in the air. What I do know is that those women are up to no good.”
My mother nodded slowly thinking to herself. “Leaving with your sister and Jane when you did was the right thing to do. And your teacher, Mr. McDillan said he’d check them out, right?”
I nodded.
“Ok.” My mom rose and drew in a breath, looking directly at me. “Then I think I will drive you to school tomorrow. I’ll call your father right away, and we’ll discuss this with Mr. McDillan tonight.”
“Who do you think they are?” I asked watching her fuss with that worried look, her imps shouting for her to have me play hooky from school.
Shaking her head as before, my mother murmured to herself. “I don’t know.”

Everyone was in a stir about it when Dad came home. Travis, my older brother in his senior year went to our computer to Google Coven Inc. on the net while Dad was on the phone with Mr. McDillan until dinnertime discussing the situation behind closed doors. I waited in my bedroom doing my homework. At dinner, while eating our macaroni and cheese Dad brought up the topic and laid out what Mr. McDillan had told him.
“He didn’t get much on those three women, I’m afraid,” my dad said. “He believes they registered at the motel under aliases. But he also believes that they are here specifically to get at Eve.”
Travis made a face and dropped his fork onto his plate. “That’s bad, Dad. Especially considering what I found. Coven Inc. has a website, but it was nothing but politically correct speak about empowering women, and you have to log on to get past the main page, no way to sign up without emailing them for a chat first. But I did find another link about it. Eve, you remember the SRA website, right?”
“The Supernatural Regulator’s Association? You mean that group of monster hunters Mr. McDillan’s brother and Michael Toms is part of?” I pulled back. “Don’t tell me they are one and the same.”
Travis shook his head, giving me a smile. “No. They are in fact the opposite. The SRA is calling for help to deal with Coven Inc. Apparently, Coven Inc. is nothing more than a front for a group of witches somewhere back east.”
“Witches?” Dawn gaped at him, then me.
“I always imagined witches to be old women.” I made a face showing my skepticism. “Biddies. That’s usually how they are in the movies. Three biddies: the head diva biddy, the roly-poly needs to diet biddy, and a thin beautiful seductress biddy. These women were not biddies at all. All three of them were thin and toned as if they were diet obsessed.”
Merely shrugging, Travis said, “Maybe they’ve modernized.”
I rolled my eyes at him.
“Either way,” he added. “They seem to come from somewhere in a small town not far from Salem, Massachusetts. Their headquarters is some place called Middleton.”
The name of that town was familiar. I knew I had heard it somewhere before I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Middleton?” Dawn repeated to make sure she had heard right. “Isn’t that where Michael Toms was kidnapped by some cult years ago?”
That was where I remembered hearing it. I had read it on the SRA website the year before. I nodded. “Yeah. I remember. The article said something about Middleton, Massachusetts and Wolf’s Wood Cult.”
“We have a friend on the east coast,” Dad said to our mother, leaning his chin on his hand with his elbow on the table. “Do you think the Deacons know anything about some witches in Massachusetts?”
“They’re werewolves,” I murmured, leaning back in my chair. “They certainly would keep an eye out for witches. Rick emails me all the time. Do you think I should email him and ask about Coven Inc.?”
My father nodded.
“I could call Will and ask him to do some research also,” Mom added. My oldest brother was a freshman at Stanford. I didn’t see how he could have more information on an east coast town than we would, but then maybe Mom wanted an extra pair of eyes looking out for me.
We finished dinner and each of us did exactly what we said we would. I emailed Rick Deacon while Mom had a long chat with Will. Halfway through the phone call she passed the phone to me. Since Will was my favorite brother and we got along best I guess he wanted to talk.
<< Hey, Eve, are you ok? They didn’t freak you out, did they? >>
I sighed, smiling and setting the phone in the crook of my neck as I still sat in front of the computer. “Nah. I’m fine. It’s just weird thinking that someone that isn’t a monster hunter is stalking me. I mean those women talking nice to me when everyone else outside our family besides Jane is scared of me kinda makes me nervous. I know they want something.”
He exhaled. I could hear him shift the telephone to his other ear. He said, “I’m going to call Jane next. She’ll watch out for you.”
Snickering, I replied, “Ok, lover boy. But don’t talk too long. Tomorrow is a school day for both you and her.”
Will merely snorted, perhaps even blushing on his end of the line. He had been dating Jane since last February. And though he had gone off to college they still were considered a couple.
We hung up, and I finished writing my email to Rick. I had decided to tell him the entire story thus far from beginning to end, and when I sent it I wondered when he would read it. Usually my family didn’t check our email until the evening so it was likely I would not get an answer until tomorrow after dinner. I only hoped he checked his email in the morning.
Logging off the computer, I then went straight to my room.
If I were a normal girl, I would have gone to bed or at least hung out in my room until I got tired, but I wasn’t. The fact was I’m not even human. I’m a vimp. And that, my family had silently decided, was the reason why those women came and tried to talk with me. And at nights, I usually went off flying with a pair of wings that come out of two ‘birth marks’ on my back between my shoulder blades. But this night I hesitated, wondering if they were keeping an eye out for me.
There is a nifty little trick I learned last March (walking through walls) and April (going invisible) that I had inherited from my birth mother who was an imp. I used it then to get myself through our roof so I could be outside without anyone seeing me, but also giving me the benefit of a view. As I pulled myself trough the roof, I took one flap and rested on the rooftop, peering out into the road.
Sure enough, there they were. I saw the car those women had rented parked across the street. They were obviously