The Only Thing Worse Than Witches (5 page)

“Hey!” Rupert said. “I thought you said I was the smartest apprentice you ever had!”

Witchling Two wouldn't meet his gaze.

Storm stood with a flourish of her black robes. “I say! What are we waiting for? Let's go!”

Seriously? After all that, he wasn't going to be a witch's apprentice after all? “But wait
—
”

“Good riddance!” Nebby said.

“Harrumph!” Storm said.

“Good-bye forever!” Witchling Two said.

Storm pulled Witchling Two out of the tea shop by the hand, and Rupert watched helplessly as his only friend marched out of his life for good.

Vocabulary Class

A
FTER THE STRANGEST, MOST WONDERFUL, AND
most heartbreaking long weekend as a witch's apprentice, Rupert did not want to return to his old life in Mrs. Frabbleknacker's class for one minute. But he took his seat next to Kyle Mason-Reed and Allison Gormley. They both looked straight ahead with wide eyes. Rupert sighed and did the same.

Moments later, Mrs. Frabbleknacker clip-clopped into the room, and Rupert caught the whiff of belly-button lint again. He bit on his lips to keep from making a sour face. The last time he had made a sour face in Mrs. Frabbleknacker's class, she made him keep ten marbles in his mouth for an hour. And when Rupert spit them out, to his horror, there were only nine.

Mrs. Frabbleknacker tapped on the board with her long fingernails. The whole class tensed. They were waiting for her to scratch the board, for her fingernails to make that high-pitched, shudder-inducing moan, but Mrs. Frabbleknacker peeled away from the board.

“Children,” she said, as though she was saying something truly awful like
Root Canal
or
Pickled Sausages.
“Today we will study vocabulary.”

She turned around and quickly wrote four words on the board:

REPUGNANT

TACITURN

CLAMOR

ABSCOND

Rupert's jaw dropped.

“Those aren't words!” Bruno Gopp called out. “Those are just funny sounds put together!”

Mrs. Frabbleknacker's head twisted around the back of her shoulder. Her eyes were wide and wild. “Did you speak without raising your hand?”

Bruno Gopp cowered. “N-no, ma'am,” he whispered. “I didn't say anything
—
it wasn't me.”

Mrs. Frabbleknacker took a step closer to Bruno, and Rupert was sure that his friend was about to wet himself. Sweat dripped down Bruno's forehead, and every kid in the class held his breath.

Mrs. Frabbleknacker sucked air through her crooked nose. “And are you
lying
to me
—
again?”

Bruno looked around, as if he hoped that someone in the class would feed him the correct answer. “No?”

Mrs. Frabbleknacker lunged forward and grabbed Bruno by the ear. Bruno winced in pain, muttering
ow, ow, ow, ow!
She pulled him to the front of the class and threw him into a wooden chair. Bruno trembled as Mrs. Frabbleknacker placed a box of toothpicks in front of him.

“P-please don't stab me with those,” Bruno said.

Mrs. Frabbleknacker leaned forward and breathed into the ear she almost pulled off. “You won't leave this classroom until you build a tower. Just one toothpick on top of the other. Longways. Use them all.”

“But that's impossible,” Bruno said. “Not without glue.”

“I hope you said good-bye to your family this morning,” Mrs. Frabbleknacker said, and then she burst into a deep, hearty laugh.

When Mrs. Frabbleknacker finished laughing, she snapped back to the rest of the class. “Well? You've had ten minutes to learn the words. Now it's time for a test.”

The entire class gasped.

“Allison!” Mrs. Frabbleknacker snapped. She walked up to Allison's desk and breathed her banana breath in Allison's nervous-looking face. “What is REPUGNANT?”

“Um,” Allison stammered. “Is it a kind of dog?”

Mrs. Frabbleknacker flipped Allison's desk over and tossed her papers across the room. “NO!” she shouted. “IT'S YOU!
YOU
ARE REPUGNANT, YOU LOATHESOME CHILD! YOU ARE THE UGLIEST, SMELLIEST, ROTTEN-BEYOND-ROTTEN LITTLE GIRL IN THE WHOLE WORLD!”

Allison ran from the classroom crying.

“Next,” Mrs. Frabbleknacker said. “Francis. Demonstrate TACITURN!”

Francis was too afraid to move, blink, or even breathe. He sat there in silence.

Mrs. Frabbleknacker frowned, clearly disappointed. “Correct. Now class, demonstrate TACITURN.”

Every student imitated Francis
—
his straight posture, his nauseated expression, his still and silent demeanor, and even his tiny eye twitch. And without knowing what TACITURN was, the whole class became it.

“Kaleigh
—
CLAMOR.”

“Oh! My daddy had mussels and CLAMORS for dinner last night!”

Mrs. Frabbleknacker smiled wickedly. “Did I not ask the class to be TACITURN? Did I ever say to
stop
being TACITURN?”

“Wh-what's TACITURN?”

“SILENCE!” Mrs. Frabbleknacker shouted. “SILENCE, SILENCE, SILENCE! AND WHEN YOU SPEAK, ARE YOU SILENT?” Mrs. Frabbleknacker licked her lips, her long tongue fluttering in and out of her mouth like a snake. “ARE YOU TACITURN, KALEIGH?”

“No, but you asked me a question.”

“TACITURN! TACITURN, TACITURN! AND YOUR FATHER DID
NOT
HAVE CLAMORS FOR DINNER BECAUSE I AM CLAMORING NOW. DO YOU HEAR WHAT I AM DOING?”

Kaleigh nodded taciturnly.

The whole room buzzed with silence. Then, Rupert heard the sound of a hundred toothpicks falling against a table.
Poor Bruno,
he thought.

“And now that I have you all silent,” Mrs. Frabbleknacker said, “I will demonstrate the last vocabulary word, ABSCOND.”

Mrs. Frabbleknacker walked out of the classroom, slamming the door in her wake.

Two hours later, Rupert and his classmates decided it was finally safe to move. Mrs. Frabbleknacker wasn't coming back.

New Lair, Where?

W
HEN
R
UPERT ARRIVED AT HIS HOUSE
,
W
ITCHLING
Two was waiting for him on the porch.

She waved to him, grinning. “Hi, Rupert!”

He was almost too stunned for words. Finally he stammered out, “What are
you
doing here?”

“I came to see my apprentice! What are
you
doing here?”

“I live here.”

“Well, there we have it,” she said with a nod.

Rupert climbed the porch steps, but as he got closer, the smile slid off her freckly face. She wiggled her nose and sniffed loudly. “You smell funny,” she said.

“Do I smell like bananas? Mrs. Frabbleknacker may have rubbed off on me.”

“No, you smell more like pigeon liver,” she said matter-of-factly.

“What are you doing here?” Rupert said. “You said I didn't know anything about magic.”

“It's called perverse apology. Nebby and Storm use it on me all the time, so I thought I'd trick them for once.”

Rupert scratched his head. “Perverse apology? I think you mean
reverse psychology
.”

Witchling Two shrugged.

“So what are you doing
here?
At my house? My mom doesn't particularly like . . . people like you. You better leave before she gets home from work.”

“I've already met Joanne. We just had a nice pot of tea.”

At that moment, Rupert's mother opened the front door. She was struggling to get her shoes on, and she was wiggling around trying to clip the straps. “Rupert, honey, you didn't tell me you made such a lovely friend at school. We were just having tea.”

Rupert looked at Witchling Two in fright, but she was just smiling. Did she tell his mother the truth? Rupert couldn't imagine that Witchling Two would tell his mother that she was a witch and Rupert was her new apprentice
—
and his mother seemed far too calm to have heard that she was just drinking tea with a witch.

“Rupert?” his mother said. “You seem distracted.”

“Sorry. You've met my friend . . .” he tried to introduce her, but then he realized that he very well couldn't introduce her as Witchling Two. “Uh, my friend. So now we're going to work on homework. In my room.” Rupert grabbed the sleeve of Witchling Two's powder blue shirt, and he pulled her into the house.

“I'm headed to work!” his mother shouted behind him. “I'll see you later, Rupert!”

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Campbell!” Witchling Two cried.

Rupert pulled her past the kitchen and through the living room. He tried to drag her up the stairs, but she paused at the adjacent basement door.

“Ooooh!” she squealed. “A dark and dangerous door! What's in there?”

“Just the basement,” he said. “Let's not go down there.”

Witchling Two opened the basement door, grabbed Rupert's arm, and pulled him down the stairs with her. The basement wasn't the most comfortable part of the house
—
it was a carpet-less, cement-floored, dimly lit, dust-ridden, musty-smelling, dingy old space. But despite his reluctance to go down there, Rupert supposed it was perfect for what he needed at the moment: a quiet area to think. He buried his face in his hands and thought, thought, thought about what to do next. Now that his mother met Witchling Two, it changed everything. His mom would expect to see his “new friend” around. But how could Rupert possibly have her over? She was a
witch
, and if his mother found out, she wouldn't like that one bit.

Rupert looked up to find Witchling Two pacing the perimeter of the room.

“What are you doing?” Rupert said.

“The dimensions are perfect. And it's just the right temperature. And it has the ideal amount of light.”

“For . . . for what?”

“For my new lair, of course!”

Rupert's stomach dropped.
“
What?”

“Well, I can't go back to Pexale Close with you. The Witches Council booby-trapped it for humans.”

“You can't have a lair here!” Rupert said. “My mom hates witches! And she'll know if a witch's lair is in her own basement!”

“Calm down, Rupert. She likes me.”

“Not when she finds out you're a witch! And what did you tell her by the way? How did you end up having tea with my mom?”

Witchling Two smiled. “Ah, well, I was waiting for you outside the house, and your mom just invited me in. Who am I to say no to perfectly good tea and crumpets?”

“And what did you say when she asked for your name?”

“I didn't say anything. I just changed the subject.”

“Do you know what name you'll want to use, eventually?”

Witchling Two shook her head. “Not yet. I'll keep you posted. But you have to promise to keep it a secret. I'll be very upset if one of the other witchlings takes my name.”

Witchling Two turned her back toward Rupert and put her arms straight in the air. Then she stretched from left to right. Then right to left. Then she jumped up in the air. Then she jumped up in the air and waved her arms. Then she crouched down on the ground. Then she hugged her knees. Then she put her cheek to the floor. Then the other one. Then she stood on her head until her face turned purple.

“Are you all right?” Rupert said.

“I have to do my exercises now. Shhh,” she said.

Rupert sat on the worktable and observed Witchling Two's routine with bemusement. “You're looking rather purple.”

“That's my favorite color!”

“So I've heard,” Rupert said, “but it might be healthier if you stayed peach.”

Witchling Two flipped up to her feet. “Let's do some magic!”

Rupert's eyes bulged, which was his way of saying
NO WAY, JOSE
. They could not
—
absolutely, positively, definitely, surely, certainly could NOT
—
use his basement as a lair. Because even though his mother worked three jobs, she was bound to notice a cauldron in the basement.

Witchling Two cracked her knuckles, and Rupert cringed. He hated the sound, and it just so happens that witches have extra crackily knuckles that make the whole room shake. It was the loudest, most horrible sound Rupert had heard in all eleven years of his life.

“AUGH!”

And Witchling Two froze. “What is it?” she whispered. “Did you see . . . a bunny rabbit?”

And then everything clicked for Rupert.

“Oh yes!” Rupert lied. “I saw a bunny! There are tons
of them in the basement.
Millions,
in fact. All the bunnies in the world live in basements. Maybe you don't want your lair here after all
—
”

Witchling Two jumped onto the table. “BUUUUNNNNNYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

“NO NO!” Rupert said. “I WAS JUST KIDDING!”

But then Witchling Two whimpered. And that whimper turned into a snivel. And that snivel turned into a weep. And that weep turned into a cry. And that cry turned into a wail. And that wail turned into a sob. And that sob turned into a blubber.

And by that time, the basement began to flood.